Daniel Silva - The Fallen Angel

The safe house itself stood about a half-mile to the south of the site of the Wannsee Conference, on a densely wooded lane aptly named the Lindenstrasse. Two high walls surrounded it, one of crumbling brick, the other of overgrown greenery. The empty rooms smelled of damp and dust and faintly of brandy. Fat calico carp dozed beneath the ice cap of the fishpond.

The members of the team posed as employees of something called VisionTech, a Montreal-based firm that existed only in the imagination of a desk officer at King Saul Boulevard. According to their cover story, they had come to Berlin to launch a joint venture with a German firm, which explained the unusual number of computers and other pieces of technical equipment they had in their possession. They kept most of it in the large formal dining room, which served as their ops center. Within hours of their arrival, its walls were covered with large-scale maps and with surveillance photos of a man who pretended to be a low-level clerk at the Iranian Embassy but was in fact his country’s top mastermind of international terror.

Dina happily accepted the assignment of preparing the questions for Massoud’s long-overdue interrogation, and to enter her workspace was to enter a classroom dedicated to the evolution of modern terrorism. Massoud Rahimi had been at the center of it, beginning in November 1979, when he had been among the students and militants who stormed the American Embassy in Tehran. Several of the fifty-two hostages would later identify him as the cruelest of their tormentors. Mock executions were his favorite form of entertainment. Even then, Massoud enjoyed nothing more than seeing an American beg for his life.

His next star turn came in Lebanon in 1982, when he began working with a new Shiite militant group known as the Organization of the Oppressed on Earth. It was said that Massoud was instrumental in shortening the group’s name to the Party of God, or Hezbollah. It was also said that he personally helped to assemble the twelve-thousand-pound truck bomb that destroyed the U.S. Marine barracks at Beirut Airport at 6:22 a.m. on October 23, 1983. The explosion, the largest non-nuclear detonation since the Second World War, killed 243 American servicemen and forever changed the face of global terror. More attacks followed. Planes were hijacked, hostages were taken, embassies were bombed. All had one thing in common. They were carried out at the behest of the man who now worked from the Iranian Embassy in Berlin, protected by the shield of a diplomatic passport.

But how to convince a man such as Massoud to relinquish his most murderous secrets? And how to take possession of him in the first place? They would have to engage in the time-honored Shiite practice known as taqiyya , displaying one intention while harboring another. They were not going to kidnap Massoud, said Gabriel. They were going to be his saviors and protectors. And when they were finished wringing him dry, they were going to let him go his merry way. Catch and release, he called it. No harm, no foul.

They would have preferred to watch him for a month or more, but it wasn’t possible; the red lights were flashing at King Saul Boulevard, with all the intelligence pointing to a major attack in a week or less. They had to take Massoud into custody before the bombs exploded, or before Tehran found an excuse to summon him home. That was Gabriel’s greatest fear, that VEVAK would put Massoud on ice before the attack, leaving him beyond the reach of the Office or anyone else. And so Gabriel set a deadline of three days—three days to plan and execute the abduction of an Iranian diplomat in the heart of Berlin. When Eli Lavon placed their odds at just one in four, Gabriel took him into Dina’s makeshift office to see the photographs of what might happen if they failed. “I don’t want odds,” said Gabriel. “I want Massoud.”

Their assignment was made slightly easier by the fact that Massoud obviously felt secure on German soil. His schedule—at least in the brief time they were able to observe it—was strictly regimented. He spent most of his time inside the VEVAK station at the embassy, which was coincidentally located next door to the German Archaeological Institute, a good omen, in the opinion of the team. He arrived no later than eight a.m. and remained until late in the evening. His apartment was two miles to the north of the embassy, in the section of Berlin known as Charlottenburg. His official car appeared unarmored, though that was not true of the VEVAK-issue thug who served as his driver and bodyguard. The task of neutralizing the bodyguard on the night of the snatch fell to Mikhail. Not that he needed much convincing. After spending years dodging Iranian-supplied bullets while serving in the IDF, he was anxious to return the favor.

But where to do it? A busy street? A quiet one? A traffic signal? Massoud’s doorstep? Gabriel decreed that the spot would be determined by just one factor. It had to offer them a clear route of escape in the event of either success or failure. If they chose a spot too close to the Iranian embassy, they might find themselves in a shootout with the German police who guarded it day and night. But if they let Massoud get too close to his apartment, they could become ensnarled in Charlottenburg’s heavy traffic. In the end, the choice was clear to everyone. Gabriel marked the location on the map with a blood-red pin. To Eli Lavon, it looked like a gravestone.

With that, the operation settled into the phase the team referred to as “final approach.” They had their target, they had their plan, they had their assignments. Now all they had to do was get the aircraft on the ground without killing themselves and everyone else on board. They had no computers to guide them, so they would have to do it the old-fashioned way, with instincts and nerve and perhaps a bit of good fortune as well. They tried to keep their reliance on providence to a bare minimum. Gabriel believed that operational luck was something to be earned, not counted upon. And it usually came about as a result of meticulous planning and preparation.

In the lexicon of the Office, the operation was “wheel heavy,” meaning it would require several vehicles of different makes and models. Transport, the Office division that saw to such matters, acquired most from friendly European rental agents in ways that could not be traced back to any member of the team. The most important vehicle, however, was Office owned. A Volkswagen van with a concealed human storage compartment, it had played a starring role in one of Gabriel’s most celebrated operations—the seizure of Nazi war criminal Erich Radek from his home in the First District of Vienna. Chiara had been behind the wheel that night. Radek still made regular appearances in the worst of her nightmares.

Much to her dismay, Chiara was not among those present in Berlin, though her role in the operation remained central. Her task was to coordinate the elaborate piece of taqiyya that would cover the team’s tracks and, if successful, throw both the Germans and the Iranians off its scent. Like all good lies, it was plausible and contained elements of truth. And perhaps, said Gabriel, it also contained a thread of hope for the future—a future where Iran was no longer in the grip of a cabal of religious madmen. The mullahs and their henchmen in the Revolutionary Guard were not rational actors. They were unpredictable and apocalyptic. And the Middle East would never know true peace until they were ushered into history.

There were other lies as well, such as the canvas rucksack filled with cream-colored clay, wires, and timing devices, and the small limpet-style mine that was far more sound than fury. But they would all be for naught unless they could extract Massoud from his car with a minimum of violence. After much deliberation, it was decided that Yaakov would serve as the sharp end of the sword, with Oded, a blunt object of a man, playing a supporting role. An experienced interrogator of terrorists, Yaakov had a face and demeanor that left little doubt he meant what he said. More important, Yaakov was a descendant of German Jews and, like Gabriel, spoke fluent German. It would be Yaakov’s job to talk Massoud out of the car. And if words didn’t work, Oded would bring down a very large hammer.