John Weisman - Direct Action

“These people never do anything without a reason.” Reuven picked up his mug and sipped. “There had to be explosives somewhere.”

“No there didn’t, goddamnit-” Tom almost choked on his sausage. “Don’t you see, Reuven?”

“See what?”

“It’s always been the assumption that Dianne unwittingly carried the explosives.”

Amos nodded. “That’s the pattern. The Irish woman flying from Heathrow, the-”

“I know about all those cases. But there was no trace of explosives in anything Dianne brought from London.”

“So far. We also know the man you call Ben Said and we call Bomber-X-he had to make small whatchamacallit batches of a new formula.”

That Aricha knew Ben Said’s formula was made in small quantities was surprising because Tom hadn’t mentioned that fact to Reuven, or anyone else. He decided to elicit. “Are you sure, Amos?”

Tom caught a flicker of motion in the Shin Bet man’s eyes. And then Amos deflected the question. “It’s not impossible there were explosives in the radio as well as the backpack.”

Tom decided not to follow up the elicitation. It would be too obvious. So he deflected back. “What’s the point?”

Aricha looked at Tom. “The point is, one plus one equals two. Two radios. Two bombs. The point is that this Ben Said has come up with a new way of targeting Israel.”

“Hold it.” Tom scampered from the patio up to the living room, where he’d left his interrogation notes. He flipped through the sheets until he found what he wanted and charged back downstairs. “The batteries were dead, Amos. The radio batteries were dead.”

The Israeli shrugged. “So, nu ?”

“Don’t you see? They weren’t dead-they were something else. Dummies. Containers for some critical element of his bomb. Malik sent Dianne to buy new batteries. He got her out of the room while he did whatever he had to do. Removed whatever was concealed in the batteries. There had to be something in the batteries.”

Amos frowned. “When you go through security at Heathrow,” he said, “especially when it’s a Tel Aviv flight, they make you turn on all your electronic devices. No exceptions. They would have done the same at de Gaulle, or Dulles, or wherever. That’s the standard practice these days.”

“But Malik’s radio was in Dianne’s suitcase, not her hand luggage,” Tom said. “It would never have been inspected. Not in Europe. In Europe, you can lock your luggage. Only in the U.S. is luggage for the hold hand-inspected.”

“This has nothing to do with the U.S. He was trying to launch attacks here in Israel.”

Tom ignored the Shin Bet man. “There had to be something concealed in the batteries. I think Dianne carried detonators. They spent all their time together on the August trip. But in July, Malik was by himself twice in three days. Once for a meeting with his editor-who we know works with Ben Said. And once for a meeting with ‘an old friend’ whom he met while buying a newspaper. My guess is that Malik picked the detonators up in Paris on the previous trip.”

Reuven shrugged. “What’s your point?”

“My point is that maybe they were Ben Said’s prototype detonators. We can’t discount that, can we?”

Amos gave Tom a dismissive stare. “Prototype-schmototype. I don’t think it makes much difference at this point.”

“I do. I think we’ve been focusing on the wrong target. We’re thinking inside the box. We’re no better than Langley.”

He got blank stares from the two Israelis. “Look,” he said, gulping some coffee to wash the sausage down. “There’s this old shaggy-dog story about a guy who goes through a diamond-mine gate every night for a week with a wheelbarrow full of dirt. The security guard sifts the dirt. He searches the guy-even puts on rubber gloves and does a body-cavity search. Nothing. Bubkes. The guard never finds a thing. After two weeks of this, he pulls the fellow aside. ‘Look,’ he says, ‘I know you’re stealing diamonds. I just can’t figure out how you’re doing it.’ And the fellow looks at the guard and says, ‘Since this is my last day on this job, I’ll tell you what I’ve been doing. I’ve been stealing wheelbarrows.’”

“That’s supposed to be funny?” Amos shrugged. “What’s the point?”

“Let me put it another way.”

“Maybe you’d better, because you’re confusing me good.”

“We’ve all been trying to analyze the situation so we can solve the Ben Said problem, right?”

“Of course.” Aricha set his coffee down. “The goal must be to stop or prevent the megaterror he is planning to commit on Israeli soil.”

“That’s always been the assumption.”

“But you also contend, Tom, that the ambush ten days ago in Gaza in which three American embassy employees were killed, and the two bombings-Heinrich Azouz, the German national in the Nablus Road Hotel, and Malik Suleiman at Mike’s Bar in Tel Aviv-are all related equally to the planning for this megaterror.”

“I do.”

Aricha cracked his knuckles. “I can tell you for sure Shin Bet doesn’t see it.”

“See what?”

“The relationship. In the first incident, the bomb went off prematurely while Azouz was affixing the detonator. That’s what you call operator error. We were able to prove conclusively that the explosion was caused by static electricity. End of story. In the second, a survivor swears he heard Malik, the perpetrator, exclaim, ‘Allah akbar!’ just before the explosion went off. We are convinced he detonated the bomb after having second thoughts about killing his girlfriend. No operator error, no static. Full stop. And the Gaza incident was Arafat’s way of sending a signal to the Bush administration to back off its support of Sharon.”

Aricha rapped scarred knuckles on the tabletop. “I accept that incidents one and two are related. I accept your theory that the man you call Ben Said and we refer to as Bomber-X is working on a new form of undetectable explosive. I accept that he was a participant in the Gaza incident, by which I mean he supplied the plastique and was on-site for its detonation so he could watch firsthand its effects. But that’s the extent of it, Tom. Gaza is a whole other whatchamacallit-kettle from fish. Full stop again. End of story, kiddo.”

Tom said, “Wheelbarrows, Amos. Think wheelbarrows.”

The Israeli scratched his head. “Reuven, what’s with these wheelbar-rows?”

Reuven toyed with the heavy gold chain around his neck. “Pay attention, Grandfather,” he said in Hebrew. “Maybe even you will learn something from the youngster.”

Tom caught the look that passed between the old soldiers. He swiveled toward Aricha. “You’re basing your conclusions on two common threads: the explosives, and the fact that there’s a plan to wage megaterror against Israel sometime in the near term.”

“Because those are the logical conclusions to draw from what we know about the events. We look at what happened, and we draw conclusions from our experience. We rely on”-he fought for the word in English-“empirical logic.”

“Precisely.” Tom noted the look of confusion on Aricha’s face. “But, Amos, too often, when we analyze a problem, we begin the process by formulating our conclusions. I think that’s what happened in Shin Bet.”

“You say we start with conclusions? I think not.” Aricha folded his arms on his chest. “Shabak started with explosions.”

It was a defensive position. Tom extended his legs, shifting his own body into a nonthreatening attitude. He softened his tone. “I’m not talking about you personally. It’s a problem that’s endemic to the whole intelligence community-you, us, everybody.” He paused as he caught the confused look on the Israeli’s face. “A natural mistake, if you will. In this case, Amos, the conclusion Shin Bet drew-and it’s a perfectly logical one to reach-is that two of the three incidents are directly related to explosives and evidence of a mega-attack on Israel in the near future.” He looked at Aricha. “Am I correct in the way I characterized the situation?”