John Weisman - Direct Action

The Israeli played the magnifying glass over the photograph. Finally, he looked up. “She’s right-but I think it’s a barrel of olives, not the oil.” He backed away so Tom could take a peek.

Tom peered at the photo. Then he gave MJ an anxious look. When she nodded at him, he said, “Give MJ a couple of minutes to play with these. I think she can make things a lot clearer than I did.”

3:56A.M. Tom waved the eight-by-ten at Tony Wyman. “She got it,” he said proudly. “She’s a genius.”

MJ blushed. “Not according to Mrs. Sin-Gin.”

Tony Wyman took the photo. “My Arabic’s rusty,” he said. “But I think it reads Boissons Maghreb Exports .” He looked at Tom. “The name sounds familiar. What’s the significance?”

“It’s an import-export company. Belongs to a Moroccan named Yahia Hamzi. He’s the third man in Shahram’s surveillance photos. Shahram described him as Ben Said’s banker.

“Dianne Lamb, our little bomber girl in Israel, met Hamzi here in Paris,” Tom said. “At a Lebanese restaurant in the seventeenth.”

“I found the place,” Reuven interrupted. “It’s called Rimal. It’s on boulevard Malesherbes.”

“Lamb was told his name was Talal Massoud,” Tom interrupted. “And that he was the editor of Al Arabia, the magazine that employed Malik Suleiman-the Tel Aviv disco bomber.”

Reuven picked up: “Hamzi’s a regular.”

Wyman cocked his head in Tom’s direction. “Does two plus two equal four here, gentlemen?”

“If you’re thinking what I am, the answer’s yes.” Tom turned to Reuven. “What do you think?”

“I agree.”

MJ gave Tom a puzzled look. “What in God’s name are you talking about?”

“That last day when I had lunch with Shahram,” Tom said. “He told me Ben Said’s new explosive was terribly difficult to make. Said it had to be cooked in small batches. Said that Ben Said used up his entire stock of the new stuff in the Gaza explosion.”

“So?”

So, one: we can extrapolate that he’s running short. Aside from what’s been rolled out and is sitting on the drying racks, I don’t see any plastique in the room-no bricks, or mounds of anything to be rolled out.” He scanned the room. “Does anybody?”

“No,” said MJ, “but I don’t know what to look for.”

“There’s nothing there,” Reuven said authoritatively.

Tony Wyman gave the Israeli a probing stare. “So everything’s on the drying racks?”

Reuven didn’t back down. “That’s what I think.”

“Next,” Tom said. “Reuven’s earlier surveillance indicated no activity on rue Lambert. That tells me Ben Said wasn’t on scene.” He looked at Tony Wyman. “But last night-there were hostiles.”

“So?”

“Indicates one of two things: either DST’s got something working or Ben Said’s getting close.” Tom put his arm around MJ’s shoulder. “Here’s my two-plus-two: you asked how Ben Said moves the explosive once it’s been fabricated. How does he get it to the safe house. Obvious answer, given the photo: the explosive gets shipped in a container of Maghreb’s imported olives. Maghreb is Yahia Hamzi’s firm. Shahram told me Hamzi was Ben Said’s banker. But was Shahram being literal or figurative? Maybe he was saying Hamzi moves stuff around for Ben Said-launders the goods, or the cash, or whatever, if you will. Okay. Now, let’s posit the explosives are fabricated in Morocco in small batches-just as Shahram said. Then they’re shipped to Paris-or wherever-in Maghreb olive containers.”

MJ played with Tom’s fingers. “Wouldn’t the oil affect the plastique?”

“Not at all,” Reuven said. “And getting rid of the oil coating would be as simple as using soap and water.”

MJ’s eyes went wide. “Holy cow.”

“Tom,” Tony Wyman said, “I think we need to speak with Mr. Hamzi about these matters.” He swiveled toward the Israeli. “In private, of course. Is there some way you might arrange that, Reuven?”

“Are there time constraints?”

“Obviously, the sooner the better. Sometime in the next twenty-four hours would be optimum.” Wyman looked at Tom. “You look dubious, Tom. Am I asking the impossible?”

“Nothing’s impossible, Tony.” Tom found it significant that Wyman had directed the initial question to Reuven. That was because Reuven had done these kinds of ops before and Tom hadn’t. Besides, Wyman had worked with Mossad in the past-when he’d targeted Abu Nidal.

Many of the CIA’s Arabists-Charlie Hoskinson was one-tended to keep the Israelis at arm’s length. They distrusted Mossad’s motives. Wyman, it was said, had liaised with Mossad off the books on some European operations during the Gates and Webster era, when Langley was institutionally opposed to any sort of risky or audacious operation.

But talk about risky. Snatching Hamzi was way beyond risky. It was dangerous. The French tended to frown on kidnapping in their capital. But there had to be a way.

Tom looked at Tony Wyman. Wyman expected results, not excuses. And he was obviously waiting for Tom to say something-Tom could almost hear the ticking of the clock in Wyman’s brain.

He let his mind go free-float with the white sound of the police scanner. Wheelbarrows, Tom. Think wheelbarrows. And then the answer came to him in a sudden epiphany- create dread . It was so simple it had to work. “We question Hamzi in Israel,” Tom exclaimed.

Tony Wyman gave him a skeptical look. “Isn’t that a bit complicated, Tom? Planes. Unwilling passengers.” He looked at Tom. “Remember when Mubarak tried to smuggle that dissident out of Frankfurt in the trunk?”

He turned to MJ as Reuven and Tom stifled guffaws. They knew the story. “Once upon a time, the Mukhabarat el-Aama-that’s Egypt’s intelligence service-kidnapped a bothersome anti-Mubarak dissident in Germany. They snatched him from Freiburg where he was teaching political science and preaching revolution. They drugged him, stuffed him in a trunk, and tried to ship him back to Cairo as diplomatic mail. Problem was, the son of a bitch woke up just as the Germans were loading the trunk on the plane. There was one hell of a diplomatic flap and the incident caused Mubarak all sorts of political embarrassment in the Western press.” Wyman looked at Tom and Reuven. “We don’t need any flaps, guys.”

“And we won’t have any because I’m not being literal,” Tom interjected. “We use the warehouse. We build a cell, a hallway, an interrogation room. We snatch Hamzi. We put him to sleep. He wakes up in a cell. He hears Hebrew being spoken outside the door. He hears other prisoners talking in Arabic. The guards-what he sees of them-are wearing Israeli uniforms. What’s he going to think? He’ll swear he’s been kidnapped by Mossad and flown to Israel.”

Tom looked at the smile spreading across Reuven’s face. “We re-create Qadima. We squeeze Hamzi. After he gives us what we want, he goes to sleep again-and badda bing, he wakes up in Paris.”

“I like it,” Wyman said. “Because if we succeed, Tel Aviv will get all the blame.” He cast a quizzical look at Reuven. “And how are you with that outcome?”

“I’m retired, remember.” Reuven shrugged. “Besides, the people at Gelilot are big boys. They’ve been blamed for a lot worse things than kidnapping.”

“Good,” Wyman said. “The question is, can we accomplish this within a workable time frame?”

“For what you want, twenty-four hours is tight. So perhaps things will take slightly longer,” Reuven said. “The construction alone will take almost a day, I think.”

Tom said, “If we keep an eye on Hamzi, we should be all right.”

Reuven said: “I’d like to use one of my former networks.”