Mishka Ben-David - Forbidden Love in St. Petersburg

In Beirut, the Corniche served both as the ring road and as the main avenue. It was a wide, circular road that began in the north at the port, ran the length of the bay, became the promenade along the beach to the west and then turned eastwards, becoming the border between the old Christian and Moslem city and the southern, Shi’ite quarters, in the centre of which stood the refugee camps. Each section of the Corniche had a different name and a different character; Gadi’s squad members called it Corniche el Mazraa after one of its sections.

Every city has its surprises, too. Khartoum surprised them with its verdure, which spreads through the city along the river as it splits into the Blue Nile and the White Nile. In Damascus it was the number of trees and the grass and huge parks; in Amman, the neighbourhoods filled with enormous villas built of chiselled stone, not just by wealthy Hashemites but also by rich citizens of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Emirates. In Beirut, it was the liveliness of the beach: the restaurants and cafés, the walkers and joggers. The other surprise in Beirut, less pleasant than the first, was the huge number of policemen and soldiers. At every intersection there were at least two well-armed members of the security forces. Some were Syrian and some were Lebanese, and together they formed a tight ring of security that surrounded the city, making it difficult to gather intelligence or find escape routes for the squad. This was always mentioned in intelligence summaries, but seeing it personally gave new meaning to its operational aspects.

Far worse was the situation south of the Mazraa. Dahiyeh, where the main concentration of Shi’ites lived, comprised two neighbourhoods. Bir-el-Abed, to the north, was reminiscent of other Arab cities, with multi-storeyed private homes and quiet, narrow alleys. But Haret-Hreik, in the south, was an awful, crowded heap of six- and eight-storey apartment buildings with streets far too narrow to contain the masses of pedestrians and cars that created an ongoing and endless traffic jam.

In the heart of Dahiyeh was the autonomous area of the Hezbollah, whose borders and roadblocks were manned by armed Hezbollah guards who stopped and inspected nearly every car. While the drive along the bay was still relatively free, even when passing the refugee camps and the poorest neighbourhoods, entry into the Hezbollah-controlled area required an unshakeable cover story and nerves of steel. Even Christian residents of Beirut didn’t dare try to enter.

Just over a year earlier, Gadi, as squad commander, and Udi, one of his most experienced men, had made their way as scouts to find Abu-Khaled’s whereabouts. They were sent a few days after a suicide bomber dispatched by Abu-Khaled, the head of Hezbollah’s foreign operations, had blown himself up in a crowded Jerusalem market, killing a dozen people. Gadi and Udi were relieved to discover that his office was in a building on a wide street that separated the two neighbourhoods, a street that connected the coastal road with the Beirut-Damascus road at a spot where traffic was heavy but moved fairly freely. They called the road by the name of the neighbourhood nearby, El-Obeiri. The shops on the street level of the building enabled Udi to gather information nearly without raising suspicions, though they both noticed that, as in every Arab city, they still drew the attention of the occasional local.

It took a little more effort to locate Abu-Khaled’s home on a quiet lane of three-storey houses and apartment buildings in Bir-el-Abed. The nature of the neighbourhood made a foot patrol, and even driving around in a rental car, extremely dangerous. One of the buildings fit the description they had received in an intelligence briefing based on a report made by a local agent and after a few trips through the neighbourhood they were able to pick out, in the parking area of the building, a light green Mercedes that had also been parked at the office. The next morning, as they waited by the entrance to the El-Obeiri road, they spotted Abu-Khaled in the same Mercedes. The pieces of the puzzle were beginning to come together, and when the car was seen in different places with additional Hezbollah activists, new operational possibilities opened up.

Gadi had decided to return to Israel with the early findings in order to plan the next stage of intelligence gathering with officers at headquarters, and to send a second team to gather additional information. Both he and Udi had spent too much time there already; there was no way of knowing which shopkeeper near the office or which security guard at the roadblock nearest Abu-Khaled’s home was already suspicious. In a police state the path from suspicion to arrest is short, and in the extraterritorial Hezbollah area the path from suspicion to being kidnapped or murdered is even shorter.

Back in Israel Gadi recommended continuing intelligence-gathering activities, with a focus on placing an explosive device in Abu-Khaled’s Mercedes, either at his home at night or even, under certain circumstances, in his office car park during the day. For that kind of operation they would need more information, such as whether his wife and children used the car as well.

And then Abu-Khaled had ordered another car-bomb attack. There were more bodies in Jerusalem, and Gadi’s squad was instructed to depart immediately. Without further intelligence, planting a bomb in the car would be problematic. The Prime Minister was reticent, too, since innocent bystanders could be injured and retaliation would follow: yet another car-bomb, or a rain of Katyusha rockets in the Galilee.

Gadi remembered well the day when Doron, the head of the Operations Division, had assembled the staff just after returning from a meeting with the Mossad chief and the Prime Minister. They set up a highly focused operation: since it was Abu-Khaled who had ordered the attacks, and Abu-Khaled who had sent the terrorists, then it was Abu-Khaled who must be assassinated – immediately. All intelligence gathering, even if related to planning escape routes, was suspended.

A mere two days later Gadi, Doron, and the Mossad chief presented their plan to the Prime Minister. Gadi seized an opportunity to state briefly that there would be no time for preparing contingency plans, no time for simulations; that some of his team, including Ronen, the “Number One” – the shooter – were not familiar with Beirut, and that there was no time for them to learn the escape routes – a necessary stage in case of a shoot-out. But he stopped short of saying that this was no way to set out on a mission.

Had he assumed that the chief and Doron had already said all this to the Prime Minister at their previous meeting, when the decision had been made? Did he think it was too late, or that in any event it was Doron’s job, as his superior, to say it? Was it so obvious that it was unnecessary even to mention? Or was it that in the heat of activity, with the pressure from terrorist attacks, as part of the division’s culture of operational derring-do, such things simply were not said?

Gadi still hadn’t come up with answers to all these questions. But a year later the whole process seemed completely insane to him. He was travelling the same streets, everything appeared the same, but back at home an internal earthquake had taken place due to the failed operation.

As he approached Abu-Khaled’s office, he was glad it was evening and the shops were closed. There was no need to worry, on this first drive-by, that he would look familiar to one of the shopkeepers in the building.

Still, something inside him reacted when he arrived at the office building. The car park was empty and the pavement nearly bereft of passersby, but two armed soldiers were walking towards him. He couldn’t see any signs of security at the entrance to the building itself, but perhaps these two were reinforcements for the two pairs of soldiers stationed at the closest intersections. Putting the building behind him, Gadi felt his breathing returning to normal. He hadn’t seen any signs of Ronen yet, but there was no reason for him to be there just now.