Mishka Ben-David - Forbidden Love in St. Petersburg

You were still in high school, or maybe even in primary school, when we ran into problems in Bern, so you can allow yourself to talk like that. As for me, the word Switzerland still sends shivers down my spine, Udi told him. But in principle you are right, only you have to be extra cautious about security. If there is any doubt, you hold off.

Isn’t it always like that? Boaz asked, feigning innocence.

If it was, there would be no screw ups but also no operations.

Isn’t our motto ‘zero screw ups’? Boaz laughed.

Yes, but not ‘zero operations’. Come on get going now.

And Boaz, Udi continued, as much as you can, go in and out of the hotel wearing a hat and scarf. Though there are Asians and Caucasians in the city, ‘I’m a Middle-Easterner’ is writ large all over your face.

Locating our apartment within the huge blocks of buildings was not simple. It required following us very closely till the moment we arrived, then gaining entry into the complex to see which specific building we went into, and into the building itself, immediately after us, to discover on which floor the elevator stopped. The team managed to accomplish all these tasks without my spotting any of them.

At night, the temperature sunk to minus thirty and it became impossible to station a lookout on foot to monitor the building’s routine. The same applied to a parked car, the windscreen was immediately covered in condensation. Boaz and his team had no option but to keep watch from a car with its engine running. This limited the amount of time they could stay put in any one place so they were forced to patrol the area, risking a possible run-in with a touring police vehicle.

The building’s routine revealed that towards midnight the residents were already asleep and that after that time the team could do the work in relative safety. The entrance to the building was not guarded and Boaz’s men found the connection box in the basement with its door unlocked. However, Alex and Boris were unable to pinpoint the apartment’s phone number, listed in the name of the real estate agent and not ours. They couldn’t, therefore, initiate a call to that line while other team members used butt sets to identify the pair of wires leading to the apartment.

Udi was forced to decide between two solutions offered by Boaz: one was to call the dozens of other residents whose names were in the phone book. While they were initiating these calls the team could get a fix on each pair of wires in the basement and, by a process of elimination, identify our line. The other option was to break into our apartment and simply dial out from there.

I don’t want to wake up the tenants in the middle of the night while the team is in the basement, Udi decided. Breaking into the apartment is only possible during the day when it’s empty. But that also means working in the basement when the building is alive. Neither solution is ideal, he concluded. After some hesitation he authorized a break-in.

The whole team took part in preparing for the lunchtime break-in, and Udi held a briefing session in the safe house. He assigned Alex to Simon and Kent–who were to break into the apartment–and Boris was attached to Boaz and Zohar, whose task was to go into the basement.

I’m sorry if it’s not to your liking but I want you, Zohar, to dress like a whore and I’m sure that any chance passer-by will readily accept that Boris and Boaz are your clients. Boaz will be with you inside the basement and Boris will wait outside. And you, he said turning to the three would-be housebreakers, if there is any kind of disturbance you’ve simply made a mistake about which building you were supposed to be in. Alex, you’d better look tipsy, which will explain why you got muddled.

The team worked on fine-tuning other possible chance happenings and responses to them. But there were no such incidents either in the apartment or in the basement. Kent and his two men broke into the apartment. Simon called the airport’s automated answering service, and Alex searched the place. They’re certainly living the high life, he said to Kent and Simon. I’ve found a season ticket here to the philharmonic and another one for the opera. There’s a performance of Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin in three days time, anybody interested? I somehow doubt they’ll be using it.

In the basement, Boaz and Zohar, in order to monitor calls, attached butt sets to the dozens of different wires and finally identified the pair on which they could hear the list of flights taking off and landing.

I must remind you that this was only half the job, Udi told the satisfied operatives when they left the building to go to their cars. Have a rest and then tonight we’ll install the bugging device.

Since there was no need to return to the apartment, the teams shuffled roles and this time too there were no mishaps with the plan. The entry into the basement at 1 a.m. was smooth. Boaz, Simon, and Kent connected and concealed the transmitter quickly and efficiently while in the safe house Lavi announced that the reception signal was good. The group dispersed.

Excellent work. Tomorrow’s another day, now go to sleep, said Udi. Who’s on morning watch?

Hagai and Zohar, who’d taken on the role of drivers and spent the night behind the steering wheels of their cars, volunteered to start the morning following me and Anna from the house to the shop.

The head of the Mossad was pleased to hear that the apartment had been successfully bugged and that a significant number of pictures had been transmitted to HQ. I’m not building my hopes on the telephone conversations, he told Udi. Who knows if they even talk from there and if they do, about what. We won’t get incriminating evidence from an order to the grocery store. But tell your guys to come up with the pictures and I want to see what they manage to do in the lab.

The pictures taken in the street of Anna going out to lunch or of both of us on our way to the shop and back, were merely the raw material for the creativity displayed by the technicians in the photo lab and the people working in the psychological warfare department. Computer programs placed her wherever the lab staff wanted her to be. To get the job done, they turned repeatedly to Boaz’s team with additional requests. They were supplied with a roll of pictures of the exteriors and interiors of cafés and restaurants near the shop, photos of public gardens in its vicinity, and a row of cars.

In Israel, Anna’s ‘controller’ was selected; a thin, tall, grey-haired man who worked as a teacher in a language lab. Without explaining their purpose, the photo technicians sat him at the wheel of a car and photographed him. In one take he was looking straight ahead and in another to the side at someone supposedly standing next to the vehicle. They shot pictures of him sitting on a bench, standing near a wall, climbing stairs, and coming out of a building wearing a winter coat and a pair of gloves.

The computer editing of these images was truly a work of art. Anna, walking in the street and sitting in a restaurant, was slotted in perfectly. The pictures were printed, enlarged, and photographed on regular film which was sent over to Udi and his people by special courier.

Even the head of the Mossad was pleasantly surprised by the authenticity of the pictures. Listen, I was convinced, he said to Udi on the phone. If he’s not persuaded then it means that he’s not listening to reason, or not acting of his own free will. If that’s the case, we’ll have to move to plan B. You’re aware that we’re approaching the end of the week I gave you.

Yes, I’m aware, Udi answered, but we’ve made good progress. As soon as the film arrives we’ll give it in for developing here at a regular photo shop and I will present him with the pictures in the shop’s envelope to allay any suspicion. I hope that within a couple of days this will all be behind us. I’m also continuing to rely on the phone conversations. I think they will be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.