Gordon Kent - The Spoils of War

“Because that is most stupid of all! We have to live with the Palestinians, whatever happens—interrogations must not kill.” She put her chin up, said almost defiantly, “The Supreme Court of Israel ruled in 1999 that torture is illegal.”

“Al said the dead man had been beaten.”

“Yes, badly, badly. But beating, I don’t know—if he died of beating, do you think Mossad beat him to death? Are they that stupid?”

“Either way, the question remains, why do any of it? Who was he?”

She gave an elaborate shrug. “He was a Palestinian.” She put down the spoon. “I have work to do at Dizengoff Street.” She began shaking hands all around.

When she had gone and Peretz and Alan and Rose were walking back toward their hotel, Peretz said, “Interesting woman. Think she’d be open to a contact?”

“What, recruit her? No, I don’t.”

“No, no. But—I liaise with cops; she’s a cop. What I’m thinking—this thing isn’t going to go away. State told the Israelis we’ll pursue the investigation and expect them to do the same. I just got word Dukas is sending somebody to follow through. I’m going to wind up in the middle of that, no matter what happens.” Peretz stepped around a woman who was staring into a store window. “And you’re leaving.”

“You bet your ass I’m leaving.” He said that he thought that the investigation was really Dukas’s and NCIS’s, not Peretz’s, but it would be impossible to do from Naples.

When they were parting, Peretz said, “Mossad has a long arm, Alan. And a long memory.” He looked like a wise professor repeating an important point to a slow pupil.

Alan looked at his watch and nodded. “I’ll remember.” He was on his way to the meeting that was his real reason for being in Tel Aviv; he couldn’t wait for it to be over so he could get out. He left Peretz nodding to himself, conscious that the man had more to say, and too focused to listen to it.

Dick Triffler was leaning against the wall in Dukas’s office, arms crossed, one ankle over the other and the shoe resting tip-down. He’d taken his jacket off, but his shirt was crisp and white and his tie was a thick Italian silk in a shade of blue that could have been used for a late-night sky. “Tel Aviv’s already giving us static about the forensics team,” he said.

“Jeez, I thought they’d pretend to stay scared for twenty-four hours, anyway.” Dukas made a face. He was wearing the same dark polo shirt and tired chinos, and his feet, in running shoes that looked like purple bathtubs, were crossed on his desk. “How much static?”

“They ‘question the necessity.’”

Dukas made a growling noise. “Okay, message ONI, try to get them to lean on it.”

Triffler nodded.

“How about the policewoman Craik was working with?”

“Sounds nice but very cautious. Clearly thinks I’m trying to recruit her with my magic wand. She says that she’s got the Qatib case now but she’s just doing the preliminary work. She’s been promised the body by the end of next week.”

“What the hell, what end of next week? What’re they gonna do, clone it before they turn it over? The cops should have had the body already!”

“‘Administrative complications.’ Mrs Gurion says she doesn’t dare turn them off completely.”

Dukas made the face again and toyed with a pencil. “You tell her I’ll be there Monday?”

“She was beside herself with delight.”

“When NCIS was investigating Pollard, the CIA finally broke down and gave us a Mossad organizational chart and a personnel roster. What I want to do is get on to headquarters and pry that stuff out of them. Specifically, I want to know all the operational people named Shlomo and if so what they do. I’m trying to find out what the hell Mossad’s interest could be in Qatib if it wasn’t cryptology. Can do?”

“If they’ll give it to me.”

“HQ will give us anything we want right now because a Navy guy was kidnapped and Mossad is in the shit.”

“For twenty-four hours, anyway.”

“Yeah, so move quick.”

“You know how many guys in Israel are named Shlomo? It’s like Bill.”

“Yeah, well one was with me in Bosnia in ninety-seven. A Shlomo, not a Bill. We gotta start somewhere.”

Dukas made a call to The Hague. He wanted a former French cop named Pigoreau, who now worked for the World Court and who had been Dukas’s assistant in a war-crimes investigation unit in Bosnia. Pigoreau wasn’t in the office yet—banker’s hours, Dukas thought—but would be in soon, he’d call back, etcetera. And did an hour later.

“Mike! Marvelous to hear from you!” Pigoreau had a great French accent—you expected an accordion accompaniment.

“Hey, Pig.”

Laughter. “Mike, you’re the only guy I let call me Pig. You know, in French this is a big insult— cochon ?”

“In English, it’s affectionate. The Three Little Pigs. Porky Pig. We got a chain of supermarkets called Piggly-Wiggly.”

“Okay, I take it as an endearment. What is going on?”

Dukas reminded him of the operation with the two Israelis in Bosnia. Pigoreau didn’t remember it at once—he hadn’t been involved, but he had had contact with everything that went on in that office—and it came back with some prompting. Finally he was able to say, “The guy died!”

“Yeah, that’s the one. We wanted him, and he got shot.”

“I remember. A long time, Mike.”

“Yeah. What I need is, Pig, I want to know what the Israeli involvement was.”

“Oh, mon dieu —Mike, that stuff is buried a thousand meters deep someplace.”

“Yeah, but it’s get-attable. You guys are bureaucrats; you don’t throw stuff away.”

Pigoreau laughed again. “I try, Mike. This is serious business? Okay.”

“Leave a message on this phone. You’re a good guy, Pig.”

“ Cochon. ”

Dukas hung up and thought about how much he didn’t want to go to Tel Aviv. On the other hand, it would get him out of the office. And it was his job.

Tel Aviv’s sunlit concrete was a nightmare environment for spotting surveillance. Alan Craik was looking for surveillance because he was gun-shy from the events of yesterday, and because that’s what he had been taught to do in a hostile environment. And this was now a hostile environment.

He was on his adversary’s home ground, a colossal disadvantage. And the city’s modernity eliminated narrow streets with blind corners and back alleys in favor of broad boulevards. Heavy buildings set a bomb-blast’s reach away from the street gave potential watchers plenty of room on the wide sidewalks, among the hundreds of vendors and the thousands of pedestrians, to stalk him at will.

If his opponents had all these advantages and deployed a large, diverse team to watch him, he would never see them. If they were lazy, undermanned, or too uniform—that was another story. Especially if he could lead them into an environment where they were out of place, ill-dressed, just wrong. That was his technique, perfected in the souks and western hotels of the Gulf States. He planned his routes to cross the invisible social boundaries that define class and trade, profession, education. His route today went from his hotel to the diamond district, through the towers and business suits of the insurance brokerage houses, in and out of the library and the museum of the University, and on to his meeting.

He made his first watcher ten minutes into the walk. He spotted her early, a slight young woman in a drab scarf with a face like Julie Andrews. He gave her that name in his head, an automatic catalogue of everyone who gave him a glance or appeared interested in his progress. Her rugby shirt, jean shorts, and tanned legs were unremarkable on the busy sidewalk three blocks from his hotel.