In the blood a thriller, p.19
In the Blood: A Thriller, page 19
part #5 of Terminal List Series
“Good. This family does not need any more tragedy.”
“Let’s walk over,” Harel said. “I don’t want to ask for a status report over the radio with the troops in there.” He motioned with his head back inside the house. “They’ve got headsets on, but grandparents and kids can be a perceptive lot.”
“Understood. Do you have a biometrics kit with you?”
“Yes, and we are already using it. We’ll ID these guys and unravel this thing. A group this size, they got in somehow, probably tunnels.”
An operator approached, whispered something to Harel, and passed him a folded piece of paper. The Yamam commander looked at it and then back to Reece.
“What did he say?” Reece asked, noting the look of concern on Harel’s face.
“The team is going through the bodies. We haven’t found anyone left alive to question. The team on the hill ended up being two shooters: a machine gunner and an RPG man. There was not much left of them. So far it looks like we have a mix of Hezbollah and Syrian terrorists, probably former Syrian military.”
“Former?”
“Possibly active duty but my intel guy says pocket litter, weapons, and gear suggest mercenaries on the Syrian side, Iranian-backed Hezbollah for the others.”
“Who the hell were they targeting?” Reece asked.
“Mr. Donovan, who knew you were coming here?”
“What do you mean?”
Harel handed Reece the paper his operator had just given him.
“They found it on the man in the car you killed when we landed.”
Reece opened the folded paper and found himself looking at his death photo, the picture in uniform that the SEAL Teams started making everyone take before deployment in case you didn’t make it back. Senior leaders got tired of not having professional photos at funerals, so everyone ended up having to take them. No one was happy about it except the staff officer who had to report on its status to the admiral. Years ago, Reece’s photo had ended up on the twenty-four-hour news cycle for a few weeks and now it was in the pocket of a Syrian mercenary in Israel.
They could hear a helicopter begin to spin up as they took the steps down to a stone walkway.
An operator approached from out of the darkness.
“What?”
“We didn’t want to put it out over the radio, sir. We need to get them to Carmel Medical Center in Haifa. We need CASEVAC now, sir!”
“Roger that, make it happen.” Harel reached across his plate carrier and pressed a push to talk. “CLOSET 01, this is Red Lead. We are bringing two nonambulatory patients to you for CASEVAC to Haifa.”
“I’m going with them,” Reece said as they began to run toward Shiri’s house.
In a moment of confusion that morphed to horror, Reece saw a figure sprint from bushes and enter Shiri’s house.
Even at this distance there was no mistaking what he was screaming.
“Allāhu ’akbar!”
God is great.
CHAPTER 46
THE DEVASTATION WAS ENORMOUS.
The explosion threw Reece and Harel to the ground. Ears ringing and vision blurred from what were most likely concussions, they struggled to their feet, both doing a head-to-toe assessment as they got their bearings. As Reece sprinted toward the flames, he could hear Harel shouting something in Hebrew to his men in the Gartner house.
A Yamam operator was on the front lawn attempting to attach a tourniquet to the remains of a leg that was missing just above the knee. Reece stopped and assisted him.
“Go! Go!” the man said, telling Reece to help others.
Reece heard the MH-6 rise into the night and join the two AH-6s patrolling the target area. The Black Hawk helicopter was spinning. It sounded to Reece like it had set down at the park he had visited earlier in the day.
Harel raced past and into the house. Reece was on his heels.
Chaos.
Even though the windows and back sliding glass doors were gone, thick, dark smoke still covered the scene, making it hard to see. The curtains and couch were on fire, adding to the haze.
“Shiri!” Reece yelled. “Tuvia!”
Reece took a step forward and tripped to the ground. He turned and saw what the smoke had obscured: the torso of a Yamam operator. His rib cage was ripped open and most of his internal organs had been eviscerated by the blast. Reece pushed himself to his knees and was about to stand when he saw something else. As the smoke rose to hit the ceiling and make its escape into the night, he saw a head. He reached for it, picked it up, and turned it toward him. It was just a boy. No more than fifteen or sixteen, with black hair, olive skin, and dark eyes. His head had been severed at the neck, as was often the case with suicide bombers, their bodies tamping the blast outward along with the nails, screws, ball bearings, and short sections of barb wire embedded in the explosive. That outward energy also escaped up and would sever the head cleanly at the neck, allowing for positive identification on a corpse that was otherwise completely obliterated. His expression looked peaceful.
Reece dropped the head to the floor.
“Harel?” Reece yelled, getting to his feet.
“Harel?” Reece said again.
“I’m here,” the Yamam leader said through the smoke.
Reece followed the sound of the voice toward the stairwell, the resignation in Harel’s voice already preparing Reece for what he would find.
Reece stood next to the Yamam commander and looked down.
If Reece had not just seen them alive just thirty minutes earlier, he might not have recognized them. Their bodies had been shredded by the shrapnel embedded in the explosive vest.
It was clear that they had not ended up where they did by sheer chance. Both were on the floor. Tuvia had covered Shiri with his body in an attempt to shield her from the blast. A protector to the end.
CHAPTER 47
Mossad Headquarters, Tel Aviv, Israel
“TAKE A SEAT, MR. Donovan, or may I call you Reece?”
“Reece is fine.”
The director of Caesarea was dressed exactly as he had been upon their first meeting. Reece realized that just over a day had passed since then and that he was probably wearing the exact same clothes, as was Reece, though now his were marred by sweat, dirt, and blood. The Tel Aviv office seemed darker, as though additional secrets had seeped into the walls over the past twenty-four hours.
News of the tragedy in Kibbutz Merom Golan had spread quickly. Reece and Katz were both warriors. The time to grieve would come later. Now there was work to be done.
“Can you tell me why a hit team from Syria had my photo with them and how they knew where I was going to be last night? It seems to me that only a few people knew my intended location.”
Katz opened a desk drawer and pulled out a bright green pack of Noblesse cigarettes.
Reece waited, touching the fresh stitches on his forehead just over his left eye, while the Israeli spy touched a flame to the end of his cigarette, inhaled deeply, and blew the smoke toward the ceiling.
“Why and how,” the Mossad man said. “Different questions. Finding the answer to one often leads to an answer for the other.”
“Let’s start with the ‘how,’ then,” Reece said.
“What do you know about a Russian named Yevgeny Prigozhin?” Katz asked.
“The head of the Wagner Group?”
“Yes and no.”
“What do you mean?” Reece asked.
“The Wagner Group, as most in the West understand it, is a private military company. Open-source reporting indicates it is essentially a proxy military force used to further the Kremlin’s foreign policy interests from the Ukraine to Mozambique to Syria, but it’s more complex than that.”
“You mean it’s the Russian president’s private army.”
“Not exactly but there is a connection.”
Katz took another drag off his cigarette before continuing.
“Intelligence agencies first took note of mercenaries supporting Russian troops in the annexation of Crimea in 2014. From there, wherever Russian interests have intersected with strategic energy reserves, mineral deposits, or precious stones, what we commonly refer to as the ‘Wagner Group’ has had a hand it.”
“Are you saying it doesn’t exist?”
“Not in the way we’ve come to understand the relationship between governments and private military companies, like your Blackwater or whatever they are calling themselves these days.”
“So, what is it? And what does it have to do with me and the attack in Golan?”
“Wagner is more than a company. It’s a network of mercenaries, paramilitary groups, contractors, and related businesses, which makes it harder to counter, but there is one man who connects them all.”
“Yevgeny Prigozhin,” Reece stated.
“That’s right. They call him the ‘president’s chef’ as, unlike most other Russian oligarchs, he didn’t acquire his wealth through the ‘loans for shares’ scheme after the fall of the Soviet Union, becoming the sudden inheritor of what had once been state assets. Rather, he ran a restaurant in Saint Petersburg that the current Russian president patronized on his rise to power. Soon Prigozhin was winning government catering contracts to the tune of millions, supplying meals for Russian schools and hospitals. Competition disappeared. After delivering on those contracts, Prigozhin then turned his attention to the armed forces. His first Russian military catering contract was worth north of a billion dollars.”
“It helps to be in business with the president.”
“It does. As the president consolidated his hold on power, so did his ‘chef.’ Prigozhin began to create companies, putting his wife and even mother at their helms. The catering contracts turned to construction and then to paramilitary services. The Russian president awarded contracts to Prigozhin and was rewarded with large-percentage kickbacks into bank accounts and investment vehicles across the globe.”
“I still don’t know what this has to do with me.”
Katz took another drag and pushed on.
“In reality, Wagner is a shadow network of entities that at times can be the action arm of the Kremlin and at other times a proxy force to further the interests of the Russian president while amassing a fortune for those at the top. Wagner is simply a name to focus human rights activists, journalists, and intelligence agencies. PMCs are illegal in Russia even though mercenaries connected to Prigozhin train alongside Russian special forces in Molkino in southern Russia. Wagner is a dead end.”
“If it’s a dead end, why are we talking about it?”
“The name, Wagner, hits close to us in Israel, Mr. Reece. We believe it originated with one of the mercenaries fighting in Ukraine, a former lieutenant colonel in the GRU, Dmitry Utkin, who we also know was Prigozhin’s head of security. Our sources indicate he was a sick bastard who idolized the Nazis and had something of an obsession with Richard Wagner, the preferred composer of Adolf Hitler. He was last seen six years ago at a ceremony at the Kremlin honoring those who fought to annex Crimea.”
“You believe Prigozhin has a connection to the attack in Golan?”
“Have you heard of the Internet Research Agency, Mr. Reece?”
“Isn’t that the Russian troll farm that caused so much confusion in the last few elections?”
“That’s right. And do you know who founded it?”
“Let me guess, Yevgeny Prigozhin.”
“Correct, which in reality means it had the approval of the Russian president. Prigozhin even created companies with the public mission of combating disinformation and what you Americans like to call ‘fake news,’ but as with most things Russian, they did the opposite, leading massive disinformation campaigns to further undermine confidence in Western voting and elections.”
“They’ve certainly been successful. I am still not making the connection between Russia and what happened last night.”
“There wasn’t much left of the suicide bombers in Golan and some of the terrorists took more than a few shots to the head, so facial recognition on them is proving difficult, but of the bodies recovered thus far and entered into the system, four were Syrian mercenaries tied to Concord Management, a company with the contract to protect Russian energy interests in Syria.”
“As in oil and gas?”
“Yes, but that’s not their play. Russia doesn’t need Syrian energy. Russia produces ten million barrels of oil a day, Syria only twenty thousand barrels.”
“What do they want?”
“Access and influence. Russia has not been a player in the Middle East since the fall of the Soviet Union. They are adapting. Russian mercenaries had major involvements in Syria in 2015 and Libya in 2019. As they take territory, they hold it, while Russian businesses linked to Yevgeny Prigozhin acquire major stakes in the exploitation of natural resources, not because they need oil or natural gas, but so that they can project power from the motherland through Syria, across the Middle East into Libya.”
“Putting them on Europe’s southern flank,” Reece said.
“Spoken like a true strategist.”
“Why risk all that to kill me, to kill Shiri, Tuvia?”
“That’s the question, Mr. Reece. If they were willing to risk their gains in the region to kill you, you must be a threat, a strategic threat.”
“I’m only a threat to Nizar Kattan.”
Katz extinguished his cigarette among a heap of similarly extinguished butts in a well-used ashtray.
“Reece, Shin Bet lost a good man tonight. Yamam will feel this hit for decades. Four children were orphaned. The prime minister is considering military action against Syria that could ignite a wider conflict. They are convening the cabinet. The nation is on war footing. Everything we just discussed is circumstantial. The cabinet doesn’t deal well in ‘circumstantial.’ They will call for reprisal.”
“Unless.”
“Unless we can prove that these were Syrian mercenaries targeting you and not Israel.”
“That photo should help.”
“It will, along with the links to Russian paramilitary organizations.”
“Nothing you’ve told me indicates why I’d be targeted here, on Israeli soil.”
“Follow it back, Reece. Your photo is found on Syrian mercenaries in Golan with ties to Russian paramilitary companies run by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a man who doesn’t make a move unless it’s approved and initiated by the Russian president.”
Katz paused, letting Reece process what he’d heard.
“Reece, can you think of a reason the president of Russia wants you dead and was willing to risk Russia’s strategic position in the Middle East to accomplish it?”
Reece exhaled, trying to wrap his head around what he had just heard.
“I’ve had some Russian entanglements but nothing that would justify starting a war between Israel and Syria and losing their recent gains in the region. It just doesn’t make sense.”
“There is something else.”
Reece raised an eyebrow.
“Information on Nizar Kattan,” Katz said.
“Is he connected to what happened last night?”
“He appears to be operating independently.”
“How do you know?” Reece asked.
The Israeli spymaster tapped his nicotine-stained fingers together, contemplating his answer.
“We have an asset in Italy.”
“In Italy? A spy?”
“Not a spy. An asset.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Reece, what do you know of Operation Wrath of God?”
“I know you call it Bayonet. It was a reprisal for the eleven athletes killed at the Olympic Games in Munich.”
“It was, but it was more than revenge. It was an operation to target and decapitate the PLO and its affiliate branches in Europe to ensure another Munich could not happen again. A young Kidon operative was in Europe conducting reconnaissance and surveillance on one of our targeted individuals. Remember, this is a long time ago. There was a wall between East and West Germany. The memory of the Second World War was still fresh.”
“What happened?”
“This Kidon reported that his Black September target was meeting with the KGB.”
“The KGB?”
“There had been intelligence suggesting that Black September and the PLO had Soviet backing.”
“Why?”
“The Soviets were not happy that Israel had taken the side of the Americans in the Cold War.”
“Was there ever a question?”
“Oh yes, early on, Israel could have gone either way. The kibbutz movement had deep roots in socialist ideology. When it became clear that Israel and the United States had allied, Israel became a target of Soviet aggression through proxies. The Soviets supported Iran, Syria, Egypt, Libya, Hezbollah, Hamas. Their support of our enemies created the modern Middle East.”
“But Russia wants back in.”
“That’s right.”
“And the operation in Germany?” Reece asked.
“The Kidon operative was given the green light to take out his PLO target and the Soviet handler, but he took a bullet, a sniper’s bullet, before he could execute.”
“What does this have to do with Nizar Kattan?”
“The man who was shot in Germany survived but never returned to Israel. Nor did he cut ties completely with his former employer.”
“The Mossad.”
“Caesarea,” Katz corrected.
“I’m still not making the connection.”
“This former operative, there is another reason he didn’t come home.”
“Oh?”
“He couldn’t operate anymore.”
“Why not?”
“The bullet nicked his spine. Since 1986 he’s been confined to a wheelchair.”
CHAPTER 48
REECE’S FLIGHT OUT OF Ben Gurion Airport was not until the following morning. The two “State Department” representatives from the United States Embassy had picked him up at Mossad Headquarters and driven him to one of the flats they maintained in Tel Aviv. Though the embassy had moved its official address from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, the United States still maintained a robust staff at the Tel Aviv embassy branch office.
“Let’s walk over,” Harel said. “I don’t want to ask for a status report over the radio with the troops in there.” He motioned with his head back inside the house. “They’ve got headsets on, but grandparents and kids can be a perceptive lot.”
“Understood. Do you have a biometrics kit with you?”
“Yes, and we are already using it. We’ll ID these guys and unravel this thing. A group this size, they got in somehow, probably tunnels.”
An operator approached, whispered something to Harel, and passed him a folded piece of paper. The Yamam commander looked at it and then back to Reece.
“What did he say?” Reece asked, noting the look of concern on Harel’s face.
“The team is going through the bodies. We haven’t found anyone left alive to question. The team on the hill ended up being two shooters: a machine gunner and an RPG man. There was not much left of them. So far it looks like we have a mix of Hezbollah and Syrian terrorists, probably former Syrian military.”
“Former?”
“Possibly active duty but my intel guy says pocket litter, weapons, and gear suggest mercenaries on the Syrian side, Iranian-backed Hezbollah for the others.”
“Who the hell were they targeting?” Reece asked.
“Mr. Donovan, who knew you were coming here?”
“What do you mean?”
Harel handed Reece the paper his operator had just given him.
“They found it on the man in the car you killed when we landed.”
Reece opened the folded paper and found himself looking at his death photo, the picture in uniform that the SEAL Teams started making everyone take before deployment in case you didn’t make it back. Senior leaders got tired of not having professional photos at funerals, so everyone ended up having to take them. No one was happy about it except the staff officer who had to report on its status to the admiral. Years ago, Reece’s photo had ended up on the twenty-four-hour news cycle for a few weeks and now it was in the pocket of a Syrian mercenary in Israel.
They could hear a helicopter begin to spin up as they took the steps down to a stone walkway.
An operator approached from out of the darkness.
“What?”
“We didn’t want to put it out over the radio, sir. We need to get them to Carmel Medical Center in Haifa. We need CASEVAC now, sir!”
“Roger that, make it happen.” Harel reached across his plate carrier and pressed a push to talk. “CLOSET 01, this is Red Lead. We are bringing two nonambulatory patients to you for CASEVAC to Haifa.”
“I’m going with them,” Reece said as they began to run toward Shiri’s house.
In a moment of confusion that morphed to horror, Reece saw a figure sprint from bushes and enter Shiri’s house.
Even at this distance there was no mistaking what he was screaming.
“Allāhu ’akbar!”
God is great.
CHAPTER 46
THE DEVASTATION WAS ENORMOUS.
The explosion threw Reece and Harel to the ground. Ears ringing and vision blurred from what were most likely concussions, they struggled to their feet, both doing a head-to-toe assessment as they got their bearings. As Reece sprinted toward the flames, he could hear Harel shouting something in Hebrew to his men in the Gartner house.
A Yamam operator was on the front lawn attempting to attach a tourniquet to the remains of a leg that was missing just above the knee. Reece stopped and assisted him.
“Go! Go!” the man said, telling Reece to help others.
Reece heard the MH-6 rise into the night and join the two AH-6s patrolling the target area. The Black Hawk helicopter was spinning. It sounded to Reece like it had set down at the park he had visited earlier in the day.
Harel raced past and into the house. Reece was on his heels.
Chaos.
Even though the windows and back sliding glass doors were gone, thick, dark smoke still covered the scene, making it hard to see. The curtains and couch were on fire, adding to the haze.
“Shiri!” Reece yelled. “Tuvia!”
Reece took a step forward and tripped to the ground. He turned and saw what the smoke had obscured: the torso of a Yamam operator. His rib cage was ripped open and most of his internal organs had been eviscerated by the blast. Reece pushed himself to his knees and was about to stand when he saw something else. As the smoke rose to hit the ceiling and make its escape into the night, he saw a head. He reached for it, picked it up, and turned it toward him. It was just a boy. No more than fifteen or sixteen, with black hair, olive skin, and dark eyes. His head had been severed at the neck, as was often the case with suicide bombers, their bodies tamping the blast outward along with the nails, screws, ball bearings, and short sections of barb wire embedded in the explosive. That outward energy also escaped up and would sever the head cleanly at the neck, allowing for positive identification on a corpse that was otherwise completely obliterated. His expression looked peaceful.
Reece dropped the head to the floor.
“Harel?” Reece yelled, getting to his feet.
“Harel?” Reece said again.
“I’m here,” the Yamam leader said through the smoke.
Reece followed the sound of the voice toward the stairwell, the resignation in Harel’s voice already preparing Reece for what he would find.
Reece stood next to the Yamam commander and looked down.
If Reece had not just seen them alive just thirty minutes earlier, he might not have recognized them. Their bodies had been shredded by the shrapnel embedded in the explosive vest.
It was clear that they had not ended up where they did by sheer chance. Both were on the floor. Tuvia had covered Shiri with his body in an attempt to shield her from the blast. A protector to the end.
CHAPTER 47
Mossad Headquarters, Tel Aviv, Israel
“TAKE A SEAT, MR. Donovan, or may I call you Reece?”
“Reece is fine.”
The director of Caesarea was dressed exactly as he had been upon their first meeting. Reece realized that just over a day had passed since then and that he was probably wearing the exact same clothes, as was Reece, though now his were marred by sweat, dirt, and blood. The Tel Aviv office seemed darker, as though additional secrets had seeped into the walls over the past twenty-four hours.
News of the tragedy in Kibbutz Merom Golan had spread quickly. Reece and Katz were both warriors. The time to grieve would come later. Now there was work to be done.
“Can you tell me why a hit team from Syria had my photo with them and how they knew where I was going to be last night? It seems to me that only a few people knew my intended location.”
Katz opened a desk drawer and pulled out a bright green pack of Noblesse cigarettes.
Reece waited, touching the fresh stitches on his forehead just over his left eye, while the Israeli spy touched a flame to the end of his cigarette, inhaled deeply, and blew the smoke toward the ceiling.
“Why and how,” the Mossad man said. “Different questions. Finding the answer to one often leads to an answer for the other.”
“Let’s start with the ‘how,’ then,” Reece said.
“What do you know about a Russian named Yevgeny Prigozhin?” Katz asked.
“The head of the Wagner Group?”
“Yes and no.”
“What do you mean?” Reece asked.
“The Wagner Group, as most in the West understand it, is a private military company. Open-source reporting indicates it is essentially a proxy military force used to further the Kremlin’s foreign policy interests from the Ukraine to Mozambique to Syria, but it’s more complex than that.”
“You mean it’s the Russian president’s private army.”
“Not exactly but there is a connection.”
Katz took another drag off his cigarette before continuing.
“Intelligence agencies first took note of mercenaries supporting Russian troops in the annexation of Crimea in 2014. From there, wherever Russian interests have intersected with strategic energy reserves, mineral deposits, or precious stones, what we commonly refer to as the ‘Wagner Group’ has had a hand it.”
“Are you saying it doesn’t exist?”
“Not in the way we’ve come to understand the relationship between governments and private military companies, like your Blackwater or whatever they are calling themselves these days.”
“So, what is it? And what does it have to do with me and the attack in Golan?”
“Wagner is more than a company. It’s a network of mercenaries, paramilitary groups, contractors, and related businesses, which makes it harder to counter, but there is one man who connects them all.”
“Yevgeny Prigozhin,” Reece stated.
“That’s right. They call him the ‘president’s chef’ as, unlike most other Russian oligarchs, he didn’t acquire his wealth through the ‘loans for shares’ scheme after the fall of the Soviet Union, becoming the sudden inheritor of what had once been state assets. Rather, he ran a restaurant in Saint Petersburg that the current Russian president patronized on his rise to power. Soon Prigozhin was winning government catering contracts to the tune of millions, supplying meals for Russian schools and hospitals. Competition disappeared. After delivering on those contracts, Prigozhin then turned his attention to the armed forces. His first Russian military catering contract was worth north of a billion dollars.”
“It helps to be in business with the president.”
“It does. As the president consolidated his hold on power, so did his ‘chef.’ Prigozhin began to create companies, putting his wife and even mother at their helms. The catering contracts turned to construction and then to paramilitary services. The Russian president awarded contracts to Prigozhin and was rewarded with large-percentage kickbacks into bank accounts and investment vehicles across the globe.”
“I still don’t know what this has to do with me.”
Katz took another drag and pushed on.
“In reality, Wagner is a shadow network of entities that at times can be the action arm of the Kremlin and at other times a proxy force to further the interests of the Russian president while amassing a fortune for those at the top. Wagner is simply a name to focus human rights activists, journalists, and intelligence agencies. PMCs are illegal in Russia even though mercenaries connected to Prigozhin train alongside Russian special forces in Molkino in southern Russia. Wagner is a dead end.”
“If it’s a dead end, why are we talking about it?”
“The name, Wagner, hits close to us in Israel, Mr. Reece. We believe it originated with one of the mercenaries fighting in Ukraine, a former lieutenant colonel in the GRU, Dmitry Utkin, who we also know was Prigozhin’s head of security. Our sources indicate he was a sick bastard who idolized the Nazis and had something of an obsession with Richard Wagner, the preferred composer of Adolf Hitler. He was last seen six years ago at a ceremony at the Kremlin honoring those who fought to annex Crimea.”
“You believe Prigozhin has a connection to the attack in Golan?”
“Have you heard of the Internet Research Agency, Mr. Reece?”
“Isn’t that the Russian troll farm that caused so much confusion in the last few elections?”
“That’s right. And do you know who founded it?”
“Let me guess, Yevgeny Prigozhin.”
“Correct, which in reality means it had the approval of the Russian president. Prigozhin even created companies with the public mission of combating disinformation and what you Americans like to call ‘fake news,’ but as with most things Russian, they did the opposite, leading massive disinformation campaigns to further undermine confidence in Western voting and elections.”
“They’ve certainly been successful. I am still not making the connection between Russia and what happened last night.”
“There wasn’t much left of the suicide bombers in Golan and some of the terrorists took more than a few shots to the head, so facial recognition on them is proving difficult, but of the bodies recovered thus far and entered into the system, four were Syrian mercenaries tied to Concord Management, a company with the contract to protect Russian energy interests in Syria.”
“As in oil and gas?”
“Yes, but that’s not their play. Russia doesn’t need Syrian energy. Russia produces ten million barrels of oil a day, Syria only twenty thousand barrels.”
“What do they want?”
“Access and influence. Russia has not been a player in the Middle East since the fall of the Soviet Union. They are adapting. Russian mercenaries had major involvements in Syria in 2015 and Libya in 2019. As they take territory, they hold it, while Russian businesses linked to Yevgeny Prigozhin acquire major stakes in the exploitation of natural resources, not because they need oil or natural gas, but so that they can project power from the motherland through Syria, across the Middle East into Libya.”
“Putting them on Europe’s southern flank,” Reece said.
“Spoken like a true strategist.”
“Why risk all that to kill me, to kill Shiri, Tuvia?”
“That’s the question, Mr. Reece. If they were willing to risk their gains in the region to kill you, you must be a threat, a strategic threat.”
“I’m only a threat to Nizar Kattan.”
Katz extinguished his cigarette among a heap of similarly extinguished butts in a well-used ashtray.
“Reece, Shin Bet lost a good man tonight. Yamam will feel this hit for decades. Four children were orphaned. The prime minister is considering military action against Syria that could ignite a wider conflict. They are convening the cabinet. The nation is on war footing. Everything we just discussed is circumstantial. The cabinet doesn’t deal well in ‘circumstantial.’ They will call for reprisal.”
“Unless.”
“Unless we can prove that these were Syrian mercenaries targeting you and not Israel.”
“That photo should help.”
“It will, along with the links to Russian paramilitary organizations.”
“Nothing you’ve told me indicates why I’d be targeted here, on Israeli soil.”
“Follow it back, Reece. Your photo is found on Syrian mercenaries in Golan with ties to Russian paramilitary companies run by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a man who doesn’t make a move unless it’s approved and initiated by the Russian president.”
Katz paused, letting Reece process what he’d heard.
“Reece, can you think of a reason the president of Russia wants you dead and was willing to risk Russia’s strategic position in the Middle East to accomplish it?”
Reece exhaled, trying to wrap his head around what he had just heard.
“I’ve had some Russian entanglements but nothing that would justify starting a war between Israel and Syria and losing their recent gains in the region. It just doesn’t make sense.”
“There is something else.”
Reece raised an eyebrow.
“Information on Nizar Kattan,” Katz said.
“Is he connected to what happened last night?”
“He appears to be operating independently.”
“How do you know?” Reece asked.
The Israeli spymaster tapped his nicotine-stained fingers together, contemplating his answer.
“We have an asset in Italy.”
“In Italy? A spy?”
“Not a spy. An asset.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Reece, what do you know of Operation Wrath of God?”
“I know you call it Bayonet. It was a reprisal for the eleven athletes killed at the Olympic Games in Munich.”
“It was, but it was more than revenge. It was an operation to target and decapitate the PLO and its affiliate branches in Europe to ensure another Munich could not happen again. A young Kidon operative was in Europe conducting reconnaissance and surveillance on one of our targeted individuals. Remember, this is a long time ago. There was a wall between East and West Germany. The memory of the Second World War was still fresh.”
“What happened?”
“This Kidon reported that his Black September target was meeting with the KGB.”
“The KGB?”
“There had been intelligence suggesting that Black September and the PLO had Soviet backing.”
“Why?”
“The Soviets were not happy that Israel had taken the side of the Americans in the Cold War.”
“Was there ever a question?”
“Oh yes, early on, Israel could have gone either way. The kibbutz movement had deep roots in socialist ideology. When it became clear that Israel and the United States had allied, Israel became a target of Soviet aggression through proxies. The Soviets supported Iran, Syria, Egypt, Libya, Hezbollah, Hamas. Their support of our enemies created the modern Middle East.”
“But Russia wants back in.”
“That’s right.”
“And the operation in Germany?” Reece asked.
“The Kidon operative was given the green light to take out his PLO target and the Soviet handler, but he took a bullet, a sniper’s bullet, before he could execute.”
“What does this have to do with Nizar Kattan?”
“The man who was shot in Germany survived but never returned to Israel. Nor did he cut ties completely with his former employer.”
“The Mossad.”
“Caesarea,” Katz corrected.
“I’m still not making the connection.”
“This former operative, there is another reason he didn’t come home.”
“Oh?”
“He couldn’t operate anymore.”
“Why not?”
“The bullet nicked his spine. Since 1986 he’s been confined to a wheelchair.”
CHAPTER 48
REECE’S FLIGHT OUT OF Ben Gurion Airport was not until the following morning. The two “State Department” representatives from the United States Embassy had picked him up at Mossad Headquarters and driven him to one of the flats they maintained in Tel Aviv. Though the embassy had moved its official address from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, the United States still maintained a robust staff at the Tel Aviv embassy branch office.
