The protocols of spying, p.22
The Protocols of Spying, page 22
Eli took a sip of the hot unrecognisable liquid from the mug and keyed in the land-line number. He heard the long ring in his ears and waited for it to switch to voicemail.
‘Ken,’ Eli heard and started. It was a man’s voice.
‘Who’s that? Eli said.
‘It’s me, Abba. Who were you expecting?’ Doron said.
An unexpected rush of joy flooded through Eli and he felt his eyes tear up. ‘What are you doing there? Are you on leave? How long for? Let me speak to your mother, motek.’ Eli knew his voice sounded odd but, if he spoke to Gal, he could recover.
‘She’s not here,’ Doron said. ‘And there’s no food either, not even that birdseed she eats for breakfast. I was so desperate I was going to eat that, but there was no birdseed and no milk either.’
‘Is there nothing in the freezer, schnitzel or a goulash?’ Eli said.
‘I’ll have a look,’ Eli heard rustling in the background and the sound of the freezer door being wrenched open.
‘Make sure you close it properly,’ Eli said. ‘The seal needs attention.’
‘Yeah, yeah, yeah.’
Eli smiled at his son’s dismissal.
‘How’s it going?’ Eli said. ‘How long are you there for?’
‘Just the weekend and I’m going to eat, shower and sleep,’ Doron said. ‘Ah… this looks like steak.’ There was more rustling and then he said. ‘I’ve got some frozen vegetables. That will do.’
‘Wish I was there,’ Eli said. ‘That’ll be those South American steaks your mother gets. What else do you need. Mustard?’
‘I’ve got everything.’ Now Eli heard the clatter of drawers being pulled open and the frying pan going on the hob.
‘Shall I call you later?’ Eli said, sensing the hunger urgency in his son’s voice.
‘You can try, but… I might be asleep, Abba. I’ve been awake for 36 hours, on patrol with our guys, clearing houses, room by room.’ His voice shifted from the breezy tone he was putting on. It was now brittle. ‘It’s bad, Dad, really bad.’
‘I’m sorry, Doron.’
‘It’s the smell that’s the worst. It’s like an abattoir.’
‘Doron, my darling boy, you are home now,’ Eli said. ‘Eat, shower, sleep. It will seem better tomorrow, I promise. It’s always better in the morning, remember?’
‘Yeah, yeah.’ Doron replaced the mental shell. ‘Always better in the morning, the bears aren’t there. They never were. Always better in the morning.’
When he was a kid, Eli used to sing his son a nonsense song when he couldn’t sleep.
‘Tell your mom I called,’ Eli said. ‘Love you. And it will be better in the morning, I promise.’
For a while after finishing the phone call, Eli sat unmoving. He was with his son, in the kitchen he knew so well, visualising him cooking the steak, microwaving the vegetables and then sitting at the table, eating in his usual enormous mouthfuls. With all his heart, Eli hoped that Gal got back soon, imagined her coming in the front door and putting her arms round his son, as he would do if only he was there.
Eli pushed the mug of tea aside and went to the cupboard, where he had a bottle of Pinot Noir. He’d been saving it to go with a meal that merited its excellence but, since that was likely to be some time coming, he opened it and poured and swirled before sipping. It was a way of delaying the moment. Eli had a difficult call to make and he wasn’t sure how he was going to explain to Yuval what he’d found out about Harel’s operation.
After Eli had sipped the wine, he made a few handwritten notes on a pad, then he went through the security protocols for the pre-arranged conference call with Yuval. The screen on the laptop was black and then exactly at 10 o’clock UK time, it flickered into life and Yuval’s face stared out at him. Behind his old boss, Eli could see drawn curtains and the ubiquity of the international hotel. Yuval was in a room outside Cairo but he could have been in any of a hundred or a thousand hotels across the planet that all looked exactly the same. He looked tired, defeated and Eli had a moment’s qualm about burdening his boss and mentor any further but tamped down the idea.
‘Manyanim,’ Yuval said. ‘Tell me some good news.’
Eli smiled. This type of comment was unlike Yuval in the extreme. Maybe he was on the Pinot too.
‘How’s it going your end? How are the negotiations?’
‘Couldn’t be much worse, since you ask. We make a proposal, they agree to the proposal, then we change our demands and so do they. It’s like being a rat in a maze, we go round and we go round but we’re trapped and so are they. And we both know why. Neither Sinwar nor Bibi even want a deal to release the hostages. Whatever he may say, Sinwar doesn’t want any political competition from the movers and shakers that we’ve got in our prisons, so he certainly doesn’t want them back. And, on the other side, Bibi wants to keep the war going forever, so that he doesn’t have to face the inevitable inquiry and corruption trial.’
‘What can you do?’
‘Nothing. Eli, I really don’t know what I’m doing here, apart from carrying the boss’s briefcase and having a whisky with him at the end of yet another unproductive day. The Americans are getting sick of us as well. So are the Qataris and the Jordanians. I don’t blame them. So I’m relying on you, Eli. Tell me some good news. How is my old friend, Oliver Milne of MI6? Does he miss me because I certainly miss him. Tell him. I’m not cut out for this diplomacy crap.’
Eli had never seen Yuval like this and it was alarming. It reminded him of the day that he’d seen his father cry when he received the posthumous medal given to the uncle that Eli could only barely remember. Yuval had always been there. He was a rock. He was always thinking his way out of a corner. If he was giving up, which is what it sounded like, then what hope was there?
‘Yuval, I know it’s bad and I don’t think it’s ever been worse than this, but we are still here. And we can do something. We can stop Harel from using Kidon to murder for Bibi’s political expediency.’
Yuval seemed to have heard this. He straightened up a little in the chair.
‘Go on.’
‘The situation is like this,’ Eli said, consciously using his boss’s introductory expression. Eli described what they had found out about Grant D Miller and he had a sense of satisfaction from seeing Yuval shift from despondency into engagement as he unwound the proofs they had. By the time Eli had told him about the librarian and the GPUs, he could see that Yuval was fired up.
‘How did you find this out?’
‘I went to the house that’s connected with this Grant D Miller and… found a barn out the back with GPUs.’
‘A barn out the back with GPUs?’ Yuval repeated. ‘Are you telling me that you… the head of the station, did a break-in? Are you crazy, Eli? How would that have looked on the BBC, who already hate us?’
‘I didn’t get caught. I had Rafi with me.’
‘Was this his idea? I should have known better than to put you two together. Rafi’s a liability, always has been. There’s something wrong with his brain. He does something and then thinks about it half an hour afterwards.’
‘It was my idea,’ Eli insisted.
‘Then you’ve been spending too much time with him.’
‘It was done properly,’ Eli said. ‘We were off grid, but I followed all the necessary protocols and, for God’s sake, Yuval, it worked. Isn’t that the most important thing?’
There was silence for a few moments while Yuval glared at Eli. Then he nodded and almost growled. ‘You’re right. I’m spending too much time in these damn meetings. Now, at least, we have options,’ Yuval said. ‘Good work.’
‘Harel is back in London tomorrow,’ Eli said. ‘And the Kidon team are arriving at the end of the week for pre-operation training. I’m going to tell Harel what we know and tell him to back off.’
‘You are going to have to play this carefully,’ Yuval said. ‘You can’t put a fire under him until you find out if we created the cover story. And if Harel knows that it’s bullshit.’ Yuval rocked back and forth in his chair, seeming to be thinking hard. He went on, ‘Let me tell you, Eli, if I was in the Prime Minister’s office and I wanted to do something dirty before the American elections, Harel would be my top pick. He has history. He’s ambitious. He cuts corners and he wants to be on the winning side.’
‘I’ve got no proof. I can’t find out if it’s us who created the cover story or some other nation state’s advanced persistent threat group – you know, an APT. Not without leaving a trail in our systems.’
Yuval massaged his jaw and he was frowning. ‘Don’t patronise me, Eli. I know what an APT group is. I did the same cybersecurity course you did.’
‘Sorry,’ Eli said. ‘But it doesn’t solve the problem. I can’t use our systems to check the authenticity of the cover story without being exposed.’
‘No, you can’t. If I was back in Washington, I could get someone on it who worked for 8600, who just might do me a favour. But I’m not.’ Yuval shifted in his chair. ‘I’m attached to the hostage negotiations – I can’t be seen to be involved. That means that this is on you, Eli. You have to tell Harel that there are proofs and get him to understand what the implications are of going ahead with this operation.’
‘Understood,’ Eli said.
‘Do you really understand? If it is us, and we have that piece of information and it’s leaked, it will bring down the government and it will impact the American election. It will also be illegal and we could find ourselves in one of those prisons alongside the guys that Sinwar doesn’t want back.’
‘That’s why you needed to know,’ Eli said.
‘Thank you. I need another headache,’ Yuval said. ‘But it’s good news, Eli. We’re not dead yet.’
Chapter 38
Two days later, Eli was at his desk waiting in his office on the third floor of the embassy in Palace Gardens. It was 5 o’clock. Eli pushed the laptop away from him, stood up and stretched. His muscles were stiff. He hadn’t managed to get down to the gym for weeks and he was feeling it. Eli walked to the window that looked out on Palace Gardens, at the tree that he’d seen through summer and winter since he’d got his posting. The branches were sharp and made stark silhouettes against a sky that changed minute by minute as dusk fell. It was now ochre and warned of high winds that were surely on the way. High winds that just might blow some fresher air into the Office. He could hope. The embassy was quiet. There was an event that evening, a screening in Finchley of a film about the attacks on October 7 and a lot of the embassy staff would be in attendance. Either as security or guests, it was perceived to be a significant event.
But Eli wasn’t on the guest list. He was waiting for Harel, who was in London and was coming to see him.
For the past two days, Eli had spent hours preparing for this meeting. Preparing to convince Harel that the course he was on had to be diverted. Rafi was part of it and they talked about likely ways of trying to reach Harel and turn him away from the headlong tumble into a diplomatic abyss.
On one thing Rafi and Eli were in total agreement, there was no point trying to appeal to Harel’s sense of history, of honour or ethics, since they were concepts that would be alien to him. But there had to be something that would make him realise that this targeted assassination would end in disaster.
Eli walked back to his desk and sank into the chair, he turned on the desk lamp and there was a pool of light in the darkening room. There he reread his notes for what was likely to be the most consequential meeting of his life. He was going to push back against his boss, the acting head of Washington Station and that meant pushing back against the head of the Mossad, the Prime Minister’s office and indeed pushing back against the country. It didn’t feel good.
The door buzzed and Eli looked at the image on his desktop. It was Harel; on time. Eli pressed a key on his laptop and it activated the lock. Harel strode into the room.
‘I understand you have something significant to pass on to me,’ Harel said without preamble.
‘Yes, please sit down. Let me get you a drink or something.’
‘I’m only here because I got a personal message from Memune. No doubt this was engineered by your master, Yuval. What exactly is it you want to say to me, Eli?’
‘I appreciate you coming, I really do,’ Eli said, ‘I’ll get to the point. There’s no easy way of saying this, but you’ve been duped about Grant D Miller. He’s a fake. His backstory is a construct and I have the proofs to support what I’m saying.’
‘What proofs?’
Eli ticked them off on his fingers, ending with the annotated document that showed Grant D Miller’s illustrious heritage, as detailed at the National Archives. Harel shook his head. ‘That’s not possible. I’ve met the man. He knows who we are. He did a Ted talk, he’s all over YouTube.’
‘Did you think to ask any of our people if they saw him with Driver at the White House during the presidency? Or after?’
Harel fiddled with the cuff on his shirt and tugged it down to cover his oversized watch. He was rattled.
‘He was in Thailand, he spent a lot of time in Thailand because of the Jeffrey Epstein business. We know that.’
‘Do we?’ Eli said.
‘Everything’s organised. The team are arriving, I can’t stop it. I can’t stop it without explaining to the Prime Minister’s office that the guy is fake and I’m not doing that.’
‘What?’ Eli said. Stunned at the direction the conversation was taking. ‘You have to stop it.’
‘No, I don’t,’ Harel said. ‘As far as I can see, you haven’t got any hard-edge proof that anything more serious has happened other than someone slipped a document into a file in a museum. Eli, you found a bunch of graphic processors in an unauthorised illegal-entry operation. So what? Someone could be designing a video porn game. That sounds exactly like the sort of thing Miller would do. We’re not stopping the operation without more evidence.’
‘But he’s fake,’ Eli said.
‘We’re all fake,’ Harel said. ‘Nobody is who they say they are, that’s our business, isn’t it?’
Eli stood up from his desk and went to his bookcase. It was something to do, a way of dispersing the anger that had built up inside him. A way of stopping him trying to throttle Harel, who, having made up his mind and overcome what no doubt he now saw as a minor glitch, had now assumed his habitual superior expression.
‘It will come out,’ Eli said. ‘These things always come out in the end. Remember the Palestinian who scammed us in 1967.’
‘I wasn’t born then,’ Harel said.
‘It came out. How about Lillehammer, when we shot a waiter instead of a terrorist, or the blood on the pillowcase in Bahrain and everyone was filmed on the hotel CCTV. It came out. The mistakes always come out and this is more than just a mistake, Harel. This is knowingly murdering someone.’
‘Eli, unless you have authenticated proof that will stand up in an internal inquiry and not something that you stole during an unauthorised break-in, then you’d better shut up and let the professionals get on with it. Grant Miller says the target is a thorn in Trump’s side.’
‘Grant Miller is a fake,’ Eli said.
‘The target still has a podcast that gets millions of downloads and he’s pissing off Trump because he’s funny.’
‘Harel, think for a minute,’ Eli said. ‘What makes you think that Trump would be okay if a vocal critic is murdered? He’s not Putin. Or MBA.’
‘The target’s not going to be murdered,’ Harel said.
‘What?’
‘He’s not going to be lured into an embassy and cut up in the basement. It will look like a heart attack and my guess is that Trump will be delighted. As happy as I would be if someone I loathed dropped down dead.’
‘That’s puerile,’ Eli said.
In an instant Harel’s expression changed and softened. His voice mellowed along with it. ‘You’re right,’ Harel raised his hands and showed his palms. ‘That was puerile and I apologise. But, Eli, let me ask you something, do you ever go to the casino, play cards or gamble in any way?’
‘No.’
‘I thought as much. Let me put it in simple terms – we are spreading our bets. We need to prepare for either election outcome in the US. Your lochesh operation will fit neatly into a Democratic win. But it’s long-term. Short-term we need arms flow and, throughout all of this, we have one duty, and you know what that is?’
‘I’m sure you’re going to tell me.’
‘It’s to survive.’
‘As what? A Mafia state?’
‘You’re being dramatic, Eli, but with good reason. We’re facing an existential threat. Listen, my wife has one of her uncles in Washington for a visit. Irritating man, he’s one of the old-timers. He was in the Unit at the same time as Bibi and Yonni. Said Yonni was always the star and Bibi was nothing much.’
‘He probably wasn’t.’
‘But no one denies that he is a remarkable politician. Anyway, that’s not the point,’ Harel said. ‘The point is that this bitter old fool, who I currently have staying in my apartment, eating my food and driving my wife crazy, says we’re finished. Says the State of Israel, everything we’ve fought for over 75 years, is finished, and he’s been saying that ever since Bibi was re-elected in 2022, before any of this happened. He gave us seven years then.’
‘So what? Where are you going with this? How does it justify this unethical and entirely illegal operation?’
‘Because we are facing an existential threat,’ Harel said. ‘We have a duty to survive when all bets are off.’
Despite himself, Eli had to admire Harel’s argument. His taste for ostentation concealed a feral intellect. But there was a way in; a counter argument to make Harel change course, because citing survival suggested that Harel would be determined that his career survived and even prospered. He wouldn’t want to get buried in an ugly internal inquiry once the war ended and the inquiries began.
