Ring of Lies (2 page)

“Forget about Istanbul.”

“He's late?”

“Dead.”

“How?”

“Not now. You have to go back.”

Galia lets out a long breath. “We're an hour away from Bolu.”

“Go back,” the man orders. “There's a leak.”

“From the Nibelungs?” she asks.

“Probably from our side, too. Take two guys, go back to the warehouse, do what has to be done, change faces, and fly out through Ankara.”

“And the others?”

“They go as planned, through Istanbul,” the man says.

“Istanbul squealed?”

“Let's assume he did.”

“How did he die?”

“Not now.”

“Where's the pit?”

“On the top of Mount Bolu. Under the snow.”

“Where on the top?”

“We're checking on it.”

“We won't have time to dig a new one.”

“I know. We're checking on it.”

“There's no acid,” Galia says.

“Do without it.”

“And the electric burns?”

“Get rid of the plastic sheets, pails, rags, towels. Wipe everything down. Outside, too.”

“If they were on to Istanbul, they're on to us, too,” she says.

“Where are you exactly?”

“Approaching Körfez. Ninety miles east of Istanbul.”

The man examines the map on the huge monitor. “Turn back where the highway meets Route 100. There should be a reserve gallon of diesel fuel in the trunk.”

“Diesel fuel?”

“Burn him.”

“We have no weapons, nothing. They took everything. All the stuff must be back in Ankara by now . . .”

He's silent.

“Give me a minute to get organized,” Galia says.

Her breathing quickens.

“You'll be fine.”

She snaps out rapid-fire orders into another phone, trying to keep cool.

He hears a siren approaching on her end. “What's that?”

“An ambulance. Two and Six are going back with me,” she says.

“Not Six. His wife's nine months pregnant.”

“So Seven. Two and Seven.”

“Give Seven the fuel. He's good at that.”

He gives her the coordinates of the pit Istanbul dug two days ago on the snowy summit of Mount Bolu.

They have to make it to Ankara in time for the morning flight. A hundred and twenty miles. The Turkish soil is burning. Their intelligence agency is on the hunt for General Farzan Karabashi, a key figure in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. The man vanished from the streets of Ankara two days ago, and Turkey wants to prove to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that it isn't just a friend but a genuine ally.

Acid rises in his throat. He snaps into the microphone, “I need a thermal satellite over Bolu. Anatolian Plateau. Turkey. Now.”

“One hour and forty-two minutes from now. Confirm?” a young woman reports from the operations center.

He feels like smashing one of the monitors.

“Confirm?” she repeats.

“No. That's too late.”

There's no video. It's as though the blackout has stretched all the way to their location.

It's cold on Mount Bolu. Minus three. And there's no time.

He scans the giant monitors on the wall. His eyes linger on the three-dimensional image of the spice warehouse, a windowless, one-story concrete structure. Two thousand square feet. Walls insulated against cold and heat. An autonomous climate-control system to preserve the freshness of the valuables inside.

He zooms in for a closer view. Behind the last row of shelves, a yellow
X
is painted on the warehouse floor in a rectangle the size of an average living room. There, bound to a chair, sprawls a lifeless, naked body.

He switches back to the frontal view. On a faded sign, the name
FALACCI BAHARAT
is written in white letters against a red background. A lone forklift is parked beside the entrance, casting a long shadow.

He looks at the satellite image from the afternoon. The area is densely forested. The mountaintops are snowcapped. There's a sharp curve in the nearby highway, followed by enormous tunnels. The warehouse is situated on the sharp slope of the mountain, far from the houses of the town. There's only one access road.

A separate monitor is filled with a photo of the squad leader. Her face is expressionless.

They shouldn't return to the scene of the operation. It's against regulations. Strictly forbidden. But that's exactly what he ordered her to do.

One by one the senior staff members file quietly into the underground war room, whispering, getting updates, voicing speculations. A chair squeaks. Someone's knee pops.

One chair, the one belonging to the chief of Mossad, has been empty since the start of the crisis. Everyone has taken note.

In the middle of the night, five stories underground, the operational nerve center on the other side of the double glass partition is buzzing with activity.

What happened to Istanbul? How could he have died minutes before he was supposed to go out on his mission?

The head of Internal Security enters the war room. He's wearing a black leather jacket; his expression is tense. His head is shaved. The crease of a blanket is still etched on his cheek. He takes his place. He's the one who has to hunt down the source of the leak before the night ends.

And he? He's been here since six yesterday morning. Where will he go when the night is over?

For the past three months, he's been personally commanding a large number of operations all over the world. Whispering has begun in the corridors. Something is happening to him.

He was supposed to be with Galia in Bolu, but she asked to go alone. He gave in.

He tries to push his acute anxiety for her out of his mind.

Silence in the situation room. No chirping phones. Except for the faint hum of the air conditioner, all is quiet. He has to rescue Galia tonight, or else she'll come back in an aluminum box.

Nineteen other men do not dare breathe.

But the responsibility is his alone. They're just the audience.

They're watching him the way you watch a gladiator.

“We're at the observation post, about two hundred feet from the warehouse,” Galia reports in a tense voice.

“Gut feeling?”

“It stinks.”

“Sorry. Who's going in?”

“Me. Seven and Two will keep watch here.”

“Send Seven in.”

“I'll do it.”

She'll manage. She always manages. She has nine lives.

“Has anything changed there?” he asks.

Nothing but breathing on the other end. A long minute goes by. “No. It's dark.”

“Go slow.”

“Fuck!” she hisses. “It's almost three thirty and we still have to bury him . . . We won't make it to Ankara before seven.”

He hears her breathing quicken as she moves forward, taking silent steps.

“Okay.” She takes a deep breath. “I'm going in.”

He stares at the image of the warehouse on the monitor, trying to picture what she's seeing.

The iron door opens noisily.

He holds his breath.

“It's dark. I'm turning on my flashlight.”

Now steps echo in the high-ceilinged space.

“Oh my God!”

“What happened?”

“He's not here!”

In the dark situation room, everyone freezes.

“Get the hell out of there!”

A terrifying barrage of gunfire.

A choked moan of pain.

A faint thud.

Rapid breathing.

“I'm hit . . .”

Everything stops.

The sound of men shouting comes through his wireless headset.

Then the line goes dead.

It was because of Reuven Hetz, sitting behind his desk, that he was forced to live a life he didn't want.

Hetz, the head of Mossad, had to raise his head to meet Alex Bartal's glance, which, for the last three months, he'd been avoiding religiously. They shared a long history as volatile as a minefield.

Reuven didn't stand up to greet him, and Alex didn't sit down. He just stared at the chief, his clenched fists turning white at either side of his worn jeans.

The oppressive silence dragged on. The space between them crackled with tension.

Reuven focused his close-set eyes on Alex's chest and finally said, “We're forced to have this meeting because of what happened tonight in Bolu.” He licked his lips with his pale tongue, separating the paragraphs.

“You know them as the Nibelung Ring. They help us with the most dangerous operations in Europe, but apart from that, you and the other Mossad operatives don't know a thing about them.” Another lick of his lips.

“The Nibelungs are sleeper agents who live in major European capitals, local citizens with reliable covers. Some of them have families. They assassinate, sabotage, burglarize, and keep suspects under surveillance as skillfully as we do. They work alone. Nibelungs can lie dormant for years, wake up, kill two people in a
few seconds, and then go back to sleep for another long period.”

Lick.

“We don't know them, and they don't know us; the separation is absolute. They are an external defensive ring around us,” Reuven said. “An immune system.”

Reuven's desk was empty, his computer screen dark.

Alex moved back.

Reuven leaned forward and rested his elbows on the empty desktop.
If he rolled up his sleeves, you'd see a layer of Teflon instead of skin
, Alex thought.

“The day I stepped into this job,” Reuven said, “there was an envelope waiting for me in the safe. It contained the name of the man who heads the Nibelung Ring. The prime minister is only letting me tell you the name now because of tonight's disaster. The information is at the very heart of this country's covert operations. If you share his name with anyone without the proper authorization, you'll spend the rest of your life in prison.”

Reuven seemed to relish this information that defined his superiority. Lowering his glance, he said quietly, “His name is Justus.”

“That's it?”

Reuven pursed his lips, took a deep breath. “He's German, Christian, fifty-three years old. He lives in Berlin and runs dozens of Nibelung agents throughout Europe. The Nibelungs don't know one another. They are trained for critical one-man missions in friendly countries. If one is lost, we can't launch any dangerous operations in that country because under no circumstances can we leave traces that lead back to Israel. Wherever we lose a Nibelung, we have no local backup force.

“A good Nibelung is the difference between a lethargic police
investigation and a diplomatic incident. They're classic ‘cleaners.' They stay behind, dispose of evidence, and remove all traces. Are you beginning to understand the extent of the damage?”

Reuven moistened the tips of his index fingers with his tongue and smoothed down his bushy eyebrows.

“Justus and the Ring report directly to the prime minister. Everything's coordinated without any intermediaries. Nothing is in writing.”

In Wagner's opera cycle, which Hitler was so fond of, the Nibelungs are dwarves struggling to keep a gold ring out of the hands of the gods.

“Has Istanbul's body been found?” Alex asked.

“No.”

“He might be alive.”

“Istanbul's dead, Alex.” Reuven blinked like a crocodile.

“Says who?”

“He has three-week-old twins waiting for him at home. He comes from a prominent, wealthy Jewish family in Istanbul. He has no reason to disappear.”

Lick.

On his only visit to Reuven's home, Alex had found bare walls and not a single personal item. For a moment, he'd suspected that the man's house had a false bottom.

“One day we're going to miss these times, Alex. In another year or two, a vacation in Bodrum will seem as plausible as a vacation in Tehran,” Reuven said, sipping what was left of his black coffee.

There was a momentary oppressive silence.

Then Reuven said, “From the initial debriefing of the operatives, we know that they were ambushed at the spice ware
house by soldiers wearing black combat overalls and armored vests. It sounds like Özel Tim. There was an ambulance waiting nearby—it arrived less than a minute after the shooting.”

“The leak didn't come from us,” Alex cut in. “We didn't know Istanbul's identity. The Turks must've gotten hold of him, and he gave up the warehouse.”

“So why didn't they attack when the whole team was inside?” Reuven asked, examining the burnished mahogany surface of his desk.

“Maybe Özel Tim didn't have time to get ready. Is there anything new from our sources in Ankara?”

“Politicians are usually asleep at six in the morning. When they finally get up, they run straight to the newspaper and look for any mention of their names.”

Reuven turned to look out at the coastal road. “You've been in this business long enough to know that sometimes the price is painful. We'll thank God if this whole thing ends with only two losses.”

Alex approached, pressed both palms on the barricade-like desk, and bent toward Reuven. “You're not planning to fight for Galia?”

Reuven looked at Alex's hands as if he were looking at a dead cat.

“Definitely not right away, and it would depend on the cost. She has a Dutch passport.”

Alex straightened up and strode back to the far end of the office. “Her Dutch identity won't hold up longer than a day,” he said too loudly.

“No one wants Galia back more than I do,” Reuven said hastily, “but don't forget, Mossad isn't supposed to serve its agents.
The agents are supposed to serve Mossad. If we have to give up Galia in order to avoid taking official responsibility for the screwup in Bolu, we'll do it—with a heavy heart, but we'll do it.”

Alex closed the distance between himself and Reuven.

Reuven straightened up and tensed.

“You have no problem abandoning your best people?”

“Everyone can be replaced,” Reuven hissed.

Even you, Reuven
, Alex thought.

The head of Mossad nodded, as if reading his mind.

“Galia was going to be the first woman to head Operations,” Alex said.

“You are not the one who's going to appoint the next chief of Operations,” Reuven fired back. “I've heard that the two of you are close. People talk.”

Reuven backed away from the desk, from Alex. The wheels of his desk chair spun soundlessly.

Sweat was forming on Alex's back. It was always too hot in the chief's office.

“You didn't bother to come down to the war room even once all night,” Alex said.

“I was tied up in intense consultations with the prime minister and the head of the Ring,” Reuven replied too quickly, as if he'd prepared his answer in advance. “I couldn't conduct those discussions in front of everyone.”

A ping sounded. Reuven moved closer to the computer. His eyes darted across it. “Unit 8200 interception: The Turkish government is about to announce that they have found the body of General Farzan Karabashi. They are holding a female Mossad operative with Dutch citizenship who was involved in his abduction, torture, and murder. She's injured.”

“How do they already know she's Mossad?” Alex asked.

“She must've talked. She's wounded and she needs treatment. Anyone would talk.”

“Not Galia.”

“Alex, you can't run the intelligence agency of a country like ours if you let your emotions get the best of you.”

The chief swung his armchair around and bent over the safe, making sure to hide the digital pad with his shoulder as he entered the code. The cast-iron door opened with a sucking sound.

He rummaged through the cardboard folders inside, pulled out a thin green one, opened it, and handed it to Alex.

The first thing Alex saw was a picture of a man with a high, curved forehead, like a dolphin's. His light blue eyes sparkled.

“That's Justus. I want you to meet with him this afternoon. Keep your eyes open, sniff him out in your inimitable way. Justus runs all the Nibelungs personally. If there was a leak, it came from him. Don't hesitate to attack. Shake the tree and see what falls out.”

“Maybe you should shake it yourself?” Alex suggested.

“I have to go on working with him,” Reuven said. “I don't want to ruffle his feathers. Anyway, I already have urgent meetings scheduled with the PM, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the legal advisers. And we're expecting a full-out media blitz.”

The course of action was predictable. For the next few days, the State of Israel would offer no response. The familiar evasion tactic—the safe haven for prime ministers and Mossad chiefs who screw up.

“I've put together an investigative team led by the head of Internal Security. They'll look into whether we had a leak here. They'll want to talk to you when you get back from Berlin,” Reuven said.

The phone on the desk chirped.

Reuven grabbed the receiver. He listened in silence, closed his eyes, and finally nodded and said, “I understand.”

Then he opened his eyes, stared into space, and announced, “The prime minister has ordered an immediate halt to all our European operations.”

“And how are we supposed to understand what's going on, from Fox News?” Alex wondered.

They both felt that their ship was filling with water.

“Three months ago, I suggested that you take some time off. You have more than two hundred days saved up. You've been through things that would shake anyone up. Maybe after Berlin you'll take a little rest?”

A hopeless dawn rose outside the window. A flash from the depths of his memory, a picture that would never be erased: the hospital in Hampstead. His wife, Naomi, lying on the pale linoleum floor. Dark blood pooling around her. Her face growing pale.

A strange fluttering in the air. Silence. He heard himself say, “You didn't even come to
shivah
.”

Reuven stared at the muted coastal road through the bulletproof window.

“And you were there when she died,” Alex added.

“Don't blame me for the mistakes in your life,” Reuven said quietly, not without rancor.

“You walked into the hospital waiting room with your gun drawn. You didn't wait to see who was there,” Alex said.

“Enough! I don't want to hear it anymore.”

“You haven't heard anything yet,” Alex hissed, his ears burning. He spun around and headed for the door.

“How's Daniella?” Reuven called out behind him.

His back muscles tightened.

“Have you told her yet?” Reuven twisted the knife.

As he left the chief's office, Alex was seized by an intense urge to shower.