Rules of Deception (29 page)

61

Twenty-four hours had passed
since the war council had convened on Balfour Street. In that time, phone calls had shot back and forth across the Atlantic with the savagery of a spring lightning storm. The Foreign Ministry to the U.S. State Department. Iran Command to the Centcom headquarters. The Mossad to the CIA.

At eleven p.m., the prime minister of Israel stood in his office, one hand behind his back, the other clutching the telephone to his ear. Like any other courtier seeking the emperor’s company, he’d been told to wait his turn. The president of the United States would be with him momentarily.

Zvi Hirsch stood at the PM’s side, seething with impatience. “Momentarily” had run out five minutes earlier. Every added second worsened the insult to his congenitally insecure heart.

Suddenly, a woman came on the line. “The President of the United States.”

Before the prime minister could respond, a cold technocrat’s voice filled the earpiece. “Hello, Avi, good to hear from you.”

“Mr. President. I wish it were a happier occasion.”

“I wanted to convey my thanks for consulting with us,” the American president said. “These developments have caught us off guard. We didn’t see this coming so soon.”

“We were both caught off guard. I’m sure you can empathize with our position. We cannot tolerate the presence of nuclear weapons in the hands of a regime that has unequivocally stated their commitment to seeing Israel wiped from the map.”

“Statements are one thing. Actions another.”

“Iran’s actions are a matter of record. For years they have been financing the terrorist activity of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. Their participation isn’t limited to Israel. I don’t need to tell you about the havoc they’ve wreaked in Iraq. They have two goals: to gain de facto control over the Middle East and to destroy my country. They are well on their way to the first. I will not allow them to succeed at the second.”

“The United States has always said that any act of violence against Israel will be viewed as an act of violence against us.”

“This is not a situation where we can wait to be attacked. The first strike will be fatal.”

“I understand, but I think it’s too early to act. We have to take this to the United Nations.”

“If you had known that the nineteen hijackers were planning to take over your jets and fly them into the World Trade Center, would you not have taken preventative actions?”

“Attacking a nation is different than taking out a band of terrorists,” the president said in a carefully measured tone. Any mention of 9/11 left him wary. The hallowed date, and the immediate call-to-arms it inspired, had become this era’s “Remember the Alamo!”

“And a nuclear weapon is different than an airplane,” retorted the prime minister. “Any bomb will kill millions of Israelis.”

The president drew a breath. “What can I do for you, Avi?”

“We require your permission to fly through Iraqi airspace,” said the Israeli prime minister.

“If and when the State of Israel is attacked, you’ll be granted that permission.”

“With all due respect, Mr. President, by then it will be too late.”

“The Iranians will retaliate.”

“Perhaps. But some fights you cannot put off.”

There was a pause and the prime minister could hear the U.S. president conferring with his aides. A minute later, the American spoke. “I understand you have a second request.”

“We also require four of your B61-11 EPWs—earth penetrating weapons.”

“That’s a helluva request. We’re talking about nuclear-tipped devices.”

“Yes, it is.”

The American president had been made aware of the request beforehand and had prepared his response with some precision. “Listen carefully to what I have to say. America will under no circumstance initiate the use of nuclear weapons. We do, however, believe in Israel’s right to a strong and overwhelming defense. To this end, and in respect of our many years of friendship, I’ve ordered my men to immediately transfer four B61’s to General Ganz. I will require your word, however, that you will not use these weapons unless you’re directly provoked.”

“I don’t know if I can give you my word on that.”

“This is nonnegotiable. I’ll say it again. If that sonuvabitch in Iran lays so much as a finger on you or any of your interests, you have my permission to use those bombs as you see fit. You can fly back and forth across Iraq from dawn to dusk. But until then, I want your word that you’ll keep them locked up.”

Zvi Hirsch, who was listening on another line, shot the prime minister a shocked glance. Violently, he began to nod his head, indicating that the prime minister was to consent at once. The prime minister complied. “You have my word. On behalf of myself and the people of Israel, I thank you.”

The call was concluded.

Zvi Hirsch set the phone in the cradle. “Did you hear him?”

“Of course,” said the prime minister. “What are you so heated up about?”

“He said we can use the bombs if and when we are directly provoked.”

“And so?”

Zvi Hirsch was so worked up that he had trouble getting the words out. “Don’t you get it?” he asked. “They don’t have to bomb us. It can be anything…any act at all…as long as we can tie it back to Teheran.”

“They only have to lift a finger against us.”

62

The Pilot held the stopwatch
in his right hand. “Five minutes. Go.”

The men moved quickly, but never hurriedly, from their positions at the foot of the garage. Breaking themselves up into three two-man teams, each group approached one of three man-sized stainless-steel packing cases called coffins standing against the wall. Two of the cases contained convex aircraft wings, each broken into two four-foot sections. The third case held the fuselage, which housed the aircraft’s operational guts: the inertial navigation system, Ku-band satellite communications processor, fuel tank, primary control module, turbofan engine, and nose camera assembly.

Locking the landing gear into place, the first team set the fuselage on the ground. The men responsible for the wing assembly bolted the sections to one another, and then attached each to the fuselage by means of tungsten pinions. At the same time, the Pilot wheeled a low-slung gurney across the floor. Cradled in the gurney was a tear-shaped metallic nacelle, the size of a large watermelon, weighing thirty kilos, or some sixty-six pounds. The nacelle contained a powerful explosive charge.

The design was similar to the warhead used for Sidewinder missiles. In fact, the blueprint had come from Raytheon, the defense contractor responsible for the air-to-air missiles created over thirty years before. Little had changed in that time. Only the explosives had grown more powerful.

The nacelle consisted of a case assembly, twenty kilos of Semtex-H plastic explosive, an initiator device, and five hundred titanium fragmentation rods. When the proximity sensor detected the target—in this instance a passenger airliner—it would activate a fuse mechanism that ignited the explosive pellets surrounding the Semtex. The pellets would in turn ignite the twenty kilos of high explosive, causing it to release a huge amount of hot gas in a very short time. The explosive force from the expanding gas would blast the titanium rods outward, breaking them up into thousands of lethal flechettes that would effectively obliterate the aircraft’s fuselage.

The goal was to destroy the drone as well as the plane. No trace of the delivery mechanism would ever be found.

As soon as the nacelle was attached and the wiring plugged into the main instrument panel, the Pilot rolled the gurney from beneath the aircraft and called, “Time.”

He read the stopwatch. “Four minutes, twenty-seven seconds.”

The men did not cheer or evince any satisfaction. As quickly as they had begun, they disassembled the drone. They couldn’t take the chance that a random check might uncover the aircraft sitting in the garage assembled and ready for launch. In minutes, the three coffins were loaded and stored in locked cabinets inside the house.

Having supervised every aspect of the drill, the Pilot walked into the living room where a picture window looked down on the Zurich Airport. At eight o’clock, he spotted the landing lights of an incoming airliner approaching from the north. He was happy to note that it was precisely on time. But then, this particular flight had one of the best arrival records in the world.

He followed the lights until the Airbus A380 landed. The plane appeared oversized even from a distance of four kilometers. He knew its specifications by heart. Seventy-three meters in length. Twenty-four meters high. A wingspan of nearly eighty meters, nearly that of a football field. It was in every way the largest commercial jet aircraft in the world. It was configured to carry 555 passengers. This evening the manifest put the total at a shade under five hundred. Tomorrow it was set to carry a maximum load.

The aircraft lumbered into its parking space. It was so large that even a special jetway had been built to accommodate it. It was then that he was finally able to make out the six-pointed star painted on the tail.

El Al Flight 863 from Tel Aviv had arrived.

63

Von Daniken arrived back
at Tobi Tingeli’s door precisely at nine o’clock. A maid led the way to the study. Tingeli sat behind a large mahogany desk, talking on the telephone. The jeans and turtleneck were gone. He was dressed in a black suit and pearl gray tie, his hair combed through with pomade. He greeted von Daniken with a glare, tossing a bound dossier across the table to him.

Von Daniken picked it up. Inside was documentation relating to the creation of one Excelsior Trust, based in Curaçao, the Netherlands Antilles. The holding company was formed with a capital investment of fifty thousand Swiss francs. Three directors were listed, two of whom were employees of the bank. The last name meant nothing to him. He was interested, however, to learn that the client had visited the Vaduz offices of the Tingeli Bank in August of the past year. The visit fit in neatly with Ransom’s return from the Middle East.

More interesting were the documents that followed. Monthly account statements sent from the Bahamian bank kept by the Tingeli Bank on behalf of the Excelsior Trust. The statements detailed all activity in each of the numbered accounts that had sent money to Lammers and Blitz, as well as a third account that was used to purchase the Villa Principessa.

Still unanswered was the question of who had made the initial deposit into the Bahamian bank. Von Daniken shuffled through the papers. Both numbered accounts had been opened with cashier’s checks. He found copies of the checks and read the name of the issuing bank printed on the upper right-hand corner. His heart jumped. It was one of the most venerable names in the American financial community.

“And so?” asked Tingeli. He had hung up the phone and come round the desk. “Not what you’d expected?”

Von Daniken recalled his conversation with Philip Palumbo. He wondered if he’d put his colleague at the CIA in danger. “Not a word of this, Tobi.”

Tingeli took the dossier from von Daniken’s hands. “I didn’t like the way our meeting ended last night. I can’t live my life the way I please with you looking over my shoulder, so I did a little extra work on my end. Peddle it to your superiors as a loyal Helvetic doing his patriotic duty. You want me to keep quiet? Sure. No problem. It’s my job, right? But in return, I want you to stay off my ass, once and for all. I may be odd, but it’s my choice. I’m not breaking any laws.”

Von Daniken received the entreaty with skepticism. “So far, I don’t see anything that merits a promise on my behalf. It was no skin off your nose to get me the information. It was right there in the files. In a week I could have had a subpoena on your desk and obtained exactly what you’ve given me.”

“I figured you’d say as much.” Tingeli handed back the dossier, his thumb marking a page. “Here’s something that wasn’t originally in the file. I had to make some calls to get this. It cost me dearly.”

The dossier was opened to a confirmation of an outgoing wire transfer from the Bahamian bank in the amount of five hundred thousand francs. The money was sent from one of the numbered accounts in question to an account at one of Switzerland’s largest banks. Below it was written the name of the account holder.

Von Daniken gasped. “You’re sure about this?”

Tingeli nodded. “Do we have a deal?”

Von Daniken took the outstretched hand and shook it. “Yes.”

Tingeli yanked him forward so that they were uncomfortably close to one another. “Then get out of here. And tell your buddies in Bern that the Tingeli family has done enough for its country.”

Von Daniken descended the steps and walked to the sidewalk where his car was parked. All along he’d been aware of an unseen hand in the investigation. It wasn’t anything he could put his finger on. It was just a feeling. Like most policemen, he knew better than to disobey his intuition. The information he now possessed was enough to shock the nation, let alone a middle-aged cop who still believed in the incorruptibility of his government. He stood for a moment, thinking of how he should proceed, reckoning whom he could trust and whom he couldn’t.

As he unlocked his door, a dark, late-model Audi sedan roared up the street and braked beside his car. The window went down revealing Kurt Myer’s flushed face. “We found Ransom.”

“Do you have him in custody?”

“Not yet, but we have a line on his whereabouts.”

“What happened?”

“Yesterday evening, two Bern police officers answered a call regarding an intruder gaining entry to an apartment. They knocked on the door and a man responded.”

“Was it Ransom?”

“Looks like it. But before he opened the door, there was an explosion inside the apartment. The policemen broke down the door and found the kitchen and bedroom ablaze. Apparently, it was a gas explosion. A leak in the oven or range…”

A gas explosion. Von Daniken was reminded of the ruptured gas main responsible for killing Drako, the Bosnian warlord.

Myer continued. “At first, the officers thought he’d been blown out of the building, but there was no blood and a search of the grounds failed to turn up anything. The woman who reported the intruder said that the man had identified himself as a doctor. Apparently, he had a wound on the neck and was bleeding. She thought it looked like he’d been cut with a knife. One of the officers thought it sounded like he might be a fugitive, so he ran his description through outstanding warrants. Ransom’s name came back. They printed a picture and showed it to the woman. She recognized him, but said that his hair was black and very short.”

“What was he doing in Bern?”

“He said he was there to see his sister-in-law. Her name is Eva Kruger.”

“What do we know about her?”

“Not a thing. She’s a ghost. No national ID. No work permit. The neighbor says she’s hardly ever around.”

“But the neighbor’s seen her? In the flesh?”

“So she says. According to her, this Eva Kruger travels all the time.”

Of course she does, thought von Daniken. No doubt to exotic destinations like Darfur and Beirut and Kosovo. Plainly, she was another member of Ransom’s network. “I thought you said you had a line on Ransom.”

“We ran Eva Kruger’s name on the state and national level,” said Myer. “We got a nibble from the chief of security for the World Economic Forum being held in Davos. He told me that he vetted the same Eva Kruger, domiciled in Bern, a week ago, and granted her a pass to the event. The pass was valid for one day.”

“Today?”

Myer nodded grimly. “It’s a VIP pass. She can get access to anyplace she wants, right down to the floor of the Kongresshaus.”

“What’s on today’s schedule?”

“They have panels running all day long. Big shots from all over the world. The keynote speech this evening is to be given by Parvez Jinn, an Iranian.”

“Have you alerted event security yet?”

“Not yet.”

“Do so immediately. Tell them to invalidate her identification. Give them the latest description of Ransom. He may be armed.”

“Is that all?”

“No,” said von Daniken. “Tell them that we’ll be there in an hour.”