She couldn’t speak, but he knew by experience what her eyes were saying. Why? He leaned forward and whispered directly into her ear. “Are you wondering why?”
He was sure she tried to nod yes.
“Beats the hell out of me,” he said coldly. And that was the truth.
Chapter 6
Ira Wurlin knocked on the solid metal door. Few people ever got this far. Fewer still passed through to the room beyond. For the last eleven years of his life, Wurlin felt two overriding emotions.
He admitted to only one. He told his boss he was honored to serve him so directly. In his quiet time and private places, he felt cursed.
Now 51, Ira Wurlin wondered where his life had gone. He’d forgone marriage and raising a family to serve almost day and night as the principal analyst and aide to a man the West knew very little about. So, like the man he worked for, Wurlin led a secret existence. No children or grandchildren would ever be born to him and pass on stories about his exceptional service to their country.
He was an unimposing, ordinary man, the kind you’d never notice in a crowd. Thinning hair, glasses in bland, clear frames, a short-sleeved white shirt that would have looked better on him if he could lose 15 pounds. He was a blank man in a colorful world, and it was this virtual invisibility that made him so good at his job.
Wurlin took short deliberate steps, always with the same pace, which said all you needed to know about him. Work was his life. He slept more nights at his office than he did at home. He was an analyst. Only one man could fire him, and that wasn’t going to happen. Yet, like every secretary, assistant, or even support staff in the complex, Wurlin wore an ID badge with a good-for-one-day-only computer chip. Try to traverse the halls without the proper chip, you were a dead man…or woman. There was blood on the walls to prove it.
A control officer watching a monitor three floors higher in the nondescript Tel Aviv headquarters always noted when a “blip” moved from one quadrant — it could be an office or a bathroom — to another. This blip was going where it was supposed to.
“Enter.”
Wurlin didn’t have to identify himself. Jacob Schecter knew he was coming, as he did so many other things. Schecter was head of Hamossad Lemodi’in Vetafkidim Meyuhadim. Israel’s intelligence agency, Mossad.
“Ah, Ira,” he started as if surprised, which he wasn’t. “What do you have for me?”
Schecter had risen through the Israeli Air Force, the IAF, and flown on more unrecorded missions than those logged by paperwork. He was educated in intelligence specialty schools, though he never talked of his training or his experiences.
His wavy brown hair was longer than in his military years, but his wardrobe remained consistent with his military code: a tan, button-down, short-sleeve shirt and khaki pants. Nothing flashy, nothing that signified his supremacy in the Mossad or in the government. Tradition had it that even the identity of the Mossad head remained a secret as a matter of national security. Rumors flew. But rumors were usually wrong.
Jacob Schecter didn’t have a birthdate or a birthplace. He looked to be in his late 50s, but even Ira wasn’t certain. No Air Force friends ever visited, and he never spoke of a family, wife, children, or parents. Schecter might not even be his real name.
As Director of the Mossad, he had supreme authority over the security of Israel, guarding the nation from outside threats, gathering political, military, and civilian intelligence, and evaluating the information. He reported to only one person: the Prime Minister du jour.
The other focal point in his stark white room was the utilitarian industrial office desk, which contained visible locks and hidden sub-locks that Schecter alone could open. The only creature comfort was a very worn, coffee-stained leather chair. A picture of Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, hung over his desk. Three clocks, representing current time in Washington, Tel Aviv, and — for historical sake — Moscow, were lined up at eye level on the opposite wall.
What wasn’t visible was the metal lining within the walls. It effectively blocked eavesdropping devices and microwave signals. Even with that security protection, Schecter’s office was swept by Mossad agents, not once a week or even once a day, but twice each day.
It was from here that Jacob Schecter sought ways to protect Israel’s secrets and uncover those of his enemies…or his friends.
He was one of the most protected, most protective, and most secretive men in the world.
He was also one of the most aware. Except for today. He was trying to figure out the meaning of some unencrypted messages the Mossad had received via e-mail. Schecter laid them on his desk. There was no need to give them to Wurlin. He had already vetted the content over the last seventy-two hours.
“So, Ira, what is your opinion?” Schecter preferred first names. Trust mattered more than rank.
Wurlin didn’t need prompting. They were scheduled to discuss the matter of the person they referred to as Chantul.
“Simple matters. Nothing more. We get a little bit of this and that.”
“Grade?” asked Jacob.
“D. No better.”
Schecter read the most recent seven-line correspondence again. “Interesting. And nothing.”
“Like the last.”
“Are we being wooed or baited, my friend?”
“I can’t be sure. Not yet.”
Wurlin took back the file. “The contact is traceable. That is what concerns me. Counter-intelligence could be back-channeled very easily.”
“And traced here,” the head of Mossad added. “I’m worried, not because it exists, but because it exists and says nothing.”
Wurlin had come to the same conclusion. An uninvited operative was knocking at their door. Why?
“Verify every single word, Ira. And my orders stand. Do not respond. Nothing but silence from us.”
“You are more suspect than before? This Chantul worries you.”
“Everything worries me, Ira.” He said it with a low, rumbling laugh, not a humorous one, the kind that signified his concern. “Now what else do you have today?”
Wurlin reported on a deep-cover Mossad agent who had infiltrated the Iran University of Science and Technology. An operation was in play to determine which Iranian professors were freelancing on the stepped-up nuclear arms program. Mossad wanted to know who they were, how dangerous their knowledge could be, and how they could be turned or neutralized. He would leave the final option open for Schecter. The briefing was another reminder that Israel lived day-to-day. They were surrounded by enemies and hated by most of the world. The country and its defenses were principally sustained through their high tax rates and their ever-tenuous relationships with the West.
As a people, Israelis stayed alive through an unparalleled determination and their government’s reliance on intelligence. It was dangerous and time-consuming to cast the net, but Jacob Schecter’s spies succeeded where America’s CIA failed.
Schecter continued to listen, but the news was always the same. Bad. Iran, Iraq, al-Qaeda. Renewed anti-Semitism around the world. The French. Some days, even the Americans. That’s what brought him back to Chantul.
He gave this freelancer a name, one with a specific biblical reference.
During the voyage of the Ark, Noah discovered that the lions had become far too dangerous. They liked dining on the other passengers. So he prayed to God, who answered him by sending the lions into a deep sleep. But soon, with lions asleep, rats quickly multiplied and made life on the Ark even worse. So Noah prayed again. God listened and woke the lion for one roar. Out of its mouth sprung a cat — in Hebrew, chantul. The creature, the first of its kind, was blessed with the timeless job of dispatching the rats.