At the same time that Ollie and Andreas met in Stockholm, Eugene and Vassilly were summoned to meet the IAEA Secretary General, Dr. Javier Augustin Marcos, known in short by his initials JAM. The honorable Argentine who held a doctorate in political science, with emphasis on the first part of the subject, disliked this nickname as he felt that it was disrespectful, but people kept calling him by this nickname behind his back. When Eugene and Vassilly entered his vast office they saw that their section heads were also present. They were not invited to sit down and JAM proceeded to read them the riot act, blaming them for raising a false alarm and causing panic in the IAEA and within the intelligence communities. He mentioned that the number of orphan gamma sources had barely changed since last August and that there was no evidence that terrorists were trying to produce "dirty bombs" for sabotage in European capital cities. He demanded that they cease and desist from all their activities and focus on their designated jobs or else they would be dismissed from the IAEA. Furthermore, pointing at their section heads, he said they would be closely watched and supervised to make sure that his directive was followed verbatim. Eugene felt like a school kid being reprimanded in front of his whole class and friends by the teacher. He stole a sideways glance at Vassilly whose face had turned crimson red. Both were then sent away and left the room with their heads down.
Eugene's certainty that there was a concerted effort to steal radioactive sources to be used for an act of terror deepened. He decided to continue his investigation of the matter but to do so while keeping a low profile. He was disappointed by the response he received from MI6 and the CIA, and the lack of reaction that Vassilly got from the FSB, and decided to approach the one security organization that he trusted would not participate in a cover up, the Israeli Mossad. However, he did not know any Mossad agents so he asked for a meeting with the security officer of the Israeli delegation to IAEA. It turned out that this officer was actually a young woman who introduced herself as Orna Cohen and heard him out patiently but then bombarded him with astute questions. Apparently she had already heard the story of the mysterious increase in the number of missing radiation sources and read the analysis that it had no real significance but stated that she herself had a gut feeling that there was more to this than met the eye. Eugene asked her to convey the detailed information he gave her to Mossad contacts and this she promised to do.
The coded message from Orna in Vienna attracted the attention of the Deputy Director of the Mossad, Haim Shimony, and he convened a meeting with his experts in the technology department to discuss the possible implications of the orphan radiation sources. The group of experts included an interesting mix of older scientists and engineers with a lot of operational experience and several young and bright graduates of Israel's top universities. The Deputy Director presented the statistics of missing gamma sources that he had received from Vienna and then opened the meeting for discussion. Unlike similar institutions in the world, in this type of meeting Mossad employed the same principles used in the Israeli air force when debriefing air crews after an exercise or operational mission. In these sessions everyone could freely express their thoughts and ideas regardless of rank or seniority. Often times, the person chairing the meeting asked the younger and junior participants to speak first so that they would not be influenced by the opinions of their bosses.
A lively discussion commenced with the general consensus being that the most probable explanation for the missing sources was that someone planned to use them for the construction of "dirty bombs". In view of the fact that this occurred all over Europe the likely culprits were, as usual, the racist, extreme-right movements that planned to terrorize their governments. One of the participants, the descendent of holocaust survivors and a great believer in conspiration theories, suggested that it could be a provocation by the extreme-right trying to place the blame on Muslims as a means of inciting public opinion against foreigners and immigrants. The youngest member of the technical group, David Avivi, a fresh physics graduate of the Haifa Technion, said that the number of missing sources and the broad geographical spread of the incidents was an overkill for just deploying an RDD and that they should not limit themselves to this explanation but should look into other possibilities. Furthermore, he said, the fact that only gamma sources were missing raised his suspicion because for an RDD including both alpha and beta emitters, especially if inhaled, would be more effective since monitoring exposure would be much more difficult, enhancing the panic and terror in the population overloading the public health services.
David Avivi came from a family of scientists who had worked in two of the renowned Israeli government research institutes. His father, who held a doctorate in chemistry, was a senior research scientist at the Israel Institute for Biological Research (IIBR) and was head of the department of analytical chemistry at the institute. David's mother held a Ph. D. degree in physics and specialized in the development of electro-optical devices at the Soreq Nuclear Research Center (SNRC). The family lived in Rehovot, a city in which a large community of top notch scientists and engineers resided in a small tightly linked community. David's childhood was in this community was well suited for a boy with his natural gift for computers, mechanical devices and mathematics. As a child he was fascinated by the Sidney Pollack's movie "Three days on the Condor", starring Robert Redford and Faye Dunaway. The hero, played by Redford, worked in a clandestine section of the CIA that scanned books, newspapers and magazine articles looking for new weapons, military tactics, political intrigues and unconventional ideas. The whole section, except Redford who was out for his lunch break, was murdered and he had to seek refuge while trying to figure out what happened and who was responsible. David didn't care too much about the plot of the movie but liked the job description of reading exciting thrillers and suspense stories for a living, and hoped that one day he would have such a job in Mossad, Israel's improved version of the CIA. He sought a challenging and adventurous career in his compulsory military service and finished the tough course in the elite unit of the Israel Defense Force (IDF) as commander of a small team and commissioned officer. He specialized in all forms of unarmed combat, intelligence gathering, special weapons and tactics. After his army service he studied physics and graduated top of his class and then applied for a job with Mossad, seeing it as a step to fulfill his dream. Mossad however recognized his talent and after completing another rigorous training course David was assigned to a special technical unit that dealt with threats to Israel's security. There too he excelled and managed to disrupt a couple of schemes that could have caused serious damage in Israel. So, in his late twenties, David had combat experience in the military, technical and scientific skills and some knowledge of the way the intelligence community operated. His physical appearance fit the description for the leading actors in the Hollywood films from the 1950s and 1960s — dark, tall and handsome — so he was sought after by many women who were attracted to his good looks as well as to his intelligence and keen sense of humor. Yet, he felt that the demands of his job did not allow him the luxury of having a family or even engaging in long term relationships, and settled for good sex with quite a few ladies and with no serious commitment.
The Deputy Director thanked the participants and dismissed them but asked David to stay. He then told David to hand over all his tasks to colleagues from his department and to devote his entire time to pursuing his idea that there may be another rationale for the increase in the number of orphan gamma sources. He asked David for a preliminary report within two weeks and told him that he had a free hand if he needed to travel to Vienna or elsewhere. David said that he would first like to meet some of the Israeli scientists, particularly those with expertise in health physics and nuclear science, and asked the Deputy Director for permission to share the information with them and divulge the problem. Shimony told David that he should use his own judgment for that but warned him that panic may spread if the information reached the media so that he should caution them to be discrete.