“We don’t want him alive, do we?”
“Hell, no. This is one murdering sonofabitch. He’s blown up power stations, refineries, volcanoes, and god knows how many people. He’s smart, trained, and damned dangerous. Rashood is one of those people you kill, no questions asked. Nothing announced. Nothing admitted. Just get it done.”
“As I recall, Arnie, you’re kind of good at that sort of stuff.”
“Guess you could say I’ve had my moments. But not for a couple of weeks.” For the second time in a half hour, Admiral Morgan offered a conspiratorial wink, this time at Jimmy Ramshawe, who grinned and shook his head.
It was almost midnight now. Admiral Morris poured the coffee, firing a couple of buckshot sweeteners into his old friend’s cup. Jimmy delivered it to the big desk, and Arnold Morgan said crisply, “Okay, boys, whaddya think, do we shoot him, poison him, blow him up, or bomb the whole street?”
“Why not the whole city?” said Admiral Morris benignly. “Might as well start World War III while we’re at it.”
Arnold Morgan chuckled. “George, I’m more or less serious. It will probably not be that long before the Hamas leaders discover that someone has spilled the beans. Maybe a matter of three or four weeks. At which point, they’re going to move their General Rashood to a very different, much safer place. Maybe even to a different country, but certainly to a different city. Then we’ve lost him again. So we better get moving if we want to take him out.”
“I presume you rule out a full-frontal assault?”
“Christ, yes. We can’t do that, not with the new Middle East peace talks coming up.”
“Then you’re thinking straightforward assassin? CIA or even special forces?”
“Quite honestly, George, I’m not mad about either. First, we don’t really know how much protection Rashood has, how many bodyguards or even military security. And second, it’ll take us a while to find out. And even if we could get a team in place, or even a single sniper, we have no guarantee our man could get away; and if he were caught, there’d be hell to pay.”
“How about a bomb?” said Jimmy.
“Well, that’s a possibility. But we got so much trouble in the Middle East, it would probably turn out to be a bigger risk than the president would be prepared to take. Can you imagine the uproar if we either got caught, or somehow got the blame?”
“I could imagine it very easily,” interjected George Morris. “The liberal press would crucify us, behaving like gangsters, bullies, murderers, and Christ knows what else-reverting to the standards of our enemies and all that.”
“Don’t remind me, George,” replied Admiral Morgan. “But these things have to be considered. And in the end, we might have to get someone else to do it for us.”
“What? Go in and assassinate General Rashood? And then be prepared to take the rap for it if necessary?”
“There’s only one group who would fill those boots,” said Jimmy. “And that’s the Mossad.”
“My own thoughts precisely,” said Arnold Morgan. “Remember, Israel wants General Rashood dead worse than we do.”
“Remind me?” said Admiral Morris.
“Well, for a start, in the original battle in Hebron, he turned traitor against the Israeli forces, which counts as high treason and is punishable by execution. Then he masterminded those two huge bank robberies in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, Christmas ’bout eight years ago… what was it? A hundred million minimum?
“Four months later, he led an assault force on the Nimrod Jail and released just about every one of Israel’s major political prisoners, killing almost the entire prison staff while he was at it. A couple of years ago, the Mossad thought they had him trapped in some restaurant in France. But Rashood turned the tables on the Mossad hitmen and killed them both. And the Israelis, as we know, never forgive.”
“Are they still looking for him?” asked George Morris.
“They never forgive, or give up,” replied Admiral Morgan. “Guess that’s why they’re still breathing as a nation. They’re still looking for him, all right, but no one ever told me they came even close to finding him. Rashood’s probably the most dangerous and clever opponent the West has had since bin Laden retired.”
“I don’t think we’d even need to ask the Mossad to help us,” said Jimmy. “Just tell ’em where he is. Assure them of the validity of our sources, and they’ll be grateful. We can probably leave the rest to them.”
“They might not acknowledge we’re asking for a favor,” said Arnold. “But they’ll sure as hell know why we’re telling them.”
“Do we need to involve the government and the president and everyone else?” asked Admiral Morris.
“Hell, no,” said Arnold. “This will be just a friendly chat between intelligence agencies. My view is the less said, the better. Until one day we get a call from an informer letting us know the archterrorist General Rashood has been killed by a bomb in Damascus.”
“How do you know it’ll be a bomb?”
“It just happens to be the Mossad’s preferred method of operating. Less risk of missing the target, and the ability to be far away when the timing device explodes.”
“How do we start?” asked Admiral Morris.
“That part’s easy,” replied Arnold. At which point he picked up the telephone on the big desk and said sharply, “Get me the Israeli embassy, would you… right away.”
Moments later the call went through, and Admiral Morgan ordered whoever was at the other end, “Put me through to the ambassador, would you?”
Sir, I would need to know the nature of your call before I am permitted to do that.
“I’m not at all used to explaining things,” replied Arnold, curtly. “Just tell Ambassador Gavron to return my call immediately. That’s Admiral Arnold Morgan. I’m in the director’s office at the National Security Agency, Fort Meade. And tell him to look sharp about it.”
Crash. Down phone. The young Israeli girl on the line at the embassy instantly realized that in her experience no one had ever passed on a message like that to Ambassador Gavron, and she knew the name Arnold Morgan. Precisely twenty-three seconds later, the phone rang in George Morris’s office.
And the other two heard Arnold say cheerfully, “Hello, David. Yes, I appreciate you tried to look sharp about it!” And they watched the great man chuckle at the minor explosion he had put under the switchboard at the Israeli embassy. At least, it was minor compared to the one he was planning for Bab Touma Street, Damascus.
“Urgent? Hell, no. I just decided it was too long since I’d seen you, and I’d made a highly classified decision to buy you dinner-tomorrow night?
“… What d’you mean, only if Kathy comes? I know she’s better-looking than I am… of course we’re going somewhere halfway decent. I’ll get a table at Matisse. And, no. That does not mean I must have an ulterior motive. Seven-thirty. See you then.”
Admiral Morgan had just reentered, in his customary rambunctious manner, the life of one of the Mossad’s most revered former commanders. Which, happily, always amused the life out of the battle-scarred Israeli general.
David Gavron was a true sabra, an Israeli of the blood, and a patriot from his bootstraps to the jagged scar that was slashed like forked lightning across the left side of his face. He was six feet tall, lean, upright, very obviously ex-military, with a fair, freckled complexion, deeply tanned, with piercing blue eyes.
His sandy-colored hair, receding, still seemed bleached from the Sinai Desert, where, thirty-nine years ago, as a young tank commander, he had fought a desperate battle for his own life and for that of his country.
The bitterness of the Yom Kippur War remained for years in the hearts of the Israeli army commanders; but, for some, there burned a flame of pure fire that would never die. David Gavron was one of those.