Ops Files II--Terror Alert (12 page)

“Negative. A landline.”

“Any other issues? Are you all right?” She understood what Uri was asking. They had protocols, and if her call was being made under duress, this was her chance to use a code word that would tell him she was in trouble.

“I’m fine.”

“Good. Do you have a pen? I’m going to give you an address. It’s a small office building about twenty minutes from your hotel. By the airport.”

“Shoot.”

Uri rattled off a street and number.

Maya repeated it back. “Give me half an hour. And Uri? It was as bad as you can imagine, so I wouldn’t hang around there any longer than you have to. If they come for you…”

“Don’t worry about me. I’ve been at this for a long time.”

“See you in thirty.”

“Be careful. Make sure you don’t pick up a tail.”

“Of course.”

Maya hung up and stared at the receiver. She was in the lobby of a medium-sized hotel near the bus station. She’d stopped at her old hotel and checked out, and after confirming that she wasn’t being watched, checked into her new digs and changed into dry clothes.

She’d resisted the urge to try to access the laptop again, figuring that it was possible the imam’s men had configured it to wipe its hard disk if the wrong password was entered more than once. She knew far too much about computers from her interest in them, as well as the comprehensive course the Mossad had put her through, to assume she knew all the possible hacks or security programs. Better to leave that to a specialist.

Maya checked the time. It would take fifteen minutes to get to Uri’s new rendezvous spot. That left her a little leeway to find a pharmacy and get some antibiotics for the scrapes and cuts she’d gotten from her fall down the stairs and her roll on the roof.

A block away she found what she needed, and after buying ointment, antibacterial swab, and several roles of gauze and bandages, she retraced her steps to the hotel. After stripping off her top, she hurriedly cleaned her back the best she could, and then wrapped her torso and ribs, several of which felt broken – certainly sore enough to be, she reasoned, although there wasn’t much she could do about it.

She opted for a rickshaw now that the rain had abated, and sat wincing with every bump the driver hit, the jarring from the pavement excruciating. She arrived at the office building five minutes late and headed up to the second floor and a hallway that looked like it hadn’t been cleaned in weeks. The second door on the right had the name of an export company on it. Uri’s cover.

Maya tried the knob, but it was locked. She knocked and heard a shuffle inside, and then the door swung wide and Uri stood frowning, a pistol clutched in his hand, the stink of cigarette smoke following him. He pushed past her and looked down the hall, and then wordlessly closed the door behind them and moved to one of the desks.

Maya sat in front of it and regarded Uri calmly. He returned her scrutiny with a sour expression and then noticed the laptop in her hand.

“Is that it?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me everything that happened. Start at when you arrived at the address where Gil was being kept.”

Maya nodded and began her account, her voice unemotional, conveying only the facts, keeping her sentiments out of her report. When she finished, Uri rose and began pacing in front of the window, his eyes on the bank of monitors on the table next to it, where black-and-white images of the entry and the approaches to the building flickered in silence. Eventually he turned to her.

“You try to access the data yet?”

She shook her head and explained about the password, and her fears of losing whatever lay on the hard disk or in memory. “The only thing I did was plug it in while I changed clothes so the battery wouldn’t die. That way anything in RAM should still be recoverable.”

Uri grunted in reluctant approval. “Sounds like a job for Raj.”

“Are you sure he’s up to it?”

“He’s the best. If there’s a way to discover what’s on that thing, he’ll know it.”

Maya eyed him. “You mentioned your watcher went dark?”

“Yes. Right after he called to report that the imam was unexpectedly on the move. That was only a few minutes after you left.” Uri didn’t have to say that Kahn’s home was near the house where Gil had been held. They could both work out the math. She’d probably just missed him – or an even more alarming thought occurred to her: he could have still been in the house, if that’s where he’d gone, when she’d arrived, and evaded pursuit while she was walking the neighborhood, or even when she was in the tenement preparing to make her roof jump.

She voiced her misgivings and Uri waved them away. “No way of knowing. Right now, what’s important is finding out what, if anything, we can glean from that computer.”

He picked up the landline’s handset and Maya leaned forward. “And if there’s nothing on it?”

Uri stared at a point a thousand miles over her left shoulder, and when he spoke, his voice was barely a whisper. “Then everything that happened today was for nothing. Because sure as hell Kahn’s going to vanish now, and we’ll never know what he was up to.” He let his words sink in and then dialed Raj’s number from memory.

After a terse discussion, Uri hung up and leaned back in his chair. “You checked out of your hotel?”

“Of course.”

“You use a different alias at the new one?”

“Yes. They didn’t ask for ID.”

“Very good. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to ask you to step into the other room. I need some privacy while I talk to headquarters.”

Maya stood and walked to the connecting door. She stopped when she reached it and turned to Uri. “Did Gil have family?”

“We were his family.”

The words echoed in the room with the finality of a eulogy. Maya nodded and moved into the other room, which was another office with three cots and a small refrigerator. She presumed the door on the far side was a bathroom, which in Bangladesh could mean anything from a hole in the floor to a nightmare.

She sat on one of the cots, listening to Uri’s muffled voice droning on the other side of the door. Then she walked to the window and surveyed the street. She was still standing there fifteen minutes later when Uri opened the connecting door and peered in.

“See anything interesting?”

“Just the usual. No jihadis trying to creep up on us or anything.”

“Raj should be here any minute. You want anything to drink? I have water and orange juice in the fridge.”

“Some water would be good.”

He removed two bottles of water and handed her one, holding her stare as he did so. “Are you all right?”

“Other than some bruises and some questionable bones, I’m fine.”

He sighed. “It’s never easy losing one of your own.”

“Have you lost many?” She didn’t mean for her tone to sound accusatory, but even to her ear, it did.

“Maya, I don’t answer to you. Are we clear on that? I’m your superior.”

“Of course.”

“We observed all safeguards with Gil and his informant,” he said stiffly.

“Then maybe you need to rethink the safeguards, because obviously they failed.”

He stared at her without blinking and then nodded slowly. “Fair point, and you’re right, of course. I’m sorry. I’m just defensive. You’ll see what it’s like when you’re running agents. You always feel like you’re to blame when something goes wrong. Always. Doesn’t matter if you did everything you possibly could. All you’ll think is that it wasn’t enough.”

“I…I meant no disrespect.”

He dropped his gaze. “None taken.”

They returned to the office next door, and Raj materialized several minutes later. Uri described the problem, and after a series of questions, Raj went to work. Maya watched him curiously as he tapped at the keyboard and plugged in a flash drive and then looked to Uri. “Can I have the room? I don’t work well with spectators.”

Maya got up from where she was sitting. “I think he means me.”

Raj didn’t say anything further, and Uri shrugged. She took the hint and walked back to the other room, this time lowering herself cautiously onto one of the cots with a grimace of pain.

When Uri opened the door, Maya bolted upright and glanced around. She caught a glimpse of the window – it was dark out.

“What…what time is it?”

“Took us three hours, but he cracked it. I told you Raj was the best.” Uri lit a cigarette. “Come on. He just left. You need to see what he found.”

Uri led her to his desk. The air was stale with smoke and burnt coffee, but he didn’t seem to notice. She sat down and began reading the printouts Raj had made, and after a few minutes looked up at Uri with wide eyes.

“These…why would they want blueprints of a stadium halfway across the world?”

“Yes. And why would they be worth killing over? A few ideas spring to mind, none of them good.”

“God. They’re planning a strike.” She eyed the documents again. “Judging by the size, that’s a venue that would hold…tens of thousands.”

Uri nodded. “Depending on the use, between forty and sixty.”

“It would be a massacre.”

“Yes. Yes, it would.”

“You have to call headquarters.”

“I already did.”

“And?”

“And they want to talk directly with you.”

“I see,” Maya said, her tone indicating she didn’t at all.

Uri dialed a number on the landline and then flipped a switch on a scrambler attached to the back. He spoke in rapid-fire Hebrew and then handed her the phone. She took it and looked at him. “What about you? Can you put it on speakerphone?”

“No need. I’ve already spoken with them.”

Maya raised the headset to her ear. “Hello?”

“Yes, Maya. Do you recognize my voice?” It was Jaron, the voice unmistakably his, even from thousands of miles away.

“I do.”

“Good. Your assignment in Dhaka is finished. I’ve authorized you to be on the next flight to England tomorrow, where you’ll be working with our Manchester field office.”

“I see. And…Uri?”

“Not your concern. He’s head of station in Dhaka, so of course, that’s where he’ll remain.”

She digested that, as well as the cold, unfeeling tone of Jaron’s voice. “Do you have a briefing document for me? Anything I need to know?”

“You’ll have a file in your hands via email within the hour.”

“It’s probable that my passport and identity are blown. The interrogation…I don’t have confidence that Gil didn’t tell them about me.”

“I understand. We’re making arrangements to have new docs sent to London. We don’t believe it will be an issue for travel. You’ll have an itinerary with the file, as well as flight information.”

“Very well.”

“In the meantime, I need you to fill out a complete report. Omit nothing, no matter how trivial. Ordinarily we’d bring you back to debrief you, but given the circumstances we felt it would be better to have you support the UK office and be debriefed there.”

“Will do, sir.”

“Great. And Maya? Good job. It sounds like you vindicated my decision to use you on this.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

“Stand by for the file. I’ll send it to Uri, for your eyes only.”

“I…see.”

“It’s a necessary step. Compartmentalization. You know that.”

“Of course.”

“See that you remember it at all times.” Jaron’s message was clear – don’t discuss anything with Uri.

The phone went dead. She replaced the handset in the cradle and closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, Uri was standing in the doorway.

“Well?”

“They’re sending a file to your encrypted inbox. For my eyes only. I’m to destroy it after reading it.”

Uri nodded. “Standard procedure.”

“I’m…this is awkward.”

He sighed and sat back at his desk. “Yes, sometimes, especially times like this, it can be. No way around it, I’m afraid. But I’m a big boy, so my feelings don’t get hurt. They need me to clean up my mess here. You’re off to fight other battles. That’s how it goes.” He looked up at her, his eyes red from strain and fatigue. “You get used to it.”

“Any word from your watcher?”

Uri shook his head. “No. We can assume he’s crocodile food by now.”

“Do you have other assets you can use to pick up the imam’s trail?”

“Of course. But that’s no longer your concern.”

“I’m making it mine,” she said quietly.

Uri drummed his fingers on the printout. “Maya, all due respect,
that’s
your concern. Whatever headquarters wants you to do is your concern. Catching Gil’s killers, getting retribution, allowing your sentiment to determine what you do…none of that is your concern. Are we clear?”

“Somebody has to care, Uri.”

“Yes, and I do. I’ll ensure we exact our pound of flesh, have no fear of that. But you need to put all of this out of your mind and prepare for your next assignment. HQ is sending more resources to help me…and they won’t be administrative staff, if you get my drift. Don’t waste your energy worrying about this. The Mossad takes care of its own, and nobody’s getting away with anything on my watch.”

Maya’s brow furrowed as she held Uri’s stare. “Promise?”

“Absolutely. As much for myself as for anyone.”

The hour dragged by as they waited for the file to arrive. When it did, Uri left her with the computer so she could assimilate the information at her leisure. It didn’t take her long – she was finished in twenty-five minutes, and after committing the relevant data to memory, she deleted the file, as instructed, and then dumped the recycle files as well using a utility on the desktop that also permanently erased the data from the disk and memory.

Maya knocked on the connecting door after she finished and Uri rejoined her.

“Do you have anything else you need me for?” she asked, suddenly anxious to be anywhere but in the office, which smelled like a giant ashtray.

“No. Just be careful. You’re still my responsibility as long as you’re in Dhaka.”

“I will. I depart tomorrow. I’ll touch base to let you know I’m officially gone.”

Uri held out his hand. Maya took it and they shook awkwardly.

“Good luck, young lady.”

She offered him a confident smirk that never reached her eyes. “Luck will have nothing to do with it.”