Patriots & Tyrants (2 page)

Kafni considered the situation for a moment. Sayar certainly had the ability to make his life difficult if he chose to but, for the moment at least, the veteran spymaster seemed to be on his side. Keeping the director happy while he arranged for his exit seemed like the best idea.

"Eilat is a long way from any kind of military support," he said signaling that he was willing to accept the assignment. "If we start bringing in IDF forces surely someone will notice."

"That is correct," Sayar said. "But I believe that can be used in our favor. Due to the secret nature of this operation it is absolutely imperative that as few people know about it as possible. There is already a group of counter-terrorism troops there, though they are not from our normal Special Forces. They are a volunteer force known as Lotar Eilat and many of their members are quite a bit older than regular IDF Special Forces. However, they have had several successes over the years in defending their home during attacks from the Sinai."

"You're planning on notifying them at the last possible moment and using them to take down the trade?" Kafni asked.

Sayar nodded. "Yes. That is the first part of your assignment. You will be going to Eilat disguised as an American businessman of Jewish decent. Once you are there and you have made contact with Tehrani, you will meet with the commander of Lotar Eilat, a man named Okan Osman, and you will bring him up to speed."

"It is a big risk."

"Yes, but it is a necessary one. I trust that you'll be successful and bring me the head of Sa'adi Nouri."

Kafni cringed at the mental image of actually presenting the director with a severed human head. Noticing his subordinate's discomfort, Sayar laughed. "Get going," he said. "Call me when you've made contact with Tehrani."

"Would you like this charged to your room, Mr. Goldman?" the waiter asked as he removed a drink from his tray and handed it to Abaddon Kafni.

"Yes, thank you," Kafni said placing several American dollars on the man's tray without sitting up from the cabana lounge chair. The waiter smiled and vanished into the throng of tourists that populated the pool area of the Queen of Aqaba Hotel. With a straw beach hat and dark sunglasses Kafni watched everyone from his perch on a shaded deck in the corner of the swimming area. The sun shown down intensely over the sparsely covered area and the air smelled of oil and sunscreen. While he appeared to be just another tourist relaxing in the one hundred and four degree heat of the southern Negev, he was in fact waiting for an Iranian spy to make contact. So far the man was a no show.

The fact that the spy had yet to show was no bother to Kafni. In fact, he would rather the man didn't come at all. Then he could go back to his superior in Haifa, inform him that the operation was a failure at no fault of his own and the two of them could continue discussing his resignation. While he was a patriot and certainly wanted to see the likes of the terrorist organization they were targeting fall, he felt that he had more than done his duty over the past twenty-three years and he was ready to move on. If the Al-Mumit Islamic Liberation Brigade had to exist a little longer until his successor took over, then so be it.

The town of Eilat was a small city on the edge of the Gulf of Aqaba sandwiched between the vast Egyptian Sinai and the mountainous terrain of eastern Jordan. Bordered to the south by the Red Sea and to the north by the colossal Negev, it was effectively cut off from the rest of Israel by a hundred miles of desert. Kafni had arrived three days earlier aboard an El Al flight that had originated in Atlanta. While the ticket he held had been used all the way from Atlanta via a plane run by Air Canada, the Mossad agent that occupied the plane from Atlanta to Tel Aviv had stepped off and Kafni had taken his place for the remainder of the journey to the southern resort town. Disguised as an American bank executive called Daniel Goldman, he'd grown a beard, rented a limousine to usher him around and had been as free with his money as a man who simply had no worries. While in the hotel he'd ordered the correct drinks, worn the right colored shirt and smoked the exact brand of cigarettes his Iranian contact had been told to look for. While it wasn't impossible that there was another American businessman in Eilat that drank French Absinthe, wore plum colored shirts and smoked Noblesse cigarettes, it was very unlikely.

Removing a bright orange pack of cigarettes with English writing on one side and Hebrew on the other from his shirt pocket, Kafni lit one and inhaled the low tar, low nicotine blend deeply. As a Mossad field agent he had developed a tolerance for just about every cigarette in the world at one time or another, but the more political position he had occupied for the last two years had left him soft. He steadied himself and fought through a dizzy spell as a man appeared at the edge of the cabana wearing a burnt orange shirt with white flowers and a straw hat exactly like Kafni's.

"I see we have a similar taste in hats," the man said in a Semitic accent.

"Good for you," Kafni said fighting the urge to cough as he inhaled another drag from the cigarette.

"Could I bother you for a light?" the man asked withdrawing a light green pack of Noblesse cigarettes from his pocket and making sure Kafni saw it as he withdrew one.

"Of course," Kafni said, disappointment rising inside him as the Iranian spy stepped into the cabana and pulled up a chair beside him.

Kafni crushed out his cigarette and the Iranian put away the light green pack.

"You are not who I expected," the man said. He was tall, with coffee colored skin, black closely cut hair, a rough shave and ears that seemed too big for his slender head. He stewed for a moment looking over Kafni as he decided whether or not to leave. "This is not so good for me. I talk to Sayar. He did not inform me that he was sending someone else."

"Sayar's health is not so good. He could not make the trip."

"I do not care about his health. What about my health? Do you know the risk I am taking?"

Kafni nodded.

"Nouri will kill me if he finds out this is a set up."

"All of my credentials have been set up well in advance. The real Daniel Goldman has made several successful trades with Palestinian groups over the last few years. He has been quietly arrested by the FBI in America and my image has replaced his on the company's website. I'm carrying his American passport, his credit cards and even his Georgia drivers license. I have spent my career abroad in places like Belgium, Ireland and South America. I haven't operated in the Middle East for many years."

"What? You think Nouri only pays attention to things that happen in the Middle East? He has a lot of money and pays very well to be informed of anything that goes on in any area he visits."

"Then leave. But Sayar will not extend the protection to you that he has promised if this deal does not go through. Sooner or later he will get Nouri and his network. If you're with them, you'll be treated just like them."

Tehrani grimaced and looked around the pool area of the hotel. "Fine," he said.

"Good. Then we'll meet tonight. I have the merchandise stored at a hotel construction site near the Jordanian border just below those mountains," Kafni said pointing beyond the hotel to a spot on the horizon.
"My firm
has a heavy financial interest in the construction, but it has been delayed for many weeks by bureaucracy. You'll take pictures and return to Nouri with them."

"And what if Nouri does not come? What if he tells me to make the deal?"

"Has he ever trusted you with the type of money we're talking about before?"

"No."

"Then he will come."

Tehrani seemed reluctant but nodded his agreement, stood and walked away from the Cabana.

Kafni poured the light green spirit in his glass through the slits in the deck's floor and left the cabana. It was time to meet with Okan Osman.

"Come in gentlemen," Sa'adi Nouri announced as one of his bodyguards opened the front door of his house and stood aside. Wearing a cream colored turtleneck, white dockers and a brown leather belt that matched his loafers he radiated a metropolitan style. His salt and pepper hair was worn short and conservative, but styled in a modern way and his slightly coffee colored complexion gave him the look of a man who spent a lot of lime in the sun. Dark stubble lined his chin.

"I hope you found the journey to your liking," he said as the two men entered the modern one story house through the black composite door and looked around as if they had just entered a museum. Nouri was seated on a black leather sofa sipping an espresso and overlooking the indoor pool through a set of floor to ceiling windows supported on each end by stone columns. The floors and walls of the house were made of light gray and white swirled granite, the house had an open architecture with high ceilings and a fireplace at the base of a stone chimney that crackled and filled the air with the scent of burning wood.

"Vadim, Deni, it is good to see you both. Please come in and make yourselves comfortable," Nouri beckoned again. The two guests plodded towards the leather sofa and sat opposite of their host. Both men looked sorely out of place in their camouflage jackets, brown oilskin pants, heavy combat boots and berets bearing a crest of the Chechen flag with a black wolf on a pedestal encircled by a nine-starred Islamic crescent. With their unkempt beards and lack of proper hygiene, Nouri was glad they had chosen to sit as far from him as they did. Reaching over the armrest of the couch, he opened a black wooden box and withdrew a cigar, lighting it, and inhaling deeply before blowing a blueish haze into the air and covering the odor of the two men with the scent of cherry tobacco.

"Why have you called us here?" Deni Baktayev said. As the younger of the two men his demeanor was the most brash. With dirty blonde hair that sat atop his head like a bad weave, an unkempt beard, a bulbous nose and an unmistakably Russian sneer, he sat forward with his elbows on his knees and eyed the Iranian in front of him suspiciously.

Nouri shrugged and grimaced. "Because I have what you're looking for of course. Why else?"

"You have the weapons here?" Deni said with an air of skepticism.

"Well, no," Nouri said. "They are stored in Israel. I'm not going to put down six million American dollars until I'm sure that they are what you're looking for."

"You cannot mistake Kalashnikovs, fragmentation grenades and claymore mines. They are what they are. They are either real or not and surely a man as experienced as you knows the difference."

"Yes, yes," Nouri said sitting forward and placing his coffee cup on a glass table before continuing, his voice dripping with venom. "I know the difference, but if you want this you will have to work for it. I am not the one stop jihad shop. If you're not willing to meet me half way then you can go back to raiding Russian caravans and bleeding all over the pavement when their reinforcements cut your men to ribbons."

The older Chechen sat forward, placing a hand on his younger brother's shoulder and speaking. Vadim Baktayev's voice was gravely and his tone much less abrupt. His black beard extended a full foot beyond the end of his chin and exhibited heavy streaks of gray. The hair on his head was shaved to a light fuzz and his beady, black eyes darted between his little brother and the Iranian financier. "You'll have to excuse my brother. Months of fighting has worn his patience as well as his manors. We are willing to work with you if it ensures that our people get the weapons they need to win this fight. What is it that you need from us?"

"That's more like it," Nouri said sitting back again. "After all, we are on the same side. I don't stand to gain anything from helping you except furthering the cause of Islam against the enemies in the west and north. Now lets take a walk. The man with the details will be here shortly."

Nouri stood. The Chechens followed suit and as the three arrived at the front door of the house, a black clad man with an Uzi opened the door and stood aside for them. Nouri pulled on a brown parka that had been hanging on a hook beside the door and stepped out.

Outside the air was cold, a dusting of snow covered the ground and in the distance below the dim lights of Iran's fifth largest city, Karaj, stood out against the desert beyond. Nouri's home was situated in the foothills of the Alborz Mountains on a wooded lot along Road 59 heading northwest out of Karaj towards the Caspian Sea. The one-story concrete house was surrounded by a high stone wall, had well-lit concrete pathways lined with waist high shrubbery and a winding driveway that led to a multi-car garage where the Rolls Royce that had brought the Chechens from the port city of Chalus was now parked.

"Now, what I need from you," Nouri said picking up the conversation from where it ended inside the house, "is to accompany me to the location where the weapons are stored. While I know the difference between Russian Kalashnikovs and Romanian-made knock offs, what I do not know is whether or not each weapon is in the proper working condition. You can test them, with the appropriate silencers for the location of course, and verify that they work. The man who has them has arranged several buys for our allies in Palestine and my information indicates that he is more than capable of providing good weapons, but this will be a true test of his worth."

Vadim Baktayev nodded his agreement as the sound of a horn blowing drew their attention towards the property's front gate. Two of Nouri's darkly dressed bodyguards appeared from a guardhouse just outside of the gate and approached the vehicle that was parked there, its headlights shining brightly. After exchanging a few sentences in Iranian with the vehicle's driver one of the guards returned to the guardhouse and activated the gate, allowing the pewter colored compact car to pass.