Straits of Power (38 page)

Like many items in the bags—including pencils, an underwater camera with blank film, and Mohr’s quantum computer and tool case—the clipboards were damp with saltwater. Everything had been soaked while still on
Challenger,
to appear more authentic when examined. Were they authentic enough?

Felix and those with him stood on the deck, dripping. Their compressed-air tanks and weight belts were heavy out of the sea. Standing upright in the head-to-toe loose-fitting wet suits was serious labor. They had to squint in the bright sun reflecting off the Med, because their hats and sunglasses were in side pouches of the gear bags. Even with a light onshore breeze, and the temperature in the seventies, Felix felt much too warm as he waited to see what happened next.

“What’s in these cases?” the boat owner demanded.

Felix’s tension worsened. Explaining the cases couldn’t be avoided. Neither could Mohr keep mute forever, and Meltzer was too junior to lead a major university archaeological expedition, even a last-minute add-on by a school not a principal dig sponsor.

“May I show them to you?” Mohr asked politely.

The soldier pointed his rifle angrily at Mohr, stepping back to keep the foursome covered. His partner held his own weapon pointed at the men still in the water. Felix had seen that the rifles were Galil ARs, with their safeties off. Long, curved magazines projected down and forward from their receivers; each held fifty rounds of the same ammo as an M-16. Felix did
not
want to take a bullet—or a burst of bullets. None of his team wore body armor.

“You have a German accent,” the soldier said to Mohr, his voice thick, bloodcurdling, hate-filled.

“So?” Mohr answered back aggressively. “And I suppose that no Israelis speak with German accents?
Hmm?”

“You are not Israeli.”

“Did I say I was?”

“What are you?” The soldier had his Galil’s unfolded stock on his shoulder now, and peered down its sights at Mohr’s head.

Uh-oh,
Felix told himself, sweating,
here’s the punch line.

“I’m German. And an adjunct professor at New York University. And
not
a supporter of Imperial Germany or I wouldn’t be here, would I?” Mohr advanced on the soldier, loaded Galil and all, in a rage that he summoned from deep inside himself. “Don’t you know there are
good
Germans? Do you know how many of my friends were shot for resisting tyrants last year
in
Germany?” Spittle began to fly from Mohr’s mouth. “Do you think I
like
having to explain myself wherever I go, as if I’m some kind of vile insect?
Do you think I like it?”
His nose almost touched the flash suppressor at the Galil’s muzzle now.

Felix thought that if they survived this, Mohr deserved an Oscar for his performance.

“Where are your papers?”

“At the hostel. We don’t take them with us
on dives.”

“What are these boxes?”

“Magnetometers, gravimeters. For finding and mapping out underwater wrecks. I’m testing them on working sites to calibrate them. You understand the word
‘calibrate’
?
”
Mohr folded his arms across his chest defiantly, over the straps of his scuba and his uninflated buoyancy vest.

For an uncomfortable minute the soldier kept his rifle trained on Mohr. Then his eyes drifted to the equipment cases sitting on the deck. His eyes darted back to Mohr, testing for a reaction, any excuse to open fire. The tactic was as transparent to Mohr as to Felix. Mohr gave the soldier a dirty look, then spoke quietly and evenly. “Get us a ride to the beach, or shoot me. Make up your mind.”

The soldier lowered his rifle, snapped the selector onto safe, and shouted to the wheelhouse, then to his partner. The other soldier safed his weapon. The boat owner talked on the radio; a response crackled in Hebrew. Soon a young woman on the beach, at the primary camp north of the minefield, pushed a rubber raft into the water and started its little engine, heading for the boat.

The soldier glanced at Meltzer. “Eight people and those bags, you need two trips.” The deck’s pump and vacuum engines came back to life, making noises and giving off smelly exhaust.

Chapter 43

C
hief Costa and the enlisted SEALs had already gone to the beach with some of Mohr’s gear. Now Felix, Meltzer, Salih, and Mohr rode the raft steered by the young woman. She’d spoken to Meltzer briefly in Hebrew, but ignored her other passengers. To her, Felix could tell, he and Salih were underlings. Klaus Mohr kept his mouth shut, not pressing his luck. The woman, her expression serious, purposeful, handled the raft with skill.

They approached the shore quickly. To the left of the beach the land rose to gray cliffs, with an indentation forming a cove. There were structures and activity on the cliffs. Felix knew this was Tel Dor, one of the most extensive ongoing land-based archaeological digs in Israel. Farther north was a promontory, topped by a Crusader fortress crumbling from neglect. South by a few miles, also directly on the shore, lay another Crusader ruin, with the base of what had once been a tall, massive tower.

Large rocks stuck out of the water near the beach. The rubber raft wove between them, kicking up cool spray that sprinkled Felix’s body and face. The sea altered from deep blue to turquoise green, the surf was barely three feet high, and white water lapped against yellowish sand. The raft ran up on the beach. The woman turned off the outboard to save scarce gas.

“Todah,”
Meltzer said. Thank you. The woman nodded, then went about checking the raft. The narrow tide line here was mostly free of detritus from naval battles a hundred-plus miles to the west; Felix saw bits of charred driftwood, and small blobs of oily gunk, easily sidestepped.

He scanned the setup on the beach. Open-sided canvas tents gave shade, where people at long tables rinsed artifacts, then immersed them again in buckets for preservation; records were kept on laptops. A close-sided tent had a sign that said “East Carolina University Underwater Archaeology Group.” Another such tent had a sign in Hebrew and English; the English part said “University of Haifa.” Farther off, a generator purred. Cables were strung over tall planks driven into the sand, providing power to different parts of the encampment. A tank trailer with diesel fuel sat near the generator. A bigger trailer had “Fresh Water Do Not Drink” marked on its tank. One open-sided tent held coolers, coffee urns, and food; workers wolfed down snacks there.

Closer to the multilane coastal highway stood a row of chemical toilets, and a few parked vans and cars—Haifa was twelve miles straight north. Felix also noticed a big stack of white PVC pipe, a pile of empty compressed-air scuba tanks near the highway, and rows of filled tanks standing upright on wooden pallets close to the water. The sand in many places was wet; it was crisscrossed by countless footprints and sets of tire tracks.

Rolls of barbed wire stretched along the whole south edge of the area, from the surf to the highway. Portable floodlights on poles, switched off now, pointed both at the encampment and toward the deserted beach beyond the wire. Hundreds of yards off, on a twisting corridor through the minefield, Felix saw a sandbagged heavy machine-gun emplacement.

He went to the co-ed shower area. Burlap screens on stakes gave minimal privacy. Chief Costa and his men had by now washed off, cleaned their gear, and changed into casual civilian clothing from dry side pouches in their bags. Felix and those with him did the same, then strapped dive knives near their ankles, under their slacks.

They carried their dive gear to an open-air spot with wooden tables and clotheslines equipped with plastic hooks. All sorts of gear was piled on the tables; wet suits hung from the hooks; an attendant kept an eye on everything. Felix and his men tied numbered tags to their gear, and the woman gave them claim checks. She spoke good English. Meltzer said they’d be back in two hours, to put in another short dive before dark. He asked how they could get a lift into Zichron Yaakov, a town a few miles away where he said they were staying. She pointed to a van.

As the team trudged up the beach to the van, hefting their equipment bags, Felix noticed more barbed wire, and other young women guarding the inland perimeter exits. They wore army uniforms and carried Uzi submachine guns—an old design, used mostly by rear-area troops, but deadly if well maintained. Felix’s group was challenged at gunpoint by two of these women.

They spoke little English. While Felix’s heart was in his throat again, they questioned Meltzer and he responded as best he could. He gestured out at the boat, and the raft they’d ridden in on. These soldiers insisted the team open their equipment bags and unlock Mohr’s module cases and his tool kit. They looked them over carefully. They waved electronic wands around each case: detectors for explosives, poisons, radiation, and germs. Finally one of the women nodded and pointed the team toward the shuttle van. Felix knew that the hardest part by far was yet to come.

As they clambered into the van, he realized that none of the soldiers had names or rank insignia on their uniforms, for security. Meltzer told the driver, another woman, their supposed destination. The driver wore civilian clothes, but had a loaded Uzi on the seat beside her. The van’s windows were all rolled down. With a jerk it picked up speed and cut onto the highway, heading south. A nice breeze came in the windows. Traffic was conspicuously light, except for crowded buses and long military convoys.

Soon swamps and lagoons mixed with eucalyptus groves, date trees, and tilled fields. Ahead was a coastal kibbutz—a socialist collective farm—and a road sign said it was called “Nakhsholim.” The van turned inland instead at the first intersection. They crossed a rail line, then another north-south road. Their side road began to gain altitude. They were climbing the foothills of the Carmel Range, only 1,500 feet tall at its peak, but compared to the flat coastal plain running south, these green hills before them seemed high. They passed large vineyards along the road, then soaring, narrow, fragrant cypress trees. Behind the van, the view to the Med with the late-afternoon sun above the sea was stunning.

The van made a sharp right turn. Soon they were on a street of Zichron Yaakov: population six thousand, employment mostly in agriculture or light industry, plus tourism—the latter was sluggish because of the war, except for the ubiquitous Japanese. The street was lined by stucco one-story buildings with red-tile roofs. It was paved in places with cobblestones, and the streetlamps were decorative old-fashioned gas lights; the first Zionist settlement at Zichron Yaakov had been founded in the 1880s.

The van stopped at the hostel. The driver gave Meltzer a card, then touched the cell phone on her dash: Call if they wanted transport later. Everyone waited on the sidewalk until her vehicle was well gone. Their jaws set. It was time to assume new identities, and do the thing they’d come here for.

Chapter 44

I
t wasn’t easy finding the type of manhole Mohr said they needed. He’d deduced that one of the buried fiber-optic trunk cables from Tel Aviv to Haifa had to pass under Zichron Yaakov
somewhere.
It was by far the largest town on a straight line from the Mediterranean shore to the West Bank Territory’s border, barely sixteen miles eastward from the sea. Such placement of the cable was forced in part by the need to protect it, and in part by the need to give good connection service in the town. The size and shape of the maintenance-access manholes—rectangular, one by two meters or so—were set by the need to sometimes move big parts and equipment in and out.

Felix knew this was at best a series of hopeful assumptions.
Challenger
lacked maps of Israel’s fiber-optic grid, because in Norfolk no one thought they would ever use them. The idea of stealing the information in Israel was dismissed right away, with Gerald Parker’s wholehearted agreement. He’d warned that any physical or computer-hacking break-in or search for such data could be spotted instantly by the Shin Bet, Israel’s ruthless internal state-security apparatus. The SEALs’ raid would end in catastrophe, the team either captured or killed.

The group began walking the streets, lugging Mohr’s gear, looking for the manhole that would let him hook up his quantum computer. Meltzer preempted suspicion by people they passed as best he could, acting friendly and making quick greetings to Israelis they met on the spotless sidewalks.

Felix often glanced at his watch. He was in a race with almost a dozen Kampfschwimmer teams to get into the Israeli systems first. He also kept thinking of the hard deadline Captain Fuller had set for minisub pickup. Even if they found the cable, even if Mohr’s gizmo functioned correctly—and Mohr didn’t show any signs that he was in fact a double agent for the Germans—Felix realized they might not make it back before
Challenger
sailed. They’d be stuck in Israel lacking a good explanation of how they’d arrived, with an all-out Axis offensive charging toward them very soon. The American embassy would surely be watched, might be penetrated, and going there could betray
Challenger
and Mohr.

Face it, this effort was launched on a swim fin and a prayer.
The fatalistic mood of the Israeli pedestrians Felix saw didn’t help. They all knew that the war—which up to now had spared their homeland, though it nearly bankrupted their economy—would soon become a vicious fight for survival, a fight to the death. Memories of previous wars and terrorism fueled the communal concerns. Knowing what a different generation of Germans had done to a different generation of Jews added an edge of fury that Felix could tell was seething all around him. The scenic views between the leafy trees reminded him of how much could still be lost. Few of the locals he went by were males between sixteen and fifty—they’d been mobilized, massing nearer the front where the Afrika Korps would be.

Mohr pointed into the road. Meltzer walked to the manhole cover, consisting of four smaller pieces placed side by side flush with the pavement, and read the words on the heavy metal castings. After reading them he said, “Right type of manhole, but welded shut.” Security.

Felix’s mind raced, trying to think of where they could steal an acetylene cutting torch.

“No,” Mohr whispered. “This is good. It means we’re in the proper area. We need to trace the cable’s route and find one kept open for quick repairs and testing. You see?”

Felix nodded. He considered splitting up his team to search in opposite directions. But this would probably waste as much time as it saved, since he needed everybody when the work began. His instinct told him to go north.

After snaking for blocks through the streets of Zichron Yaakov, they found another manhole for the fiber-optic line, also welded shut. Felix’s frustration level was almost unbearable.

Then it dawned on him. Technology-dependent firms would want to be close to the fiber-optic main, to have the shortest, least expensive, reliable high-baud-rate connections. To find the main he had to find such companies. A commercial area would be busier too, so a manhole there might not be sealed against tampering like these unguarded ones in quieter residential districts. Felix led the way southwest, to an office park near the modern town center. Following curving streets that ran steeply uphill and down, they located what they needed.

In plain sight of people on the street, and of others who might glance out the windows of their offices, the team put down their equipment bags. Chief Costa and his three enlisted SEALs—da Rosa, Azavedo, and Magro—opened the bags, chatting as casually as they could in Portuguese to keep up their cover as hired guest workers. Meltzer began to fuss about, pretending to be their foreman, waving his arms, pointing, and issuing commands in English and monosyllabic Hebrew. He understood conventional fiber optics from qualifying on
Challenger
’s systems. The supposed cable-maintenance crew removed eight uninflated orange life jackets, which everybody put on as if they were traffic-safety vests. The team donned hard hats brought from the ship.

Costa pulled out a crowbar. Rosa, Azavedo, and Magro stepped into the street, and began directing vehicles around and away from the manhole. Costa used the crowbar to lever the sectional covers off; Felix and Salih helped him slide each awkward piece to one side in a pile facing oncoming cars. Below these was a sheet-metal pan for channeling rainwater into drains. Costa lifted it, exposing an opening into cool, musty blackness. Mohr climbed down the ladder with a flashlight, and the SEALs passed him his modules one by one, then his tool kit. As his team manhandled the cases, Felix saw the silicone that plugged the holes in the power unit where the German bullet had gone through. He thought to himself that the repairs made on
Challenger
had better work—or they, Israel, and the world were in trouble.

Felix and Salih climbed down to help Mohr, then Meltzer went down partway. Like this, Felix could see his alleged foreman standing above, in a rectangle of tree-shaded daylight, with torso exposed, watching for any problems at street level. Meltzer tried to appear as matter-of-fact as he could, not furtive. He’d be the team’s liaison with any locals, and while underground Felix needed someone on the ladder to be surveillance and verbal communications relay for the surface element of the group.

The maintenance space itself, beneath the manhole, was maybe four times the size of the three-foot-by-six-foot entry hole. Felix found a light switch, flicked it, and weak bulbs came on, leaving the crowded and dank space in semi-shadow. Thick cables emerged from the concrete wall in a side of the prefabricated chamber, entered a floor-mounted unit that Mohr said was a fiber-optic signal amplifier, and then the cables disappeared into the wall on the opposite side. Thinner cables ran from junction boxes to the amplifier and through the other sides of the chamber. There were old spiderwebs in the corners by the low ceiling that supported the street. Mohr, tallest, brushed the top of his hard hat against the roof when he stood up straight.

Mohr crouched and opened the modules with help from Salih. He removed neat wire coils and furiously started to hook together his gear, then plugged a cord from the power unit into a 220-volt utility socket in the chamber wall. Lips pursed, very tense, Mohr pressed buttons on the modules, starting the first complete, all-up test allowed by a protective Captain Fuller since the damage in Istanbul. The modules began to hum and whine. Indicators glowed, green and amber. “All self-check correctly.”

Felix thought he might feel something being so close to the quantum-entanglement process.
A tingling, a numbness, distorted vision? . . . Weird stuff is going on inside those cases.
But the only sensation he noticed was one of relief.

The next step would be to tap into the Israeli trunk cable.

“Mah zeh?”
a man snapped from somewhere above.

Meltzer glanced down the ladder and said that meant “What is this?” He left the hole. Felix heard him speak in Hebrew, to a person who answered sternly, unsatisfied.

Felix feared that the inevitable confrontation with authorities had struck much sooner than he’d hoped. “Keep working,” he said to Mohr. Felix climbed the narrow ladder. He smiled, which was the only thing he could do under the circumstances. Right there was an Israeli policeman, on foot patrol. He was thirtyish, muscular, and had a swarthy complexion with unreadable predator’s eyes. His body posture told Felix enough. The man kept his fingers poised by the butt of a hefty pistol in his belt holster. His radio crackled, a staticky voice, then was silent, pregnantly.

“He’s asked to see our work papers and IDs,” Meltzer stated to Felix in English, deadpan. “I’ve explained that I’m an American engineer helping on cable-system upkeep since everybody else is in the army, and you lead the work gang assisting me.”

“What are you wearing?” The cop fingered Meltzer’s orange life vest.

He speaks some English. He’s establishing more control.

“For emergencies. Flash floods, in sewers . . .”

“I want to see your passport.”

Something had to be done, and Meltzer waited for a SEAL to do it. Chief Costa was standing behind the cop. Costa sneaked in a hand sign asking Felix if he should knock the guy out.

The policeman’s free hand began to reach for his radio mike. Felix envisioned the entire scheme falling to pieces, with them all arrested for sabotage. Costa couldn’t attack the cop in broad daylight, in the middle of the street. Pedestrians were glancing too attentively as it was.

Felix counted on the cop not wanting to swamp his headquarters with yet another false alarm about what could be perfectly legitimate newcomers to the area. Felix faked a noisy sneeze, then begged pardon in Portuguese—a prearranged signal. The enlisted SEALs continued directing the sparse road traffic, but they moved subtly to block the manhole from the view of the nearest civilians on the sidewalks beyond parked cars. Felix gestured for the cop to approach him. Costa backed off. The policeman walked nearer, touching his pistol. His expression was opaque, hard. He unsnapped the nylon strip holding the weapon snug in its holster; he was preparing to draw.

Felix held up a hand to the policeman as if to mean, Please wait a moment. “I bring you all the documents. They’re with our things in the hole. Okay?” He hammed up hesitant English, in his thickest Portuguese accent, displaying his sweetest smile.

Felix climbed down before the cop could object. Inside the maintenance space he whispered urgently to Salih. “Your turn. Take my place. Charm the guy and lure him in real close.”

“Plan B?”

Felix nodded curtly. The next few seconds were critical. “Keep working,” he hissed to Mohr.

Salih stood on the ladder and spoke in gabby Turkish, trying to convey to the cop that he was a foreign guest-worker technician; he said “Turk Telecom” repeatedly, but that was all Felix could understand. The idea in this contingency—at least as briefed in the hectic mission rehearsals—was to try to puzzle a cop just enough, by a seemingly innocent barrage of different languages and people going in and out of the manhole. This mental sleight of hand, a jack-in-the-box show, was a long shot, and improvising under pressure would be key. From the shadows, peering up, Felix saw the cop look into the manhole, past Meltzer and Salih to where Mohr fiddled with his modules.

Felix smoothly reached and grabbed the policeman’s ankles and yanked him past Salih and into the opening. The cop yelped and tumbled through feet first; Felix grunted with effort as he and Salih caught him. Felix chopped him in the side of the neck with the edge of his palm, and lowered the stunned policeman to the floor. He barely fit, taking up most of the free floor space.

“You all right?” Meltzer yelled into the manhole. He pretended to wait for the policeman to answer. “Yes?” Meltzer said. “Good . . . Here’s your hat.” He held the hat below the lip of the manhole, then let it go; it dropped. This pantomime was supposed to make locals think the policeman had been clumsy following Felix into the manhole, and was safely inside examining documents. Meanwhile, Felix had grabbed a roll of duct tape from Mohr’s tool kit. He swiftly bound and gagged the cop before the man could regain his senses. He tugged the pistol from its holster and placed it on top of the waist-high amplifier: a newly acquired firearm, a possible asset for his team, kept in reserve. Felix would use it only as a last resort. He held his breath, listening for hints of alarm from above. Salih went up to check.

Felix rubbed a painfully bruised shoulder.

Mohr looked at him. “Wonderful. Now what?”

“Keep working. How much more time do you need?”

“I’m not sure yet.”

The cop, wedged beside the amplifier cabinet, fought against the tape. “Relax,” Felix mumbled. “Be quiet and we won’t hurt you.” The Israeli glared and fought harder. Felix raised a hand, threatening another karate chop. The policeman levered his bound legs, fast, and almost clobbered Felix on the chin. He ducked under the man’s flailing heels and dealt him another, much sharper blow to the side of the neck as he tried to bodily smash Mohr’s equipment. The Israeli slumped, in a stupor. Felix removed his gear belt, tossing it out of reach.

“What are you going to do with him?” Mohr asked as he applied his tools to one of the fiber-optic cables.

“Leave him here,” Felix said, securing the cop’s feet to one drainpipe and his upper arms to another with lots more duct tape.

“And no one will notice that he went in, but didn’t come out even after we finish?”

“Passersby who saw him go down won’t be around to not see him climb back up. They’ll have passed by.”

“And people in offices? They won’t have passed by.”

Crap.
“Keep working.”

Mohr peered at whatever he was doing, frowning. “You already said three times to keep working.”

The policeman’s radio crackled again. Something about the tone of the voice made Felix wary. He stuck his head out to where the others were making sure no one drove into the manhole. He caught Meltzer’s eye; Meltzer came inside.