Thunderstrike in Syria

July is always hot in Israel, and riding in a car that wasn't air-conditioned only made us more uncomfortable. My main concern was that the heat might cause the makeup on our faces to soften and wreck my scheme for catching off guard the SLA agents in the House of Medals. I wanted to take at least one SLA member alive, more if possible, and Leah Weizmann and I could hardly walk into the religious shop and pose as elderly tourists with greasepaint flowing down our faces. However, the Hamosad makeup experts had assured us that the cosmetics were impervious to heat and perspiration and could only be removed by a special solution of alcohol, glycerol and something called somandaline. Two bottles of the stuff were in the dashboard of the Volvo. The Hamosad makeup boys had been right: I could sweat through the cosmetics and even wipe my face without harming any of the tints or shades or "wrinkles."

I glanced at Leah who was sitting next to me in the back seat of the Volvo, and marvelled at how the Hamosad intelligence experts had transformed both her face and figure. Underneath all the war paint, Leah was a very attractive young woman, a Sabra, a native-born Israeli whose slim body was tanned and curved in all the right places. Her soft hair, as black as a raven's feathers, curled at the ends but otherwise fell straight and shiny around her face. Her face was beautifully shaped, her sable eyes made large and somewhat dolllike by the long dark lashes. Her mouth was a bit too large, but she had a wonderful smile with a dimple in the left corner. The rest of Leah was built to match — breasts that were full and round, that always seemed to be struggling for release; a slim waist; nicely rounded hips; long, deeply tanned legs that could almost squeeze a man to death in bed.

But now, Leah looked like a woman in hear early sixties, her skin wrinkled, her lips thin and pale, a gray wig covering her own dark hair. Her full breasts had been flattened, her figure padded in strategic places to make her look dumpy, a victim of middle-age spread.

The Israeli makeup experts had worked the same kind of magic on me, adding thirty years to my own face and placing a gray-white wig over my own brown hair. I was still luckier than Leah. I didn't have to be tortured by any padding under my summer-weight suit. I'm lean and well-muscled and that was enough. And who said that an "old man" has to be fat? As for height, by bending over slightly and using a cane, I could give the impression of not being too tall.

Feeling me watching her, Leah turned to me, her eyes questioning.

"Anything wrong, Nick? Don't you dare tell me my makeup is starting to run! Yours looks all right."

I reached down and squeezed her hand. "I was thinking that it's not going to be easy in the House of Medals," I said. "Since the clerks are members of the Syrian Liberation Army, they have to be first-class fanatics. People like that would rather die than admit defeat. You shouldn't be going in there with me."

Leah shook her head, pushed her knee against mine and looked deeply into my eyes. "We've been all through that, Nick," she said matter-of-factly. "We both know that our chances of pulling this off are better if we stick to the original plan. An elderly couple is not going to arouse suspicion. You know I'm right. So don't try to talk me out of it. And quit worrying."

I didn't try to dissuade Leah from going with me. Nor was I worried; I was concerned. The mission, only a month old, was stalled with dead ends and lack of any real progress. The raid on the religious shop, if successful, would change all the failure. If we could capture just one SLA agent and make him talk, we might be able to develop new leads.

"We're on the outskirts of Jerusalem," the Hamosad driver of the Volvo called back. "Another fifteen minutes and we should be there."

A short-haired man with a thick mustache, the driver was the same man who had contacted Leah and me a week ago. Then he had posed as a cab-driver.

I watched the traffic that was getting heavier from both directions, leaned back and relaxed, my thoughts backtracking to how the mission had begun. I had been enjoying a vacation on a lake in Maine, when a Control Agent had gotten word to me: Hawk wanted to see me in Washington — and fast. I had hurried back, going straight to DuPont Circle where AXE, the super-secret U.S. espionage agency, has its headquarters, under the cover of the Amalgamated Press and Wire Services.

David Hawk hadn't called me to D.C. to ask about my fishing. Apparently, AXE had learned that the Syrian Liberation Army, a deadly organization of Arab terrorists dedicated to killing every Israeli on the face of the earth, was planning to expand its murderous activities to the U.S. in an attempt to incite the American people enough so they would demand that the government stop giving military aid to Israel.

As Hawk had explained the SLA plan, a large part of it involved the planting of time bombs aboard a supertanker carrying liquefied natural gas from the Soviet Union to the United States. The bombs would be set to explode when the giant nine hundred-foot-long vessel entered New York City harbor and started on its way to a specially designed dock near the Arthur Kill, a channel separating Staten Island from New Jersey.

In his growl of a voice. Hawk had rattled off facts and figures, explaining that LNG is natural gas turned into liquid for shipment and storage, with its volume reduced six hundred times by bringing its temperature down to 260 degrees below zero. The liquid rapidly turns to gas when exposed to normal air or water temperatures. Should the tanks rupture in a supertanker, which carries about four million gallons of LNG, the gas would cover an area ten miles long. Normally odorless, colorless and tasteless, the Death Cloud, with a temperature of about one-hundred sixty degrees below zero at its center, would freeze enough water vapor to become visible — if the spill were over water. But should a single spark touch the cloud, it would explode into raging flames, incinerating everything beneath it. If the cloud did not explode, it would freeze anything that came in contact with it, or it would suffocate anyone who did not freeze first.

Then Hawk had given me the worst news of all:
Such a death cloud, whether it exploded or not, could kill as many as one million people!

My assignment was to find out the name of the supertanker, how the bombs, or bomb, were to be planted, and the names of the SLA agents who would plant them.

Where would I begin? Hawk had provided the answer before I could ask him. AXE had acquired the full cooperation of the Hamosad, the Israeli Intelligence Service. No, Hawk had explained, I wouldn't fly directly to Israel. Instead, I would go to London and there make contact with a woman operative of Hamosad. Posing as husband and wife, we'd use the cover that we were Britishers on a vacation to the Holy Land. And how would I find this Israeli Mata Hari in merry ole England? All I had to do. Hawk had said, was register as "Charles Heines" at the Mount Royal Hotel in the exclusive Mayfair district. In fact, an AXE agent in London had already made reservations for me.

Leah Weizmann had found me, the same day that I had registered.

Three days later, Leah and I had taken a BOAC flight to Israel and were in the Samuel Hotel in Tel Aviv, in a suite of rooms overlooking the sunny Mediterranean. Personally, it was an arrangement I enjoyed, especially since Leah's reasoning was as pragmatic as my own. We had registered at the Samuel as "Mr. and Mrs. Charles Heines"; our passports said we were "Mr. and Mrs. Charles Heines." Why not enjoy the arrangement? Besides, the bedroom of the suite had only one king-sized bed.

Leah and I were under cover in more ways than one. Under no circumstances were we to go to Hamosad headquarters in the Histadrut Building. Hamosad would contact us and had done so as Leah and I had toured Tel Aviv, or Tel Aviv Yafo as the Israelis call their main city. Often our contact had been another "tourist," or a «guide»; at other times, a "cabdriver."

During those weeks, our Hamosad contacts had kept Leah and me informed of developments. The catch was that there hadn't been any developments. All Hamosad had learned was that SLA headquarters was based somewhere in Syria and that its leader was Mohammed Bashir Karameh, a Palestinian who was an ex-school teacher.

Finally a Hamosad agent had come to the Samuel on a two-fold mission: to deliver an attaché case from Hawk and to apprise us of Hamosad's latest scheme. At the time, the attaché case had not been a mystery. I knew it contained
Wilhelmina,
my 9-millimeter P08 Luger,
Hugo,
my pencil-thin stiletto; and
Pierre,
my special gas bomb.

But I hadn't been prepared for the second part of the agent's mission. Neither had Leah.

The agent had explained that for almost two months the Shin Bet — uniformed Israeli security — and the Hamosad had been watching an Arab place of business in Jerusalem, a small shop that sold religious items to tourists, items that only Christians would buy. Hamosad believed that the House of Medals was the headquarters of the SLA cell in Jerusalem. In several days the Shin Bet would raid the House of Medals.

I had disagreed completely with the strategy and had informed the Hamosad that one man would have a better chance of capturing members of the Syrian terrorist organization in the shop, than dozens of Shin Bet boys. At first, the big brass in Hamosad had been reluctant, but finally I had persuaded the Israelis to come around to my logic, pointing out that if the Shin Bet surrounded the shop there would be a lot of corpses. It wouldn't be easy to storm the place. And suppose the SLA crackpots destroyed the shop with explosives? Scores of people would be killed or wounded. Another flaw in the Hamosad's plan was that there were numerous possibilities of escape from the shop, unless the SLA people inside were taken by surprise. The streets of the Temple Area were as narrow as alleys and they twisted and climbed in crooked patterns. Some of the streets were covered and resembled tunnels. There were all manner of steep passages and declivities. If any of the SLA members escaped to this maze of streets, they'd never be caught. One man would have a better chance of taking the SLA off guard and completing the raid with some measure of success.

What I hadn't counted on was Leah's insistence that she go along. Nor had I been able to throw up a counter-argument, for what she had said made sense. If one person had a good chance, then two should be twice as good, especially if they were disguised as an elderly man and woman.

The next day, Leah and I had gone to a Hamosad «safe» house on Derech Hagevura Street, and Hamosad makeup experts had gone to work on us. Three hours later, Leah and I were on our way to Jerusalem.

The Volvo bounced along over the rough stones of the road.

"We'll turn on Shlomo Hamelech and enter the Temple Area by way of the NewGate entrance," the driver called over his shoulder. "The House of Medals is on St. Francis Way."

"Yes, I know the area," Leah said. "St. Francis Way is only a short distance from the New Gate Road. Let us out close to the Holy Sepulchre. We'll walk the rest of the way."

The driver slowed the car and we proceeded in silence. I had been in Jerusalem before and this was familiar territory to me. Nothing had changed. Hebrew and Arab newspapers were still being sold from the same stands. But cigarettes had risen in price. The Volvo passed a
sign: American cigarettes $1.80 a pack.

Slowly, we drove past tiny stalls selling a favorite tidbit, round rolls encrusted with sesame seeds and served with hard-boiled eggs. Other stalls sold
gazoz,
a raspberry-flavored carbonated water. There were open sheds displaying
felael
, a kind of vegetarian meatball made of chick-peas and peppers; and neat Occidental posters advertising
Ponds Almond Cream.
There were stalls of dried figs, miniature apricots, almonds from the other side of the Jordan, mysterious-looking herbs from India, walnuts, vine leaves, and bright-orange lentils.