was as clear as it was sharp.
“I’m afraid—”
“I cannot abide that phrase,” the Director said shortly. “Her job at the airline?”
“Dead end. Her supervisor has had no contact with her since the incident in Damascus six weeks ago. I am convinced he does not know where she is.”
“What about her phone?”
“She’s either thrown it away or disabled its GPS.”
“Friends, relatives.”
“Have been interviewed. One thing I know for certain is that Rebeka told no one about us.”
“To break protocol like this—”
There was no need to finish that sentence. Mossad rules were strictly enforced. Rebeka had violated the prime rule.
The Director turned, stared broodingly out the window of his satellite office on the top floor of a curving glass-faced structure in Herzliya. On the other side of the city were the Mossad training center and the summer residence of the prime minister. The Director often came here when he grew melancholy and found the Mossad’s ant-colony central HQ in downtown Tel Aviv oppressive and enervating. Here, there was a fountain in the middle of the circular driveway and fragrant flower beds all year round, not to mention the nearby harbor with its fleet of sailboats rocking gently in their slips. There was something reassuring about that forest of masts, even to Amit, as if their presence spoke of a certain permanence in a world where everything could change in the space of a heartbeat.
The Director loved sailing. Whenever he lost a man, which was, thankfully, not all that often, he went out on his boat, alone with the sea and the wind and the plaintive cry of the gulls. Without turning back, he said rather harshly, “Find her, Dani. Find out why she has disobeyed us. Find out what she knows.”
“I don’t—”
“She has betrayed us.” The Director swung back, leaned forward, his bulk making his chair squeal in protest. The full force of his authority was explicit behind each word he spoke. “She is a traitor. We will treat her as such.”
“Memune, I wonder at the wisdom of rushing to judgment.” Amit had used the Director’s internal title, first among equals.
The bullet and bombproof windows were coated with a film that reflected light as well as the possibility of long-range surveillance, lending the room a distinctly aqueous quality. The Director’s eyes seemed to glimmer in the office’s low lamplight like a deep-sea fish rising into the beacon of a diver’s headlamp. “It isn’t lost on me that she has been your pet project, but it is time now to admit your
mistake. Even if I were inclined to give Rebeka the benefit of the doubt, we are out of time. Events threaten to overrun us. We are old friends as well as comrades in arms. Don’t force me to call in the Duvdevan.”
Invoking the specter of the Israeli Defense Forces’ elite strike unit caused a blade of anxiety to knife through Amit. It was a measure of Rebeka’s extreme importance to Israeli security that the Director would even use the threat of the Duvdevan to induce Amit to do what the Director knew full well he was reluctant to do.
“Who will you use?” The Director said this conversationally, as if he were asking after Amit’s wife and children.
“What about her unique skills, her usefulness—”
“Her betrayal has trumped everything, Amit, even those extraordinary skills. We must assume that what she discovered has sent her to ground. What if her intent is to sell that knowledge to the highest—”
“Impossible,” Amit flared.
The Director contemplated him for a moment from beneath halfclosed eyelids. “And I daresay up until today you would have said her disappearing off the grid was impossible.” He waited. “Am I wrong?”
Amit hung his head. “You’re not.”
“So.” The Director knit his fingers together. “Who will it be?”
“Ilan Halevy,” Amit said with a heavy heart.
“The Babylonian.” The Director nodded, seemingly impressed. Ilan had garnered his operations name by almost single-handedly shutting down the Iraqi Babylon Advanced Weapons Project. He had killed more than a dozen enemy operatives in that pursuit. “Well, now we’re getting to the heart of the matter.”
TheDirectorlovednothingbetter;it was one of his many admirable traits. His inflexibility was not. However, it was his iron hand on the tiller that for the past five years had guided them successfully through the rough seas of international espionage, clandestine forays into the territories of their enemies, and state-sanctioned executions while keeping their casualties to a minimum. He felt the deaths of his people like body blows, which was why, when they occurred, he needed to take