in his eyes.
‘We pissed on him long enough?’ Gabriel asked, good humouredly.‘I’m looking forward to a nice bath and a comfortable bed.’
‘Yeah,’ Stratton said, tapping him on the side of his shoulder, and they headed for the car.
As Manachem Raz watched them he wondered how he was going to deal with this unexpected and, frankly, strange development. That morning, during the weekly meeting between senior members of Mossad, Shin Bet, the army and police, he had been handed this assignment which required him to look after two characters from MI6 and the CIA arriving in Israel on the scent of a Russian mercenary explosives expert. The unofficial feeling of some of the council members was that the visit was another example of the post-9/11 programme of commitment by the West to combat international Islamic terrorism and show solidarity with Israel. Not that there was anything wrong with that, nor did the Israelis not take it seriously. All and any help was appreciated. However, the general ignorance and insensitivity of the Europeans, British and Americans to the Israeli cause never failed to astound Raz, and, more often than not, anger him. But he was forced to suffer it, not only because Israel needed the West’s support, but also their approval, more so now than ever, and Israel had to accept the various pros and cons that came hand-in-hand with that support.
Things had changed a great deal in Raz’s twenty-one-year career in Shin Bet, and the army before that. In the early days of Middle East terrorism, it appeared to most other nations to be primarily an Israeli problem and so they were left pretty much alone to deal with it as they saw fit. But now that the West was as much a target as Israel, the big two in the fight, namely America and Britain, wanted to show Israel the correct way to deal with the situation, as if they suddenly knew what they were doing and possessed all the answers.The British should have been the easiest to deal with since they were the most experienced in terrorism and the Middle East, but that was not always the case, as far as the Israelis were concerned. Ironically, the Israelis had modelled Mossad on British military intelligence after spending several years as their bitter enemy. It was no secret that the current international intervention was due in part to the perception that Israel, with its heavy-handed tactics, was in many ways as much a part of the problem. Israel had little choice but to bow to outside pressure or at least to be seen to, since the country practically depended on an annual three and a half billion dollar handout from America, and much more than that in recent years. There was also the perceived increased threat to Israeli national security due in no small part to the stirring of the terrorist pot caused by the American-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq,Western threats against Iran and Syria and the ‘occupation’ of the Middle East and North African oil states by Western companies. Mossad and Shin Bet had enjoyed a great deal of assistance from British and American intelligence over the years; however, any help these days often came at a price in the form of concessions to the Palestinians and Israel’s other Arab neighbours. That ran counter to everything the average Israeli had been indoctrinated with from childhood concerning the threat from its neighbours to their very survival. This resentment of Western tampering was even stronger in Shin Bet because of its more right-wing politics. It was Raz’s nature, as well as a prerequisite of his employment, to be suspicious, but when he laid eyes on this odd pair, he became convinced that the American and British story about a Russian bomb-making instructor was bullshit.
Raz had lived his whole life on his intuition and he was no ordinary man. He was ruthless but not exceptionally so by Shin Bet standards. Planning and selecting targets for execution was a regular activity which had dulled his conscience over the years and Shin Bet was very much behind the force that maintained the right to torture suspects for the purpose of gathering information. Raz had spent years as an interrogator in Lebanon and had become adept at interpreting the four prescribed legal methods of torture in Israel, namely shaking, sleep deprivation, music and cramped positions. The interpretations of these guidelines were broad and many prisoners had died from exhaustive combinations of them, although Raz