Esther's Sling (20 page)

She just looked at him and shook her head.

“It is a huge American intelligence agency. They can intercept everything on the planet that goes over the Internet or travels through the airwaves. Your cell phone. Your texts. Your email. Your Google searches. Your phone calls. Facebook. Everything.”

“How do they pick me out of all the stuff everywhere?”

“They have the most computing power in the world by a wide margin. Everything passes through their computers. If they know what they are looking for, they sift all of it, the millions and millions of calls and texts and emails every hour of every day. They can search for known phone numbers or email addresses or Twitter accounts or even names or words in a phone call. I can assure you that my name is in their database. Just like Prime Minister Cohen or Director Levy. Or Osama bin Laden. If you are on the list, anything that has your name or address in it is flagged and reviewed.”

“That is scary, Amit.”

“I am only telling you so you realize what is at stake … what reality is. You have to accept that you can’t discuss me with anyone or over any medium.”

“But the Americans are our friends.”

“That’s not the point, honey. That’s just an example. There are plenty of people out there that aren’t our friends and nobody has a monopoly on technology.”

Enya realized what Amit was saying, the realization making her face relax involuntarily. “I understand.” She hugged her man. “Did you just say that you love me?”

Amit felt like his heart stopped beating. “Yes. I love you Enya Govenin.”

“I love you, Amit Margolis.” She put her arms around his neck. They kissed.

“Has it been a year?” he asked.

“You have been traveling most of the time. I hope you can stay home more.”

“I will try.” Margolis paused and a strange look came over him.

“What is wrong?”

“There is something else I need to tell you about.” Now Enya assumed the strange look Amit just had. “It is … I don’t know how to describe it.”

“Tell me what is wrong.”

“It’s not that something is wrong. It is just a remarkable coincidence. The director came to tell me something about my personal life that I didn’t know.” He hesitated, gathering his thoughts. “It’s just that … I don’t know. It’s crazy really.”

“Amit,” the tone was pleading. “Just tell me what it is.”

“My father was in Mossad as well.”

Enya was not sure how to respond or where Amit was going with this. “Is this why you are now in Mossad?”

“No. No. It’s something different.” She simply gave him a puzzled look. Amit continued. “My father is the man who arranged for your parents to get out of the Soviet Union. He brought them here.”

Enya stepped back one small step. “No. This is too freaky.”

“It is a crazy coincidence. I don’t know what to think about this.”

“What are the odds that we would meet and fall in love? Maybe this was meant to be.”

“There is more, though. Do you know about your grandfather?”

“My grandfather? He was a Soviet physicist. A dissident.”

“Do you know about his death?”

“All I know is that he was the victim of PLO terrorists.”

“They were definitely terrorists. But not the PLO. The PLO was a cover story.” Amit gathered his emotions, scared to death about where the next few sentences would lead. “He was murdered by a Soviet kill team.”

“Here in Israel?”

“Yes. I don’t know the whole story but apparently he knew about a coup plot in the Soviet Union. They came after him for that.”

“How does your father fit into that?”

“My father went into the Soviet Union based on the information he learned from your grandfather. He – my father – was killed inside the Soviet Union. But apparently he uncovered this coup and foiled it before he was killed.”

Enya exhaled loudly and covered her mouth with her left hand. “Oh my God, Amit. Your father died because of my grandfather?”

The statement caught Margolis off guard. It was the opposite of the way he had been thinking and it was not the message he was trying to convey. “No, honey. My father died for his country, for what he believed in. There is another aspect.” Amit looked down, unable to make eye contact. “He was responsible for protecting your grandfather while he was here.”

“So?”

“So? Don’t you see? He failed. That failure cost your grandfather’s life.”

“Amit, really? You just said my grandfather was killed by the KGB … or whoever.” She raised her hands up and cupped Amit’s jaw in her palms. She brought his face to hers. “I don’t know everything like you, but I am smart enough to know that if the KGB wants to kill someone, they will probably succeed.” She kissed him softly. “I never even knew him. The way it sounds to me is that your father died for him, and for you, and for me. That is what I call a hero. And you, Amit Margolis, you are my hero.”

Ibrahim Hajjar sat in the over-wing exit row of the Emirates Airbus A330 as it corkscrewed down to its final glide path into Baghdad International Airport. The plane’s steep left hand turn leveled out only a mile off the end of runway 15 Right. Just seconds later the rear tires of the plane scorched the concrete runway. Only three minutes later the plane was at the gate, its passengers eager to deplane. Another hour long journey through customs awaited, but at least the venue would be the relative safety of the terminal building. Beyond that awaited the eight-mile taxi ride into the International Zone – the chosen Iraqi name for the area of downtown Baghdad defined by a sweeping bend in the Tigris river and known to the world as the Green Zone – where foreigners could find comparative normalcy and a decent hotel. At least, thought Hajjar, the route from the airport into the city, which had been dubbed “Route Irish” by the American military during the dark days following the fall of the country in 2003, was now fairly safe. The experienced taxi drivers kept a healthy distance from any American convoys – both to minimize the chance of being caught in an ambush and to keep any trigger happy GIs from unloading a machine gun in their direction.

Hajjar checked into the Al
Rasheed Hotel a little after 6 p.m. on February 17, 2011, hungry and tired from the travel. The flight from Kuwait City had been short, but the added stress of flying into Baghdad made every traveler weary. The next day he would meet a man named Joseph Calantro in the lobby of the unmarked Iraq Civil Aviation Authority building on Nasir Street. Mr. Calantro, he was told, would be the “grease” he needed to accomplish his job over the next few days in Iraq. But right now, he just wanted some food and a good night’s sleep.

Ibrahim Hajjar awoke the next morning to a cold cloudy day. Odds were high that rain would fall on any given winter day in Baghdad and as Hajjar looked out the window of his room he was thankful that he had planned appropriately. After a surprisingly good breakfast of omelet and fresh melons, he retrieved a backpack from his room and a large aluminum
-sided case on wheels. In the backpack, Hajjar had packed enough clothing and basic supplies to last him for several nights. In the aluminum case, he had the instruments of his profession: a Radiodetection RD-1000 ground penetrating radar, a GPS mapping device, an 18-volt cordless drill with a series of bits, and a set of batteries and charging adapters to ensure power for each instrument. He had a contract to perform engineering services, and he was prepared for the most hostile environment short of combat.

A taxi dropped him off at 8:47 a.m., Hajjar tipping the driver well to compensate for the short drive from the hotel. He quickly gathered his items and walked into the lobby. Inside, two Iraqi policeman checked his ID and confirmed that he was an invited guest. Before he was allowed into the reception area, he was frisked and his backpack and aluminum case were searched. He was made to explain what the lawnmower-shaped device was in his case. The ground penetrating radar was portable and not particularly powerful, but to the trained eye it could reveal the geological properties of the first 20 feet or so of earth underneath it when run along the ground.

Finally Hajjar was issued a pass and allowed into the reception room. Inside, a shorter man wearing a long sleeve button down cotton dress shirt and dark slacks immediately stood and walked toward the engineer. “Ibrahim Hajjar?” came the challenge.

“Yes. Mister Calantro?” The men exchanged smiles.

“Salam alaykum,” said Joseph Calantro to his guest. “Welcome to Baghdad.”

The men exchanged a firm handshake.
“
Wa alaykum salam.”
Hajjar put his hand to his left breast.

“Please follow me.”

Over the next hour in the office of Deputy Director Walid Hafeez al-Salih, Calantro and Hajjar discussed the Kuwaiti’s contract with the Iraq Civil Aviation Authority. The common language spoken was English. Hafeez’s English was nearly fluent, a skill that had been useful in keeping him gainfully employed since the American invasion. Hajjar did not speak fluent English. He described his knowledge as “conversational”, but it was clear to all in the room that he was quite rusty. Deputy Director Hafeez would occasionally speed the process along by explaining technical matters in Arabic. But by the end of the meeting, all three men understood the project clearly: Hajjar would be assessing the status of a small number of abandoned Iraqi airfields. His job was to deliver a report with a detailed assessment of the condition of each of five airfields located in the western region of Iraq known as Anbar Province. Two main airfields, called H2 and H3, originally had been built by the British in the 1930s to protect and service pumping stations along a pipeline built to bring oil from Kirkuk in Iraq to Haifa, now Israel’s third city.

The Iraqi Air Force had expanded H3 and added two small single runway airfields during the
1970s to create a grouping of bases for the defense of Iraq, each theoretically supporting the other. The network of airbases had been abandoned since the opening weeks of the 2003 invasion, when British and Australian special forces, supported by larger elements of the U.S. Army, seized control of the airfields. The objective was to keep Iraq from launching Scud missiles at Israel to seize expected caches of chemical and biological weapons thought to be stored in the area. Both objectives failed.

Joseph Calantro played the same role he usually did. As one of the many State Department employees based in Baghdad, he functioned as a facilitator for the huge
number of vendors from around the world who flew to the Iraqi capital in a quest to win contracts for the reconstruction of Iraq. It was the modern day equivalent of the California gold rush. The fact that U.S. taxpayers were footing much of the bill gave the State Department significant power in the process. Men like Calantro were invaluable, with the ability to draw on the resources of the U.S. military on the one hand and adroitly navigate the landmines of Iraqi politics on the other. In this case, he had arranged for the U.S. Army to act as escort service for Hajjar.

Two hours later, following a short lunch in the building’s small cafeteria, the quality of which was the opposite of
Hajjar’s breakfast, Calantro received a call on his cell phone. He spoke for only a few seconds and hung up. “They will be outside in a few minutes. You ready?”

“Yes.”

A convoy of three up-armored Humvees headed west out of Baghdad on the Abu Ghraib Expressway, which conveniently bypassed the towns of Falluja and Ramadi. The modern multi-lane highway, which paralleled the historic route of combined Highway 10 and 11 towards Jordan and Syria, was a public works triumph of Saddam Hussein, a road to rival any highway in Europe or the U.S. This small group of American military vehicles was heading into the heart of Anbar Province, the center of much of the hardest combat between Sunni insurgents and the U.S. Army until just a few years earlier.

Ibrahim Hajjar was well aware of the history and was obviously nervous as he sat in the rear seat behind the driver of the third Humvee. Next to him was a 23-year-old sergeant named Jose Gutierrez, but everyone called him Rican. He had been born in Puerto Rico and grew up in Brooklyn
, and was equally proud of either geography. Rican had been given a simple order from the lieutenant who rode in the first Humvee: make sure nothing happens to their guest.

Rican was not used to being a host, but smiled as he looked over to his nervous Arab charge. “Ever been to Iraq before?”

“No.”

“Well, look. Don’t worry. The roads here are safe. We can patrol the streets of Fallujah now and the kids swarm us. Not like it was four, five years ago. Plus it’s Friday. Less traffic.”

Hajjar smiled back at the sergeant. His poor English combined with Rican’s accent and fast rate of speech left him understanding only a fraction of what was being communicated. But the Kuwaiti could tell from the American’s tone that he was calm and attempting to reassure.

The trip into the western desert took six hours, the heavily armored
Humvees struggling to maintain a speed of 45 mph despite the perfect condition of the highway. Sedans and trucks occasionally whizzed past the small convoy, each driver accelerating as fast as he could to get past the menacing 50-caliber machine gun mounted on the top of the second Humvee.

Finally the group passed just to the north of
Ar Rutbah, a town of almost 59,000 that had grown up to support the nearby oil pipeline and the H3 and H2 pumping stations and airbases. Twenty miles further down the road, the convoy pulled off and turned into Camp Korean Village, a military outpost built a few hundred feet north of Highways 10 and 11 by the Americans shortly after the invasion. Now the camp had been turned over to the Iraqi National Army and was manned by elements of the 7
th
Iraqi Army Division.

After settling down into a hut that featured cots that were surprisingly comfortable, Rican was surprised when his guest, who had been taciturn during most of the drive out, became very outgoing and chatty with the small number of Iraqi officers at the base. Rican had no idea what they were talking about, but he was struck by how intently the engineer was listening to whichever Iraqi opened up to him. Wherever Hajjar went, Rican followed. He had assumed the role of the Kuwaiti’s personal bodyguard, not that it was necessary.

The next morning, just as the sun appeared on the eastern horizon, the convoy of three Humvees pulled onto the eastern end of runway 29, the primary runway at the main airfield known as H3. Two decades earlier, during the war with Iran that many of the Iraqi military now looked back on with fond nostalgia, this had been known as Walid Air Base and H2, only 57 miles to the northeast, had been known as Saad Air Base. The town of Rutbah was situated about 32 miles to the east of H3, the town and the two airbases forming a right triangle on the map. The temperature outside was only a handful of degrees above freezing. As they had the prior day, Ibrahim Hajjar sat in the back seat of the third Humvee with Rican next to him. Rican leaned in toward Hajjar. “Okay, sir, we are here. Tell us where you want to go.”

The young sergeant was already a veteran of this war and was now on his third tour in Iraq. He had seen occasional combat, usually only a brief firefight with insurgents or just pissed off locals who were brave enough to fire a round or two in the direction of passing Americans, the mere act a sign of courage and resistance for many in Iraq. On his second tour he had been wounded by an
improvised explosive device, an IED. He had been in a Bradley fighting vehicle reinforced with reactive armor when an IED with an explosively formed penetrator, the handiwork of the Iranians, pierced the engine compartment. The copper penetrator caused an explosion that was largely contained by an intervening bulkhead, but that still sent pieces of aluminum shrapnel into the crew compartment, wounding four men, including Rican. His thigh had been penetrated, but not too deeply, the wound being treated with a thorough cleaning and four stainless steel staples to close it shut. He had been sent home after that, but his recovery was not difficult. He knew that in a major war he would have spent a couple days in hospital before being sent back to the front. But in this conflict, the Army took a different path.

Hajjar lifted himself up in his seat, leaning to his right to look past the driver, supporting his weight by grabbing the back of the driver’s seat with his left hand. He simply pointed straight ahead to a confluence of two runways
more than a mile away.

The convoy drove for almost 8,000 feet, passing old trucks and an obsolete MiG-21 fighter without an engine, all placed strategically on the runway to keep planes from landing. “Here?”
asked Rican.

Ibrahim Hajjar just nodded his head. He looked out the front windshield. “There,” he said as he pointed again to a spot a few hundred yards away. “Good.”
He gave Rican a thumbs up sign.

“You got it,”
responded the sergeant, telling his driver to head for the approximate location. For the next four hours Hajjar had them stop near each end and in the middle of all three runways, the main taxiway and at two spots in the main tarmac comprising this airfield. At each stop he followed the same routine. First he set a waypoint in his GPS device. Then he placed his ground radar device, which looked just like a lawnmower complete with wheels at all four corners, on the ground about half way between the center line and the edge of the runway, walking up the runway about two hundred yards before turning and crossing the center line to walk back half way between the center line and the opposite side. A computer mounted on the handlebars recorded all of the readings picked up by the device.

Finally he would take out his cordless drill and attach a
foot-long coring bit. He would drill into the runway. After penetrating the maximum length of the bit, he would withdraw it and use another device to remove the coring sample and place it in a plastic tube sized perfectly for the core. He then noted the GPS coordinates, temperature, humidity and time of day on the plastic tube.

It took about fifteen minutes at each stop to complete the process and another few minutes to pack up and move to the next stop. At the stops that were near the end of the runways,
Hajjar took photographs from several different perspectives. His camera recorded the time, GPS coordinates and compass direction on each photo taken.

The two other
Humvees took up covering positions. All of the men were bored, correctly guessing that the chance of enemy action was about equivalent to the chance that Meghan Fox would suddenly land in an airplane for their entertainment.

After the last stop, Hajjar climbed into the back of his Humvee. “Thank you,” he said to Rican.

“Just doing my job. This is about as interesting as most of what I do in country.”

The convoy moved quickly to cover the 21 mile driving distance to the next airfield, known as H3 Southwest. It had a single runway running and taxiway. A small apron was located near the southeastern terminus of the
airfield. This time the Humvee carrying Hajjar drove to the runway/taxiway junction and stopped, the driver not needing to ask the Kuwaiti where to go. The engineer exited and retrieved his gear. The process began at the right junction, moved up the runway and came back down the taxi. Only a single core was drilled on the apron. The time on the base was a little over two hours, each man except for Hajjar able to enjoy an MRE for lunch.

The three
Humvees headed out to the final airfield of the day, the second of the two dispersal fields established to support the main H3 airfield, this one known H3 Northwest. The drive took about fifty minutes, the Kuwaiti engineer able to eat some lunch on the way. The established process began again. Hajjar was tired as he worked. He was still in his 30s, but was clearly not in the same physical condition as his American military hosts. But despite this, the small base with a single taxiway and small tarmac took less than three hours to complete.

The convoy was back at Camp Korean Village as nightfall began to make Rican nervous about being outside the camp’s protection. The process of the prior night repeated, with the Kuwaiti talking endlessly with every willing Iraqi, this time adding a couple
of enlisted men in his discussions.

At 0630 hours the next
day, the convoy set out again, this time not expecting to return. The lieutenant went out of his way to find the commanding officer of the base and shake his hand, thanking him for the hospitality. One hour later, the convoy pulled on to the southern tip of runway 34 at H2 airfield. This field had two long runways, two long taxiways and two tarmac areas. Every 700 feet or so, a large rectangular pile of sandbags blocked the runways and the taxiways. But Hajjar followed the same procedure he had the prior day, except for one change in the routine. On this day Rican asked to operate the cordless drill after the first stop, taking over the drilling function at each remaining stop and speeding up the process. It gave Rican something to do and made the lieutenant happy since they had a long drive to reach the last of the five airfields they would visit on this trip.

The convoy loaded up and moved out from H2 around noon. To the north, dark clouds heavily laden with moisture were headed their way. Distant thunder rolled along the sandy earth, heightening the desire of everyone to outrun the storm
. That goal was successfully achieved. The convoy drove back east 84 miles to the intersection with Highway 21 and turned south for another 55 miles before turning right onto an unmarked road for the last 11 miles of their journey.

The road they were on terminated at an isolated air base known as Mudaysis Airfield. Mudaysis had a single 9,800 foot runway with a
n equally long parallel taxiway and a single rectangular tarmac that was adjacent to the taxiway and measured 1,325 feet by 380 feet. As the convoy pulled onto the tarmac at 1532 hours, lightning struck the southern end of the runway only a quarter mile from the Humvees. As if under the direction of the lightning bolt, rain suddenly hit the convoy hard. All three Humvees buttoning up as tight as they could. The convoy simply sat in position, hoping the rain would soon pass.

After almost an hour of heavy rain, a small amount of fading sunlight broke through the clouds as the raindrops slowed to a trickle. The lieutenant walked up to
Hajjar’s Humvee and opened his door. “What would you like to do?” asked the young officer.

Hajjar got out onto the tarmac, stepping into a pool of water about three inches deep. He looked around the barren airfield. Other than some earth
-covered aircraft bunkers and a handful of roofless buildings that looked like they had been deserted and decaying for decades, there was nothing to see but desert flatness that was now covered in most spots by a layer of water. “Too wet,” said the Kuwaiti. “Radar not good now.”

“That’s what I figured,” responded the lieutenant. “We will spend the night right here and start at first light.”

Hajjar got back into the Humvee, and the officer informed the soldiers in the vehicle of the situation. The lieutenant then closed Hajjar’s door and walked to the other Humvee to inform them before walking back to his vehicle. Inside the lieutenant’s Humvee, a communication specialist radioed the home base outside of Baghdad. The radio call was relayed by an unmanned aerial vehicle orbiting at 62,000 feet over central Iraq to facilitate U.S. military transmissions. It took less than a minute to report their location and status. They were warned that aerial support was not close if they got into trouble.

The vehicles started up and drove over to the one aircraft bunker that appeared to be in the best condition. The lieutenant got out and investigated before ordering the two
Humvees without a mounted gun to back in while the Humvee with the .50 caliber machine gun backed in last, its nose just inside the roof of the bunker. The steel doors which used to close up the opening to protect the airplane once housed here were long gone. But now, anyone who approached the opening to the bunker would be met by half inch diameter machine gun rounds, more than enough to deter any but the suicidal.

Rican hopped out. The ground was wet. He looked up at the sky through a three foot wide circular opening in the roof with rusting rebar pointing downward into the hanger area. The hole was the only remaining evidence of the weapon that had destroyed whatever airplane had been unlucky enough to be parked here when the U.S. Air Force came calling. He walked around and found an area where they could set up a couple of tents that had been brought along for this contingency. The sergeant yelled at
several privates to get them going on their new task, exercising the prerogative that dictated life in every military throughout time. He returned to his Humvee and climbed into the rear seat. “Fun night tonight,” he said. “Already feels like forty degrees out.”