Headhunters (33 page)

“I would rather not have had to come, sir, but I haven’t been left with an alternative.”

“Nevertheless, you realise that I can’t let you leave?”

“No, sir. You will.”

Blum smiled at him as if Milton were a child who had just said something ineffably foolish.

“You killed one of my
sayanim
in Australia.”

“They tried to kill me.”

“But that’s not something I can just overlook.”

“Shall we park that for now? It’s not going to get us anywhere. I want to talk about Bachman.”

“Yes, of course. You killed his wife.”

“He told you that?”

Blum nodded.

“It isn’t true. He abducted a friend of a friend. I went to retrieve him, and his wife was killed in the crossfire. I didn’t fire the shot. Bachman did.”

“That’s not how he tells it, Mr. Milton.”

“Of course it isn’t. He isn’t going to accept that he’s responsible for that, is he? Far better to blame a scapegoat. I was there. It might as well be me.”

Blum nodded, indicating that he should go on.

Milton looked at him. “Be honest, sir. What does he have over you?”

“Why would you say that?”

“Because it’s obvious. You mounted an operation on foreign soil to break him out of prison. You killed Americans to do it. I can’t begin to imagine how far up the chain of command you had to go to get authorisation to do that. And you’ve backed him to go after me. Four agents in Australia, the
sayanim
you must have activated. The Mossad has no interest in going after me, sir. There’s no reason why you would do any of that unless Bachman has threatened you with something very damaging.”

Blum steepled his fingers and looked at Milton for a long moment. Milton was aware that he was considering how much he should tell him.

“Very well. Avi took some very sensitive information with him when he disappeared. We only knew that he had it after he had been arrested in Louisiana. He called us and told us that unless we did what he wanted, he would disseminate it.”

“What was it?”

“A list of active agents.”

“Hardly active. It must have been years out of date.”

“Yes, that’s true. We’ve tried to assess the damage that would be caused. Much of the information will be irrelevant, but not all of it. Some agents are still in place. Some have become very senior in their particular roles in the time that has passed. Others have retired, but they could easily be traced. You understand what that would mean for them. Our enemies have long memories. My men and women would be put at serious threat. I care for my agents, Mr. Milton. I respect and honour their service, and I will not abandon them. There are some risks that I cannot take.”

“No,” Milton said. “Of course not. I understand.”

“And we have no relationship. And with respect, Mr. Milton, you mean nothing to me. I don’t mean to offend you, but that’s the fact of it.”

“No offence taken.”

“So Avi has leverage. I looked at every option when he came to us. We could have ignored him. He wasn’t going anywhere, after all. He was incarcerated. The Americans would have killed him eventually, but that would have taken years.
We
could have killed him. It would have been simple. We could have had an inmate do it. We could have fomented a riot, had him murdered. Such a thing would have been trivial.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Avi tells us he has a dead man’s switch. An associate. He says if he doesn’t report to him regularly, the information will be released.”

“And you believe him?”

“I know it to be true. We know who the associate is.” Blum laid his hands on the table and drummed his fingers against the wood. “I should be honest with you, Mr. Milton. I don’t understand why you have come here. You must have suspected all of this. I’m not sure how you think I can help you. You know I have to hand you over to Avi.”

“No. You won’t do that.”

The drumming fingers stopped and Blum fixed him in a cold stare. “Why is that, Mr. Milton?”

“Your guards took a thumb drive from me. Have you looked at it yet?”

“It’s being examined now.”

“Let me save you the bother. Avi has his database, but it’s old. My stick contains an up-to-date version. It was downloaded yesterday. Operational details. Your Bible, sir. Who your agents are. Where they are. What they are doing. Everything.”

Blum didn’t answer.

“Perhaps you should speak to your analyst? It might accelerate things if you know I’m not bluffing. I’m not going anywhere.”

Blum narrowed his eyes warily, but took a phone from his pocket and dialled a number. The call connected and Blum tersely explained that he was with Milton, and that he needed to know what was on the memory stick that had been confiscated from him. Milton could hear the buzz of the answer, but it was too quiet for him to distinguish the words. He watched Blum’s face instead. He watched as the colour slowly drained from it, as the lips pursed so that they became a hard line, as the frown deepened into a scowl. Blum did not acknowledge the person to whom he was speaking again; he pulled the phone from his ear, ended the call, and put it back into his pocket.

“Sir?”

Blum got up. Milton had no idea whether he had been persuasive enough. He had certainly angered him. Milton had known that a man like Victor Blum would be proud. To last in a career like his for as long as he had lasted would mean that he usually got his way. He would not be used to being defied or, worse, manipulated. But Milton wasn’t just manipulating him: he was threatening him. Blum had been reduced to the role of a patsy. He was caught in the middle of a struggle between two others and he had no leverage of his own. He was helpless, and Milton knew that that would be difficult for him to stomach.

He was counting on it.

Blum turned his back and reached for the door.

Had he made up his mind? Was he going to leave him here? What would that mean?

“I’ll look at it, Mr. Milton.”

Milton knew he had his attention. He decided to risk an escalation. “You’ve got an hour, sir. Avi isn’t the only one with backup. If I’m out of contact for more than an hour, the information is released anyway.”

Milton saw the anger flash across the old man’s wizened face, but he gave a curt nod and, without another word, he shut the door and left him alone.

BLUM SHUT the door to the interrogation room and gestured to the guard stationed next to it.

“If he tries anything, shoot him.”

“Yes, sir.”

He took the elevator to his office on the fourth floor. It offered a broad view of Tel Aviv, from the elegant and futuristic skyscrapers of the downtown district to the cultural landmarks of Habima Square. He looked east to the Shalom Tower and, beyond it, the Great Synagogue. Blum was old enough that he could remember when the building was always busy. It wasn’t the same today. Pious locals had emigrated, and now the services were attended by just a handful of congregants. Blum felt it to be emblematic of a larger problem in Israeli society. Religion was not as important today as it had been when he was growing up. His father had been a rabbi and he had seen to it that his young son was given a thorough and severe religious education. His piety had been the reason he had been able to endure the privations of his military career. His service, however unpleasant, was in honour of God. His standing within the religious community had also been of some benefit to his accelerated promotion and the fact that he had held his position at the head of the Mossad for so many years.

That his fellow citizens no longer put so much faith in God was a matter of great regret, and the subject of many late night rants to whomever he could find to listen to him, but it did not mean that he would countenance—not even for a minute—a lessening of his vigilance. He had stood on the wall for all of his adult life.

He had sent agents to kill and had seen his agents killed.

He was as dedicated to Israel today as he had ever been.

That was why the situation with Avi Bachman had caused him so much dismay.

And now this.

The Mossad was divided into eight separate departments. There was Collections, the group responsible for espionage operations. There was the Political Action and Liaison Department, responsible for relations with foreign espionage agencies. There was Metsada, or the Special Operations Division, tasked with assassination, sabotage, and paramilitary and psychological warfare projects. Blum was responsible for them all, but he didn’t need them today. He sat down behind his desk and called the head of the Technology Department.

“ARE YOU SURE, SIR?”

The man’s name was Yossi Levy. He had been born and educated in the United States and then, following some time on a kibbutz, had been recruited to join the Mossad. He had studied computer science at MIT and was a genius programmer. The
sayan
on campus who monitored potential recruits had spoken very highly of him, and had said that he had been raised the right way with the right kind of attitude towards Israel. Blum had told the
sayan
to recruit him, and, with typical discretion, that had been achieved. He had started work at the agency and had quickly risen through the ranks to his elevated position today as the head technician in charge of technology.

“The man who brought that stick is being held downstairs. He is, potentially, significant to our operations. He says that it has information that would be dangerous to our interests.”

“He’s blackmailing you?” Yossi said.

That irritated Blum, and he frowned. “Yes. He is. How I choose to deal with him depends upon whether he has something on that stick or whether he’s bluffing. I need to know.”

“You understand my reluctance, Director?”

“You made it plain.”

Yossi repeated himself anyway. “We don’t know what’s on it. We don’t know whether there’s anything that could compromise our network.”

“I’m not a child, Yossi. I need to know what’s on it, and I need to know
now
.”

“Why not wait until I can test it properly?”

“Because he says we have an hour. If he isn’t bluffing and I detain him for longer than that while you work out whether it’s safe to look at it, he says his associate will release the information.”

“And then he has nothing.”

“Maybe it’s not everything. Maybe it’s something discreet to prove his bona fides? Discreet, but damaging. I can’t afford to risk that. And he isn’t the sort of man who bluffs. I need to know.”

Blum could see that the technician was reluctant to proceed, but they had worked together long enough for Yossi to know that it would have been folly for him to push against Blum once his decision was made. He would simply have to find a way to minimise the risk.

He took a MacBook from his satchel and set it on the coffee table, unfolded the lid and booted it up. The machine played its welcoming note and the screen changed from white to a picture of a woman and two children.

“This is against my better judgment, Director.”

“I understand that.”

“This machine is air-gapped. That means that it isn’t connected to the Internet or the network. It’s completely isolated. You could call it a quarantine, if you like. If there’s anything on this stick, anything we don’t like, it’ll manifest itself here, but it will be trapped. It won’t be able to propagate.”

“Fine,” Blum said, waving a hand. He had no interest in the minutiae. He just wanted answers.

Yossi sent the cursor across the screen and opened two applications. “This will check for viruses,” he explained, pointing to one window, “and this will analyse the data.”

Blum couldn’t help noticing that the technician took a breath before he collected the stick and slotted it into one of the laptop’s USB ports.

Nothing happened.

Yossi was staring intently at the screen, his fingers flashing across the keyboard as he entered commands.

Blum waited impatiently, drumming his fingers against the surface of his desk.

“There’s nothing here,” Yossi reported after another minute.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that I can’t find anything. It’s empty. There’s nothing on it.”

Blum scowled. “You’re sure?”

“It’s empty, Director.”

“Check again.”

Milton was bluffing? Really? That didn’t make any sense. He would come to the Mossad, effectively hand himself over in the sure knowledge that Blum would pass him to Bachman, and threaten him with something that could very easily be proven to be a bluff? No. Something was wrong. Blum knew more than enough about Milton to know that he was smart, and that he wouldn’t take that kind of massive gamble without something to back up his threat.

“I need you to be absolutely certain, Yossi. I can’t take any risks that—”

He paused, mid-sentence. He heard a high-pitched whining noise.

“What is that?”

He looked at Yossi. The man’s face bore an unmistakeable cast of concern.

It took Blum a moment to place it. “It’s coming from the computer,” he said, pointing to the laptop.

Yossi was ahead of him, his fingers dancing across the keys again. He cursed in Yiddish. “
Fakakta!
” he spat. He held his finger on the key used for powering up and down. It should have taken a second to kill the machine, but nothing happened. It kept playing the sound, that same high whine that was just on the edge of what could be heard, an auditory itch in the back of the head. Yossi looked around the room, saw Blum’s computer and the iPhone on the desk, and started to panic, his breath coming in faster and faster gasps. He swore again, picked up the MacBook and, before Blum could say anything to stop him—not, Blum thought, that he would have stopped even if he had asked him—dropped it out of the open window.

All was quiet for a moment, save for Yossi’s breathing, and then, just as Blum was about to ask him what in God’s name had just happened, the whining noise started again.

Yossi surged across the room, barging Blum out of the way, his face a mask of terror. He bolted for Blum’s desktop computer, and, just as he reached it, the screensaver was replaced by a big yellow smiley. It was there for half a second. Yossi yanked the plug out of the wall and the screen flicked to black.