JET V - Legacy (11 page)

The seconds ticked by as they ascended the tower, and then the door opened with a ping. Jet stepped into a large lobby – the colorful logo emblazoned across the front of the reception desk announcing it as the headquarters of an import company, though she noted it was staffed entirely by men and women with the distinctive air of operatives. One of her escorts nodded toward the offices behind the receptionist’s station, and they walked back to a conference room at the far end of the suite. The agent opened the door and handed Jet her travel bag before stepping back and speaking his first and only words to her.

“Inside. He’s expecting you.”

Jet nodded and entered the room, which offered a panoramic view of the Mediterranean Sea through an oversized picture window. The door closed behind her and a figure beckoned from the far end of a large conference table.

“Come. Sit over here. Don’t be shy – I won’t bite.”

The speaker was an older man, late sixties, perhaps early seventies, with a crown of tight, steel-gray curls framing a long, heavily-wrinkled face, decades of stress and impossible decisions carved into it with indelible creases that gave him the appearance of a beleaguered Shar Pei. Only his hazel eyes, dancing with a keen intelligence from behind heavy black-rimmed glasses atop his aquiline nose, hinted at the unstoppable intellect and strength of will that permeated the room like a physical force.

“Please. Sit. I trust your flight wasn’t too taxing,” he said, his voice deep and gravelly, worn by countless crises and a two-pack-a-day cigarette habit.

Jet took a seat and swiveled to face him. “Well, here I am.”

“Yes, indeed. I won’t bother to thank you for coming, seeing as it wasn’t entirely voluntary, but I want you to know that I do appreciate it.”

“What’s done is done. Have you made any progress with the situation since we last spoke?”

“Regrettably, nothing concrete. But I’ll update you on what’s transpired, and how we’re planning to move forward. Feel free to interrupt whenever you have a question. Would you like something to drink? Water?”

“No, thank you.”

The director leaned back in his chair. “Our people have confirmed that the bomb that went off in Somalia was of Russian manufacture. I won’t bore you with how. The Russians are of course denying it vehemently, but that’s to be expected, and nobody believes them. For our purposes, it’s unimportant, other than that it confirms what we’ve suspected, or rather, feared, for some time: The two Russian RA-115 devices that we were told were in Iraqi hands have finally surfaced, and contrary to all the expert opinion, are functional – or at least one was, which means we need to assume the other is as well. That they could still be a danger was considered an impossibility; but as luck would have it, the rumors of their inoperability turned out to be misguided wishful thinking.”

“Which leaves you with one more nuke floating around,” Jet said, her tone flat.

“Exactly. I suppose the only good news is that it’s not in the hands of Al-Qaeda or Hamas.”

“But you don’t seem relieved.”

“No. Because the organization we believe has it is ultimately just as dangerous, if not more so. Have you ever heard of The Council?”

“No.”

“They’re a shadow group of very wealthy, very powerful ultra-nationalists, who have a political ideology that’s incompatible with the real world. We’ve heard rumblings about their existence for twenty years, and frankly had put it in the same category as the Illuminati or the Templars. It turns out that was also wishful thinking. I won’t belabor how we got from point A to where we are today, but the group is very real, and we believe they’ve joined forces with the three operatives who were sent into Iraq to find the weapons, but who claimed to have come out empty-handed. Except we now believe that was a lie. We’re convinced that they located the nukes and got them out during the chaos of the invasion.”

“But that was a decade ago. Why would they have waited until now to detonate one, and why in the most desolate stretch of coast in the world?”

“All we have is conjecture, but we think there must have been technical hurdles to be surmounted to render the bombs operable. They were built in the mid-eighties, so they’re relatively primitive by contemporary standards. Crude. But the radioactive material – the uranium – hasn’t lost its capacity to create a chain reaction, so we’re really talking the wiring – the brain and the power – that would have been the problem. The basic guts of it aren’t particularly sophisticated: An explosive charge propels the uranium bullet at the uranium target, and when they collide, well, boom. Conceptually it’s simple. But the devil’s in the details.”

“And you think that they’ve somehow either rehabbed or changed the computer or whatever it is so that it’s now viable.”

“Exactly. Our experts say it could be done, though it might take years; and if there were false starts trying to locate components that can’t exactly be bought at the local electronics store…anyway, the how isn’t so important at this point. More so is the why.”

“And the who. Tell me about these men. These operatives.”

The director pushed three files across the desk to her. She opened the top one, and found herself looking at a photograph of a handsome dark-haired man with strong features, in his late twenties.

“That’s Solomon Horowitz. He’s the older of the two brothers. Sixteen months older, to be precise. The younger one is Peter. Both in the service for six years at the point they were sent into Iraq. Their entire dossiers are there, although the photos are a decade old, so they are unlikely to look the same. You can study their backgrounds at your leisure. The third man, Joseph Aloni, was in the same class as Peter. But he went on to specialize in explosives, including arcane devices, which is why he was part of the team we sent in.”

“But I thought the Mossad didn’t recruit family members?” Jet interjected.

“We stopped after these two left the Mossad. That’s not important for your purposes. They were part of us – and we sent them into Iraq to find the nukes.”

“And they came out, reported that they never found anything, and then…?”

“The younger of the two brothers turned in his resignation six months later. Their father had just died, so it wasn’t completely unexpected. His death hit them both very hard, according to their colleagues. Four months later, Solomon quit – said it was time to move on to something else. He expressed interest in traveling.”

“And you just let them go?”

“This wasn’t like our experiment with your team. That was a special case. If an operative really wants to leave, we aren’t going to force them to stay. There’s no point. If they’ve lost the stomach for it, they’re more dangerous to us remaining in the service than leaving.”

“Apparently not always,” Jet said, then bit her tongue as the director glowered. She may have resented him dragging her back into the fray, but he was a figure who commanded respect. Who had earned it, just as she had, through years of demanding duty.

“I’ll let that slide. The third operative, Joseph, departed thirteen months after the Iraq assignment. Then all three of them dropped completely off the radar.”

“How is that possible, in Israel? It’s a small place. Everyone knows everyone else’s business. How do you just disappear?”

“Under normal circumstances you’d be right. But nothing about any of this is normal. You see, all three men left Israel, and as far as we know, haven’t been back. It’s probable that they’re using aliases and different passports, or we would still have a good idea of their whereabouts.”

“Almost like they’d planned to go dark for some time.”

“Exactly. We now believe that whatever scheme they concocted to abscond with the nukes was hatched before they ever left for Iraq. So it was premeditated. And required considerable planning.”

“And resources.”

“Yes. And that’s where we believe The Council came in. Money is nothing to that group. Which is speculative; but if accurate, explains how three young men can disappear, with nuclear weapons, and stay invisible for a decade.”

“What about motive? Money?”

“That’s one of the big questions. Certainly, in my experience, money makes the mare run. But it could go deeper than that. One of Solomon’s closer friends was interviewed when alarms sounded after they disappeared, and he mentioned that Solomon was staunchly conservative in his political views – which, given his career choice, wasn’t viewed as a negative. Only we now believe that we missed a warning sign. Upon closer examination, there are hints that he wasn’t just conservative, but radically so. He apparently felt that we weren’t doing nearly enough to stamp out the terrorism that’s been plaguing the nation for years. His friend said that he once mentioned that he thought we should take a scorched earth policy, and recognize that this was a war to the death. Those were the exact words he used. At the time, that wasn’t viewed as zealotry so much as the sort of patriotism we would want. Perhaps a little simplistic and hyperbolic, but young men need big ideas to sustain them when they’re being asked to sacrifice everything…”

“I remember.”

“That’s right. I keep forgetting how much of this must seem familiar.”

“What about tracking the nukes? Don’t they emit some kind of radioactivity?” Jet asked, moving past the why question to more practical concerns. When all was said and done, it didn’t really matter why a suicide bomber detonated his vest in a crowd – it just mattered that he did.

“Negative. They would be shielded. If these are anything like the other designs we’ve studied, there’s a lead sheath, and the case might also be lead-lined. That’s part of their weight. The lead, and of course, the uranium.”

“And you haven’t come close to locating any of the three former operatives.”

“Correct. It’s as though they evaporated.” The director paused. “Except for one possible sighting in Genoa recently, which ended with the surveillance team butchered. We had picked up some promising chatter, but the operation ended in disaster. Long story short, it was inconclusive, and we wound up with nothing but what you see here.”

Jet thought about the magnitude of the problem as she read through the files, taking her time, absorbing the details for future reference. “Both devices are in the same kiloton range?”

“Yes. Roughly five. I could take you through the physics of the fireball versus the air blast versus the radiation radius, but suffice it to say that anything human out in the open within at least a kilometer will be killed. Worse, if it’s detonated in the air above a target. A small plane with a warhead could cause almost twice the damage as a ground-level strike.”

“Do you think that’s a legitimate possibility?” Jet asked.

“At this point, anything’s possible. But I think the better question is what the likely target will be.”

Jet closed the files and pushed them aside. “You’ve given some thought to that, or have a lead, correct?”

“I wish you were right about the lead. All we have are guesses. None of which are positive. Iran. Syria. Any of a half dozen terrorist groups. Most of our neighbors, when it comes down to it, depending on how radical these men’s ideologies have become. A holy place. Or a false flag attack on a location in Israel. It’s a question of how twisted their logic is, and what they hope to accomplish. I would hope none of those, but from where I’m sitting, hope isn’t a very good strategy, is it?”

“Not really. Imagine the fallout if a nuke were to go off someplace like Mecca. It would be a never-ending holy war. Nobody would care that these were fringe lunatics. That they were Israeli would be all anyone would ever remember.”

“And any denials would be meaningless. Yes, we’ve considered the worst-case scenarios, and they’re more horrifying than any sane person could contemplate.”

“But the members of this Council – are you saying that they’re insane? Who are they, anyway? Any ideas?”

“Not insane. Not in the way you or I would think of it. But reckless and fanatical, and willing to jeopardize world peace to attain their goals. Which is just as bad. Maybe worse.” The director ran a hand over his leathery face and fixed Jet with a cold stare, his eyes unblinking. “At this point our chances of locating the three former operatives are almost nil. Which leaves us with The Council – and the one man we’re almost sure is a member. If we can penetrate its ranks, then our hope is that we can learn where the bomb is. That’s all we have.”

Jet returned his gaze. “How do you do that?”

He smiled for the first time since the meeting began, more of a grimace than anything, a humorless and cold thing that tugged his skin in unfamiliar ways.

“You were always the best of the team members. I remember reading the reports. The smartest. Fearless, effective, but also brilliant. They broke the mold…”

The director flattering Jet disturbed her more than any threat or blackmail attempt would, and yet a small kernel inside her glowed from the unexpected praise. Apparently she hadn’t completely separated herself from the life – all of her self-talk notwithstanding.

“I’m listening. And the clock’s ticking.”

“Indeed it is,” he acknowledged, and then told her how he intended to infiltrate the ranks of the secretive Council – an organization that was little more than a whisper in the halls of power. By the time he was finished, she was nodding.

It could work.

Chapter 14

Jerusalem, Israel

“Sir, there are two men here to see you.” Jacob’s secretary’s carefully modulated voice sounded tense – uncharacteristic for her, even under the most difficult of circumstances.

He set his pen down and stared at the intercom speaker. “Men to see me? I don’t have anything on my book. Who are they?”

“They’re from the government, sir.”

“The government? Tell them to make an appointment like everyone else. I’m busy.”

“They’re very insistent.”

“They can be as insistent as they like. If they want to speak with someone without an appointment, point them to Howard. That’s why we have a corporate counsel in the first place.”