The Brotherhood Conspiracy (21 page)

They would have thirty minutes on the mountain, no more. A single click on their radio earphones would mean someone had the information they sought, or the thirty minutes had elapsed. Two clicks meant to leave—quickly. From his review of the aerial photographs, Painter had identified twenty-six caves. They would have to search quickly.

Hamid counted off the seconds in his mind. Training convinced him the others were counting at the same, methodical rate. Eighteen . . . seventeen . . . sixteen . . . fifteen . . .

The crosshairs in his sight remained locked on a spot between the temple and the ear. His target stopped.

It wasn’t a sound, or a smell, or a feeling. It was thirty years of combat and training. Painter stopped in the lee of a large boulder, disappearing into its cleft. The night was silent. He reached up the hill with his senses and his night-vision binoculars, searching for the source of his hesitation.

Six . . . five . . . four . . . three . . . Hamid’s finger caressed the trigger.

Painter slowly eased to the edge of his sheltering darkness, raised his left hand to the radio transmitter at his right shoulder. He didn’t like the feel of this. It was time to . . . The first bullet hit before his hand could toggle the radio switch to signal retreat. It hit just above his left ear, drove skull fragments and brain tissue before it, and smashed out the other side of his head, ringing off the rock to his right. Painter was dead before the second shot tore through his chest and pierced his heart.

The target was driven into the rock by the force of the two bullets.

Hamid lifted his head from the scope. To his left and to his right, eight other Syrian-trained soldiers held up their right thumbs.

Hamid pulled the night-vision binoculars to his eyes. All six bodies were sprawled in varying poses of death.

The night was silent once more.

16

F
RIDAY
, A
UGUST
14

Jerusalem

“Eliazar, face it, we have a leak.” General Orhlon’s voice had the vitality of an invalid on life support. “There is a traitor.”

Orhlon was simply worn out. Every ounce of his strength and reserve was sucked dry. Weeks of standing on high alert, moving from crisis to crisis, had dissipated even his bulk and resilience. But this? This was too much. Even the legendary Bull of Benjamin felt crushed in his spirit, discouraged to the point of despair. Only his anger fueled his flagging body.

“And he is close,” said Orhlon. “He is someone we trust.”

General Moishe Orhlon lost his struggle to sit straight before the prime minister. The weight of the last few hours was so heavy. His shoulders sagged, his head drooping and shaking back and forth. Six men dead. Executed. Lukas Painter, the dependable warrior, the steel ramrod of Mossad. Lukas, his right arm and comrade for so many years, through so many battles—those hidden and those revealed.

And he would not even be honored with a public funeral.
Lukas . . . my friend.

“Their bodies?”

Baruk sat across the table from Orhlon in the conference room of Central Command’s Operations Complex. To Baruk’s left sat Levi Sharp, director of Shin Bet. None of them slept that night. Nor had anyone else at Central Command. These men were oblivious to the sun rising over Israel.

“Dumped out of a truck before dawn on the Allenby Bridge, just short of our guard post,” said Sharp. “Whoever is responsible didn’t want to acknowledge the dead bodies, either. To the world, this incursion never happened.”

“Who do we repay?” the prime minister asked. “David?”

Orhlon held his breath waiting for the answer. Lieutenant Colonel David Posner should be neither star-struck nor awed by the other men in the room. As deputy director of Mossad, he accompanied Lukas Painter on countless operational meetings and briefings. He was present when Aman, the branch responsible for collection of intelligence within the Arab world and along Israel’s borders, shared its briefing on the Jordanian incursion with the senior staffs of Shin Bet and Mossad. He understood the risk of the mission. But Orhlon wondered if, in fact, he knew whom to punish.

“We don’t know, Mr. Prime Minister,” said Lieutenant Colonel Posner. “We’re confident it wasn’t Jordanian military. So that leaves unofficial sources. Perhaps Palestinian Islamic Jihad, who are trained well enough. This attack was carried out by a well-disciplined group. The shooters were gone before we could identify them by satellite. The truck was nondescript military. The Syrian 14th Special Forces Division is stationed outside Dar’a, only a kilometer from the Jordanian border, and could have deployed a tight unit to Mount Nebo in a few hours. What we do know is that, whoever they are, they were in place when Director Painter and his squad pushed off.”

Orhlon felt the prime minister’s eyes on him. It was Orhlon’s chief of staff who ran Aman and so Orhlon himself carried the responsibility for their failed intel. Struggling with the burden of his guilt, the general lifted his head to meet the prime minister’s gaze.

“Which supports your conclusion, Moishe,” said Baruk. “One of our trusted friends is a traitor. Whoever executed Painter and his men responded rapidly and from short distance based on some inside information received at the last minute. Someone within our inner circle condemned those men to their deaths.”

Eliazar Baruk was wearing an open-collared, short-sleeve shirt that hung limply on his bone-thin frame . . . not one of the usual finely tailored Italian silk suits which were his trademark. Still, as he leaned into the table, he commanded all the respect due a prime minister. “Moishe,” he whispered, “you were betrayed. We have all been betrayed. This is not your failure.”

Baruk looked around the table.

“It is all our failures. We all failed Lukas. But, one of our number killed him. That one, we will find, and we will extract our revenge.”

Orhlon felt a current of malice race up his spine and into his resolve.
I will find you.

“Moishe,” said the prime minister, “rebuild the command structure.”

Orhlon noticed the prime minister’s eyes flick toward Posner and he nodded.

“David,” said Orhlon, “as of this moment you are promoted to the rank of colonel and installed as acting director of Mossad, pending approval by the Security Committee of the Knesset. Choose your deputy director.”

Posner didn’t miss a beat and Orhlon was affirmed in his decision, knowing the new colonel had prepared himself for all eventualities before entering the conference room. “I’d like to request Major Evan Mordechai. I know he’s Shin Bet, but I’ve known Major Mordechai since officer’s training. He is one of the smartest, well-briefed officers I know. He’s a great leader of men. And . . . well, sir, I would trust him with my life.”

“Very well, Colonel,” said Orhlon. “Major Mordechai will be assigned to Mossad and installed as your deputy. Levi?”

“Avram Levin’s served Shin Bet well for years,” said Sharp. “He’s more than ready. It will be a seamless transition from Mordechai to Levin. I’ll process his promotion to major.”

Orhlon pointed his finger at Posner. “But one thing without fail, Colonel. Whether it’s Mossad or Shin Bet . . . find this traitor. Find him quickly. Or more men will die.”

Balata Camp, Nablus, West Bank

From the sky, Balata refugee camp looked like a solid white postage stamp pasted to the terrain on the western end of Nablus, the Palestinian city sprawling out of the narrow, steep cleft between Mount Ebal and Mount Gerazim in the tinderbox known as the West Bank.

Balata, the largest refugee camp in the West Bank, crammed over twenty-three thousand people into a space smaller than New York City’s Central Park. The streets between its one and two-story, flat-roofed, concrete block houses were so narrow that an overweight person could not pass through them. During the second Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation—the Al-Aqsa Intifada in the first five years of the century—the Israel Defense Forces invaded Balata, a hotbed of Palestinian militants, by “traveling through the walls” . . . blowing holes in the walls of one house after another, advancing down a street with the homes used as shields against the Palestinians firing from the roofs.

Imam Moussa al-Sadr had no need for subterfuge. This was his turf, these
were his people . . . home to Islamic warriors loyal to al-Sadr’s Hezbollah army. Still, with the unpredictability of the IDF and its incursions, it was wise to exercise discretion. Al-Sadr’s aged, crooked body moved silently through the darkened streets of Balata, his black kaftan billowing in his wake. One heavily armed, masked bodyguard preceded him, pausing to ensure that crossing each junction was safe, while the one behind walked backwards, his Kalashnikov trained on the darkness they had vacated.