Tsunami Connection (6 page)

When they walked by the car, Zak was hiding near the wall by
the adjacent car's nose. Rolly turned in between the two parked vehicles on the
driver's side. He had backed in before his shift. Zak whispered,
"Yes", under his breath. The door lock popped with a remote control
and big Rolly lifted a willing Kefira up after he opened the back door. He
plopped her down on the seat facing him and she opened her legs exposing torn
shorts with no g-string.

"Whoa, slide in, sweetheart," he said, the minute
Zak struck the back of his head just above the neck.

"Not so fast, big boy," she answered, as Rolly
fell into Zak's arms.

The two of them manhandled him into the waiting back seat.
Zak took his wallet, removed the money, and spilled Rolly's cards all over the
pavement under the truck. He then took Rolly's iPhone and pocketed it. Kefira
went to the glove compartment and found a fully charged Taser M26c. Zak had
left it there earlier.

Zak was taping the big man's mouth and securing his hands
with plastic tie wraps when Rolly stirred and moaned.

"Climb out, Zak. I'll slow him down." The two
needles from the taser launched into Rolly's neck. He shook and passed out
cold, drool forming at the corners of his now open mouth.

Sounding like the American wrestling announcer, Mike Buffer,
Zak said, "Let's rumble," a little out of the normal context.

Kefira took Zak's hand and anyone looking might have thought
that they looked like a slightly kinky couple out to a costume party.

"Aren't you supposed to say that before the
fight?" she jibed and then froze, looking up at the surveillance camera in
the entranceway.

"What do you take me for? Got the cameras before you
got here,″ said Zak, waving his index finger in front of her nose. In ten
minutes they were all back in the sailboat. Aden was working on the phone, and
Zak and Kefira were removing stage make-up. A bottle of Champagne-style bubbly
wine was chilling on ice, waiting to be uncorked. Everyone was looking at Aden.
Even Sarah was quiet.

"Uncork it. There are two numbers to Michael MacAuley,
one in Buenos Aires, and another in North Hatley, Quebec.″

March 21, 1992

Agape Takis, her first name meaning
'love′ in Greek, sat leaning slightly forward, her knees together, feet
to the left of her knees, with her hands in her lap, in a stiff-backed wooden
chair just outside of the headmaster's office of Naoussa Junior High School.
Her eyes flashed repeatedly to the clock on the wall. It was very unusual to be
asked to wait after school because the school buses ran on a strict schedule,
but more annoying for Agape was that she was missing her first meeting as
editor of
palmi tis neoleas
, The Young Beat, her high school's student
newspaper.

Mr. Skadia, the headmaster, opened the solid oak door to his
office from the inside. He had a serious look on his usually smiling face.

"Miss Takis, please step into my office."

In the leather chair, near the wall by the ten-foot-wide
window overlooking all of Naoussa and the Aegean Sea in the distance, sat an
ordinary looking woman. When Agape entered the room, the older woman stood and
extended her hand to Agape.

"I am Yochana. I have known your parents for a long
time. In fact, your mother was my best friend when I was your age."

"Thank heavens. I was wondering why they hadn't phoned as
they usually do on Tuesday evenings. Do we have to talk long? I am the new
editor of the school newspaper. My first meeting is right now. May we talk
later, please, Sir, Madame?"

"Please sit down young lady. We have some very
important and rather unpleasant news for you," said Mr. Skadia in Greek,
excusing himself to Yochana with a nod of the head and a click of his heels.

Mr. Skadia saying 'please' in the polite form of Greek to
address her was a shock in itself. Agape sat, edging her knees slightly to the
left, away from the two people now seated on the other side of the coffee
table. She clasped her hands over her thighs and waited. Mister Skadia stood up
abruptly, went to the door, and asked his secretary to bring some chamomile tea
for all of them. He returned to the couch and then thought better of it.

"Perhaps Miss Takis should sit on the couch beside you,
Madame Dayan," said Mr. Skadia, once again moving with embarrassment. This
time, the school headmaster gave up his customary seating place, facing the
window, beside the table exhibiting his cherished collection of rocks from
throughout the Cyclades Islands. When Agape did not move, he clicked his heels
and gestured to her to move as he bent slightly at the hip in obvious deference
to the young woman.

"I must insist," he said, again making the
deferent gesture and motioning with his hand opened in her direction.

His secretary came into the room with biscuits and tea for
everyone. She busied herself with pouring each cup laboriously, and then exited
without having lifted her head or said a word. When the door closed without a
sound, Agape looked around the coffee table. No one seemed to know what to say.

"I really should be getting to my meeting," said
Agape, making to get up. "I am sorry, but chamomile makes me sleepy and I
have a lot of things to do today."

Sensing his unease, Yochana said, "Perhaps you should
go, Mr. Skadia, and inform the newspaper group that their new editor will be
delayed."

The headmaster seized on the chance to escape the emotions
in the room, leaving the two strangers alone.

"Come and sit a little closer, child. I have something
beautiful to show you. Do you recognize this?" asked Yochana, as she
uncurled her fingers, revealing a locket that opened to expose a picture.

"Where did you get that? It's my mother's," said
Agape, snatching the necklace from the woman's open palm.

She opened the clasp and saw that the picture inside was not
the same as the one in her mother's locket, but that both her parents and the
woman in front of her were in the picture. Tears began to roll down her cheeks.

"Something has happened to my parents."

"Let me help you with that locket. I want you to have
it. I will close it around your neck for you. You know, your mother gave me
that locket when we were about your age. We were the best of friends at Kibbutz
Yamit in the Negev Desert.″ Yochana gently caressed the child's hair.

"Open the locket."

Agape complied, feeling the shock set in.

"You see. They are always with you. Any time you think
of them, you simply have to open the locket and they are with you."

Agape fell into the older woman's arms, tears flowing from
her uncontrollably. Yochana's perfume, a subtle, homemade mix of jojoba oil and
night blooming sambac and jasmine overwhelmed the teenager.

"You smell like my mother," said Agape, recovering
a little.

"Well, actually, she smells like me. I make this
perfume and often sent it as a gift to your mother on her birthday."

"When will I see my parents again?"

"Do you like adventures, Agape?"

"You didn't answer my question."

"I'll explain everything when I show you where I met
your mother."

"What about school?"

"Soon you will be going to a different school. I am
sure a bright girl like you will love it. How many languages did you say you
speak?"

"I didn't say."

Mr. Skadia knocked on the door of his own office as he
opened it. His manner was stiff and he looked ill at ease. It was the first
time Agape had seen an adult having difficulty with reality. The headmaster
handed a large manila envelope to Yochana.

"Everything seems to be in order in the paperwork, Ms.
Dayan. I phoned the embassy. They are aware of the documents and have confirmed
the transfer."

He then turned to Agape and extended his hand while once
again clicking his heels and bending a little at the waist.

"My deepest sympathies, Miss Takis."

At that, Agape and Yochana left the office and made their
way to a car with a driver. The ten-kilometer drive passed in a dream. Upon
arrival at Paros National Airport, the car drove right out to a small, unmarked
private jet.

"Is this your jet?" asked Agape.

"It belongs to my employer, but I can use it when
necessary."

"What about all my things in my room?"

"I took the liberty of having all of your things flown
ahead of us. Your room, where we are going, will look exactly like your room
here in Paros."

The smell of new leather flooded over Agape as she took in
the Learjet. She sat down in a plush leather seat and Yochana sat opposite her.
Before she could do it, a smiling military-looking flight attendant reached
down and buckled Agape's belt for her. The attendant's khaki uniform blended
with her olive skin, jet-black eyes and tightly pulled back raven hair.

"You, young lady, are going to fly a plane today. What
do you think about that?"

"I don't–"

"I am Captain Bagrit and I won't take 'no' for an
answer. Once we get up and going, I will come back here and get you, that is,
with your permission, General."

"That's a wonderful idea, Captain," said Yochana.

The young pilot walked purposefully toward the cockpit.
Yochana cleared a tear from the corner of her eye.

"What do you think, Agape?" asked Yochana, and
repeated, "What do you think, Agape, maybe a new life deserves a new name.
With your permission, of course, I am going to call you Kefira, which means
lioness in my language, from now on."

"I am never going to see my parents again, am I?"

"Open the locket, child. They are always with you.

March 21, 1992

Kabril Shafiq, a rare Coptic
Christian in an Islamic organization, sat alone in his office, watching the
growing street protests on closed-circuit television filmed from the rooftop of
the Egyptian General Intelligence Service (GIS) building in central Cairo.

Shafiq's job had always been secure by virtue of his
dedication and competence, as well as his father's high rank and long service.
His father had also had the foresight to give Shafiq an Arabic name, so that
his son would fit into the GIS more easily. "Now, who knows," he
mumbled aloud and to himself. He had put some money aside in case of
misfortune, but he was a purist, an agent's agent, although the pictures on the
screen above him gave him pause.
It is all coming undone,
he thought.

A dedicated teletype machine clattered. This particular
piece of equipment had rested unused for years, spent technology, retained only
in case all other message-making devices failed.
Odd
, he thought,
that's
my Israeli counterpart's secret call sign and location marker.
He rose,
glancing one more time at the madness, the anarchy, on the streets of his
beloved Cairo. He craved movement, anything to distract him from the maelstrom
rising up even to his high offices.

Shafiq snapped his antique British Army swagger stick under
his arm and then thumb polished his epaulets' single stars and eagle pips, signifying
his Lieutenant Colonel rank. Wistfully, he sighed and rolled on the ball of his
foot, turning smartly toward a full length mirror behind the door of his
office.

The GIS man slowly removed his uniform and stepped into the
clothes of a desert Bedouin. The rank odor of camel filled his nostrils as he
unsealed the large bag containing his outer garments. He wore a wrapped white
turban, a traditional, short Bedouin style striped garment, white pants with
buttons on the legs, often called a
potur
and a plain, long, light blue
shirt or
gellabiya
. Finally, his two sets of travel documents: one in
the personality of an Egyptian desert nomad offering tourist camel rides at the
site of the pyramids, the other the documents of an Israeli Bedouin from the
southern Negev. As well, he carried recently made pro-democracy and pro-Mubarak
identity cards in case of emergency. He kept all four different sets of
identification in separate pouches, conveniently located about his body under
his
gellabiya
or main garment.

These documents and cover clothes had been prepared and
regularly changed over the years. They were kept in his secure wall safe since
eight years earlier when he was working closely with his Mossad counterpart,
codenamed Antioch, on an ultra-secret project started by his father, a General
in the Mukhabarat, the Egyptian Secret Service. He checked his dedicated secure
cell phone. Sure, enough, there were map coordinates hidden in a text message
showing a real but unrelated phone number.

He quietly walked down twelve flights of stairs without
breaking a sweat. Years of discipline were paying off tonight. Before opening
the door to the car park, he put on a pair of skin-toned surgical gloves.

In the parking garage, he went directly to space number 86.
There was always a grey Mercedes Benz W123 parked in it. He had passed it many
times, often wondering if he would ever need to leave by the clandestine route
under the car. The keys to the Mercedes were in his
gellabiya
, secured
by duct tape. He ripped some tape from under his arm. Stuck under the tape,
there was a key. He slipped the key into the lock.

For an instant, the alarm appeared ready to start, but
instead, one soft sounding beep opened the door. He got in and backed the car
up about one meter, leaving it in the parking space, but away from the wall. He
stopped the car, got out, closed the door quietly, and his trained eyes panned
the garage. No one was leaving by car tonight. He was alone. He slipped down,
unhitched and then lifted the cover of a water drainage sewer and air
circulation duct.

It was a tight fit, but claustrophobia had never been one of
Shafiq's problems. Having trained in the desert every month of his professional
life, heat was also not problematic. Lying on his back, he re-secured the cover
and started pulling himself toward the edge of the building. The sounds of
night, a night full of protests and some gunfire, grew steadily louder as he
approached his exit location. As he traversed the hundred-meter tunnel, he
heard voices coming gently toward him.

The voices grew steadily louder as he got closer to the
exit. Just as he arrived under the outlet cover, someone above flicked a
cigarette end into the grate. It landed on Shafiq's
gellabiya
and
threatened to set him on fire, but he calmly stubbed it between his thumb and
forefinger without so much as a wince of pain at his burning flesh.

Still lying on his back, he reached up and unscrewed the
securing bolt using a pair of pliers left there years ago by a much younger
Shafiq for just that purpose. He exited under a tree behind a shrubbery on
Talaat Harb Street. He walked against the throngs moving towards Tahrir Square.
The mood was hostile.

People on this street were supporters of President Mubarak.
They were converging upon the side of the square controlled by pro-government
mobs. The other side of the square was full of pro-democracy supporters.
Everyone was carrying wooden sticks or pilfered stonework as weapons. Some, but
not all, bore the demeanor of the ideologically slanted activist, eyes filled
with dark determination.

A small group of young men stopped Shafiq at the corner of
Adb el-Salam el Areaf Street when he turned right. They were a militia
controlling street access. He feigned pain and showed his hand, which he had
been holding on his left shoulder. Blood was leaking through his garments.

The young city boys operating the checkpoint reacted more to
his camel smell than his wounds. He muttered, Al Azhar, the name of a large
mosque, which was offering free medical services to demonstrators of all
political persuasions. "Go, father," the young men said in unison,
using the affectionate term for an older man in some Arabic communities. Their
eyes softened and they sent him on his way. "
Allah Akbar
,"
said Shafiq. He pretended to be weak for one hundred paces then recovered his
hand from his wounded shoulder. The theater makeup stopped oozing from the
pouch taped onto his skin under his garment. He walked faster towards Mohamed
Abdo Street, under the shadow of the great mosque.

In an entranceway near the mosque grounds, a young person
called out, "Father, God is great. Come and share food. Sit." Shafiq
was stunned to recognize the face of his Israeli contact, a woman under a
striped
gellabiya
similar to his. He sat. They drank tea from an
heirloom-like tea set. A hookah gave off the scent of apricots.

"This," whispered Yochana, gesturing open handed
to the seething crowd on their way to the mosque, "is not good for either
of us."

"God is great. His wisdom supersedes our ability to
understand," said Shafiq, a little too loudly, for other curious ears
milling about nearby.

In the bottom of his cup, a mobile phone number appeared.
Shafiq memorized it as it faded and disappeared. His heart leapt a bit, knowing
from the method of message transmission that he might yet have a way out of
this developing mess.

"Don't forget your phone," said Yochana, pointing
to a phone she had surreptitiously deposited on the tray beside the teapot.

Shafiq made his way back along Al Hazar for a while and then
turned right on Port Said. He would avoid all the troubled center area of the
city by this route. He had to find a place to call and receive a secure
message.

The only place that was truly safe was his office. He
retraced his steps back to the mosque and followed the same route he had used
earlier. His behavior became more and more belligerent. Someone dropped a long
hardwood switch and he ran to scoop it up. He melted into the crowd now, moved
with them through militia checkpoints, which harassed people, arbitrarily
arresting anyone who could not produce identification cards connected to
whatever partisan group was manning the checkpoint.

Twelve young men with bloody headscarves sat, hands bound
between their legs, on the pavement, behind this particular checkpoint. Their
crime was the possession of a pro-President Mubarak identity card.

Different young men stopped Shafiq on the corner of Areaf
Street this time. The pro-democracy groups had taken sway over a large swath of
the center tonight. It was like this on a daily basis. The political stripe of
those on the street often changed on an hourly basis.
Better the devil you
know than the one you don't,
thought Shafiq. He was carrying identity
documents for both sides, pro-democracy in his left pouch under his
gellabiya
,
and pro-Mubarak in a pouch under his right arm.

Without being bothered this time, he passed the checkpoint.
He felt it was ironic that these young men touched their hearts and slightly
bowed their heads while using the same salutations as the opposing young men
had earlier. "God is great. Go in peace, father," they said
. Was
that not proof that they should be able to compromise,
reflected Shafiq.

He was approaching the tunnel entrance point behind the
bushes that he had used earlier, but something told him not to go there.
Instead, he made his way to the front of the building where he had worked for
twenty-six years. As he turned the corner, Shafiq was aghast by what he saw.

The doors of the GIS Headquarters were broken down. Smoke
poured from the upper floors and prisoners were flocking out the exits, some in
blood-stained clothing.

"That message from Yochana may've saved my life. Must
make haste," Shafiq said to himself.

He made his way through the hysteria. People pushed and
shoved one another, shouting accusations and creating turmoil. The sound of
Army vehicles, screeching to a halt, combined with the noise of people rocking
these same vehicles in an effort to tip them over.

All these occurrences contributed to the cacophony of
anarchy. As if controlled by a puppeteer in the sky, all heads suddenly looked
up at the arrival of commandos dropping down onto the roof. Shafiq made his way
through the throngs, looking up and cursing again, using his package of actor's
makeup to simulate injury when anyone questioned why he was leaving the scene.

As a Lieutenant Colonel, he was privy to the location of a
secret office built a few streets away in case of emergency. He made his way to
a nondescript entranceway on El Tahrir Street, off Bab el look Square.

On Tahrir, there was a restaurant called Fatatri Pizza. It
was open twenty-four hours a day. It was also a cover for Mukhabarat agents of
higher rank. In the basement, he passed through a stall in the back of the room
containing videos of young women. There was a hidden door covered with thick
burlap. Under the sack cloth, there was a numerical keypad. Shafiq entered his
code.

The stainless steel partition slid into the floor, revealing
a dank stairwell. At the bottom of the stairs sat a stiff looking military man
in uniform. Three stars on his epaulets identified him as a Captain, a much
higher rank than usually kept watch here. His right hand toyed with the trigger
of a silenced Berretta M9 pistol, the pistol of preference of the Egyptian GIS,
while his left hand took Shafiq's proffered identification card.

Unlike the boys on the street-level checkpoints, this
guardian had a swipe terminal and he quietly swiped the card. Looking at a
small screen, he faced Shafiq, returned the Lieutenant Colonel's identification
card, and then put his pistol back into the holster under his left arm.
"Sir," he said, pointing to a second keypad, "you must enter
your second code here."

Shafiq complied, nodded and proceeded down an
air-conditioned hallway, lit by overhead neon. Emergency lighting boxes sat
ready every ten meters. The communications room was at the end of a
thirty-meter walk. Another keypad glowed on the door at the end of the passage.
The lights flickered and auxiliary power took over.

The disguised Lieutenant Colonel entered a partially compartmentalized
room lit mostly by computer screens. There were no women in the room. The men
were all about Shafiq's age and dressed in civilian clothes. The hardness of
their bodies gave away strict training regimes, marking them as military men.

No one took notice of him as he sat in front of a terminal
and prepared to dial into a secure Military Intelligence server. Once on the
server, he dialed the number Yochana had given him in the bottom of her cup of
tea. It was February 2, 2011. An unrelated message flashed on his screen:
President Mubarak Resigns.

A pop up window demanded secure code numbers. Shafiq ignored
the instructions on the general security screen; he spoke into his encrypted
device, closing the door behind him, believing he was making his message secure
even in this office. Unknown to Shafiq, as the message from Yochana played out,
a traitor to the Mubarak regime inside Military Intelligence, was recording
everything at every terminal in the room, using hacking software planted the
night before, even at this secure, officers-only location.

Yochana's talk of the need to have a training exercise
threatened the following year. It was essential that Shafiq arrange to plant a
suicide bomber with an explosive vest and an RPG that Yochana would provide.
The bomber would use a faulty rocket launcher.

In exactly one year, in the Sinai, near Nuweiba next
February 2, 2012 at dawn, the bomber must pop up from the sand, aim his RPG at
the passing helicopters and pull the trigger. It is imperative, and explicitly
stated by Yochana, that the rocket launcher must fail.