Tom looked at Tony Wyman. Wyman expected results, not excuses. And he was obviously waiting for Tom to say something-Tom could almost hear the ticking of the clock in Wyman’s brain.
He let his mind go free-float with the white sound of the police scanner.Wheelbarrows, Tom. Think wheelbarrows. And then the answer came to him in a sudden epiphany-create dread. It was so simple it had to work. “We question Hamzi in Israel,” Tom exclaimed.
Tony Wyman gave him a skeptical look. “Isn’t that a bit complicated, Tom? Planes. Unwilling passengers.” He looked at Tom. “Remember when Mubarak tried to smuggle that dissident out of Frankfurt in the trunk?”
He turned to MJ as Reuven and Tom stifled guffaws. They knew the story. “Once upon a time, the Mukhabarat el-Aama-that’s Egypt’s intelligence service-kidnapped a bothersome anti-Mubarak dissident in Germany. They snatched him from Freiburg where he was teaching political science and preaching revolution. They drugged him, stuffed him in a trunk, and tried to ship him back to Cairo as diplomatic mail. Problem was, the son of a bitch woke up just as the Germans were loading the trunk on the plane. There was one hell of a diplomatic flap and the incident caused Mubarak all sorts of political embarrassment in the Western press.” Wyman looked at Tom and Reuven. “We don’t need any flaps, guys.”
“And we won’t have any because I’m not being literal,” Tom interjected. “We use the warehouse. We build a cell, a hallway, an interrogation room. We snatch Hamzi. We put him to sleep. He wakes up in a cell. He hears Hebrew being spoken outside the door. He hears other prisoners talking in Arabic. The guards-what he sees of them-are wearing Israeli uniforms. What’s he going to think? He’ll swear he’s been kidnapped by Mossad and flown to Israel.”
Tom looked at the smile spreading across Reuven’s face. “We re-create Qadima. We squeeze Hamzi. After he gives us what we want, he goes to sleep again-andbadda bing, he wakes up in Paris.”
“I like it,” Wyman said. “Because if we succeed, Tel Aviv will get all the blame.” He cast a quizzical look at Reuven. “And how are you with that outcome?”
“I’m retired, remember.” Reuven shrugged. “Besides, the people at Gelilot are big boys. They’ve been blamed for a lot worse things than kidnapping.”
“Good,” Wyman said. “The question is, can we accomplish this within a workable time frame?”
“For what you want, twenty-four hours is tight. So perhaps things will take slightly longer,” Reuven said. “The construction alone will take almost a day, I think.”
Tom said, “If we keep an eye on Hamzi, we should be all right.”
Reuven said: “I’d like to use one of my former networks.”
“Which one?” Wyman played with his monocle.
“The Corsicans. They’re already involved-running the surveillance on rue Lambert. They’re expensive, of course. But they’re good, they’re quick-and they’re very discreet.”
“Corsicans.” Wyman’s head bobbed in agreement. “Works for me.” Tony had employed Corsicans before and they were everything Reuven said they were.
“Reuven.” Tom cocked his head in the Israeli’s direction. “Is there any chance we might snag Salah for this?”
The Israeli reacted. “Y’know,” he said, “that’s an interesting idea.”
Wyman looked over at Tom. “Who’s Salah?”
“He runs the interrogation center where I interviewed Dianne Lamb.”
Wyman played with the monocle’s silk ribbon. “I’m not sure I like it.”
“Why?”
“I don’t like the possibility of competing agendas,” Wyman said. “Salah isn’t our unilateral or our employee. He’s liaison. That means he’ll be doing Gelilot’s work as well as ours.”
“Sometimes, Tony,” Reuven broke in, “that’s not so bad. Besides, I think in this particular case, Gelilot’s agenda and ours will run parallel-at least in the short term.” He gave the American time to think about what he’d said. “And Salah’s one of the best in the world at wringing information out of these people.”
“Can we trust him?”
“Look.” The Israeli crossed his arms. “Say you’re right. Say he’ll report to Gelilot everything he learns. Okay, sooner or later, they’ll use it-to their advantage and maybe not to ours, or to Langley’s. But Salah won’t hold back on us-and neither will Mossad.”
Wyman gave the Israeli a penetrating stare. “Why, Reuven?”
“First of all because we’re giving Mossad access to someone who might give up something useful. And second because in a sense, we’re carrying Gelilot’s water on this whole Ben Said business.”
“How so?”
“Gelilot screwed up on Ben Said. They didn’t catch the pattern. We-through Tom’s good work and Shahram’s instincts-did.”
“And?”
“And, let’s say we snag Ben Said. Do we-the 4627 Company-take the credit? Of course not. Because what is 4627? It’s a private risk-assessment firm. Operationally, we don’t exist. Operationally, we are entirely in the black. So who takes credit when we succeed, eh?” The Israeli paused, then quickly answered his own question. “Nobody does-and everybody does.”
The Israeli looked around the room. “My old boss at Gelilot, Shamir, was a tough bird. A real prick-let me tell you, when the son of a bitch became prime minister, he was just as tough and unyielding. And whenever something fatal happened to one of our enemies-like the Black September murderers who planned and perpetrated the 1972 Olympics assassinations being tracked down and killed one by one, or the Fatah terrorists who bombed Israeli diplomats and then subsequently disappeared off the face of the earth-Israel, of course, would get the blame. And the government always denied, denied, denied. No comment. But Shamir always used to tell those of us who worked in the embassies, ‘Never, never, never,’ he’d insist, ‘deny the stories too loudly. Leave the sons of bitches guessing. Whether or not it was us, always leave them guessing.’”
The Israeli’s palms came together. “So, like I said: let’s say we snag Ben Said. Make him disappear. The putzes who write forThe Guardian andThe Independent will scream accusations at Mossad. And Mossad? Mossad won’t deny it too loudly. The left-wing American press and the left-wing French press, they’ll accuse CIA. And guess what: CIA won’t deny it too loudly, either. Why? Because CIA is in such bad shape that any suggestion at all that Langley might have pulled off a successful operation against a bin Laden-level terrorist will make the seventh floor happy.”
Reuven looked at Tony Wyman. “So, I say we bring Salah on, and we do what we do, and who says what afterward, or what their long-term agendas might be, none of that matters. Not one bit.”
Tom said, “I think Reuven’s right, Tony.”
Wyman said, “I’m inclined to agree.” He rapped the table and nodded. “Do it.”
“Done.” Tom started to leave, then turned back toward his boss. “Tony, can you set MJ up in a secure place for a couple of days?”
“Good point.” Wyman smiled at MJ. “I’ll put you at the Sofitel Faubourg, mademoiselle. That’s where I’m staying. The room service is good, and because it’s on the same block as the American embassy, there are hundreds of SWAT cops around to make sure no one from thebanlieues gets anywhere close.”
MJ frowned. “What am I-under some kind of house arrest?”
Tom took her by the shoulders. “These people play rough. I think you should lay low-at least for a couple of days.”
“I think you just want me out of the way while you guys play cops and robbers.” She looked at him critically. “And where willyou be staying?”
“Staying?” Tom gave her a reassuring smile, trying to hide the fact that she’d hit the nail on the head. Tomdid want her out of the way in case events turned sour. He fell back on tradecraft:charm, deflect, redirect. “Sweetheart, I don’t think I’m going to be getting much rest in the next forty-eight hours.”