The next morning Miriam opened her eyes and saw a glimpse of David’s bare ass as he pulled on fresh shorts and reached for his tee shirt, to pull it over his head. She got up with her back to David, took off her pajama top and put on her bra hoping he watched. She slipped down her pajamas, pulled on white panties, then jeans and turned to strut into their small bathroom. Had he ignored her? She really didn’t know, but hoped not. Their small apartment had no real privacy, but there was something about their studied lack of attention that had a foundation of intimacy. It felt comfortable to each of them now that they had become open and honest about their relationship. Miriam knew she was in trouble if David tried anything, but he didn’t seem to going in that direction. Evidently they had established a working platonic friendship.
By end of the week, the operatives decided that stealth was the only way to fully enter the compound. They met in David and Miriam’s apartment before going to dinner to made their dated decision. Tomorrow at two-thirty in the morning, they would move, first disabling the front guards with tranquilizing darts then enter the three houses to plant their bugs. The next night, they would try for the buildings on the training grounds. Forbes had managed to plant a bug on the lean-to the same night as David.
Then at seven, just as they were about to go to dinner, Miriam’s cell phone rang. Ringo was calling with news that changed their plans. Mrs. Ricardo Klement just died ten minutes ago. He had intercepted the call to the coroner. “If you guys want to be morticians, you can get inside right now. I will send George with hospital coats in an ambulance. I will take care of the regular mortician’s staff.”
“We’ll do it!” Miriam exclaimed and hung up. Then she quickly explained the situation, and everyone got their equipment and weapons ready. David gave the final word: he and Miriam would do most of the talking with the family and attend to the body. Marla and Forbes would venture from the immediate scene throughout the house using any excuse to move into other rooms. They had done the drill. They had the skill. Now in for the kill, David said. Lenny and Jan would also go in the ambulance, and go to plant bugs in the other two houses during the uproar. The signal to get the hell out would be when George hit the ambulance siren then immediately turned it off. Whoever failed to re-enter the ambulance within 5 minutes, would be assumed to have gone over the fence and to then returned to their apartment on their own. If any of the team ran into anyone at any time in any house, they were to tell them they are counselors who were looking for whomever to speak to about their grief. “You’ve got to make it look like you were looking for a person to run into,” David told them.
The phone rang again. It was George on his way. They should leave now.
Everyone in the Klement compound had gathered in the main house to express their condolences, so Lenny and Jan accomplished their task with no interference, bugging every room in the two side houses. They got back to the ambulance before the siren sounded. David and Miriam were drawing out their procedure as long as they could. Forbes and Marla talked with several people in the large two-story house, carefully planting the wireless bugs as they moved through the rooms.
Finally, David and Miriam came out with the body on a gurney and carefully slid it into the ambulance. They had instructed the family not to come with them now. It would be better for all to view the body after it was prepared at the Martinez Mortuary. George handed Karlene Klement a black wreath for the front door, walked to the waiting vehicle, got in, put it in gear, and slowly drove down the circular driveway and out the gate toward the mortuary. Two blocks away, he let the six operatives, stuffed inside, out to make their way back to the apartment complex..
“I can’t believe it! We could have planned for a month and still not have been able to pull it off that well,” said Marla, and the rest of the crew agreed.
“Can we take further advantage of this situation to get onto their training grounds?” asked Lenny.
“We go back on the day of the funeral,” said David calmly, “once we learn the date and time.”
“The funeral will be in the daylight hours, so it’s going to be tricky,” Jan said.
The phone rang, and everyone quieted as David picked up the receiver. “Okay. Okay. Make sure the recording is working. Tell Sofie and Barto to let us know when anything comes up. Thanks, Rolf.”
David told the group that the Mossad couple in the third apartment, Rolf and Theo would share the listening duties and will notify us of anything significant. They will be listening in shifts twenty-four hours a day.
“That means we can leave after the funeral, hopefully?” Marla asked.
“Yes, hopefully,” Miriam said.
Ringo overheard that following the afternoon funeral the there would be a wake to be held at a large convention center in downtown Buenos Aires. From what he over-heard, everyone from the Compound would be in attendance. At four o’clock in the afternoon, the day of the funeral, the six operatives watched as two buses pulled out of the entrance of the Klement Compound decorated with wide black ribbons draped across the front bumpers. A man in a black suit got out of the second bus, closed the gate. The buses pulled in line to follow the three family limousines also draped with black ribbons. After the cars and busses left the Compound looked quiet, but those watching the proceedings could not tell if anyone remained in the Compound.
Forbes, Lenny, Jan and Marla each walked a quarter of the Compound perimeter looking for signs of life and seeing none, David sent one person over the fence to scout the place.
As the copper sun sank over the Rio de la Plata and the streetlights began popping on along Garibaldi Street, the Mossad team wearing camouflage khakis, faces blackened, got their walkie-talkies, cameras, filled their pockets with electronic bugs, and drove to the back end of the compound in Theo’s van and waited for anonymous darkness. Finally, Miriam got out, laid leather shield across ten fence spikes, scaled lightening the fence and sprinted across the vegetable garden to the safety of the trees bordering the training ground. She would give the ok for the next person to enter, when she felt it was safe. David nervously repeated quietly: “Plant a bug. Take a picture. Move on, and repeat some where else.”
Miriam headed straight to the ‘gym-like building’. With her ear next to the door, Miriam slowly turned the knob and opened it about four inches only to find pitch darkness. She slipped inside quietly and hugged the wall to get her bearings and allow her eyes to adjust. No light, no noise no movement, so she flicked on her flashlight. She was in a small office, placed a small bug under the desk, and slipped through another door on the far side, which opened into a large cavernous space. No sign of anyone. She gave the signal for the next two people to enter the compound.
Now Miriam had the choice of either going across the open area to the closest two-story building or getting in from the back end by circling around behind the gym structure. Taking the long way around she reached an outside door that opened with an easy twist of the knob, and silently crept through the lower level rooms lit only by the beam of her flashlight. Finding more empty offices and she again bugged the underside of each desk. Moving swiftly up the stairs she gave the signal for the others into the compound. She sent word that the top floor was all office space, then departed to the two-story building next door.
She discovered it was a laboratory of some kind. A light burned inside, causing her to crouch down quickly behind the first counter. Listening intently for a full minute but hearing nothing, Miriam slowly raised her head and peered over the countertop. No one appeared to be around. She moved to a glass-door cabinet on the side wall with shelves full of various-sized bottles and looked closely. From the labels, she could see that many contained metals, such as silver, gold and aluminum in powder form and there were also liquids like mercury and nitroglycerin. She whispered into the walkie-talkie attached to her collar, giving David instruction to enter this building, but warning him to be quiet as she had not yet scanned upstairs. He radioed back that Marla was on her way, and he would soon be there. Moving on up the metal stairwell to the opened center of the two-level room, she entered a four-sided landing with small labs opening up all around the periphery. Each small work space consisted of a metal, electrical or plastic construction shop with tools and eye shields laying about. One room on the corner was a calligraphy and engraving shop with all sorts of pens, tools, blank passports and identification papers lying on a desk under a large magnifying lamp. Returned to the stair-well Miriam saw Marla on the ground floor. Miriam waved for her to come up and start in the corner office. As Miriam was leaving, David entered and she pointed up to Marla, saying nothing as she exited out the door he had just entered.