“I welcome that response. But there is something more concrete we desire. You have provided command and control computers for the Georgian radar network. We would like to have access to what they see on those radars.”
This was a direct request and Margolis knew exactly what the Russians wanted: the ability to take control of what the Georgians see on their radars in the event of a Russian attack. Amit thought about his response carefully. “I certainly believe that my country can refrain from selling weapons that are commensurate in quality with the S-300,” he said. “And I am comfortable telling you that we will join you in urging restraint with our American ally. But I do not have authority to agree to what you want on their radar system, nor do I think such a plan would be acceptable to my government.”
Arkanov took a last draw on his cigarette and buried the lit end into the glass ashtray. The cigarette had not been even half consumed. “That would be unfortunate. My government is under intense pressure to fulfill its contractual commitments to Iran. Perhaps you could discuss the matter with the appropriate authority.”
“Yes, I am happy to discuss your proposal.”
“How much time do you need?”
“Let’s meet in the lobby tomorrow at thirteen hundred.”
Dmitri Arkanov stood. “I will be there.” He extended his hand and Amit stood and shook it.
Amit escorted the Russian out the door, glanced down the hallway, which was empty, and closed the door. He walked back to the table. The cigarette box and lighter were gone. The Israeli thought about that and recalled that the Russian had returned the cigarettes and lighter to his right pants pocket when he stood up to leave. Amit remembered that the FSB operative had earlier retrieved those same two items from his breast pocket. Amit went down onto one knee. Amit bent over at the waist and stuck his head under the bed. The lighter was there on the rug about two feet underneath the bed. Amit knew that it had to be a listening device.
He stood back up and headed for the door. Within a minute he was downstairs in the lobby, his eyes scanning for FSB men. It only took a few seconds to spot two men. Their strident attempts to avoid looking in his direction made them obvious. Amit headed back to his room.
Back in his room, Amit opened his cheap overnight case. Inside were a pair of sneakers, a hat and a blue Gore-Tex winter jacket. Amit took off his overcoat and suit jacket and hung both up in the closet. He put on the contents of the suitcase and then placed it in the small closet. He turned on the television and found a news channel. Next he went to the door of his room and opened it, stepped into the hall and closed the door. He stood in the hall for a minute and then opened and closed his door while he stayed in the hallway. Now he headed to the rear exit of the hotel, stopping to look out the window. He was on the second floor and he could see the alleyway below. There was no one visible. He entered the stairwell, walked down and exited into the alley. Within a few minutes he was several blocks away. He hailed a taxi and gave the driver directions in broken Russian to the hotel he had checked into the previous day, doing his best to sound and act like an American tourist.
Forty minutes later, Margolis checked the telltale he had put on his door when he left earlier in the day along with a “Do Not Disturb” doorknob hanger. The clear piece of tape was along the top edge of the door and still bent outward toward the hallway just as he left it. He opened his door and entered the room, relieved to see that the bed was unmade and the dirty towel he had left on the floor by the door was undisturbed. He opened the closet and pulled out his real suitcase, supplied to him by Mossad. He opened it and removed a computer. The computer had only one purpose and he placed it on the room’s utilitarian desk to put it to use.
Amit booted the computer up and it opened directly to a word processer. Amit typed in a review of the meeting and the questions that required answers from Jerusalem. Only the prime minister of Israel could approve Russia’s request. When he was done he retrieved a cable from his suitcase along with his cell phone. He plugged one end of the cable into the USB port of the computer and the other into the micro USB port of his BlackBerry phone. He clicked an icon on the computer and the memo he had just typed was compressed, encrypted and downloaded onto his phone. The computer then erased the memo automatically from its random access memory and erased the one-time cipher key it had just used, rewriting a random sequence of digits over the prior disk drive space. The message written by Margolis had never been saved on any drive.
On the cell phone, an email message light appeared. Margolis unplugged the cable and opened his email. A photograph of Red Square appeared on his screen and he pushed a button to forward the photograph in a text message to a contact named “Mary.” Along with the photo, Amit typed “Safe in Moscow. Miss you.” and then hit the send button. Encoded and embedded within the photograph was the memo he had written on the computer. Once he received confirmation that the message had been sent, he relaxed, turned on the TV and lay down on the bed to wait.
Inside the Israeli embassy at 2 Palace Green in London, a resident Mossad communications officer received a text on his recently activated Virgin Mobile prepaid cell phone. The phone was one of several that sat on his desk mated to his computer. Each phone supported communications with a single katsa who was operating in the field. He transferred the texted photograph to his computer, which stripped the embedded text from the photograph, keeping it encoded in its original cipher. This raw ciphered message — a long string of binary digits — was itself mated to a routing code and the combination was encoded into the embassy code in use that day. This final encoded message was sent along with the day’s traffic to Tel Aviv via satellite transmission.
This convoluted process had a purpose. Israel wanted to keep the NSA, the National Security Agency of the United States, from learning about these negotiations. The NSA would certainly pick up the text messages between Margolis and London, but they would be just a handful of messages out of tens of millions scooped up by the NSA that day alone. The first line of defense for the Israelis was to send messages that would not be flagged by NSA computers as worthy of more detailed scrutiny. The keys for this were the use of innocuous words and photographs; the use of phone numbers that would have no reason to be flagged; and the careful sizing of the photograph file so that it was within the expected range — a file that was too big would fall under suspicion. The only thing that worried the professionals in Unit 8200 who designed this system, was the fact that the texts were routed through one of the cell towers located near Embassy Row in London. This could be a flag in and of itself. But even if the NSA picked these texts out, and even if, after they intercepted the satellite communications, they had broken the Israeli embassy code for the day, the critical message from Margolis used a one-time cipher that was theoretically impossible to break.
Two hours later a chime sounded and the message light on Amit’s phone started blinking. Margolis retrieved the email and reversed the process to read the message from Israel.
Cannot accept request to access radar system. Working on alternative ideas. Standby.
Amit Margolis deleted that message and started typing. He had spent the prior two hours thinking about what alternatives were possible if he received exactly this response.
We could offer access to real time data from UAV sale. All that is needed to provide are code keys. I believe this solution will be acceptable.
He texted this message, embedded in a photograph of the Bolshoi Theater, to “Mary.” It took only thirty-five minutes for a response. The prime minister liked his idea. He had approval.