David said, "Look around you and see the diversity of the population. There are all kinds of people here, especially in the harbor area."
Joe insisted, "I wrote down the license plate number of the hearse. I want to see which funeral parlor it belongs to. With your permission, of course."
David shrugged, "Joe, keep a low profile. We don't want to get in trouble with the FSB people." He looked to his right and saw a stocky man openly staring at them. "Don't look now, but my tail is watching us closely. We can talk freely, but I don't want him or his buddies to follow you when you check the car and funeral parlor. Let's go and have a drink and then we'll split."
They sat in a corner of the dimly lit bar and nursed a tepid bottle of a local brand of what passed in Russia as beer. Joe said, "This makes our own beer taste like nectar of the gods. We should have ordered vodka — that's something they surely know how to make."
David placed his half full beer mug on the table, "I'll leave the table now and go to the restroom. Then, I'll walk slowly out of the bar and pretend that I must meet someone clandestinely. When you see my FSB tail follow me, leave quietly and take evasive action to lose anyone who may be following you before you sniff around the funeral parlor."
David rose from the table and went into the men's room. He opened the window, which brought in fresh air that helped dilute the unpleasant odors and could also create a temporary diversion. He entered one of the stalls and stood in front of the toilet and waited until he heard the door open and two men talking excitedly in hushed voices. Although he didn't understand the words, he knew that they were looking for him and were worried by the open window. He flushed the toilet and nonchalantly exited the stall and went to the rusty sink to wash his hands. One of the men was trying to peek out of the window while the other was checking the stalls. The two men were obviously relieved when they saw him. David looked at them nodded pleasantly, and then left the restroom and exited the bar. From the corner of his eye he noticed that one of the men followed him on foot while the other flagged a car that was parked up the street and jumped in as the driver stopped for him.
David flagged a passing taxi that took him from the Vasileostrovsky District, the small island on which the cruise ship terminal was located, back to his hotel. Every time he set eyes on the two buildings that comprised the Corinthia hotel, he silently thanked Mossad's administrative staff, who managed to get rooms in the fancy hotel for half the nominal price. It was located right on Nevsky Prospect, the city's main boulevard, and close to some of the museums and central railway station. He was quite sure that the rooms assigned to his team were equipped with surveillance cameras and voice recorders and that all internet correspondence was regularly monitored. However, his experienced team would refrain from doing anything that could be used to blackmail them or even cause a minor embarrassment. They all knew the stories about very important guests being captured on camera doing things that wouldn't wash well with their voters or family members. The Mossad agents were clever enough not do fall in any 'honey traps' or similar primitive manipulations. David's 'shadows' followed the taxi to the hotel but didn't enter it. David saw that and knew that the responsibility for tailing him was transferred to the permanent FSB staff who monitored the hotel guests — the beautiful young blonde at the reception desk, the room cleaning staff and the matron who supervised them, and finally, the hotel security team.
David entered his room and used the internal telephone system to summon his team to the hotel's bar, for a drink before going out for dinner. They all arrived on time, except Joe who was still busy surveying the funeral parlor, and they took their seats in the corner booth. David noticed the FSB people who entered the bar after him and naturally occupied the booth adjoining his own. He took this as a good sign — the corner booth was probably not bugged, although it was most certainly monitored on the closed-circuit TV. In rapid Hebrew, he updated the team members about Joe's suspicion, using words like sarcophagus to describe the coffin or meat-wagon for the hearse. In fact, he didn't really mind if the Russian intelligence services also got word of Joe's suspicions about the strange connection between the driver of the hearse and the supposedly bereaved old man who accompanied the coffin.
The team members indicated that they understood what he was referring to. After finishing their drinks, the Mossad team strolled along Nevsky Prospect until they found a suitable restaurant. There were two hints that showed that it was not a 'tourist trap' — the menu was only in Russian and the clientele was entirely made up of local people. When the small group of foreigners entered the restaurant, everybody stopped talking and looked at the strangers, but after the Israelis seated themselves at the only vacant table, all conversations were resumed, and the noise level was restored. A sour-faced waitress, wearing an apron that had seen better days came to take their order. Edna Rieger spoke Russian, one of the six languages she was fluent in, and ordered the simple house specialties for all the group, and a bottle of vodka. The chilled vodka arrived quickly, and before long a second bottle arrived with the food.
They opened with shchi — cabbage soup and a meat broth, served with sour cream and rye bread. The main course was Beef Stroganoff, and the Israelis found that the small pieces of beef in sour cream created a uniquely delicious flavor they were unaccustomed to, because in most Israeli restaurant meat dishes and dairy products were not served together. For dessert they had sweet pirogh with aromatic apples and coffee. While enjoying the food and vodka, David said that they were free to spend the evening and would meet for breakfast and hear Joe's report. When they returned to the Corinthia hotel they saw that the dining room offered the same dishes they had eaten, but at a price that was fivefold higher, and the authenticity was probably fivefold lower.
Joe returned to the hotel close to midnight and knocked lightly on David's door. David was reading a thriller by his favorite author about a group of Islamic radicals trying to plant a nuclear device in the heart of London. He kept laughing to himself, because reality, as he knew it, surpassed the imaginary events described in the book. He opened the door and let Joe in, "Welcome, I was just planning to go to the bar for a drink. I need some more alcohol in my system to fall asleep." He placed his index finger over his mouth — the universal sign to keep quiet. Joe didn't need the warning — like all Mossad agents, or for that matter, all intelligent intelligence agents, he was aware of the Russians obsessive habit to photograph and record everything.
The two men took the elevator down to the bar, talking about the wonderful tourist sites of St. Petersburg. Joe, who had been on several secret missions to the city, even before the fall of the communist regime, noted that the city had received an exhaustive facelift for its 400th anniversary in 2003. David said that this was his first visit to the famous city — not exactly true, as he had visited the place under an assumed identity a couple of years earlier — and was impressed by the restoration of the old buildings. They continued to exchange small anecdotes until they were comfortably seated in the same corner booth that David had used earlier in the evening and felt reasonably assured that it was not bugged.
David's 'shadow' entered the bar after them and took the adjacent booth, without even trying to make it look like an innocent move. They ordered White Russian cocktails, just as a joke, to spite the FSB agent who was listening to them. After the drinks which comprised vodka, kahlua and cream on the rocks, arrived, Joe spoke quietly, hiding his mouth with his hand in case there were lip-readers observing them on camera (not that the FSB had many lip-readers who could decipher Hebrew conversations). "The funeral parlor is a respectable institution, well-known in the city. They have a small fleet of four hearses, including the one I saw. The hearses are parked overnight in an enclosed garage and there is a night watchman, although I must say that in other countries no sane thief would steal a hearse. Perhaps things are different here." David took a sip from his cocktail and made a face — maybe this White Russian cocktail was not such a great idea close to midnight — but encouraged Joe to continue. "So, David, I chatted up the bored watchman and told him I needed to see the level of maintenance of the hearses as I need to bring my uncle's body from Novgorod for burial in St. Petersburg. It's about 200 km from here and I said that I didn't want the hearse to break down on the way. Naturally, he realized that this was nonsense, but when I slipped five $20 bills, he nodded and let me in. I gave him another five bills and asked him to go out for a few minutes and smoke a cigarette. I gave him a fresh packet of American cigarettes that are popular, but expensive and hard to get in Russia. I closely examined the hearse I had seen, but there was nothing unusual about it. Just to be on the safe side, I planted a tracking device under the back-fender and left the garage. As I was leaving, the night watchman winked and said that I was welcome any time he would be on duty."