David answered, "He knew that he was taking a risk getting involved with NEMESIS and Islamic terrorist organizations. At least you'll be giving him a chance to survive, which is more than he would have given you if your positions were reversed. The woman could be a member of the gang or an innocent bystander, so try to take her to a safe place but if she causes any trouble dispose of her. Be careful and avoid getting caught until the Mossad team arrives. Good luck."
He disconnected the call and immediately called the Head of Mossad at the headquarters in Tel Aviv. He explained the situations in St. Petersburg and Malmo and requested the help of the special operations team. Haim Shimony promised to send the team to Malmo and summoned the team's commander to his office.
Chapter 18
The six members of Mossad's special operations team, a euphemism often used for the elite 'hit team', assembled in Malmo and met with Edna, 'The Fish' and Joe. The team consisted of five men and a single woman, Haya, who was their commander. Haya in Hebrew, as a noun, means 'animal' or 'beast', and as a verb means 'alive'. The commander of the team was called, behind her back, 'Haya Haya' or 'a living beast', and had a reputation of never quitting until the mission was accomplished. She combined courage, cunning and craftmanship, and her men followed her through hell or high water.
After the team was briefed by Edna and studied the area around both the apartments in which the NEMESIS people were staying, a game-plan was drafted by Haya. Her objective was to gain information on the exact location of the coffin with the nuke in St. Petersburg and the whereabouts of the Chechen scientist whose job was to detonate it. The only provision Mossad Chief set for the team was to limit collateral damage. He emphasized — 'limit' not 'avoid' — the termination of Le Docteur and his colleagues was considered as a bonus after, he repeated the word three times, the required information was gathered. Haya's decision was to first grab, or eliminate if necessary, the people staying in the apartment that was in the Muslim neighborhood. Then go to the apartment which Le Docteur and Lara were occupying near the Oresund Bridge and overpower the couple. The intention was to capture them alive and then interrogate them by threatening each one that the other would be severely harmed unless they cooperated.
Edna, the living database, who had studied all Mossad's previous operations, thought that it was simple and straightforward, but not cunning enough considering the sophisticated adversaries. She wished that David was there to devise something better but kept her opinion to herself. 'The Fish' saw her expression and guessed what was going on in her mind addressed the head of the Mossad hit team, "Haya, I have been involved in many operations of the Israeli Security Agency in Palestinian territories. There, when we needed to make an arrest, the whole area was secured by dozens of soldiers before the leading fighters stormed the apartment, and that was usually done when they knew the exact location of each and every one of the enemy fighters. We cannot do this in Sweden where the whole neighborhood will rise in protest. We'd be better off grabbing them on the street, when they go out of the apartment."
Haya didn't like to have her plan criticized by what she considered as amateurs, "I have led numerous operations of this sort against terrorists in quite a few European countries."
Before the two continued to argue, Edna intervened, "Your reputation precedes you, Haya, and we know that you have eliminated many of the enemies of Israel. But here we need to get them alive and force them to talk before sending them to Allah. We have told you that during the 24-hours before your arrival we have set surveillance on the suspects. We saw that Le Docteur and Lara like to go out for a stroll after dark, and then stop at a restaurant for dinner. We can wait for them when they return to the apartment and grab them on the street."
Haya considered this and finally nodded her agreement. They arranged surveillance, a safehouse, weapons, communications and transportation, and got ready for executing the operation the following evening. This was not Mossad's modus operandi, they usually had an advance team make all the preparations, followed the target for days, planned escape routes and back-up plans, but the circumstances and the required time-sensitive information didn't allow for that. Every Israeli knew about the operational fiasco in neighboring Norway in 1973, when a Moroccan waiter in Lillehammer was mistakenly identified as the chief of operations of the Black September terrorist organization and killed by Mossad agents. In the aftermath, six Mossad agents were captured and convicted by Norwegian courts of law, and Mossad's reputation suffered a serious blow. The team in Malmo didn't want to repeat that mistake but knew that an improvised plan like theirs involved high risks.
Karim's bold operation was perfectly executed. In broad daylight, a police car and an ambulance, driven by the IRG men dressed in the proper uniforms, parked near the side gate of the Tikhvin Cemetery. Two Russian laborers, who knew nothing about the clandestine operation, were hired to dig up the coffin and load it in the ambulance. They carried out the task under the supervision of Karim who was posing as an FSB officer. When one of the cemetery's officials tried to enquire what was going on, the 'FSB officer' told the 'police officer' to lock her up in the police car and take her cellphone as 'evidence'. Seeing that, none of the bystanders intervened or queried the unusual activity. Just before the operation begun, the two IRG women sprayed a thin layer of semi-transparent paint over two surveillance cameras which blurred the picture sent to the control room, without raising an alarm that the cameras were out of order. Within 20 minutes the coffin was loaded into the ambulance and was driven away. They headed to a deserted coal power-station on the northern outskirts of St. Petersburg and loaded it in a standard shipping container, that was then filled with pieces of scrap metal and sent overland to Helsinki in Finland.
By the time the St. Petersburg police realized what had happened in Tikhvin Cemetery, the coffin and all the culprits were no longer within the borders of the Russian Federation. Karim and one of the IRG couples were on board a plane heading to Istanbul. From there, the Iranians intended to take a flight to Tehran. The other couple, after delivering the coffin to the container, had driven the ambulance across the city and abandoned it near the monument that commemorated the bravery of the residents of the city, then called Leningrad, who fought Nazi Germany's troops in the Great Patriotic War, as the Second World War was called in Russia.
Colonel Alexandrova almost had a heart-attack when she received the news. She knew that her career was over, and there was no one who could serve as a scapegoat and save her. She considered blaming the Mossad agents, David Avivi and Mata, but knew it wouldn't hold water. When David heard the news, he rushed to the burial site at the cemetery and met the colonel there. He used his radiation monitor to measure the activity of the soils that was dug up when the coffin was excavated. He saw that it was slightly higher than the background level and showed the colonel the reading. Meanwhile, the two laborers were apprehended in a nearby bar and brought in for questioning. They had no information beyond the description of the 'FSB officer' who hired them. Nevertheless, they were sent to Bolshoy Dom to stand trial as saboteurs and for assisting the enemy. They were sentenced to life in Siberia, without the right to appeal. David thanked the colonel for her cooperation and wished her luck. She glumly acknowledged that and smiled slightly when he said that thanks to her efforts, the explosion of an atomic bomb in St. Petersburg was prevented.