“There is a man named Moshe Traymir,” she told him, “a soldier who was part of the Lebanon refugee camp massacres. He was stripped of rank and court-martialed in disgrace, but he became one of Rasin’s bodyguards. My people saw them leaving the country by plane on several occasions. If anyone knows where Rasin can be found, it is Traymir.”
“Where can I find him?”
“He’s taken a most fitting job. He is an animal keeper at the Safari Park in Ramat Gan.”
Colonel Yuri Ben-Neser walked slowly down the Tayelet on his way to Atarim Square. His left shoulder was bandaged and wrapped, and to his dismay the phantom itching intensified with the coming of this fresh wound. It was only ten hours earlier that his planned taking of Evira had ended in disaster. Ben-Neser had responded as the soldier in him dictated. From the hospital, he had reported everything, confessed everything, through proper channels. Disgrace was certain now, perhaps even imprisonment. Yet that prospect did not weigh as heavily on the colonel as the fate of his team did. Six had died in the square and a seventh was not expected to live through the night.
Atarim Square contains a cluster of open-air cafes, restaurants, and snack bars, each featuring a different menu, design, and atmosphere. Lying between the Carlton and Mariah hotels just above the shores of the Mediterranean, it is normally reached by way of the HaYarkon Street. But Ben-Neser came by way of the Tayelet’s long stretch of asphalt promenade because the sounds of the sea just below calmed him. Compared to its vastness and power, he was nothing, and what had happened in Jaffa today was also nothing.
Mossad, of course, thought otherwise. The founder of Mossad had been named Isser, and since then all of his successors had taken the same name. Unlike their counterparts in other intelligence services, heads of Mossad took a direct interest and involvement in the affairs of their organization. It was not a political or bureaucratic appointment. They were all field men first and brought that perspective to the job. Ben-Neser hoped that would work for him. That was his only hope.
He found Isser waiting for him just as planned, in Atarim Square beneath the blue-canopied table in the largest of cafes. It was not isolated, but the tables immediately around it were unoccupied. Isser was sipping what could have been either a weak drink or club soda. As he approached, Ben-Neser felt his heart quicken and breath become short.
Isser was a short, barrel-chested man with menacing blue eyes. His hair was strangely thick on the sides but thinning on top. His bulging forearms rested atop the table, a manila folder pinned beneath one. He did not acknowledge Ben-Neser’s approach until the one-armed man was right before him.
“Sit down, Yuri.”
Ben-Neser did so stiffly. Every speech he had rehearsed fluttered out of his mind, and he simply gulped down some air.
“You are probably wondering why I asked to meet with you personally.”
Ben-Neser gulped more air.
“There will be no inquiry on this, Yuri, no formal hearing. It must remain between just you and me. Is that clear?”
Ben-Neser nodded. He felt a small hope rising in him.
“I have read the report on this afternoon’s affair. I will not dwell on what you have done. You understand the impropriety of your actions, as well as the ramifications. But there are other matters involved here that are more pressing now.”
Ben-Neser eyed the head of Mossad as he slid an eight-by-ten photograph from the manila folder that had been beneath his forearm.
“Is this the man who saved your life, the one your men had spotted with Evira previous to that?”
Ben-Neser focused in the dim light on the half-smiling bearded face and recognized it instantly.
“Yes, but how did you—”
“This man was identified entering the country earlier today on an El Al jet out of London. He is a former American operative who in years past worked extremely closely with us on a number of affairs.”
“Former?”
“Details unimportant at this time. His name is at the bottom of the photograph.”
Ben-Neser scanned down and read it aloud. “Blaine McCracken …”
“You sound as if you know him, Yuri.”
“I throught I recognized him. Yes, I should have remembered immediately. I worked with him in ’73. I was attached to his unit for a stretch of the Yom Kippur War.”
“Yes,” Isser droned ironically, “he is a hero to our country in every sense of the word.”
“Then what was he doing in the company of the most wanted Arab operative at large in Israel?”
“Interesting question.”
“You didn’t dwell on his past. Is it possible that he’s turned?”
“You worked with him, Yuri. What do you think?”
“I worked with him, Isser. I don’t know him. I remember him being single-minded, ruthless, accustomed to getting what he wants. If he was meeting with Evira, he had his reasons.”
“An obvious conclusion,” Isser commented, easing his drink to the side. The limes in the glass were starting to sink past the melting ice toward the bottom. “Expand on it.”
“I … can’t. There’s too much I don’t know.”
“Let me help you, then. What were your conclusions about the ‘soldiers’ your men encountered in the square.”
“Imposters there to protect Evira, perhaps dispatched when our presence was betrayed.”
“They were all Israelis, Yuri,” Isser said flatly. “All dismissed or suspended for some breech of discipline, outcasts perhaps, but Israelis nonetheless.”
“What? This is madness! Israelis killing Israelis? It makes no sense.”
“Let us take it a step further. If they did belong to Evira, why would Blaine McCracken, the man she was meeting with, risk his life to save you during the battle?”
“But if they weren’t Evira’s, then who were they?”
“That is the crux of our quandary, Colonel.”
“My God, they must have been sent by someone else to take care of Evira in a much cruder way than we had planned. But who, Isser, who?”
“Someone with access to such men, Yuri. Someone in our own government. A shadow army, a shadow movement, who for some reason made it their business to go after Evira. We cannot afford to have this possibility spread any farther than it has already.” Isser’s voice hardened as the bands of muscle through his forearms seemed to throb. “That makes you a liability to us, a liability we cannot permit anyone else to gain access to before we have sorted this out. I am forced to reassign you, Colonel, out of necessity as much as punishment….”
And as Isser continued Ben-Neser found himself wishing Blaine McCracken hadn’t bothered to save him in the first place.
Thursday night had given way to the early hours of Friday morning when Moshe Traymir came on duty at the Safari Park and Zoological Center in the Ramat Gan sector of Tel Aviv. His apartment was only a few blocks from the zoo and, as on most nights, he was slightly drunk when he arrived. Drinking was how he coped with his disgrace in the wake of the Beirut massacres. Traymir sat through the token trials and seethed. Not that he wasn’t guilty; he was. But he and the others were scapegoats, and there wasn’t anything they could do or say about it. Traymir had kept his mouth shut and been spared imprisonment as a result. This alternative seemed only the slightly better of two evils, until he was approached and recruited by a man with need of services Traymir was well versed in providing.
As usual, his steps toward the front entrance of the park were lumbering and labored. It was strange for a man who hated animals to be working at Tel Aviv’s Zoological Center, but the hours suited him well. The hard muscle of his soldier days had been replaced by fat over his large, big-boned frame. His heavy beard was grubby and untrimmed. He seldom bathed. Traymir cared about none of this. He cared only about doing whatever was necessary to rid Israel of the Arabs who were destroying her.