He’d first met Yosy at the “schoolhouse,” nearly twenty years ago. Slaton remembered the smiling, gregarious young man with whom he’d had so much in common. Their days were spent in classrooms, buildings, and fields, going over strange, sometimes unimaginable lessons — things that would supposedly save their lives, or perhaps even their country someday. With the idealism of youth, Slaton, Yosy, and their classmates played the game during business hours, then escaped nightly for food, drink, and revelry.
To talk about their training outside the schoolhouse was strictly forbidden. More than one cadet had been eliminated from the program for lack of discretion, and they were sure the instructors had sources in every watering hole in Israel. Still, the student-spies found ways to escape, and the order of the day was to find humor in the inane, seemingly ridiculous things they were learning.
Slaton remembered one particularly libatious evening. As they sat at an outdoor café in a large square, Yosy had posed what seemed an insurmountable challenge. In the center of the square stood a statue, full-body and to scale, of a male lion. The statue was surrounded by a knee-deep reflecting pool. Yosy had guided Slaton’s attention to a rather prim, frail young woman who was dining in the company of a thick paperback novel at the adjacent café. Yosy had recognized her as a librarian from the nearby university (in fact, the institution from which he’d graduated two years prior). Slaton was tasked to somehow have the woman sitting atop the lion within the next ten minutes, a gin and tonic raised in her left hand, offering a toast in the general direction of the judges. Upon issuing those instructions, Yosy called a time hack and the race was on.
Slaton’s ale-induced haze had not helped, but he began improvising. He took a camera from Yosy’s backpack, then went to the bar and ordered a gin and tonic. From there he walked halfway to the statue, then made a beeline to the woman’s table.
“Irena! Where have you been?” he admonished when he was nearly on top of her, with a hard look at his watch.
The woman glanced up from her romance novel, perplexed. “I beg your pardon?” she said meekly.
Slaton was masterful, oblivious to the giggling and taunting going on three tables away. He tilted his sunglasses up over his eyes, mixing surprise with awe. “I’m sorry to bother you, miss. Only … it’s just that you bear a striking resemblance to Irena, the model who was supposed to meet me here half an hour ago. She’s late, and I am losing the light …”
After a pause, Slaton asked the woman, if it wasn’t too much trouble, to remove the reading glasses that were perched low on her nose. Yosy and the others fell quiet as they strained to hear the performance.
“Yes, a remarkable resemblance. The project today? It will be for the cover of Leisure Travel magazine. It might seem unusual, but you see that statue over there …”
On it had gone until, as attested to by five witnesses, the woman had sat atop the great stone beast, smiling mechanically as she raised her glass in salutation. One minute and ten seconds to spare. Slaton even used Yosy’s camera, and an entire roll of film, to record the triumph.
At the time it all seemed so innocent, a game with no harm. Slaton had learned his lessons well, the arts of deception and destruction. As had Yosy. Only now Slaton sat here alone, and it seemed anything but a game. Yosy had come to see him, to warn him, and now he was gone. Why had Yosy told his wife he was going hunting, when in fact he was the one being hunted? Slaton held one hope for the answer.
He went to the couch and gave it a shove across the floor, then rolled up one side of the rug underneath. If Yosy had come, this would be the place. There was a single loose floorboard, the one he and Yosy had heard creak under their feet so many years ago. Then, they had found two bottles of wine stuffed underneath, a soothing Cabernet. Now Slaton pulled up the short plank hoping to find something, anything to explain what was happening. The hole beneath the strip of wood was only six inches deep, but it extended far along the length of the floor to one side.
Slaton curled his arm into the nook and instantly latched onto something. He pulled out a heavy manila envelope, then groped once more in the dusty hole to make sure there wasn’t anything else.
He brushed the envelope off, opened it, and sank onto the displaced couch. Inside was a two page, handwritten letter. Stunning, it answered many of the questions that had been tormenting him. But it raised even more.
Well, partner, if you’ve found this, I guess you know something’s up. I was hoping to explain it in person, but here’s what you should know.
A few weeks ago I got a phone call from a fellow named Leon Uriste. I worked with him once, when he was in military intelligence. We were never great buddies, but I think he looked me up because I was the only Mossad guy he knew. Uriste was dying of cancer, and he asked me to come see him in the hospital. I could hardly say no.
When I got there, a nurse confirmed that Uriste only had a couple of weeks left. I barely recognized him. He was fifty-one, but looked twenty years older. As soon as he saw me he got frantic and started babbling some really crazy stuff. As the proverb goes, “None brings conscience like the face of Death.”
Uriste drifted in and out, and part of me said it had to be the drugs. But David, he laid out an incredible story. He said there’s an organization of traitors within our service, attacking Israel. Mossad and Aman people bombing our own markets, shooting our own soldiers and policemen. Sound crazy? That’s what I thought at first. Uriste talked as fast as he could draw breath. There were so many details — meetings, targets, casualty figures. He told me who was in the organization — names, but more code names. Everything was run by someone called Savior, and Uriste swore it had been going on for over twenty years.
It sounded absurd. Yet something about it bothered me. Here was a dying man trying to cleanse his shame. I played along and asked him who was behind it. The Palestinians? Hamas? Syria? Uriste broke up. He fell back on his bed, sobbing and babbling. He kept saying, “We had to do it. No other way.” About that time, a nurse came in. She saw that Uriste was disturbed and kicked me out. I decided to go back the next day to talk again, and maybe bring a video camera. Uriste never made it through the night.
I was tempted to write it off as a dying man’s drug-induced hallucination, but instead I followed old Lesson #1 — It’s Good to be Paranoid. Sure enough, Uriste had another visitor after me that day. Whoever it was didn’t sign into the hospital log, and none of the staff remembered much. One big dead end. That did it. I spent a few hours in Archives, checking and cross-checking. Those hours turned into days and the days into weeks. David, the more I looked, the more I saw. Not much hard evidence, but lots of shoddy investigations and inconsistent reports. Certain names kept popping up again and again. Worst of all, there’s someone near the very top involved.
I copied some documents, made notes of others. It’s mostly circumstantial, but a few hard facts. Enough to convince me,old friend. These vermin really exist, they have for a long time. I don’t know how many are involved, or which of our enemies they’re associated with, but it’s got to be a small operation. Otherwise, they’d never have been able to keep it quiet for so long. I was able to identify six people who are almost certainly involved, and another three who are probable. But I still don’t know who runs it. One other thing — they seem to be launching fewer attacks now than in years past, but the things they’ve done lately have been bigger, real newsgrabbers. And for the last six months it’s been especially quiet. I think they’re looking for something really big.