“What? He’s killed one of our own people?”
“I didn’t believe it at first either, but the man in the hospital is sure. It was Slaton.”
Jacobs sat down gingerly, his mind spinning through the possibilities.
“Let me tell you all of it,” Bloch started. “We got a tip from a source in Scotland Yard. It seems a small sailboat pulled into Penzance, that’s a port in southwestern England, and the skipper claimed to have rescued someone from a ship that had gone down. The name given was Polaris Venture.”
“So Slaton was on this sailboat?”
“Not when it pulled into port. The American was alone.”
“What did this fellow say happened to Slaton?”
“She said he got off hours earlier and rowed ashore in a dinghy. The situation was pretty murky, so I ordered London to send a team to find out what was going on. They were supposed to be discreet, but for some reason they approached this woman and ran into Slaton. He killed one of the men, put the other in the hospital, and ran off with the American woman in tow. I don’t know much more. We haven’t been able to talk to Itzaak yet. He’s the one that survived. The local police are keeping a close eye on him, and I’m sure Scotland Yard is involved now.”
Jacobs sank even lower in his chair. “Why would Slaton try to eliminate two of his own? And why take this woman with him?”
“I don’t know about the woman, but I can tell you without a doubt that he wasn’t trying to kill Itzaak.”
“How could you know that?”
Bloch dropped a thick file onto the Prime Minister’s desk. Absent were the usual title and security classifications. Jacobs opened it and winced at the one word emblazoned in red on the inside cover — kidon. Beneath that was the standard Mossad black and white, official glossy of David Slaton. Jacobs knew men like this existed, and he knew it was the kind of thing that could be poison to a politician. Yet it bothered him on an even more basic level.
“If this man had wanted Itzaak dead, we wouldn’t have a team headed to the hospital right now.”
Jacobs rubbed his temples. “Do you think he sabotaged Polaris Venture?”
“The American woman, a Dr. Christine Palmer, spoke to the police yesterday. Said she found Slaton nearly dead, floating around in the middle of the ocean. If that’s true, he either wasn’t the saboteur, or he mucked up his escape in a big way. Knowing Slaton, I doubt that.”
“You say, ‘If that’s true.’ Do you think this woman might be lying? Could she be involved?”
Bloch shrugged his beefy shoulders. “It’s something we’ll have to look into. None of it makes much sense right now, but I’d sure like to talk to Slaton.”
Jacobs shook his head. He’d have to call yet another Cabinet meeting. What a shouting match that would be. He looked again at the file on his desk.
“How well do you know this man, Anton? Do you still trust him?”
“I know him as well as anyone. I recruited him. His father was an officer in the Haganah. He helped design the guerrilla tactics that made us such a thorn to the British and Arabs. In the War of Independence, Ramon Slaton was the leader of the underwater demolition team that sank the Emir Farouk. Nine men destroyed the flagship of the Egyptian Navy.”
“Ramon Slaton …” Jacobs pondered, “I’ve heard that name but I don’t associate it with the War of Independence.”
“After winning the military battle we were faced with a very different set of problems. We had to start up a nation. Infrastructure, schools, health care. You couldn’t even mail a letter. It all took money and the new government had none. What it did have was a high level of support from expatriate Jewish communities. That and a world whose conscience was still haunted by the Holocaust. Ramon Slaton became an unofficial emissary, working the public and private coffers of Europe to get everything from missiles to plowshares.”
“Ramon Slaton — Cyprus!” Jacobs said with a burst of recognition.
“Yes, that was where it ended. He and his wife were gunned down on a street corner. A bodyguard killed the attacker, an Egyptian.” Bloch pointed to the folder on Jacobs’ desk. “The boy was nine years old at the time.”
“Where was he when it happened?”
“At school in Geneva. He was the only child, and with no other immediate family he was taken in by some friends of his parents. They lived on Kibbutz Gissonar. Later, when we screened him for recruitment, these years were given special attention. For the most part he channeled his grief constructively. He continued as a superior student and was strong athletically. But he also acquired an interest in the military. His adoptive father was a company commander in the Reserves, and he gave the boy a basic introduction to the tools of war. He spent two years at this new home, finally getting stability back into his life. Then it happened. He was home on Kibbutz Gissonar on the eve of the Yom Kippur War.”
Jacobs envisioned it. “Directly in the path of two Syrian armored divisions.”
“As a country, we were completely unprepared. The few armored units we had in the area were forced to pull back until reinforcements arrived. The people of the kibbutz used every car, truck, and bicycle to evacuate the women and children. When the Syrian tanks arrived, two dozen men and three World War II vintage rifles were all that stood between the Syrian army and the main pumping station of our National Water System. Some of the men hid. The ones who tried to fight were mostly mowed down by machine gun fire from the leading tanks and armored personnel carriers.”
“And the boy?”
“It was chaos, but he used his head. He acted alone, with nothing more than one of the old rifles and his knowledge of the area. He moved along the perimeter of the village looking for an opportunity. It came in the form of an APC with an overheated engine. The thing ground to a stop, spewing smoke. The rear door opened and soldiers began to stagger out, coughing and rubbing their eyes. The Syrians didn’t seem worried about being out in the open, probably thanks to the lack of resistance they’d seen so far. They milled around and began arguing. The boy saw his chance. He held his fire until he was sure the APC was empty. Then he let loose on the five soldiers, taking four before his gun jammed. The last one ran to the village for cover. The boy removed the bayonet from his rifle and killed the man by hand.”
Jacobs shook his head, “I’ve heard other stories,” he said, “but a child …”
Bloch nodded.
“Did the boy tell you this?”
“Eventually he filled in the blanks, but during his initial Mossad screening interviews he refused to talk about it. Most of it came to light by way of a witness, this idiot Captain who was in the Signals Intelligence Division. When the Syrians crossed the border, this fellow had to take a jeep and collect code books from a series of command bunkers that were about to be overrun. He was racing just minutes ahead of the Arab tanks when he lost control of his jeep passing through Kibbutz Gissonar. Went into a ditch and the jeep turned over on him. Broke his leg badly. The fool managed to take cover, and from there he had a bird’s-eye view of the whole thing.”
“I see,” Jacobs said, lowering his head in thought. “And is this what brought Slaton to the attention of Mossad?”
“In part. It also had to do with the fact that his father was a very influential man, one who died in service to the state.”
“What happened to the boy after the war?”
“He went back to school, eventually entering Tel Aviv University. He studied Biology and Western Languages. He had an exceptional gift for languages. Textbook speech is fine for the university or ordering dinner in a restaurant, but our section prefers those who have been immersed in a native country — regional accents and usages, slang. You can only get that kind of proficiency by living in a place, and the boy had spent time at several schools in Europe. He tested out at the highest level in three languages. We usually hope for one.”