“I don’t know how you expect to do that. We haven’t got a single good agent inside of the Soviet Union who is far enough inside the system to know that.”
“We don’t, sir, but Israel does. Dr. Saul, he’s the head of the Mossad, he might know. He’s got the best penetration into the Soviet Union of any of us and he’s a friend.”
“I didn’t think of Israel,” Benson said slowly. “But if he knows he should have told us by now. We’re his best ally.”
“That isn’t the way the game is played,” Wilson grunted. “If it’s okay with you I’ll go to Tel Aviv and see him. He owes me a few favors. If he knows he’ll tell me. I’d like a couple of those pictures Admiral Brannon gave you of the Shark-fin to take with me.”
Admiral Benson sat quietly, looking out the window, turning the problem over in his mind. He opened and closed a snap on the briefcase and the sharp metallic sound hung in the air.
“I’d better send you an interoffice memo telling you to go to New York, to the United Nations for some talks. That would account for your absence from the office.” He looked out the window at the wind-scarred countryside. “I’ll get back to Mike Brannon, tell him to stand pat for a few days.” He drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. “You know, running a carrier division was a hell of a lot more fun than this job.”
Seated in his office with a cup of coffee Wilson looked at his watch. Ten in the morning, Washington time. Five in the afternoon in Tel Aviv. Isser Bernstein, a.k.a. Dr. Saul, would be in his office. No chief of Israel’s Mossad, its famed intelligence service, ever went home early. He reached for the scrambler phone and asked to be connected with Dr. Saul’s office.
“How’s your health, my friend?” Dr. Saul’s hearty voice boomed through the mechanical artificiality of the scrambler.
“Not so good, Doctor. Bad attack of nostalgia, I think. I desperately need to see someone.”
Wilson sat back in his chair, visualizing the man at the other end of the telephone connection. A short man with a tanned bald head ringed with a fringe of gray hair that matched his small goatee and precisely trimmed mustache. Isser Bernstein was a former Irgun terrorist who had helped form the Mossad in 1945. In the years since he had risen to be its chief and had become a legend in the world’s intelligence circles.
“Nostalgia can sometimes be difficult to treat.” Bernstein’s voice was solemn.
“I know,” Wilson said. “I think you’re the only doctor who can help me. Do you remember our mutual friend, the one who smokes Kools and who went to a university in New York?”
“Ah, yes. Not a person to help sick people.”
“I know but I have to see him if I am to be cured of what ails me. I’d like to do that in your consulting room. Soon. Very soon, Doctor.”
“So you suffer also from anxiety. Be calm. Don’t drink too much coffee. I will see what I can do.”
The call came the next morning from the Israeli Embassy in Washington. A man’s voice instructed Wilson to be in New York that afternoon, that a seat had been reserved in his name on El Al Airlines. The man hesitated a moment and then said, “Dr. Saul advises you eat a light lunch, sir. The cuisine on the airline is famed for its excellence. You will be met upon arrival.”
When Wilson walked into the terminal at the Lydda Airport the next day he saw Isser Bernstein’s secretary waiting for him at the Customs barrier. They smiled at each other and she nodded at the Customs agent who bowed slightly to Wilson. “Nice to see you again, Naomi,” Wilson said. “You get more beautiful every time I see you.”
“And you flatter without reason just as much as you always did. It’s been more than two years since that weekend in Athens and you never wrote me, not once.”
“People in our business don’t write letters, you know that. You broke my heart when you told me you wouldn’t marry me.
“People in our business don’t marry,” she said primly. He followed her through the crowded terminal, his trained eye picking out the unobtrusive men who were ahead of them and back of them as they moved through the crowd. Naomi led him to a battered Fiat parked in a No Parking zone. He cramped himself into the bucket seat beside her and reached for his cigarettes.
“How’s the good doctor, and do you mind if I smoke?”
“He’s fine and I do mind. Cigarettes give you cancer, don’t you know that?” She pulled the car out into the traffic behind a Mercedes with four men in it. “There’s another car behind us,” she said. “Even here at home Dr. Saul takes no chances.”
Twenty minutes later the Fiat pulled up in front of a house surrounded by a high whitewashed wall with sharp spikes studding its top. Two men opened a heavy iron gate and came trotting out to the car. One of the men opened the car door on Wilson’s side and extended a hand to assist him out of the car.
“Welcome home, Mr. Wilson,” he said, his teeth gleaming in his dark face. “The doctor is inside the gate.”
“My old friend from the wars!” Isser Bernstein wrapped his arms around Wilson in a hug. “How is it you grow old and ugly with the years while I get ever more handsome and youthful?” He stepped back, his eyes shrewd. “And how is life for you these days with that airplane jockey your president put at the head of your company?”
“He’s a good guy, very bright,” Wilson said. “He’s hung up on things like loyalty and trust and honesty.”
Bernstein shook his head as he led Wilson into the house. “None of those are qualifications for our work. One must be a thief and a liar and have no sense of shame. Which is why we two are such a great success. Come into the kitchen, I must talk with you before Shevenko gets here. We’ve got a few minutes.
“I have to impose a condition, my friend. This is a very delicate thing you have asked me to do and I have done it. Now I must insist that I sit in on your talk with Shevenko. Moise, you remember Moise Shemanski, he’s still my right hand man, he’ll sit with me.”
Wilson shook his head. “I’d rather not, Isser.”
“So I’ll leave you alone with Shevenko. Do you know if the room is bugged? No. But you might suspect so you go for a walk in the garden to talk. I can listen to you with a Big Ear. You gave us our first Big Ear and we have made many since then. So what do you want to do? Better to have Moise close by in case that Russian bear decides to give you a hug.”
“You’ve got a point,” Wilson said. “We’ll do it your way. But don’t interrupt unless I ask you to do so.”
“Who interrupts? I don’t like talking to that bastard.”
The meeting was held in the kitchen. Wilson and Shevenko sat across from each other at the kitchen table with cups of steaming coffee in front of them. Isser Bernstein and Moise Shemanski, a burly, taciturn Pole who had escaped from a Nazi concentration camp in 1944 and made his way to Israel, sat in wooden chairs against one wall of the kitchen.
Shevenko raised his coffee cup as if offering a toast. “We meet again, Bob. It was worth the long trip just to see you.” He sipped at his coffee. “I might say also that it is almost worth the trip to taste this coffee. You would not believe the coffee we get in our building at home. It must be the water, not even the best American instant coffee tastes very good.”
“You know why I want to see you,” Wilson said.
“I am not good at guessing games, my friend. Tell me.”
“One of our ballistic missile submarines was attacked and sunk by one of your submarines. The attack took place in the Atlantic, west of the Strait of Gibraltar. That was a deliberate act of war, Shevenko.”