Gideon's Spies полностью

Was that Zein’s final destination? the controller had finally asked. Yes, Bern, in Switzerland. And that was where Zein lived? The informer thought so, but could not be certain.

Nevertheless, it was Mossad’s first positive news about Zein since he had left Lebanon to organize Hezbollah’s fund-raising activities among wealthy Shiite Muslims in Europe. Their money, along with that from Iran, funneled through its embassy in Bonn, paid for Hezbollah’s war of attrition against Israel. In the past year, Zein had been variously reported as operating from Paris, Madrid, and Berlin. But each time Yatom had sent someone to check, there had been no trace of the slim thirty-two-year-old with a taste for snappy Italian-cut suits and customized shoes.

Yatom had dispatched a katsa to Bern from Brussels, where Mossad had recently transferred its control center for European operators from Paris. The katsa had spent two fruitless days in Bern searching for Zein. He decided to extend his inquiries. He drove south to Liebefeld, a pleasant dormitory town. The katsa had last passed through its streets five years before, on his way out of Switzerland after being part of a team that had destroyed metal vats in a bioengineering company near Zurich; the vats were designed to manufacture bacteria and had been ordered by Iran. The team had destroyed the vats with explosive devices. The company had canceled all its contracts with Iran.

In Liebefeld, the katsa had shown that good intelligence work often depended on patient footwork. He had walked the streets, looking for anyone who could be from the Middle East. He had checked the phone book for a listing for Zein. He had telephoned house-leasing agencies to see if they had rented or sold a property to anyone of that name. He had called the local hospitals and clinics to see if a patient of that name had been admitted. Each time he had said he was a relative. With still nothing to show for a day’s work, the katsa had decided to make another sweep of the town, this time in his car.

He had driven for some time through the streets when he spotted a dark-skinned man, wrapped against the night cold, driving a Volvo in the opposite direction. There had been only the briefest of glimpses, but the katsa was convinced that the driver was Zein. By the time the katsa had found an intersection to turn his car, the Volvo had disappeared. Next evening, the katsa was back, this time parked in a position to follow. Shortly afterward, the Volvo appeared. The katsa fell in behind. A mile later, the Volvo parked outside an apartment block and the driver emerged and entered the building, 27 Wabersackerstrasse. The katsa had no doubt the man was Abdullah Zein.

The katsa followed Zein into the apartment block. Beyond the plate-glass door was a small lobby with mailboxes. One of them identified the owner of a third-floor apartment as “Zein.” A door off the lobby led to a basement service area. The katsa opened the door and went down to the basement. Fixed to a wall was a junction box for all the telephones in the building. Moments later he was back in his rental car.

Next day he leased a safe house half a mile from Wabersackerstrasse. He told the letting company he was expecting friends to join him for a skiing holiday.

Danny Yatom had continued planning. He had sent a communications specialist to Liebefeld to examine the junction box. The technician had returned to Tel Aviv with a set of photographs he had taken of the inside of the box. The prints were studied in the research and development department and adjustments made to the devices being prepared. One was a sophisticated bug capable of monitoring all calls in and out of Zein’s apartment. The bug would be linked to a miniature recorder capable of storing hours of phone calls. The recorder had a built-in capacity to be electronically emptied by a prearranged signal from the safe house. There the recordings would be transcribed and sent by secure fax to Tel Aviv.

By the first week of February 1998, all the technical plans were in place. Yatom moved to the most crucial part of the operation: choosing the team who would carry it out. The operation had two stages. The first was to gather sufficient evidence to show that Zein continued to be a key player in Hezbollah’s activities. The second part was then to kill him.

By mid February 1998 everything was ready.

Shortly before 6:30 A.M. on that Monday, February 16, Yatom’s Peugeot entered the parking lot in the basement of Mossad headquarters in Tel Aviv, and he took the elevator to a fourth-floor conference room. Waiting there were two men and two women. Seated around a table, they had already paired off as couples, the role they would assume in Switzerland. Each was in his late twenties, suntanned, and superbly fit-looking. For the past few days they had been up in the snow of northern Israel brushing up on their skiing.