Esther's Sling (7 page)

“You don’t look too good, Amit.” Shlomo Fiegelbaum was the no-nonsense director of the Collections Department of Mossad, the Israeli equivalent of the CIA’s deputy director of operations. This was not the man who usually gave Amit Margolis his assignments, so Amit was more than curious as he sat down. “You need coffee?”

“No, sir. Just a late night. I’m
fine.”

“You weren’t hanging out with Dov Hirsch last night?” The question from Fiegelbaum was rhetorical. “I miss
Dov’s, shall we say, ‘liveliness.’ His skills, however – I must admit – are perfectly suited for his role at Rafael.” Fiegelbaum paused and sized up his underling. He felt a fatherly attachment to every man and woman he sent out on missions. “Enough about Dov. We have a new assignment for you.”

“Sounds good.”

Fiegelbaum shook his head. “I have always thought that to be an odd expression. You haven’t heard what your assignment is yet.” Margolis smiled and shrugged his shoulders. “You have done a great job in Russia. This has been noticed and appreciated. We need you to do something very important, but it might compromise your ability to return to Russia.”

Margolis was excited. He was tired of being assigned to operations in Russia and ready to spend time back home. “It sounds important.”

“It is. And you are the one who made it this important. The operation you handled a few years ago when you got the chips into the Iranian Tor systems was a huge success. Now we need you to keep the value of that mission intact.

“As I am sure you are aware, the Russians signed a contract in December 2007 to sell the S-300 anti-aircraft system to Iran. This was a billion dollar contract, enough to make the Russians eager to see the deal through. Since then there has been intense pressure on Russia from the USA, us and Europe to kill the deal. Unfortunately, the Russians have been using this deal as leverage and we are afraid that they are getting close to going ahead with delivery. We need to stop that from happening.

“Your assignment is to meet a Russian FSB operative named Dmitri Arkanov. You will be negotiating on behalf of Israel. We need to figure out what they will take in order to call off the deal permanently. You understand Russians and you understand business. You are the right man for this job.” The FSB, or Federal Security Service, is the Russian descendant of the Soviet Union’s KGB.

“Sounds exciting. I’m on board. Timing?”

“Here’s the deal. We want the negotiation to be between us and Russia. No Americans. No Europeans. No one but you and Arkanov. You will need to be very discrete and very careful.”

“Then I suggest that either I go to Moscow or he comes here. Since the headquarters of FSB are no secret, I should go there. If he doesn’t have to travel, we cut out at least half of the traceable chain.”

“Exactly my thoughts, except that I’m not sure about you going into the Lubyanka. The Americans watch that place closely and it wouldn’t surprise me if the NSA can listen in on most of what goes on in there.”

“I will have to think about that,” replied Margolis. “To be honest, I would be happy to die without ever seeing the inside of the Lubyanka. There must be a million ghosts in that building.
Makes me ill thinking about it.” Both men thought about the bloody history of the building, which had housed Stalin’s secret police, the NKVD, before being home to the KGB and now the FSB. This was the same building where Lavrentiy Beria in the late 1930s built a drainage area for the more efficient cleaning of blood from the execution of prisoners every night, typically dispatched with a bullet to the back of the head. The same place where Beria was himself executed shortly after Stalin’s death.

Amit came back to the issues of the moment. “May I ask why me? You realize that once I show up in Moscow and make contact, I am blown for future operations there.”

“First, this has been discussed. You have done your duty in Russia, Amit. It is time for you to change venues. As for why you were picked. That is easy. You speak fluent Russian. You know how Russians think. You clearly know how to negotiate. You are trusted and this is a critical mission. By the way, you will be alone. No team. No backup. If you have trouble, you will need to get to a friendly embassy on your own. Can you accept that risk?”

“When do you want me to go?”

“I have your tickets.” Fiegelbaum opened a drawer in his desk and passed an envelope to Amit. “You fly out Monday to London. London to Moscow. The first passport is for here to London. The second passport will be your identity once in London. You will become a Brit named Roger Wilkinson. Your meeting in Moscow is this Wednesday. The information you need to know is in there. It includes a couple of reports. One on the S-300. It is a world-class system. We do not want that system in Iran. The other is everything we know on Dmitri Arkanov. I would like to tell you we have leverage on him or that his grandmother is Jewish. But this guy is clean and as goy as it gets. Both of those reports are to be left here. Background only.”

They spent another half hour discussing the mission, including the level of authorization Amit had and the methods of communication for Amit to use. Margolis was surprised at the amount of latitude he was being given. In the middle of the discussion, he realized that this mission would probably be the last time he could travel to Russia. By the time it was over, he was sure the FSB would have his fingerprints, his DNA, his voice print and many photographs.

Margolis started to stand as Fiegelbaum added one last statement. “By the way, bring in your Michael Jenkins passport and documents today. That alias is officially retired. We don’t want the FSB tracing you back to prior operations. We will keep the business front in Toronto open for cover purposes, but you no longer travel under that alias.”

The McDonald’s at 29 Bolshaya Bronnaya Street on Pushkinskaya Square in Moscow was first opened in 1990. It quickly became the highest volume McDonald’s in the world. While customers no longer waited in line for hours, this restaurant was still one of the busiest in the world for the fast food chain. Amit Margolis ordered nine chicken McNuggets with sweet and sour sauce and a Coca-Cola.

It
was January 6 and Moscow had a fresh coating of several inches of snow from the prior night. As instructed, Amit sat next to the long stretch of windows facing the street. His training wanted him to turn his back to the window, but he was resigned to the fact that he was being photographed in detail. He continued to wear his leather gloves. He was determined that at least the FSB would not get his fingerprints. Per the agreed contact plan, he wore a red scarf and kept his long black winter coat on. His eyes scanned the restaurant and the street, trying to pick out the FSB team.

He was down to his last
McNugget when a man who had been at a back table stood up and walked over. “May I join you?”

“Please do.”

“Visiting Moscow?”

“Here on important business for a few days. You?”

“Not a visit for me. I live here.”

“Perhaps you can show me around?”

“My pleasure.” The man was much older than Amit. The Israeli would have put him in his sixties if he didn’t know from the file that Dmitri Arkanov was fifty-seven. It struck Amit that most long-serving intelligence professionals he knew, like Arkanov and Fiegelbaum, tended to look older than they were.

Amit ate his last piece of chicken in one bite. “Well then, let’s go.” He stood and shook the man’s hand. “I’m Lev.” Amit wheeled a cheap black overnight suitcase behind him that he had
purchased the prior afternoon.

“My name is Dmitri.”

A half hour later, Amit opened the door to a randomly selected hotel room in a randomly selected hotel. The odd couple walked in and arranged the pair of chairs in the corner for an open discussion. Amit put the suitcase in the corner and removed his coat, the red scarf having been left in the trash at the McDonald’s. He kept his gloves on. “Shall we begin?” Both men sat down.

“Of course, Mister ..?”

“Cohen.”

“Mister Cohen. That is appropriate.” Arkanov smiled at his counterpart. “I must say that your Russian is flawless. Did you grow up here?”

“Yes. Right here in Moscow as a matter of fact.” The response was the opposite of the truth, but Amit was more than happy to send the Russians on a goose chase.

“I am guessing that Cohen is not your real name.”

Amit smiled. “Well, I can’t make it that easy for you. But I can assure you that I have the full authority and backing of my government.”

“I have no doubt about that.
And I can assure you of the same.” Arkanov crossed his legs. His dark gray suit was much higher quality than what the old-time KGB used to wear, but was still short of the standards on Wall Street. “It seems that Israel has concerns about Iran.”

Amit raised his right hand in the air, his palm facing the Russian. “Please, Dmitri. We have important matters to discuss. Let’s not waste time discussing obvious issues. We want you to agree to permanently forego the sale of the S-300 system to Iran and you want something in return. I have no idea what this is, so please tell me what you want.”

Arkanov cocked his head to the side and shook it slowly. “Your directness is refreshing. In my position politics has become too common and I am used to the dance. I will try to be more to the point.” Arkanov reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a box of Winston cigarettes. He offered one to Amit. “Do you smoke?” Amit shook his head. “Mind if I do?”

“If you must.”

Arkanov put a cigarette in his mouth and placed the box down on the table. He then pulled a lighter from the same pocket, lit the cigarette and placed the lighter on the table next to the box. “Thank you. I can’t think right unless I have a smoke.” He reached over to the far end of the table for the glass ashtray. “As you know, my government has a long history of supporting Iran. We feel it is appropriate and important for them to be able to defend their sovereign territory. We strive to achieve a fair balance in the region and your country, along with your allies, are in no danger of any military imbalance. Quite the contrary.”

“What is it you want?” Amit’s words were stern. He commanded a level of respect far beyond his years. At his request, his hair had been colored almost completely gr
ay for this journey and the impact helped him with the older Russian.

“Your country maintains close relations with Georgia. Georgia is, to us, much as Iran is to you. In addition, we have ongoing concerns in Chechnya. Were you to provide certain support for us on both of these issues, my government is willing to seriously consider your concerns with respect to our dealings with Iran.”

Amit Margolis had spent the last five years negotiating with Russians. There was a pattern of speech that every Russian over 50 years old was locked into. It was the art of subtle vagueness that had been so critical to longevity in the old Soviet Union. For the men who had come of age in the old system, the pattern was set in granite. The pattern held true today. “We certainly share much with regard to Chechnya and we certainly have had a relationship with the Georgians,” Amit said. “How is it, specifically, that you think we can help you?”

“Since we share a common interest in Chechnya, we would like to have active cooperation between our intelligence agencies.”

Amit broke the Russian’s train of thought. “How?”

Arkanov was taken aback. He was used to complete deference from his subordinates. On the other hand, he thought to himself, Jews are notoriously pushy and rude. “We would like to have an active liaison. We want you to have a representative here in Moscow that interacts daily with the FSB.”

“I am not sure that daily makes sense; however, we are willing to work with you to share intelligence on Chechnya.”

“You understand that your objectives in Chechnya must be in line with ours,” the Russian continued.

“And those objectives would be?”

“I will be very candid. Like you with Arab terrorists or America with al Qaeda, we actively seek to interdict Muslim Chechen terrorists. We wish to cooperate in the identification of appropriate targets.” Like any good negotiator, Arkanov had sought agreement first on the easier issue.

“I think that you can correctly assume that we have common objectives in Chechnya. Now let’s discuss Georgia,” Amit responded.

“Georgia is of historical importance to my country. I will start with our objectives. We desire that they maintain an even hand in their relations with us. We are not seeking to annex Georgia, we only wish that they stay close to their historic roots. After all, the birthplace of Stalin should not become a playground of American imperialism.” Arkanov smiled but got no response from the Israeli. “We wish for your active support in restraining American inroads into Georgia and we ask that you stop selling advanced weapons systems to Georgia.”

“Israel is always happy to seek a level playing field in your backyard. Is this the key issue for you?”

“I welcome that response. But there is something more concrete we
desire. You have provided command and control computers for the Georgian radar network. We would like to have access to what they see on those radars.”

This was a direct request and Margolis knew exactly what the Russians wanted: the ability to take control of what the Georgians see on their radars in the event of a Russian attack. Amit thought about his response carefully. “I certainly believe that my country can refrain from selling weapons that are commensurate in quality with the S-300
,” he said. “And I am comfortable telling you that we will join you in urging restraint with our American ally. But I do not have authority to agree to what you want on their radar system, nor do I think such a plan would be acceptable to my government.”

Arkanov took a last draw on his cigarette and buried the lit end into the glass ashtray. The cigarette had not been even half consumed. “That would be unfortunate. My government is under intense pressure to fulfill its contractual commitments to Iran. Perhaps you could discuss the matter with the appropriate authority.”

“Yes, I am happy to discuss your proposal.”

“How much time do you need?”

“Let’s meet in the lobby tomorrow at thirteen hundred.”

Dmitri Arkanov stood. “I will be there.” He extended his ha
nd and Amit stood and shook it.

Amit escorted the Russian out the door, glanced down the hallway, which was empty, and closed the door. He walked back to the table
. The cigarette box and lighter were gone. The Israeli thought about that and recalled that the Russian had returned the cigarettes and lighter to his right pants pocket when he stood up to leave. Amit remembered that the FSB operative had earlier retrieved those same two items from his breast pocket. Amit went down onto one knee. Amit bent over at the waist and stuck his head under the bed. The lighter was there on the rug about two feet underneath the bed. Amit knew that it had to be a listening device.

He stood back up and headed for the door. Within a minute he was downstairs in the lobby, his eyes scanning for FSB men. It only took a few seconds to spot two men. Their strident attempts to avoid looking in his direction made them obvious. Amit
headed back to his room.

Back in
his room, Amit opened his cheap overnight case. Inside were a pair of sneakers, a hat and a blue Gore-Tex winter jacket. Amit took off his overcoat and suit jacket and hung both up in the closet. He put on the contents of the suitcase and then placed it in the small closet. He turned on the television and found a news channel. Next he went to the door of his room and opened it, stepped into the hall and closed the door. He stood in the hall for a minute and then opened and closed his door while he stayed in the hallway. Now he headed to the rear exit of the hotel, stopping to look out the window. He was on the second floor and he could see the alleyway below. There was no one visible. He entered the stairwell, walked down and exited into the alley. Within a few minutes he was several blocks away. He hailed a taxi and gave the driver directions in broken Russian to the hotel he had checked into the previous day, doing his best to sound and act like an American tourist.

Forty minutes later
, Margolis checked the telltale he had put on his door when he left earlier in the day along with a “Do Not Disturb” doorknob hanger. The clear piece of tape was along the top edge of the door and still bent outward toward the hallway just as he left it. He opened his door and entered the room, relieved to see that the bed was unmade and the dirty towel he had left on the floor by the door was undisturbed. He opened the closet and pulled out his real suitcase, supplied to him by Mossad. He opened it and removed a computer. The computer had only one purpose and he placed it on the room’s utilitarian desk to put it to use.

Amit booted the
computer up and it opened directly to a word processer. Amit typed in a review of the meeting and the questions that required answers from Jerusalem. Only the prime minister of Israel could approve Russia’s request. When he was done he retrieved a cable from his suitcase along with his cell phone. He plugged one end of the cable into the USB port of the computer and the other into the micro USB port of his BlackBerry phone. He clicked an icon on the computer and the memo he had just typed was compressed, encrypted and downloaded onto his phone. The computer then erased the memo automatically from its random access memory and erased the one-time cipher key it had just used, rewriting a random sequence of digits over the prior disk drive space. The message written by Margolis had never been saved on any drive.

On the cell phone, an email message light appeared. Margolis unplugged the cable and opened his email. A photograph of Red Square appeared on his screen and he pushed a button to forward the photograph in a text message to a contact named
“Mary.” Along with the photo, Amit typed “Safe in Moscow. Miss you.” and then hit the send button. Encoded and embedded within the photograph was the memo he had written on the computer. Once he received confirmation that the message had been sent, he relaxed, turned on the TV and lay down on the bed to wait.

Inside the Israeli embassy at 2 Palace Green in London, a resident Mossad communications officer received a text on his recently activated Virgin Mobile prepaid cell phone. The phone was one of several that sat on his desk mated to his computer. Each phone supported communications with a single katsa who was operating in the field. He transferred the texted photograph to his computer, which stripped the embedded text from the photograph, keeping it encoded in its original cipher. This raw ciphered message – a long string of binary digits – was itself mated to a routing code and the combination was encoded into the embassy code in use that day. This final encoded message was sent along with
the day’s traffic to Tel Aviv via satellite transmission.

This convoluted process had a
purpose. Israel wanted to keep the NSA, the National Security Agency of the United States, from learning about these negotiations. The NSA would certainly pick up the text messages between Margolis and London, but they would be just a handful of messages out of tens of millions scooped up by the NSA that day alone. The first line of defense for the Israelis was to send messages that would not be flagged by NSA computers as worthy of more detailed scrutiny. The keys for this were the use of innocuous words and photographs; the use of phone numbers that would have no reason to be flagged; and the careful sizing of the photograph file so that it was within the expected range – a file that was too big would fall under suspicion. The only thing that worried the professionals in Unit 8200 who designed this system, was the fact that the texts were routed through one of the cell towers located near Embassy Row in London. This could be a flag in and of itself. But even if the NSA picked these texts out, and even if, after they intercepted the satellite communications, they had broken the Israeli embassy code for the day, the critical message from Margolis used a one-time cipher that was theoretically impossible to break.