Obsession (Year of Fire) (75 page)

In fact, Al-Saud wasn’t planning to hand anything further to Lars Meijer. If everything went according to his plans, Meijer would never mention the relationship between Israel and chemical weapons in any media outlet in the world again. That was why he needed to meet with the European head of Mossad. On the morning of Monday, March 2, after receiving Vladimir Chevrikov’s call, Al-Saud went to see him at his apartment.

“What news?”

“Vincent Pellon just called me. He says that Ariel Bergman, the European head of Mossad, has agreed to meet with you.”

“Fine. Tell Pellon Thursday.”

“Thursday, March fifth?”

“That’s right,” Al-Saud ratified. “On that day, a car will pick Bergman up at ten at night at the end of the Pont Alexandre III across from Les Invalides, in front of the Charlemagne column. He should be unarmed, without microphones or recorders.”

Ariel Bergman wrapped his scarf around his neck. The wind whipped off the Seine, and cold burrowed into the tiniest cracks. Although he was bundled up, he felt naked without his Beretta, the regulation weapon of Mossad agents. He wasn’t carrying anything except clothes and his identification. They had thought about the possibility of putting a transmitter under his skin, and dismissed it immediately, suspecting that Al-Saud would have the technology to detect it. They agreed to his demands
because they had no choice. Bouchiki’s photographs were going around the world, causing tumult in Tel Aviv. After the first article, on February 25, the
NRC Handelsblad
had published one more, with new photographs and more facts. Nobody knew exactly how many aces Meijer was hiding up his sleeve.

In Israel, the prime minister was shouting demands left and right and making the members of the cabinet and Mossad’s director nervous. The previous year’s Convention on Chemical Weapons, organized by the UN, had been discredited in the face of Israel’s flagrant failure to comply, and the secretary general was pressuring the government to provide an explanation. The prime minister suggested the line of argument that although they had signed the Convention on Chemical Weapons, they still hadn’t ratified it, which exempted them from justifying their actions. His advisers suggested that he not mention this argument in public.

Bergman sighed. He was tired. The consequences of this damn aerial accident from 1996 followed him around like a curse and, above all, distracted him from more relevant matters, such as the sudden appearance of Mohamed Abu Yihad on the European arms trafficking scene, for example. One of the Prince of Marbella’s partners, they were both part of Saddam Hussein’s world and apparently interested in stocking up on weapons, nuclear fuels and red mercury. There was also the disturbing reappearance of a demon from the past, the German terrorist Ulrich Wendorff, and the suspicious movements of a few members of the armed branch of Hamas, the Ezzedin al-Qassam Brigades, which led him to suspect that its head, Anuar Al-Muzara, was planning a new, deadly attack.
Anuar Al-Muzara
, he thought to himself with admiration and fury. He was the most slippery, intelligent enemy he had ever faced. Where was he hiding? They didn’t have a clue.

With these questions dancing around him, Bergman felt trapped in a political tug-of-war that would end the day he put a price on Al-Saud’s silence. He wondered how the UN secretary general would react if they found laboratories producing chemical weapons in Iraq.
Maybe
, he thought sardonically,
they could hire Al-Saud to uncover them in the heart of Baghdad or Tikrit.

A Peugeot 405, with tinted windows on all sides, including the windshield, stopped with the motor still running in front of the Charlemagne
column at the end of Pont Alexandre III. Bergman consulted his TAG Heuer: ten p.m. One of the rear doors opened in an invitation the Mossad agent wasn’t in a position to decline.

From a Range Rover parked a few yards away on the Quai d’Orsay, the katsas Diuna Kimcha and Mila Cibin watched their boss getting into a Peugeot 405, which crossed Pont Alexandre III heading away from L’Hôtel National des Invalides toward Avenue Winston Churchill. The Range Rover pulled out and followed it. Behind the tinted glass, in the backseat of the Peugeot, a man searched and blindfolded Bergman. They could tell that the vehicle was equipped with electronic countermeasures, because when they got near the Peugeot, their listening devices only played static. Moreover, the electronics experts in the base at the basement of the Israeli embassy warned them that a disruptive electromagnetic signal was being emitted by the Peugeot, preventing the satellite from tracking them. At that moment, the mission depended on Kimcha’s skill at the wheel of the Jeep, so as not to not lose sight of the car carrying Bergman away.

The Peugeot 405 went under the viaduct on Avenue Général Lemonnier, where the entrance to the underground parking lot of the Louvre was located.

“They’ve gone into the parking lot,” Cibin realized when he didn’t see them emerge from the other end of the viaduct. “It’ll be difficult to find them there! Damn bastards!”

It was getting late, but the place was full of cars. When the katsas finally came upon the Peugeot 405, it was empty.

Bergman, his eyes still blindfolded, was sitting in the back of an Audi A8, which brought him to the house on Avenue Elisée Reclus, where they entered through the garage on Rue Maréchal Harispe. The katsa squeezed his eyes shut under the blindfold to sharpen his sense of hearing. He identified the noise of a car elevator that went down one, two, three floors, judging by the three lurching sounds; the pitch of a scanner registering a hand or an eye, he didn’t know which; the buzz of an elevator; the five short beeps of a code being pressed into a keypad and a long, sharp one as the door opened. He was surprised by the silence of his guides; they hadn’t exchanged a word nor had they said anything to him. As soon as he set foot in the room, he was hit by a pleasant aroma, something like
orange or bergamot, and he inhaled the clean, fresh air. He counted fifty yards from the entrance to his final destination. A door closed behind him and hands gently pressed down on his shoulders, urging him to take a seat. Another, or perhaps the same set of hands, he couldn’t tell, took off the blindfold. It took him a few seconds of blinking to get used to the soft light shining in his face.

“Thank you for accepting our invitation,” a masculine voice said politely in English.

“I didn’t have much of a choice,” Bergman admitted, more out of humor than anger.

Three figures were standing outside of the pool of light. Bergman recognized them immediately: Eliah Al-Saud, Michael Thorton and Anthony Hill, the majority shareholders in Mercure Inc. Peter Ramsay was missing, but he owned fewer shares in the company. Still, Bergman suspected that he wasn’t far away; the ex-member of The Firm must have monitored his transfer to the site.

“You already know who we are,” Michael Thorton continued. “We don’t need to introduce ourselves. We believe that your agents tried to follow us some time ago, which means that Mossad has identified us.”

Bergman offered a condescending smile.

“Yes,” he admitted, “I know you. Lately you’ve been giving me quite a headache.”

Hill and Thorton laughed briefly; Al-Saud remained impassive. He was quite a lot younger than his partners and he was just as attractive in person as he had been in the photographs. He stayed somewhat removed, standing up, resting on the edge of a table, his legs lightly separated and his arms crossed over his chest. He communicated mistrust that was accentuated by his furrowed brow. A cold, lethal energy flowed from his body. Bergman looked at the muscles in his naked forearms—he had rolled up his white sleeves—and remembered what was said about him, that he had been trained to kill a man with one hand. He couldn’t avoid admiring the man in spite of the problems he had caused him over the last few weeks.

“Our actions,” Hill said, “are not personally motivated, not even toward you, Mr. Bergman, or the agency you belong to. They’re the consequence of an agreement we made.”

“Why did you ask me to come to see you?”

“Because we need a contact in the Israeli government,” Mike explained, “and we think that you’re the perfect person.”

“A contact? Why?”

“Mr. Bergman.” Al-Saud spoke for the first time, and leaned down to put himself at the same height as his partners. “We don’t just have proof that the Institute for Biological Research is producing chemical weapons on a large scale, but that El Al flight 2681, which crashed in Bijlmer, was carrying at least three of the four components of the nerve agent known as sarin.” Their eyes met in the bright light. “Our clients hired us last year to investigate whether the rumors that the cargo on the El Al flight wasn’t made up of cosmetics as was claimed were true.”

“Who are your clients?” Bergman wanted to know.

“The Metropolitan,” said Anthony, “and World Assurance, two Dutch insurance companies that have suffered large economic losses due to the accident in 1996.”

Al-Saud held out a folder, and Bergman studied it for a few long moments in which nobody made a sound. He tried to disguise his unease at the document he was analyzing. Bouchiki’s betrayal reached unthinkable dimensions. He had photographed not just the laboratories but also the documentation containing manifests of the nerve agents and their components and their names and providers. The next part was made up of notes, memorandums, records, documents, delivery orders, shipping manifests and much more, all with the Blahetter logo stamped on them. Many of these papers were in Spanish, a language he didn’t understand, but reading the details in English was enough to appreciate the magnitude of the danger.

“What do you want?”

“Our clients,” Tony spoke, “want to meet, discreetly of course, with the transport minister of your country and the authorities from El Al, and, in light of the interesting information with which we have just provided you, negotiate a compensation fee that will alleviate the economic damage suffered from the air crash.”

Bergman jumped to his feet, openly displaying his anger.

“You put the stability and diplomatic relations of a country at risk just for money?”

“Mr. Bergman,” said Al-Saud, “if your government and the El Al authorities hadn’t acted indifferently when our clients approached them in good faith to negotiate for compensation, we wouldn’t be in this situation today. But of course, when our clients tried to negotiate, they didn’t have the evidence we have now. The investigation brought facts to light that put us in an excellent bargaining position.”

“You put too much at risk with that strategy.”

“He who dares wins,” Tony said, and Bergman remembered that this was the SAS motto.

“The situation now seems irreversible with all these reports already out there,” the Israeli continued. “The
NRC Handelsblad
sold the information to every major newspaper and television channel in the world. The UN commission in charge of enforcing the Convention on Chemical Weapons is already requesting entry to Israel to assess the Institute of Biological Research.”

Thorton and Hill’s laughter ricocheted off the thick concrete walls.

“Worried about the UN, Mr. Bergman?” Mike said mockingly. “Your great friend and ally, the United States, owns the UN. You know as well as we do that that commission will not cross the Israeli border unless it’s to take a vacation on the banks of the Dead Sea.”

“There are groups in the United States who are very uncomfortable with these revelations,” Bergman explained, “and they’re starting to lobby for an investigation. We still don’t know how far the damage you’ve caused us already will spread.”

“Mr. Bergman,” Al-Saud intervened, with an air of impatience, “are you in a position to assure our clients that you will sit down to negotiate compensation with the authorities of your country and El Al?”

“What will we get in exchange?”

“You’ll be able to turn the situation around a hundred and eighty degrees, recover your good image in the international community, and halt the hail of threats raining down from the UN and international humanitarian organizations who haven’t approved of Israel for many years.”

“That’s impossible. It would be like trying to stop a truck with your hand. You set this story in motion and it will be difficult to repair now.”

“It won’t be if we tell you how,” Mike declared.

Bergman glanced over at these three men, incredulous that they had been able to put a state as powerful as Israel in this position. He fixed his gaze on Al-Saud. His instinct told him that the son of the Saudi prince had been the brains behind this strategy. Did he hate Jews because of his aristocratic Arabic ancestry? He didn’t think so. He suspected that in his pride and arrogance he considered himself above such trivial details as racial or religious prejudice. He didn’t even seem angry, just fed up, as though all these issues bored him. Moreover, thought Bergman, he couldn’t ignore his friendship with Shiloah Moses.

“How can you stop the scandal that you have set in motion?”

“After the meeting between our clients and the authorities of your country, we’ll tell you,” Mike said.

“If a suitable compensatory sum is agreed,” Tony clarified.

“Do you really expect me to go back to my government with so little?”

“It isn’t much,” Al-Saud accepted. “However, the threat of the rest of the information you just saw,” he said, gesturing at the folder in Bergman’s hands, “ending up in the newspapers is very strong.”

“This is blackmail!” the Israeli cried, pretending to be scandalized, while his interlocutors remained impassive.

“Your government will have to trust our word,” Mike picked up. “Time is against us. The media will keep on speculating and drawing conclusions. If we act quickly, the impact of the damage will be minimized. The meeting should take place in the next few days.”

Bergman’s head drooped and he looked at the folder in his hands.

“You can take it,” said Al-Saud. “They’re just copies. The originals are held under extremely secure conditions. If something should happen to me or my partners, the documentation and the rest of the photos will end up where you don’t want it. And I promise you that, by that point, it will be impossible to stop the impending catastrophe.”