The Third Target (22 page)

The next twenty-four hours were a whirlwind.

Yael and Ari were true to their word. They gave me everything I needed and then some.

As I was preparing to leave, Ari explained why he hadn’t personally come to meet me in Turkey. He told me
 
—completely off the record, of course
 
—that the prime minister had sent him on a secret mission to Jordan.

“Lavi is determined to be remembered by history as the leader who nailed down a final peace accord with the Palestinians,” he whispered. “I told him the timing was wrong. I’m not opposed to a two-state solution. Not at all. But to make a deal right when ISIS is about to hit us with chemical weapons? It’s foolish. But he doesn’t agree, and he’s the boss. So I went. I’m sorry I wasn’t with you.”

I thanked him for his candor and all his help and Yael’s. I apologized for putting Yael in harm’s way, but he wouldn’t hear of it.

“That’s what I pay her for,” the Mossad chief said.

“It can’t possibly be enough,” I said.

Yael sighed. “You’ve got that right.”

Ari and I shook hands. Then Yael drove me to a private airfield. On the way, she gave me her real mobile number and asked me to
call her when I arrived in Amman. Then she put me on a Learjet and instructed the pilot to fly me to Cairo. She said I could write my story there in peace and quiet and have it datelined from an Arab capital, not from Israel.

It was a good idea, and I was grateful. I would be safe there. No one would suspect me of being in Egypt. I didn’t want to leave Tel Aviv. I wanted to spend more time with Yael. But the clock was ticking. She wished me well, shook my hand, and said good-bye, and with that, she was gone.

Once on the ground in Cairo, I took a cab downtown. I used the phone Khachigian had given me to scan through the headlines back in the States. The nation was riveted on the events at Union Station. The president had called it a tragedy. The mayor of D.C. called it another senseless slaughter. The head of the FBI called it a cold-blooded homicide without rhyme or reason. But that was all spin. The FBI knew there was a reason for the attack. They knew it was terrorism, and they had to suspect it was either al Qaeda or ISIS. But they were still treating the case like another Columbine massacre or the shootings at Sandy Hook, not like a national security emergency.

What’s more, the bureau was keeping what cards it had closer than usual. They still weren’t releasing the names of any of those who had been killed. Nor were they releasing the name of the female shooter who had been pronounced dead at the scene. At least they were no longer sticking to the “right-wing white supremacist” nonsense.

The Feds had now confirmed there had been a second shooter. MSNBC was running grainy video footage from someone’s smartphone showing a sniper on the second floor, back in the corner. An intrepid
Washington Post
reporter had even gotten a detailed description of the sniper and his weapon from an off-duty D.C. police officer who happened to be eating at the Pizzeria Uno on the second floor at the time of the shooting. The officer had tried to chase the sniper but had been shot twice and was now in guarded condition
at a local hospital. The Associated Press, meanwhile, was quoting several witnesses who said there was a third shooter as well. That, I assumed, was me, and I knew I would have to talk to the FBI soon lest I become an active suspect.

I directed the cab to a Hilton I had once stayed in near the American embassy. There were few tourists, few business guests, and plenty of rooms available. I took a spacious suite overlooking the Nile, pulled out my laptop and notes, and set to work.

The process didn’t take long, given that I had already written several drafts over the past few weeks. Essentially, all I needed to do now was add in the new material I had gathered over the past forty-eight hours, including several quotes from Khachigian. I decided to break the story of how deeply involved in this process Khachigian had been, along with the fact that he’d been killed at Union Station. I didn’t connect all the dots about why he’d been killed. I didn’t need to. I just wanted to stick to the facts that I could prove, and I had plenty.

When I was finished, I debated calling Allen and personally updating him on all that had happened. In the end, however, I opted against it. I simply sent him the story by e-mail with a single sentence that I was safe and coming home soon. I didn’t want an argument. I didn’t want a dressing-down. I just wanted to file and keep moving. If he was going to fire me, so be it. I wasn’t going to fight for my job. I was just going to keep doing it until I was either broke or dead.

The moment the e-mail went through, I jumped in a cab, raced back to the airport, and bought the last seat on the last flight to Amman, Jordan, that night. I didn’t want to be in Cairo when my story hit the newsstands. Besides, from Amman I could get a direct flight to Baghdad.

In the meantime, now that my story had been filed, it was time to put the battery back in my iPhone and go to work. I e-mailed and texted every contact I knew in the Iraqi government. Yet again
I pleaded for their help to locate and then secure an interview with Abu Khalif. I also said I was coming to Baghdad in the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours and would be deeply grateful for their assistance. It was an enormous risk, especially after filing a story about chemical weapons and ISIS. Jamal Ramzy had been crystal clear that I was to go nowhere near that story. But I was going anyway. I had to.

Live or die, I was going to hunt down this story to the end.

The next morning, I woke up at Le Méridien, an upscale hotel in downtown Amman.

I glanced at the alarm clock on the nightstand beside me. It was 7:23 a.m. I got out of bed, rubbed the sleep from my eyes, and powered up my laptop. As I ordered room service for breakfast, I wondered what Allen had done with the story I’d sent him. Had he run it or buried it? I didn’t dare guess. I’d defied his direct orders. He had insisted that I come meet with him in Washington, and I’d planned to, of course. But events had taken a turn I could never have expected. In any case, I had gotten him the third source he’d insisted upon with regard to the WMD story. The final draft I’d sent him was written with significantly more care and precision than the previous versions. But it was still an explosive piece.

If Allen had signed off on it and it was really going to be published soon, it was going to create an international firestorm. Just a few months earlier, few people outside the intelligence community had ever even heard of ISIS. Now the jihadist movement had captured half of Iraq and much of Syria and could very well be in possession of large amounts of sarin gas. Not only that, they were threatening to hit a third target beyond Iraq and Syria. The implications for U.S. and Israeli national security were chilling, to say the least. But would Allen really run with it? I hoped so, but I didn’t know.

I pulled up the
New York Times
home page and held my breath.

There it was, on the front page.

ISIS Forces Seize Syrian Base Where Chemical Weapons Stored,
read the enormous banner headline, with a subhead that read,
“Intelligence experts warn al Qaeda faction, now signaling new terror attacks, may have WMD.”

My body tensed. I thought I’d be excited. But as I scanned the story, I actually felt full of dread. The weight of what this all meant began to come down on me. I read through it quickly. It was all there. Allen had made only minor edits. Now the story was available for the whole world to see. There was no turning back. The president was going to wake up to it. So was the director of the CIA. And Prime Minister Lavi. And Jamal Ramzy. And, I had to assume, Abu Khalif. What would they say? What would they do?

I had included all the caveats the president and CIA director had warned me about
 
—though not citing them, of course. I had carefully noted that while three different intelligence agencies had clear proof of ISIS seizing the base and carrying off hundreds of crates, none of them could give definitive evidence that ISIS now actually possessed WMD. The
Times
didn’t want to get burned on another bogus Mideast WMD story. Neither did I. It was my reputation on the line, and I guarded it jealously.

I had woken up hungry. Now I had lost all interest in food. Instead, I pulled up airline schedules online and considered my meager options. I was going to Baghdad. ISIS could kill me, but they couldn’t stop me from letting the world know what they were up to. I had Ramzy’s interview. I had the WMD angle. Now I wanted Abu Khalif, and the only way to get him was to get to the Iraqi capital and hunt him down.

I booked a seat on Royal Jordanian Airlines flight 810, departing at 5:30 that evening and landing at about 8 p.m. local time. From the airport, I would head straight for a hotel in the Green Zone where I had stayed in the past.

It would be a return to familiar but dangerous territory: the hotel had a well-trafficked bar. During the second Iraq war, I’d spent countless nights there. I’m guessing that’s where I officially became an alcoholic. Everyone who was anyone hung out there in the evenings, after the Western submission deadlines had passed. It was the kind of place I could pick up leads and get the lay of the land. But it was all done over whiskey and bourbon and an occasional bottle of vodka. For that reason alone, it was probably suicide to go back. But that’s where the sources were, so that’s where I had to be too.

I opened the door to the hallway, picked up my complimentary copy of the
Jordan Times
from the carpet, and brought it into the room. Pulling back the drapes to let in some light, I looked out over the sprawling skyline of the Jordanian capital and thought about Yael. I debated calling her, but what was there to say? We couldn’t have a personal conversation on the phone. She had work to do, and so did I. She had probably given me her real number in case I had a follow-up question. She was a professional. She was a spy. She hadn’t suggested I ask her out. Even if I did, when was I going to be back in Israel? The whole thing suddenly seemed ridiculous and awkward. Here I was, a grown man. Divorced. Single. Not seeing anyone. Yet I felt like a boy trying to get up the nerve to ask a girl to the junior high dance.

I grabbed my phone off the desk. It had finished charging overnight. Yet instead of calling Yael or even texting her, I found myself sending an SMS message to my brother. He was in Amman. Maybe I should say hi. Seemed like the decent thing to do. I couldn’t avoid him forever, and it would make my mom happy.

Matt
 
—hey, in town for a few hours. You free?
 
—JB

I debated calling Hadiya, Omar’s wife, but I wasn’t sure she would be happy to hear from me. Instead I sent her an e-mail telling her how much her husband had meant to me and how sorry I was for her
loss. Perhaps in time I could express my sorrow and regret to her in person. For now, I decided, she probably needed some space.

With no one else to contact at the moment, I scanned the local headlines. None were what I expected.

King Says ‘Historic Breakthrough’ Possible in Palestinian Peace Talks with Israel

Prime Minister Says ‘Peace to Our West’ Would Help Calm ‘Storm to Our East’

Palestinian President Mansour to Meet with King in Aqaba

Gas Prices Climb, but Food Prices Stable in November

To my astonishment, there was nothing about ISIS on the front page, only an allusion to the implosion of Jordan’s next-door neighbor. I knew the palace kept a pretty tight grip on news coverage, but were they really going to try to act like ISIS wasn’t on the move? I quickly flipped through the pages, but there was little mention of the Islamic State inside the paper either. One story focused on a new refugee camp Jordan and the U.N. were building in the north. Another noted that the U.S. had just authorized the sale of new Hellfire missiles and other arms to the Iraqi government. Only deep inside did I find this headline:
Jordan Does Not Fear ISIS Rebels, Says Interior Minister
. But the accompanying article was only six paragraphs long.