Donner stepped in. “Unfortunately, it will not play out that way unless this officer is stopped.” He had looked Janson full in the face. “That is our rogue operation. Will you help?”
“Help you how?” Janson had asked.
“Kill the bastard. We can’t get close to him. We’re too well known, by the Mossad and by our counterparts in South Africa. But you are a stranger.”
They code-named Janson “Saul.”
The operation itself they named biblically, in the Mossad tradition, “Operation Sword Fall.” Janson had protested. He had read the Old Testament to prepare for his posting to Jerusalem, and knew that facing capture by Philistines, Saul had fallen on his own sword.
They meant the other Saul, the Stern Gang laughed. The one who became a Christian and built the Catholic Church. “Paul before he went native,” Donner had joked.
Still, the mission they laid out verged on the suicidal.
The best thing about it was that no one would ever know. Not the U.S. State Department, not Consular Operations, not the CIA, not the South African Security Service, not even the Mossad. The Stern Gang used their still-formidable connections within the Mossad to fill the blank weeks in Janson’s record with tantalizing hints of Janson’s participation in a top-secret operation in Iraq. To this day that legend had stuck and Paul Janson’s first killing was still a secret. Not even Jessica knew.
* * *
JANSON MADE HIS pitch to the retired spies while they sipped tea at the shaded end of the swimming pool. Donner’s and Grandig’s tea was iced and sprinkled with mint leaves, old Weintraub’s hot in a glass and sucked through a sugar cube.
Janson described in colorful and precise detail the Harrier rescue of President for Life Iboga and how he had subsequently learned that the commando who had escorted the dictator aboard the jump jet with blazing guns claimed to be with an outfit called Securité Referral. They listened closely, intrigued by the boldness of the operation and its flawless execution. “A brave man, this diver,” Grandig said of the commando.
“He handled himself well,” Janson admitted.
“A dangerous combination. What are the chances of turning him to your side in this matter?”
“They were slim when he was trying to kill a man I’m being paid to keep alive. Now they’re nonexistent, since he came up short tangling with one of my people.”
“Fascinating.”
“Here’s something even more fascinating.” He told them about the Reaper intervening in the climactic battle on Pico Clarence. When he finished, they were sitting forward in their chairs and exchanging incredulous glances.
“You lead an interesting life, Saul.”
But when Janson asked Donner, Weintraub, and Grandig to use their contacts around the world to identify Securité Referral, they resisted. He was not surprised. He had expected to find them old and cautious and deep in the grip of habits of discretion. But primarily, Janson knew, the old patriots were asking themselves the question they had always asked: Is it good for Israel?
Their resistance took the form of pooh-poohing their ability to help.
“Who do we know anymore at our age?” asked Grandig, the youngest.
“ Yourage?” Weintraub echoed disdainfully. “Everyone Iknow is dead.”
“I was not thinking so much of you as your acolytes,” said Janson. “Your protégés hold key intelligence and security positions in various parts of the world.”
“Our protégés aren’t getting any younger, either.”
“Then theirprotégés,” Janson coaxed. “Gentlemen, I am fully aware that few men have contacts like yours. Poll your people for me. The name Securité Referral is bound to ring some bells.”
They stared into their empty glasses.
He looked at Miles, who had been listening silently. Miles had taught him, “If you have something to say, don’t until you know what you want its effect to be.” Now Miles said, “Two phrases you will not hear often in Israel, my friend: ‘Excuse me.’ And, ‘Thank you.’ ”
Janson squared his shoulders. “I don’t expect thanks. I do believe I have earned the right to ask a favor as small as this.”
“Maybe we owe you,” Weintraub grumped. “Maybe we don’t. Sword Fall was not exactly a one-man operation.”
“One man got close enough to do the job,” Janson said grimly. “He’s come back to collect.”
Weintraub shrugged his scrawny shoulders. “Who loves the bill collector?”
Janson saw that he had succeeded in maneuvering them into a position where none were comfortable.
Finally, Grandig raised a new objection: “What sort of bill collector would demand that we risk our friends’ cover asking them questions?”
Janson glanced again at Miles Donner. The English Jew winked, acknowledging that Grandig had given Janson the opening he was working toward. Janson pulled a plastic sack from his shoulder bag and upended it. The contents clattered on the table. “Go phones. With prepaid SIM cards. No one will know who called who.”
“Who sold you these untraceable prepaid minutes?” asked Grandig. “The phone shop at Ben Gurion Airport otherwise known as Mossad-dot-com?”
“With Subscriber Identity Modules programmed by Shin Bet,” Weintraub chimed in, “so the security agency can eavesdrop on the people we call?”
“No, I paid cash in Sadr City. As soon as your protégés tell me where Iboga’s jump jet went and who runs Securité Referral, you are welcome to protect your friends by swallowing the SIM cards.”
TWENTY
Three days later Janson was still in Israel. The old men were slow. Weintraub napped between telephone calls and insisted on being driven home to spend each night in his modest flat on the far side of Tel Aviv. Grandig camped on Donner’s couch. Janson dozed in an armchair during the very few hours that Donner himself would actually sleep. Slow as the old men were, they stuck to it, at first honoring their obligation to Janson but soon caught up in the chase, making call after call overseas to younger men and women in the field. As Donner explained on the drive back from delivering Weintraub to his flat, “Retirement is a spectator sport. But it is more satisfying to do than to watch. They won’t thank you, but they are happy you gave them a job.”
“Are you happy I gave you a job?”
“It is always a pleasure to watch an old acquaintance in action.”
Like a photograph coming into focus as pixels hardened on a monitor, an image of Securité Referral formed around bits and pieces garnered from scores of queries. The details resembled what Janson had already seen in action on the palace pier in Porto Clarence. Securité Referral did exist. The outfit appeared to have been organized by a tight-knit group of renegade clandestine officers with the express purpose of providing safe havens in rogue and criminal states for deposed rulers and war criminals and the fortunes spirited out of their countries.
It appeared to be a new operation, which would explain why few had heard of it. The old men’s telephone calls revealed two rescues before Iboga: the exfiltration under the noses of the DEA of a Colombian drug lord about to be extradited to the U.S. and the rescue of a Kyrgyzstan general who had reigned over the ex-Soviet vassal state just long enough to steal $10 billion. Securité Referral had established a niche business rescuing what international prosecutors called politically exposed persons.
“Sounds like a sort of anti–Phoenix Foundation,” Kincaid drawled when he filled her in on the telephone. “Providing a fresh opportunity for bad guys to be really bad.”
“I’ll admit it sounds a little cartoonish.”
“The Klingons of corporate security?”
“Except that we’ve seen them operate.”
“Porto Clarence was mighty slick,” Jessica agreed.
Janson said, “Think about what happens if that Kyrgyzstan general gets back in power. Or they rescue some Balkan warlord who ends up controlling a rogue state like Croatia. All of a sudden Securité Referral will be operating under the wing of a sovereign nation.”