enough for him to go against. Raz believed he would never again have the love he shared with his Palestinian girl, and a normal family life was important for his chosen career.
He went to extraordinary lengths to keep his son safe, even placing his name on a secret intelligence list as a potential spy, which saved him on more than one occasion from being brutalised during incursions. The day Raz learned of the death sentence placed on Abed by the IDF officer he found himself fearing for the life of his Palestinian son more than he imagined possible. He went immediately into high gear as he considered various ways of getting the death sentence removed. His options included abducting Abed and his mother and placing them in a safe house much like a witness protection programme, but even in his high position within Shin Bet that would be too difficult to engineer and maintain for long without drawing suspicion. Another option was to place Abed on record as actually being an insider, a confirmed spy for Shin Bet, but that was fraught with danger too. It would expose Abed to other agent handlers and then create all kinds of complications if Raz was ever asked to ‘loan’ him out, since Abed was not really a spy. When the day came that Raz learned the officer had decided to carry out the assassination of Abed himself, he was motivated into taking action that was drastic but unavoidable if he was to save his son’s life.
Raz took full advantage of his senior position to mount a relatively small operation aimed at establishing a covert observation hide in the attic of a derelict building that just happened to be next to Abed’s new metal shop. The operation required Raz to be driven into Rafah late one night through an IDF checkpoint and dropped off where he could walk to the proposed hide carrying a nondescript case of observation equipment. It was more normal for a police agent to carry out such a task for Shin Bet, but neither was it unheard of for a department head to get his hands a little dirty now and then to keep in touch with the realities of field operations.
Raz did not know where the IDF officer intended to position himself for the shoot although the options were limited if he wanted to kill Abed while inside his shop. However, he did know roughly when to expect the hit which would be on Abed’s arrival at his metal shop. The biggest problem for Raz was locating the officer’s hide. Raz knew he would probably have to wait for the first shot to give away the officer’s location. The question was, would the officer play with his mouse first as he had done so often in the past, or would he kill Abed at the earliest opportunity. The first bullet that slapped into the metal shop took Raz by surprise even though he had been as vigilant as possible. It was the second shot, hitting a sheet of steel inside the shop, that gave the sniper’s position away, a hint of smoke and movement in the shadows of a distant building. Raz could only pray that Abed had not yet been hit. Fortunately, the officer was not a professional sniper and as he exposed the barrel of his weapon to squeeze off his next, and probably deadly shot, Raz carefully took aim through the scope of his own rifle and fired.The bullet flew down between the houses that lined the market road, across the open stretch of no-man’s-land that ran along the edge of Rafah, past the Israeli watch tower, over the three layers of fifteen foot high fence topped with razor wire, in the second-floor window of the derelict house on the edge of the Egyptian border and through the officer’s head, flinging him back across the room, killing him instantly.
Raz left his hide almost immediately and did not find out until the next day that his son had survived unhurt. Shortly after that, Raz lost track of Abed and assumed he had gone to ground in fear for his life.
It was not until a year later he learned the name and description of the leader of the team of Islamic Jihad which had hijacked a supertanker off the coast of Spain, murdered all the crew and set the boat, filled with crude oil, on a collision course with the English coastline.
There was a time before that when Raz fantasised about one day meeting Abed and revealing himself as his father, not that he was under any illusion it would be a loving reunion. Perhaps it would be nothing more than closure between them. But it was a pipe dream, for their races could not be more polarised. In truth, it was both their stated doctrine that the other be denied the right to exist. There used to be a chance things could change on a personal level between the two of them, but now that Abed had joined the ranks of the arch terrorists, Raz’s fantasies were forced to give way to the grim reality that Abed would probably die at the hands of an Israeli or British assassination squad. He did wonder what he would do if he happened to become involved in such an operation even though that was unlikely. In his heart of hearts, he knew he would pull the trigger, even if that only meant giving the order.
His thoughts went back to Abed’s mother, the image of her on her deathbed still fresh in his memory, and he was filled with sadness at the outcome of it all. The human story was indeed more often than not an unhappy one.
Raz snapped out of his daydream as Stratton and Gabriel walked towards him and he opened the rear door of the car for them to climb in. As they drove across the airfield and out of the airport, Raz looked over his shoulder from the front passenger seat. ‘We will be in Jerusalem in forty-five minutes or so,’ he said. ‘Will that be okay for you?’ he asked in his typically insincere polite manner that was only barely detectable.
No one answered him. They were looking out of the window at the country neither of them had seen before. It did not look as clean as it did from the air. The land was dry and dusty. In the distance was a hint of green but no evidence of the soil that produced the lush fruits and vegetables for which Israel was famous.
Raz considered asking them about the Russian to get the ball rolling and start searching for any cracks in their supposed mission but decided against it and turned back to face the front. He was not in the mood for subtle conversation at that moment, and, anyway, he got the impression from the thuggishlooking Englishman he would learn more from watching than discussion.
Stratton stared at the back of Raz’s head and wondered what kind of man he was and would he pose any problems for them. His thoughts drifted to the meeting in Ramallah and what light it might throw on the mission, if any. Zhilev was somewhere here in the Middle East with his atom bomb, of that he was certain. The question was, where did he want to detonate it. A more detailed profile on Zhilev could have been useful and might shed some clue as to what his goal was. From what little Stratton knew, and thinking as a Special Forces soldier himself, he had boiled it down to two options. Zhilev either wanted to destroy an Islamic symbol and as many Muslims as possible along with it, or start a fight between the East and the West. For the latter, initiating the bomb in Europe would have been better, but only if he could somehow blame it on Islam, which would not be easy. For the former option, the two most important Muslim sites were Mecca and Medina. After that came Jerusalem, but inside what was perhaps technically or symbolically the West, i.e. Israel. That certainly made it interesting, but the big disadvantage was the degree of difficulty. It would be much harder to get a bomb into an Israeli city than into an Arab one. But then, from what little Stratton knew about Zhilev, he was certainly ambitious and did not lack tenacity or planning abilities. The truth was Zhilev had been faultless so far and was only being hunted thanks to a psychic remote viewer.
Stratton suddenly felt eyes on him and looked up to the rear-view mirror. Like most civilianised police-type vehicles, there was a second rear-view mirror for the passenger to use and Raz was looking directly at him.
Zhilev pulled off the tarmac road scarred by countless tank tracks and eased on to a sandy, stony verge, stopped the car and killed the engine. He looked ahead through the dirty windscreen up the road that climbed steeply to a permanent Israeli army checkpoint a hundred yards away. A large sign close by announced the entrance to the city of Jerusalem. Jericho, the lowest dry point on earth, was some twenty miles behind and to the east on the northern tip of the Dead Sea and over two hundred miles north of Elat. He had spent the night outside a petrol station, south of the Dead Sea, waiting for it to open, and the drive to Jerusalem had been eventless with no other checkpoints after the one outside Elat.
The traffic heading into the city at this checkpoint was light; however the lethargic soldiers who ran it were slow and managed to maintain a constant line of half a dozen or so waiting cars. Beyond the checkpoint, lining the high ground a mile away like medieval battlements, were new Israeli housing estates, their stone-clad buildings and red-clay tiled roofs standing defiantly, proudly occupying their captured ground. The land in front of the city on all sides was barren, rocky desert with sprinklings of hardy shrubbery growing out of the arid soil.
Zhilev had considered bypassing the Israeli outpost on foot but after studying the land decided against it. There was hardly a stick of cover for a daylight move and at night the likely approach routes to the city were undoubtedly monitored by a variety of night vision, trembler and movement detection devices. Attempting to pass through the checkpoint with the stolen car was obviously out of the question. He had to assume the owners had
