“Looks like we’ll have to get rid of the guards,” observed Abraham.
“No way we’ll get in there without,” replied Ben. “Unless there’s some time in the day when the house is left unprotected.”
“Can’t imagine that,” said John Rabin.
At 0300, they started work. Colonel Rabin was locked in the tiny kitchen with his explosive and detonators. Ben Joel stood in the dark with his glasses trained on the house across the street. Three times every hour, they changed places, while Ben entered the surveillance chart on the computer, mostly reporting no movement.
A little after 0600, there was a change. The front door of the Rashood residence opened and two youngish men dressed in jeans and loose white shirts emerged into the dawn. Colonel Joel grabbed the camera and fired off six pictures of them.
They turned left out of the house and walked together down Bab Touma toward the Via Recta. Ben looked carefully for the arrival of two more guards, but none showed up. But then he saw movement in the main downstairs room of the house: two other men, both carrying machine guns, were standing there staring out of the window. The powerful Mossad binoculars picked them up starkly. Neither one of them was Ravi Rashood.
When the watch changed and Colonel Rabin emerged from the kitchen to take over at the window, Ben Joel told him, “The guard duty changed at 0600. Two of them left, but the other two, who took over, did not come in through the front door. That means they were already in there. It’s a big house. There may be a guard room where they can sleep.”
“Unless there’s a back door they use?”
“We’ll recce that today, and maybe watch that door for a few hours — check when it’s used.”
“Okay. Do we need more help? Two watches will stretch us a bit.”
Colonel Joel was pensive. “Quicker we get this done, the quicker we can get the hell out. Let’s just go for it — I’ll get around the back end of the house this morning around 1100. Is the weapon ready?”
“Affirmative. I need about thirty minutes to check the timer. Any time after that, the bomb can be put in place.”
“Size?”
“I’ve made it in two halves. If we just want to blow that front room to eternity, we use just one. If we don’t mind knocking the fucking house down, we use the lot.”
Ben Joel chuckled. “Okay, John. It’s getting light; stay back behind that curtain. I’ve cut two holes in it for the binos. Don’t take your eyes off that place even for twenty seconds. I’ll get us some coffee.”
The watch changed at 0700. Abraham and Itzaak came on duty. Abraham left immediately to check out the garage where the getaway car was hidden. Then he skulked around the side streets and finally walked slowly into the street right behind Ravi Rashood’s house, adopting the gait of an old man.
There was a small backyard to the property, and that yard was surrounded by a twelve-foot-high wall. A hefty wooden gate, painted green, was shut tight, and it was secured by a chain and a large padlock.
“Jesus,” breathed Abraham. “You want to get in there, you’d have to blow that gate down with dynamite.”
Right now the street was absolutely deserted. And Abraham took a risk. He walked along the wall and stopped at the gate, pretending to take a rest. But he had a good look at the padlock, and found what he was searching for, rust. And there it was, right there on that thick, curved steel bar. No one had opened that door for a very long time. Abraham kept going, slowly, his white robe billowing in the light February breeze. The street was still deserted.
He walked past the back of the next house and saw a white truck parked against the high wall. For a split second he debated climbing onto its roof and taking a look into the backyard, but he dismissed that as too risky.
He continued for another hundred yards, and to his mild surprise saw a builder’s ladder lying on the ground, alongside a house on the left-hand side of the street. There was also a group of paint cans and a small cement mixer. This was work in progress.
Abraham considered borrowing the ladder and using that to take a good look into the Hamas colonel’s backyard, but thought better of it.
Once more he took a devious route, checked out local cafes and a couple of restaurants, and then made his way back to the rear door of the apartment building, used a key to let himself in, and climbed the stairs.
Ben Joel, still unshaven and still awake, was talking to Itzaak at the window. Abraham told him the car was in place, keys under the front seat, and that the back entrance to Mr. and Mrs. Rashood’s home was bolted and barred, unused, and obviously secured.
He also explained he had not looked over the wall, but had found a way to do so, by borrowing a ladder and maybe using it after dark.
“I’m not too certain about that,” said the colonel. “What if you got caught?”
“Then I suppose I’d have to kill someone,” said Abraham, shrugging his shoulders.
“I don’t think so,” said Ben. “The last thing we need is a murder hunt conducted by the police in a back street behind Rashood’s house.”
“Hadn’t thought about that,” replied the Mossad hitman, gloomily. But then he brightened and said, “Ben, that back gate is never used. I know that. Right here we got a one-door house.”
“That’s what I’m working on. Thanks, Abe. The next hour should tell us something.”
And at that precise moment the front door of the big house on Bab Touma opened, and into the now-bright morning light stepped General Ravi Rashood, followed by his wife, Shakira, and a bodyguard holding an AK-47 Kalashnikov. Ben Joel stared at their photographic evidence, which was very little: two quite good pictures shot by the Americans of Ravi on a high cliff in the Canary Islands, and a better-quality print of Major Ray Kerman, supplied, reluctantly, by Great Britain’s SAS.
The images matched, no doubt. The man leaving the house on Bab Touma was General Ravi Rashood, commander in chief of Hamas. The woman accompanying him was plainly his wife, and the field agent’s description of her was accurate. She was indeed tall, dark-haired, and spectacularly beautiful.
It was 0900 and a cool fifty-eight degrees. The general was dressed in Western style, light blue jeans, a white shirt, and a brown suede jacket. Shakira also wore light blue jeans with high black boots, a blue shirt, and a leather jacket. Ben Joel grabbed the camera, pressed the long-range button, and snapped four close-ups of the Hamas terrorist and his wife.
The men from the Mossad watched as the guard stepped back and took up his position on a white bench set against the wall on the right-hand side of the front door. General Rashood and his wife walked down the steps alone and turned left toward Via Recta. They were in fact making their way over toward the Madhat Pasha Souq and a little restaurant where they often had breakfast.
Ben Joel did not care one way or another where they were going. He cared only what time they left, what time they returned, and the movement of the guards at the big house. With Ravi and Shakira still within sight, there was another change. A second guard came outside and sat on the opposite side of the door. Ben photographed both men, talking and smoking, their Kalashnikovs resting against the wall.
These were the 0600 men, who had begun their watch in that front room, moved out into the inside passage, and then taken up position outside at 0900. At noon, Ravi and his wife returned, walking slowly, reading newspapers.
They reentered the house, and almost immediately there was a guard change. Two young men arrived from the north end of the street. The men on the door handed over their AKs and left. The new arrivals sat outside. By Ben Joel’s calculations, there were no other guards inside the house.
Aside from several occasions when the guards went inside, always one at a time, the situation remained unchanged until 1800. At this time, four new guards came along the street together, the other two left, and the night watch took up position.
Colonel Ben Joel spent the afternoon sleeping, but now he had it clear in his mind. The four new arrivals guarded the house through the night, taking it in turns to eat and sleep. The photographs on the computer matched. The two men he had seen leave at 0600 that morning were the same two who now slipped inside the front door. The others stayed outside in the last of the light and the warmish air.
Much depended on General Rashood’s plan for the evening. If he went out for dinner, the two guards must be
