The mountains fell away, and the horizon glowed a dull orange. City lights.
An armored car, a hundred thousand francs, and a cashmere sweater…but who were they for?
42
Midnight in Jerusalem.
Heat hung over the ancient city like a worn blanket. The unexpected temperatures had brought the people onto the street. Voices rang from cobblestone alleys. Drivers honked impatiently. The streets buzzed with a boisterous, defiant energy that was Israel itself.
In the prime minister’s residence on Balfour Street, four men sat at a long, battered table. Barely twelve feet by fifteen, the office would be considered small for a head of state. Though recently painted, it still retained a scent of mildew and age.
The “red line” had been crossed. The Iranians not only possessed the means to manufacture weapons-grade uranium, they already had one hundred kilos of the stuff. It was no longer a question of preemption, but of self-defense.
Zvi Hirsch stood next to a map of Iran, the harsh overhead lights casting his skin with a greenish pallor, making him look more lizardlike than ever. Overlaid on the map were thirty distinctive yellow and black emblems denoting radioactive materials placed at locations of known nuclear facilities.
“The Iranians have ten plants capable of manufacturing weapons-grade uranium,” he said, using a laser pointer to indicate the various sites. “And an additional four where the uranium can be fitted to a warhead. The sites most crucial to their efforts are at Natanz, Esfahan, and Bushehr. And, of course, the newly discovered facility at Chalus. For a first strike to succeed, we must destroy all of them.”
“Four isn’t enough,” said a quiet voice.
“Excuse me, Danny,” said Hirsch. “You’ll have to speak louder.”
“Four isn’t enough.”
General Danny Ganz, Air Force Chief of Staff and leader of the newly created Iran Command, charged with all planning and operations involving an attack on the Islamic Republic, stood from his chair. Ganz was a wiry man and restless, with a hawk’s nose and hooded brown eyes. Years of combat and conflict had etched deep wrinkles around his eyes and into his forehead.
He approached the map. “If we want to lock down Iran’s nuclear efforts, we have to take out at least twenty, including the facility at Chalus. It won’t be easy. The targets are spread out all over the country. We’re not talking about single buildings, either. These are massive complexes. Take Natanz here in the center of the country.” Ganz rapped his knuckles against the map. “The complex is spread out over ten square kilometers. Dozens of buildings, factories, and warehouses. But size is only half the problem. Most of the crucial production facilities have been built at least twenty-five feet underground beneath layers of hardened concrete.”
“But can you do it?” demanded the prime minister.
Ganz fought to conceal his contempt. It wasn’t so long ago that the prime minister had been a vocal peacenik calling for the halt of all new settlements on the West Bank. To his mind, the PM was a turncoat, and just shy of a traitor. But then, he had the same opinion about most politicians. “Before we talk about striking the target, we have to figure out how we’re going to get there,” he went on. “From our southernmost airfields, it’s eight hundred miles to Natanz and a thousand miles to Chalus. To reach both sites, we have to overfly Jordan, Saudi Arabia, or Iraq. I don’t think we can count on the first two countries granting us permission to violate their airspace…which leaves Iraq.”
Ganz looked to the prime minister for comment.
“I’ll talk to the Americans at the appropriate moment,” said the PM.
“That moment passed a few hours ago,” commented Zvi Hirsch out of the corner of his mouth.
The prime minister ignored the jibe. He directed his question at Ganz. “What about our planes? Are they up to the task?”
“Our F-15l’s can make the return trip, but our F-16’s are another question,” said Ganz. “They’ll need refueling en route. Iran has no air force to speak of, but they do have radar. Over the past few years, they’ve made big purchases of Russian-made ground-to-air missile systems. At Natanz, for example, the missile sites are to the north, east, and south of the complex. We’ll have to accept a high casualty rate going in.”
“How high?” asked Zvi Hirsch.
“Forty percent.” Ganz crossed his arms as a rustle of outrage and disappointment rose from the others. He wanted to make sure everyone present knew the price asked of his men.
“My God,” said the prime minister.
“It’s hard to dodge missiles when you’re delivering a bomb to target,” said Ganz.
“What about a preemptive strike to soften up the air defenses?” asked Hirsch.
“Not enough planes.” Ganz cleared his voice and went on. “If we want to sufficiently degrade the targets, we’ll have to strike repeatedly. And I mean right on top of their heads. I’ll need precise GPS coordinates of the production facilities. I know what you’re all thinking. We did it before. We can do it again. I’m sorry, gentlemen. But this will not be a repeat of Opera.”
Ganz was referring to Operation Opera, the surprise airborne strike launched against the Osirak nuclear plant near Baghdad on June 7,1981. On that day, fifteen Israeli aircraft flew from Etzion Air Base across Jordan and Saudi Arabia and destroyed Saddam Hussein’s maiden nuclear effort. All returned home safely. The planes had enjoyed help from an American agent who had placed transmitters along the route, allowing the Israeli planes to fly via instruments beneath Jordanian and Saudi radar. The same agent had been at the site, painting the target with a laser for the bombs to home in on.
“Which brings up our last issue,” the general continued. “Ordnance. Assuming that we do manage to fly twenty jets a thousand miles to each target, and that at least twelve of them make it through the air defenses, what are we going to hit them with? The best we can manage is the Paveway III. The bunker buster. Two thousand pounds of explosive with a warhead that can penetrate eight feet of concrete. Granted, that’s a helluva wallop, but what if the plant’s twenty-five feet down? Or fifty? Or a hundred, even? Then what? The Paveways will cause some dust to fall from the ceiling, and that’s it.”
“There are better weapons,” suggested Hirsch with a glance at the prime minister. “Something with more bang.”
“Paveway-N’s with a B61 warhead,” said Ganz. “A nuclear-tipped bunker buster carrying a throw weight of a few kilotons. Something a tenth the size of Hiroshima. The Americans conducted a sled test last year.” A “sled test” referred to the process whereby a missile is fired into concrete to measure its destructive force. “They achieved penetration to one hundred feet. The crater was five hundred yards in circumference.”
“Just enough muscle to take out the factory,” added Hirsch, the voice of caution. “We’re not barbarians, after all.”
All eyes fell on the prime minister. He was an older man, nearly seventy, at the end of a turbulent political career. His reputation had him as a deal maker, a negotiator. His enemies questioned his principles. His friends called him an opportunist.
The PM shook his head with disgust. “It’s always been our philosophy that we cannot allow the Iranians the means to produce weapons-grade uranium. Unfortunately, they’ve passed that barrier. It’s too late to go back. I’m of two minds about a strike. My first responsibility is the people’s welfare. But I can’t risk anything that might provoke a nuclear attack on our soil. I just wish we knew their capabilities better.”
“You’re forgetting something,” said Hirsch. “We do know their capabilities. They have a bomb and they’re going to launch it.”
The PM leaned back in his chair, his hands tented over his nose and mouth. Finally, he exhaled loudly and stood. “Once in our history we gave the enemy the benefit of the doubt. We cannot afford to do so again. I want a plan of attack on my desk in twenty-four hours. I’ll call the Americans and see what I can do about securing permission to use Iraqi airspace.” He looked at Ganz. “And about the other, God help me.”
Slowly, the men in the room rose. Zvi Hirsch was the first to clap. The others joined in. One by one, they pressed to shake the prime minister’s hand. All said the same words.
“Long live Israel.”
43
At his home,
Marcus von Daniken could not sleep. Lying in bed, he stared at the ceiling, listening as the habitual sounds of the night tolled the passing hours. At midnight, he heard the radiator click off. The old wooden house began to shudder, surrendering its stored heat in groans and cracks and faint, pining voices that seemed to wail forever. At two, the nightly freight passed over the Rumweg Bridge. The tracks were five kilometers away, but the air was so still that he could count the cars as they rumbled over the trestles.
A drone.
He knew that this would be the case that defined his career. He knew it because things like this did not happen often in small, cozy Switzerland, and he was proud of the fact. He imagined the unmanned aircraft cutting across the sky, bearing its nacelle of plastic explosives. He pondered the possible targets. The terrorist, Gassan, had said that Quitab wanted to take down a plane, but here in his bed, in the dark of the night, von Daniken conjured up a dozen other possibilities, ranging from a dam in the Alps to the nuclear power plant at Gösgen. A drone like that could fly anywhere.
In his mind’s eye, the white unmanned aircraft grew larger in size and changed shape, until it was no longer a drone packed with twenty kilos of plastic explosives, but an Alitalia DC-9 carrying forty passengers and a crew of six en route from Milan to Zurich, among them his wife, his unborn child, and his three-year-old daughter. He was dreaming and he knew it, but the knowledge did nothing to lessen the impending horror. He saw the plane nosing through clouds, its landing gear hanging clear of the fuselage in preparation for arrival. It was not February, but November. A night much like this. Freezing temperatures. Sleet. Ground fog.
In his dream, he was standing inside the cockpit, lecturing the captain that he had no business flying in such conditions. The captain, however, was busy talking to a stewardess, more concerned about getting her phone number than paying attention to the faulty altimeter that had him flying three hundred meters too low.
And then, with the merciless acuity of all dreams, von Daniken saw his wife and daughter seated in the rear of the plane as it hurtled toward the mountainside. As was his custom, he took the seat next to them and gently laid his fingers over their eyes, closing their eyelids and shepherding them to a deep, painless sleep. He was certain that little Stéphanie’s head had been touching his wife’s shoulder.
At 19:11:18 hours November 14, 1990, Alitalia Flight 404 struck the Stadelberg, altitude four hundred meters above sea level, head-on, just fifteen kilometers from Zurich Flughafen. The speed at the moment of collision was four hundred knots. According to the accident reports, when the ground collision alarm sounded, the captain had less than ten seconds to avoid hitting the mountain.
Von Daniken shot upright in his bed before he was forced to watch it explode.
“Not again,” he said to himself, his breath coming fast and shallow.
No more planes would go down on his watch.
He would not allow it.
44
Sixty kilometers to the south,
in the mountain hamlet of Kandersteg, the lights blazed in a small hotel room where a slim, muscular man stood naked in front of the mirror, shuddering violently. He was a sight from a grotesquerie. Great daubs of blood painted his cadaverous flesh. Feverish black eyes peered from sunken hollows. Strands of lank hair were pasted across his damp forehead.
The Ghost was dying.
The poison was killing him.
One of his own bullets had ricocheted off the bullet-resistant glass, entering his abdomen above the liver. The wound was barely the size of a sunflower seed, but the skin surrounding it had colored a sour yellowish brown, like a week-old bruise. With each heartbeat, rivulets of blood slid down his flat, hairless belly. He could feel the lead lodged close to the surface. The impact of the bullet against the glass had shattered the hollow-point jacket. It was only a sliver, and coated with bare micrograms of the poison. Otherwise, he would already be dead.
A spasm wracked his body. He closed his eyes, willing it to pass. Already, his breathing was growing labored and his sight dimming. His fingertips tingled as if being pricked by needles. In the recesses of his mind, he looked across the abyss. He saw shapes there, beasts writhing in torment. He saw faces, too. His victims cried out his name. They were keen for his arrival.
He drew back from the precipice and opened his eyes. Not yet, he told himself. He wasn’t ready to pass over.
In one hand he held his knife. In the other a gauze bandage, dampened with rubbing alcohol. With his fingertips, he located the sliver of lead and positioned the blade above it. He stilled his shuddering, then cut deftly and quickly, freeing the sliver. The bandage burned terribly.
Afterward, he forced himself to drink tea while he sat on his bed. He remained there for three hours, doing battle with the poison. Finally, the spasms ceased. His perspiration lessened, and his breathing returned to normal. He had won the battle. He would live, but the victory had left him weak, both mentally and physically.
Though exhausted, he could not permit himself to sleep. He showered to cleanse the blood from his body. He dried himself, and then set up his shrine on the windowsill. The shrine was composed of sticks from a banyan tree, a pinch of soil from the farmland near his home, and drops of water from the sacred headwaters of the Lempa River. He prayed to Hanhau, the god of the underworld, and Cacoch the creator. He asked that he be allowed to find and kill the man who had escaped death earlier that night. When he was finished, he dashed the water around the foot of his bed to guard him against malicious spirits.
Only then did the Ghost crawl between the sheets.
And as he slept, a voice warned that he would never see his home again. It said that he would not kill the American, but that Ransom would kill him. It begged him to take his own life now. It was Hanhau, trying to lure him to the shadow world. In his dreams, he laughed to show Hanhau that he paid him no mind.
He woke at dawn with only one intention.
Kill Ransom.