Trail of Blood Read online

  The plot of this book, the characters mentioned in it and their names are all products of the author’s imagination. Any connection between the plot of this book and actual events, or between the characters mentioned in it, including their names, and the characters and names of actual people, dead or alive, is totally coincidental.

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  Trail of Blood

  Uzi Eilam

  Copyright © 2019 Uzi Eilam

  All rights reserved; No parts of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information retrieval system, without the permission, in writing, of the author.

  Translated by Yael Schonfeld Abel

  Contact: [email protected]

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Dr. Gideon Ben Ari was sitting at the stylishly designed desk in his office, not touching the mountain of documents that had piled up there during the last two weeks, when he had been in California. He was contemplating his next steps.

  Only two days ago, Dan and Noam’s wedding ceremony had taken place in the Beth Jacob Reform Synagogue in Redwood City. During the ceremony, Gideon had received a text message from Nahari. Gideon had promised to get back to him as soon as possible. Before the ceremony, he had already watched the news on the American media channels. All of them were reporting a coordinated mega-attack on a school in the northern Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona, which had resulted in the death of twenty people, most of them children, and in injuries to dozens of schoolchildren. A preliminary assessment by Israeli analysts indicated that Hezbollah fighters might be trying to take over an entire settlement in northern Israel.

  The TV networks were airing brutal images. They noted that the event consisted of a series of explosions; initially detonations went off in several classrooms, followed by explosions timed to target the security forces rushing to the scene. No terrorist organization had declared its involvement. The investigation was still in progress, and Israel was hurting and furious.

  The subsequent conversation with Nahari had been brief, but its connection to the mega-attack was obvious. The groom, the bride, and the rest of the family had a hard time accepting Gideon’s decision to disengage and return to Israel, a decision that seemed incomprehensible and unjustified to all of them.

  “Dad, what’s going on? Why ruin the happy occasion for us, and for yourself?” Noam protested, barely holding back her tears. “Why do you snap to attention every time Mr. Nahari commands you to show up?”

  “Really, Gideon,” Dan chimed in. “Isn’t it time for someone else to take on the burden?”

  “At this stage, I have to trust Nahari’s judgment. He’s not a guy who panics easily; he’s privy to all the secrets and is at the heart of all the research and the investigations. He knows where I am, and what the consequences are,” Gideon said.

  Uncharacteristically, Gideon packed distractedly, in a disorderly manner. The pain from his leg injury during the Six-Day War had returned, a clear sign of the tension he was experiencing since the conversation with Nahari.

  The last item he packed was the flute that he kept with him at all times. On the day before the wedding, when the entire family had gathered from near and far at the Goldman home, Noam had decided to ask Gideon to play a musical piece on the flute.

  “Dan can accompany you on the piano, Dad,” she said, looking beseechingly at her future husband. “He still remembers his piano lessons.” Gideon realized he could not refuse the bride and merely asked her what he should play.

  “Dan has the score for the ‘Greensleeves’ theme and variations for flute and piano,” Noam replied. “Why don’t you two play it for us?”

  Nurit, the mother of the groom, looked down and kept her silence. When she and Gideon had been a pair of young lovers, this had been “their tune.” Dan’s father, Yudke, looked at Dan and Noam without saying a word, and Gideon’s ex-wife Suzy did the same. Only the grandparents, Michael and Barbara, expressed their enthusiastic support, breaking the ice somewhat.

  Gideon acquiesced, producing the flute from its case. “Greensleeves,” with all its musical twists and turns, bewitched everyone. Nurit wiped away a tear, and Suzy hugged Noam all through the piece.

  ***

  Throughout all of his flights, from California to New York and from there to Tel Aviv, Gideon engaged in an inner debate repeatedly. He faced a difficult dilemma; on the one hand he was obliged to answer the call of duty, while on the other hand he longed to be free to resume managing the small, successful company he had built over years of toil. Gideon knew he could not refuse.

  Nahari wasted no time. A delegate he had sent was waiting for Gideon next to the door of the plane, rushing him with through border control, straight to a meeting in Nahari’s office.

  In a succinct review in the bureau of the Mossad1 director, Gideon learned more about the series of terror attacks. The most chilling part was the description of the attack in Kiryat Shmona. Children were slaughtered, and the message “The thunder of revenge” was sprayed on the walls. The massacre had been preceded by a barrage of five long-range missiles, only one of which penetrated the Iron Dome, Israel’s anti-rocket defense system. An initial assessment by the Air Force was that these were guided missiles of a type not previously encountered. One unbearable additional detail was the fact that the terrorists waited for the children in the school’s reinforced shelter – to which the children streamed based on their “Red Alert” practice drills – and massacred them there.

  Despite the best efforts of the Intelligence Corps, the Shin Bet2 and the Mossad, there were still no leads regarding the perpetrators of the attacks. There was, however, a common link between all of the attacks; the appearance of several words in Arabic on the screens of all three security agencies: “The thunder of revenge” followed by “Nuclear is on the way.”

  “A combined team of experts,” Nahari updated him, “is busy trying to identify the source of the message, but so far, to no avail. We’ll find out the identity of the
terrorists sooner or later.”

  Gideon made it clear to Nahari, and to himself, that he should have long ago “hung up his red combat boots,” as the saying among Israeli paratroopers went, and continued on to a civilian career. However, Gideon knew that he had a bad case of the “counterintelligence bug.”

  Nahari hinted at numerous findings already revealed. They were dealing with a broad deployment of technologies and weapons systems, new missile capabilities, and the threat of incorporating nuclear weapons in future attacks. They currently suspected, Nahari emphasized, that this was a dispersed, covert organization not necessarily connected to known terrorist groups. Nahari skillfully ignited Gideon’s curiosity, complimenting him on his ability to analyze and decipher complex situations. He suggested that Gideon dedicate a few days to meeting the investigators, and draw some conclusions once they had finished updating him.

  ***

  When Gideon felt the need to recharge, he thought back nostalgically to the period when he had been studying toward his Ph.D. at Stanford. He had been feeling increasingly depleted due to the grueling defense-related work he had taken on immediately after graduating from the Technion Institute of Technology. He was a carefree bachelor, still yearning for Nurit, the love of his youth. It was their shared love for music that led to their first meeting. Gideon played the flute, while Nurit played the piano; both minor and major fights dissolved in the soothing pleasure of playing together. The crisis that ultimately led to their breakup occurred when Gideon, a son of the kibbutz, refused to get married before he could stand on his own two feet financially and support a family. Moving to California to study, Gideon admitted (without quite expressing it in words) was an attempt to distance himself from Nurit, who, in the meantime, had married Yudke, the son of a wealthy contractor from Jerusalem.

  Michael Goldman and his wife Barbara had been heaven-sent, as far as Gideon was concerned. The Goldmans adopted the lonely Israeli student. From the moment he entered the Goldman home in the city of Menlo Park, Gideon, who had grown up on a kibbutz and had lost his father to a terrorist attack, felt as if he had become a member of a family. Suzy, Michael and Barbara’s shy, pretty daughter, was studying political science at Stanford, and a budding romance with the handsome Israeli seemed natural to both Suzy and her parents. After Gideon handed in his doctoral thesis to the dissertation committee, he and Suzy decided to get married. Despite the temptation to accept an offer in Silicon Valley and conduct research at the university, Gideon insisted on returning to Israel. He felt as though he belonged to the reserve forces troop in which he served, and to his brothers in arms. He knew that the Israeli defense agencies would accept him with open arms. Suzy agreed to live in Israel, and her parents were overjoyed. And so, Gideon recalled with gratitude, Suzy had taken on the burden of taking care of the family and raising the children, their son Amitai and daughter Noam, while Gideon invested all his time and energy in his defense-oriented scientific career.

  What motivated me to agree to the research fellowship at the SRI Institute near Stanford University? Was it guilt over tearing Suzy away from her roots, forcing her to leave the place where she grew up? Was it Suzy’s subtle hints to the effect that the children were now old enough, and there was no reason not to return to her real homeland for a while? Or perhaps it was also my need to distance myself from the whirlwind of dealing with defense technology?

  The two years at the SRI Institute had been quiet and pleasant. The way the institute was managed by Dr. Gerald Deutsch – who had become a friend over time – suited Gideon. It was less pleasant to encounter the espionage plot initiated by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard in an attempt to uncover the secrets of the anti-missile defense technology developed by Israel and the United States. Finally, in a typical example of closure, he had returned to California, for the wedding of his daughter to Dan Avni, the son of his childhood sweetheart.

  * * *

  1The Mossad, meaning “The Institution” in Hebrew, is Israel’s national security agency, responsible for covert operations, gathering intelligence, counterterrorism, and protecting Jewish communities abroad.

  2The Shin Bet, also known as the Shabak, the General Security Service (Hebrew) or Israel Security Agency (English), is Israel’s internal security service, charged with defending Israel against terrorism and espionage.

  Chapter 2

  One by one, the researchers from Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) Military Intelligence Directorate presented the latest information they had on terrorist organizations throughout the world, focusing on the Middle East. Next, members of the Shin Bet’s research unit revealed information that pointed to the activity of sleeper terrorist cells in Israel. These indications, they explained in response to Gideon’s queries, was not firm enough to make clear recommendations regarding espionage activity amid of Israel’s defense agencies. Tevel3, the Mossad’s collection division, presented a broad, disturbing portrait of what appeared to be an international network of terrorist organizations. However, their presentation included no specific leads; in response to Gideon’s repeated questions, they shrugged in embarrassment. Gideon’s inquiries regarding the guided missiles shot as a prelude to the attack on the school in Kiryat Shmona were also not answered satisfactorily. The greatest unanswered question related to the words “Nuclear is on the way.”

  Gideon tried to determine whether Iran was the country willing to convey this developing capability to Hezbollah, as well as to single out the people within Hezbollah fluent in nuclear technology. At the end of the lengthy presentations, Gideon felt exhausted, his lungs depleted of air, like a runner at the end of a marathon.

  The longtime office manager told him that Yitzhak Nahari wanted to meet him first thing the next morning. Gideon was grateful for the quiet interval that would allow him to process the multitude of information and to try and spot the forest in all the trees with which he was presented.

  ***

  “Good morning, Gideon,” Nahari greeted him with uncharacteristic warmth. “How do you feel after the meetings with our people, and what can you tell me at this stage?”

  “The information I have received covers widespread geographical regions and multiple potential investigative directions. I heard about activity in Lebanon and identified a connection to the Syrian leadership. There is also activity in Iraq and a fairly obvious link to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. In each of these arenas, Yitzhak, there is a great variety of technologies, including both advanced explosive charges and accurate long-range missiles. Even the topic of Iran’s nuclear capabilities surfaced. There are also what appears to be advanced technological capabilities when it comes to cyberterrorism…”

  “But Gideon, did you not find indications of something linking all these areas? A common denominator?”

  “Well, hatred for Israel, and apparently for the United States too, is prominently featured in each piece of the puzzle…”

  “So, it’s not all one orchestra with a talented conductor? Is it rather – staying with the musical metaphor – a group of musicians playing variations on the central theme; hatred toward Israel and seeking revenge against it?”

  “That last attack on the school in Kiryat Shmona was a brutal, painful blow, but from a pragmatic viewpoint, we have to recognize that it was not an existential threat,” Gideon said. “The combination of barrages of guided missiles as the initial stage of an attack on a settlement, as we saw in Kiryat Shmona, might make the Israeli people protest against the current leadership. I think that it is the field of long-range missiles and nuclear weapons that we should focus on as an existential threat. Moreover, of course, we still need to attend to the risk of a sequence of conventional attacks, which you mentioned…”

  “So, we’re still left with hatred toward Israel as the only common denominator?”

  “Do you remember the story of the four blind men?”

  “What is that? Some story your genera
tion made up?” Nahari did not like to be perceived as someone out of the loop.

  “Right. It is about four blind men who encounter an obstacle. One claims it’s a garden hose, another says it’s a tree with a massive trunk, the third thinks it’s a wall, while the fourth declares it’s actually a thick rope. The truth is that all of them encountered an elephant… The first touched its trunk, the second its thick leg, the third touched its body, and the fourth its tail, which resembles a rope.”

  “That’s a nice story, Gideon, but what is the moral? Are you claiming we’re all blind? Do you have any idea where our elephant is?”

  “We are not blind; what our intelligence agencies have detected appears as a broad, unrelated collection of separate organizations and events. But I would not rule out the possibility that beyond the common denominator of revenge against Israel, and despite the lack of a shared factor linking all the activity revealed and the clues that have yet to be deciphered, there actually is an elephant here…”

  “Nicely said, and I think that is a direction worth pursuing. I want you to create an outline for a project we’ll call ‘The Elephant Trek.’ Will three days be enough?”

  Gideon merely nodded, accepting the challenge, his thoughts already wandering. The trumpeting call of elephants as they galloped out to protect the young members of their herd was echoing in his ears.

  Am I getting swept up toward a place that doesn’t exist? To something located only in my imagination? Is it all an illusion; perhaps there actually is no elephant at all? I owe it to myself to try and focus during the three days Nahari gave me, in order to see whether I come up with a picture pointing at a clear direction.

  The small room allocated to Gideon in Nahari’s bureau contained only four chairs. Six groups of documents were stacked up on the desk, their contents reflected in their headings: Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, and The Rest of the World. Teams of researchers came to meet Gideon, one at a time, flooding him with specific information unique to that team. Unlike the young researchers, who displayed one detail at a time on a single screen, Gideon liked to use printed documents, which he spread out in a broad fan that would allow him to see the big picture.