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  The Danger Within

  E. L. Pini

  Copyright © 2020 E. L. Pini

  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.

  Translation from the Hebrew by Tal Keren

  Contact: [email protected]

  Contents

  Prologue

  BOOK 1

  1.

  2.

  3.

  4.

  5.

  6.

  7.

  8.

  9.

  10.

  11.

  12.

  13.

  14.

  15.

  16.

  17.

  18.

  19.

  20.

  21.

  22.

  23.

  24.

  25.

  26.

  27.

  28.

  29.

  30.

  31.

  32.

  BOOK 2

  33.

  34.

  35.

  36.

  37.

  38.

  39.

  40.

  41.

  42.

  43.

  44.

  45.

  46.

  47.

  48.

  49.

  50.

  51.

  52.

  53.

  54.

  55.

  56.

  57.

  58.

  59.

  60.

  61.

  62.

  63.

  64.

  65.

  66.

  67.

  68.

  69.

  BOOK 3

  70.

  71.

  72.

  73.

  74.

  75.

  76.

  77.

  78.

  79.

  80.

  81.

  82.

  83.

  84.

  85.

  86.

  87.

  88.

  89.

  90.

  91.

  92.

  93.

  94.

  Epilogue

  Glossary

  Message from the Author

  Time to go home & cook supper & listen to

  the romantic war news on the radio

  My Sad Self

  by ALLEN GINSBERG

  Prologue

  “Amsterdam! Brussels! Paris! Frankfurt!” Imad fired off the names of the cities with contagious enthusiasm. “And finally, Rome! You’ll finish your journey in Rome, and go on vacation, back home, to… the kid’s name is Mohsan, right?”

  “Mohsan.” The passenger nodded, and his face lit in a soft glow. The fact that Imad had bothered to remember the boy’s name moved him, and he hurried to wipe a tear away from his eye. “Mohsan,” he mumbled. “My Mohsan.”

  Imad smiled understandingly and handed over a colorful cardboard box with a photograph of a toy tank covered in colorful LEDs. “It drives around, flips over, fires just like the real thing. Solid engine, wireless remote… this is for him, and this is for you.” He handed over a small, fancy wooden box. “Open it.”

  In the box lay a golden Rolex, set with small diamonds. Dumbfounded, the passenger opened his mouth, but Imad spoke over him: “This is the gift that God gives us. Time! And you, try to enjoy it.” He squeezed the passenger’s shoulder.

  “Good luck! Allah Ma’ak…” God be with you.

  Imad’s driver helped the passenger climb into the Range Rover that drove off to Port Sudan, where he would embark on his perilous journey.

  Imad watched, thoughtful, as the cloud of dust grew distant and eventually disappeared into the yellow desert of Hadhramaut.

  “To see Rome and die.” Imad smirked with some bitterness and returned to the operations board in his office, pushing the troublesome thoughts out of his mind.

  Book 1

  1.

  The passenger held a Lebanese passport rife with stamps. He carried little cargo, no laptop and no cell phone. In his suitcase, the screening equipment in Schiphol Airport registered only neatly pressed clothes. Procedures demanded no additional checks for passengers without phones or laptops, even in the case of keffiyeh-wearing Arabs whose foreheads gleamed with sweat.

  “Allah hu akbar; in him we shall trust and fulfill our destiny,” the passenger muttered, attempting to raise his spirits. He tossed a glance at the wristwatch, which filled him with pride.

  The diamond-studded Rolex drew the airport security guard’s attention.

  “Nice watch,” he said, nodding appreciatively.

  “Time. That is all God gives us, time. And I try to enjoy it,” said the passenger, staring at his feet.

  The screener saw nothing but a man of faith and sent him on his way.

  The passenger raised his head, buckled his belt, and wiped the cold sweat from his forehead and the back of his neck before hurrying over to the gate. He then boarded the flight to Brussels.

  The watcher, who’d been observing all this from the upper balcony, left his vantage point and rushed to the restrooms. He locked the door of the stall behind him and sent the video via Telegram. His hand shook as he struggled to break the SIM card, and eventually he had to crack it with his teeth before managing to tear it and flush it, along with the small burner phone, down the toilet.

  The new Saudi passport hastily handed to him in the airport in Brussels, the red keffiyeh with the golden agal he wore—as Imad had ordered him to—all screamed for extra attention. Belgian airport security were exceedingly polite, but similarly inquisitive, asking him to pass again through the screening device. They’d taken no chances since the suicide bombings that had killed thirty-two Belgian citizens.

  “Once you’ve passed one screening, you’ve passed them all,” Imad had told him before the flight, and he clung to those words now like a lifeline.

  Just three more flights, and he could go home, to his Mohsan.

  “Inshallah,” he muttered fervently. “Inshallah!”

  The local watcher left his post and entered the restroom. Another broken SIM went down the drain, and another box was checked on the operations board in Shabwah, under similar ones denoting airports in Paris, Frankfurt and Amsterdam.

  Passport control in Rome was the passenger’s final stop before his flight back home. By this point, he was exhausted and impatient, and he was beginning to notice a wetness spreading around his lower abdomen. After passing the passport control booth, he hurried into the restroom, crouching and ashamed, and discovered the wetness had come from the recently sutured surgical incision, which had been weeping pus down his stomach and onto his clothes. He patted it down with paper towels and covered it as much as he could.

  A driver wearing a baseball cap and holding a cardboard sign reading “Dr. Mahmoud Rantisi” picked him up from the airport. Only now, behind the dark-tinted windows of the taxi, did he
allow himself to break into tears.

  “You okay?” asked the driver, glancing at him in the rearview mirror.

  The passenger wiped his nose and nodded. “Where are we headed now?”

  “Restaurant, get something to eat,” replied the driver, turning his gaze back to the road.

  Only when the taxi arrived at Via Pietro Tacchini did the passenger finally manage to choke down his tears, even managing to laugh slightly in embarrassment. The driver pulled up in front of number 13, at Ambasciata d’Umbria. A long line had formed on the sidewalk, and some Hebrew could clearly be heard in the crowd. The Israelis, true to their reputation, had probably flocked there after hearing of the charcuterie platters provided on the house to make the wait more bearable.

  “So, want to talk to your son?”

  The passenger wiped his face and blew his nose, nodding excitedly.

  The driver turned to him, and his eyes rested momentarily on the Rolex.

  “Nice watch,” said the driver. “Trade?”

  The passenger stared at him, bewildered.

  “I’m kidding. I just want to see how it looks on me,” said the driver, holding out his hand.

  “Could I have the phone now?” asked the passenger.

  “Certainty.”

  Smiling shyly, the passenger removed the wristwatch from his wrist and gave it to the driver, who handed over the phone. “I’m going to take a piss,” said the driver. “Give you some privacy.”

  As the driver climbed out of the taxi, the passenger dialed, hands shaking. He tried to guess which of his children would answer the phone. He loved them all, but his favorite had always been Mohsan, his eldest, despite—or perhaps because of—his mild mental disability.

  “Babaaaaa!” Mohsan whispered. “Baba…!”

  The driver, standing with his back to the car, clicked the remote. The locks on the doors clicked shut. The passenger gave a puzzled look but shrugged and went on talking to his son. His lips stretched in a wide smile, finally showing some relief from the tension of the past day.

  The driver slipped into a nearby alley, pulled a cell phone out of his pocket, punched in some numbers and sprawled down on the black cobblestones for good measure.

  A deafening explosion tore through the air.

  Twenty-two people waiting in line outside the restaurant were killed instantly. Others had been wounded and were trampled by the panicked tide of patrons rushing outside. The taxi had been doused in highly flammable chemicals and soon burned to a crisp, leaving the security forces who arrived at the scene with no remains from the body, and no forensic evidence whatsoever.

  2.

  During those weeks, I hadn’t managed to speak to Eran even once. I took a day off, planning a few errands and a lot of Eran. Before I went to bed, I planned tomorrow’s agenda and laid out a schedule in my Google calendar.

  06:00-07:00 Go for swim (look into new Ironman training plan).

  07:15-08:00 Paleolithic breakfast.

  08:30-09:30 Dr. Rafi Shahaf, get Garibaldi’s teeth cleaned.

  10:00-18:00 Eran. +weeding +pruning his grapevine.

  From 18:00-12:00, I wrote, “only God knows.” And I had planned on reading The Dramatist by Ken Bruen—an eternally drunk, mad and beloved Irishman—and maybe swim for another hour. On the days I can’t find the time for a swim (namely, most days), the four slipped discs in my spine give me all kinds of hell.

  As it turns out, I really shouldn’t have left things up to God. I woke up around 7:30 and had to skip my swim. Realizing this would take its toll later that day, I started on breakfast. I warmed the espresso mug on the fumes rising from the machine, browned the bacon strips and laid them aside on a paper towel. In the remaining grease, I fried four eggs, brown-shelled and orange-yolked, from the copious chickens pecking around in Shuki’s vineyard. They used to tell us to carbo-load before heading into action. Now they say we should load up on protein, plenty of vegetables and fatty meats.

  Another espresso, and I surrendered myself for a moment to the gentle April breeze and the scent of citrus blossoms that it carried.

  “Well, isn’t your life just peaches,” said Eran, and his tall form draped in a pressed dress uniform turned its back to me, walked to the grave and faded away. I wanted to tell him how wrong he was, but I knew I’d get the chance eventually.

  I live in Agur, a settlement on the Judaean Mountains, located on the highest peak in the region. The massive kitchen carries into a west-facing grapevine pergola. Plot A, measuring a bit over an acre, ends in a fault that creates a small cliff. Underneath lie around six acres of vines, Petite Sirah and Cabernet Franc.

  Looking west on a clear day, you can see Ashkelon’s power plants to the south and the massive chimneys of Reading to the north, and even the deep blue of the sea. Shuki, who owns the neighboring vineyard, works and harvests our vineyard, and in return I get as many bottles as I like. This naïve arrangement suits us both.

  On the edge of the cliff, facing the view, I raised Eran’s headstone. It’s where we sit together and talk, and occasionally share a bottle of Shuki’s excellent wine.

  I stood up. The next item on the agenda was considerably more difficult: to somehow transport Garibaldi—a magnificent Neapolitan mastiff weighing as much as I do, around two hundred and forty pounds—to Dr. Shahaf, our veterinarian, and get his teeth cleaned. Garibaldi, on his part, was perfectly aware that loading him onto the jeep has only one possible outcome and was determined to avoid said outcome. He rubbed his massive head against mine, and each time I reached for his collar, he turned to present me with his ass and wagging tail.

  I decided to play this smart and took a strip of bacon out of the fridge, waving it in front of his face. As he sat there planning his next move, I spotted Adolf, Garibaldi’s colleague—a large Malinois, previously from Oketz, the IDF’s counterterrorist canine unit. He approached from my flank and nonchalantly snatched the bacon. I pulled a leash on him and tied him to the ancient fig tree. First object—neutralized. I opened the car door, clinched Garibaldi in a double nelson and pulled him back into the jeep along with me, walking backwards with my arms hooked under his front legs and my face smooshed against his.

  The odors that surrounded me as he incessantly licked my face made it clear that I was taking him to the vet come hell or high water. I fell back on the car seat, pulling the great beast on top of me. The double nelson had been his downfall. Finally, he was inside. I scrambled out the other door and went around to the driver’s seat, victorious and covered in drool.

  And then the phone rang.

  “Get down here ASAP. Froyke needs you.”

  “But I—”

  “Bubinke,” scolded Bella, principal staff officer for the DM—the director of the Mossad—“get down here now. You’re flying today.”

  3.

  “Six dead Israelis,” said Froyke. “This is no coincidence, and even if it is, I don’t give a rat’s ass. Find them and destroy them. A personal favor, do this as a personal favor to me!” he concluded with his usual reiteration.

  I was stunned. Froyke was difficult to provoke and had never been an advocate of retaliation and bloody vengeance. And what was I supposed to do about Shabwah? My missile convoy project. And what about Anna? She had volunteered back in January to run the Shabwah hospital, and only recently, her obsessive flings with Imad had developed into something resembling a steady relationship. It wasn’t until earlier this spring that she’d even attempted her first transmissions.

  It had taken three weeks of constant, gut-wrenching tension, ending only recently, until the people around her stopped paying attention to her daily running habit. Until her first transmissions were finally received, loud and clear. A customized Bluetooth transmitter was implanted into the state-of-the-art running computer on Anna’s armband, programmed to relay her messages to the transmitters concealed in the photovolt
aic cells of the solar farm. From there the transmissions were picked up by the assigned satellite and bounced straight into the facilities of military intelligence Unit 8200, in the no-man’s-land between Ramat HaSharon’s organic strawberry farms and Herzliya. If everything went off without a hitch, we should receive an early warning whenever Imad and his buddies planned to dispatch an Iranian missile convoy to south Lebanon or the Gaza Strip. That early warning would then enable the preparation required to terminally neutralize the convoy.

  Due to the unfortunate absence of digital mind readers, this kind of warning can only be achieved through the human element. Like many handlers, I’d developed a sort of fatherly protectiveness toward my asset—and, in blatant disregard of protocol, much more than that. Anna was the most extraordinary woman I’d ever met. A sharp, bright intellect, a wild personality, and sex appeal to rival Marilyn Monroe’s.

  Froyke was saying: “The ones sending the missiles and the ones who sent the suicide bomber to Rome, they share a goal, and a background. Maybe even…”

  He fell silent and placed a hand on my shoulder. “Don’t worry. One single peep from Anna and you’re back on your project. But in the meanwhile, I want you on this.”

  I held out a hand. Froyke ignored it and hugged me instead.

  “You okay, Froyke?”

  “Five-by-five,” he replied.

  “Five-by-five or five-by-ten?”

  “Ehrlich… just get on the damn plane.”

  “You’re supposed to say it’s peaches, Froyke, everything’s just peaches.”

  Froyke shrugged in response, and I could tell that no peaches would come of this. Something was troubling my old man.

  4.

  Bruno Garibaldi arranged for my swift VIP route through the airport and picked me up. Bruno is more or less my counterpart in the AISI, the Italian foreign intelligence service. My glorious mastiff, Garibaldi, is named after him—if I’m its father, Bruno is its grandfather.

  We drove straight from the airport to see the Ambasciata d’Umbria. Roberto, the owner, was a close friend of Bruno’s. He ran an excellent place, one in which we’d consumed a great quantity of wine and meaty protein over the years. Now it looked like post-Vesuvius Pompeii. This sort of soot-coated destruction made sense in the Dahieh suburb in Beirut, where it was a natural staple of the local lifestyle. But here, in the heart of colorful, lighthearted elegance, it became distressing, disturbing.