The Devil's Shepherd

By Steven Hartov

Israeli Military Intelligence agents Eytan Eckstein and Benni Baum are summoned once more to undertake a mission that could be their last. A defecting Czech spy claims to know the identity of a mole within Israel’s top secret nuclear program, but he has fled to Africa and will only turn over the information if a string of his demands ar

• Language: English
• Publisher: West 26th street Press
• Release date: Mar 4, 2013
• ISBN: 9780786754038

Steven Hartov

STEVEN HARTOV is the coauthor of the New York Times bestseller In the Company of Heroes, as well as The Night Stalkers and Afghanistan on the Bounce. For six years he served as Editor-in-Chief of Special Operations Report. He has appeared on CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, FOX, and most recently the History Channel’s Secret Armies. A former Merchant Marine sailor, Israeli Defense Forces paratrooper and special operator, he is currently a Task Force Commander in the New York Guard. He lives in New Jersey.

Book preview

Prologue

Eritrea, April 26, 1993

MAJOR EYTAN ECKSTEIN prayed that the bullets would kill him before he heard the gunfire.

Such was the way of ballistics, especially across open water, and he wrestled the urge to look back from the prow of his black Zodiac assault boat at the fading strip of midnight beach. Even at this range of half a kilometer, the heavy 7.62 mm round of a Dragunov sniper rifle could leap out faster than the speed of sound and sever his dreams, long before its sonic report reached his dying ears. If he was lucky, he would feel virtually nothing at all.

"Zeh beseder. It’s all right, he silently persuaded himself in Hebrew. Ahf echad lo echieh l’tamid. Nobody lives forever."

He paddled on, first the right side, then the left, watching his aluminum oar blade slice a flat sea shimmering with the pearls of an evil moon. The blazing orb should not have been up there at all; it was supposed to be obscured by clouds, and he cursed the army meteorologists and tried to think. Of nothing. Not of home, not of his wife, not of his son. There is no future. There is only now. Like the moments before a parachute jump, thoughts were your nemeses, instincts your only allies. Fantasy brought fear, fear broke concentration, and a flagging brain would react a split second too late, and then . . .

Just row, he ordered that other Eckstein, the cold professional one, while the hair at the nape of his neck stood straight up and stiff as the arms at a neo-Nazi rally.

The major had not always cringed at the possibility of being shot. As a young paratrooper, then an officer, and finally a senior operator with the Special Operations division of AMAN—Israel’s military intelligence branch—he had swaggered into gunfire with the idiocy of ignorance, as do most young men whose flesh has not yet been scarred by spinning slugs of lead and brass. But later on, he had been wounded. Badly. His knee still ached from it, his memory held a vintage taste of that vicious flashback. He knew what it would feel like and he tried not to show that he trembled with the knowledge.

Just row.

Ahead, the gray unlit hulk of an Israeli Navy Aliyah class missile boat bobbed clumsily in the undulating swells, engines silent, its form growing larger, but slowly, so slowly. Eckstein fought another urge, to go prone now and paddle like a madman. But his wards were huddled just behind him in the rubber Zodiac, watching their shepherd very carefully. He could feel their eyes on his back, and so he knelt, spine erect.

First the right side, then the left. Just slice the Red Sea, part the waters, think about Moses . . . He grimaced slightly, chastising himself for his biblical comparisons as his muscles strained with the oar. I suspect we might be having some delusions of grandeur here, Major.

There were eleven falashas in Eckstein’s stretch Zodiac Hurricane and eight more boats behind him, carrying a few remnants of the Ethiopian Jews who had been airlifted to Israel during Operation Solomon back in ’91. Solomon had been a public relations triumph for Jerusalem, over 14,000 black Jews spirited to the Promised Land in less than forty-eight hours. Ethiopia’s then-dictator, Mengistu Haile-Mariam, had happily snatched a thirty-five-million-dollar bribe from the Israeli government in exchange for turning a blind eye to the rescue, and promptly fled his war-torn country for Zaire.

But tonight, with the first general Ethiopian elections set for dawn and the province of Eritrea on the verge of independence, various and sundry rebel bands were pillaging the countryside, getting in their last licks. There was no one left in power to pay off, so Eckstein’s mission Operation Jeremiah, was barely Solomon’s pauper cousin and strictly a covert operation.

The falashas gripped the gunwales of the rubber boat; silent, polite, mostly women and children, a couple of old men of fifty. A grandfather wearing an incongruous Sinatra fedora slipped a silver-plated Old Testament from his worn tweed coat and began to bob over the pages. The refugees were surely frightened, and possibly ashamed, for Eckstein had had to strip the women of their bright white shama shawls and their tin jewelry, and the handsome mothers in their burlap smocks clutched their children to their breasts, shy eyes lowered, waiting, watching.

Yet they trusted Eytan Eckstein, whom they knew only as Anthony Hearthstone. They had listened to him when he came to their secret villages in Gondar, along with that burly bear of a man called Schmidt, who was in fact Lieutenant Colonel Benjamin Baum, Eckstein’s superior and SpecOps Chief of Operations. The two strangers had to say no more than, It is your turn. Come with us to Israel, and the joyous tribal leftovers of Beta Israel abandoned their meager belongings to join a month-long trek by foot, wagon, truck, and finally here, to the sea.

The danger, besides the sun, starvation, and disease, was from Amin Mobote and his Oromo Liberation Front. The Oromo rebel leader was furiously jealous of the Eritrean independence bid and determined to upset the elections by any means possible. Ambushing and killing over one hundred falashas and their Israeli rescuers would do nicely. And so, as the ragtag convoy grew, following their Israeli pied pipers from Asmara to Akordat to Keren, through the searing wadis and the frosted mountains to Nakfa and Karora, and finally to the beaches of Ras Kasar, the OLF had probed. Like hyenas after wildebeest they had fallen on the weak, the slow, and the sickly who strayed.

Eckstein, Baum, and three support men from Queens Commando—the AMAN cover name of their SpecOps unit—had strict orders not to engage. But the rebels were growing dangerously bold, so on the last night before the final dash to the sea the Israelis had laid their own ambush. Igniting a seemingly frivolous campfire, they had drawn in the OLF probe, fired a brace of deadly Claymore mines, then herded their flock into poultry trucks and sprinted the last twenty-eight kilometers to the beachhead . . .

Eckstein broke his own rules of engagement now and began to think, making hollow promises to himself.

No more after this. No more. It’s your last field mission, Eytan. Onward and upward to a desk in Jerusalem. It’s enough. You’ve proved you’re not your father. He ran from the Nazis, you ran straight at the enemy. Over and over and over. You can stop now . . .

He was aging, hurtling toward forty. It was not physically apparent, for his blondish ponytail was misleading, his physique boyish, and the sun of these continents had tightened and camouflaged the tired flesh around his pale blue eyes. But inside, his memories overflowed. Inside, he was sixty-five.

First the right side, then the left.

A pool of phosphorescent algae glowed green around the blade of his oar, and the missile boat beckoned. He could see a naval crewman gripping the handles of a fifty-caliber machine gun on the beachside gunwale. He could see the amber combat bulbs glowing from inside the bridge.

He glanced down between his knees at an olive canvas parachute bag. Anthony Hearthstone was zipped up in there: his frayed jeans and chambray shirt, his forged British passport, his pocket litter, his press credentials from Stern, his cameras. Now Major Eytan Eckstein had emerged once more, clad in black fatigue pants and canvas Palladium commando shoes soaked through from the wading. He was shirtless except for a cordura assault vest, magazines of nine-millimeter ammunition, a Browning Hi-Power pistol, a smoke grenade, and a field dressing. On the beach a naval commando had handed him a small packet from General Itzik Ben-Zion, commander of AMAN SpecOps. It contained Eckstein’s genuine dog tags, military ID, and prisoner of war card. He was a soldier again, in theory no longer summarily executable as a spy, but to Mobote’s rebels it would make no difference. A warm African breeze full of brine prickled the hair on his arms. He was cold.

He suppressed the thoughts of gunfire and glanced over his left shoulder. Just behind him, Bayush Addisu sat cross-legged on the hard rubber flooring. Like all the refugees, she wore a water skier’s life vest painted black, and she stroked her four-year-old son as he slumbered in her arms with the womb-like rocking. She opened her mouth and the accursed moonlight flashed from her smile. Eckstein felt the muscles twitch his lips as he grimaced in return. At the rear of the Zodiac two naval commandos from Flotilla 13 crouched at the flanks of the silent Evinrude 40 engine, rowing steadily outboard with their young muscles. They wore no diving gear, only black wetsuit tops and fatigue trousers, their mini-Uzis clipped to the new high-tech chest harnesses that Eckstein had never seen before.

The rest of the Zodiacs curved behind to the south in a long arc, much too visible under the betraying night of star clusters and the earth’s bald-faced satellite. Benni Baum was back there somewhere, bringing up the rear in the last boat, and Eckstein wished they had reversed their positions. He felt like a lazy farm boy allowing his aging father to plow the fields on a blazing August afternoon. Baum was supposed to be out of it already. Baum was supposed to be retired, at home in Abu Tor, cursing his boredom and tending his garden. But he was a stubborn old bull and he had stayed on to help with Jeremiah, and in the field he was still the boss, by experience and by rank.

You’ll take the first boat, Baum had said when they broke through the brush and came upon the beach and the naval commandos suddenly rose from the water like someone’s aquatic nightmare.

Up your ass, Benni, said Eckstein.

"That’s an order," Baum growled.

I see your point.

While the two officers and their three SpecOps men separated the falashas into small groups, the naval commandos secured the beachhead, then called in the Zodiacs from the missile boat. The rowing-in seemed to take forever, but the outboards could not be fired up, for if Mobote’s men were still tracking the flock the roar of marine engines would bring them on like a wolf pack.

Still, it had gone fairly smoothly, even though the falashas had backed away like frightened sheep at the sight of the strange rubber alligators, having never seen anything like them. And now they were all away, nearly to the missile boat, perhaps twenty minutes from making full throttle for the distant Gulf of Aqaba. Eckstein willed his neck muscles to soften as he watched the dot of Benni’s distant boat bumping over the shallow shore swells and the beachhead team of commandos backing up with staggered discipline into the water, sweeping the beach with their gun barrels. They carried light weapons of choice, Colt Commandos or mini-Uzis, their flippers linked to their combat webbing. They were going to swim to the missile boat, a feat of which Eckstein found himself jealously annoyed.

He turned back toward the gray mass of the sleek hull out ahead. It was larger now, like a bobbing fifth of whiskey, and he could see rope ladders dangling from the gunwales. Just a few more paddle strokes, maybe a hundred, he reckoned. First the right side, then the left, and he remembered Baum’s whisper in the dark, just before Eckstein pushed his laden Zodiac from the beach into the curling surf.

This is all so unnecessary. The colonel had gestured at the tensed commandos crouching on one knee, weapons poised, hissing into commo gear. Eckstein looked at Benni, while the beefy bald man shrugged and pointed. "We could have just stood on that dune with a white flag and a suitcase full of cash. Mobote would’ve probably joined us for a bonfire and a kumsitz, sent us all off with a kiss."

Eckstein had just grunted, then pushed off for the sea. But now he smiled.

Simple bribery. Not a bad idea, come to think of it. Benni Baum was many things, including a genius tactician and practical cynic, and in the field even his jokes were often the fruits of operational lifesavers. Well, next time, Eckstein decided, then remembered that he had just sworn off field operations forever.

His ears pricked up like a dog’s as something plucked at the water not two meters from the Zodiac’s prow, and just as the flash from the beach registered on his retina and the choked report of the rifle reached him, the truth thundered in his head.

This is the next time!

The rest of it happened all at once. From the hillocks of brushy dune just above the slim beach a line of star-shaped flashes burst the night open, throwing Jeremiah’s boats into horrific silhouette, their occupants frozen like teenagers caught skinny-dipping as the cannonade of Kalashnikovs rolled across the water. From somewhere behind, one of Eckstein’s men yelled "Ta’tan’kak!" in Amharic, and the heads of the falashas bowed to the floors of their Zodiacs like Moslems at midnight prayer as quick lines of green tracers crisscrossed overhead and hissed into the swells.

Eckstein’s heart muscle froze for a millisecond, then he caught a breath and turned to yell orders at his boat crew. But the commandos were instinctive and well-trained animals and all the Zodiac pairs reacted simultaneously. The men facing the beach unclipped their mini-Uzis, came to their knees, and opened up with controlled bursts of spaced red tracers back at the hillocks, ineffective as their nine-millimeters were at such a range. The starboard men kicked the Evinrude blades into the water and hauled on the starters, and in the shallows of the beach itself the withdrawal team quickly abandoned their retreat, went prone in the surf, and hammered back at the hillocks on full auto.

The prow of Eckstein’s Zodiac suddenly lurched forward and rose precariously into the air, and he lost his paddle as he dove onto the rubber nose cone, scrabbling for the rope handholds and throwing his weight down. Feeble yelps reached him from behind, then were snuffed out as the engine screws bit and the big palm of a wave smacked his head, filled his ears, and stung his eyes He shook it off, sputtering and straining to see and hear again.

Up ahead, the roar of the missile boat engines coming to life seemed to split the sea beneath the crackling reports of small-arms fire. He could hear guttural shouts, quick boots slamming the ship deck, and then the fifty-caliber opened up, echoing over the water like a mad-man’s gavel on a steel drum as the explosions stuttered and the shell casings rang off the railings.

The missile boat’s fast attack hull turned quickly, listing hard to port as it came around, heading right for him. But the commando crew at Eckstein’s stern were just as quick and they charged straight for the sharp bow, then suddenly veered the Zodiac hard to starboard as the missile boat driver cut his engines to coast again. And just before Eckstein passed behind the shelter of the mother ship, he turned back to see his pathetic little convoy, still in formation, Uzis buzzing like angry wasps. He squinted, then opened his mouth in horror, for the last Zodiac, Benni Baum’s Zodiac, had gone flat and deflated in the waves, its engine fuel ignited by tracers, spitting pools of fire into the sea.

Eckstein’s rubber craft bounced off the high steel hull of the missile boat, then came back in again, and someone reached down from the boarding ladder and grabbed his vest, but he caught the crewman’s hand and switched it instead to the Zodiac’s rope grip. And all at once the mission changed, Jeremiah became Baum, only Baum, and Eckstein spun on his refugees and began to snatch at them; arms, clothes, bodies of thin skin and unfed bones. He hauled them over his head one after another like sacks of potatoes, smearing each one against the rope ladder until other hands took them away, and he heard himself yelling at the naval crewmen.

"Kadima! Kadima! Kadima!"

He wanted all of them gone, he wanted his boat back, empty and fast. The last falasha’s worn sneakers slipped on the rubber prow, half her legs splashed into the sea, then someone had her by her armpits and Eckstein was spinning again to his crew. But they already knew what he wanted and he crashed onto his back to the hard nippled deck as they roared away from the missile boat, arcing wide to swing around the stern and head back for Baum. Another naval commando team had davited a fiber-glass Snunit assault craft over the rails there, and they freed it and it crashed keel-flat into the water with a tremendous splash. Someone fired a parachute flare into the night, and as it popped Eckstein glimpsed flippered forms leaping from the stern deck after their craft.

He crawled back onto his stomach, hugging the prow again as the Zodiac came around and picked up speed, passing the missile boat on the side exposed to the beach. From the shore, the rebel AK-47 bursts had been joined by the jackhammer of a PK light machine gun and a trio of Russian-made rounds cracked the air overhead and punched into the thin FAC hull just above his hair. He winced hard as he passed beneath the navy’s fifty-caliber, the young gunner pivoting the heavy weapon and playing murderous timpani on the butterfly trigger. Then something thonked from the forward deck, the ship’s bow was momentarily thrown into hard silhouette by the tube flash of an Israeli fifty-two-millimeter mortar, and moments later the shell exploded in the dunes too far behind the beach hillocks and a naval officer berated the mortarman in a torrent of Hebraic curses.

Eckstein instinctively reached for his pistol, then left the Hi-Power in its holster. What the hell could he do with it at this range, anyway? Throw it? Instead, he fumbled for the small pickup beacon pinned to his vest and twisted the phallus head until it glowed green, determined at least to not be killed by friendly fire.

Just out front, the surviving Zodiacs were coming on hard, the lead craft already passing him to reach the missile boat and disgorge their cargo. But Eckstein and his crew broke through the rescue flotilla, racing back toward the dwindling smudge of oily fire that had been Baum’s pathetic craft, and he could feel his heart hammering against the sea-slickened rubber as a pattern of green tracers suddenly appeared out front only a meter above the waves. He smeared himself flat as the Zodiac slipped beneath the quilt of zipping neon projectiles and something clanged off the Evinrude and one of the commandos grunted, but they kept on.

Behind them now even more covering fire began to spit from the missile boat, a chorus of echoing rattles and pinging shell casings as the crews’ M-16s and Galils bucked in long bursts, and on the beach the rebel guns at last slacked off into stutters. Eckstein lifted his head, searching the undulating sea. An acrid film of rifle and camouflage smoke drifted over the water like mist above a loch. Somewhere a heavy Israeli tracer struck rock on the beach and went careening off into the night like a red Roman candle. One of the beachhead commandos fired off a Mecar, and the rifle grenade exploded in a plumed flash that flickered over the sea like a disco globe.

He spotted the mahogany heads of Baum’s surviving falashas bobbing in the small waves, the water glistening in their woolly scalps. Another empty Zodiac raced by on his left flank, then slowed as naval commandos rolled into the sea and began passing the refugees back into the craft.

But Eckstein only had eyes for Baum, and he flicked them madly over the water, seeing nothing, the gunfire no longer registering in his ears as he panicked.

Where is he? He cringed as his search foundered and he felt himself choking, helpless, like a child who’d left his dog in a burning building. Where are you?! He wanted to scream, but screaming made you a target, and then his fingers dug into the heavy balloon of boat rubber and he foolishly came to his knees and arched his body out over the water and he did scream.

"Benni!"

Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

"Benni!!"

Stop shouting.

Eckstein spun his head to the sound of Baum’s voice. There he was, just off the starboard pontoon, his bald head bobbing in the moonlight like an upended buoy. Incredibly, the colonel was smiling.

The Snunit assault craft zoomed by close, its gunner firing a MAG light machine gun at the beach from the bow, and the wake flowed quickly toward Benni and washed over his head. He came up again, spitting, and he raised his voice.

Get me in before the idiots drown me.

Eckstein stretched out his hand, and already his crew were turning the craft around as Benni gripped the sinews of Eytan’s arm. Eckstein leaned out, grabbed Baum’s trouser belt, and the Zodiac almost flipped as the major hauled his whale of a colonel aboard . . .

They were the last men to board the missile boat. Baum was breathing like an asthmatic and Eckstein was not much better off as they climbed the rope ladder, with Eckstein’s shoulder butting up into Baum’s rump. They barely negotiated the rail and fell to the deck, where they slumped, soaked and trembling, amidst the crowd of grateful falashas sitting cross-legged and thanking God. A pair of navy medics were counting heads and checking for injuries, while more of the crew still crouched at the rails, popping off rounds at the beach. The fifty-caliber still spat angrily, making the falashas squeeze their quivering hands over their ears.

The Snunit assault craft roared by trailing taut nylon ropes in the water, having picked up the naval commando team from the beachhead, their elbows locked into loops in the ropes as they slid along the wavetops like limp acrobats. The Snunit driver raised a thumbs-up as he passed—he would rendezvous with the mother ship upstream.

Eckstein watched as the muscular captain of the missile boat turned from the stern and came wading forward through the refugees, a strange expression of amusement at his lips. He was hatless, carrying a Motorola, and his kibbutznik red curls glistened beneath the parachute flares. He yelled to his riflemen at the rails.

Sink the Zodiacs.

There wasn’t time to haul the empty rescue craft on board. Even though the rebel gunfire had been suppressed to the occasional snipe now, Mobote’s reinforcements might arrive at any moment. The young riflemen moved to the opposite rails and fired down into the rubber boats.

The boat commander made his way to the bridge, stopping for a moment to grin down at Baum, who wagged a finger at him.

The comptroller will have your ass for that, Ami, Baum warned.

He can bill me. The commander sneered and made to move on when there was a sharp bang from the beach and, a split second later, the finned rocket from an RPG screamed by just aft of the stern, then arced lazily down into the water.

The boat commander frowned angrily, spat some orders into his walkie-talkie, and all at once from a turret forward of the bridge the terrible roar of a multi-barreled Vulcan Air Defense System buzzed like a gigantic hair clipper. Its streams of twenty-millimeter tracers stretched to the shoreline and chewed along the hillocks, obliterating sand, brush, flesh, steel, and bone alike.

Everyone on deck, including Eckstein and Baum, jerked spasmodically with the unearthly howl. Then it stopped, the echo keening back over the water. Silence. Not a peep of retort from the beach.

"Zonot. Whores," the boat commander muttered, as if to justify the slaughter. Then he holstered the Motorola and walked away, shouting orders.

The big twin engines began to rumble, and very quickly the pitching hull of the missile boat settled as it picked up speed.

Eckstein leaned back on a rail spar and stretched his legs out, trying to will his calf muscles to stop twitching. He realized that in those fierce moments of the firefight, when he’d been sure more than once that each breath was his last, few images had flickered in his brain. No memories. No longings. No last wishes. For a brief instant, only the face of his son.

He looked at Baum, who was rubbing sea salt from his thick eyebrows, smearing it back over his bald pate. Baum craned his thick neck, catching a glimpse of the receding wrecks of the Zodiacs and the thin smoke and brushfires on the distant beach. Then he turned to Eckstein and shrugged.

I told you. A white flag and a suitcase of cash. I don’t need this much excitement.

Eckstein tried to smile, but his face would not function. This was it. No more. He didn’t need it, either.

He felt the breeze from the forward speed lifting his wet hair as they began the run north for the Gulf of Aqaba and Eilat. He watched as Benni patted the breast pockets of his soaked khaki shirt, came up with a box of Marlboros, then opened it and frowned at the squashed, drowned cigarettes. Baum tossed the crumpled box over the side.

Well, said Eckstein, you should quit anyway.

Part I

Volunteers

There are no good-tempered generals.

—Michael Shaara,

The Killer Angels

1

Tel Aviv

April 28

THE GIRLS AT the main gate of the Israel Defense Forces Command General Headquarters appeared as delicate as swimsuit models. They were tall and slim, with fine features, modest lipstick, and no more than a touch of eyeliner, and they wore their young strong hair pulled back beneath old-style overseas caps. Their olive-drab blouses and trousers failed to camouflage athletic bodies tanned nut-brown from working under a Tel Aviv sun, and as they gracefully slalomed between the lines of waiting vehicles, checking drivers’ identification cards and examining passengers with cool smiles, it was easy to imagine them as harmless as the perfume girls at Bloomingdale’s. But they were some of the best gunwomen in the IDF order of battle.

The Kiria, as General HQ is called, is a massive plot of unmatched architectures just off of Kaplan Street. Girded by kilometers of high pylon and razor-wire fences, patrolled by elite infantry in open armored cars and full battle dress, it houses the command centers of every military and intelligence branch. And each independent structure of glass and steel, stucco or stone is equipped with a means of descent to the much larger balance of the Kiria’s bowels, where neither the impact of nuclear nor biological warheads shall impede the conduct of a war.

At Victor Gate, the main entrance to the complex, perhaps the female gatekeepers’ relaxed air was buttressed by their faith in the hydraulic steel teeth that could instantly thrust from the roadbed, stopping anything short of a main battle tank. Yet the hints that these young women were also deadly shots lay in the types of sidearms nestled in their waist holsters. The pistols were not standard issue, which meant that each not-quite-twenty-year-old girl had earned the right to be selective, having proved her killing prowess on the close-quarter range at Mitkan Adam.

They were not debutantes.

Eytan Eckstein’s royal blue Ford Fiesta was only sixth in line now, but something was holding up progress, most likely the movement within the Kiria of the minister of defense en route to a sitdown with the chief of staff. The five sedans before him were all white Subaru staff cars with black IDF plates, and as the early Mediterranean sun began to turn the vehicles into microwave ovens, their windows rolled down and their drivers’ bronzed arms dangled outside, impatiently flicking ashes.

The constant clutching and shifting was hard on Eckstein’s once-wounded knee, and Benni Baum, squeezed into the small passenger seat, watched his major’s rippling jaw muscle and clucked his tongue.

You could declare yourself disabled with that leg, you know, said Benni. In the Israel Defense Forces, being wounded and disabled in action afforded a soldier compensatory privileges unequaled by any other army. You could be driving a Mercury.

Itzik would love that, Eytan snorted. He’d chain me to a desk forever, and with the surgeon’s blessing.

"Now that would be a travesty," Baum huffed sarcastically. He had been trying to lure Eckstein out of the field for some time, though he was unsure of his own motives. Baum was slated to retire altogether from the army and had only extended his tour to help Eckstein with Jeremiah, In turn, he believed that Eckstein should follow the natural progression, stop playing spy and run a unit from inside. Yet he suspected himself of a selfish wish, that Eckstein should hold down an office in Jerusalem so that he, the retiree, would retain an ally in SpecOps. Someone to visit, someone to keep him in the game should gardening and clicking his heels to Maya’s redecoration commands prove to be loathsome.

"Tiyeh retzini. Be serious, said Eckstein. Can you picture me working in Itzik’s little circus?"

It’s not such a bad idea.

"You’ve forgotten why we’ve stayed in the field, Benni. So he doesn’t have to actually look at us."

Eckstein and Baum were admittedly the best of General Itzik Ben-Zion’s officers, but the commander resented their operational coups, while forced to employ them if he wanted to continue to bask in their glories.

Well, everyone has to come in from the heat eventually, said Benni, twisting the title of the novel that launched John le Carre’s fame. He lit up a fresh Marlboro. The ashtray was already overflowing.

Thank you for the advice. Crude, yet borderline poetic, Eckstein replied. But it would be like jumping from a volcano onto an iceberg.

Baum laughed. Eckstein was right, of course. Even though Baum held the title of Chief of Operations, he made sure to hold most of his meetings, briefings, and rendezvous outside of Jerusalem headquarters. Not that he actually suspected Itzik of wiring his office, which would have been difficult since it was electronically swept once a week by the internal security detachment known as Peaches. Baum had simply been weaned by the Mossad back in the 1960s, when street corners, cafés, and empty orange groves were the office and such habits were ingrained for the sake of security. But most importantly, these personal quirks kept him out of Itzik’s line of sight, as the lumbering colonel knew that he was always a ripe target for inconsequential assignments concocted by his general.

I want to change, Eckstein suddenly said, but he used the verb l’hachlif, which also means switch.

Departments? Baum’s tone was incredulous. He could not really envision Eckstein going back to Training again, or taking a straight AMAN desk where you analyzed Syrian troop concentrations by having your field agents monitor prostitute flow.

Clothes. Eckstein shifted in his seat, snatched up one of Baum’s cigarettes, and stabbed the car lighter. He was tempted to honk the horn, but the gatekeepers would probably respond by pulling him out of line and searching his trunk. Neither he nor Baum had slept in over thirty-six hours, and his eyes stung as if invaded by sand, his mouth mealy and his stomach sour.

The missile boat had zigzagged north through the Red Sea, then run the demarcation line straight up the Gulf of Aqaba, where just south of the resort city of Eilat they offloaded the refugees onto a civilian snorkel boat. An air force C-130 picked them up at the local airport, and the already culture-shocked Ethiopians were subjected to further technical thunder and wonder, opting to pray and sing Amharic folk tunes rather than peek out the portholes at the Negev Desert sweeping below.

Officials of the Jewish Agency and the Joint Distribution Committee took charge at Jerusalem’s Atarot Airport, but Eckstein’s dawn fantasy of limping off home to catch his young son before the school day began was dissolved by a messenger driving the major’s own Ford and waving a note from Ben-Zion. As always, Itzik’s missive was polite, flowery, and so apologetic: 0800 hours. Meeting at the Kiria. B.Z.

Eytan and Benni had managed to borrow some sandals and T-shirts from a kibbutznik acquaintance en route to Tel Aviv, but they were both still wearing their miserably damp fatigue pants.

My ass is chafing, Eckstein complained.

"It’s not the trousers, my son," Baum observed.

First you’re a literary sage, now you’re Sigmund Freud. I can’t keep up.

One of the gatekeepers approached Eckstein’s window. She was a sergeant, tall like a volleyball player, her coal-black hair pulled into a slick ponytail. Her thumbs were hooked into a white Sam Brown belt and