“Yes sir, of course. I had no idea—”
“You have caused me to blow cover on an important operation. Let me just say that you will never uncover the missing Bak. I have already done your work for you, and now you expose me. Do you see what I could do to you?”
“Yes sir. I had no—”
“I did so because this man here is my bodyguard and has done extraordinary work in service to NKVD and the security of the Soviet union .”
“Yes, Major Speshnev, my God, everyone knows of Major Speshnev, of his activities with the partisans all over the occupied zones, of his—”
“Get him the highest clearance so that he may return home as the hero he is. I will move paperwork shortly to award him the medals he deserves.”
“Yes sir.”
“As for me, I require air transportation to Moscow at my earliest convenience. Do you understand?”
“It will be done.”
Speshnev went up to the Peasant. “All right,” he said, “they will treat you well now. Go home, my friend, live well, have many children.”
“Sir, you will speak for Mili? Make them see—”
“It is not time yet. Politics, as I have said. Much needs to be unraveled. I will try. Vengeance is a different matter, however. Now get out of here. Return home. Have more children.”
“I will name them after you.”
“It’s of no importance. If you have a daughter, name her after Mili. That would be something.”
Interlude in Tel Aviv VII
The bad news was that the satellite had filmed imagery of six tractor-trailers, each with oceangoing containers, leaving the Nordyne site and transporting their cargo to a Iranian freighter in the Astrakhan harbor. The trucks completed loading. The ship was ready to go. What was holding it up?
“It’s Russia. Paperwork.”
Cohen explained: “The Russians run their import-export very tightly. Nothing goes in or gets out without close examination. That’s why this puzzles me. Those containers will be examined, that load of extremely hazardous material will be discovered, and there will be an immediate emergency. Any kind of damage could set that stuff off, and there’d be a huge tragedy. The Russians will have to disassemble it very carefully.”
The eureka moment. The banging of drums, maybe the ringing of a doorbell, maybe just a weird tremor, brain to toes. Gershon experienced it at that second. Dots all connected. “I have it,” he said.
All eyes went to him.
“The minister of trade can issue arbitrary waivers on the inspection process. That’s why he wanted the job.”
Silence in the room.
Gershon summed up: “We now know that Strelnikov was the son of the traitor Basil Krulov, who was himself a student of the insane Dr. Hans Groedl, may he not rest in peace. It’s a straight line from the coils of Groedl’s infected brain to that ship full of Zyklon B sitting in a Russian harbor, waiting for shipment to Iran and then, by means yet unknown, to Israel. The boy Vassily idealized his father, Basil, and wanted to be just like him, wanted to continue his work in the holy war against the Jews. Now he’s elderly and absurdly rich and feeling disappointed that he hasn’t done enough. So he uses his wealth to set up this insanity as a tribute to his father’s wishes. Now all that’s left for him to do is to sign the documents and sit back and enjoy the fun.”
“When does he become minister of trade?”
Gershon looked at his watch, calculated Moscow time from it, and replied, “In about twenty minutes.”
“Options,” the director asked.
“Limited, I’m afraid,” said someone. “We have no military assets in the area. Even if we did, attacking something in a Russian harbor would be a policy disaster. The ship will be vulnerable for the eight hours it takes to travel from Astrakhan to the Iranian harbor. We could hit it with Phantoms if we could get permission to meet them on the way back in someone else’s air space with tankers for refueling. Even then we’d catch hell for bombing a ship in the Caspian, and if there were consequences of the gas, we’d catch hell for that. Not the makers of the gas but us, the Israelis, as usual.”
“Once it’s unloaded in Iran, we’ve pretty much lost it,” another executive continued. “Our only responses are defensive. Heightened border and air security. A posture of readiness. A suspicion of any large-bulk transport near our borders. All reactive, not proactive.”
“Gershon, you’re the genius who came up with this. Tell us what to do.”
“Everything just mentioned. Prayer would also be an excellent idea.”
“Strelnikov will sign the documents, the ship will leave, we will watch it disappear, and then we’ll wait for the inevitable. We—”