An Excerpt from Flight of the Skyhawk

CHAPTER ONE

1965

Aboard the USS Ticonderoga. The Philippine Sea. Eighty nautical miles from Kikai Island, the Kagoshima Prefecture. 5 December, 1965.

Lieutenant Junior Grade Golan Stiel lay in his bunk and braced against the rail as the aircraft carrier pitched in the rough waters. He had just returned from the flight deck where the temperature was below freezing, and ocean swells were beginning to top forty feet. An alarm blared over his head and pierced the tightly confined quarters. “God loves the Navy,” he said as he hopped off the bunk. 

“What was that, Pickle?” Lieutenant Carlton Waters said through the open doorway. To Naval aviators, the term pickle referred to the releasing of bombs. But during an early training flight, Stiel had come back one fuel tank short. He had inadvertently released the tank instead of the weapon. The nickname stuck.

“I said, ‘God loves the Navy.’ That means me. You? Not so much.” Stiel smiled at his wingman. He hurriedly grabbed his flight suit, a one-piece made from fireproof Nomex fabric, and stepped into it, then zipped it up. He picked up his anti-G suit and jammed in one leg followed by the other. The suits were designed to apply pressure to a pilot’s lower extremities to prevent loss of consciousness when under heavy acceleration.

“Hurry up. Flight line in two. The Cold War isn’t going to wait for you,” Waters said as he darted from the stateroom.

Stiel threw on a torso harness and chased it with a survival vest. Once both were properly affixed, he stuffed a .38-caliber pistol into a chest pocket and zipped it tight. 

The alarm continued to pulse. A booming voice came over the speakers, reverberating through every compartment on the ship. “General Quarters, General Quarters. All hands, man your battle stations.” 

“I hope this is a drill,” Stiel said to himself. But part of him hoped it wasn’t. 

The carrier’s primary Cold War mission was to defend against the ultimate doomsday scenario, one in which the Russians would launch a nuclear attack. But with the Vietnam war now in full swing, the carrier had double duties. Stiel had already made fifteen combat runs, expertly placing explosive ordnance onto military targets in North Vietnam. The adrenaline spikes had become almost addictive. 

The first several attack missions had been targeted at supply depots, but the last was a munitions dump. Stiel’s Zuni missiles had been right on target that day. He could still picture the secondary explosions in his mind.

But right now, time was not on his side. He stuffed a water-filled baby bottle into a pouch on the leg of the anti-G suit, grabbed his helmet bag and broke into a run. His destination was the hangar deck. Situated one level below the flight deck, the hangar deck served as the primary location where aircraft were stored, repaired, and armed for combat. 

With so much gear and supplies strapped to his body, extra ammo, pencil flares, cigarettes, a knit cap, heavy gloves, signaling cloth, hat, and a long jungle knife strapped to his leg, his dash to the hangar deck felt more like a weighed-down slog. 

The ship pitched from one side to another in the heavy seas. Under General Quarters conditions, sailors ran in various directions in what looked like disorganized chaos. Yet the response was textbook. 

Stiel blew past the ready room and descended a narrow staircase, known onboard Naval vessels as a ladder well. With so many sailors running for their duty stations he called ahead, “Make a hole! Down ladder!” He shuffled past a dozen sailors coming up. He was on the hangar deck and running for his plane seconds later. 

When he got to the craft, however, he hesitated. A B43 nuclear bomb was strapped to the underbelly. Oh shit, Stiel thought.

“Get your ass in gear, JG,” Waters yelled from the cockpit of his A-4 Skyhawk attack aircraft.

Stiel slung his helmet bag into the hands of an airman already standing on the wing, waiting for him. He climbed the exterior ladder and jumped into the cockpit of his Skyhawk. The airman, known as the plane captain, handed him his helmet. Stiel snugged it over his head and began adjusting the oxygen mask. The the airman leaned in and affixed Stiel’s shoulder and leg straps, then pulled a pair of safety pins from the ejector seat.

Adrenaline pulsed into Stiel’s veins the way it always did in the harried moments before being flung from the deck of the carrier. 

The airman said, “Good to go, sir?”

Stiel nodded then his fingers instinctively found several switches. The process of preparing the plane for flight was on. 

The airman gave him a thumbs up and shimmied down the ladder.

With so much noise emanating from the flight deck above them, Stiel held his oxygen mask over his mouth and keyed his radio. “Hey, LT, this isn’t a drill, is it?”

“What makes you think this isn’t a drill?” Waters replied. “The carrier’s cruising for Yokosuka, Japan for a little R and R.” 

Stiel looked to the side of the hangar and saw them, three sailors known as ordnance men, red-shirts charged with moving, mounting, and arming weapons. But these were no ordinary officers. Known as “the W,” the elite Special Weapons Division was comprised of those trusted to handle nuclear weapons. They were flanked by a detachment of Marine guards who stood in close watch. 

Stiel smiled. “What makes me think this isn’t a drill? Well, let’s see. There’s a Mark 43 on my wing for starters.”

“Oh, you noticed that, did you? You got a problem with a tactical nuclear weapon strapped to your balls?”

“And we’re not doing an exterior pre-flight?”

“That’s a negative, Pickle. The island says this is priority. You just better hope that bucket of bolts you’re flying is in good shape. Kick the tires then light the fire. Run your interior pre-check, and do it fast. Ejection seat safety pins out?”

“Affirmative.”

“Fuel level?”

Stiel checked his gauge. Since a fully fueled tank would make the plane too heavy to launch, Skyhawks launched with half-capacity and were refueled in mid-air. His gauge read 2,734 pounds, almost perfect. 

He flashed a thumbs-up to Waters. 

“The tanker just launched from CAT A,” Waters said. An enormous roaring sound came from overhead as another aircraft launched from the catapult. “That would be a Crusader. There’s another F-8 to launch, but you’re number two on CAT B, right behind it.”

A vehicle called a tug detached itself from the front landing gear. Tugs had the singular responsibility of moving aircraft into various positions on the ship, but once a plane was ready to be backed onto the elevator, planes were moved the old fashioned way. 

A dozen sailors ran into position and began to push. Stiel’s plane rolled backward toward the carrier’s single deck-edge elevator where it would be raised to the level of the flight deck. 

Stiel hurried through his interior pre-flight checklist, flipping switches and checking gauges. As the plane was backed onto the open-air elevator platform, the wheels bumped across the leading edge of the elevator. 

Stiel glanced over his shoulder at the raging seas behind him. A wave slammed into the side of the massive ship, and freezing, salt-laden mist blasted across the elevator and into the hangar deck. The ship lurched in protest, and Stiel felt the roll tilt him forward. He pulled the canopy actuation handle and lowered the jet’s canopy to the closed position, forming an airtight seal. 

Stiel’s wingman came over the radio again. “Island says we’ve got two bogeys inbound. Probably Russian MiG-17 fighter aircraft. They’re moving at subsonic speeds, just below Mach 1. Position is one hundred nautical miles and closing. That’s what they’re launching the Crusaders for. But those MiGs launched from somewhere. If there’s a Russkie carrier group out there, it could get ugly. It’s time to earn your pay.”

“Bogeys?” Stiel said. “Christ, I expected it when we were in the Gulf of Tonkin, but out here? If you ask me, the Cold War ain’t so cold.”

“Did you just say Christ?” Waters said as he laughed into the comm. “Aren’t you Jewish?”

Stiel extended the middle finger on his right hand and used it to salute Waters. He glanced at a small black and white photo affixed to the top of the instrument panel. His sweetheart, Evelyn, a trim brunette dressed only in a two-piece bathing suit, smiled back at him. “See you in the air, LT.”

Several sailors, plane handlers in blue shirts and a safety director in yellow, shielded their faces against the freezing mist. As the plane was pushed back, the safety director eyed the position of the front wheel relative to the painted yellow line on the floor of the elevator. But as the massive wave passed underneath, the ship began to lean in the other direction.  

Stiel felt his plane roll backward, toward the edge. With nothing between him and the rolling seas but a thin metal safety bar, he jammed his foot onto the brake pedal. Instead of feeling pressure, however, his foot went straight to the floor.

“Shit! No brakes!” he yelled into the comm.

The plane’s front wheel rolled past the yellow line and the safety director blew his whistle. Men on the hangar deck erupted into motion. Two sailors, known as chock men, one positioned under each wing, threw large wooden chocks behind the landing gear, an attempt to thwart the roll. 

Two other safety men blew whistles just as the plane’s wheels bumped over the chocks. Frantic blue-shirts ran onto the elevator and grabbed at the plane. But the elevator platform tilted further and they could not arrest the rearward motion.

Jamming his foot on the brake pedal in repeated succession had no effect. The platform tilted past the critical threshold.

Waters’ eyes flared wide. His best friend was about to fall over the edge. He sat bolt-upright against his shoulder harnesses and his voice boomed into the radio. “Pickle, no!”  

Stiel felt a violent jarring accompanied by the sounds of metal on metal as the huge fuel tanks under his wings tore through the safety bar. Blue and yellow-shirts let go and leapt to the side to keep from being pulled overboard.

Stiel’s heart rate exploded as he felt his rear landing gear slide over the edge. It was too late to bail out. The bulk of the plane slid off the platform, hung momentarily by the nose gear, then toppled thirty-nine feet. It landed on its back, slamming canopy-first onto the thrashing water below. Stiel and the plane were upside down.

Inside the cockpit, the impact was jarring. The plane began to sink beneath the surface of the thrashing water. Stiel scrambled to get his bearings. The lights illuminating the instrument panel went black. Out of instinct, Stiel reached for the ejection handle, but being below the surface, realized instantly the canopy would not be able to jettison clear. With the canopy still in place, deploying the ejection seat’s rocket motor would cause flames to erupt inside the cockpit. He would either burn to death or be crushed against the closed canopy.

With lightning speed, he unbuckled his safety harness, pressed the canopy actuation handle forward, and jammed his hands into the canopy. The plane slipped into the dark, watery oblivion. He pushed as hard as he could, but the water pressure holding the canopy closed was too much. What little light he had vaporized into inky blackness.

The plane descended deeper, and Stiel pushed against the canopy. After a few moments, it began to pop and groan under the pressure. The canopy would not budge. Stiel’s mind frantically searched through every emergency training scenario he had gone through, but this was not a contingency anyone had planned for. 

Stiel propped a boot against the canopy and pressed with everything he had. A small amount of water began to leak in around the seal. He could feel the plane descend deeper and deeper.

The canopy, however, remained like a rock. The plane rolled end over end into the depths below. Stiel no longer could tell which direction was up. Exhausted and out of options, there was nothing left to do, and Stiel knew it. He unbuckled his oxygen mask then fumbled in the pitch darkness for the photo of Evelyn. 

The metallic groaning of water pressure against the canopy intensified, and he held the photo to his lips. 

“Goodbye, my sweet Evelyn.”

 

CHAPTER TWO

A STRANGE CALL

Mossad Headquarters, Tel Aviv, Israel, Nuclear Detection Lab. Present Day.

The phone rang for the fifth time in the past five minutes. Talia Stiel looked at it and shook her head. She knew the calls were for her but had been trying to ignore them. Her work to develop a technology to detect nuclear material was so close to being finished that she could no longer stand the repeated interruptions. But on the fourth ring, she stood and tightened the band holding her long black hair into a ponytail. She snatched the phone off the receiver. 

“Talia Stiel,” she said.

“Dr. Stiel?” a female voice on the other end said. “We’ve been trying to reach you. This is Ayala, in Human Resources? We’ve got an emergency call for you. It’s a family emergency, I’m afraid. You’ll need to call Sourasky Medical Center right away.”

Talia’s posture straightened. “Family emergency? Is it Moshe?”

“No, ma’am. We notified Director Himmelreich as well.”

“But I don’t have any other family.”

“Please,” the woman said, “it sounded urgent.”

Talia shook her head. “I said I don’t have any other family. You’ve made a mistake.”

“No, ma’am. They said—”

“Your parents can only die once.” Her slightly warped sense of levity went nowhere, and all she heard was silence. “Fine, whatever,” she said. “You have a number?”

The woman relayed the phone number and reiterated the urgency of the call. Talia stood from behind a wide research table and caught the reflection of herself in the glass wall lining the laboratory. Ever since her last birthday, the “big three-oh,” as she had called it, Talia found herself more conscious of her looks. 

Like many Israeli women, she was trim and often found men looking at her. But today, in the final stages of her research project, she decided the long hours were beginning to take a toll. She stared into her reflection and smoothed a wrinkle in her form-fitting skirt. She dialed the number. “I still don’t see how I can have a family emergency,” she said to herself.

The phone rang twice, and on the other end, a female voice answered in a hurried, yet polite, tone. “Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, Intensive Care Unit.”

“Yes, my name is Talia Stiel. I think there’s been a mistake, I’ve been asked to call this number. Some kind of family emergency?”

“Yes, Miss Stiel. We’ve been trying to reach you. It’s about your grandfather. He’s here in the intensive care unit. I’m afraid it’s quite serious. You’ll want to get here as soon as possible.”

“My grandfather?” Talia said as she pressed the phone harder to her ear. “I don’t have a grandfather. Both my grandfathers died years ago.”

“Miss Stiel, please. He’s calling for you. It’s all we can do to keep him calm. The doctors say his condition is grave. You must come immediately.”

“I appreciate your concern, but you’ve got the wrong person. Like I said, I don’t have a grandfather. I don’t have a mother or father anymore, for that matter. I’m the only Stiel left.” Across the phone line, Talia heard what sounded like the woman standing up from a swivel chair. 

“He said you wouldn’t believe it.” The nurse’s voice sounded course, like one trying to choke down the day’s frustrations. “Here, I wrote it down so I wouldn’t forget.” She sounded like she was reading from a piece of paper. “You are Talia Stiel, are you not?”

“Yes, but—”

“And your mother’s maiden name was Mizrah?”

Talia’s voice flattened. “Yes.”

“Your father was Avraham Stiel?”

Talia swallowed. “Yes.”

“The patient here is named Yosef Stiel. He says he’s your grandfather. He’s insistent about it. He’s the one who told us where to call you.”

Her legs wobbled. “But . . . ” Talia said as she sat. “Yosef Stiel died when I was five years old. I distinctly remember it.”

“No, ma’am. He’s lying right here, and he’s asking for you.” A moment of awkward silence played out. “He said if you still didn’t believe it was him to tell you he used to call you Peanut?”

Talia dropped the phone, then clutched her hands to her mouth. 

The nurse on the other end of the line said, “Hello? Miss Stiel? Miss Stiel?”

 

CHAPTER THREE

INTENSIVE CARE

Thirty-five minutes later, Talia Stiel half-jogged down the sterile, white hospital corridor. She skidded to a halt in front of the nurse’s station, wobbling on her high heels before grabbing the counter top to stabilize herself. “I’m looking for a patient, Yosef Stiel?”

“Yes, ma’am,” a nurse in surgical scrubs said as she looked up from a computer monitor. “Mr. Stiel is in pod seven, just that way.” 

Talia ran past pod five, then six. When she came to number seven, she stopped. She could see through a bay of large glass windows into the room where an old man lay. Tubes and wires were connected to his arms and chest. His face was obscured by an oxygen mask, and Talia squinted to get a better look. 

She clutched her purse, then pushed the door open and stood staring at the man’s face. Its warm familiarity flooded over her. It was her grandfather, a man who, until now, only existed in faint, time-washed memories. It was Yosef Stiel.

Talia placed her hand on a handrail against the wall as a wave of dizziness swept over her. She steadied herself when a different nurse, a woman with wrinkled skin and gray hair pulled back into a tight bun said, “Are you all right, Miss?” The woman spoke softly, as one might in a public library.

“Oh, yes, thank you. Vertigo. Comes and goes.”

“Would you like to sit down?”

“No. This will pass. The dizziness comes sometimes when I’m under stress. I’ll be fine.” 

The nurse smiled. “The ICU can be overwhelming.” For just a moment, the woman’s warmth reminded Talia of her own mother.

Talia looked back at the old man on the bed. His eyes were closed. Several digital monitors hung on the wall, each making its own, distinct bleeping sound. She walked closer and looked down at him. 

A moment later, his eyes flickered open as he registered her presence. “Talia, Talia!” the old man said, his voice crackly and hoarse. “My little Peanut. Look at you.” He pulled the oxygen mask from his mouth.

Talia startled, but the voice, it rang true in her mind; it was really him. “Grandpa?” she said as she leaned closer.

His face softened, and he reached for her hand. “My glasses,” he said, his voice raspy and dry. “I need my glasses. I want to see your face.”

She reached to the side table and picked up the glasses, and that’s when she noticed her own hands were trembling. When he had donned the glasses, a warm smile spread across his wrinkled face. “Come closer. It’s really you, isn’t it, Peanut?”

“I don’t, I don’t understand. You’re . . . dead.”

“I’m so sorry, sweet pea. It was your parents, you see? I had to lie to you. I had to lie to you all. I know what they told you.” He began to cough violently. When the hacking abated, he drew in a deep breath. “They told you I had died. But there was a lot at stake. I had to disappear. Otherwise, they would have found me.”

“Who? Who would have found you?”

“That’s not important right now. I’m just glad to see you. My little Peanut.”

The face, the familiar voice, it was all starting to feel so real. And the reference to her childhood nickname brought a lump to her throat. “Grandpa, I’m so lost. Ima and Aba told me you had died. You’re saying my own parents lied?”

“Do not place blame on them. They were simply trying to protect you.”

“Protect me? Protect me from what?”

Her grandfather cocked his head to the side. To Talia, it appeared he had lost his train of thought.

“None of this is important now.”

Talia decided to try a different tack. “What did you mean when you said they would have found you?” Talia shook her head. “Why don’t you start from the beginning.”

“No, no,” he said as he began coughing. It was worse this time. “There are other things I must tell you—” 

His coughing fit exploded, and a nurse walked in. She replaced the face mask over his mouth and nose and connected one of the tubes to a nebulizer pump. 

She opened a small white box of medication labeled Salbutamol Teva 5mg Solution for Inhalation, then pulled out one of the vials of clear liquid. She poured a bolus of the liquid into the nebulizer and turned the machine on. A medicated mist began to blow into the face mask.

The nurse said, “There, there, Mr. Stiel. Just breath in slowly. That’s it. You’ve got to stay calm now.” She waited as the coughing subsided, then walked back out.

He pulled the mask down again. “There’s not much time,” he said as he gripped his rib cage and held it. The underlying pain’s intensity magnified across his face. “But you have to know. You have to know everything. Otherwise, it will be too late.” He stopped, apparently lost in thought.

“Grandpa?”

He took a few breaths through the face mask, then pulled it down again. “There is something I must tell you, something that has pained me all these years. I can’t hold it inside any longer. It’s been eating me alive since I was a young man. And,” he coughed, “as it turns out, you, you are the only one left, the only one who can help me.”

“Wait. Are you-”

“Dying? Yes, my dear. That’s why I must tell you now before it is too late.”

She pulled a chair closer to the bedside and sat, then placed her purse on the floor. “Um, okay.” Talia studied his face a moment and found herself entranced with its familiarity. “Is this something I want to hear?”

“That is for you to decide.” He drew the face mask closer and allowed the nebulized medication to waft into the air near his face. He covered his mouth and coughed again. “It was 1965. I was young, and so was Israel. You’ve got to understand, things were much worse back then. We had enemies on all sides. None of our enemies had wanted the state of Israel to come into existence in the first place. There was very little time.”

“Time for what?”

“The Land was in great danger. We knew if Israel were to be invaded, we wouldn’t stand a chance. We had to have a means of defending ourselves.”

“But, Grandpa, we had an army. It was formed with the country’s inception in 1948.” 

“When your tiny country is surrounded on all sides by enemies, just having an army is not enough. Even in 1965, our army was small, ill-equipped. We were facing the distinct possibility of being annihilated. It had become a matter of urgency.” 

“What did you do?”

“I did what had to be done, everything in my power. We had to obtain what we really needed, the one thing that would secure the security of The Land for generations to come.”

Talia’s head turned to the side as the statement played forward in her mind. “Which was?” 

He coughed, but only mildly. “We needed a nuclear weapon.” 

Talia shifted in her seat.

He continued. “Your work at the Mossad as a nuclear physicist means you are in a scientific role, but from what I know about you, you’ve been something of a historian your entire life. You’ve studied the country’s history, even to the point of accessing Mossad case files in order to learn all you could.”

“How do you know that?”

He placed the mask over his mouth and waved the question off. “It’s not important.”

“But you haven’t seen me since I was five.”

He ignored the question. “You know that in 1965, Israel did not yet possess such capabilities. Not only did Israel not have nuclear weapons, but at that time we were not allowed to possess them in any form.”

“Yes, yes,” Talia said, “that was part of how the deal to create the State of Israel came about in the first place.” The old man opened his mouth to speak, but Talia spoke over him. “Wait. You worked in the bakery with Ima and Aba. What do nuclear weapons have to do with a pastry chef?”

He coughed again yet a smile widened across his face. “Ah, Peanut. I am so glad you grew up with that picture of me in your mind. You were so young and innocent.” He looked out the window a moment. The smile abated, and his eyes became glassy, like one lost in a memory. “I wouldn’t have wanted you to know who I really was. Who I am.”

There was something laced in his words. It sent a cold shiver up Talia’s spine.

 “But this is not why I wanted to talk to you.” His face furled a moment as if assembling the words he wanted to use next. “We appealed to the United States, Canada, Great Britain, France and Norway for help obtaining a weapon, but none would defy the treaty.”

“Well, sure,” Talia said, “The United Nations Special Committee on Palestine made the recommendation for the creation of Israel after a lot of compromises. No one would have wanted to go against the agreements set aside in the Partition Plan.”

 “I was right. You do have a love of history. You are correct, my dear. Nonetheless, by 1965 our intelligence sources feared an invasion was imminent, an invasion we could not survive. We had to obtain a weapon, without which we would face utter annihilation.”

He coughed again and gripped at his ribs. Talia stood and squeezed his hand. His face grimaced as he braced against the pain buried somewhere deep within his side. “I’ve got to tell you something,” he gritted out, then his voice quieted. “It’s a story you’ll have a hard time believing, but it is true, every word of it. In 1965, I was a Mossad agent.”

Talia’s head turned, and she peered down at him out of the corner of her eye. “What?”

He began to hack and pulled the mask over his face and inhaled the bronchodilator medication until the coughing settled. “I was assigned a very specific mission.”

“No, no,” Talia said as she shook her head. “You worked in the bakery. Am I supposed to believe that all those times I saw you kneading dough and making pastries were all just my imagination?” 

She stared at him a moment and studied his expression. When it was clear his story was not about to change, she said, “I work at the Mossad as a research analyst, but you are telling me you were an agent?” The word came out as if it tasted of spoiled milk.

“Do not judge me, dear Peanut. I was determined The Land was to survive, and it was up to me to obtain a device.”

Talia’s brow flattened. “A nuclear device?”

“The weight of the entire nation was on my shoulders. The Land,” he said, referring to how most Israelis refer to their country, “needed me, and I was not going to fail it.” His voice became dry, like the winds of the Negev desert. “I was to obtain the device using any means necessary.”

Talia knew the types of covert operations the Mossad was involved in. “Any means?” She crossed her arms over her chest. “What did you do?”

“I killed a man,” he said. “But not just any man. I killed . . .” his eyes crunched shut, “my own brother.”

“You killed . . . but you don’t have a brother.”

“Your father probably never talked about Golan because of what he did with his life. To the family, he was a disgrace, and they carried the shame around with them as if it were a curse. But it wasn’t. Golan Stiel was a great man.”

Talia shook her head. “You’re telling me I had a great uncle named Golan?” 

Yosef spoke as though recounting a horror. “My brother didn’t fail at his life. There was no disgrace. He was murdered at my hands, though no one knew it. In fact, the Israeli Prime Minister and the Director of the Mossad were the only ones who knew the truth, besides myself.”

Yosef’s eyes started to shift back and forth, and Talia wondered if the man was telling the whole truth.

“The truth you murdered my uncle, or that Israel was trying to obtain a nuclear device?”

“Both, my dear. In those days, I was recruited for the mission, a mission of such importance the future of the State of Israel hung in the balance.”

“All right,” she said as she turned around. “Grandpa, this is all a little too much for me to take in.”

“You must hear this. You are the only one that can know. You must hear the story of how my brother died. It is my dying wish.” 

The old man studied the ceiling tiles a moment, then began.

 

CHAPTER FOUR

WEAPON REVEALED

Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, Pod Seven.

Yosef started, “When my brother was of age, he chose to emigrate to America. The family was very upset with him leaving, but he insisted. It was the late 1950’s. He became a US citizen and then went to university at the United States Naval Academy as a cadet. After graduation, he served in the Navy as a fighter pilot.” He grinned. “He was so proud. His aircraft was an A-4E Skyhawk, and from what I was told by the others in his squadron, he was the best.”

Talia turned and walked to the wall, lost in a swirl of thoughts. Her historical knowledge of the Israeli Mossad afforded her not only an extensive understanding of Israel’s military capabilities and past actions but that of her allies and enemies as well. She turned to him and said, “Skyhawks were fighter-bombers.”

“That’s right. And during the Cold War, when tensions were high enough with the Russians, the United States would arm Skyhawks with tactical nuclear weapons, secured to the underside of the plane, and launch them from the decks of carriers. The weapons were thermonuclear, and depending on the fusing options chosen, were capable of detonating in a variety of ways.”

Talia crossed her arms. “Yes, I’m well aware. But how do you know—” She stopped herself. “Tactical devices are meant to be used in any number of situations. They can detonate in air burst, ground burst, can be dropped free fall, could detonate on contact, or even be used under laydown delivery.”

“Your Ph.D. has not gone to waste,” he said with a cough. “And depending on the fusing option chosen, the explosive yield of a single device could be adjusted from seventy kilotons up to—”

“One megaton,” Talia said as she nodded. “And I’m not a Ph.D. yet.”

“And that was exactly the type of weapon Israel was desperate to possess. Since a foreign aggressor could approach us from any side, by the time their attack was detected, it would have been too late for our Army to thwart. We needed a tactical nuclear weapon just like that to neutralize the threat. And the fact that the weapon carried by the Skyhawk could be varied in yield when detonated made it ideal. We would have a weapon which could be tuned on demand as the situation warranted.”

Talia nodded, but her shoulders slumped. “And I suppose Israel would have made sure all of our enemies knew we were in possession. That way, they would think twice before invading.”

“Exactly.”

She exhaled. “What did you do?”

“I enlisted.”

“In what?”

“In the United States Navy.”

“Hold on,” Talia said as she held an open palm to Yosef. “Your brother, Golan, if he did exist, may have been a US citizen, but you weren’t. You couldn’t have enlisted.”

Yosef grinned. “You are correct. My brother had become a US citizen after a year-long process. I, however, did not have that kind of time. The details of how I was able to enlist are not important. Let’s just say I had help.”

Talia nodded. The Mossad, she thought. 

“In the Navy, I became a Chief Warrant Officer and requested assignment to a particular aircraft carrier, the same carrier Golan was assigned. Since I also had obtained a brand new identity, no one knew we were siblings. And since my sole directive was to get my hands on a nuclear weapon, I figured, the best thing to do was to become a weapons specialist. It would give me direct access to the weapons themselves.”

“You’re telling me you were going to attempt to steal a nuclear weapon from the United States Navy? Were you insane?”

“I was trained to load, unload, and store armaments of all types, including those with nuclear tips. And as a Warrant Officer, I had authorization to be in restricted areas where others were not permitted.”

Talia looked down as if lost in thought. “Which carrier was Golan assigned?”

“The USS Ticonderoga.”

It took a moment, but then Talia’s mouth opened. “The Ticonderoga? Wait a minute. We studied this in grad school. That’s the ship that in 1965 lost a nuclear device. They were in the, ah, the—”

“The East China Sea. We were part of Attack Squadron 56. We had departed Subic Bay in the Philippines, performed a combat tour in Vietnam, and thirty-one days later were eighty miles from Kikai Island, the Kagoshima Prefecture.”

She pointed at him. “You were on board the Ticonderoga?” But she stopped herself. “Wait. First, you lead me to believe you were a baker, that you died when I was five, and now this? This must be what Moshe was talking about.”

“Ah, Moshe. What did your godfather tell you?”

“He always said you were crazy.” She crossed her arms again. “I don’t believe a word of what you’re saying.”

Yosef nodded. “Moshe has his own motivations. He and I never really saw eye to eye.” Yosef continued with the story. “It was a bitter, cold December day. The seas were hell, I don’t mind telling you. I remember it like it was yesterday.”

Talia’s tone sharpened. “Fine,” she said as he sat in the chair then threw one leg over the other. “Go on then. Tell me how you did the impossible, stole a nuclear weapon from a naval warship. I’d love to hear this.”

“I didn’t.”

“But you just said—”

“I failed.”

Talia shook her head. “You failed? At your mission?”

He nodded. 

“All right then,” she said, “tell me how you thought you were going to steal a nuclear device from a US warship.”

“At the time, my brother, Golan, had no idea I had entered the United States. He certainly did not know I was a Warrant Officer deployed aboard the same vessel as him. I tried, and I tried, but when I finally came to the conclusion there was no way to steal the weapon outright, I knew I would need help. So I approached him.”

The old man stared off into nothingness. “Just seeing me shocked him to his core. You see, Golan and I never really saw eye to eye either.” He wafted a hand. “Those feelings between us went back a long way. As a child in Tel Aviv, I always believed that since he was older, the family loved him more than me. And as you know, in Israeli households, to a certain extent, that is true.” 

He coughed but was able to settle himself before it could go further. 

“On board the Ticonderoga, I had no other choice than to try to recruit him into the operation. After all, he was Israeli. If I could convince him to work covertly for Israel, his true homeland, we could accomplish the mission together. 

My plan was that he would take off from the deck of the carrier with the weapon attached. He would fly off-course to a remote location we would coordinate with the Mossad where he would land. The weapon would be offloaded, and he would take off again and report a weapons malfunction. It wouldn’t be the first time a bomb had come accidentally detached from its mounts and dropped into the sea.”

“But he didn’t go along with it, did he?” Talia said, as her foot bobbed back and forth.

“No,” the old man replied as he again began coughing. This time, as he gripped at his ribcage and doubled over, the coughing intensified to a point at which a digital alarm began to pulse on one of the monitors. 

Talia stood. “Grandpa? Are you all right?”

The hacking continued, and the nurse rushed in and helped him lean back. She repositioned the nebulizer mask across his mouth, then checked his vital signs. “You need to stay calm, Mr. Stiel. Perhaps you should rest now?” 

“I will be fine,” he said as he cleared his throat. 

“All right then,” the nurse said. “But please stay calm. And it’s very important you get some rest.” She glanced at Talia as if to say, “Visiting hours are over,” then walked out.

He waited until the nurse was out the door before continuing. “At first, my brother was torn between service to his homeland, and service to his new home, America. He loved the United States, you see. Eventually, he refused.”

“And you murdered him for that?”

He scowled at her. “Working in an air-conditioned laboratory may afford you the ability to stand back and pass judgment. You have the advantage of looking behind you, then evaluating decisions that were made in real time. Without the weight of a million tons of tanks, artillery, and boots standing on your head, it is easy for you to think in terms of black and white, right and wrong. But when faced with utter annihilation, nothing is that simple.” 

His eyes formed into slits. 

“You have no idea what it’s like to have the future of a nation in your hands.” His voice stiffened further. “Israel was in imminent danger. Hundreds of thousands of lives were on the line, and I had sworn to protect them!”

Talia rubbed her temples. “All right, all right.”

After a few moments of calming down, Yosef continued. “My brother may have initially been torn between loyalty to his homeland versus his new home, but once he made the decision to honor his commitment to the United States, he was clear. He struggled internally with what to do with the information, that an Israel operative was on board and was trying to actively steal a nuclear device.”

“He was deciding whether to turn you in or not.”

“I could see it in his eyes. There was inner conflict. Eventually, I couldn’t risk it anymore. Even though he was my brother, I knew I had to honor The Land over my own family. I had to kill him.”

Talia shook her head. “You were trying to save your own skin.”

He pointed a crooked finger at her. “That, my dear, is where you are mistaken. I would have gladly traded my life for Golan’s. I think about it every day. But if the United States were to discover the operation, Israel’s chance of obtaining a weapon would be severely damaged.”

“If this is true, you are a murderer.” Talia snatched her purse from beneath the chair.

Yosef’s voice descended into a gravelly whisper. “And Yahweh will judge me for my sins.”

“As will I.” She started to walk out.

His hoarse voice escalated. “I will be dead soon.” Talia stopped just before she reached the door but did not turn around. “I am a man of sin. I admit that. But I am dying. Please hear me out.”

She turned to face him. “What do you want from me? Why have you dumped all this on me?” A wave of emotion pushed tears against the backs of her eyes.

“I want you to do something that I cannot. I want you to honor your uncle. I want you to clear his good name.” He stared at her a moment. A tear welled in his eye, then fell. “You must have Golan’s remains returned to Israel.”

She walked back to the bedside and dropped the purse onto the chair. “Returned? Where are his remains now?” But then she put her hands into the air. “No, wait a minute. I want to get this over with.” Her teeth clenched. “You want to unburden yourself? You want to dump all this on me? Fine. I want to know how you murdered my great uncle.”

“My dear, the details are not—”

“I’m tired of all this evasive double talk. Tell me!”

The up and down movement of Yosef’s chest increased and his eyes filled with fear. “Don’t make me retell it,” he said shaking his head. “It is too painful.”

Talia reached down for her purse, but Yosef grabbed her other wrist. “I will promise to tell you everything if you promise to stay.”

Talia stared at him a moment, then nodded.

“As weapons specialist, I had direct access to the devices. In my mind, I had run through every scenario of how I could smuggle one off the ship. But nothing was feasible. Security was too high. 

“Originally, I had reasoned that if I could have uninterrupted time, I would be able to physically separate the internal components of one of the bombs. I had training that would enable me to remove the warhead from inside the nose cone and reassemble it. 

“I would have had my hands on the nuclear tip, and, looking at the bomb from the outside, there would be no way for others to tell the nuclear components had been removed. But there would also have been no way to get the warhead off the ship. 

“The bomb itself is large, over twelve feet long, with a weight close to twenty-one hundred pounds. But the warhead is only about yay big,” he said as he held his hands about two feet apart, “and weighs eighty pounds. But as I mentioned, security around those devices was high. We had a roving Marine guard on board at all times. Officers would inspect each weapon as it was loaded or unloaded from a plane.”

“Let’s fast forward. Once you knew you had no chance at stealing the warhead, and you had made the decision to kill your brother, what did you do?”

“I had to ensure his death looked like an accident.”

She held her hand up to stop him. “An accident?” She turned and studied the floor until her memory recalled what she had learned about the Ticonderoga. “I remember this,” she said as she began to pace the floor. “My Military Studies professor used it as an example in one of his lectures. The device the Ticonderoga lost was attached to the underbelly of a Skyhawk.” 

She snapped her fingers. “There was an accident on the elevator.” Her voice trailed off as the thoughts played forward in her mind. “Something went wrong and the pilot and plane were dumped overboard, and the weapon with them.”

He turned his head, a veiled attempt to hide his eyes.

She pointed at him. “You caused the accident, didn’t you?” 

Yosef’s voice choked. “We had completed a combat tour in Vietnam and had rotated off. The ship headed for Yokosuka, Japan for a little R and R. But on the way, the captain received orders for what is called a nuclear strike plan. A Russian carrier group was nearby and tensions were high. The temperatures were below freezing that day, and we were in the middle of a huge weather front. The ocean swells were at thirty feet. Even with the massive size of the aircraft carrier, the ship pitched from side to side. I knew where my brother’s plane was. I knew when and where it would be moved from below decks, topside to be launched.” 

He swallowed and covered his eyes with a crinkled hand. 

To Talia, it looked as if he was picturing the scene in his mind. 

“The plane was rolled from the hangar bay and onto the number two elevator. The elevator sits on the edge of the ship and lifts multi-ton aircraft to the flight deck to be launched.” 

He began to cry, and his words came out in fits and starts. “Once on the elevator my brother would have applied pressure to the brake pedal to stop the plane from moving backward. But I had sabotaged the braking system. In the storm, as the ship leaned to port, the plane rolled off the elevator platform and was dumped overboard.”

“And your brother with it.”

“Yes,” he whispered as he covered his eyes. “One of the sailors standing right there describe it to me. He said everything happened so quickly. My brother knew immediately he had no brakes. The look in his eyes was frantic. The sailor said the blue-shirts threw wooden chocks behind the plane, and grabbed at it, but it was too late. The plane rolled right over the chocks and through the safety rail. The back landing gear dropped off the edge and the front gear caused the plane to hang for just a moment. Then the plane dropped. It fell on its back. I picture it in my nightmares. I picture myself strapped into the cockpit, a helmet over my head, then being dumped overboard into the wet darkness.” He looked up at Talia. “The canopy would have held for quite a while as the plane plummeted like a rock toward the ocean floor. Oh, it’s so horrible!”

She walked the floor in front of the bed. “You knew once your brother’s plane had been dumped overboard, he would have had no chance to escape.” She stared at him, her mouth hanging open. “And in the high seas, no one would question the accident.”

Yosef nodded. “His plane had a nuclear bomb attached to it at the time. The reason they never attempted a recovery was because of the ocean depth in the area.” 

Talia’s voice descended into resignation. “That is correct. The depth was something like 4,900 meters, three miles down. Far too deep for a recovery.” She put both hands on the top of her head “I studied that incident in graduate school. No public mention was made of it at the time. It wasn’t until 1989 that the US admitted a one-megaton bomb had been lost. The Japanese were pretty pissed off about it as I recall. And now you’re telling me it was deliberate?”

“After the accident,” he said, “I went to—”

“Accident?” she said, interrupting. “History may record it as an accident, but you murdered him. That was no accident.”

“I am sorry, my dear. You are correct.” Yosef cleared his throat. “Having failed my mission, I needed to get off that ship and pursue Israel’s goal another way. I went to the First Officer and told him that Lieutenant Junior Grade Golan Stiel, the pilot that had just perished, was my brother.”

“They sent you home on bereavement leave, didn’t they?”

“As a matter of standard operating procedure, yes. I was horrified at what I had done. I knew I had to honor my brother. My plan was to go home and bury him.”

“Bury what?”

Yosef did not address the question. “And that is where my plans went awry. You see, my brother had dual citizenship, Israeli, and American. But our family were all in Israel.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Talia said. “Bury him? His body was at the bottom of the ocean. What were you going to bury?”

Yosef shut his eyes. “His footlocker.”

Talia’s eyes wandered. “His personals. The Navy would have sent his personals home.”

“That is correct. It was my wishes to place his personals into a casket to be returned home. I at least wanted to pay him that honor.”

The old man looked away. His labored breathing punctuated the silence. Without looking up, he said, “But that is where the story takes a turn.”

 

CHAPTER FIVE

A TRAVEL MISMATCH

“What turn?” Talia said.

“The Navy honored my request to have Golan’s personal items placed into a casket. But that casket was not sent to our home in Tel Aviv.”

“It was sent to the United States, wasn’t it?” She looked at him. “You thought the Navy would ship the casket to Israel.”

“That is correct,” the old man replied. “Since Israel wasn’t yet officially recognized by the United States as a sovereign nation, it was the policy of the Navy to ship remains back to the States.”

“But,” she pointed at him again, “you were sent on bereavement leave. And since your family was in Israel, that’s where they sent you, didn’t they?”

“Yes. My brother’s casket in one direction, myself in another. While we were at sea, the casket was offloaded to a sister ship and taken to the harbor. But our shore leave was canceled and it was months before the Ticonderoga itself came to port and I was allowed to disembark. All I could think about when I arrived in Tel Aviv was going to the US to recover my brother’s casket so I could return him to Israel, to his final resting place. But two days after I got back, on June 3rd, 1967, that’s when—”

Talia interrupted. “The Six-Day War erupted.” 

“Yes. It was the invasion Israel had feared. The Land was thrown into chaos. Invasion forces came at us from all sides. You can’t imagine how terrified we were. With no nuclear device, we believed we would be overrun. But in the end, our military was able to defend our borders. To this day, it’s considered a miracle of God that Israel wasn’t destroyed. There is no other explanation. At any rate, the Director of the Mossad, one of the only people with operational knowledge of my mission, was killed.”

“So no one besides you knew about the mission, and no one was interested in seeking the return of your brother’s remains.”

“That is correct.”

“If Golan’s casket was sent to the US, where was it interred?”

The old man looked away. His eyes pooled again, but no tears fell. 

“The United States, if nothing else, is brilliant at honoring its dead. Even without a body, the American military wishes to honor those that have served and paid the ultimate sacrifice for their country. Golan’s casket was laid to rest in the cemetery of his beloved United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.” 

He paused a moment, and he folded his hands together. “There,” he said, “my secret has been revealed to you. Now, it is up to you. You must go to the United States and retrieve Golan’s casket and have it brought home, to its proper place, here in The Land.”

“Tell me this, if it’s so important to you that your brother’s remains be moved to Israel, why don’t you make the request yourself?”

The old man’s eyes darted around the room as if he were searching for a lost item. “It is not possible,” he finally said. “The United States, they knew . . .” He struggled to finish the sentence. “They found out about my involvement.”

“But you said the US had no idea of the plot.”

His words quickened. “You must retrieve your uncle’s remains!” 

Talia put her hands into the air and shook her head. “I’m in the middle of finishing my dissertation. I do not have the time, nor the inclination, to traipse off to a foreign country and retrieve the empty casket of an uncle I’m not even sure I have. In fact, I don’t think I believe a word that’s come out of your mouth.”

She picked up her purse and started to leave in earnest.

“If you don’t believe me,” Yosef said as he reached a hand out, “please, go back to Mossad Headquarters. Pull the case file. But tell no one what you are up to.”

Talia’s shoulders dropped. “The case file about the fictitious mission you were talking about? You must be out of your mind.”

“Peanut?” he said, an attempt to stop her in her tracks. “At least go discover for yourself that your uncle, Golan Stiel, was a real person. You have the access. You have the clearance. Once you discover that he was real, perhaps then you will believe me.” 

His coughing erupted, and a heart rate monitor let out a shrill cry. 

The nurse rushed in, and this time injected a bolus of medication into his IV drip. She turned to Talia. “I’m afraid visiting hours are over. Mr. Stiel needs to rest.” Moments later, the pulsing of the heart monitor subsided, and Yosef’s eyelids began to droop. The medication was taking effect. 

“What did you give him?” Talia said.

“It’s just a mild sedative,” the nurse replied.

Talia stopped in the doorway and looked back at Yosef, her emotions in a swirl. His eye flickered open, and for just a moment, she saw a twinkle, and it catapulted her back to her childhood.

 

CHAPTER SIX

THE NEEDLE

Talia walked out of pod seven in a state of half-shock. Just the knowledge that her grandfather was alive was enough to disrupt her equilibrium. But the wild story was so detailed, she couldn’t help but wonder if any part of it was true. She stopped at the nurse’s station and leaned against the desk. 

“He must have lost his mind,” Talia said to herself.

“Are you all right, Miss?” the nurse in her later years asked. 

Talia startled. “Oh. Fine.”

“You don’t look fine,” the nurse added. “The intensive care unit isn’t an easy place.”

“I’m agitated, I guess. He just doesn’t seem like he . . . You’ll look after him? Mr. Stiel, I mean.”

“Of course. Your grandfather is in good hands. We’ll keep him as comfortable as we can.”

“Thank you,” Talia said, her voice leaking telltale signs of mental exhaustion. She started to walk but turned back. “Has there been any psychological evaluation?”

The nurse cocked her head. “Psychological? Let me look at his chart. Hmmm, no, there’s nothing here. There hasn’t been a need to from what I’ve seen. But I want you to know he’s under the care of our top oncologists.”

“So, when you’ve interacted with him, there hasn’t been anything that made you feel like he’s not all there, mentally, I mean?”

“Most patients in the ICU who are lucid are under a great deal of stress. We get everything from critically ill patients like your grandfather to traumatic injuries. I wouldn’t let it bother you.”

Talia nodded. “Is the oncologist here? I’d like to speak to him.” 

“The doctor should be making rounds in a few hours. That would be the time.”

“Thank you. I’ll be back.” Talia rubbed her temples. “I’ve got to go somewhere and process all this.” She hadn’t realized how quietly her words had come out.

“I’m sorry?” the nurse said.

 Talia looked up. “Oh, nothing. Can I leave you my cell phone number?” She turned and wrote the number on a pad. “Please, call me if his condition changes.”

“Of course.” 

Talia walked down the hallway and boarded the elevator. It was time to get some fresh air.

 

***

 

Pod Seven. Thirty minutes later.

 

The elderly Yosef Stiel’s eyes cracked opened as an orderly approached his bed. To Yosef, the dark-complected man appeared to be around thirty years of age, of obvious Israeli decent, yet the look in his eyes decried something between toil and deadness. 

Stiel felt groggy, but drew back as the man reached underneath his pillow and pulled out a small black device about the size of a cellphone.

“What are you doing?” Yosef said.

The orderly pressed a button on the device. From a tiny speaker on the device, Yosef heard his own voice, and that of Talia’s, replaying their earlier conversation.

“You recorded me?” Yosef blurted. 

The man removed a tiny earpiece and held it up. “And I’ve been listening in. You have served your country well, old man. Your government owes you a debt of gratitude.” 

But as Yosef’s mind began to clear, he realized he recognized the man’s face. The right side was pockmarked, as though it had been drug across gravel, and a long scar ran the length, starting at the base of the jaw, crossing over the eye, then continuing onto the forehead. “I have always been loyal to The Land. My country owes me nothing. You and I have communicated with one another a half-dozen times. You never said anything about being here when my granddaughter arrived. How long have you been listening?”

The man’s face hardened. “I heard every word. You revealed too much to her. The mission is now in jeopardy.”

“No, no. The mission will be fine.”

The man looked over his shoulder. “You should have just told her that her uncle’s remains needed to be moved to Israel, and that was all.”

Yosef’s voice quivered. “She was not believing me. She didn’t even think she had an uncle. She needed to be convinced. I thought—”

“You told her of the original plan to steal the nuclear tip from the device. And then you made the mistake of telling her the United States found out about your involvement. You have said too much, her curiosity will be our undoing.”

“No,” Yosef said as he thought back to the conversation. “You don’t think she would—”

The man’s tone sharpened. “You told her to look into the records to verify that her uncle did, in fact, exist. When she does that, what do you think she’s going to find? Play it forward in your head, old man. Once she discovers he’s real, she’ll try to find out if there was a covert operation in the first place.” His eyes narrowed to slits. “She will try to access the case files.”

Yosef’s eyes flickered from one side of the room to the next as his mind scrambled to come up with something to say. “No, she will find out her uncle does exist, and that his casket is in the US and should be moved. That is all. I have done exactly what our mission requires. She will have the casket exhumed and sent to Tel Aviv. Then, the operation can go forward, as planned.” 

The man laughed, and the sound of it curdled Yosef’s stomach. “A fighter, till the last,” the man said. “Tell me, how many others know our secret?”

“No one. No one knows,” came the raspy reply. “I’ve held this secret for over fifty years and have never divulged it to anyone. And now that the casket will be brought here, the final objective can be completed.”

“You are weak, old man. No one knows besides your granddaughter, you mean?”

“She had to be told. She didn’t believe me.” But as the thoughts played forward in Yosef’s mind, he grabbed at the man’s jacket. “You stay away from her!”

A sickening grin painted his face. “I have no intention of staying away from her. Once she is out of the way, we will move forward with the final objective in a different way.” 

“She is my granddaughter!”

“Tell me, do you know who I am? Who I truly am?”

“Of course I know who you are. I have known from the beginning. Your name has circulated within the shadows of the intelligence community for years. You are the one they call the Raven.”

“And what am I known for?”

“You follow orders. That’s what we all do.”

“That is not what I am asking.”

“You are an assassin.”

“Go on.”

“They say, they say you are insane, that you have no soul.”

The Raven began to laugh. At first, the laughter was reserved, but then it escalated to an almost maniacal level.

The old man drew back, but the laughter suddenly stopped as if a switch had been turned off. The Raven towered over Yosef, and his eyes narrowed. “Insane? Is that what they say? Tell me what I want to hear!”

 “They say you murdered your own parents!” Yosef blurted. He leaned further away, fearing a blow may come at any moment. When none came, he said, “You are known for killing your victims with a—” 

“Coming out of the shadows was a mistake, old man.”

Yosef’s eyes flared, and he reached for the nurse call button, but the Raven slapped it out of his hand. Yosef drew back. 

“You have failed your country for the last time.” The Raven snapped his left arm down, the action causing a six-inch stainless dagger to slap into his hand. The steel dagger, which had been concealed under his sleeve, was honed into the cylindrical shape of an ice pick, but with a flat handle on the end. 

Without hesitation, he yanked off Yosef’s oxygen mask and covered his mouth to contain the screams. Yosef struggled, but the Raven plunged the blade into the base of the neck, forcing it in. The upward direction of the blade caused it to pierce Yosef’s brain stem and cerebellum. 

Yosef’s eyes crunched shut against the pain, then the rigidity in his body abated. The Raven glanced at the heart monitor above Yosef’s bed. The jagged line representing Yosef’s heartbeat slowly flattened. Then a piercing sound began to blare, a warning sign that the patient’s heart had stopped. The Raven reached up and turned the knob to quiet the noise, then slid behind the room’s open door. 

An instant later, the elderly nurse, having seen the alarm on a monitor at the nurse’s station, rushed in. The Raven grabbed her from behind, cupped his hand over her mouth, then plunged the blade into the base of her skull. The woman thrashed, but then her body went limp.

The Raven held her upright and closed the door. He then dragged her to the opposite side of the bed. He let her body flop to the ground where it landed out of sight. He took a hand towel from the bathroom and cleaned the blade, then wiped the blood from Yosef’s neck. He stood back and studied the scene a moment as if to ensure that someone glancing into the room would see nothing out of the ordinary.

He walked out with the lackadaisical air of a person strolling in the park, then stepped behind the nurse’s station. He switched off the monitoring equipment and glanced over his shoulder. He nodded to an orderly pushing a cart of supplies, then walked toward a stairwell door. He was gone.

 

CHAPTER SEVEN

UNDERGROUND

Talia pulled into the underground parking deck at Mossad Headquarters. She parked in her spot but sat with the engine running, her hands still vice-gripped onto the steering wheel. “My grandfather?” she said to herself. Her senses were overwhelmed.

A rap on the window tore her out of her own fog. She startled at a uniformed soldier with an automatic rifle standing just outside her driver’s window.

“Dr. Stiel?” he said as he glanced at the marker in front of her parking space. “Is everything all right?” He looked up, and his eyes scanned the other cars the way a Secret Service agent scans a crowd.

Talia nodded and glanced at his shoulder insignia. He was a member of the famed Sayeret, an elite unit within the Israeli Defense Force. In practice, Sayeret units typically specialized in commando and other special forces activities, but they also served as security for the Mossad. As far as Talia was concerned, they were everywhere.

She was so close to finishing her dissertation that her coworkers had begun calling her Dr. Stiel. It had become a bit of an office joke. They had even gone so far as to repaint her nameplate over her parking space. “I’m not a doctor yet,” she said. 

“Please kill your engine,” the guard said. His tone was curt but polite. “Carbon monoxide.”

She nodded then turned the key and opened her car door. The soldier nodded back. “Ma’am,” he said, then continued his foot patrol. 

She remained seated, and her mind drifted back to childhood. Memories of her grandfather came to her in fits and starts, like the flickering of an old newsreel. She remembered certain things. Him pushing her on a swing set behind the house, coming to the dinner table and finding he had placed a small gift there for her, a magnifying glass, and the smell of his aftershave, a cross between fresh earth and mint. 

Something in the rear-view mirror caught her eye and Talia looked up. The military guard had returned but was simply on foot patrol. He nodded as he passed and she got out. 

“Have a nice day, ma’am,” the guard said.

“You, too.”

Talia grabbed her bag and walked past the elevator bank to a heavy steel door, then scanned her badge across a digital card reader. When she heard the door’s bolt thrown clear, she pulled it open and went through. 

She walked down a long, starkly-lit hallway before entering the lobby. The lobby of the building served as the main security checkpoint, and was massive. Despite the volume of foot traffic traversing the floors daily, the dark marble was polished to a fine shine. 

Talia found herself glancing down at the crest of the Mossad embedded into the floor. It consisted of a menorah, the seven-lamped ancient lamp stand, and was surrounded by Hebrew writing. 

As Talia recalled the conversation with her grandfather, which had taken them back to the year 1965, she thought about the meaning of the menorah and the words surrounding the crest. 

The menorah is described in the Torah as being made of pure gold. It was said to be used in the portable sanctuary set up by Moses in the wilderness, then later in the Temple in Jerusalem. Believers would pour fresh olive oil into its lamps and light them. 

The Hebrew words on the Mossad crest, however, foretold something far more ominous. The words roughly translated to “By way of clandestine strategy thou shalt do war.”

She thought about that in light of the wild tale her grandfather had just woven.

Talia walked behind several other Mossad employees that had queued at the security checkpoint. About a dozen heavily-clad soldiers holding automatic rifles looked at each in turn, studying the faces, identification cards, and body language. Although this was just an average day at the Mossad, the tension was palpable in their faces. 

She placed her bag onto a conveyor belt so it could be scanned, swiped her badge on a card reader, then placed her hand, palm down, onto a biometric scanner. The scanner lit up in yellow light as it searched the database for a matching hand print. 

After a moment, the light turned green, an indication her identity had been verified. A Kevlar-laden guard standing next to the scanner studied her ID a moment, then compared the photo to her face. “Thank you, Dr. Stiel,” he said. The guard smiled politely. Talia couldn’t help but notice the man’s eyes flick down to her chest.

Considering where the man was looking, she said to herself, Hey, I’m up here, but said, “I’m not a doctor yet.” 

“That’s not what the computer says,” he replied.

Talia shook her head then picked up her bag and walked through the metal detectors.

A man wearing a light gray, three-piece suit and bow tie speed-walked over to her. His steps were short, almost effeminate. “Talia, my dear,” the man said with a slight lisp. “I just heard about your grandfather. Are you all right?” 

His name was Moshe Himmelreich, and to Talia, he always reminded her of what Albert Einstein would have looked like had he trimmed his hair and grown a beard. He had been a close friend of the family, and when Talia’s parents had died, he had raised her as if she were his own child. 

Himmelreich’s title was Director, Political Action, and his years of service were evidenced by the gray of his hair and beard. He was the de facto head of the Mossad Intelligence Services.

“I’m fine,” she said. She put her arm around him and gave him a quick hug. Even in the halls of one of the world’s most revered intelligence services, a hug between father and daughter wasn’t frowned upon. “Just a little shaken up, I guess.”

“I came as soon as I heard,” Moshe said as he placed a hand on his flushed cheek. Moshe had never married, and although he would never admit it, Talia believed he preferred the same sex, not that it bothered her in the least. “It’s shocking, just shocking. The fact that he’s alive I mean.”

As they walked down the corridor, he removed a finely pressed linen handkerchief from the breast pocket of his suit jacket and dabbed his forehead. “An ugly business this is,” he said. “I was so worried when I heard. I thought it would upset you.”

She looked at him and smiled. “I’m fine, Moshe.”

“You know how much I like it when you call me Aba,” he said referring to the way Israelis often address their fathers. “It must have been awful for you. Just awful.”

“I don’t have words for it.” As they walked, she looked over her shoulder to ensure no one was behind them and waited until they had walked past another military guard. “Aba,” she whispered, “there’s something else.”

“What is it, my dear?” he said as he took her by the arm. “You know you can tell Aba anything.”

“He told me things, a wild story.”

Moshe stopped her. “Oh dear. I was afraid you would find out one day.”

“Find out?”

They began to walk again. “Your grandfather, he’s, well, he’s not all there.” He looked at her with the eyes of a father. “It pains me to tell you this, dear, but there’s mental illness in your family.”

It took a moment for the thought to settle in Talia’s mind. “You’ve made comments here and there, why didn’t you tell me.”

“Well, I suppose I didn’t want to hurt you. I’m afraid whatever story he told you is likely a fabrication.”

“I know. It’s just, he was so detailed. And it sounded like a story you couldn’t make up.”

Moshe seemed lost in his own train of thought. “The man was always a little off-kilter, a real Meshugana if you ask me. I’m shocked he’s still alive. Are you sure it was him?”

“Positive,” she said with a tone of resignation. “I remember him from my childhood. I can see it in his eyes, the resemblance, I mean. It’s uncanny.”

“Well, you would know. We were all together when you were a child, your parents, your grandparents, and me.”

“He’s in the ICU at Sourasky. Cancer.”

They continued down a corridor then turned toward Talia’s office. 

“Tell me what he said.”

“It’s . . . almost too much to believe. But, interestingly, it folds into my research.”

“How so?”

Talia retold what Yosef had revealed. That he had been a Mossad agent, that he had tried to steal a nuclear weapon, the murder of his brother, all of it. 

“That’s astonishing,” Moshe said, yet his tone was more mocking than supportive. “You know you cannot trust such a tale.”

“I just—”

“My dear,” Moshe interrupted, “Whatever he told you was a manipulation of his own warped mind. This is not the first time the man has gone off the rails. I mean, think about it. He was always a bit of an eccentric, never staying in one place, disappearing for months at a time. And apparently, he faked his own death.” Moshe shook his head. “I was at his funeral. In fact, my dear, so were you.” 

Moshe dabbed his brow with the handkerchief again.

“Do you think any of it could be true? What about his brother?”

“Yosef Stiel had no brother.” He stopped just outside her office. “I’m so sorry he caused you this much upset. Put it out of your mind.”

“Aba, do you realize what it would mean if the story were true? I mean, I’ve researched every nuclear device that’s gone missing since the Cold War. Are you sure he didn’t have a brother?”

Moshe’s tone sharpened this time. “It’s a fabrication from an old man that doesn’t deserve your attention. He was never there for you as a child, particularly after your parents died, God rest their souls. You’re upset over the sudden appearance of this madman, and it has affected your judgment.”

“But Moshe, I—” She studied his face a moment, and when a cold shiver ran her spine, she stopped herself. It was a look she had never seen before. Her shoulders slumped. “I’m sure you’re right. It’s been a very upsetting morning.”

Talia opened the door to her office.

Moshe let out a long exhale, put his hands on her shoulders and smiled. “I raised you as if you were my very own daughter. I hate to see you this way. Perhaps you should go home and rest?”

“No. No, I’m fine,” she said, a curt smile easing onto her face.

“All right. But if you need to, don’t hesitate. I want my top Ph.D. at her best when she presents her dissertation to the Directorate next week.”

“I’m not a Ph.D. yet. My report is almost done. I’ve rehearsed and rehearsed.”

“Very well, my dear. And no more talk of wild stories.”

Talia watched as he walked away. But there was something in her gut that wouldn’t settle.

 

CHAPTER EIGHT

TALIA’S DISCOVERY

Talia sat at her desk. She still felt a little uneasy and began to second guess herself. The story her grandfather had retold had been wild. But at the same time, she couldn’t help but notice a number of things she knew to be true. 

As a graduate student, she had spent an entire semester studying the various incidents involving nuclear materials from around the world. She also knew that globally, over one hundred devices had gone missing over the years. Most had been lost during the Cold War between Russia and the United States and were still unaccounted for. 

During that time period, tensions had been so high between the nations that it had become common to load nuclear weapons onto military aircraft. It was a practice still in use in Israel today. 

Although a few of the devices had disappeared under suspicious circumstances, the majority had simply been lost due to accidents at sea or in the air, just like the accident Yosef had described. Several had been separated from the underside of Naval aircraft which had either undergone mechanical trouble or had been involved in mid-air collisions, usually with members of their own squadron. At the end of her research, Talia had been shocked at the sheer volume of them.

But in the case of the USS Ticonderoga, Yosef Stiel had been accurate about so many things. The dates he spoke of were precise. December 5, 1965. On that date, the USS Ticonderoga did, in fact, lose an A-4E Skyhawk fighter-bomber with a nuclear bomb strapped to its belly. 

The location of the accident had been accurate as well. And even Talia’s knowledge of naval operating procedures added up.

She took a few deep breaths, a futile attempt to blow out the jittery feeling in her stomach. “You know Moshe is right,” she said to herself. Yet it wasn’t two hours later that her curiosity got the best of her.

She stopped in the middle of re-reading her dissertation paper for the hundredth time. “The man is obviously a nut-job, but is it going to kill me to confirm he didn’t work for the Mossad?” She tapped at her laptop and accessed a classified section of the Mossad’s vast computer network. She clicked into a directory labeled, “Personnel,” then typed in the name Yosef Harel Stiel. When her query returned a hit, her spine stiffened. 

There she sat, face to face with a headshot of a man who was a much younger-looking version of her grandfather. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” she said. She let her finger trace the monitor as she read. 

 

NAME: YOSEF HAREL STIEL

DATES OF SERVICE: 2 FEB 1965 – 9 MAR 1993 

MILITARY OCCUPATIONAL SPECIALTY: REDACTED

 

“Redacted?” she said. “What’s that supposed to mean?” Never in Talia’s experience had she come across a personnel file where the job description was Redacted. “I don’t get it. Where’s the rest of this file?” She clicked on the hyperlinked tabs at the top: Background, Role, Human Resources, but they were grayed out as if there was nothing to click. And she knew, someone had purposely removed the records. Talia’s eyes drifted to the bottom of the page.

The final entry said:

 

CURRENT ASSIGNMENT OR OUTCOME: DECEASED

 

“Deceased, my ass,” Talia said as she leaned back in her chair. “That was him. No one else called me Peanut. No one could have even known about that.” The thoughts played forward. “So he was in the Mossad. I can’t believe it.” But believe it she did. “This record has been heavily altered.”

Her next thought was to tap into the operational records system, a separate area of the network. It took a moment, but after clearing three security challenges, she was in. The familiar warning message painted the screen.

 

UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS PROHIBITED

UTILIZATION OF THIS SYSTEM IS GOVERNED BY THE PROTECTION OF PRIVACY LAW

CODE SECTION 5741-2981

DATABASE CLASSIFICATION: HIGH SECURITY

BREACH NOTIFICATION: UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS WILL BE PROSECUTED 

LEVEL: HIGH TREASON

AUTHORITY: ISRAELI LAW, INFORMATION AND TECHNOLOGY AUTHORITY (ILITA)

 

She clicked through the warning screen and placed her cursor into the search box. She started by limiting the query to one date, December 5, 1965, the date of the Ticonderoga accident. After typing the date into the search box, her finger hesitated over the Enter key on her keyboard. She clicked it. A single record popped onto the screen.

 

CODE NAME OR DESIGNATION: RED SCORPION

INSTANTIATION: 5 DEC 1965

VISIBILITY: EYES ONLY

 

“There was an operation on that date.” 

She heard a small commotion in the hallway and glanced up. 

When she looked back at her monitor, the screen had inexplicably gone blank. Talia’s brow darkened at the sight. The laptop was still powered on, and the browser was still active, but the webpage had simply gone blank. 

“What the hell?” She tapped at the keyboard to refresh the browser page. The browser again painted a blank screen. Her eyes flickered up at the hallway. But when she hit the refresh button on the browser a second time, this time it read:

 

FILE DELETED OR REDACTED

 

“What?” Talia whispered.

A man appeared in the doorway. The bottom of his rumpled suit jacket splayed wide as he tried to close it over what must have been one hundred pounds of unneeded body weight. His eyebrows were heavy like thick, fuzzy gray caterpillars. But what caused her to cock her head to the side was the fact that he was flanked by several military guards. 

“Dr. Stiel?” the man said, his voice thick.

“I’m Miss Stiel, yes?” Talia replied as she closed the lid on her laptop. 

“Pardon me. May I come in?” he said, but walked in without waiting for a reply. His tone was harsh, yet disarming at the same time. He squeezed his enormous frame into a chair in front of her desk and said, “Let me introduce myself. My name is Pakad Avraham Zaret. I’m with the Mišteret Yisra’el.”

“I’m sorry, what’s a Chief Inspector of the Israel Police doing in my office?” Talia became suddenly aware of a wave of heat rising from her blouse.

Inspector Zaret looked over his shoulder at the armed guards flanking the door. He flicked at a fluorescent orange visitor badge that was clipped to his top pocket. “My apologies about the armed escort. The Mossad doesn’t take kindly to visitors inside their headquarters. At any rate, I’m sorry to be the one to tell you, but I am the bearer of bad news. It’s your grandfather, I’m afraid.”

Talia stared at him a moment then her vision washed free of all color. “He’s . . .” she searched for the words, “gone? I just saw him. So soon?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

He pulled out a notepad and pen from inside his coat. “The incident occurred approximately one hour and fifty minutes ago.”

“Incident?”

“Your grandfather was murdered.”

 

CHAPTER NINE

THE INSPECTOR

Talia stared at the inspector. “He couldn’t have been murdered. No, he has cancer. His illness is terminal.” When the inspector did not reply, she said, “I was just in his room. He wasn’t murdered. Why would you say such a thing?”

The inspector glanced at the notepad. “Another individual, a Mrs. Shira Doron, a nurse, was a victim as well. The coroner estimated their times of death to be identical. Surveillance video shows that you exited the room twenty-nine minutes before another individual, a male. Who else was there with you, Miss Stiel?” His tone had drifted to the accusatory.

But Talia’s was still transfixed. “Why do you say he was murdered?”

“In twenty-nine years working homicides, I have covered plenty of stabbings.”

Talia’s face paled, and she sat with the information a moment. “Stabbings?”

“Now, the coroner will list the official cause of death at a later time, but right now, I need you to tell me who that man was.”

“What man?”

He rattled off a description as if he were reading, “Dark-complected, one hundred and seventy pounds, twenty-five to thirty-five years of age, dark coat, dark trousers, a scar running the right side of his face.”

“What are you talking about?”

“He was in there nearly at the same time as you.”

“You’re accusing me?” Her volume had escalated higher than she had intended and one of the armed guards at the doorway looked in. Talia stood and turned to the window. She put a hand over her mouth. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to yell. This has all been just too much. He’s really gone?” she said. “I only found out he was alive this morning.”

“I don’t follow you.”

“I don’t have any family, Inspector. Well, no real family anyway. My parents died when I was a child. And from what I knew, all my grandparents were gone as well. I got a call this morning from the hospital telling me my grandfather was alive. And now, you’re telling me he’s been murdered?” 

Thoughts swirled in her mind: her grandfather laying on the hospital bed, the twinkle in his eye, a memory of the two of them in Moshe’s little dingy on Dalton Lake, and then, the sudden redaction of the classified document she had just accessed.

The inspector looked over his shoulder at the guards. “Miss Stiel, this is a murder investigation. I am not comfortable here under the prying eyes of the Mossad. I’ll need you to come to headquarters. I have some further questions for you.”

“Frankly, I don’t care for your tone.”

“Miss Stiel, in Israel murder is my jurisdiction. It’s a matter of national law. If I need to question a person of interest, that decision is mine and mine alone.” Zaret pushed himself up from the chair. Given his considerable body weight, the act took him a moment. “Gather your belongings, please.”

The hallway came alive as a small commotion erupted just outside the door. Talia looked out. 

“Oh, let me through,” a man said. The voice was effeminate, and Talia recognized it as Moshe’s.

“Identification, please,” one of the guards said.

“Identification?” Moshe replied. His normally timid voice had quickened. “You know damn well I’m the Director of Political Action. Now step aside. What’s all this about anyway?”

“Orders, sir,” the guard replied after examining Moshe’s ID card, then handing it back to him.

Moshe walked into Talia’s office but stopped at the sight of Inspector Zaret. “Oh, my goodness, am I interrupting?”

“Moshe, no,” Talia said as he motioned toward the detective. “Inspector Zaret, this is Moshe Himmelreich. He’s the number two in command.”

The two men shook. Moshe removed his cloth handkerchief and dabbed his forehead with it. Talia couldn’t help but notice he seemed to be having trouble figuring out what to do with his hands.

“Is everything okay?” she said. 

“Fine, I, I just wanted . . .” He couldn’t peel his eyes from Zaret. “There’s been some . . . I need you to . . .” Finally, he clasped his hands behind his back and smiled. “Dr. Stiel, when you are finished, would you please join me in my office?”

“Actually Moshe, I was just telling the inspector here that I’m not leaving Mossad HQ. I’m sorry,” Talia said as she looked at Zaret. She looked back at Moshe. “Apparently, my grandfather has been murdered.”

“I know dear,” Moshe said. “I just heard. That’s what I was coming to tell you.”

“The inspector seems to think I knew something about it.”

“What’s this then?” Moshe blurted. “Inspector, I can assure you Dr. Stiel is not a murderer.” He pushed his wire-rimmed glasses higher onto his nose. “How dare you accuse her of such. She is an esteemed member of the Mossad, a true servant of The Land.”

Zaret held up a stiff palm to Moshe. “Miss Stiel is a material witness in a murder investigation, and I’m taking her in.”

“You’ll do nothing of the kind,” Moshe said. “This is a federal facility.” He turned his head to the door. “Guards?” Two Kevlar-laden soldiers entered. “Escort Inspector Zaret to the front gates.”

“Yes, sir,” came their stilted reply.

Four of the guards inserted themselves in front of Zaret, and one took him by the arm. 

Zaret smiled politely to the men in uniform. He patted one on the shoulder. “Ah, our fine soldiers. That is all right, my dear boy. You are just doing your job.” He looked back at Moshe. “I play golf with the Interior Minister on Saturdays. Perhaps you’d like to join us this weekend? I’m sure he would be fascinated to ask why you interfered with the investigation of a capital crime.” Zaret held out a hand, “It was nice to meet you, Director Himmelreich.” 

The guards took Zaret out.

 

CHAPTER TEN

RECORDS ROOM

The next morning as Talia pulled her car into her assigned parking space at Mossad Headquarters, she rubbed sleep from her eyes. She had tossed and turned the prior night as the stress of day’s events took its toll. She glanced at her makeup in the rearview mirror, grabbed her bag, hopped out of the car and affixed her security badge to a pocket on her dress. 

But as she scanned her badge across the steel door, she stop. She took one glance at the elevator door to her right and the sign that read “Fire Evac Only.” The elevator led to one place, the sub-basement level. It had been installed years prior as a means of secondary escape in the event of a fire. 

The reasoning at the time suggested that if a person should find themselves in the underground recesses of the records room when a fire alarm was sounded, the high-security doors would lock to protect the contents from being destroyed. The elevator provided a person’s solitary means of escape. 

The elevator was only accessible from that level, but just looking at the doors made her think about the records stored there. Something haunted her from yesterday: 

 

CODE NAME OR DESIGNATION: RED SCORPION

 

 Red Scorpion. The code name of a project of top-secret status. Yesterday’s events swirled in her mind. Yosef had been murdered just after telling her about an operation that took place on the exact date as Operation Red Scorpion. And her access to the digital records of that operation had been redacted just as she’d opened it. 

A brief wave of nausea wafted over her but was quickly replaced by familiar dizziness. Her vertigo had kicked in, but she could tell it wouldn’t last. She put a hand against the wall to brace herself and took a few deep breaths. 

As her equilibrium stabilized, she walked through the corridor, and her thoughts railed forward. The project’s instantiation date corresponded exactly to what Yosef had told her. Talia knew she’d have to dig this out for herself. And she also knew there was but one way to proceed: she would have to go to the records room and find the physical case file the old-fashioned way. 

As she walked to the security checkpoint, she thought to herself, You’re going to be distracted all day until you go down there.

Once past security, Talia tossed the strap of her tiny purse over her head and walked to the facility’s main bank of elevators. Several Mossad employees waited there, all headed to upper floors of the building. Talia was the only one headed down. 

She boarded an otherwise empty elevator and swiped her identity badge through the scanner inside. The buttons controlling access to the below-ground floors lit up, and she pressed a button labeled SF-5, a level five stories below ground. 

Talia’s research had taken her to the sub-basement levels on numerous occasions, and as the elevator descended, she rubbed her eyes again. “What am I doing?” she murmured. To her, it felt as though she were on a wild goose chase. 

Up to this point, she hadn’t allowed herself to believe her grandfather’s wild claims. In fact, if she allowed herself to believe them, that would mean he was not the man of her memories, the one who took her for ice cream, who visited on holidays, and had brought her the gift of a hand-carved rocking horse. The dichotomy was something she couldn’t reconcile.

And, if any part of the story were true, it would cast a sickening pallor over her employer, the Mossad. She knew full well the Mossad was involved in clandestine activities, but she couldn’t picture the authorization of unjustified murder.

She distracted herself by thinking how many times she’d pulled records out of storage. In research for her dissertation, fact-finding was her favorite part. Each box filled with records had a history all its own. Discovering once forgotten secrets was fascinating. 

Although she had to admit, the vast majority of files housed in the highly secured sub-floor were more boring than most people would imagine. Instead of cases involving international espionage and intrigue, many were operations that simply recorded movements of various people of interest. 

The Israeli government, in its desire to protect itself, had long made it a practice to spy on individuals whom it believed may be plotting against it. A not uncommon reaction to the dangers of a country surrounded by enemies.

The elevator doors opened, and Talia walked to the security desk. Behind the desk was a wall of tinted fire-proof glass separating the small lobby area from the massive collection of records. 

The storage space itself was gargantuan, particularly for an underground facility. The entire span of the building, approximately the square footage of a European football field, was occupied by row after row of warehouse shelving. Shelves, packed from top to bottom with boxes, files, and other items, rose to a uniformed height of eighteen feet and fit snugly beneath the twenty-two-foot ceilings. 

The desk was manned twenty-four hours a day by security officers, all of whom were familiar with the layout of the stacks. Only one officer was on duty at any point in time, yet never in her experience had Talia found the security desk unoccupied. She wondered how these “librarians,” as she thought of them, ever had a chance to go to the restroom. 

Talia recognized the uniformed man posted there. He looked up from his work and glanced at her badge. “May I help you, Dr. Stiel?” the man said with a grin.

Talia smiled. Although the name on her badge did not include the title of Doctor, the inner-office joke lived on. 

“I’m looking for an old case file. I don’t have the case number this time, but its name is Operation Red Scorpion? I not sure it even exists but—” Talia stopped mid-sentence as the aroma of cinnamon, and sweet yeast wafted over her. She was catapulted in her mind back to childhood, back into the kitchen of her parents’ bakery. 

Sights and smells from those carefree days flickered into her mind’s eye. Her as a little girl covered in white flour, giggling with her mom. Sneaking a chocolate chip when her Ima wasn’t watching. The smell of yeast as the bread was rising.

And then she saw it. Sitting on the security desk was a Krantz pastry. With countless layers of thin yeast dough interspersed with a not-too-sweet chocolate filling, the delicacy had been one of her mother’s favorites. The babka-like pastry lay on a disposable plate, half eaten.

“Red Scorpion?” the guard replied, shaking Talia from her memories. “Hold on, let me look.” He tapped at a computer keyboard and ran his finger across the screen. “Case number 8076. Wow, a four-digit case file. Considering the cases are sequentially numbered, that is old.” 

“Wait, it’s a real case file?”

“Well certainly.” His head tilted to the side as he studied the screen. “Hold on a minute. This file is in the active group. That changes things. I’m afraid I’ll have to call for authorization before you can access the active section.” 

“There must be some mistake. Even if it does exist, this is a historical file. It dates back to 1965. It can’t be active.”

“We don’t make mistakes, ma’am. I’ll need to hold your credentials, please.” 

Talia shook her head and handed the young guard her badge. Yet her eyes wandered back to the Krantz, and she thought about the bakery. Her mother’s smile had been so wide, her eyes so large. Nothing in real life could account for the beauty she remembered in her mother’s face. 

She cleared her throat to avoid it tightening and distracted herself with thoughts of her grandfather. The idea that Operation Red Scorpion existed lent his story credibility. But then again, according to Moshe, that would be just like her grandpa. He had apparently always been an expert at weaving bits of truth into his lies. 

The guard picked up a phone and dialed. As Talia waited, she strolled to the glass wall and stared at the shelves. They were stacked so full that a person couldn’t see from one row through to the next. 

After a few moments, the man hung up. “Sorry about that, Dr. Stiel. I’m required to get authorization for anyone accessing the active stack. Regulations.” He glanced at his computer monitor. “I see that looking at your past access, you’ve never requested an active file?” His eyes flashed at her chest, but just for a moment. 

Talia crossed her arms. “Well, no. Is there a problem?”

“No, ma’am. You have all the access you need. But you are aware that all the files in the active section are eyes-only? You must be cleared to view each file individually. If you need to view other files, besides this one, please just return to the desk, and we’ll make the appropriate call.” 

Talia glanced at a second computer monitor in front of the man. It displayed the view from multiple independent security cameras. He continued. “You’ll find the active stacks at the far end, all the way in the south-east corner, closest to the wall.” He took the scrap of paper and jotted on it. “Your file is on row forty-nine, stack fourteen, shelf nine, space eleven. That’s almost at the top of the shelving. The active sector is separated by a glass wall similar to this one. To enter you’ll need to walk down row thirty-five. That’s where the entrance is. Just scan your badge to gain entry.”

“Thank you,” Talia said as he handed her ID back. He pressed a button, and the glass door slid open. Talia walked in and could feel his eyes on her backside. The way men looked at her body often made her uncomfortable, but in the male-dominated world of the Israeli government, it was such a common occurrence, she had hardened to it. 

The temperature of the records room was kept at sixty-five degrees year round, a sometimes pointless effort to thwart mold and mildew from forming. Talia crossed her arms against the cold and walked down the center aisle all the way to row thirty-five, then turned left. 

She walked about three-quarters of the way and stopped at the glass wall separating the secure area. The walk had been so far that, in her heels, her feet already hurt. 

The wall of bulletproof glass lined the entire periphery and a sign posted on the door read, “Authorized Personnel Only.” Talia looked up at a security camera then scanned her badge. The heavy glass door wafted open with a swish, and she walked in. As the door closed behind her, she couldn’t help but notice the quiet. It was so quiet, in fact, that she couldn’t even hear noise coming from the air conditioning vents.

She walked into the rows, her heels clacking on cold cement, and glanced at the paper in her hand. Again she thought back to childhood. More flickers of the bakery popped into her mind. The feel of her mother standing behind her, guiding her little hands as they pushed a rolling pin back and forth. Her mother slipping a hand onto Talia’s rib cage, tickling her while she rolled. Talia would let go of the rolling pin and giggle. 

“Come on, my sweet Talia,” her mother would say as she too laughed. “We must roll the dough.” 

“But you’re tickling me!” Talia would reply as she began to roll again.

Her mother would tickle her other side, and Talia would giggle and withdraw her arms again. 

“Ima!”

The smell of fresh yeast, the glow of her mother’s smile, a smile that, to Talia, symbolized warmth, love, and a feeling that everything’s going to be all right. Those had been good days, days when Talia knew she was loved. And it all had ended so abruptly.

 

CHAPTER ELEVEN

SHOTS FIRED

When Talia finally reached row forty-nine, she walked down it and read labels on the shelving until she got to stack eleven. She looked up and squinted. Shelf nine was indeed almost at the ceiling. Talia walked over to a heavy rolling metal staircase and pushed the monstrosity into position. 

“Even if there is an Operation Red Scorpion, I’m sure it’s going to turn out to be something else.” But her curiosity had piqued. “What wild story has grandpa concocted this time?” 

She ascended the stairs until at the top of a small level platform. From there, she located shelf space eleven. Two cardboard boxes with lids sat nestled against one another. One was of a different style of box and was covered in a thick layer of dust, yet Talia noticed what appeared to be relatively recent finger smudges across the top. The label on the older one read:

 

CODE NAME OR DESIGNATION: RED SCORPION

CASE NO: 380987

DATE CLOSED OR TERMINATED: 2 NOV 1965

VISIBILITY: EYES ONLY

 

“See?” Talia said to herself as she removed the dusty lid. “It says right there. The operation terminated even before the Six-Day War. Why is this in the active section?”

A smell of must wafted out. It reminded her of when she would spend a week each summer at Moshe’s tiny cabin on the edge of Dalton Lake in Israel’s north country. She had gone there on numerous occasions with both Moshe and her grandfather. 

She closed her eyes a moment and inhaled. She could picture Moshe’s smile, his face much younger in those days, her grandfather sitting on the porch cleaning fish, and the little dingy tapping gently against the dock. 

She glanced inside the box. Not unlike others she had opened, it was stocked full of old button-and-string style manila envelopes, each tied shut. 

“This might take a while,” she said as she let out a long exhale. There were seven large envelopes in total. All were yellowed and worn. But then something occurred to her. “Actually, this shouldn’t take any time. Operation Red Scorpion might have been an actual codename, but it has nothing to do with grandpa.” She shook her head. “I can’t believe I walked all the way down here for this.” 

She picked up the first envelope and squeezed it to feel its contents. Aside from one bulge at the bottom, it seemed to contain nothing but paperwork. She untied the string and dumped the contents into an open hand. 

A yellowed file folder, the type with a bonded, flat metal bar to hold its contents, dropped into her hand. She was about to look to see what else was in the envelope when her eyes traced the words on the outside. Stamped at the top, it read:

 

ACCESS RESTRICTION(S): TOP SECRET

USE RESTRICTION(S): EYES ONLY

 

“Yeah, yeah,” she said. “I’ve got your clearance right here.”

 

Then, further down, toward the center:

 

CLANDESTINE SERVICES HISTORY

 

SUBJECT OR OPERATION CODENAME: RED SCORPION

COMPILED: 1965 DECEMBER

GOVERNMENTAL ENTITY: MOSSAD

DEPARTMENT: CAESAREA 

PROJECT UNIT: KIDON

PROJECT LEAD: YITZHAK HOFI

PRIORITY DESIGNATION: AT ALL COSTS

 

DO NOT DESTROY

 

“’At all costs.’ My, my. I’ll say this, grandpa certainly doesn’t disappoint. Let’s find out what Red Scorpion is.” She read the rest of the manila folder allowing her finger to trace the words as she read. “Yup, the Kidon, literally meaning ‘the tip of the spear.’ That unit belongs to the Caesarea department of the Mossad. They run assassinations and infiltrations. This is the first time I’ve ever seen a Kidon file. And I’ll be damned. Look at that, Yitzhak Hofi oversaw this operation.” Talia thought for a moment. “He later became the Director of the Mossad. Back in the early ‘70s.” 

She flipped open the file and read the first page. There, she perused the table of contents:

 

PRINCIPAL PROJECT AND ACTIVITY

 

EXCULPATORY OVERVIEW: TAB A

INFILTRATION: TAB B

EXECUTING UNIT: TAB C

INTENDED OUTCOME: TAB E

 

Talia knew from experience that operational files tended to have a summary page at the front, containing the most pertinent details. This file was no different. She flipped to the second page and read.

 

EXCULPATORY OVERVIEW:

STABILIZE BORDER SECURITY VIA HEIGHTENED MILITARY RESPONSE CAPACITY 

 

But then her eyes locked onto a type-written line written in a different font. Even the color of the ink appeared darker.

 

OPERATIONAL CROSS REFERENCE:

OPERATION RED DRAGON EXECUTED IN CONCERT WITH OPERATION ABSOLUTION 

 

Talia liked to think out loud. She found it helped her clarify her thoughts. She read and reread the sentence. “That’s weird. It looks like someone added this after the fact.” She shook her head but knew the Mossad never revealed the details of related ops within the same case file. She glanced at the newer box beside her and knew this was going to take some digging. 

“Wait a second,” she said, again scanning the name of the operation. “Absolution? What’s Operation Absolution?”

She glanced at the space number printed onto the metal shelving, then at the scrap of paper in her hand. “I’m definitely on the right spot.” But when her eyes read the label on the outside of the newer box, the one sitting right next to the old one, she stopped. It was marked: 

 

CODE NAME OR DESIGNATION: ABSOLUTION

CASE NO: 380987

 

“Both operations have the same case number? I don’t get it.” She glanced between the two. 

The newer box read:

 

DATE CLOSED OR TERMINATED: N/A

 

“So that one is active. Okay, one old case file, Red Scorpion, one still active, Absolution. She shook her head and continued reading from the Red Scorpion case file.

 

MODE OF OPERATION – INFILTRATION. 

HIDE IN PLAIN SIGHT. INSERT COVERT ASSET AS WEAPONS SPECIALIST / WEAPONS ASSEMBLY OFFICER.

 

“Well, that’s interesting,” she said as she thought back to her grandfather’s words. I was a warrant officer . . . a weapons specialist.

 

INTENTION – INFILTRATE USS TICONDEROGA. 

 

She stopped right there. Upon reading the words USS Ticonderoga, her mouth dropped open. “Oh my God.” It was almost too much to take in. She placed a hand onto the railing to steady herself on the platform. “He wasn’t lying?” 

Then she heard a noise. It came from the other side of the wall, through the thick glass enclosure. To Talia, it sounded like a muffled whump, but it was barely audible. She looked up but then shook her head. “You’re getting paranoid.”

She read further and her eyes locked onto the page.

 

INTENDED OUTCOME: OBTAIN A NUCLEAR DEVICE VIA CLANDESTINE ACTION.

 

“Oh, shit,” Talia said as she covered her mouth with her hand. “So it’s true. Israel did have an operation to steal a weapon, Operation Red Scorpion.” She glanced at the newer box and knew she needed to know what Operation Absolution was as well. She dropped the manila file folder from Operation Red Scorpion into its envelope, but when it did not go all the way in, she pulled it out again. 

That’s when she noticed something at the bottom of the envelope. She turned it upside down and a small metal canister dumped into her hand. The canister had no labeling on it, was drab green in color, appeared old and scratched, and was capped. She held it a moment before shoving the old Red Scorpion box aside and opened the newer box.

The Operation Absolution box also contained manila file folders, but the printed materials appeared much newer, perhaps having been generated by a modern laser printer.

Talia opened the first file and scanned it. Several things jumped off the page at her.

 

RECOVER THE NUCLEAR DEVICE . . .

 

SECURITY OF THE NATION OF ISRAEL . . . 

 

AT ALL COSTS . . . 

 

ANY MEANS NECESSARY . . .

 

“All right,” she said. “So, if what Yosef said was true, and Israel was trying to obtain a nuclear device in 1965, but Operation Red Scorpion failed, then why is this operation still active? I mean, 1965 was more than fifty years ago. We’ve got all the nukes we could ever want. And what do they mean recover the nuclear device?”

She scanned to the next section. 

 

OPERATIONAL OBJECTIVE, REVISED 

 

Further down it read,

 

COVERT PLACEMENT OF THE WEAPON . . . 

 

But then a swish sound interrupted her concentration, and she looked up. It was the bulletproof door sliding open. Someone else must be accessing the active stacks, she thought. She glanced back to the file. 

 

HEZBOLLAH . . . HAMAS . . .

 

A man appeared at the end of the row, and Talia turned. He was holding a box similar to so many others on the shelves and began walking in her direction. He nodded to her in a polite yet businesslike manner. But when she noticed a long scar running the length of his face, her mouth dropped open. 

 Upon seeing Talia’s reaction, his stride increased in length and pace. It was as if he knew he’d been recognized. In one swift motion, he tossed the box aside, pulled out a handgun, and aimed it at her.

 

CHAPTER TWELVE

THE POUNDING OF FEET

At first sight of the gun, Talia froze, virtually paralyzed. He fired a silenced round. Flame burst from the end of the barrel, and the bullet zipped through the file folder Talia was holding. It slammed into the older box. Shards of yellowed paper peppered the air. 

Talia dropped onto the staircase’s metal landing as a second bullet missed her head by a millimeter, blowing her hair back. The man continued his deliberate stride as he fired again and again. Silenced bullets smashed into the metal railing beside her. 

Out of instinct, Talia flung the open case file boxes aside and leapt into the shelving. The man had closed the distance, and Talia heard the heavy clank of his heels on the metal staircase. She crawled deeper into the shelving and kicked two boxes, sending them flying in his direction. Both rained their contents on top of the gunman just as he reached the landing. 

She scrambled to the other side of the shelving and yanked two more boxes out of her way. 

He leveled the gun at her, and a lopsided, sickening grin painted his face.

Talia kicked the boxes in his direction. One of them knocked into the gun just as he pulled the trigger. The bullet, intended for her head, clipped the flesh of her left shoulder, but in the adrenaline-fueled terror, she didn’t feel it. 

She kicked another box at him and flung her body over the edge of the other side of shelving and grabbed the edge at the last moment. She hung from the shelves only long enough to get a foothold on the shelf below, then crawled down the outside of two more shelves. 

Upon hearing the man shove boxes aside as he climbed through the shelving to come after her, Talia reversed course. Instead of leaping to the floor below, she scrambled back in the opposite direction, toward the metal staircase. As the man popped out on one side of the shelving, Talia popped out on the other. She shoved boxes aside and jumped down, a height of about eight feet. Her heels landed with a loud clack against the cement. She tumbled sideways then jumped up, flicking off her heels in the process. She ran barefoot down the row in the direction of the sliding door.

The man leapt down and landed like a cat. He then ran toward the end of the row. 

Talia turned and sprinted for the door, about two rows away. Just as she reached it a bullet ricocheted off the bulletproof glass. She ducked just in front of the door, and the door whooshed open. She dove through then got up and ran through the stacks on the other side. She turned down one row, ran to the end, turned again, and continued her escape in a zig-zag pattern. 

When she popped out onto the main walkway, she was two rows from the exit. She nearly tripped over the body of a guard. Her eyes locked onto the pool of blood on the floor below him and she froze for a second. It was the same man that had checked her in. 

She started to turn to run toward the sliding glass door where the security desk sat, but a bullet slammed into the bulletproof glass in front of her. She ducked and ran in the opposite direction. She’d been cut off. Her mind scrambled, but then she remembered, the fire-evacuation elevator.

She ran for it and pressed the button. The door wafted open, and she jumped in just before the gunman rounded the corner. She repeatedly pressed the only button inside, one simply labeled “Up,” in repeated succession. 

As he ran in her direction, the sound of his footsteps slamming into the cement grew louder.

 

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

TBE PARKING DECK

The pounding of footsteps escalated as Talia continued pressing the Up button. The elevator door slid closed a moment before the gunman arrived. As the elevator ascended toward its only destination, the parking deck level, Talia panted to catch her breath. A wave of heat flushed up her neck, and a brief bout of nausea ensued, chased with a dose of dizzying imbalance. She slumped to the floor and tried her deep breathing exercises. 

So much adrenaline coursed her veins that her hands, arms, and even torso began to shake. The vertigo leveled off but did not relinquish its grip. She stood and leaned on the wall and looked for an emergency phone or call button, anything with which she could alert the Sayeret soldiers.

The imbalance in her equilibrium made it hard for her to hold her head up straight. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply. The elevator chimed once, indicating it had reached the parking level. The door slid open, and she braced its sides to step out, yet had trouble maintaining her balance. 

She looked down the long expanse of cars until her eyes landed on the entrance where a guard shack was positioned. In her dizziness, it looked as though the ceiling of the parking deck was bending and waving in a rolling motion. She stumbled to the first car and used it for balance, then began to call out.

“Help!” she half-yelled, but being over one hundred meters away, the guards could not hear her. She struggled forward, moving in their direction. Her feet were unsteady, yet she pressed on, all the while trying to force the vertigo to abate. 

She made it halfway down when from behind her, near the elevator, a stairwell door flung open and slammed into the wall. The scar-faced gunman burst from it. Talia dropped to her knees and shimmied toward the wall to hide. 

She raised her head just enough to see the man through the glass of several cars that were between them. The man squinted toward the guard shack as if to check if he had been heard, then his head craned in all directions. He walked in her direction, and the distance between them closed. 

Talia turned toward the guard shack and opened her mouth, but before she could scream, she stopped herself knowing they’d never hear her. 

The sound of the man’s footsteps grew louder. 

Talia watched as he inspected the space between each car, then got down on his hands and knees to look underneath. 

The closer he got, the more Talia’s heart rate accelerated. He was just three cars away now. She ducked lower to avoid being seen but knew, once he bent down to look under the car, he would see her. He was now two cars away. 

She stopped breathing. In the hollow-sounding deck, she could hear the quiet crunching of grit under his heels. He had reached the trunk side of the car she was hiding behind. He glanced down both sides of it. 

Talia’s only thought was to peer under the car and follow his feet, but the gunman dropped to the ground, and his face appeared. When he saw the terror in Talia’s eyes, a crooked smile went across it. 

Talia’s mouth opened as if to scream, but no sounds came out. Her heart pounded, her breathing became erratic, and the vertigo intensified. Talia slumped, almost paralyzed with the spinning of the room. 

The man walked between the cars with taunting slowness until he could see her. He stood and studied her a moment, almost as if to evaluate why she wasn’t screaming.

“Where is it?” he said. He waited a moment. Talia was so frozen in fear, she could not speak. “I said, where is it?” The words were harsher this time. “I saw it in your hand.” When Talia didn’t respond again, he reached his right hand inside his opposing sleeve and began to pull something out. Talia’s eyes caught the glint of a polished steel blade.

“Sir?” a male voice yelled from the guard shack. “Sir? Is there a problem?”

The man pushed the dagger back under his sleeve as the guard approached. 

When he turned to speak to the guard, Talia saw the scar and pockmarked skin on his face.

The soldier approached the car and said, “Sir, I was asking if everything was all right. You’ll need your identification badge displayed at all times.” The guard held out his hand. “Break out your ID, please.”

Talia’s mouth moved, but no words came out.

“Oh, my fault,” the man said. The corners of his voice sounded like cold frost. He patted at his pockets as if searching for his ID. And like a flash of lightning, yanked out the dagger and plunged it into the soldier’s gut.

The soldier doubled over but quick-fired his rifle before falling. Inside the confines of the underground parking deck, the sound was deafening. The man turned to Talia and her eyes locked onto the blade, now covered in dark blood. 

Two other guards at the guard shack yelled then broke into a sprint. The man looked at them, then turned back to Talia and slipped the ice pick into his sleeve. He ran in the opposite direction. 

The guards screamed for him to stop. As they ran past the wounded soldier, one raised a rifle and fired. Out of instinct, Talia ducked, and the chase was on. But the moment her eyes landed on the wounded soldier, the vertigo abated. She went to him and found him curled into a ball.

“Let me see,” Talia said as she knelt. The soldier pulled his blood-covered hand off his stomach. Talia pressed a palm onto the wound, an effort to stem the bleeding. “It will be all right,” she said. “Help will be here soon.” She looked back in the direction of the now empty guard shack. “Medic! We need a medic!” she screamed. 

The soldier looked at her. Somehow, his face looked younger than she had thought. He was perhaps just nineteen years of age. “You are a doctor?” he said.

“Yes,” Talia lied. “I’m going to take care of you.” 

“I want my mother,” he whispered. But then his eyes went wild. “Don’t tell the others I said that.”

She heard more gunfire from the direction where the attacker had fled. When she looked back down, the young soldier’s eyes had stopped moving. He was gone. 

Talia stared at the boy. Laying like this, he didn’t look like a soldier, he looked like a son. She placed a gentle hand onto his eyelids and pulled them closed then took his hand and held it in hers. She sat, allowing tears to run quietly down her face. She whispered, “You saved my life.” 

A few moments later several other Sayeret soldiers ran up as the sound of their boots echoed across the cement walls. As they stopped, one of them, a commander, barked orders to the others. “You four, set up a perimeter. Seal the facility. Every exit. I want it shut down!” He knelt to Talia. “Ma’am? Do you require medical attention?” he said as he placed fingers onto the soldier’s throat to check for the presence of a pulse.

“No,” she said. 

“Ma’am? There’s nothing we can do for him now.” His voice was surprisingly soft this time.

Talia nodded, then placed the dead boy’s hand onto his chest. 

The bewilderment of the events had overwhelmed her senses. She stood,  leaned against the car, and tried to process her thoughts. As the adrenaline eased, her thinking became more clear. 

He tried to kill me, she thought. But how did that man get in here?

Talia startled to find the commander standing in front of her. She hadn’t realized it, but he had apparently been trying to get her attention the whole time. “Ma’am?” He turned to another soldier. “She must be in shock.”

“I’m sorry,” Talia said.

“You’ll need to come with us. We need to debrief about the incident.”

“How did he get in here?” Talia said.

“Ma’am?”

“The gunman. How did he get into Mossad Headquarters?”

“I don’t know, ma’am. We’re still in the process of apprehending him.”

“Has anyone ever penetrated HQ?” 

“Not that I’m aware. But there was obviously a breach. There will be a thorough inquiry, however. We’ll get to the bottom of this.” He turned to the other soldier and issued several more orders.

A breach? she thought. She glanced at the blood on her hands. Yeah, I’d say there was a breach. Something in Talia’s core shifted, and she felt an overwhelming need to get away from this place. She began walking toward her own car.

“Wait, ma’am, we still need to talk to you.”

But Talia didn’t slow. She walked to her car and to the driver’s side door.

“Ma’am?” the commander yelled.

The sensor in the car detected the key fob in Talia’s tiny purse, and the door lock popped open. She hopped in and locked the doors, then pushed the button labeled “Start.”

“Ma’am?” the officer yelled as he and the other guard ran toward the vehicle.

Talia threw the car in reverse and jammed her foot on the gas pedal. 

The tires squealed, and the soldiers stopped running to avoid being hit.

The car’s tires barked again, and Talia accelerated toward the exit. She waited until the automatic security gate swung open, then sped into the street. 

It was only then, as she gripped the steering wheel, that Talia noticed it. Still clutched in her hand was the small metal canister from the records room. She had been holding it the whole time.

 

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

THE MOLE

As Talia sped from Mossad Headquarters, adrenaline spiked into her system again. She glanced at the small metal canister in her hand, then tucked it into her purse. She took the on-ramp to the Glilot Ma’arav Interchange, one of Tel Aviv’s major highway arteries. From there she headed east toward Petah Tikva, a city in the Central District, toward her apartment.

Something doesn’t add up, she thought, then began talking aloud to herself. “I mean, seriously, how did that guy get in there, all the way down to the sub-basement level?” As she changed lanes, she noticed a woman in the lane next to her staring. “Yes, I’m talking to myself. That okay with you?” she blurted and sped up. “That scar on his face. That had to have been the same man who killed grandpa.” Talia began piecing the events together. “If that was the same man, that means he then came after me. But why? Why would anyone want to kill him, want to kill me, for that matter? This makes no sense.”

Being past rush hour, traffic was light. She exited Route 5 onto Derekh Zvulun Hamer Road and wound around the long curve in the road surrounding Yarkon Cemetery, a sprawling circular property nearly one kilometer across, the final resting place for more than 100,000 people. As Talia took the curve, she glanced at the multitude of new construction projects at its center where multi-story cemetery tower structures were being erected to house up to 250,000 more.

She turned onto Rishon LeTsiyon and thought back to the records room. He came all the way after me. It was a thought that terrified her to the core. She took the last turn onto Zikhron Ya’akov Street. The residential road was well-populated but quiet. Talia particularly liked the trees that had been planted all down it. There were many Bengali ficus, but her favorite was a sycamore fig, a massive tree of at least four hundred years of age. Its canopy of green sprawled in all directions. 

She parked on the street in front of her apartment at 32 Zikhron Ya’akov and got out. She glanced at her bare feet and thought back to when her heels had come off during the attack. It wasn’t random, she thought as she slammed the car door. It was broad daylight, yet for the first time, Talia felt unsafe. 

She walked barefoot to the apartment building, a four-story structure, strikingly well designed for a city known for its drab construction. But her inner turmoil railed on. He had to have penetrated Mossad security to get there. How is that even possible?

After ascending the open-air stairwell to the third floor, she reached in her purse for her keys. Think of the risks he took to get in there. Why would anyone want to risk all that to come after me? As she withdrew the keys, the tiny metal canister tumbled out with them, and she bent down to pick it up. She stared at it. “This?” she said. “He said something about where is it and that he saw it in my hand.”

She went inside and bolt-locked the door behind her. “What could possibly be in this that’s worth killing for?” But the more the thoughts played forward in her mind, the more jittery she became. And finally, it hit her. “No one could break into Mossad HQ. Someone would have had to help him from the inside.” Talia then began to fear that she had stumbled upon something she wasn’t supposed to find, and someone wanted to kill her for it.

“Wait,” she said as she walked to the tiny flat’s one and only bedroom, “If someone helped him from the inside, then that means . . . that means he might know where I live. He could come after me here.” 

Her heart rate again accelerated, and she darted to the closet and pulled out the backpack book bag she used for school. She tossed it onto the bed and turned it upside down. Two thick textbooks and a large three-ring binder dumped out. 

She yanked open a dresser drawer, grabbed several pieces of clothing, and jammed the stack into the bag. She threw on a pair of snug jeans and a casual top and running shoes. “I’ve got to get out of here.” She crammed toiletries into an outside pocket then stuffed the metal canister into a small zippered pocket. 

She spun around the room, looking for what else she should grab. “Passport,” she said as she pulled open the top dresser drawer and grabbed her Israeli passport. 

“Cash, I need cash.” With the backpack over her shoulder, she was out the door and down the stairs. When she got to the ground floor, however, a nondescript, four-door sedan pulled up on the street and stopped, double-parked right next to her car. Both doors popped open, and two men with tightly trimmed hair emerged. They wore crisp suits and black Ray-Ban Aviator sunglasses.

Talia clutched the straps of her backpack, then backed up until she was underneath the staircase, out of view. She peered through the bushes at them. 

One of the men raised a handheld radio and spoke into it. Talia couldn’t hear what he said, but the other glanced at the back of Talia’s car. She heard him call out the numbers on the yellow license plate. “Niner-four, three-ten, two-three. That’s her all right.”

Talia clutched the strap of the backpack and watched as the men walked right at her.

 

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

AGENTS ON THE APPROACH

As they got closer, Talia squinted at a pin affixed to one of their lapels. It depicted the Star of David encircled in a ring of woven leaves with thin wings angling downward. Her mouth dropped open. Yamam, she thought. The Special Police Unit. What are counter-terrorism agents doing at my door? She slid deeper beneath the cement staircase. 

 One said to the other, “Go around back.”

“What for? Her flat is on the third floor. What do you think she’s going to do, jump or something?”

They both began to ascend the staircase. 

Talia looked at them from underneath, then followed the sounds of their hard-soled shoes across each step. When they were on the next level, she peeked out at the street. With her car blocked she scanned in all directions to find an alternate escape.

“Ha-matzav khara,” she muttered under her breath, meaning the situation is shit.

Talia hugged the edge of the wall and moved toward the back of the complex, then made a break for it. No sooner had she ran across the thin green-space of the apartment’s backyard, did she hear a booming male voice call out. “That’s her!”

Talia stopped and looked up just as the other agent appeared at the third-floor banister. The man drew a Glock and pointed it at her. “Don’t move!” the man screamed. 

Talia took off in a blind run through the sparse assortment of trees toward a roadway on the other side. 

The deafening report of the Glock shattered the otherwise quiet of the neighborhood.

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