The devils shepherd, p.15
The Devil's Shepherd, page 15
“I understand you have a photograph for me,” Eckstein said.
Krumlov’s amusement returned to a thin smile as he shook his head.
“Ahhh, that Israeli reputation. No manners, all business.”
Eckstein, utterly unapologetic, watched him. Krumlov looked past his shoulder.
“And where is my lovely Nikita?” He raised himself on his toes, fingers splayed outward.
“In the Land Rover with my partner.”
“Partner?” Krumlov feigned surprise. “Not fair. Two against one.” Then he looked over at his Belgian and chided himself. “Tu m’excuse, mon ami” He turned back to Eckstein. “I forgot. With Debay, I am a whole platoon.”
Debay did not smile, and neither did Eckstein.
“Please, please, please.” Krumlov rubbed his hands together. “I must see her!”
Eckstein chose not to jockey any further for position, and he walked to the door and waved, although after the glare of the lantern he could see nothing outside.
After what seemed like a long hesitation, Niki appeared in the doorway. Her eyes were very wide, the dilated pupils turning her irises to glistening black olives. Long streaks of fresh tears webbed her cheeks, and as Baum stepped up behind her his expression showed that no matter his age, he would never decipher the female of the species.
Eckstein moved aside as Krumlov took a large lunge backward and opened his arms. He shouted something in Czech, which included her name, and Niki closed her eyes and ran to him, still clutching her diary as he enveloped her, kissed the top of her small head over and over, and whispered into her hair as he rocked her.
Baum stepped up into the church and Eckstein watched the tension drain from his colonel’s shoulders as he thrust his hands in his pockets and smiled. Benni looked at Eytan as he blew out a long breath of satisfaction.
One half of the deal was done. Package delivered.
Eckstein looked over at the embracing couple, aesthetically a fine pair, like a tall blond duke and his diminutive dark princess. For a moment he had a melancholy flash of himself and Simona in happier days when their reunions were similar. But of course Debay dispelled the illusion with his hovering just behind Krumlov.
Then all at once Niki withdrew from her lover, and Krumlov looked at her quizzically, like a dancer wondering if had trod on his partner’s toe. Her right hand rose, her white knuckles vised around her precious black fountain pen, and as her thumb popped the top and the onyx tube went arcing up into the air, Eckstein saw it. A thick steel needle protruding from the pen, glistening in the light of the lantern, flashing as she drew her hand back behind her head for the strike.
Eytan lunged, hearing Benni grunt and knowing that the range was too far, yet he targeted her elbow as he launched himself in an explosion of hope that his speed might foil her kill.
But his effort was superfluous, as Debay was much faster.
The Belgian drew a nine-millimeter FN pistol from his waistband, dropped his wrist on Krumlov’s shoulder, and shot Niki point-blank between the eyes.
Part II
Mercenaries
White men’s wars are fought on the edges of Africa—you can carry a machine gun three hundred miles inland from the sea and you are still on the edge of it.
—Beryl Markham,
West with the Night
7
Durba
May 3
WHEN THE SUN rose in the east above the mountains of Welo, you could not see Lake Tana from Durba, for although vaster than the Sea of Galilee, it lay far to the north behind a hundred peaks. Yet if you had been here before, its vision stained your soul like a Saharan oasis, and you could feel it, smell the mist curling from the endless burnished steel of flat water, see the pink flamingoes tiptoeing into cool lapping waves of dawn, sense the breeze sweeping the night mosquitos away as the tongues of leopards touched the pearly liquid.
Yet on this dawn the placid vision flitted only briefly through Eckstein’s imagination and was gone, instantly replaced by simmering rage and the truth before his bloodshot eyes as he leaned outside against the cold rear wall of the church and smoked, watching.
On the rocky cap of the hill stood a lone, flat-topped acacia tree, its sharp black fingertips glowing red in the rising light. To the right, Debay’s shirtless torso glistened as he filled Niki’s fresh grave with an entrenching tool. The chink, chink, chink of the spade striking rock set Eckstein’s teeth grinding, yet his black emotions were not directed at the Belgian, for much like a loyal rottweiler the man had only done what he was fed to do. There was a sense of quiet dignity in his motions, the caring of the soldier for his fallen enemy, the warrior’s respect witnessed over and over in places like Gettysburg, Normandy, Ammunition Hill, and Suez. There was no arrogance left in Eckstein’s heart with which to judge the man, for once as a paratroop lieutenant in Lebanon his platoon had ambushed a pair of Palestinian terrorists, then dragged their bloating bodies to a village square and left them there as a warning.
But Jan Krumlov was another story altogether. He sat nearby on a large rock, his elbows on his knees, his fingers in his blond hair, watching Niki’s grave as if she might spring from it at any moment like a magician’s assistant. And although Eckstein was not sure why, all of his curdling fury was directed at the Czech defector, and he could not mobilize his feet to console him.
Benni Baum, always the more mature of the partnership, accepted the task instead. He came back from having urinated somewhere, stopped, look at Eckstein, and then at Krumlov’s bent back. He squared his burly shoulders and went to him.
Krumlov did not look up as Baum squatted beside him on his haunches. Witnesses were usually surprised to see a portly, middle-aged colonel so limber, yet Baum could outrun boys half his age.
“I am sorry for your loss,” he said, as if Niki had been taken by a rapid meningitis. He gazed out over the Shewa as the rising sun seemed to set the fringed hills ablaze and the reedy whistle of a shepherd’s washint flute rose from a valley.
Krumlov raised his head, steepled his fingers together, and pressed them to his swollen lips.
“And I am sorry for your trouble.” The Czech’s voice was full of liquid, yet even in his shock he acknowledged the efforts of the two Israelis. He knew the game, knew what it was like to plan a dangerous mission, execute it, risk life and limb to bring the “trophy” home, and then discover it was useless, spoiled, smashed.
Yet for a moment, Baum thought that Krumlov meant the deal was off. Still, he spoke carefully.
“The amount of effort is irrelevant now. It was part of the arrangement.”
Baum came up with a pack of cigarettes. This time they were du Maurier, for he was not partial to a particular brand and smoked any box that attracted his eye. He offered the burgundy pack to Krumlov, who declined by just briefly closing his eyes, as if he were a priest and the cigarettes pornography.
“The arrangement,” said Krumlov, “has not changed.”
Baum lit up, taking care to exhibit no outward relief. Krumlov flinched as Debay’s shovel sparked against a slab of shale. The Belgian muttered something and carried on.
“At any rate,” Krumlov sighed, “Niki’s attempt should tell you that what I have is the real thing.”
“It does,” said Baum, although that was not wholly true.
“Yet, as a professional, you still have a hundred doubts.”
“At least.”
Krumlov nodded. Niki’s journal was lying next to his foot and he picked it up. He sat up straighter, gathering some strength, and placed the notebook and his hands on his knees and looked at the Israeli.
“What is your name?”
“Schmidt.” Baum glanced at the journal and quickly looked away, as if it was a woman’s cleavage at a cocktail party.
“No. Your real name.”
“I could give you another, but why force me to lie again?”
Krumlov pouted a bit, then picked up a pebble and flicked it from his thumb. He looked up as a large lammergeyer vulture wheeled overhead, then he watched the scavenger warily.
“I have given you my real name,” he said.
“You had to, so we could run background on you. You knew that.”
Krumlov shook his head, but the gesture was not argumentative, just melancholy.
“You see why I have tired of this nonsense?”
“Yes,” said Baum. “Actually, I am about to retire myself. You can only do it for so long and then one day it hits you. So foolish. For what?” Benni could lie to match any man’s sentiments and soul. In truth, he still loved it all and was only retiring because he owed it to his long-suffering wife, Maya. If it was up to him, he would die in the field of old age.
Krumlov suddenly turned to him, his eyes glistening.
“I knew she couldn’t do it, Schmidt. In my heart, I knew it. She wanted to come along, to be with me, be a part of it. But even though she was young she was still old Soviet school. Do you know what I mean?”
Baum sighed and nodded. He was at his best playing father confessor, even though with some interrogations his Dracula worked better. Here he was a sponge for another man’s torment.
“It’s strange how it has seemed to skip generations,” Krumlov continued. “First, you had the old-line Stalinists. Then there was my age group, the baby boomers of the Cold War, plodding along for the fun of it. And then we got this crop of children like Niki, searchers, fanatics for causes without hope.”
Baum suppressed a painful smirk, thinking how some philosophical Israeli officers described their own security services similarly.
“It was all my fault,” Krumlov confessed bitterly. “She was a fine professional. Not a field person, no, but a talented analyst. I thought I’d convinced her to follow my lead, go over with me, live happily ever after, you know? But I suppose once I was gone, she couldn’t bear it. She must have told them and they turned her back. She has aging parents in Prague. Maybe they threatened them, blackmailed her into killing me. We still do that in our neck of the woods, you know.”
God forgive us, we still do it in ours, too, Baum admitted silently.
“It was not your fault.” The Israeli touched Krumlov’s shoulder, but he gripped it just for a moment and withdrew. “If a man leaps from a sinking ship, and in the process offers to save another soul, and instead she tries to drown him, well . . .”
Krumlov looked at him, a thankful expression, then he plucked one of Baum’s cigarettes from his pack. Baum lit it for him and the Czech eased some of his burden while the Israeli colonel recorded as much as he could in his brain and Debay went on burying Krumlov’s past, and perhaps his future.
“As I am sure you know, I was with Czech Counterintelligence. Like your own GSS, or Shabak, as you call it. But you in Jerusalem, you are your own men, while we worked for the Russians, with the Russians, around the damned Russians . . .”
Krumlov was a career officer, a lieutenant colonel like Baum. They were his men who had crouched for a year in the gray water tower across from Vaclav Havel’s office in Prague. It was an embarrassment to post professional officers ’round the clock to surveil a playwright. The man was already being published in thirty countries, about to “bring down the house” with pencil and notebook. What did those slabby Muscovites think? That he was broadcasting nuclear secrets on a shortwave? Either kill him or leave him be. You see, there was no dignity in the work anymore.
However, even as Czechoslovakia moved toward freedom from the Soviets and on to its “velvet divorce”—a split into two republics—there were things worth protecting. Commerce.
The mile-long ZTS plant in Martin still manufactured Soviet-designed T-72 tanks, mostly for the Syrians. With a purchase order for 250 of the steel dragons at over $1 million apiece, they were essential to the economy. Krumlov had an entire counterintelligence team working at the factory to guard the secrets of the technical gear. Not that anyone cared if the Syrians were incinerated inside their tanks, but the Americans and Israelis were constantly trying to penetrate the factory, and if the Arab customers discovered a breach they might cancel the contract.
When a Syrian delegation headed by an armored corps general came to inspect the assembly line, Krumlov had them all placed on seven by twenty-four surveillance. Not for fear that they might try to acquire Czech military secrets, but because the Damascus contingent was going on to a trade fair in Prague. The chief of the ZTS factory was an old Krumlov family friend, and he wanted to be sure to underbid any potential competition. This did not, of course, appear in Krumlov’s reports to his superiors.
Satisfied with his shiny new tanks, the Syrian general went home and the delegation, now headed by a Colonel Faraj Salameh from Syrian Air Force Intelligence, carried on to Prague. Krumlov ran the surveillance operation himself, laying on photo reconnaissance and acoustic monitoring (the ZTS manager was about to endure the weddings of two daughters and could not afford to take chances with his livelihood).
It was there in the capital, late one night near the Charles Bridge, its promenade of sculpted saints dusted with snow and the waters of the Vltava below steaming with draining bathwater from the Old Town, that Colonel Salameh met the Israeli whom Krumlov would come to call “Bluebeard.”
The two men walked and talked, and Krumlov, who had wandered out to his team after a late dinner with Niki, joined the chilly surveillance in a joyful indulgence of field nostalgia. Krumlov’s team did not understand the conversation they recorded with long-range shotgun microphones, although they also shot ample infrared photographs and got the whole thing from handshake to “Ciao.” Back at headquarters, the team was stunned to confirm Krumlov’s guess, that the conversation was in Israeli Hebrew, the translator’s eyes bugging behind his spectacles as he revealed that “Bluebeard” was an employee of the Israeli nuclear facility at Dimona, and that he was negotiating the sale of blueprints.
Much like Eckstein, and all professional intelligence officers, Krumlov had a distaste for turncoats. In the past, when they were Czechs, he had snatched them up and hurled them into cells like child molesters. Yet something clicked inside him then, the sure knowledge that for all his years of service the political winds would soon blow him into retirement with a pathetic pension and a “second” career as a newspaper vendor. And an idea surfaced, like the certainty coming upon a man whose wife has long denied him her bed, and suddenly there in his hotel room stands a buxom blond bar girl wearing nothing but a pearl choker.
Irreversible.
He immediately clamped a double Top Secret gag order on his team, the translator, and the acoustical enhancement technicians. He dragged a secretary and a legal clerk out of bed and made everyone sign the triplicate forms, stamped the file Genesis, and locked it in his safe.
He went home to his flat to think. For two hours he sat by an open window, smoking his grandfather’s favorite pipe as a cold wind ruffled the white curtains, watching Prague dawn, a city devoid of any surviving Krumlovs but himself, smiling at Niki as she slept in the moonlight, her limbs occasionally jerking with fits and starts, wary even in her slumber.
And at the end of those two hours, Krumlov was nodding, although not with fatigue.
“It took me four months to make my move, Schmidt.” Krumlov stabbed out the du Maurier on the toe of his own boot, as if wishing he were barefoot and could inflict pain on himself. “I knew I was going to do it, but I had to have proof, something hard to offer your people.”
Baum’s mind flicked back over the Czech’s story. There was a large piece missing—his true motivation for defecting. A man does not forfeit his life and homeland due to dour speculations of a boring retirement.
“But you had photographs of Salameh and this ‘Bluebeard,’ as you call him,” said Benni.
“I had photographs of Salameh meeting an Israeli,” Krumlov corrected. “For all I knew, the man was a bankrupt Tel Aviv taxi driver trying to sell off blueprints of the new bus terminal.”
Fair enough. The histories of worldwide intelligence services were replete with self-important “paper merchants,” bogus spies trying to make a killing with worthless not-so-secrets.
“I wanted whatever proof Bluebeard was offering of his own bona fides. But I was not about to track him back to Be’er Sheva and toss his flat.”
Wise move, thought Baum. We would have had you at the airport.
“Salameh was easier. Back and forth to Europe. He showed up in Prague again, picked up a dead drop from Bluebeard, and was silly enough to take the train to Vienna. And as the Americans say, bingo.”
Baum instantly had an image of Krumlov chatting up the Syrian in the dining car, waiting for the precise moment when one of his Prague beauties stepped in for the diversion. There would have been at least three more personnel working the temporary switch of Salameh’s briefcase for an identical one, performing a rapid “UPS”—an uncontested physical search—taking photographs in a train lavatory and then reversing the entire procedure. He wanted to scream, “So, show me what you have already, goddamn you!” But he kept his calm, superbly, for waiting well was the greatest asset of any good intelligence officer.
“So, I convinced her to come with me.” Krumlov whispered now, staring again at Niki’s dusty grave. “Or thought that I had.” He dropped his head, a thick lock of blond hair drifting over his brow. “I suppose every betrayal has its price. But she was so young . . .”
His voice trailed off. Baum watched as Debay, having finished his grim task, folded up his entrenching tool. The Belgian swigged water from a canteen, then poured a puddle into his palm and smeared it over the muscle and red hair of his chest. There was a puckered bullet scar just to the left of his navel. He picked up his submachine gun, walked to Krumlov, stopped, and looked down at his employer, his eyes never taking in Baum at all.
“If you wish, Colonel,” said Debay, pronouncing it coh-loh-nelle. “I will leave you the Land Rover. I can walk back to Addis.”
Krumlov raised his head, a look of confusion.
