“It appears he is in Somalia, sheltering with al-Shabaab. Their request is very simple: Do we have an asset implanted in South Somalia?”
Both senior men looked at Benny. He was a former member of the elite Sayeret Matkal commando, fluent in Arabic to the point where he could pass unnoticed across the border, and thus one of the mistaravim. He studied the pencil in his hands.
“Well, Benny, do we?” David asked gently. They all knew what was coming, and agent runners hate to lend one of their assets for a foreign agency’s concerns.
“Yes, we do. Just one. He is embedded in the port of Kismayo.”
“How do you communicate with him?” asked the director.
“With extreme difficulty,” said Benny. “And slowly. It takes time. We can’t just send in a message. He can’t send a card. Even e-traffic could be monitored. There are trainee bombers in there now. Western-educated. Technology-savvy. Why?”
“If the Yankees want to use him, we would have to speed up communications. A miniaturized two-way transceiver,” said David. “And it ought to cost them.”
“Oh, it would cost them, all right,” said the director. “But you could leave that to me. I’ll tell them ‘maybe,’ and we’ll discuss price.”
He did not mean money; he meant help in a score of other ways—the Iranian atomic bomb program, the release of very high-tech classified equipment. He would have quite a shopping list.
“Does he have a name?” asked David.
“Opal,” said Benny. “Agent Opal. He’s a tally clerk on the fishing dock.”
• • •
Gray Fox did not waste time.
“You’ve been talking to the Israelis,” he said.
“True. Have they come back?”
“With a vengeance. They have a man. Deep inside. In Kismayo, as it happens. They are prepared to help, but there are outrageous demands. You know the Israelis. They don’t give away sand in the Negev.”
“But they want to discuss price?”
/> “Yes,” said Gray Fox, “but not at our level. It’s above our pay grade. Their top man at the embassy went straight to the commander of J-SOC.”
“Did he turn them down?”
“Amazingly, no. Demands acceded. You can go ahead. Your contact man is their head of station. Do you know him?”
“Yes. Fleetingly.”
“Well, you can go ahead. Tell them what you want and they’ll try to deliver.”
• • •
There was a message from Ariel when he got back to his office.
“There seems to be one purchaser of Somali fruit, vegetables and spices. A company called Masala Pickles. It makes hot chutneys and pickles, the sort the British eat with their curries. The produce is bottled or frozen or canned in a plant in Kismayo, then shipped to the main factory.”
The Tracker rang him. To a listener the exchange would have been meaningless, so he did not encrypt.
“Got your message, Ariel. Well done. Just a detail: Where is the main factory?”
“Oh, sorry, Colonel. It’s in Karachi.”
Karachi. Pakistan. Of course.
7