19
ISTANBUL, TURKEY
Turkish Airlines flight 825 landed in Istanbul at 5:35 p.m. local time.
The moment the flight attendants would let me, I powered up my laptop and satellite phone and transmitted revised copies of the ISIS story and my profile of Jamal Ramzy to D.C. I was still opposed to Allen’s decision, but I had no choice. If I didn’t do the rewrite, he’d chop up the piece himself, and I definitely didn’t want that. At least this way I still had some degree of control over how the piece was phrased.
Then Omar showed me his story on Abdel.
“This is good,” I whispered as we taxied to the gate.
Omar said nothing. I quickly glanced at him, sitting next to me in business class. The expression on his face looked as pained as I’d ever seen him. He was a good writer, but this one had clearly taken its toll.
“Really, it’s very good,” I said. “I’m sending it as is.”
With that, I immediately e-mailed the obituary to Allen, then powered up my iPhone and began figuring out how to get us home. After a frustrating fifteen minutes or so on multiple travel websites, I finally came to the annoying realization that there were no direct flights back to Washington that evening from Istanbul. When I tried to route us through Brussels or London or Paris or Frankfurt, I found that there were no late-evening flights to D.C. from any of those hub cities either. Any way we sliced it, we were going to have to spend the night in a hotel and fly out the next day. The best I could do was book us tickets on a Turkish Airlines flight that would depart at 8:10 the following morning for Brussels. We would then change planes and fly United across the Atlantic, touching down at Dulles at 2:45 in the afternoon.
With no other options, I booked the flights, then scanned my e-mails and text messages. There was only one that stood out. It was from Ari Shalit, deputy director of the Mossad, whom I had texted earlier that afternoon. As luck would have it, Shalit would be arriving later that night in Istanbul and was asking me to meet him at midnight in front of the famed Blue Mosque. My mood suddenly improved. The night might not be a complete waste after all.
Omar rented a car and we drove for the Ibrahim Pasha, a four-story hotel in the historic Sultanahmet neighborhood, not far from the Blue Mosque. While I paced in front of a roaring fireplace in the lobby, returning e-mails and scanning headlines, Omar secured two adjoining rooms. I asked him to clear my minibar of all alcohol. He gave me an “attaboy” slap on the back and took care of it immediately.
We met later in the hotel restaurant, and over a meal of lamb kebabs and rice we speculated about what kind of splash the Ramzy profile and interview would make when it went public in a few hours. We talked about how hard Abdel’s fiancée had taken the news of his death and discussed how we could send her some money discreetly, perhaps even anonymously. It seemed the least we could do.
At one point during our meal, Omar asked me why I thought Shalit would want to meet so late, and why in front of the mosque.
“I have no idea,” I said. “Why do you ask?”
“I don’t know,” Omar replied. “Just seems odd. I mean, how did he know we’d even be in Istanbul tonight?”
“Good question.”
“Did you say anything in your text?”
“No.”
“What did you say?”
“I just asked if we could talk.”
“You think he was already planning a trip here, or is he coming just to see you?”
“Does it matter?”
Omar shrugged. “I don’t know.”
I noticed he wasn’t really eating, which wasn’t like him. “What is it, Omar?” I asked. “What are you thinking?”
He shook his head. “I’m not really sure,” he replied. “Maybe it’s nothing. I just . . .”
“What?”
“I just have a strange feeling. But I can’t really say why.”
We finished dinner feeling a bit unsettled. But then again, we were both exhausted and traumatized by Abdel’s death and all we’d experienced in Homs. I decided to go upstairs and take a nap for a few hours. Omar went out jogging.
At precisely 11:30 p.m., the alarm on my iPhone went off. I got up, took a quick shower, and met Omar downstairs. Together we finalized our plan and then headed out to the Blue Mosque.
I went on foot, and Omar shadowed me in the little silver Hyundai compact he’d rented at the airport, keeping a good block or so behind me—close enough to make sure I was okay but not so close that he’d be immediately spotted. It was raining, though not nearly as hard as in Homs. The streets were slick. The air was foggy.
Soon I came to the Sultan Ahmed Mosque, commonly known as the Blue Mosque for the twenty thousand exquisite hand-painted blue ceramic tiles lining its interior walls. It was, of course, locked and closed for the night. But with each of its six minarets and the main dome and its eight secondary domes bathed in the yellow light of high-powered lamps and set against the backdrop of such a stormy night, the entire seventeenth-century structure looked spectacular in the mist, and even with the rain, the dappled reflection in the nearby pool was spectacular as well.
Few people were crazy enough to be out in such weather, but there was a young couple in love making out near the fountain, and a few police officers strolled the grounds. Ari Shalit was nowhere in sight, so I was startled when I heard someone saying my name from the shadows of a small grove of palm trees and even more startled when I realized it was a woman’s voice, not that of the man I thought I was to meet.
“Mr. Collins, over here,” said the woman, a slim, striking brunette wearing a black faux-silk London Fog trench coat and holding a polka-dot umbrella. “My, my, you’re getting soaked. Please, won’t you join me?”
“I’m sorry; do I know you?” I asked, genuinely puzzled.
“No, I’m afraid we have not had the pleasure,” she said with a warm, alluring smile as she removed a leather glove to shake my hand.
In so doing, she slipped a note into mine and whispered, “Ari sent me.”
I looked at her, wondering if that could possibly be true. Did she really know Ari Shalit? Had the Mossad’s deputy director really sent her? Why? Why hadn’t he come himself? These and a dozen other questions raced through my mind, but before I started asking, I looked down at the note.
J. B.—Sorry I couldn’t come in person. The Old Man needed me. Meet Yael Katzir. Works on my staff. Expert in CW. Fully briefed on our conversations. She can help you.—A. S.
I stared at the note, trying to make sense of it. It certainly sounded like Ari. It was concise, to the point, and consistent with the text message Ari had sent while Omar and I were flying to Istanbul from Beirut.
Meet in front of SAM in I, he’d written. Midnight. Will carry PDU.—A. S.
SAM was the Sultan Ahmed Mosque, aka the Blue Mosque.
Did PDU mean “polka-dot umbrella”?
The “Old Man” was the nickname Ari called his boss, the Mossad director. Whoever had written the text had certainly known about the chemical weapons angle I’d wanted to discuss. But was all this legit? Had someone hacked his account or accessed his phone somehow? Was this a setup?
I looked at this woman, trying to make sense of her. She was lovely, that was for certain, with a natural, unpretentious beauty that I found instantly attractive. She wore no eye shadow or lipstick or makeup of any kind. She wore no earrings or necklace or bracelets, and her short, well-trimmed nails were not painted. She looked more Arab than Jewish, but then again, so did Ari. Her large brown eyes seemed gentle and relaxed, and they twinkled in the streetlights. Despite the raincoat, I could see she was wearing a black cashmere sweater, well-worn denim jeans, and stylish brown leather boots that went up to her knees. These added a couple of inches to her height, but she was still quite a bit shorter than me. I’m six foot one, so I pegged her at about five-five or five-six. She carried no purse or handbag, just the umbrella, which she kept propped up over our heads to shield us from the drizzle.
&n
bsp; She didn’t look like an assassin. Then again, no one involved in a honey trap would. But did she really work for the Mossad? Or had she been sent by ISIS? It seemed unlikely that Abu Khalif and Jamal Ramzy were ready to kill me. The story they wanted the world to read hadn’t even been published yet. If anyone wanted me dead just now, it would be Khalif’s rivals in al Qaeda, not ISIS. But before I could process the questions any further, she leaned toward me, put her warm, soft hands on my face, and kissed me on the lips. I was so caught off guard that I immediately pulled away, but she leaned closer and whispered in my ear.
“You and I are either brother and sister, or we’re lovers, Mr. Collins,” she explained matter-of-factly. “At this hour, there’s no other reason for the police to think we’d be together . . . unless, of course, you want them to think I’m a prostitute . . .”
Her voice trailed off, but she didn’t need to finish her point. While prostitution was legal in Turkey, being seen by the police with a fahişe could raise all sorts of problems I didn’t want to deal with. So I put my arms around her waist, and she pulled me toward her, kissing me even more convincingly this time.
“Nice to meet you, Miss Katzir,” I whispered.
“Likewise,” she said, raising her eyebrows and seeming to enjoy the game. “Now let’s start walking arm in arm, like true lovers.”
I did as I was told, still trying to size up the situation.
“Call me Yael,” she said quietly.
“Fair enough—call me James,” I said, though I had no idea why. Hardly anyone called me James except my mother. Everyone else called me J. B. The guys at the Times did. Omar did. Laura had. Everyone did. Why in the world had I just asked her to call me James?
“Very well, James.” She smiled. “Is there a place we can talk, you know, privately?”
20
I had no idea where to take this woman.
Over the years I had been in and out of Istanbul many times, but I didn’t really know the city well. I couldn’t very well take her back to the hotel, and I could only imagine what Omar must be thinking at the moment. So I suggested we go find an all-night café and get some coffee. She agreed.
That was easier said than done, however. Istanbul, the ancient metropolis straddling the Bosphorus, once named Constantinople, had served as the eastern capital of the Roman Empire, but it wasn’t exactly New York or London or even Tel Aviv. It didn’t abound with late-night watering holes and all-night restaurants and entertainment. But off we went, looking for one anyway.
We held hands as we walked through the rainy streets. She nestled close to me and laughed and twirled her umbrella and acted like we had been dating for years. It was, I hoped, a solid performance for anyone who didn’t know us. But I needed more convincing that she really was who she said she was, so as we walked, I plied her with questions. Her answers were spot-on. She knew detailed elements of my past meetings and conversations with Ari that no one else could have known unless they’d been told by one of the two of us. She was trying to convince me that the deputy director of the Mossad really had sent her, that I really could trust her, that I really could confide in her whatever I had texted Ari was so urgent about my brief trip into Homs, and it was beginning to work.
“Ari says you went into journalism because of your grandfather. Is that true?” she asked as we found ourselves walking along the Sea of Marmara toward the grand Topkapi Palace, once the seat of the sultans who ruled the Ottoman Empire for over four hundred years.
“Actually, it is,” I replied.
“A. B. Collins?”
“Right again.”
“What did that stand for?”
“Andrew Bradley,” I said.
“So you were named after him, right—James Bradley?” she asked.
“As a matter of fact, I was.”
“Ari said your grandfather was really rattled when his wife—your grandmother, Betty—passed away in 1980. He never remarried?”
“No.”
“They were close.”
“Soul mates.”
“How long were they married?”
“Thirty-eight years.”
“Wow.”
“I know.”
“Who does that anymore?”
“No one I know.”
“My parents divorced when I was fourteen,” she said.
“I was twelve.”
“Did you live with your mom or dad?”
“My mom.”
“In Bar Harbor?”
I nodded.
“And your dad went to Miami Beach?”
I heard the question, but I didn’t answer. We kept walking. Suddenly this wasn’t so fun anymore. I got it. She knew everything about me. Was she showing off?
“I’m sorry,” Yael said after a few moments. “Bad choice of topics.”
I shrugged.
“And Ari says Matt is off-limits.”
“He is.”
“Why?”
“Look, Matt’s a good guy, and he’s my brother,” I said. “We were close when we were young. Not so much anymore.”
“Where is he these days?”
“Amman.”
“Jordan?”
“Is there another?”
“What’s he doing there?”
“I don’t know—a sabbatical of some kind.”
“What does he do when he’s not in Amman?”
“Does it really matter?”
Yael shrugged. “Sorry; I’m not trying to pry.”
I sighed and kept walking. “He’s a professor,” I said at last.
“Where?”
“At a seminary near Boston,” I replied. “Can we talk about something else?”
My relationship with Matt was a long story and not one I wanted to get into now.
“How about Laura?” she said.
I stopped dead in my tracks. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Ari said that didn’t go well.”
“That’s none of your business,” I said, more coldly than I intended.
Whoever this woman was, I had no intention of talking with her about my ex-wife. It was true Shalit and I had talked about my divorce some at the time. He’d been going through a breakup of his own marriage. I guess we’d sort of compared notes. But this wasn’t anything I wanted to discuss now, and certainly not with Yael.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to—”
“It’s fine,” I lied. “Let’s just . . . you know.”
Yael had certainly gotten the picture. She took my arm again to maintain our cover, and we kept walking. “Should we talk about Fordow?” she said.
I knew she was referring to the previously secret Iranian nuclear facility near the holy city of Qom that was revealed by Western intelligence agencies to the Times and other media in the fall of 2009.
“Ari says you were very helpful when he wanted to leak some details and get world leaders focused on just how much of their nuclear program Iran was hiding.”
My mind raced. Was she saying Ari had told her I contributed to the Times article on the Fordow facility? Why else would she be mentioning it?
As if answering my unspoken question, Yael surprised me yet again. “‘A senior intelligence official said Friday that Western spy agencies had “excellent access” to the site, suggesting human spies had penetrated it,’” she said, looking at me.
She was quoting from the story, from memory. I said nothing.
She continued. “‘The official said that “multiple independent sources” had confirmed that it was intended for nuclear use. The intelligence official and other officials declined to be named because they were discussing intelligence matters.’”
Then she added, “Ari said he was one of the ‘multiple independent sources’ you used to back up the story.”
“Why would you think I worked on that story?” I asked. “My byline isn’t even on it.”
“Ari told me all about it,” Yael explained. “He told me how he brought y
ou to Mossad headquarters in Tel Aviv, took you to room E-38, and gave you an ice-cold Mr. Pibb and a plate of hummus and some fresh pita from your favorite restaurant in Abu Ghosh. He showed you satellite photos and let you listen to telephone intercepts and read highly classified reports from agents in the field. And he told me why—so the Times would run the story and so the world would know that Iran was hiding key elements of its nuclear program.”
Again I stopped dead in my tracks, just a few hundred yards from the palace, and stared into her eyes. She was exactly right, yet I had never told a soul all of these details. I hadn’t written these things into my notes. I didn’t keep a journal. There was no way she could know any of it—much less all of it—unless Ari Shalit had told her.
I began to breathe easier. She was the real deal. She really did work for the Mossad. She really had been sent to help me. And I guess I had to trust her, as much as I could trust any foreign intelligence agent.
A pair of policemen came walking around the corner. They were on the other side of the boulevard, but when they seemed to take an inordinate interest in the two of us, I leaned forward, put my arms around Yael again, and kissed her on the lips.
For a moment, it seemed as if she had lost her breath. But so had I. Our kiss became so passionate that the policemen kept walking and didn’t give us another thought. Yael’s plan had worked. We looked like lovers. But it felt so good I wasn’t sure if she was still playing a game.
Then again, I wasn’t sure I was either.
21
We finally found a restaurant that was still open.
The owner graciously offered to take our soaking-wet coats and hang them up to dry. Then he showed us to a table in a back corner near the crackling fireplace. A waiter quickly brought us piping-hot chai and some warm bread, and we both began to settle in.
It was a cozy little dive. The place was about half-full, all foreigners. Most were young couples in their twenties and thirties. The problem was they were all drinking beer or cocktails, not tea or coffee. Immediately I felt the cravings I was already battling intensify. Everything in me wanted to begin drinking heavily. The ambience. The aromas. The company, to be sure. And the immense grief that was weighing so heavily upon me.