Kill Them Wherever You Find Them (30 page)

The next several hours he spent at his
computer, detailing events – times, places, conversations with Mona
over the last several years as best he could. The next morning he
drove to his office moving as one in a trance. He was aware of the
road and traffic, the pedestrians on the sidewalk, the sights and
smells so familiar to him; yet none of the familiarity of his
surroundings provided any consolation for what lay ahead.

Stepping out of the elevator to the top floor
of the military's General Staff building, he forced his legs toward
the office of the Shin Bet liaison assigned to the General Staff.
Walking past General Ashkelon's office, he noticed two unfamiliar
faces seated at the small conference table near the far corner of
the General's office. Just moments after walking past, the door to
the General's office closed.

Nobody was at their desk in the main area.
The Shin Bet liaison was in his office. Based on his tired
appearance and slightly rumpled clothing, Avi guessed he had been
here for quite some time already, though it was just the beginning
of the workday. He thought the liaison officer must have had a
plush job as he always appeared so relaxed and easy-going. This
morning, however; he looked tense and exhausted.

Approaching him, the man appeared to tense
even more. Avi pulled a chair to his desk and gave him a sheaf of
papers.

"What's this?" Cohen inquired, appearing not
to really need a response. "Sir it is a signed report, actually a
confession, that I wish to turn over to you. This report details
the fact that I have been providing an unknown enemy, though I'm
fairly certain Iranian, strategic details about
The Project
– specifically its military applications. I have an identical copy,
also signed as is the document I gave you, for General Ashkelon.
There will be a full investigation, no doubt, but I felt it best
that your people, as well as the General, have a basic groundwork
on which to build for the sake of expediency."

As the officer glanced at the document the
General's office door opened and a woman pointed at Avi, Cohen's
office being directly across the hall, motioning him in.

With every fiber of his being, he wanted to
return home, go to bed, awaken the next morning to find that this
was all nothing more than a prolonged nightmare. Steeling himself
he entered the General's office. It was telling that the General
wouldn't initially even look at him. The room was heavy with an
oppressive silence as he entered. In contrast to the General's
avoidance the woman observed him with tangible disdain. Her
associate was less discernible with an absolutely neutral gaze;
he'd make a formidable opponent at a poker table.

General Ashkelon broke the uncomfortable
silence.

"Avi, I must inform you that you have been
stripped of rank and position. You are no longer a soldier, being
considered a traitor and an enemy of the state. Is this
understood?"

"Yes sir, I fully understand." He was taken
aback at the events transpiring already; he had hoped to come clean
in his own time and way, controlling the situation as much as was
possible.

"Good. As a civilian you can't have
representation by a lawyer of the Tzahal but you are entitled to a
lawyer, something I would strongly encourage. You will face a
military tribunal down the road, but for now you may call a
civilian lawyer of your choosing – if you can't afford one a lawyer
will be appointed by the state to represent you. Do you understand
your rights?"

"I do sir."

"Do you wish to have a lawyer before we
continue?"

"No sir, in fact the reason I came in . .
."

"Mr. Ben-Levi, I'm Menachem Schalit with
security services." Avi extended his hand to shake Schalit's.
Menachem made no move to reciprocate. Awkwardly, his hand returned
to his side.

The General abruptly stood up. Avi looked at
him with the second deepest sadness he had felt in his life, the
first being the torture of Mona. Tearing his shirt pocket, the sign
that a loved one had died and he was in mourning, the General left
his office without a word or so much as a glance in his
direction.

He flashed to a memory, years ago when he was
visiting her mother with Shoshana and the General entered the
office. Speaking with Shoshi's mom, then her, the General didn't
acknowledge his presence. He remembered that first view of the
General with melancholy, how differently that compared with this
time. He wondered if the General would ever look at him again, even
during his tribunal.

Avi knew he would not see the General again,
his friend, a man who was like his father, a man who gave him his
fullest confidence and trust. This was, however; the last time the
two would be in the same room. In less than a week, Lt. Gen. Dan
Ashkelon would die from a massive heart attack. Ashkelon's wife, a
person who was as much a mother to him as his own had been, would
blame Avi's betrayal for her husband's death.

"You know the charges facing you, there will
likely be more in the future. My associate and I are not concerned
with any legal technicalities or what laws may or may not have been
broken at this juncture. We are here to assess what information has
been passed to foreign operatives along with a corresponding
timeline. We must document everything you have done with regards to
the woman you knew as 'Mona.' Let's start . . . "

"I brought a detailed report here if that . .
." Avi was cut short.

"Don't ever interrupt me again. We know about
your report, we already have it. You have been under constant
surveillance and your computers monitored. Your phones, including
that used to contact her, have also been under scrutiny. The
government has issued an order freezing all of your assets here,
and put in a diplomatic request to freeze your off-shore bank
account wherein money was transferred to you from the United Arab
Emirates."

"Ben-Levi." The woman began with a continued
look of contempt in her eyes and now voice, "We know of the Lt.
General's affection for you and close personal and professional
friendship that you have formed with him and General Aharonson
during the course of
The Project
and your time here on the
General Staff. It is out of deference to General Ashkelon that I
did not bring this up in his presence. As of now you have no
rights, you are considered a hostile, without access to legal
counsel and will be detained without communication while we sort
out this mess."

"You are to say nothing about
The
Project
to us or anybody else," Menachem continued, "beyond
what is required to fully respond to our lines of inquiry. We have
enough information to investigate your actions but are not privy to
anything beyond your interaction with
The Project
as it
relates to your former responsibilities here at the General
Staff."

"Let us begin, then, with how you met Mona.
First, before starting, there is information you need to know to
assure that you are completely open and honest with us. We have
determined that she was . . ." Menachem saw his eyes flicker " an
Iranian agent. We confirmed that she died from her injuries and was
given a quiet, martyr's burial."

Avi's mouth slackened upon hearing this. The
news came to him as a double body slam, she worked for Iran and was
now confirmed dead.

"No, that's impossible. I don't believe you."
The revelations about Mona were just too much to handle at once.
Avi was now speaking in a barely audible whisper.

"Believe it. We have no reason to be
untruthful with you, Mr. Ben-Levi. No reason at all. In fact, your
life as you know it, is forfeit. You will never be free to walk the
streets, you are probably looking at the death sentence that the
State holds as an option in the case of traitors. Full cooperation
with us will go in your favor. The only way we can know that you
are indeed cooperating completely and honestly is to provide you
with incontrovertible proof that she was the diametric opposite of
what you believed her to be. Tzipora, would you turn off the
lights?"

The office darkened, Menachem played a video
of Mona – splices of various scenes, including her freely walking
the streets of Tehran first in clothing he recognized, then covered
in black garb, head-to-toe. While he could not testify he was 100%
sure it was Mona completely covered, he was certain it had to be
her; the way she moved as she walked, the form of her body, the
pitch and timbre of her voice, and other little nuances, that the
operative documenting the surveillance was able to capture and
record.

He could no longer hide a tremor in his
hands, the shock in his countenance, as she hugged a woman also
fully covered, then spoke with two men briefly before entering a
non-descript building.

There were several such scenes that appeared
to cover about a year of surveillance that no longer focused on
Mona so much as the woman and two men she always met. The focus
shifted increasingly from Mona as the other three became the main
subjects of surveillance.

Photos of her being buried, taken apparently
from a distance with a telescoping lens, were enough to convince
him that he was duped, that she was running his life and faking her
love for him from the very beginning.

Avi's mind reverted to his first memory of
her while he was at a club celebrating with friends. He remembered
her entering the bar, finding a stool at the counter as every male
turned to better see her. He recalled everything in an instant. A
rising star in the ranks of the military even then, though not yet
on the General Staff, he could never then have guessed himself a
target of an enemy nation.

"This is something of a shock to you, we
understand." Tzipora broke into his thoughts. "Frankly Ben-Levi, we
really don't give a damn how you feel. The only reason we are
showing you this is so that you won't feel some foolish need to
protect Mona and her family. Speaking of her family, there's
something else you should know. Her parents are both alive and
well, working a farm in northwestern Iran. The other woman you saw
in some of the video segments is her sister. Her sister Balour was
radicalized when they moved to the city, then Mona was lured into
the terror group that Balour had earlier joined."

Avi started to have a glassy-eyed look to
him, as one might who has had such a mental shock that he begins to
switch reality in favor of a fantasy world designed by his own
psychological needs for mental/emotional self-preservation. On
seeing this Tzipora was fearful that he could slip into a mental
breakdown, closing himself off from them – something they could not
allow, given the nature of the situation.

Launching from her chair, Tzipora reached
across the desk, slapping Avi hard. First shock, then a gradual
mental return and recognition of the room and his indignant
circumstance, registered on his face.

Tzipora wanted to loosen a couple of
Ben-Levi's teeth; it would have felt incredibly satisfying. She
couldn't fathom how somebody in his position could be so foolish
and act with such reckless abandon. The fact that he got away with
it for so long stunned her, adding to her palpable revulsion of the
traitor seated at the same table as she. Seeing the emotional
roller coaster throwing him in one direction and then snapping him
around to another helped to assuage her loathing, which she didn't
even attempt to keep out of her voice as she spoke. An expert
interrogator, she understood that she was walking a fine line
between pushing him hard for information and throwing him over a
mental precipice from which there would be no hope of return.

"It's a game they play, you know. Using
prisoners – political and religious dissidents – as conscripted
actors. Whoever it was that you saw being tortured in the place of
her mother and father, you now realize were innocent people, whose
only crime was to say or believe something not sanctioned by the
government. Mona is the only person in her family to have actually
been tortured, and subsequently die."

"Tzipora has laid out the background for
you," continued Menachem "of the initial deception. We have a basic
construct of how events went down but there is a great deal we
don't know, and much we already know that requires verification.
Mr. Ben-Levi, why don't you start from the beginning, how and where
you met Mona."

Avi noticed that Menachem addressed him
formally and respectfully as "Mr. Ben-Levi" whereas Tzipora was
blunt, employing an underlining malice in her voice and choice of
words. Most interrogations would employ a method wherein one
interrogator was openly hostile if not actually physically
threatening. The other interrogator would be the opposite,
sympathetic if not almost friendly, respectful, even helpful. He
wondered if this was how things were to go during this first
interrogation, or were these two actually being themselves as they
really were.

Tzipora seemed to be genuine in her
hostility. Menachem, on the other hand, was more of a puzzle.
Whichever the case, he knew that he had to divulge everything, not
for the sake of his life but for the sake of his country. Nobody
would ever believe him, so there was no point in protesting his
loyalties, though he was a patriot and would do anything for his
country.

He would never mention to anybody that he
believed himself patriotic. His actions and the incriminating money
in his offshore bank account would combine to scream "Liar!
Hypocrite!" Probably every incarcerated inmate protested their
innocence to no avail. He would have been no different.

"I believe everything in my report to the
General and Shin Bet provides a broad outline and timeline. It was
never intended to be conclusive; there is a great deal to fill
in."

"We are already well aware of that, Mr.
Ben-Levi." Menachem again spoke. "While we know the minutia of your
life, your movements, for the last year give-or-take, we will
require every detail from the moment you met Mona. We need you to
recall, as much as is humanly possible, every conversation – even
those that might seem innocuous to you – and every scrap of
information that you gave her, or her handlers." Though Menachem
stated the obvious, in Avi's emotional and mental state even the
obvious needed to be nailed down. "We understand you have a
highly-trained and remarkable memory, recalling entire
conversations verbatim."