Chapter 63
Colonel Goodman was in his office sitting at his desk, looking out his window, looking out over the city of Tel Aviv and the Mediterranean beyond. He'd been reading summaries of ongoing operations all morning but his mind kept drifting back to Harry Callahan and his return to California. What a blown operation that had been, the very definition of a clusterfuck, but what exactly had gone wrong?
The idea of 'wounding' Callahan, maybe with a grazing shot, was the first thing that had gone wrong -- but probably because the entire premise behind it had been so morally out of bounds. Why had he approved such an outlandish plan? Then the fucking sniper had almost blown Callahan's leg off. Brilliant! And so Didi had been locked out of Callahan's life and years of work keeping him under observation had come to an end. The Watson woman, Harry's assistant, had proven too competent, and once she'd figured out what was happening she'd moved all of Callahan's assets out of reach. She moved to secure the residence in Davos and she'd also worked to get the planned recording studio in the village up and running. Goodman sighed, wishing he had one person on staff who was half as competent as this Watson woman.
So for months, he'd been frozen out and he could only guess what Callahan was up to. Worse still, he was no longer in any kind of position to render assistance to Callahan if he needed help. But then Deborah Eisenstadt had come along out of the blue. The physicist had every imaginable security clearance and had even worked for Mossad on two occasions, but her allegiance to the State of Israel was questionable -- so that had to be settled before he could move forward with his plan.
A Danish Jew, her life's circumstances had pushed her to the Soviet Union and then to Armenia until Anders Sorensen had snatched her up and married her. Funny too, because Sorensen had probably saved her life by getting her beyond the reach of the KGB. But Mossad had recruited her shortly after she arrived, ostensibly to keep an eye out for possible Soviet operations within Israel, so her immigration to the U.S. had come as a blow. But now? Was Callahan coming into her life -- even peripherally? Because if so then things had come full circle.
He'd just finished reading the contact report from Ted Sorensen that had come in last night. Eisenstadt hadn't mentioned her contact with Liz Bullitt so Goodman had to assume Eisenstadt had learned of the acoustic shift and if her background was any indication she'd understood the implications of Imogen Schwarzwald's discovery. As long as she didn't actively begin work on the Shift she'd be safe enough, at least for now -- but something else was bothering Goodman.
A Mossad operative in the consulate had passed along that Sorensen was headed to New York for a meeting today, and yet Sorensen had omitted that detail from his contact report.
And now Goodman was worried, because...what was Sorensen up to?
So first thing this morning he'd send word to New York to make sure Sorensen's movements on the ground were detailed, and to keep him in the loop as the surveillance progressed throughout the day. Then Didi had called and he'd asked her to come down to the office for lunch. She'd been working down in the desert on the project and he hadn't seen her in weeks and he was always curious about work down there.
Still, something was wrong, and Goodman could feel it in his bones. Something was wrong with Sorensen. Something...big. Why would Sorensen keep things from him? Why now? And what was he up to in New York?
He needed answers.
Didi appeared in his doorway and she smiled. He turned to her and nodded.
"Come. Sit. Tell me of the problems of the world," he said with a smile.
"It's a very complicated world, Papa," she sighed as she came into his inner sanctum, "but you looked troubled, not me."
"No? Well, you look sunburned. Are you at least using sunscreen?"
She shook her head and grinned. "No, never."
"You'll not like the results," Goodman said with a shrug as he pointed at two recent biopsies taken from the top of his left forearm. "Basal cell carcinoma, I think the doctor calls it."
"Is it serious?"
"Serious? No, not really. It was caught early."
"So, what's troubling you?"
"You recall Ted Sorensen?"
"The producer at Paramount?"
Goodman nodded. "I've been running him for years. He grew up with Callahan."
Didi's eyes darkened. "I didn't know that."
"No reason you should have. They rarely see one another, and haven't for, well, decades now."
"And he reports to you?"
Goodman nodded. "Ever since his father moved here. Nothing major, just deep background on Hollywood, things he thinks we might be interested in. It's all very informal, or at least it was until recently. But he's keeping things from me, things he knows would be of interest to me."
"And that is what is troubling you?"
"I'm not sure. I've had this feeling all morning long, like something bad is..."
"Papa? What is it?"
"I don't know," Goodman said as he reached for the television's remote. He flipped it on and turned to CNN and his eyes squinted when he saw black smoke pouring from one of the World Trade Center towers. "Where is bin Laden?" he whispered as he picked up his phone and dialed a four-digit extension. "Lev? Ben. Are you watching CNN? No? Well turn it on and find out where bin Laden is and let me know. Thanks." He pushed down in the cradle and then dialed his receptionist. "Doris, get me the Prime Minister."
Didi pulled her chair closer to the TV and they both watched as a second airliner slammed into the unharmed tower...
"Shit," Colonel Goodman sighed, just before his phone chimed. He reached over and picked it up: "Ariel. CNN now!"
He hung up and watched the grainy feed from a helicopter, and then it hit him. Sorensen had just landed in New York, at La Guardia. Coincidence? Or planned?
"I hate coincidences," he whispered under his breath, fingers drumming on his desktop. "What the hell are you up to, Sorensen?"
By the time United 93 was down in a field in Pennsylvania, the Mossad, like the entire Israeli government, was in full crisis mode. Everyone knew bin Laden was behind the operation so now it was just a matter of running him down and taking him out -- except he'd simply disappeared, gone to ground and presumably somewhere in Afghanistan. But Colonel Goodman presumably had other matters on his mind.
Because when he learned that Ted Sorensen's Gulfstream was headed for London, he also learned that Delbert Moloch was on board. Moloch was no friend of the State of Israel, but he had been causing problems all over Eastern Europe for years, and was now understood to be operating in South America. He had at one point been a Kremlin operative but was now living in Surrey, south of London. Exactly what he was doing, and who was paying for his services, still remained a mystery.
Yet if Moloch was now operating with Sorensen then this very clearly fell within his purview. But now, with everything else happening in the United States today, Goodman simply made the decision to move a few pieces on the board. This sort of mission compartmentalization ensured operational security, yet the lack of backup would perhaps unnecessarily expose his agent to greater than normal risk.
So with well-founded misgivings, he immediately sent his daughter to London to find out what was happening with Sorensen and Moloch, then he got on the phone and called Boston.
