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There was also the quirky Frenchman a few doors down, Mr. Soucheray, who hung out in his garage all day listening to the radio, tinkering with an endless array of gadgets and pursuing his lifelong fascination with the internal combustion engine. Thanks to him, Tommy probably knew more about cars, motorcycles and anything that ran on gasoline, than probably any seven-year-old in the country.
Kennedy closed the file on her desk and put her pen down. With a yawn she took off her glasses and rubbed her tired eyes. If she left now she could probably sneak in a quick nap before Tommy returned from his friend’s house. She grabbed several red folders off her desk and spun her chair around. After placing the files in her safe she locked it. She was about to get up when her large white secure phone rang.
She looked at the display and frowned. Ben Freidman was finally returning her call almost nine hours later. The man had gall. She possessed enough information to destroy him and still he played these games. She was sure he would have some excuse to explain why it took him so long to call her back.
Kennedy looked out at the falling rain and grabbed the handset. “Irene Kennedy.”
“Irene, it’s Ben. I’m sorry I couldn’t get back to you sooner, but as I’m sure you’ve seen on TV, I’ve had my hands full over here.”
“Yes, we’ve been watching.”
“We took out a bomb factory last night and now we’re bracing ourselves for reprisals.”
There were times when Kennedy wished she were more like Mitch Rapp. If she were, she’d tell her Israeli counterpart that he was full of shit. The news outlets were reporting that the Israeli Defense Forces attacked a bomb-making factory in Hebron and that was why the damage was so extensive. The Palestinians were denying any such factory existed and claimed the Israelis had attacked a civilian neighborhood without provocation. The truth, as always, lay somewhere in the middle. Jake Turbes from the CTC had briefed her only an hour ago that they did not think a bomb factory was the target. They’d picked up cell phone chatter that the real target was a high-level meeting of Palestinian terrorist groups. She also had in her possession satellite imagery that showed Israeli helicopters showering the neighborhood with missiles.
Ben Freidman was lying to her, but in the hall of mirrors that was her life, she wasn’t about to reveal what she really knew. Instead, she simply said, “The president is very alarmed by the amount of people killed in the raid last night.”
In his standard defensive tone, Freidman said, “Irene, we had no idea that the secondary explosion would be so large. They had enough explosives there to level the whole block.”
Obviously, she thought. The latest intelligence reports indicated that the Israeli Defense Forces were not in control of the site. Various terrorist and militia groups around Hebron had set up roadblocks to keep the Israeli army out and they had maintained their position just long enough for the media to show up and begin filming the carnage. The Israelis had fallen into this public relations nightmare before and immediately pulled back. Footage of tanks crushing teenagers and young men, no matter how just the cause, did not play well for the rest of the world.
Freidman was playing a dangerous game here. If the Palestinians were telling the truth about the number of dead, they would have quite a case to take to the UN. When she spoke to the president she would have to apprise him of the possibility. No sense going too far out on a limb to defend Israel if they weren’t going to tell the truth to their best ally.
She decided to prod him just a bit. “You know that the Palestinians are saying you attacked a neighborhood without provocation.”
Freidman scoffed. “I could have written their press release for them before the operation was even launched. It’s the same lies every time.”
“Yeah, I know,” Kennedy answered with well-feigned sincerity. The only problem is, she thought, that they in turn could have written your press release for you. “You know the timing of this is very bad.”
There was a long pause and then Freidman asked in an agitated tone, “How so?”
Freidman’s frustration was not lost on Kennedy. Her Israeli counterpart was an unusually blunt man, but something in his voice told her that he was under a lot of pressure. He had his enemies in the cabinet, doves who wanted to disengage and start real peace talks. She was sure they were none too fond of this current operation.
“The president is meeting with the crown prince of Saudi Arabia next week,” offered Kennedy, “and the main topic of discussion was going to be a renewed peace initiative in the Middle East … but now that we have dozens of Palestinian women and children being pulled from the rubble the whole thing might be a nonstarter.”
“Irene, it was a damn bomb factory.”
“And it has taken the president months just to get the crown prince to sit down.”
“You know as well as I do,” spat Freidman, “that the crown prince will never support real peace. The day he recognizes Israel is the day he ignites the revolution in his country and slits his own throat.”
“You think we don’t know that?” asked Kennedy, maintaining her neutral tone. “The president wants assurances on other fronts. We want to see a real crackdown on the terrorist groups operating out of Saudi Arabia. We want to see the funding of these groups stopped.”
“Irene,” Freidman interrupted her and let out a sigh of frustration. “We’ve been over all this before. I appreciate the efforts you make on our behalf, but this is our war. We are on the front line. We are the ones facing terrorist bombers every day. We will not sit on our hands. When we receive solid intelligence we are going to act, and if these cowards insist on hiding behind women and children, then so be it.”
“Ben, I am well aware of your difficulties, but you can’t go it alone. You need to do a better job of keeping us in the loop.”
“I am keeping you in the loop,” he replied earnestly. “What do you think I am doing right now?”
Kennedy was not about to let him know that she knew he was lying to her, so she simply said, “You’re calling me nine hours after I put a call in to you stating that the president of the United States wished to know what was going on.” Kennedy let the statement sink in and then added, “Now come on, Ben, you and I are veterans at this. There’s only a couple of reasons why you wait that long to return a call, and none of them are good from where I’m sitting.” Kennedy listened intently while she pictured Freidman squirming on the other end of the line.
Finally, he said, “There’s something I’ve been working to confirm … something that’s very important. I didn’t want to call you until I knew for sure.”
“And what is that?”
“This goes no further than you. I don’t want you telling the president until I can verify it. We had intelligence that a high-level meeting was taking place last night.”
