Chapter 2
Eyal Podhoretz was the man in charge of the office for the analysis of internal intelligence at Shin Bet. His team was collecting and putting together information taken from all sorts of sources, from satellite imagery to words whispered in the streets of the Old City of Jerusalem, with the goal of identifying any internal threat to the Jewish State.
This year was relatively quiet, at least in comparison to the years of the Palestinian revolts of the Intifada, but Eyal knew that peace was a concept with a much different interpretation in this part of the world. It simply meant no imminent danger and therefore more time to focus on preventing the next threat. The officer who had received the report from Avi had reached the same conclusion, something was not adding up and he had done more research.
It turned out that George had died in 2005 and Sean’s visits had begun shortly after. They were both technology entrepreneurs. George had started in computers, then mobile phones, and then veered to biotechnology, which is where Sean started.
However, Sean was active with a completely different set of companies.
Eyal had sent two of his guys to politely, yet thoroughly interview the people who had done business with George in Petah Tikvah. Evidently, there were no problems whatsoever.
According to his colleagues, he was a very creative and rich man, well connected in the business community. Politically, he seemed just like the average American, ready to side with Israel no matter what.
Could he have been an industrial spy?
Unlikely, as he was the one that brought the new ideas and techniques, not the other way around.
And how about his death?
Totally unexpected. They noted that at some point he got slightly thinner, but who knew why? Then no news for a few months, and all of the sudden the obituary popped up on the ‘San José Mercury’.
So no one attended the funeral?
Apparently not, it was a family-only ceremony. One of the interviewees distinctly remembered the name of George’s wife, Sheila.
The colleagues of Sean gave very similar responses, he was very reliable, very open, and a good friend of Israel without any doubt.
What was he working on?
This is where the interviewees hesitated. They were stuck between the security of their home country and the business secrets of their investors. All that the team of Eyal learned was that Sean was working on breakthrough research in aging.
To complete the puzzle, it was necessary to either interview the family of George McKilroy or catch Sean, maybe during his next trip to Israel. He sent instructions to the border agency to alert Shin Bet immediately upon his next arrival, but to let him go undisturbed. This was what had to be done in Israel.
To get the US side of the story, he picked up the phone and called his counterpart at the Mossad.
Yaakov Mayer answered on the fifth ring as usual, after some quick speculation on the reasons behind the call. He knew Eyal when they had served together in the same commando unit during the last Lebanese war of 2005, hunting for the missile launch sites of the Lebanese Shia party and Israel’s archenemy, Hizbollah. He knew he would not call without a solid reason.
“Hello Eyal. How can I help you?”
“Hi, Yaakov, we have a potential threat we need your help to fully assess. We are tracking a foreign suspect. We believe he has changed identity over the last few years and he is continuously entering Israel.
He is active in biotechnology, and a regular visitor to the Petah Tikvah research area. We cannot get any more information about him from our sources and databases, so if you could just activate your network abroad..”
“Hang on, where is this guy from? Please do not tell me he is..”
“Unfortunately, yes, he is American.”
Even without video link, Eyal could imagine Yaakov shaking his head in disappointment. It would have been much easier to ask the Mossad for some services in Iran or Afghanistan, as the United States were one of the hottest places to gather intelligence. Not so much for the inherent difficulty to get to your sources, but rather for the political fallout if anything went wrong.
“Eyal, let me ask you one question first: can't we just do this by simply calling someone at the FBI or Homeland Security? If we suspect this one is a bad guy, maybe he is also conspiring against the US. Our two countries tend to have common enemies, and it would save us a big embarrassment.”
“Yaakov, I thought about it and I would rather not get the FBI or HS involved, at least for now. The two guys have bulletproof identities. Their passports are one-hundred percent authentic, as well as work and residential addresses, and their social security codes. When the first guy died, guess what…he asked for his body to be cremated with no relatives or friends at the funeral.”
“So you are afraid he might be acting under the cover of one or more federal agencies. This would mean that our friends from across the pond are spying on us and we are just returning the favor. Maybe Bibi Netanyahu, our Prime Minister, could buy this, if we can prove it. I need to ask you a few additional questions though. First of all, are you really sure we are talking about the same person?”
“The double identity pattern has been detected by the new software that you handed over to us a few months ago. I sent one of my team members at Ben Gurion, to check how the border control officer at the airport was using the software. The boy, I think his name is Avi, thought he had made some mistake, but after a full day of examination my team member confirmed that Avi can efficiently operate the ChronoPic application. So, yes, to the very best of our knowledge the two individuals, George and Sean, are the same.”
“And why do you think this George-Sean is a bigger threat to us than Hezbollah?”
“I did not say he is a bigger threat than Hezbollah, or Hamas rockets, or the Iranian nuke program. All I’m saying is we have a man who has dealt with the biggest technology breakthroughs for the last twenty-five years, who chose to change lives and who is now playing around with biotech in our backyard, under intense protection.
What if he is in to get some of our secrets for the Americans to reuse? You know that some of the companies he is working with are also engaged in our new bio-drone program.
Or what if he is trying to smuggle biohazardous stuff inside the Tel Aviv metro area? I am not asking to put him in jail or kidnap him in Connecticut, I am just asking your help with a discreet assessment.”
“Alright, but I need to tell you, we will do this via our sayanim first, I do not want to expose our teams without more solid evidence. And this means it will take more time than usual.”
“No problem, Yaakov. We are ready to help with the analysis of the data as soon as you start getting some news. I am sending you the file right now.”
Yaakov had barely put down the phone, when the computer showed the incoming message from Eyal. Yaakov opened it with the intention of putting it at the end of his priorities. Half an hour into reading it, he looked at the clock on the wall. He would have to wait another three hours before he could give an early wake up call to Ben, his resident agent on the US East Coast.