Jaffa, Israel
19:35
Zach glanced up at Callahan. “You want to know who the mole was?”
Callahan nodded, leaning forward in his chair.
Zachary smiled faintly. “You were. You had your own special agent assigned to watch over you. Bruce Bryden."
Callahan's eyes widened. “Bryden? Why?”
“To keep an eye on you, Callahan,” Zach said and licked his chafed lips. “You behaved erratically, missing check-ins and disappearing off the radar for extended periods of time.”
“So I was red-flagged by Shabak?"
Zachary nodded slowly. “No department is better equipped to root out rogue agents.”
Callahan stood up stiffly and held his back with both hands. “You sent a rookie agent after me, a greenhorn who couldn't complete the job?”
Zachary shrugged but said nothing.
“How old is Bryden anyway?”
“Twenty-eight. But he’s special.”
“Special?”
Zach leaned back in his chair. “The first time we met, I found him to be an enigma; I couldn't place him. He spoke Hebrew with a funny accent. A big guy. He was gentle and laid-back, but there was a sense of danger about the man. I couldn't put my finger on it,” Zachary said and licked his lip again. “Could I have some water?”
Perreira filled a glass and held it to Zach's lips. He gulped it down, spilling some on his chest.
“Go on,” Callahan said, tapping his foot.
“I drew his military records and found out he had been referred from the reconnaissance unit in the South African National Defence Force. He had breezed through the Mossad training, graduating at the top of his class.”
Callahan checked his watch. “Let us hurry this along. I need to know who I’m dealing with.”
"According to Bruce’s DISC profile, he is a high ‘D’ and ‘C’ personality type. Independent, dominant, and meticulous.”
Perreira whistled. “Those are bad. In Cuba they call them the accountants of death.”
Callahan cast Perreira a worried glance. “Where do you fit in?”
Zachary leaned back in his chair, staring at the ceiling. “I was born in the States. Mom is a housewife, Dad is a doctor, Orthodox Jew. His folks passed away in the Holocaust, and he instilled a strong spirit of Jewish patriotism in me. It had always been my desire to give something back to the Jewish Nation. Graduated at Caltech with a masters in information systems. Came back to Israel to complete my military service and later recruited by Shin Bet due to my particular set of skills.”
Callahan raised an eyebrow and exchanged glances with Perreira. “Why target me?”
“Well, your GLD would go silent for hours at a time. Which meant you went underground, physically.”
“GLD?” Callahan asked.
“Yes, the beeper we issued you with. I developed the Geolocation Device. It uses multiple satellite signals to locate the person it's tracking.”
Callahan removed the device from his pocket, threw it on the ground, and stomped it to pieces with the heel of his shoe. “You made this beeper?”
“GLD,” Zach corrected him. “It cost millions of dollars to develop. The core unit is made from titanium, virtually indestructible.”
Callahan scratched through the pieces of plastic on the floor, then he picked up a silver piece of metal that looked like a pill. “So when my signal went off the grid, as you say, some red flags were raised?”
“That and something else.”
“What?” Callahan asked, glancing from the pill to Zachary.
He shrugged. “Well, you told us.”
“Bullshit.”
Zachary closed his eyes and sucked in a raspy breath. “I fitted a larger storage unit to your GLD. It would record everything and send us the recordings in thirty minute intervals or whenever there would be satellite coverage.”
Callahan nodded. “OK, so what?”
“In one of the conversations, you mentioned a secret mission the Israeli Defense Force was planning on the PLO Headquarters in Ramallah.”
Callahan had a blank look on his face.
“A conversation you had with the Palestinian terrorist, Salah Safouri.”
Callahan nodded slowly. “The target was Abu Musa, codename Fatah al-Intifada.”
“That's the one.”
“You heard that?”
Zachary said nothing.
Callahan turned to Perreira and slapped his shoulder. “How's that for implicating yourself?”
Perreira frowned. He didn’t say anything.