‘’Merde! Alright, let’s get to it! Could you lean against the police car here, with your pistol in plain sight? Good! Now, give me a nice smile…’’
12:07 (Israel Time)
Sunday, December 16, 2012 ‘A’
Russian restaurant-terrace
Downtown Tel Aviv, Israel
Victor Medveyev was quite fond of this little restaurant-terrace that served Russian and Ukrainian specialties in downtown Tel Aviv: it gave him a taste of his native land, which had been all but inaccessible to him for the past five years. Victor reflected with bitterness on the events of five years ago as he sat at one of the tables near the television set placed above the service counter. His arms trafficking business out of Kiev, in the Ukraine, had been going very well until that day of September 2007, when the Russian federal police had succeeded in unmasking him, probably with the help of 161
an informer. The Russians had then convinced their Ukrainian counterparts to let them have him. He had then barely escaped arrest, fleeing with only the content of his personal security safe and a suitcase. He had however lost nearly everything else: his house, his cars, his main bank account and his hidden stocks of illegal weapons.
Fortunately, as the cautious man he was, Victor had put away some money in various anonymous foreign bank accounts, including one here in Tel Aviv. His bad luck however followed him to Israel, as the Russian authorities had contacted the Israeli Mossad.
Caught and arrested as he was arriving in Israel, Victor had then escaped deportation and jail by making a deal with the Israeli secret service: tell the Mossad everything he knew about his past customers and arms deals in exchange for permission to stay and live his retirement in Israel. However, even after five years, a Mossad agent still came to see him from time to time to ask questions about certain past deals or contacts Victor had used. Today was such a meeting time.
Thankfully, today seemed to be a relatively rocket-free day for Tel Aviv…up to now. After two weeks of bombardment and thousands of heavy rockets fired at Israel from South Lebanon, the Hezbollah seemed to be finally running out of rockets, to the relief of the stressed out Israeli citizens. However, that did not mean that the country was at peace, far from it. The Lebanese-Israeli border was a battle zone, as was the areas around the Gaza Strip, while the occasional Iranian ballistic missile still fell on Israel. Terrorist attacks against Israeli and American citizens and interests around the World had multiplied since that crucial day when Israel had decided to strike at the Iranian nuclear facilities. To add to the regional chaos, the crisis in Syria had turned months ago into a full scale civil war, with President Assad still stubbornly refusing to step down or give away any of his powers. Victor reflected mentally on how much money he could have made as an arms merchant in the middle of such a situation. The arrival of his Mossad contact then took him out of his thoughts. Rising from his chair, he shook hands with the lean young man dressed like a university student.
‘’Hello, Ben! It is a nice day today…and a quiet one.’’
‘’Yes, thankfully.’’ Replied the Mossad agent before sitting down facing Victor.
Both men refrained at first from talking business, looking instead at the menu and ordering some red wine. They were just finished giving their order to the waiter when a piece of news appearing on the television set caught the attention of both men: reports from Afghanistan were now quite rare, due to the more urgent situations in and around 162
Israel and Iran. The Mossad agent made a face when the report, a retransmission of a BBC video, showed rows upon rows of dead Taliban fighters lying in the dirt near an Afghan police station in Bala Buluk.
‘’Wow! The Taliban sure got clobbered hard there. I can’t say that I am sorry for those bastards, though.’’
‘’Me neither.’’ Said Victor truthfully. The video then switched to the scene of an Afghan police checkpoint in Bala Buluk. Victor, who was taking a sip of his wine, then froze when a tall female Canadian officer appeared on the video, walking towards an approaching pickup truck. The action on the video then went in a flash, leaving the Mossad man open-mouthed.
‘’Did you see that piece of pistol shooting? She also beat up that Taliban as if he was only a kid. I must get the name of that Canadian, just to tell my wife about it.’’
‘’That…that’s her!’’ Stuttered Victor, nearly spilling his glass of wine. ‘’She hasn’t aged one bit!’’
The Mossad agent looked at him with incomprehension.
‘’What are you talking about, Victor?’’
Victor didn’t answer then, listening and looking at the rest of the video as a BBC reporter interviewed the Canadian officer, a tall, athletic and beautiful woman of maybe thirty with black hair and green eyes. At the end of the video, Victor sat back, pale.
‘’That’s impossible! She should look twenty years older now.’’
‘’You are not making much sense, Victor.’’
Still looking shaken, Victor stared at the Mossad agent.
‘’Ben, twenty years ago in Kiev, in 1992, I sold sixty silenced AS Val rifles and a large stock of corresponding ammunition to a young woman, who gave only ‘Nancy’ as her name. I never saw that woman again afterwards…until now. That Captain Nancy Laplante is the same woman who bought those AS Val rifles from me in 1992.’’
‘’But, that’s impossible! This Captain Laplante appears to be at most in her early thirties. She would thus have been around ten years of age in 1992.’’
‘’I had her undress then to prove that she had no microphone or recording device on her. She had the body of a fully grown woman in 1992, the same she has now. Her voice is also the same. I can prove this to you, Ben.’’
‘’How?’’
‘’When I came to Israel in 2007 and was arrested, I had with me copies of video recordings taken by security cameras hidden in my house in Kiev. Whenever I 163
conducted a business deal in my private office, I recorded the discussion, as an insurance against bad customers and as a possible way of blackmailing them if need be.
Those records include my two meetings with this Nancy Laplante. Your Mossad has had these recordings since 2007 but, despite considering the case of these AS Val rifles a priority, never could identify her.’’
‘’I could see why those rifles would be considered hot items, even today: they would be perfect weapons for terrorists, like Hezbollah operatives.’’ Said Ben, thoughtful. He then took out his cell phone and composed a number, then spoke in it.
‘’Ari? This is Ben. A piece of news just played on television, a report made by the BBC in Afghanistan about a stinging defeat suffered there by the Taliban. Part of that report was an interview with a Canadian Army female officer, a Captain Nancy Laplante. I want you to get a copy of that BBC video right away, especially the part showing Captain Laplante. I will come by in about one hour to review it and compare it with something we have on file… Yes, do that!’’
Ben then closed his cell phone and smiled to Victor.
‘’You and me are going to review a couple of video recordings together, Victor, but not before we can enjoy our meal. After all, one should not let good goulash be wasted.’’
‘’Indeed, Ben.’’ Said Victor weakly, his mind still in turmoil.
16:19 (Israel Time)
Mossad headquarters
Tel Aviv, Israel
‘’This better be good, Ben.’’ Said Moshe Eshkol, head of the counter-terrorism branch of the Mossad, as he entered the large imagery laboratory of the headquarters building. ‘’This was my first day off with my family this month.’’
‘’I know, sir, but I believe that we have stumbled onto something quite, uh, stunning.’’ Said respectfully Bennie Kellerman. ‘’To make a long story short, one of our informers alerted me to a certain Captain Nancy Laplante, a Canadian Army officer presently serving in Afghanistan, who may have clandestinely bought in the past sixty Russian AS Val silenced assault rifles, along with over 100,000 rounds of ammunition.’’
‘’Wait a minute!’’ Said Eshkol, stopping abruptly. ‘’My daughter just showed me a YouTube video about this Laplante, as she was shooting up some Taliban fighters in 164
grand style. The thing is going viral on the Internet. Miriam joked to me that we should get her as an agent. Now you are telling me that she is involved in illegal arms trafficking?’’
‘’Maybe much more than that, sir. The problem is that this case about the clandestine sale of AS Val rifles dates back from 1992. We have video files of it.’’
Before Eshkol could say that it didn’t make sense, Ben explained in detail what Victor Medveyev had told him, then sat Eshkol down and showed him the security camera recording taken in Kiev in 1992, then the video from the BBC taken in Afghanistan. At the end, Eshkol was left stunned and confused.
‘’But, but, this is impossible! This Nancy Laplante could not be a grown woman in 1992. Could she have an older sister, or a lookalike?’’
‘’We are checking on that right now, sir, but she officially is an only child and her parents died in a car accident when she was sixteen, according to her official biography.
I would be ready to say that the Nancy Laplante seen in 1992 in Kiev and the one seen now in Afghanistan are the same person, sir.’’
‘’How could this be?’’ Protested Eshkol. Ben hesitated before answering. He and a number of analysts had looked at this from all the possible angles. The problem was that their consensus was now that the only possible explanation left was an impossible one.
‘’Sir, as crazy as this may sound, the only explanation we could see to this, if indeed the same woman appeared in both videos twenty years apart, is that this Nancy Laplante went back in time to 1992 to buy these rifles.’’
Eshkol gave him an annoyed look.
‘’Have you guys fallen in with the extra-terrestrials, black helicopters and tinfoil hats crowds or what? You have nothing more serious as a possible explanation than time travel?’’
‘’I’m sorry, sir, but no. You can imagine the ramifications if this would be proven to be true, sir.’’
‘’Well, I certainly would not be ready right now to go to the Prime Minister with this, Ben. He has enough on his plate already without having to listen to such stories. I however agree with you that this Captain Laplante may be hiding something. For one thing, she is way too good in combat for a simple military intelligence reserve officer.
Maybe she is in reality a covert action operative, although I can’t see why those Canadian boy scouts would need such a killing machine. Ben, I will put you in charge of 165
digging up everything you can about this Nancy Laplante. Form a team and don’t hesitate to go to Canada to investigate her in depth. Unfortunately, Afghanistan is a bit too hot for our agents to go there and investigate her on the spot. Report back to me once you have more solid information on her.’’
‘’Yes sir! What if we can prove that she is a time traveler?’’
‘’Then, this case would become way bigger than what my pay grade has the right to handle. Get me facts, Ben, just facts.’’
18:05 (Pakistan Time)
Taliban safe house
City of Quetta, Northern Waziristan
Pakistan
If looks could kill, then the old television set resting on a small table would have been vaporized under the hateful glares of the five bearded and turbaned men present in the lounge of the large house. When the local evening news had finished airing the syndicated video from the BBC taken in Bala Buluk, one of the bodyguards of Mullah Mohammed Omar went to switch off the television set on the demand of his leader. The graying, one-eyed leader of the Taliban was silent for a moment as his subalterns present waited respectfully. He then spoke in a firm, definite tone.
‘’The Devil lives in this woman infidel. It is the sacred duty of all believers to kill that woman wherever she is to be found. The believer who will kill her will be assured of a place in paradise. If she can be captured and brought to me for my judgment, then the better.’’
‘’It will be done, O Commander of the Faithful.’’ Said his military commander, Abdul Quayyum Zakir. ‘’We will spread the word to all the believers. She will get no rest where faithful ones are present.’’
18:17 (Afghanistan Time)
Field camp of United States Task Force Raider West
Area of Herat City, Herat Province
Afghanistan
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Erik Johnson, followed closely by his longtime partner Dean Price and by the five other men of their team, was happy to enter the warmth of the large modular tent assigned to their unit. To nearly all the occupants of this camp, they were supposed to be from a special forces unit simply known as ‘Special Group Six’. In reality, Johnson, Price and the 27 other men of Special Group Six were highly trained members of the Action Division of the Central Intelligence Agency, or CIA. Wearing no rank or unit insignias and no name tags, the men of the Action Division were tasked with executing armed clandestine missions deep inside foreign territories, missions that could be denied and kept anonymous and that often would be labeled as illegal under American or international law. Such missions took dedicated, resolute men ready to fight and die without the official support or acknowledgement of their country. Erik Johnson and Dean Price were such men, but they were much more than simple combat automatons or assassins ready to die without discussion. They were men of exceptional abilities, with expertise in many domains, and could as well speak a number of foreign languages. In Erik Johnson’s case, apart from being a top notch sniper and an expert paramedic, he could speak without accent both Russian and German. Dean Price, a big and powerful man, was a demolitions expert and top pistol shooter that could have qualified as a racing car driver and that could speak French, Spanish and Creole, thanks to his family origins in Louisiana.
Taking off his backpack and load-carrying vest and putting them down in a corner of the big tent, Erik Johnson let his men make themselves comfortable and walked to the back of a command and communications van attached to one side of the modular tent.
His local superior, Ben Mullen, was waiting for him, sitting inside the van with a radio headset on. Mullen took off his headset when Erik got at the foot of the ladder leading up in the van.
‘’So, how was your mission in Iran, Erik?’’
‘’A bust! Our informer and guide never showed up. I hope that this doesn’t mean that our informer was arrested.’’
Mullen nodded his head, a grim expression on his face.
‘’A most possible reason, unfortunately. That initial Israeli airstrike seems to have helped rally the common Iranian people to the cause of the mullahs. Many of our past sources have dried up, or have squarely turned hostile towards us.’’
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‘’That was predictable, and should have been taken into account, Ben.’’ Replied Erik firmly, having argued that exact point in the past at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. ‘’How did our other team do on their own mission?’’
Mullen hesitated for a moment, trying to find the right words for what he had to say.
‘’Allan’s team was ambushed at the rendezvous point by a large group of Pasdarans5. Their last transmission was that they were down to two men and surrounded and that they were going to use their last grenades. It now seems that our whole informers network in Northeast Iran has been turned or eliminated. I am thus going to cancel all other missions inside Iran until we can assert more fully the situation.’’
‘’Fuck!’’ Swore Erik, upset, while banging his fist on the truck. ‘’You know as well as me that it will take years to rebuild our network in Iran. And Allan’s team counted our sole Farsi-speaking man. How the hell are we going to be able to operate covertly inside Iran if we can’t even speak or read the language?’’
‘’I am well aware of this, Erik. I am going to send a short report to Langley now.
Go relax, have a bite to eat and then go sleep for a few hours. I don’t expect to send teams out for the next few days, at the least.’’
‘’Very well, Ben. You will have my detailed mission report tomorrow morning.’’
Joining the men of his team at a table near a television set hooked to a satellite dish and that showed the CNN news channel, Erik passed to them the words about the other team’s fate. It took them a moment to digest the news, with a visibly upset Dean Price finally speaking up to Erik.
‘’So, a whole team has just been wasted because those idiots in Langley wouldn’t believe what we field operatives were telling them. Now, you are telling us that we are going to sit down and do nothing, Erik?’’
‘’Look, Dean, I believe that Ben is correct in putting a halt to our missions inside Iran. There is no sense in risking more men if our contacts and information are unreliable.’’
‘’Damn!’’ Said Dean, resting his chin in one hand, with his elbow on the table.
‘’When I think that we stopped chasing after those Taliban bastards just to end up here 5 Pasdarans : Iranian Guardians of the Revolution. The armed security forces protecting the rule of the Iranian clergy.
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on the border and find ourselves useless. Those damn Israelis really had to come and bomb Iran, didn’t they?’’
One of the crypto specialists attached to the group, who was eating at the next table, got his nose up from his plate then to look at Dean.
‘’Well, if you want one piece of good news, Dean, it seems that the Afghans are not doing too badly against the Taliban lately. This Friday, they inflicted a severe defeat to those bearded bastards in Bala Buluk and killed hundreds of them.’’
‘’Hundreds?’’ Said Dean, surprised but pleased. ‘’How did they manage that?’’
The specialist, smiling, pointed at the television set, which other men were watching.
‘’I will let you watch the video about it. CNN is about to replay it in a few minutes.
You should see the statuesque Canadian chick that was with those Afghans at the time.’’
‘’A Canadian chick?’’
‘’Yeah, their embedded mentoring officer, I believe. She shot up four Taliban with her pistol, right on camera, in a way Bat Masterson6 would have been proud of.’’
‘’A Canadian female officer that shoots like Bat Masterson…’’ said thoughtfully Dean Price. ‘’It can’t be…’’
‘’It can’t be who, Dean?’’ Asked Erik, suddenly curious. The crypto specialist then interrupted them by exclaiming while pointing the television set.
‘’THERE! You want to watch this, guys.’’
Looking at the television, Erik had to say that the first pictures he saw cheered him up: Afghan policemen were guarding long lines of corpses that were being described as Taliban fighters killed while attacking the district police station in Bala Buluk during the early morning of Friday. The number of Taliban losses given in the report made Dean open his eyes wide.
‘’Nearly 400 Taliban fighters either dead, wounded or captured? That is indeed a significant victory.’’
He then listened with the others around the table at the BBC account of the battle, learning that an Afghan police patrol had intervened in time to take the Taliban in the rear and throw their attack into confusion. Then, the scene changed from a field strewn with corpses to that of an Afghan police checkpoint in Bala Buluk. Dean shot up from his 6 Bat Masterson: Famous sheriff of the American Far West renowned for his extraordinary skills at pistol shooting.
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chair the moment he saw the female Canadian officer being filmed in action by the BBC
team.
‘’FUCK! IT IS NANCY!’’
Dean however managed to keep silent from then on, until the end of the interview given by Nancy. Quite a few of the men made complimentary remarks about the nice body curves of the said Nancy, with Erik Johnson finally able to ask Dean.
‘’You know this Captain Nancy Laplante, Dean?’’
‘’Sure I do, Erik! We destroyed together a motel bed while we were both attending the 2010 Houston Combat Pistol Championship. In fact, she nearly beat me during that competition, apart from giving me a run for my money in bed. She’s quite a gal, I must say.’’
‘’I see!’’ Said Erik, who could not help smile. Dean Price was widely known as being the biggest skirt-chaser in the CIA, bedding about every woman he could…when not on duty. ‘’This Nancy Laplante seems quite impressive. Her linguistic talents in particular are extraordinary. What can you tell me about her?’’
‘’Well, when I saw her in Houston in 2010, she was just returning from a six month tour in Afghanistan. You heard her on that news interview about her language and fighting qualifications, which are already impressive by any standards. From what she told me in Houston, she visited about every war-torn area of the planet as a war correspondent, apart from serving many tours as a peacekeeper with the Canadian Forces. However, if you are thinking about possibly enlisting her in the CIA, forget it, Erik: she is the ultimate goodie-two-shoes. She would not hesitate to run inside a burning house to save a child, but don’t ask her to murder someone for political reasons.’’
‘’Too bad! She would have made a prime candidate, apart from being a nice looking girl.’’
‘’That she is!’’ Pronounced Dean Price with finality, smiling.
02:31 (Montreal Time)
Thursday, December 20, 2012 ‘A’
Nancy Laplante’s condominium
Boucherville, Province of Quebec
Canada
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Bennie Kellerman felt a bit disappointed as he and his three agents finished searching methodically Nancy Laplante’s condominium suite, on the second floor of a quite ordinary-looking residential building in the quiet suburban town of Boucherville, south of Montreal. They had looked everywhere in the four-room suite, while being careful to replace everything as it was. While comfortably furnished, nothing screamed of extravagant luxury or of hidden revenues earned from illicit occupations. An impressive quantity of books and magazines, many dealing with military affairs, geopolitics and history, denoted a person of learning, while the various sports gear and outfits also told of someone who took care of her body as much as of her mind. Bennie thought that this woman would have been an interesting one to meet, if not for her possible involvement in illegal arms trafficking. Judging from her choice of reading, this Nancy Laplante may be classified as a liberal or a humanist, but she also was definitely a feminist. About her intimate life, Bennie could find very little, except for a framed set of table-top pictures showing a powerful, handsome man and an extremely beautiful teenage girl, both smiling for the camera. While the man could obviously be a boyfriend or a lover of Laplante, the role of the girl was less clear. Was she a good friend, someone being sponsored by Laplante, or a family relative? Laplante was supposed to be still single, and was an orphan from a single child family. Bennie had found nothing that could put names on those two persons, which was by itself strange. He had found no personal letters that could have come from the man or the teenage girl, while Ben’s computer expert had looked through the electronic mail in Laplante’s computer and had found no telltale mail about the two mystery figures, apart from finding nothing that could be connected to arms trafficking. How could you have two loved ones, dear enough to Laplante to keep their pictures on her bedside table, with whom she never exchanged letters or emails? Something was definitely wrong here. However, without more clues, the only thing Ben could do was to take pictures of those portraits and hope to identify them later from other sources.
Ben was about to leave the big bedroom when he felt something under the sole of his left shoe as he walked on the thick rug. Bending down and using his flashlight, he saw a small metallic object shine under the light, half hidden by the fibers of the rug near a dresser’s leg. Picking it up, he examined closely the thin, round object with the help of his flashlight: it was some sort of coin. It had probably fallen from a pocket or purse, unnoticed by Laplante or a visitor. It was however unlike any he had seen before and 171
was incredibly heavy for its minuscule size. Then, Ben saw what he believed to be the year of production and smiled to himself.
‘’Gotcha, Miss Laplante!’’
09:20 (Afghanistan Time)
Thursday, December 27, 2012 ‘A’
Parade grounds, Afghan Border Police training center
Shouz, Herat Province
Afghanistan
Nancy, like Maria Garibaldi, was wearing her dress uniform with medals for the graduation parade of her class of policewomen, instead of her usual combat uniform.
The 23 Afghan female recruits that were present on parade, along with their three Afghan female instructors, were also in their blue-gray dress uniforms with caps over their head scarves. The three recruits wounded during the fight in Bala Buluk sat near the dignitaries, while a small table held a blue cushion on which rested the service hat of Bibi Nayebaba, killed in Bala Buluk. Nancy had seen countless graduation parades and other ceremonial parades during her reservist career but this one meant much more for her and she felt a lump in her throat as Colonel Amin spoke to the proud policewomen: those Afghan women had braved threats of death simply to enroll and were going to have to survive during the next years in a poisoned atmosphere of public disapproval and Taliban wrath, even though they had proven that they deserved much better than that.