The Fox

There was no intrusive checking, as at an airport, but he knew that hidden scanners would have examined every inch of him. He carried no luggage, not even a briefcase. The chosen meeting room was in the basement, certainly a conference space scanned and sterilized to be totally secure.

Weston having been forewarned, Avi Hirsch was as he expected: mid-forties, athletic, tanned, urbane and very fluent in the language of Shakespeare. Coffee was offered, and declined. Then they were alone. Sir Adrian knew that this conversation would not be taking place without extensive briefing from Mossad high command at their HQ on the northern outskirts of Tel Aviv.

‘I am instructed to tell you that my government and my country are very grateful,’ said the Mossad bureau chief. Both knew he was referring to the donation of the access codes to the master computer at Fordow.

This was praise indeed. In the spook world, and especially in the now-integrated cyber-world, the state of Israel stands head and shoulders above the rest. Mossad has agents worldwide and, in the Middle East, it is unmatchable. Buried beneath the Negev Desert outside Beer Sheva is a think tank known as Shmone Matayim, or Unit 8200. There are grouped the finest cyber-brains of the republic, cracking codes, creating fresh ones, penetrating hostile databases and monitoring a tidal wave of coded exchanges that flit between the agencies of its enemies – and its friends, for that matter. Unit 8200 never rests.

Sir Adrian’s career had largely preceded all this. He was a veteran in a world of youngsters. But some things do not change. There are friends, there are enemies, there are traitors, there are fools who talk too much. The days of brush passes in the cobbled alleys of Soviet-occupied Bratislava might seem a thing of the past, but the right piece of information in the right place at the right time could still alter history.

More to the point, a knife between the ribs or a hidden bomb beneath a car could still end a human life. And Sir Adrian knew perfectly well that the urbane bureau chief across the table represented an agency that had in no way abandoned these old ways when their use was thought necessary.

Backing the intelligence-harvesting of the Mossad is a range of Special Forces units that match the Special Air Service, Special Boat Service and Special Reconnaissance Regiment of the British, or the USA’s Delta Boys, Navy SEALs and Special Activities Division of the CIA. The Sayeret Matkal specialist commandos, the Kidon (‘Bayonet’ or ‘Speartip’), who carry out overseas assassinations, and the even more mysterious Duvdevan, whose particular skill is to be so fluent in the languages and communities of the Middle East that they can infiltrate enemy countries, pass for a native and ‘sleep’ for years before going active.

All this Sir Adrian knew because, although the Middle East was never his area, it is common knowledge in espionage circles. So he was aware that Iran had to be impregnated with Israeli sleepers, some, no doubt, in high places. He sat quietly and waited for Avi Hirsch to start the ball rolling.

‘Let me be perfectly frank,’ said the Israeli, meaning the opposite. ‘It is clear that the source of the extraordinary information you gave us – the access codes to Fordow – must have come from some kind of cyber-genius. We have some very good code-crackers in Unit 8200, but your boy was ahead of them. He crossed the air gap, which is deemed impossible. That makes him very valuable, but also very vulnerable.’

‘Vulnerable?’

‘To revenge. With hindsight, the circumstances surrounding the disaster that struck the Admiral Nakhimov are becoming a little clearer. It looks as if someone took over the controls of that vessel.’

Sir Adrian replied in full. He said: ‘Ah.’

‘I can tell you that, just over a week after the Fordow burn-out, the Russian ambassador had a private meeting with the Ayatollah Khamenei. Any ideas?’

Sir Adrian said, ‘Ah,’ again.

‘You see, Sir Adrian, it has occurred to us that Moscow may now have informed Iran of the identity of this remarkable person you seem to have under wraps. And possibly of his location – that is, if they know it. If the Iranians have this information, they might consider revenge. Just a piece of friendly counsel. From a grateful agency. It might be wise to move him. Without delay. Iran also has killer units.’

‘Very kind of you,’ said Sir Adrian. ‘Most grateful. Certainly worth considering at the highest level.’

He knew what Avi Hirsch did not know. Moving Luke Jennings to a new and strange environment was easier said than done. Such was the youth’s mental state, so obsessional his attachment to his immediate surroundings, to the placing of every ornament in his living area, although above all to the arrangement of the algorithms in his computer, that a sudden uprooting and transfer to somewhere miles away could provoke a breakdown.

But it was a timely warning. Iran had suicide bombers, fanatics and professional killers at its disposal. Within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Pasdaran, was the inner kernel, the Al-Quds Brigade, which had killed generally and selectively all over the Middle East. Was Chandler’s Court out of reach? Would the Prime Minister permit another shoot-out on the peaceful green grass of Warwickshire?

He doubted it. To avenge the naked attack with the Novichok nerve agent on the streets of Salisbury by grounding the Admiral Nakhimov had been retributive justice and, to the world, unprovable. To assist Israel in unmasking the nuclear treachery of Iran to the American President was one thing. To provoke revenge attacks by Middle East maniacs in the English countryside was another.

‘Tell me, Avi, if there were one other highly secret Iranian organization the contents of whose database your masters would value more than any other, which would it be? VAJA or FEDAT?’

The Israeli agent struggled to keep his composure. He was surprised that this elderly retired Kremlinologist knew of either of them. But Sir Adrian had been reading up. He knew that VAJA is the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and employs its own killers, at home but mainly abroad, and that FEDAT is the extremely secret nuclear weapons research and development HQ, operating under the Defence Ministry. It works from a modern complex of office blocks in central Tehran, right opposite Malek Ashtar University.

As he was driven away from the wrought-iron gates of the Israeli embassy Sir Adrian mused upon the chances that his latest ruse – doing the Israelis a second favour – would also work. Helping them wreck the centrifuges at Fordow had been helpful to world security. What he had in mind now was closer to home.

He needed a favour and, in his world, and that of Avi Hirsch, favours were purchased with favours.

Privately, Sir Adrian surmised that, whichever Tel Aviv chose, the other one would probably have been penetrated already by Unit 8200, tapping away at their keys under the Negev Desert outside Beer Sheva. Three days later he had his reply: FEDAT.

Chapter Thirteen

WHEN A NATION decides to try to become a nuclear power, vast amounts of records are generated. Iran made the decision many years ago, just after the ayatollahs took over and created their ruthless theocracy. The statement by Ayatollah Rafsanjani that Israel should be wiped from the face of the Earth was like a declaration of war – an undercover war, but still a war, to be fought out of sight and with no regard to the Geneva Convention or any accepted rules.

In declaring an existential war on the small and encircled country across the Arabian Peninsula, Iran was taking on the most formidable opponent for 2,000 miles around Tehran. Israel was born out of covert operations, first against the war-weary British of 1945 but since 1948 against the surrounding array of angry and vengeful Palestinian and Arab entities.

The Arabs were able to bring to their arsenal huge numbers, enormous space and limitless funds. The Israelis had none of these, but their weapons and skills were better. These included years of experience of undercover planning, plotting and executing. Add to that fanatical patriotism, the sure knowledge that to fail would be to die, a worldwide network of fellow Jews prepared to help in any way they could and upon first call, and the chameleon-like ability to pass for anything except an Israeli or a Jew.

Further elements were exceptional levels of technology. Faced with obliteration if it failed, Israel had no scruple about accepting help from white South Africa, another embattled minority, in acquiring the necessary quantities of refined uranium to become a nuclear power, setting up its own bomb factory at Dimona in the Negev Desert.

The payback was helping South Africa to build its own six atomic bombs, dismantled before the African National Congress took over under the Rainbow Coalition.