The Fallen Angel

sought explanations from management, and a few stepped outside onto the sidewalk to watch the police cruisers roaring down the Unter den Linden. One guest, however, appeared oblivious to all the excitement. A well-dressed gentleman of advanced years, he calmly signed for a whisky he had scarcely touched and rode an elevator to his suite on the hotel’s uppermost floor. There he stood in the window, watching the light show as if it all had been arranged for his private amusement. After a moment, he pulled a mobile phone from the breast pocket of his suit and auto-dialed a number that had been preloaded for him by a child who understood such things. He heard a series of clicks and tones. Then a male voice greeted him with little more than a grunt.
    “What am I looking at?” asked Ari Shamron.
    “The prelude,” replied Uzi Navot.
    “When does the curtain rise on the first act?”
    “A minute, maybe less.”
    Shamron severed the connection and gazed out at the blue lights flashing across the city. It was a beautiful sight, he thought. By way of deception, thou shalt do war.
     
     
    At that same moment, some three miles to the west of Shamron’s unique observation post, Yossi Gavish and Mikhail Abramov sat astride a pair of motorcycles at the edge of a small park on the Hagenstrasse. At that hour, the park was long deserted, but warm lights burned in the bottle-glass windows of the miniature Teutonic castles lining the street. Mikhail was rubbing his sore knee. Yossi was so motionless he looked as though he had been cast in bronze.
    “Relax, Yossi,” Mikhail said softly. “You have to relax.”
    “You’re not the one with a bomb in your pocket.”
    “It’s not going to explode until ten seconds after you attach it to the car.”
    “What if it malfunctions?”
    “They never do.”
    “There’s always a first time.”
    A green-and-white police van flashed past, siren screaming. Yossi had yet to move a muscle.
    “Breathe,” Mikhail ordered. “Otherwise, the police are liable to think you’re about to kidnap an Iranian diplomat.”
    “I don’t know why I have to attach the bomb.”
    “Someone has to do it.”
    “I’m an analyst,” Yossi said. “I don’t blow up cars. I read books.”
    “Would you rather take out the driver instead?”
    “And how am I supposed to do that? Dazzle him with my wit and intellect?”
    Before Mikhail could respond, he heard a crackle in his miniature earpiece, followed by three short bursts of tone. Looking up the street, he saw the headlights of an approaching Mercedes. As it swept past their position, he could see Massoud in the backseat, catching up on a bit of paperwork by the glow of his executive reading lamp. A few seconds later came a BMW, Rimona driving, Yaakov and Oded seated ramrod straight in back. Finally, Eli Lavon rattled past in a Passat station wagon, clutching the wheel as though he were piloting an oil tanker through icy seas. Mikhail and Yossi eased into the trailing position and waited for the next signal.
     
     
    They had come to the point that Shamron liked to describe as the operational fork in the road. Until now, no line had been crossed and no crime committed, save for a minor bomb scare in the Europa Center. The team could still abort, regroup, reassess, and try another night. In many respects, it was the easier decision to make—the decision to sheathe the sword rather than swing it. Shamron called it “the coward’s escape hatch.” But then, Shamron had always believed that far more operations had been sunk by hesitation than by recklessness.
    On that night, however, the decision was not Shamron’s to make. Instead, it was in the hands of a battered secret warrior sitting alone in an empty house in Wannsee. He was staring at the screen of his computer, watching his team and his target as they approached the point of no return. It was the Königsallee, a street running from the parkland of the Grunewald to the busy Kurfürstendamm—and once Massoud crossed it, he would be beyond their reach. Gabriel keyed into his secure radio and asked whether anyone had any last-minute objections. Hearing nothing, he gave the order to proceed. Then he closed his eyes and listened to the sirens.
     
     
    Afterward, there were some at King Saul Boulevard who would bemoan the fact that no videotape had been made. Shamron, however, took the opposite view. He believed that operational videotapes, like suicide missions, should be left to Israel’s