Separation of Power

chapter EIGHTEEN

Milan, Italy, Thursday afternoon

Marc Rosenthal had killed the enemies of Israel in a variety of ways, by knife, by bullet, even by poison once, but his instrument of choice over the years had been explosives. There were several reasons for this. To start with he found it practical. Explosives enabled him to maximize damage while maintaining his cover. A machine gun could be just as lethal in the right hands, but to stand in the open and hose down a group of people was to open oneself up to return fire. And that was just the start. Such an act made escape very difficult. No, Rosenthal liked bombs. He could study the habits of his targets and get the device into place before they arrived.

He'd pulled off some bold operations during his years with Mossad. Rosenthal knew that during a time when Mossad had had a streak of bad luck, he was one of the few bright stars. That was in great part due to the keen instincts of Ben Freidman. Freidman had sent Rosenthal into the occupied territories to gather information. The baby-faced Jew had proven to be so effective at penetrating the Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas that Freidman couldn't resist using Rosenthal to strike back. The first bomb Rosenthal planted took out several midlevel lieutenants of the organization, but it was his second bombing that proved to Freidman that Rosenthal was an astonishingly brave warrior. The second bombing took place at a streetside cafe in Hebron. Rosen that had planted the device in the bottom of a trash can early the same morning and then that afternoon he met several of his Hamas compatriots at the cafe for lunch. During the meal Rosenthal got up and went to the bathroom. In his pocket he carried a pen that doubled as a trigger for the bomb. Before leaving the bathroom he depressed the pen cap and threw it into the garbage. The bomb was now on a twenty second delay. Rosenthal then walked back and sat down at the table. He had picked his spot carefully. Between him and the bomb was a palm tree in a concrete planter. Rosenthal calmly counted the time and at eighteen seconds he bent over as if to pick up something he'd dropped.

The blast instantly killed three of the four men he was dining with and two other patrons. Rosenthal escaped with a severe concussion, some lacerations from the flying debris and some hearing loss. The fact that he himself had almost died in the bombing served to cement his standing as a soldier of Hamas.

It was this bold move that allowed him to get close to Hamas leader Yehya Ayyash. Rosenthal was brought into the inner circle, and five months later on a bright sunny day he took a call for Ayyash on a cell phone that had been modified by the technicians back at Mossad. When Rosenthal handed Ayyash the phone, he walked away and left the group. Once again he had a pen in his pocket, but this time there was no delayed fuse. Rosenthal never looked back. He pressed the top of the pen with his thumb and the explosion was instantaneous. The shaped plastic charge in the phone tore intoayyash's head and killed him. That was the end of rosenthal's undercover work in the occupied territories. He was hated by all of Palestine.

Freidman had taken significant interest in honing Rosenthal's skills as an assassin. The director general of Mossad had significant experience in the arena. In 1972 eleven Israeli athletes were taken hostage during the Munich Olympics by the Palestinian group Black September. Two of the athletes were killed right away when the terrorists burst into their dormitory at the Olympic Village. The terrorists demanded the release of 234 Palestinians held in Israeli jails. Golda Meir, Israel's prime minister at the time, refused to release the prisoners because she believed it would only invite future disasters. After a tense five-day standoff, the German authorities made their move at the airport while the terrorists were transferring their hostages to a plane. The rescue operation was a disaster. The nine remaining hostages were all killed, as were six of the eight terrorists. To add insult to injury, the two surviving terrorists were later released.

Ben Freidman had been at the airport that dreaded day in 1972. He had been standing next to one of his idols, Zvi Zarnir. Zamir had been the director general of Mossad at the time, and after the massacre in Munich, it was Zamir who had convinced the prime minister that it was time to take the gloves off. Golda Meir directed Zamir to hunt down the masterminds behind Black September and kill them. Over the next nine months the blood flowed and Ben Freidman proved himself to be one of Mossad most efficient assassins. His first hit was barely a month after the massacre of the Olympic athletes. Mossad wanted to send a signal to everyone, and their first target was wael Zwaiter, a PLO representative in Rome. On October 16 Freidman came up behind Zwaiter, put two bullets into the back of his head and left him for dead on the street. Not even two months later Freidman was part of a team that killed Mahmoud Hamshari by placing a bomb in the phone of his Paris apartment. The bomb was detonated by remote control and the PLO representative was decapitated.

Blood continued to flow and Freidman's crowning achievement came on April 13, 1973. He was part of a select force of Mossad agents and Army commandos that launched a raid into the heart of Beirut. The targets that night were three of the PLO's most senior officials. Muhammad Nayar, Kamal Adwan and Kamal Nasser were all gunned down in their homes. The success of the raid had implications far beyond the deaths of the three leaders. Information seized during the raids led to the assassination of three more terrorists with ties to Black September. The success of the raid was short-lived, however.

Just two months after Mossad had experienced one of its greatest successes it experienced its worst nightmare. The disaster occurred in the sleepy Norwegian ski village of Lillehammer. A team of Mossad agents was sent to investigate a possible sighting of the terrorist All Has san Salameh. The inexperienced group incorrectly identified the target and then proceeded to kill Ahmed Bouchiki, a Moroccan waiter. If that wasn't bad enough, six of the team members were subsequently captured while trying to escape. The men and women were put on trial and five of the six were jailed. The international outcry was deafening, and Mossad was officially ordered to get out of the assassination business.

But unofficially, they stayed very much involved in the dirty business and Ben Freidman continued to be one of Mossad's best. He had used those years of experience to train Rosenthal. They studied why certain operations succeeded and why others failed. The Lillehammer fiasco was easy to dissect. After all, they'd killed the wrong man. Everything started with the misidentification of the target. The entire mess could have easily been avoided with some thorough checking. After that there was one other glaring flaw; there were too many agents involved in the operation. This was the result of too much oversight from Tel Aviv. Freidman knew that for a mission to be successful, the man or woman pulling the trigger had to have as much autonomy as possible, but they must always remember to not embarrass Israel.

It was for that reason that there would be no explosives this time. It was one thing to set off a bomb in Gaza or Jerusalem. As strange as it might seem, the people of the Middle East were used to such things. But a bomb in Milan would draw too much attention. The authorities and the press would start to dig and eventually fingers would be pointed at Israel. There were better, quieter ways to handle the situation. Donatella Rahn would have to be killed up close. Preferably a silenced bullet delivered to the back of her head.

Before leaving Tel Aviv, Rosenthal had thoroughly read Donatella's file. He had seized on her heroin addiction and thought that there might be a way to fake her death with an overdose. As convenient as the plan sounded at first, Rosenthal had to be realistic. She was not some waif of a model. She herself was a skilled assassin. There would be no realistic way to subdue her without a struggle. And a struggle would mean noise and possibly witnesses. In addition, a struggle would leave marks on her body that wouldn't be consistent with an overdose. No, the heroin overdose was too complicated; there were too many spots where it could blow up in their faces. They needed something uncomplicated.

Rosenthal had been trying to pick a spot all afternoon. He could always do it on the crowded street while she walked home from work. Rosenthal was an expert at blending into a crowd. His diminutive size made it very easy for him to move almost unnoticed. It would be relatively simple for him to stalk her, put a bullet into her heart and keep walking. The only real risk was another pedestrian getting in the way or trying to chase him after he pulled the trigger. It was a risk that he was willing to take if he had to.

As Rosenthal looked out the window of the rented car, he had some thing else on his mind. In front of him was the building where Donatella's flat was located. He'd been sitting there for half an hour and had just witnessed a UPS driver deliver a package. It got Rosenthal thinking. The best place to do it would be her apartment. She would have her guard down, and they would have time to clean up and sanitize the apartment when they were done. The apartment it would be. He started to prepare a mental checklist of the things he would need. After another five minutes of watching he told Sunberg to take him back to the safe flat.

The White House, Thursday morning

President Hayes was in the Cabinet Room watching his secretary of commerce slug it out with a group of lobbyists that represented the AFL-CIO, the Teamsters, and Amnesty International. The argument was over whether or not the U. S. should continue to grant most favored nation status to China when it came up for review in a few months. In Hayes's mind it was a worthless debate. There was only one way the U. S. would revoke China's most favored nation status and it had nothing to do with the high-priced lobbyists sitting around the large, highly polished conference table. China would have to cause an international incident. Even something so brazen as being caught stealing secrets from American businesses might not be enough. They would have to take military action against Taiwan, and that wasn't going to happen. The Chinese were ecstatic with their new highbred economy. Where the former Soviet Union was in shambles, trying to make the transition from a closed socialist economy to an open one, the Chinese were flourishing. They offered something the Russians couldn't. Stability.

Hayes looked on with mixed feelings of sympathy and disrespect as the union representatives and lobbyists tried to state their cases. He had sympathy for them because they were truly passionate, but he also loathed them precisely because they were so passionate about a dead issue. Unemployment was at a thirty-year low. The alarmists from the unions had said that NAFTA would cost millions of jobs and it hadn't. Wages were up. Continued open trade with China was good for the American economy and hence the American people. The human rights people had a slightly better point, but in the end isolationism was no way to get China to treat its people better. The key was continued trade. Get them to open their economy first and then their minds and hearts. Hayes felt the meeting was a waste of his time, but in Washington you always had to have your eye on the next election. These people represented a big portion of his base. He needed to lend them a sympathetic ear lest they go looking to back a different Democratic candidate. The President sat in his chair with hands folded neatly in front of him and nodded as the woman from Amnesty International recited a slew of statistics about the number of people unjustly incarcerated in the world's largest country.

When the door opened Hayes was relieved to see Michael Haik enter. The wiry national security advisor came around the table and apologized to the President's guests. He then bent over and whispered something into the President's ear. Hayes nodded several times and then looked to the people sitting across the table.

"I'm sorry, but something has come up." Hayes stood. "Thank you for coming to see me." He walked around the table and shook each person's hand. "You've made some very good points, and I'll take them under advisement."

As the President started to leave, the man representing the AFL-CIO stepped forward and said, "We're sick of losing on this issue, sir. We're prepared to pull out all the stops this time."

Hayes paused and looked at the man. He should have kept walking but didn't. "What's that supposed to mean. Harry?"

"It means come next election, we're going to remember who stood with us on this one."

Hayes took a step closer to the man. "What are you going to do, Harry? Tell your people to vote for a Republican?" Finding courage in the fact that the President had a less than fifty percent approval rating, the man replied, "With all due respect, sir, you might not be the only person seeking the party's nomination."

Instead of losing his temper, Hayes smiled at the man. He patted the union representative on the shoulder and said, "Good luck trying to get someone to commit political suicide." With that Hayes left the Cabinet Room and made a mental note to keep an eye on the MFN China vote. There were maybe three or four people within the party that might try to challenge him. If any of them voted against MFN status for China it would be a clear signal that they'd decided to challenge him.

As they started down the stairs to the basement of the West Wing, the President asked Haik what the unscheduled visit was about. Haik in formed him that General Flood had not wanted to talk about it over the phone. The two men continued to the Situation Room, where they found Irene Kennedy, General Flood and two other army officers waiting. The President recognized one of them, but not the other. The man he recognized was General Campbell, the head of the Joint Special Operations Command.

"Mr. President, this is Colonel Gray. He's the CO of Delta Force. I think you've met on one other occasion."

"Yes, of course we have "The President now remembered the warrior. He reached out across the table and took the man's hand. "Good to see you again, Colonel." As would be expected Gray had a hardened edge to him that commanded respect.

"I'm sorry to interrupt your meeting," continued Flood.

"Don't worry." Hayes rolled his eyes. "You actually saved me from another thirty minutes of sheer boredom." The President sat in his chair at the head of the table and everyone followed suit.

General Flood settled his large frame into the chair at the opposite end of the long conference table. "During our last meeting you asked me to explore all options to achieve our goal. I consulted General Campbell on the mission and he brought in Colonel Gray. Before I turn this over to the Colonel, I'd like to note that Delta Force was conceived to handle extremely delicate and difficult situations. I have confidence in Colonel Gray and his men and I encourage their creative solutions to very difficult problems. It is our job," Flood looked at the President, "to decide how and when to use them." The general glanced over at Colonel Gray and nodded for him to start.

"Mr. President, you may remember during the Gulf War that Delta Force was asked to look into the possibility of going after Saddam and either grabbing him or killing him. There were two schools of thought here. The first was that we were at war and hence we wouldn't be in violation of the executive order banning the assassination of foreign leaders. Many of us in the military argued that Saddam was a soldier. More often than not he wears a uniform, and he is a military dictator. The other camp argued that we would be in violation of the executive order signed by President Reagan. The debate proved to be moot due to the fact that we could never locate the exact whereabouts of Saddam. Along the way, however, we learned a couple of interesting things. Saddam takes his own security very seriously. So seriously that he often leaves his own people in utter confusion. He has an entire fleet of white armor plated limousines and cars that he uses like a big shell game. These caravans move about the country in a completely nonsensical pattern. During the war we'd get a report that Saddam was in one part of Baghdad only to find out two minutes later that there was a second caravan seen on the other side of town, and then five minutes after that we'd get a report that he was seen in the south meeting with leaders of his Republican guard. The man has over twenty palaces, and we'd get reports all night of motorcades coming and going. He was impossible to track.

"It wasn't until after the war that something occurred to me. As warriors we're taught to probe for the enemy's weakness, and if we can't find one, we have to find a way to use his own strengths against him." Colonel Gray grinned. "I've found a way to use Saddam's strength against him."

The President was hooked. Sitting up a little straighter he said, "I'm listening."

"Sir, Saddams own people don't know where he is. They are used to seeing motorcades of white cars racing about the country at all hours of the day. No one ever stops them, because the only person in the whole country who travels in such a fashion is Saddam himself and a few of his select family members."

The President still hadn't figured out where the colonel was heading. "I don't see how you'd use this against him."

"If one of these motorcades contained not Saddam, but a select team of Delta Force operators, they would be able to move about the country unchallenged."

Very slowly a smile crept onto the Presidents face, and then he began to nod. "I'm intrigued. Colonel. I'd like to hear more."