CHAPTER 8
G
ENEVA
, S
WITZERLAND
P
ierre Damien sat on the terrace of his luxury Quai du Mont-Blanc apartment and took in the view. The lake was particularly beautiful at this time of year. In a matter of moments, the sky could shift from sapphire blue to steel gray. Where the lake emptied into the Rhône, one of the city’s most famous landmarks, the Jet d’Eau blasted a massive column of water nearly five hundred feet into the air. It was forceful, phallic. It represented the virility he felt, even in his sixties.
Life had been good to him. The world had been good to him. And he intended to return the favor.
Swathed in a silk Gucci bathrobe and leather slippers, he sipped espresso as he pondered which of the five newspapers laid out on the delicate table to pick up first.
They can wait
, he decided. There was something about this morning that he couldn’t put his finger on. Something he wanted to savor just a little bit longer.
Closing his eyes, he felt the cool wind that was moving in over the lake. He heard the traffic down below, smelled the faint hint of a cigarette from some unseen neighbor on some unseen terrace who had stepped outside to partake in a smoke.
The odor offended him. Not simply because of its pungency, but because of the intrusion it represented. He despised smoking. It was a filthy, selfish habit that intruded, uninvited, into the lives of everyone else. Smokers tossed their discarded butts onto sidewalks and into streets with impunity as if society had bestowed upon them some special dispensation that elevated them to a unique class allowed to litter at will.
Disgusting
.
He opened his eyes, prepared to be in one of his moods, and was stopped cold by the vision standing at the open French doors onto the terrace. “You cannot come out here like that,” he said with a grin.
The young woman wrapped the sheet tighter around her naked body. “Why not?”
“Neighbors, board members, paparazzi with long lenses.”
“Then you come back inside,” she replied, returning his grin with one of her own.
“I’ll need another espresso.”
Ignoring his warning, she stepped fully out onto the terrace and crossed over to him.
He was a handsome man. Toned, with intelligent eyes and impeccable taste. She had slept with men a third of his age that didn’t have his stamina. Lacing her fingers into his thick, gray hair, she bent forward and pressed her lips against his. She lingered, her kiss communicating her invitation.
“I can’t,” he said. “Put on a robe and join me. Jeffery will serve us breakfast out here.”
“I don’t want breakfast,” she said, smiling. “I want you.”
He smiled back. “I have to leave in a half hour. Ring Jeffery. Eat breakfast with me.”
She had always felt uncomfortable around Jeffery, but feigning a pout, she disentangled herself from Pierre and went inside to do as he had asked.
As she walked away, Damien watched her. The sway of her hips. The curve of her body. The spill of long chestnut hair over the impossibly white sheet. She was a stunning woman. Had he not been the one to pursue her, he might have even said she was too good to be true. Yes, life had been incredibly good to him.
She returned wearing a robe, her allure only intensified by the
décolletage
it revealed. For a moment, he was tempted to cancel his morning and return to bed with her. Then Jeffery materialized with their breakfast and reality once again asserted itself.
He scanned the papers, nibbled on a bit of toast and a soft-boiled egg before kissing her on the forehead and heading inside to get dressed. He
knew that if he had allowed their lips to meet again, he would have been powerless to break away from her.
When he stepped out of the lobby, his black Mercedes sedan was waiting. His security team divided between it and a follow car. Mornings in Geneva were always the same.
As the vehicles pulled away, she leaned against the cold iron railing and watched. When the motorcade reached the next block, her phone chimed. Without even looking at the message, she knew who it was from.
Glancing at the other buildings, she tried to imagine where he was. She hadn’t asked. Not that he would have told her. That wasn’t how the spy game worked. Everything was kept compartmentalized—like bulkheads on a ship.
She pulled the phone from her robe pocket. He wanted to see her. Now, before she went to work. He followed up the first text with an address. She knew it. It was on the way to her office. They had met there before.
Deleting both messages, she returned inside and took a shower. She chose her clothes carefully as she toweled off. Bentzi liked blue.
Leaving the apartment, she conducted a surveillance detection route, or SDR, just as she had been trained. She took her time and made sure no one was following her.
She had made a daily habit of varying her route to work. It didn’t matter if she was leaving from Pierre’s, which was more and more the case, or from her little apartment near the University in the Plainpalais neighborhood. If anyone ever desired to set an ambush for her, they would have been hard-pressed to pick the right spot.
The tram would have been the quickest way to her rendezvous, but instead she had decided to walk. She was forestalling the inevitable.
The Café de la Gare was a 1900s style Parisian brasserie in the diminutive Hotel Montbrillant. It was located on a quiet street corner overlooking the rear entrance of the train station.
Sitting in the back of the café, beneath its stained glass ceiling, pretending to read a newspaper as he watched patrons come and go was her handler, Ben Zion “Bentzi” Mordechai.
Mordechai was a completely unremarkable man. Not tall, not short,
not handsome, not unattractive. He just
was
. That was his gift. That, and an amazingly cunning mind.
His only memorable feature, if it could be considered such, was his hands. He had been captured once and tortured, each of his fingers broken. His hands were slightly deformed. If the weather was just so, and he was run-down or dehydrated, his fingers would twist in a painful knot resembling the roots of a gnarled tree. Today, thankfully, was not one of those days.
Setting his newspaper down on the table, he smiled and rose as she approached. “Lenka,” he said, using her nickname as he kissed her on both cheeks. “Did you wear blue for me?”
“No,” she lied. “It was the only clean dress I had left at Pierre’s.”
He knew her too well. She was lying to him, but he kept his smile and let it go. Calling the waiter over, he motioned for her to sit and they ordered. She only wanted coffee. He ordered traditional Swiss muesli and a carafe of still water.
“No problems getting here?” he asked once the waiter had departed.
“None,” she replied. “I hope you haven’t been waiting long.”
She knew he had been, but again, he let it go. “You know why I asked to see you.”
“Because you missed me,” she said, playfully grabbing his forearm, “and you wanted to see me.”
“Stop it,” Mordechai replied as he removed her hand. “I’ve actually seen
too
much of you lately.”
He was disappointed in her and the rebuke stung.
“The problem, Helena,” he continued, addressing her by her first name, “is that I haven’t heard anything from you.”
“I’m this close,” she stated, holding up her thumb and forefinger. “I just need more time.”
“Your time is up. We’re recalling you to Tel Aviv.”
The young woman was stunned. “
Recalling
me?” she repeated. “You can’t be serious.”
“Do I not look serious?”
“Are you jealous, Bentzi? Is that what this is all about?”
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“This is not a game, Helena,” he snapped.
“Who says it is?”
“Keeping me waiting, the blue dress, the flirtatious hand on my arm. I know you.”
She began to wilt under his harsh gaze. “You don’t know anything,” she replied, sitting back in her chair, trying to create some distance.
“I found you. I trained you. I
know
you.”
“My God, you
are
jealous. How is that possible?
You
sent me to Pierre.
You
told me to do whatever I had to do. We both know what that was code for.”
“It doesn’t change the facts. You have had more than enough time. We’re pulling you.”
“Now I know you’re lying to me. You’re not going to scrap this operation. It’s too important.”
“I didn’t say we were scrapping the operation,” Mordechai replied, once the waiter had set their order down and walked away. “I said we’re pulling you.”
“And then what? The next operative you put in, you think she’ll somehow magically have more luck?”
The Israeli took a deep breath and nodded. “If she doesn’t fall in love with her mark, then yes.”
The accusation cut her to the quick and she couldn’t let it go unanswered. “That is outrageous.”
“Is it?” Mordechai asked as he set a tablet on the table and encouraged her to swipe through the photographs.
Of course they had been following her.
What was surprising was that she had been under surveillance even when she wasn’t with Pierre.
“All these prove that I have done everything you asked.”
“If you had done
everything
,” he said, “we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
“Damn it, Bentzi, this isn’t fair.”
“We don’t do
fair
. Is it fair that the Arabs have oil and we have rock? Is it fair that we are the only nation on the face of the earth that has to fight,
and
win, every single day just in order to survive? Is any of that fair?”
“Are you questioning my dedication to Israel now?”
Mordechai cut her off. “Don’t toy with me, Helena. You and I both know where your loyalty lies. I have never had a problem with that. So long as you followed orders.”
“Which is exactly what I am doing now,” she insisted.
“It’s out of my hands.”
“Please, Bentzi. I have never let you down before.”
“That’s why this is so difficult.”
“But it doesn’t have to be. Don’t you see?”
Mordechai studied her. “I’m not sure what I see.”
“
Oy.
Now with the guilt?”
He normally found her use of Yiddish amusing. There were times she could come off as just as Jewish as anyone at the Mossad, but that was the chameleon in her. It was an act, just as this was.
“I’ll double my efforts. I can do this. Trust me. I’ll work even harder.”
“Go back to your apartment,” he told her. “Call in sick. Nothing too specific. If Damien contacts you, tell him you’re having menstrual issues.”
She made a face. “That’s not very alluring.”
“Exactly.”
“I still think—”
Mordechai held up his hand, silencing her. “You go back to your apartment and you stay away from Pierre Damien. You don’t call him. You don’t go over to his place. You don’t so much as bump into him in the street. Those are your orders. Do you understand?”
Helena didn’t respond.
Mordechai repeated himself.
Finally, she nodded.
“Good. I will contact you as soon as we have your extraction figured out,” he said, sliding his tablet into his bag. He then removed a couple of notes from his pocket, stood, and placed them on the table.
“You’re not going to eat?” she asked.
“I’ll be in touch,” Mordechai replied as he turned and walked out of the café.
CHAPTER 9
T
here had been a hint of something in her voice.
Was it melancholy?
Ben Mordechai wasn’t sure and tried to sort it out as he walked.
Helena had never been what anyone would consider “stable.” While she hid her problems well, she was an emotional and psychological basket case. Had Mordechai gone through what she had suffered, he probably would have been too.
Hers was but one story among thousands in Eastern Europe. Young girls who had been tricked into the sex trade. Rings of professional traffickers lured them away from their villages. They were promised jobs as nannies with nice families in England or France. While they waited in a neighboring country for their alleged visas to be processed, they were raped, beaten, and hooked on drugs.
Their passports were withheld from them, and they were told horror stories about what would happen to their families back home if they went to the authorities. There were always families back home. The traffickers rarely picked the girls unless they had a substantial piece of leverage they could use on them.
Once broken, the girls were shipped to countries around the world. Helena wound up in Israel.
It was a national stain few Israelis would dare admit. The record, though, spoke for itself. When it got too bad to be ignored, the government would take action, but soon enough its blind eye would return.
Helena was held in the southern West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba.
There she and the other girls were forced to perform sex acts with twelve to fifteen men a day. Some were Jews. Some were Palestinians. Many were businessmen from Tel Aviv whom her pimps had inveigled.
If she failed to do what she was told, she was beaten. If she failed to please the customers, she was beaten. If she was too ill to perform, she was beaten
and
starved.
On one occasion, Helena took so sick she almost died. If it had not been for the other girls sharing their food and nursing her, she never would have made it.
When one girl, a woman Helena deeply cared for, did die—that was her breaking point. The girl had been beaten to death by one of the customers—a wealthy but very drunk businessman. The pimps should have returned the favor. At least there would have been some semblance of justice done. Instead, they got rid of her body and blackmailed the man. With the money, they brought in two more girls. They were very young. Helena could still remember what it was like to be young. She had had enough. That was the night she snapped.
Because of the constant threat of terrorism, many Israelis carried concealed weapons. They were not allowed to bring them into the brothel, but customers who were known, trusted, and had paid a premium were allowed to.
There was a special area with small, pistol-sized lockers where they could lock up their weapons. Many of them feigned using the lockers or bypassed them altogether. One such customer was a client of Helena’s. He liked her, a lot. But it wasn’t reciprocal.
He often drank before arriving and then had a couple of drinks more before heading upstairs. He was a mean man who liked to get rough. Some nights, he would show up with a garment bag and word would quickly reach Helena. Those nights never ended well. Not that any of her nights trapped in that nightmare ever did.
Inside the garment bag was the wedding dress of the man’s wife. As far as the woman knew, it was safely in storage, waiting to be handed down to their eldest daughter. He made Helena wear it while he disparaged his wife in absentia for getting too fat to fit into it. He was a jeweler and completed his sick fantasy by placing a replica of his wife’s wedding ring on Helena’s finger.
The more he would talk about his wife, the angrier he would become. And as his anger increased, so too did the level of pain and abuse he heaped upon Helena—until the night she snapped.
As it always did, word spread when the jeweler arrived that he was not only downstairs but that he had brought the garment bag with him. By the time he made it upstairs, Helena was ready for him.
He was unsteady on his feet, his eyes glassy. More inebriated than normal. She could smell his putrid, alcohol-soaked breath halfway across the room.
Reaching into his jacket pocket, he pulled out the small velvet box and threw it at her, telling her to put the ring on.
She did as he asked and waited for him to hand her the garment bag to put on the dress. She had everything planned. The request didn’t come.
Instead, the man unbuckled his trousers and told her to come kneel in front of him. When Helena asked him if he was sure he didn’t want her to change, the man barked obscenities at her.
He was making too much noise. If her pimps heard him this angry, they would step in, blame her, and she would take a terrible beating. She hurried to comply in the hope it would get him to quiet down.
The string of invectives continued until she was on her knees in front of him. Only then did he stop shouting at her.
He was a disgusting ape of a man covered in coarse, curly dark hair. The mere thought of him was enough to repulse her. The mere thought of any of the men that visited the brothel was enough to repulse her. She refused to judge any of the women who sought to escape the horror of their lives through the drugs the pimps provided. She herself had freely used the drugs throughout. But not tonight. Tonight she was sober.
It made doing her “job” even more difficult, but it was amazing what the body could be coaxed into doing if the mind was set upon a compelling goal.
Kneeling there in front of the jeweler, Helena prepared. He wobbled momentarily, unsteady on his feet. She paused, wondering if the man was possibly about to pass out.
Mistake
.
Angry that she was taking so long, the jeweler slapped her in the side of her head. The blow was so severe, blood began to trickle from her left ear.
She looked up at him half in anger, half in shock. When she did, the man punched her right in the face.
There was the crack of cartilage as he broke her nose, accompanied by a spray of blood.
He pushed her over backward with such force that her head struck the floor and she began to black out. She struggled to maintain consciousness.
Stripping off the rest of his clothes, the man then threw himself on top of her. He landed with his full weight, knocking the air from her lungs. It felt like being crushed under a collapsed, stone wall.
His coarse, wiry hair chafed against her skin like rough wool. She could feel his pawing hand searching her body for where her legs met. As she fought to breathe, and the air finally returned to her lungs, she struggled to move out from underneath the man. As soon as she did, he dug his teeth into her breast.
She began to scream, but caught herself. Instead, she felt for her weapon. It wasn’t much—an old razor blade taped to a toothbrush—but it was all she had.
Grabbing as much of his hair as she could, she pulled his head away from her chest and bent his neck backward, exposing his soft, fleshy throat. She didn’t think twice about what she did next.
Cutting as hard and as deep as she could, she pulled the razor from his left ear all the way across to almost his other ear before the toothbrush broke from the amount of force she was applying. It didn’t matter. The job was already done.
She let go of his hair and watched as his hands flew upward. He clutched desperately at his neck and throat. His eyes, which had been wide with surprise, were now white with fear.
Shoving him backward with every ounce of strength she possessed, she toppled him sideways and quickly moved to get away from him and the blood that was spurting from his fatal wound. Even if help could be summoned, there was no saving him. He was a dead man.
She had hidden extra clothing in the room. After quickly cleaning herself at the sink, she got dressed.
She went through his pockets and took his wallet, his watch, and jewelry. She took his cell phone though she didn’t have a soul in the world
she could call to come rescue her—it might have maps or access to other information she might need. She also took his gun.
She had no idea what caliber it was or what company had manufactured it. All she knew was that it was loaded, and that the man also travelled with a spare magazine. As best she could tell, she had somewhere around thirty rounds total. More than enough.
She had only fired a weapon a handful of times in her life. She had an older cousin who had been a soldier. Sometimes, when he was home visiting, he liked to get drunk and let the younger cousins fire his sidearm.
She had enough experience to know that she had to pull the slide all the way back in order to seat a round from the magazine into the chamber. The pistol was already chambered, though, and as she did that, the existing round was ejected.
It rolled somewhere, maybe under the bed. She didn’t have the time to worry about it. If everything she was about to do hinged on one round, she was destined for defeat anyway.
Holding one small towel against her nose to help stanch the bleeding, she wrapped another towel over the pistol and exited the room.
The back door was locked and only led to a small courtyard anyway, surrounded by an eight-foot-high wall topped with barbed wire. The only way out was through the front door. The only way to the front door, though, was through the salon.
Helena had long ago given up on God. No matter how badly she begged Him to save her, He had never come to her rescue. She had resigned herself to having been abandoned. This night, though, felt different.
Now she prayed like she had never prayed before. She prayed all the way down the stairs and into the salon. She felt the eyes of clients and of the girls on her. They were saying things to each other, whispering at first as she passed with the bloody towel clamped to her face and blood trickling down her neck from her left ear.
It was a spectacle, but nothing those who worked at the brothel hadn’t seen before. Girls were beaten up. It was part of the business.
What they hadn’t seen before was one of the girls crossing the salon, walking up to the muscle at the door, pulling a semiautomatic pistol, and shooting him in the chest. Whispers turned to screams.
Helena stood frozen, unsure what to do. When the door to the office opened, something took over. Her arm came up and she watched, almost detached, as the pistol fired. The man fell dead, as did the man behind him as she fired again.
There was a rush behind her and she spun to see clients running to the lockers to get their guns. One after another, she shot them.
There were shouts from the back of the brothel as the last two pimps ran into the salon with their fully automatic rifles, convinced they were under some sort of terrorist assault. Helena changed magazines, hid the weapon behind her back, and waited for them.
When they saw her and her battered face, they immediately disqualified her as the threat. She nodded toward the lockers.
That was all the pimps needed. They charged in the direction she had indicated. As soon as they had passed, she shot both of them in the back of the head.
Her bloodlust not yet sated, she walked back into the salon. Four men cowered along the wall near the bar. She shot each of them before heading upstairs.
She could read which girl was in each room, and she knocked and called them to come out. She told them it was safe. Once all the doors were open and everyone was in the hallway, she separated the girls off, and shot each of the remaining men. Then without a word, she turned and walked back downstairs.
The door was ajar, and she could see the lights of the town.
Freedom.
But with no passport and no one to help her, what exactly was she escaping to? At the moment, it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that she get out.
As she was stepping toward the door, her foot got caught between two of the bodies. Or so she had thought.
Looking down, she saw one of the pimps. Half of his lower jaw was missing and blood was pouring from a hole in his chest. Even so, he still had enough strength remaining to grab her around the ankle. In his other hand was the small pistol he kept in his pocket and had used in the past to pistol-whip unruly clients and even one or two of the girls.
Helena brought her weapon up to finish him off only to see that the slide was locked back and she was out of ammunition.
Jerking her ankle from the man’s grasp, she stomped on his opposite wrist, causing him to let go of his gun. She picked up the pistol and pulled its trigger again and again, emptying the magazine into him.
She then left the brothel. The bloodbath was over. But everything else was just beginning.