Cyrille resumed her trajet. Back and forth.
Sooner or later, Dekker would show.
Chapter 48
27 Avenue Montaigne
Paris
Ava stared transfixed as the laptop came to life.
First the wallpaper. A picture of the Bugatti, what else? A blink and the screen filled with folders and files and jpgs and pdfs. Half were labeled in Arabic, half in English.
Ava guided the cursor to the dock running vertically on the left-hand side of the screen and opened the launchpad, showing TNT’s applications. She made a beeline for Mail and tapped the track pad twice. TNT’s mailbox filled the screen. She ran down the list of correspondents. She didn’t recognize any names. Her eye jumped to the subject lines. All appeared innocuous. Appointments with government officials, lunches with friends, comments on proposed spending, a new art exhibit, confirmation of a speaking engagement at Georgetown University’s Ar-Rayyan campus.
Nowhere did she see the names Rosenfeld, Ben-Gold, or Abbasi.
For once, TNT was showing some operational security. The securest method to communicate sensitive material was through a message app tied to his phone—like Telegram or Signal. She returned to the launchpad and browsed the icons TNT visited regularly. Nothing.
Then she saw it. The last app, or most infrequently visited. Phone Mirroring.
Ava double-clicked the icon. A window appeared, demanding the passcode to unlock TNT’s phone. There was no way she could guess a six-digit code. She didn’t intend to try. Another dead end.
Or was it? She still had her magic box.
Ava dragged the icon labeled Phone Mirroring from the launchpad and placed it inside her malware’s toolbox. Let it do the heavy lifting.
She tapped her finger. If TNT was using his phone, there was no way to access it with or without the code. Only one user at a time was granted control of its operating system. Sometimes you needed to be lucky.
The screen blinked once, twice, then went dark.
“No,” said Ava. This was not the luck she was hoping for.
She hit Return.
“Do not let me down. Not now.”
The screen came back to life. Dead center was a picture of the home page of TNT’s phone. Six rows of four icons, and at the bottom the standard Phone, Mail, Music, and browser. There at the top right was a familiar navy blue icon. Signal.
Ava double-clicked it. “And God said, ‘Let there be light.’”
TNT’s inbox appeared. Chats, video calls, messages. She skimmed the inbox, registering the name of his correspondents and the subject lines. The most recent chat was with “Rosenfeld, Y.”
Hallelujah.
She typed the name into the search bar, and a history of their correspondence appeared.
The first exchange dated to February of this year, eight months earlier:Confirm meeting. Room 714. Four Seasons Doha.A week later, TNT to Rosenfeld:Arrive DBR tomorrow at 11.“DBR” for David Ben-Gurion Airport outside Jerusalem. And then a response from Rosenfeld:The Minister will attend.
Ava continued reading. Plenty of back and forth. More meets, dates, and times. In Israel. In Qatar. No need for phone calls when you can meet on TNT’s private jet.
Then this. TNT to Rosenfeld:Tech Specifications / Samson.Below in the text field: a twelve-digit serial number and a formal request for engineering blueprints. Ava noted the date. Exactly three weeks before Dr. Lutz had called her into his office and expressed his concern over the phone call he’d overheard.
Then, a week later: Rosenfeld to TNT.Tech Specswith an attachment and a note to contact Dr. Abbasi, Natanz Research Facility, Islamic Republic of Iran. Ava could presume that TNT had been speaking with Abbasi on that day in Dr. Lutz’s office. Here was the mother lode. Ava opened the attachment. Pages and pages of engineering schemas. She had it. Proof that Yehudi Rosenfeld—and by extension, his master, Defense Minister Itmar Ben-Gold—had provided Tariq al-Sabah the top secret plans for the tactical nuclear weapon code-named “Samson.”
A flurry of messages followed. More meetings. More queries. And then, the day after she spent the night at the Chesa Grischuna—the night she’d crept into Tariq al-Sabah’s office and photographed page after page of the engineering blueprints for manufacturing a nuclear trigger, provided by Dr. Abbasi—an abrupt change of tone.
Rosenfeld to TNT:Security Breach.With a note tocheck all locked down on your end. And the next day:Leak? Mossad asking questions.Mossadmeaning Zvi Gelber.
