Confiserie Hanselmann
St. Moritz
Codename: Samson.
Eleven tactical nuclear weapons, each with a strength of one kiloton, deployed across a twenty-six mile stretch of the Israeli–Syrian border in the Golan Heights, approximately two miles between each. It was 1984 or 1985. Israel had invaded Lebanon a few years before. The horrors of Sabra and Shatila had enflamed the region. Al-Assad the Lion threatened war. Hussein in Jordan echoed the call.
On King Saul Boulevard in Tel Aviv, the prime minister and his cabinet deemed it the pinnacle of reason to create a modern-day Siegfried line to forestall any attack from the north. One kiloton equaled one thousand tons of TNT. Hiroshima was thirteen kilotons. Everyone in the cabinet agreed that they were being judicious; timid, even. After all, just think what they might have done? If an attack did come—and the aggressors tried to cross the Green Line, God help them—it would be the last ever attempted by Israel’s neighbors.
Since then, the devices—“mines” they were officially called, so as not to scare anyone—lay dormant, one encrypted signal away from detonation. With time, threats of an invasion lessened. Prime ministers came and went. Even Ariel Sharon grew less bellicose, some said conciliatory. The new cabinet had second thoughts. Perhaps “judicious”wasn’t the right word. “Reckless,” “inflammatory,” even “outrageous” were more appropriate. Over time, public opinion shifted. The world no longer viewed Israel as a victim. It had become the dominant force in the region. Right or wrong, more and more countries called Israel an “oppressor.”
The outbreak of civil war in Syria forced a new perspective. The border region—once maintained by the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force—devolved into a fractious combat zone. Syrian government troops fought antigovernment rebels. The rebels fought ISIS-backed militias. The militias fought among themselves. In short, chaos.
Samson was no longer a viable military option. It was a liability.
And so, with the utmost secrecy, Ava and her team had been sent to remove the spines from the dragon’s back. They retrieved ten and delivered each to a bunker deep in the ground beneath Tel Nof Airbase, where they were to be kept with their much larger, more powerful brethren.
It was the eleventh where things went wrong. Terribly wrong.
Pondering these events, Ava sat alone at a table in the far corner of Confiserie Hanselmann. It was her habit to reward herself with a hot chocolate and a piece of linzer torte after surviving the grueling sessions of physical therapy. She sipped the hot chocolate, ate a bite of the raspberry-flavored torte.
Ava knew what she should do. She should call the office. She should tell them everything she’d heard and be done with it. She was on medical leave. Her last posting was with the diplomatic service. Before that, she’d worked as an analyst handling liaisons with US and British intelligence shops. She hadn’t been akatsa, a covert foreign agent, in twelve years.
So, of course, she did the opposite. Act now. Explain later. Her North Star.
It didn’t matter that she was still recovering from a near-fatal wound and could barely pick up a coffee cup, or that she had no official remitfrom her government to act on its behalf. In her mind, she was back at the job. She had uncovered the information. Gerd Lutz was her joe. It was her case to work. Besides, she told herself (in case she needed further justification for her actions), time was a factor. Who knew how long it would be before the boys back home acted, or, more importantly, whether they would act at all? They didn’t know Lutz. They hadn’t heard the fear in his voice.
Things couldn’t be clearer. She had no choice but to act on her own.
Decision made.
Ava got to work. She did the usual. Google. Social media. There were enough pictures to fill an encyclopedia. An article from a local paper caught her attention. “St. Moritz Chalet Sells for Record Price.” It was called the Chesa Grischuna, and two years earlier, TNT, “the jet-setting Qatari prince,” had paid 150 million Swiss francs for “the jewel of the Engadin.”
A quick check showed the Chesa Grischuna to be only a short walk.
Ava peered out the window. It was the height of ski season. Men and women walked past the window, dressed chicly, paragons of fashion. Ava stuck out by contrast. Put simply, she was dressed too plainly. No one looks closely at a tourist. They might look closely at a tall, athletic woman with vaguely ethnic features dressed as if she were about to embark on night reconnaissance.
Directly across the street, no more than ten steps away, stood the Bogner boutique. There was a mannequin wearing a red parka with a fur-lined hood she would never be caught dead in, a furshapkaand fawn ski pants tighter than anything she’d worn since she was eighteen. It was a start.
Forty minutes later, she found herself hiking up theAlpenstraßein the direction of the Suvretta House, on the western outskirts of town, and dressed like Ursula Andress or Brigitte Bardot. It had been a long time since she’d walked any distance. St. Moritz Dorf sat at an altitude of1,869 meters, or nearly six thousand feet. Hardly the top of Everest, but she was winded all the same.
She rounded a bend. The tall pine trees lining the road fell away. To her right, a broad snow-covered hillside came into view. And built on that hillside, towering high over the road, all glass and steel, the Chesa Grischuna, TNT’s alpine residence. “Chesa” meant “chalet” in Romansh, the ancient dialect spoken in the eastern corner of Switzerland, but the Chesa Grischuna looked less like a chalet than anything she’d ever seen. Not a balcony or window box or geranium to be seen. No eaved roof. No wood or plaster anywhere. It was sleek, modern, and aesthetically beautiful, as it should be, thought Ava, for the 150 million francs TNT had paid for it several years earlier. Three stories above ground, four stories below, according to the article in theSt. Moritz Zeitung. Swimming pool, bowling alley, cinema, ten-car garage, and, not to be missed, aFonduestube mit Kachelofen, or cheese room. Everything a Middle Eastern prince could desire.
Ava continued walking, taking no pains to hide her interest in the chalet. It would be more conspicuous had she not stared. What, she asked herself, does a thirty-three-year-old prince—an heir to the largest fortune on earth, a collector of exotic automobiles, a connoisseur of fine cuisine—want with a nuclear weapon?
The answer was frightening, if vague. Nothing good.
She came to a wooden bench on the side of the road. A heart was cut out of the top and an inscription read “Rolando Wyss, friend of the mountains.” She sat down, grateful for some rest. Her shoulder ached, and so did her legs. She took a bite of a truffle, another of Hanselmann’s divine creations. When in doubt, eat chocolate.
It was just past three, an hour later in Tel Aviv. It was, she decided later, the moment that she returned to active duty. It was important to remember, if only so she could put in for full pay and benefits.
“Zvi, that you?” she asked, phone to her ear. Zvi Gelber, deputy director of Tzomet—the division of Mossad in charge of foreign intelligence collection, including the recruitment and running ofagents—was a legend in the service. He had to be eighty, if a day, though for all Ava knew, he could be older. He’d been at Mossad since the days of Golda Meir and Moshe Dayan, the days when the continued existence of the Israeli State was still in question. They called him “the old man.”
“Who’s this? My phone says Ava Attal, but that can’t be. Rumor is she’s married a Swiss gnome and is living in a vault, counting gold coins and nibbling on cheese.”
“Very funny,” said Ava. “Not married and, sadly, no gold coins. But I am in Switzerland, and I do have a gnome—a garden gnome.”
“One out of three ain’t bad,” said Gelber. “I know you’re calling to see how I’m doing. Seventy-seven, nearly deaf, and missing my favoritekatsa.”
