To the Death

Jerry, the Mossad field agent, watching the broadcast at his home in the Saahat ash-Shuhada area (Martyr’s Square), was astounded. His apartment was in the far end of the Old City from Bab Touma, but he had heard the blast. When he moved in to clear out the hit team’s apartment, he had stayed west of the devastated area, keeping to the dark side streets.

He could not believe that proven special operators like Ben Joel and John Rabin could possibly have made such a mistake. The entire plan, he knew, had been to wait and watch for the Rashoods’ return.

He accepted that Shakira was alive. The journalists must have picked up her name from the hospital register. But General Ravi? How could that possibly have happened? The guys must have seen him enter the building. Otherwise they would not have detonated the bomb.

Jerry was mystified, like the police. But he walked out into the square and called the office in the Hada Dafna Building on King Saul Boulevard, reporting what the Damascus news services were saying. The Mossad chiefs had not yet seen the Syrian newspaper, nor had they heard the broadcast, but they knew Ben Joel and the team were safely home and had reported in during the small hours, mission accomplished.

As screw-ups go, considered Jerry, this one was well on its way.

At 11 o’clock that Wednesday morning, February 8, Ravi and Shakira walked out of the hospital toward a waiting taxi. They were greeted by a scrum of reporters and photographers, yelling questions. how did you escape?. do you have any idea who could have done this?. Shakira! Shakira!. this way. Mr. Rashood! Did you save your wife’s life?

This was a terrorist commander’s nightmare. Personal publicity, photographs, questions. But he faced the media with equanimity. “Yes, I am the husband of Shakira Rashood. no, we did not leave the restaurant together. my wife came home with her stepbrother to prepare coffee and pastries. twenty minutes later I followed with Abdul’s wife, Rudy. Yes, of course, both women are extremely upset.”

In answer to the question Mr. Rashood, do you think someone was trying to kill you? he replied, “I doubt it. This was either a complete accident, or a badly mistaken identity.”

For several hours, this innocuous statement held good. Ravi and Shakira moved, temporarily, into the Barada Hotel, on Said al-Jabri Avenue. But as the afternoon wore on, the police were wrestling with one problem: this was one hell of a bomb — who the hell detonated it, and why?

It was plainly not some Molotov cocktail put together by a disparate group of jihadists. This was a major, professional weapon, assembled by an expert, and somehow smuggled into that house on Bab Touma and detonated within minutes of Shakira and Abdul’s return.

This was no accident. This was a plan, which may have gone wrong, but was nevertheless a premeditated action. There was not the slightest sign that it was a suicide bomb. In the opinion of the Damascus Police Department, this bomb had been detonated by a remote-control device and it was meant to kill Mr. Rashood, and perhaps his wife. The trouble was, no one knew who the devil Mr. Rashood was.

And while the Syrian police pondered the mystery, the Hamas War Council moved with lightning speed. They sent a car and two jihadist warriors into Damascus from an outpost they maintained in the southern border city of Der’a and scooped up General Ravi and his wife with military efficiency.

They headed back south and crossed the border into Jordan, providing for their esteemed guests passports upon which the ink was barely dry. They kept going south for another fifty miles until they reached the capital city, Amman, where the Rashoods checked into the Rhum Continental Hotel as Mr. and Mrs. Anwar Mehadi, in accordance with their passports. The men from Hamas had, in fact, moved so fast that Mr. and Mrs. Rashood had vanished from the face of the earth.

Which left the Syrian police, and the media, in something of a quandary. Senior law-enforcement officials understood perfectly well that the bomb had been executed with great precision. They also believed someone wanted to kill, at least, Ravi Rashood very badly.

But like the journalists, they had no idea who he was and why he might have such determined, maybe fanatical, enemies. He had, apparently, lived in Damascus for a few years now, and there had never been one hint of trouble before.

By 1900 something had, however, become clear. The police not only had no idea who he was, they also had no idea where he was. They posted men at the airport and at the train station and the bus station. They checked out the Barada Hotel, but he had very obviously left.