To the Death

As for the Mossad, they were following events blow by blow through the guile of Jerry, who, not wanting to call attention to himself, could do no more than follow events through the television and radio news and the afternoon newspapers.

Thus the Mossad, in the split second of the midnight blast, had lost all of their advantages. So far as they were concerned, General Rashood was as elusive as ever. They no longer had an address for him, they no longer knew even the country he was in, and they no longer knew under what name he was traveling.

BOMB SURVIVOR AND HUSBAND VANISH, confirmed the

Syria Times. “Jesus Christ,” said Jerry.

It took another twenty-four hours before journalists cottoned on to the fact that this Ravi Rashood and his wife might well have had sinister connections. The principal clue came when the bodies of the two guards were found. They did not have the AKs with them, since Abraham had “confiscated” those. But they both had spare ammunition clips, and neighbors stated there had often been armed guards in front of the house. On Thursday evening, the police confirmed that both men had been knifed through the heart, which suggested that the bombers had first unloaded the sentries.

Whichever way anyone looked at it, this was a military-style hit, one that had only narrowly missed succeeding. And there were two outstanding questions that badly needed answering — who was Ravi Rashood, and who wanted him dead?

The trouble in Damascus was that anyone who actually knew who he was, most definitely was not divulging anything. And the only other person in the city who knew the identity of the assassins was Jerry.

Which left the media to speculate, blindly. Was it a gangland killing concerned with drugs? Was Rashood a terrorist the West wanted removed? Had he been attacked by Muslim extremists for whatever reason? Or was this just a local dispute between families or acquaintances?

The latter might have been the favorite explanation but for the enormous size of the bomb. And since no one had any real information, the story quickly died the death. By the weekend, nobody gave it much thought, except for those whose houses had been wrecked.

In Washington the story was barely covered. The agencies picked it up from the Syria Times and transmitted a short item headlined BOMB BLAST IN DAMASCUS. It read:

Damascus. Tuesday. A bomb that detonated in the Old City at around midnight killed at least one man and injured several more. Many houses in ancient Bab Touma Street were damaged, and one was destroyed. The police refused to confirm that it was the work of a jihadist group. But they stressed that it was a very large explosive device, much bigger than those usually associated with suicide bombers.

The New York Times used it at the low end of one of the Middle East pages. The Washington Post used it way inside on an international page. And the Boston Globe

omitted it altogether.

Lt. Commander Jimmy Ramshawe caught it in the Post, and instantly thought that was the end of General Ravi Rashood, since Bab Touma Street was the name stated by the imprisoned Ramon Salman.

He called Admiral Morgan, who had already spotted the news item, and had a call in to David Gavron at the Israeli embassy. When the ambassador called back, however, Admiral Morgan detected an air of uncertainty in his responses that was highly atypical of the Israeli general.

Arnold Morgan smelled a rat. And one hour after Jimmy Ramshawe, David Gavron called back and said, “Strictly between ourselves, old friend, there’s been a bit of a foul-up.”

He recounted in some detail how the plan had misfired, and explained that no one really held the Mossad team to blame. “It was a hundred-to-one chance they would return home at different times, with different people,” said the ambassador. “I’d say anyone would have made the same mistake.”

“Yeah. I agree,” replied Arnold Morgan. “And I guess we’ve now lost him. I’ll have the guys in Guantánamo check whether Salman can give us that cell phone number he called in Syria, but I expect he’ll say he can’t remember it. Even if we persuade him differently, you can bet it will have changed after an attempt like that one on Ravi’s life.”