Read an Excerpt
Taking Morgan
A Political Thriller
By David Rose Skyhorse Publishing
Copyright © 2014 David Rose
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-5107-0072-7
CHAPTER 1
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
For a woman who had to keep secrets, Morgan Cooper had a dangerous habit. When she felt stressed or anxious, she would voice her thoughts aloud.
What she actually said that fine spring morning in Tel Aviv was not in itself very reckless. She was stretching her tendons after her run by a bench that faced the beach, uncomfortably aware that her workout had done nothing to ease her frustration. It was not yet eight o'clock, and the sand was still scored by the tracks of the vehicles that groomed it each evening. But the sun was already rising above the line of hotels that flanked the seafront, and her skin was filmed with sweat. She wiped her face on the shoulder of her running vest and noticed a bulbous woman in pink velour. She looked about the same age as Morgan, thirty-seven, but was in markedly poorer shape. "You go girl," Morgan muttered. "Or else it's all downhill from here."
The unexpected response came from somewhere behind her right shoulder: a deep male voice with a strong Hebrew accent. "You think my wife needs more exercise? I shall be sure to let her know."
Morgan half-turned and looked up at the voice's owner: a tall man in his early fifties, with what was left of his graying hair cropped short. He was standing close, and she had seldom felt so embarrassed.
"Oh my God, I'm so sorry," she began. "I know this sounds ridiculous but I just didn't realize I was speaking aloud. I think it's just great that your ..."
The man raised his hand and cut her off. He smiled. "My dear, it is I who should be apologizing. That lady is not really my wife. In fact, I have no idea who she is."
"What did you say? But —"
"I was joking with you. A little stratagem. Forgive me if I'm mistaken, but I'm certain we've met before."
Morgan squinted against the glare, noting his lean and rigid bearing: evenly tanned, he cut an impressive figure. Like her, he was wearing a vest and running shorts, though his skin was still dry. He looked utterly unfamiliar.
He held out his hand. "Yitzhak Ben-Meir. I think it was a couple of years ago, at that New Year's party in Virginia. At the Watzmans' place. Am I right?"
Morgan had been trained to react to surprise encounters with outward equanimity. But even as she tried to exude a polite, uninterested distance, she felt off-balance.
"It's nice to meet you, Mr. Ben-Meir, but I don't know anyone called Watzman, and it just so happens that I've spent the past three New Years in San Antonio. Morgan Cooper. I'm here for a brief visit. A business trip." She made a show of looking at her watch. "I must be going, or I'll be late for my meeting."
"Are you sure I can't get you a coffee?" he said, gesturing toward the beach. "It's such a lovely morning, and the cafés over there are pretty decent. Or perhaps you'd prefer a juice?"
"I don't think so." She shook her head, still smiling politely. "Anyhow, I need to email my husband and make sure everything's okay with the kids. Perhaps we'll run into each other some other morning."
She could hardly have given him the brush-off more decisively, but Ben-Meir was persistent. "Even if we didn't meet before, we should have." He was staring into her eyes. "Are you quite sure you wouldn't like to sit and chat? I think you might find we have certain, how shall I put it, common interests."
"Like I said, I have to get going."
"Well if you change your mind, please, give me a call. You know what they say: it's not what you know, but who you know, and I know a lot of people in this country." He pulled a business card from the pocket of his shorts and gave it to her. It stated his name, his title as director of marketing at a company in Herzliya, and an Israeli cell phone number. "Make sure you don't throw it away. You might decide you need it. Well, so long for now."
At last Morgan took her leave, breaking into a gentle jog as she crossed the waterfront street, then turned left and ran on to her boutique lodgings, a Bauhaus former cinema on a quiet little square near the Dizengoff shopping mall. Whoever he really was, Yitzhak Ben-Meir had left her feeling deeply uncomfortable.
As she washed off the sweat in the shower, it seemed to Morgan that his silent approach and strange introduction were things he had practiced. She hadn't been wearing her wedding ring, but he did not strike her as the type of man who would commonly hit on a perspiring woman at a beach. And then there was the business card. What normal person carried one of them in his jogging shorts? His interest had to be professional: he must have been sent to try to find out more about what he'd called their "common interests." That meant that her flimsy cover was blown.
Emerging from the bathroom, Morgan sat wrapped in a towel on the edge of her bed and connected her laptop to the Internet. Within a few minutes, Google had confirmed it: Yitzhak BenMeir, a retired colonel — at least he was using his real name — had spent most of his career in intelligence, not with the Mossad, but Haman, the Israeli Defense Forces' intel section. The website of the firm on his business card, We Gotcha!, was a high-technology start-up, its board made up of a handful of retired intelligence officers and scientists. Its main product was a futuristic scanner, which was supposed to be able to spot potential terrorists by monitoring their biometric indicators when they printed their boarding cards at airports. Morgan knew all about "retired" intelligence officers. His connections with his former employers were almost certainly still strong.
Downstairs, she sat on the hotel terrace, grazing lightly on a buffet breakfast of eggs, flatbread, and salads. She knew the sensible thing to do would be to abort her mission and return to her family in America. Ben-Meir's approach had given her a compelling reason: her security had been compromised. Going home would mean she'd be there for the children during next week's school spring break. There could be picnics, hikes, a trip to a water park. It also meant she wouldn't have to upset Adam's preparations for his forthcoming Supreme Court date. She wouldn't have to make the phone call she'd been dreading: a warning to him that he'd have to find additional childcare, because she'd been detained in the Middle East.
She knew exactly how he would respond. Of course it was true that the case was important, both for Adam's career and because of the legal issues it raised. But so far as Adam was concerned, all the cases he had ever done always were significant, and his work more important than hers, as well as more important than the wearisome grind of raising kids, keeping a house, and ensuring someone had taken the necessary retail steps to ensure its occupants always had something to eat and well-fitting clothes. The biggest upside to going home was that she wouldn't have to experience Adam's inevitable resentment if she told him she had to stay.
At the same time, the thought of bailing was almost unbearable. Since the birth of her children, Morgan had spent years working behind a desk, first at Headquarters in Langley, Virginia, and then at an anonymous satellite building near the Tyson's Corner shopping malls. She had had to fight hard to be reassigned to the field, and knew only too well that some of her colleagues were waiting for her to fail.
Before she made her final decision, she ran over the events of the previous day. She still couldn't figure what had gone wrong. She had left the hotel early, with just a purse and a small travel bag, telling the receptionist she had no need to check out, because she only planned to be away for two nights.
Mohammed, the Arab Jerusalemite driver she always used on her trips to the region, had been waiting as usual in his aging white Mercedes, the air-conditioning running. "To Erez," she had said, detecting in return a tiny intake of breath.
Erez was the gateway to the Gaza Strip, and she could well see why Mohammed might not think that this was an ideal time for an American woman to be visiting Gaza on her own. But Mohammed knew that Gaza was where Morgan often went, and he kept his doubts to himself. As always, she had been dressed modestly, in a plain long cotton skirt and a blouse with long sleeves. She wore little makeup, and on the seat beside her was a headscarf, ready for use.
The traffic through the Tel Aviv suburbs was heavy. Soon, however, the car was gliding down an empty highway through the lush, irrigated flatlands of Israel's south, the limestone ramparts of the Hebron hills far away to the left. In not much more than an hour, the Erez terminal loomed: an echoing hall of glass and steel, far bigger than necessary for its meager flow of travelers. Mohammed parked the vehicle and carried Morgan's bag to the external security gate. She showed her passport and was swallowed by the turnstile.
On either side of the terminal lay the concrete slabs and razor wire of the Wall, Israel's security fence. Morgan knew that the infra-red and seismic sensors which ran along its length could detect any movement within several hundred meters, while the marksmen who occupied its many watchtowers were trained to kill anyone who appeared to pose a threat. The Wall penned Gaza's militants in, away from vulnerable targets in cities such as Ashdod or Tel Aviv. Should she run into any trouble, it would also be quite effective in keeping a potential rescuer out.
About twenty travelers were already waiting, and as Morgan stood there, last in line, they passed through the passport check without hindrance. But when it came to her turn, Morgan first had to wait almost twenty minutes while the girl, a listless Russian immigrant, conducted a long conversation on her cell phone. Its subject, so far as Morgan could make out with her rudimentary Hebrew, was which Ashkelon restaurant her boyfriend might take her to that evening.
At last the girl looked up: "What is the purpose of your visit?"
"Business."
"What is your father's name?"
"Robert E. Lee Ashfield."
"Mother?"
"Sherry Ashfield."
"Her mother?"
"Janet Jones."
"Are you Jewish?"
"No."
"Have you ever been an Israeli citizen or resident?"
"No."
The questions never varied. The clerk was looking for a Jewish name, for among the many curious features of the Israel-Palestine conflict was that though people still spoke of Gaza being under Occupation, Jews had been strictly forbidden from passing through Erez since Israel's disengagement of 2005 and the closure of the Strip's Jewish settlements.
The clerk's desk phone rang and she picked it up. She listened for a few moments, then put the receiver down and turned to Morgan.
"I'm sorry. You can't go today. The border is closed," she said.
Morgan struggled to keep her cool. "But you didn't say anything before! What's happening? Other people have already gone in. I saw them. Why can't I?"
The girl shrugged. "Until now they didn't tell me. Maybe it will be open tomorrow. But you know in Gaza there is much trouble. Maybe tomorrow it will be closed again. Then comes Friday: if it opens then, it will be closed at one o'clock. The day after is Saturday, when it is always closed. Why don't you come back on Sunday?"
Morgan had asked Mohammed to wait for at least an hour, until she was sure she could enter Gaza, and it was with relief that she had noticed that he and his car were still there. That, however, was the only glimmer of light.
Twenty-four hours later, as Morgan drained the last of her coffee, she still hadn't made her decision. She could simply ignore her strange encounter with Ben-Meir, and pass her problem up her chain of command: if the US were to exert a little diplomatic pressure, it might well prove effective. That, however, would mean being delayed for days.
But the more she thought about it, the more she realized she did have an alternative opening — Yitzhak Ben-Meir. If she played him right, and told him just enough, maybe he would help her. His background with Haman must surely mean that he had the contacts to ensure her passage through Erez. The more she pondered, the less she saw any downside. So what if he'd figured out that she was a spy. It could hardly be news to the Israelis that the CIA was trying to develop its own Palestinian sources. Anyhow, the last time she looked, America and Israel were on the same side.
She stood up, walked into the lobby, and summoned the elevator. She had left Ben-Meir's card on her bedroom desk. He answered the phone after two rings.
"Colonel Ben-Meir? It's Morgan Cooper, the American to whom you introduced yourself a little while ago. I wondered if I might accept your invitation after all. Shall we meet for lunch? I need to ask you something."
Ben-Meir paused for less than a beat. His voice disclosed no hint of surprise. "Of course, my dear Ms. Cooper, it would be nothing but a pleasure. But I am busy until the evening. Why don't I meet you in your hotel lobby? We can decide where to go from there. Would seven thirty suit?"
She hadn't told him, but naturally enough, he had known where she was staying.
This time, Morgan did not forget her rings: both her wedding band and the art deco diamond engagement ring that Adam had inherited from his great-grandmother, the glamorous Lottie Kuperwasser — a one-time star of German silent movies, who had escaped to Hollywood shortly before the Nazis took power.
She tried on several outfits. She had a gray linen business suit that she put with a skimpy tank top, but it looked both too formal and too provocative, as if she were planning to go wild at a corporate sales conference. Next she tried jeans, finding them way too casual. Finally she settled for a classic black silk dress which ended just above the knee. Inspecting herself in the mirror, she considered it set off her honey blonde bob and bright blue eyes nicely. Despite her life's many pressures, years of competitive track and field and constant later vigilance had left her with a flat stomach and lithe, well-muscled limbs. For makeup, she used only foundation, an almost invisible lip gloss, and a coat of mascara. She might feel desperate, but at least she didn't look it.
Ben-Meir had turned himself out in a pressed green linen shirt and a pair of black designer jeans. He greeted her with gallant formality, then led her to a taxi he had left waiting outside. Their destination was a seafood restaurant a mile or two down the seafront, near the Hassan Bek mosque. Decorated with anchors and nets on the walls, it was already almost full. Ben-Meir had made reservations. There were tables outside, but so early in the season, the air was turning chilly. They took their seats by a panoramic window. The morning breakers had gone and the sun was a swollen orange, dipping to the milky horizon.
"It's beautiful, isn't it?" he said. "Now, Morgan Cooper, before you ask me this question, please, tell me all about yourself."
Ben-Meir, Morgan noted with approval, was wearing his own gold wedding ring. What she had envisaged as a hurried drink was to become a leisurely dinner, accompanied by a fragrant Golan Riesling. She had spent enough evenings dining alone not to savor it.
"I'm married, with two kids," she began. "There's Aimee, who's ten, and little Charlie: he's two years younger. My husband's a lawyer. He used to work for a nonprofit law center but now he's with Spinks McArthur: white-shoe guys with offices in a dozen American cities and more overseas. In fact, I'm sure they've got a presence in Tel Aviv. But he does pro bono work. Sometimes it's kind of controversial. He seems to have a thing just now about defending the rights of Muslim terrorists." Her candor was deliberate: much better that Ben-Meir hear about Adam's clients from her, and in any case, she presumed he already knew. "We live in Bethesda, Maryland. Near enough to the Metro for the mortgage to be horrendous."
Ben-Meir nodded. It seemed that Bethesda was not entirely alien to him. "I understand the Bethesda school district has quite a reputation, though I'm more familiar with Virginia. I once spent a year there, living in Alexandria while I did my masters at NDU. But I've always thought Bethesda is one of the nicest DC suburbs."
"Well, we certainly like it. But I'm really a Lone Star State girl. My mom's still down there, in toasty San Antonio."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Taking Morgan by David Rose. Copyright © 2014 David Rose. Excerpted by permission of Skyhorse Publishing.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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