Justifiable Homicide: A Political Thriller (Robert Paige Thrillers Book 1) Page 18

  He succeeded. She seemed startled and taken aback by his invitation to participate.

  “I … I really don’t know. I suppose we could do all of those things.” She actually hoped they wouldn’t do any of those things. She really didn’t have a problem with what the TSA did, although she would prefer they focus their attention on Muslims, since targeting low risk targets like shiksa grandmothers in wheel chairs and goys with urine bags gave the TSA bad publicity, which was counterproductive.

  The discussion continued for a few more minutes. Some members started having separate conversations with other people in the group. When Steinman felt he had lost control of the discussion, he suggested taking a short break.

  Some members of the group used the opportunity to take a pee or a smoke break or to refill their plates. Rachel took the opportunity to start up a conversation with Paige. Although she had an instant distaste for him, she felt compelled to approach him. She shot up out of her chair and started walking toward Paige as fast as her fat little legs would carry her. She hadn’t thought about what she would say. All she knew was that she had to get closer to him to get a better assessment of the threat he posed.

  Her decision to approach Paige saved him the trouble, since he had also decided he wanted to get closer to her, to assess her threat potential.

  “Professor Paige, may I call you Robert?”

  “Yes, of course.” Actually, most people called him Bob, but Russians and other East Europeans usually preferred to call him Robert, so he went along with it.

  “Robert, I was wondering, what is an accounting professor doing cavorting with political science and philosophy professors? I didn’t think accounting professors were interested in this kind of conversation.” Actually, she couldn’t care less what his response would be. She knew he was CIA connected. Much more than just an accounting professor. Her experience with Mossad had taught her that anybody can be a spy. Accounting professors were as capable of being patriots or traitors as anyone else in the general population. She just needed an opening line. That one seemed as good as any.

  “I wasn’t always an accounting professor. I majored in social sciences as an undergraduate, with a concentration in economics and minors in political science, philosophy and history.” What he said was true. What he didn’t say was that he started off as an accounting major and changed majors after three semesters because he failed Intermediate Accounting I. He didn’t return to accounting until after graduation, when he took a job as a bank auditor. He felt compelled to go back to take some night school classes because he didn’t know what he was doing during the day.

  “Ah, that’s interesting. Where did you go to school?” Actually, she didn’t give a shit where he went to school. She just wanted to find out as much as possible about him. She regarded him as the enemy, and it was always a good idea to learn as much about the enemy as you can, since it might help to defeat him.

  Paige knew what she was up to. It was obvious to him she was attempting to gather information. He decided to go with the flow and not resist. Resisting might alert her that he was on to her. Besides, everything he was about to tell her about his education was already posted on his university website, which he was sure she would look at before she went to bed that night. He had planned to do the same thing with her website.

  “I went to Gannon University in Erie, Pennsylvania for my bachelor’s degree. Have you heard of it?”

  “No, I haven’t. I’m sure it was a charming little place.”

  He didn’t know whether she was being polite or sarcastic.

  “Yes, it was a charming little place, come to think of it, although at the time I was too busy working and studying to enjoy its charm.”

  “And for graduate school?”

  “I got my master’s in taxation from DePaul University in Chicago and my law degree from Cleveland State University in Ohio. I also have a PhD in accounting from the University of Warwick in England and a DPhil in finance from the University of the West of England.”

  “Ah, you’ve been to several different places. Which one did you like best?”

  He laughed, temporarily forgetting she was the enemy. He was enjoying the conversation.

  “As far as geographic location is concerned, I suppose I liked England, since it has much less snow than Cleveland, Chicago or Erie. For intellectual stimulation, I think Erie would be my choice. I spent a lot of hours holed up in the Gannon library reading books and staying warm in the winter. There wasn’t much else to do there for six months a year, so I stayed inside and read.”

  “Da, I know what you mean. I’m from Saint Petersburg.”

  “Did you study there?”

  “Yes, I studied sociology and political science at Saint Petersburg State University. I got my PhD in sociology from New York University.”

  She had taken the path of many immigrants, taking a degree or two from a university in the home country, then getting a PhD from an American or British university. Saint Petersburg State University was generally regarded as the second best university in the former Soviet Union, after Moscow State University. Her comment about Gannon University being a charming little place probably had some snobbery attached to it.

  “You mentioned you spent some time in Israel. How long were you there?”

  Her body visibly stiffened. She could feel the conversation turning more in the direction of interrogation. She hesitated and thought for a moment, which people often do when they’re about to tell a lie.

  “Oh, I was only there for a couple of years. I spent my time mostly in a kibbutz.” Her answer was partially true. She did spend some time in a kibbutz. She hoped her answer would satisfy his curiosity. It didn’t.

  “If you were there for a couple of years, then you probably spent some time in the Israeli army, too, didn’t you?” One of Paige’s former Jewish students told him a story about being drafted into the Israeli army after spending a few months in a kibbutz, so he knew it was a distinct possibility.

  She seemed unsettled by the question, but quickly recovered, as best she could. “Yes, I was in the Israeli army for a few months.” Actually, she was in for more than a year.

  “What did you do in the army?”

  “Nothing much, just dug some irrigation ditches.” Actually, she had taken some courses in security procedures and participated in several enhanced interrogations of Palestinians who didn’t have proper credentials and who were suspected of plotting to plant a car bomb outside a crowded street in Tel Aviv. One of them tried to sue her and her colleagues for torture in an Israeli court. The case was dismissed for lack of evidence.

  “So, it was mostly like being on vacation.”

  She let out a small laugh at his comment. “Yeah, mostly.”

  Although she was enjoying the conversation, her main focus was on gathering more information about Paige. As the conversation continued, she made mental notes to help her remember the details she would put in her report of the meeting. Paige did the same thing.

  The meeting broke up around ten-thirty. On the way out, Rachel made a point of striking up a conversation with Paige and walked him to his car. She wanted to see what kind of car he drove and get the license number, which she wrote down as soon as he got in the car. When she got into her own car she immediately scribbled down all that she could remember, so she wouldn’t forget anything. After she got home she added details to her notes and checked out Paige’s university web page, where she was surprised to learn that he also had a PhD in political science from the University of Sunderland, another British university and a certificate in Intelligence Studies from American Military University. She put all the information in her report, which she gave to Sergei Turetsky.

  Turetsky gave Paige’s name and license plate number to a contact he had at the Division of Motor Vehicles and learned Paige’s home address and other information. He downloaded and printed the online copy of Paige’s driver’s license and placed it in his file, along with a printout of Paige’
s university web page. Both documents included a photo of Paige, which he enlarged and distributed to his boss and several of his subordinates, along with a summary report. He decided to have Paige followed.

  58

  “That’s quite an interesting story.” Wellington was commenting on the data dump Paige had just given him of the Steinman get-together. They were having lunch at The Chart House in Coconut Grove. Wellington chose that restaurant because it had tasty seafood and he was in a seafood mood.

  Their outside table overlooked the boats in the marina. A speed boat went by, a little too fast. Its wake caused one boat to slam into another boat, making a small noise. The sun glistened off the water. A sea gull landed and perched on one of the docking posts. The smell of the salt air added to the ambiance.

  Wellington took the chip from Paige’s pen that had recorded the events of the meeting. “I’ll file your report and make copies of the photos you took. You can attach names to the photos after I print them out.”

  Paige leaned forward and looked Wellington in the eyes. “I think Rachel Karshenboym’s going to be a problem. I could feel it. I got the distinct impression that she’s much more than just a sociology professor. She made a point of coming up to me during the break. I felt like I was being interrogated.”

  “Yeah, she probably is much more than just a sociology professor and you probably were being interrogated. I’ll run her name through the system and see what I can find. If you managed to get a good photo of her, we might be able to pick something up with our facial recognition software. She might have done some work using other names. We’ll treat her as a threat for now, but a friendly threat. After all, she does work for the same team, more or less.”

  “Any idea why Mossad might have planted her?”

  Wellington’s eyes narrowed, his lids almost closed as he replied. “I don’t know. I guess they’re just interested in Steinman for the same reasons we’re interested in Steinman.”

  As he uttered the words, Wellington was thinking something entirely different. Mossad knew that Steinman was going to get hit, but Paige didn’t know. Mossad’s options were limited. It was unlikely they would try to prevent the hit. They probably just wanted to monitor the situation for now, and maybe learn something about the aid he was funneling to the Palestinians.

  Wellington wanted to change the subject slightly. “By the way, do you think any of the professors you met at Steinman’s should be put on the list for further investigation? Do you think any of them are a sufficient threat to national security?”

  “Nah. They’re just a bunch of namby pamby professors. Karl Marx probably wouldn’t even bother talking to them.” Wellington smirked. He found the comment to be especially funny, coming from a professor. Paige didn’t want to have any of them investigated. He took a liking to some of them and he liked most of the ideas they came up with to draw attention to the TSA abuses.

  Wellington wanted to pursue the issue. “I’m a little concerned they might organize some demonstrations to protest the TSA’s policies. That kind of thing could catch on like it did with the Occupy Wall Street protests.”

  “Yeah, but those protests were organized and funded by outsiders. These guys are unorganized and unfunded and they don’t have any ties to groups in other cities.”

  “Yeah, like Martin Luther King. He wasn’t organized or funded at first, either, but it didn’t take much funding for him to have an impact. All he had were a cause and people who were willing to march in the streets. And being unfunded today doesn’t mean they’ll be unfunded tomorrow. All they need is one guy like George Soros to take an interest in their cause and they could be funded overnight.”

  Wellington paid the bill in cash. He didn’t want to use his Commerce Department credit card. He didn’t want to have to answer any questions from the bookkeeping department. He could tap into his CIA slush fund without the need for much more than a receipt. They finished their meal and headed toward the parking lot.

  Wellington got in his car. He took out his cell phone and called Jim Bennett, his contact at the FBI, who was also on the CIA payroll.

  “Jim, I’d like you to run a background check on Rachel Karshenboym. She’s a sociology professor at Miami Dade College. Yeah, it’s K-A-R-S-H-E-N-B-O-Y-M. I might be able to send you some photos later. Do a facial recognition scan.”

  “Who is she? What am I supposed to find?”

  “I’ll tell you after you do your check. I want to see how good you are.”

  “Thanks a lot, fuck face. You know the FBI always gets its man … or its woman, in this case. We’ll find something on her even if there’s nothing to find.”

  “On second thought, I think I should give you a few hints, since this search is a little out of the ordinary. She was born in Russia and spent some time in the Israeli army.”

  “Hmmm. I think I see where this is going. Am I to assume I shouldn’t ask for Mossad’s assistance with this search and that I shouldn’t use a Jewish agent to do the search?”

  “That would be a very good assumption. I’m sure you don’t have any Mossad moles in your office, since they are completely trustworthy and don’t have a history of spying on the United States, but there’s always a first time.” He smirked as he said it.

  “Yeah, right.” They both knew it was a joke. A few months previously, the New York Times reported that several Israeli spies had been discovered working at the State Department. It was an open secret that Mossad had spies in sensitive U.S. government positions and that the United States had spies within the Israeli government. It wasn’t considered a big deal, since they were allies. Most of the time the press didn’t even report on it. The New York Times article was an exception. Apparently, something had slipped through the cracks. The usual modus operandi was for someone from the government to suppress the news before it could see the light of day.

  Paige got into his car and drove away. He started to think about what the next few steps might be. He didn’t trust Wellington’s admonitions that Steinman wasn’t on their hit list, although it was plausible that Wellington just wanted to keep apprised of Steinman’s activities. But Professors Shipkovitz and Kaplan had been hit for doing and saying things that weren’t much different from what Steinman had been doing and saying for years. If Wellington was interested in Steinman, maybe he was also interested in Shipkovitz and Kaplan. Maybe interested enough to silence them. And the two guys who accosted him in the university parking lot apparently worked for Wellington, based on what he saw of their conversation in the alley by Wellington’s Commerce Department office building. There were too many unknowns. He decided to go along with the plan. For now.

  59

  “Thank you for your report. I think you’ve identified the CIA mole. Anyone who would have a pen in his pocket that is capable of taking photos isn’t an ordinary accounting professor.” Sergei Turetsky was commenting on the report of the Steinman meeting Rachel Karshenboym had just given him orally. They sat in Turetsky’s real estate office, along with his Mossad boss, Aaron Gelman. It was after 9 p.m. All the other real estate agents had gone home. They were alone. It was quiet. The air conditioning put a chill on the room. Rachel noticed it.

  Gelman didn’t usually get involved in minor projects, especially in the early stages. The fact that he was physically present at the meeting indicated that he didn’t regard the Steinman project as something minor.

  Turetsky turned toward Gelman. “Do you think we should alert Tel Aviv about this?”

  “No, not yet. That would be premature. Let’s find out some more information first.” Gelman hesitated to pass along the information to his superiors for several reasons. For one, they might dismiss it as nothing and accuse him of being paranoid, which they had done on several other occasions. He didn’t want to appear to be incompetent. He had an image to protect, an image that was damaged due to a few errors of judgment in the past. He didn’t want to have another incident added to his file.

  His other reason for not r
eporting was that Tel Aviv might consider this series of events to be so important that they would take over the project, taking it out of his hands. That would result in another loss of face for him. He could always alert them of this planned hit later, when he had more details.

  Gelman looked at his watch. “What are our options?” He was getting nervous about the time. His wife, Shona didn’t like it when he was out late and it was getting late. Luckily, he always had a built-in excuse. He worked for Mossad and she knew it, although she didn’t know the details. His job prevented her from asking the questions that most wives ask when their husband came home late without a good reason. He had used this built-in excuse to dally with high-end prostitutes from time to time. His preference was non-Jewish blondes from Eastern Europe or the Midwest.

  “Sergei, what do you think?”

  “One option would be to do nothing. Just let it happen.”

  Rachel practically jumped out of her chair to respond. “I like this option. Steinman is a piece of shit. He’s doing things that undermine U.S. security, and that means Israeli security.”

  Gelman was a little startled by her response to the question, and by her enthusiasm. He was accustomed to more reasoned discussions. He also didn’t know about Rachel’s volatility. He wasn’t used to dealing with personnel a few levels lower in the chain of command. He almost never dealt with private contractors or part-timers. Rachel was a part-timer.

  She continued. “We should assist them to make sure they do the job right. If we let him continue doing what he’s doing it would not be in Israel’s best interest.”

  “I think that’s overstating the case.” Turetsky was beginning to think he had made a mistake by bringing Rachel into this case, or for letting her stay to participate in the discussion. Perhaps he should have thanked her and asked her to leave after she finished giving her oral report.