Sleeper agents

An excerpt of my 10th book "An irretrievable step".

The unit's weekly meeting opened up in an atmosphere of an awkward silence. Although there were several issues on the agenda, one certain subject caused general uneasiness to everyone present. It was the realization that there were no substantial means of communcation with the team that landed a few days ago in Cairo.

'It was a harsh decision without enough thought.' Dov concluded coughing slightly. 'We'd enough time to solve the problem while they were on leave in Florence, and I can't grasp why it didn't bother us.'

'You said they'll send coded letters to her parents.' Mike remarked he usually did not open his mouth in most of the meetings, but now he could not refrain anymore. 'It's a one way flow of minimal information but how are we supposed to instruct them to send them orders, by editing or forging her parents' letters?'

'We won't touch her parents' letters, we may assume in general terms how they're doing through her letter that we've received a copy yesterday, but we haven't invented a code by which they'll understand what we want of them.'

'What about the Italian embassy in Cairo, it could be used…?' Dan asked and went straight on. 'They surely have one or two of their intelligence members among the embassy staff.'

'They haven't reopened it yet, they've shut it down like most of the foreign embassies in Cairo during the invasion, and I believe that our couple's passports were not stamped, to allow them to land smoothly again in our country or in any other western country.'

'We can refer to them as to sleeper agents up to next December, when they'll have their holiday leave in Italy. He's an independent type and they get along very well together, while the little we'll have to know we'll get through her letters.' Joe expressed his view to sum up the matter; he was sure it's the only possible solution. 'We didn't have a sign from them during their previous stay in Luxor.' He added with emphasize.

'Okay Joe that's one option that we'll take into account, but let's check some more possibilities.' Dov remarked turning to the others. 'What's the background over there, what's going to happen there in the coming days, Dan?'

'Well there's a UN peace corps units of Colombians and Danes along the Suez Canal, a flow of engineers and technicians are supposed to come soon from the Soviet Union to build the Aswan dam; and some tens of East German scientists are bound to come, to assist Nasser to construct ground to ground missiles.'

'Thanks Dan so we might find an indirect contact man in the U.N. headquarters in Cairo, while the Russians and East Germans are out of the questions I'm afraid. What do you thing Joe?'

'I think it would be too risky to try and operate indirectly a contact man, which will get in touch with them be it a Russian or a German. I'd let them get along on their own, there might be changes in two or three months or I'll see them in Italy in five months time.'

'Okay has anyone else some other views, if not we'll let them be up to December as Joe says.'

© Haim Kadman September 2013 " all rights reserved.