Glitter and Smoke

An unmarked cargo plane was hit by anti-aircraft fire as it was coming in for a landing somewhere in the vicinity of Erbil in Northern Iraq. It is believed that the shots originated among Kurdish rebels. A Mossad agent, friendly with the local insurgents, gets access to the wreckage and stumbles on a small briefcase; it contains a fortune in diamonds. He assumes that he just happened onto a drug traffic exchange location, where opiates are sold for diamonds.

An important piece of intelligence reached David Heller, Mossad's new Head of Disruption. Two ships had transited through the Bosphorus, the Istanbul Strait, that links the Black Sea to the Mediterranean Sea. Someone thought they saw missiles below deck, but the Turkish navy did not want to intervene. The belief was that the two boats were on their way to Syria and, if so, would have to be intercepted.

Mossad designs a plan to infiltrate the drug trade with the help of an invention from a star scientist: diamonds manufactured through a totally novel process. They appear virtually indistinguishable from the real ones. Working with Countess Renate, the founder and head of The Shadow Experts, Mossad finds a way to have the diamonds cut and uses them to trade with the smugglers; moreover, it discovers a hitherto unknown Russian activity. Will the Russian ships succeed in making their suspected arms delivery? Could their interception bring about a larger confrontation as both Russian and American navy ships are in the area? Will the worst be avoided? Will the terrorists who were attempting to resuscitate ISIS in Syria be prevented from wreaking havoc?