13

The Operators

2009–2010 . . . Living in fear . . . Nestor Del Rosario rises . . . Warning signs . . . Summoned to Kenya

Back in Manila the morning after his harrowing boat trip, Moran Oz rushed to find Alon Berkman, his Israeli colleague. By this point, Berkman knew something was amiss. He’d been un- able to reach Oz or Le Roux for thirty-six hours. Now Oz turned up back at their hotel, looking ashen. The two of them immedi- ately switched locations, hoping Le Roux would be unable to track them. They bought tickets for the next flight out of Manila to Hong Kong, and then back home.

After Oz returned to Israel, friends noticed that his demeanor had changed. One childhood friend said that Oz wouldn’t tell him what happened on his trip, making only cryptic statements about his boss. “I don’t think I should be working with this guy,” he told the friend. Oz installed security cameras in his home, bought a gun, and varied his routes to work. “He was different, like he was shut down,” the friend said. “He was suspicious. We didn’t know of what.”

Still, he went back to work managing the call centers in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem alongside Berkman, who had taken on accounting