(Image Credit: Reuters)
In September, 2024, Lebanon was rocked when the batteries inside pagers and walkie talkies purchased by the Islamic group, Hezbollah, exploded. In two days 3,400 were injured and 37 were killed. The battery pack had a “thin, square sheet with six grams of white pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN) plastic explosive” between two regular rectangular battery cells. The detonator, a strip of highly flammable material, completed the deadly middle layer. Designing and manufacturing the device was easy compared to getting Hezbollah to buy the pagers.
What we, as writers, can use here:
What really happened: Hezbollah supposedly uses airport security scanners to check for explosives in shipments. Real life answer: AR-924’s were designed with no metal components making them virtually undetectable by X-ray.
How you can use this in your plotting: We never want to make a mission, or life for that matter, easy for our protagonists. Don’t slide over the obstacles she faces. Think it through and I’m sure you’ll think of likely problems (aka conflict) and an elegant solution.
What really happened: Stings and scams need people. People to do business with. People the mark will trust. Israeli intelligence set up a shell company, later expanded to three, to hide the manufacturer – themselves. They created an online presence with stores, posts, etc. The front company for manufacturing was B.A.C. Consulting along with the even more shadowy Apollo Systems. Someone from the latter approached Taiwanese manufacturer Gold Apollo and negotiated a licensing agreement for B.A.C. Consulting. Gold Apollo’s name would be on the product and it would be listed on their website. B.A.C. Consulting CEO Barsony-Arcidiacono is described as a “Board Member at the Earth Child Institute.” Brilliant. The group told Reuters that Barsony-Arcidiacono had “never held any role there.” Her CV also described her as a former “Project Manager” at the International Atomic Energy Agency in 2008-2009, who organized a nuclear research conference. Actually, she was an intern for eight months.
How you can use this in your plotting: Why have your scammer claim to be on the board of a faceless corporation when an affiliation with an educational and environmental charity is so much more impactful, relatable, and all-round nice person sounding. Put texture and subtlety into her backstory.
I think these ripped-from-the-headlines accounts have layers that we can use to make our books truly current. Do you agree?
I don’t know if I could ever come up with a plot as brilliant as what Mossad came up with. But I can definitely make the effort
And it was so layered!
It’s true, Lane. Truth really is stranger than fiction…because people can be geniuses, fools, lovers, and miscreants, sometimes all at the same time. I’ve gotten a lot of plot ideas from history. In fact, I’m in our Airbnb in Lavenham, England, right now, reading a book in their library (mining for characters)–The Folio Book of Humorous Anecdotes. One chapter is entitled “Eccentrics and Eccentricities.” Right up my alley!
Safe travels, my friend.
Thank you for this. So helpful, Lane. Hard to get one’s head around too.
I was going to say what Connie said, Truth -IS- Stranger than Fiction!
I also agree with Emilya – the most obsessed of us mystery weavers would be hard pressed to invent something half as complicated as what Mossad came up with.
Perhaps though, it is just that we find it hard to fully comprehend that which the human heart is capable. We don’t go far enough, no matter how far we go.
Yes! We don’t go far enough!
Lane, this was so informative. I had no idea… and yes, we think we are inventive and then you read something like this. More than food for thought, it makes us want to push that envelope!
We have to push that envelope!
Thanks so much for this thoughtful analysis. When I read about it, it sounded, as truth often does, stranger than fiction.