“Okay. What’s her motivation?”
“Not personal. She can’t guarantee your involvement.”
“Political, then.”
“Fine. It’s a unilateral act.”
“Then why doesn’t someone take credit, Eytan?”
“Okay. Strike that. It’s operational.”
“Target?”
“The prisoner exchange.”
“She can’t know about it.”
“But she does, Benni. You’re in denial.”
“Okay. Then who’s running her?”
He could imagine Eckstein thinking, rubbing a hand up the back of his blond head.
“No one runs her anymore,” said Eckstein’s voice. “She runs herself.”
“Okay, so who’s financing her?”
“Uh, Hizbollah.”
“Runs counter to logic.”
“Fine. Jabril, then. Nidal, Abbas, the Palestinian rejectionists.”
“Doesn’t really fit with the exchange. You’re back to unilateral, Eytan. But don’t forget the bomber was Iranian.”
“Fine. So you answered your own question.”
“The Iranians?” Benni was squeezing the bridge of his nose, eyes shut, conducting his silent symphony. “Why them? They control Hizbollah, they obviously sanctioned the exchange, they want the military cargo even if they don’t give a shit about Sheik Sa’id.”
Eckstein’s spirit voice did not immediately reply. “They have some other motivation,” his ghostly whisper finally declared.
But Benni could not fathom that, and the dialogue faded. He just could not separate himself, play both parts successfully.
He tried to stagger on alone. If the bombing was an attempt to scuttle the exchange, then that effort had failed. Accordingly, would there not be other attempts? Itzik was right. He had to get on home and tend to this from “inside the perimeter.”
Still, Martina’s role in synchronous events continued to grow. There was the matter of the motorcyclist who had lost his machine and fled. The recovered saddlebag had contained meaningless personal items and one incriminating lead that could not be ignored. It was a well-thumbed map of Boston, with a penciled circle within which fell that city’s Israeli Consulate. Despite Baum’s protests that such a blatant breach of Martina’s security must surely be a decoy, Hanan Bar-El had no choice but to treat it as a new threat.
The fresh team from Tel Aviv had already arrived, and Benni had briefed them at the hotel. They were Mossad people for the most part, as Ben-Zion had agreed with the “civilians” that this was jurisdictionally an intelligence issue on foreign soil, and AMAN had other fish to fry. Most of the young agents were British-born Israelis, and Benni was impressed by their tailored suits and English aplomb, remembering his own recruitment in the sixties, when the “office” had to put you through a course in how to knot a tie and drink an aperitif.
They had thanked him for his input, then huddled with their GSS and NYPD counterparts, preparing to head north for Boston. Benni had to suppress the egotism that had him wishing for their failure, so that he would be recalled to wrap up the case.
“Shvitzer.” He chastised himself with the Yiddish slang for a narcissist. He was already thinking like a retiree, jealous of the vigor and enthusiasm of the young.
Deciding to take another stab at his meal, he plowed up a healthy pile of the potatoes. They tasted like cold, wet plaster, and he caught the waitress’s eye and pointed at his empty beer glass.
If he had to leave, he wished that he could do it now, head straight for Kennedy and catch the late flight to Ben-Gurion. Yet another event prolonged his suffering.
Just after Itzik’s wake-up call, the phone in his hotel room had rung again. This time it was Lieutenant General Avraham Yaron, the IDF’s military attaché at the Israeli Embassy in Washington. Yaron greeted Baum like an old army buddy, which was appropriate since he had been Baum’s squad leader during basic training three decades before. Their career paths had often crossed, spilling over into reciprocal invitations to weddings, brises, and bar mitzvahs.
“Akshev! Ten-hut!” Yaron boomed into the phone.
“Avraham!” Benni smiled despite his foul morning mood.
“You weren’t going to visit me, were you, Baum.” The general’s tone was playfully wounded.
“You were next on my list, I swear. But Itzik’s dragging me home.”
“Jobnik.” Yaron insulted Baum’s commander with an army term meaning “noncombatant,” then his voice grew serious. “Well, now you’ll have to visit me.”
“How come?” Benni sat up on his bed, fully awake.
“First of all, Hanan Bar-El flashed our chief of security down here. Something about Boston, which on my map is in Massachusetts, but he still has our Shabakniks running around like they’re expecting a Syrian invasion. You know about it?”
“Yes.”
“Thought so. I’d like to hear the story from a cool head. But that’s not why you’re coming here.”
“Nu?”
“A package arrived by overnight courier,” said Yaron. “Addressed to you.”
“So?” Benni said with some confusion. “Have someone send it on to Jerusalem in the pouch.”
The general laughed once, a snort without mirth. “No can do, Baum. The thing has no return address, a hefty weight to it, and it’s covered with stamps. Lebanese stamps.”
Benni understood that such a parcel would be automatically tagged “suspicious” and not forwarded anywhere until it was examined. “Oh,” he said. “No return address?”
“That’s right,” said Yaron. “Why? You got relatives in Beirut? Just your name and my address, thank you very much. The sappers have it in the basement, but they want you here for the opening ceremonies.”
“Yes, I understand.”
“Something relevant to that fucking fiasco up there, Baum?”
“Might be.”
“Good. Then swing on down. You might want to have a look inside, if it doesn’t explode first.” The general said this with the flippancy that comes of over-exposure to incoming artillery.
“All right,” Benni sighed. “I can catch a shuttle tonight. Is there a flight out tomorrow?”
“Of course!” Yaron shouted. “This is Washington, not Petach Tikva.” He paused. “And Baum?”
“What?”
“You weren’t going to visit me. Were you?”
“Go to hell, Avraham.”
“Down for thirty!” The general laughed, harking back to the good old days when he could torture Baum with push-ups. . . .
So now this too, Benni thought while the waitress refilled his beer glass. He did not even want to speculate on the meaning of the package, but he had the uneasy feeling that he was wearing a nose ring and Martina was tugging at it, turning his head, drawing blood.
All of this was just very poor timing, a series of occurrences jerking him from his trajectory. He had planned on devoting this last evening to Ruth, a quiet dinner over which they could arrive at some personal conclusions. That was the worst of it, that he and his daughter had just begun to dissolve the obstacles that had kept them apart for years, and now he was severing the tie again before they could seal a fresh pact.
This short time together had been far from ideal, hardly a quiet camping trip in Galilee where they could stare at the stars while he confessed his parental mistakes. Yet they had been immersed together in operations, witnessed each other’s talents and foibles. Perhaps she understood him a bit better now, perhaps he had gleaned the depths of her disappointments. He had always loved her, always been proud, and now he knew that a parent, stingy as he might be with praise in his professional life, had to verbalize those feelings to his children. A child could not be expected to discern love or encouragement. She had to be told.
That was what Ruth was trying to tell him, that it was not too late, that she would forgive two decades of ignorance. She was giving him another chance, yet now the opportunity to speak his heart was be
ing snatched away, and he was not sure that she would grant him a rain check.
And what of Yosh and Amos, his two sons, already in uniform? Had he raised them in that same atmosphere of friendly neglect? He was sure that he had. Were his excuses of the call to duty enough to assuage their loneliness in his absence? He doubted it profoundly. Would his poor example of manhood and fatherhood turn them into parents who also patted their toddlers’ heads in passing, while they laced up their combat boots and went back to their units? One a paratroop recruit now, one a pilot candidate. He had taught them to replace intimacy with sacrifice.
Benni had never shared with anyone, not even Maya—especially Maya—that his most terrible fear was losing one of the children to untimely death. As a young father, he had been awakened by horrific nightmares of auto accidents, suffocations, terrorist attacks on their nurseries. And like every soldier determined to survive, he had suppressed those fears, camouflaged the ugly secret.
Yes, I am afraid for her, he admitted now. Ruth lived in a city rife with horrors that made Jerusalem seem like a Vermont village by comparison. Add to that equation a woman like Martina, and although Ruth was only on the periphery, his fears began once more to rise in his chest.
If only O’Donovan had reacted properly when he had the chance, this nightmare could have been swept away.
And that was another factor that churned his stomach juices. O’Donovan. There was no ignoring the fact that the American and Ruth had begun to form a bond. It was hard enough for a father to accept a daughter’s sexuality, yet this potential union, with all its verbal jousts and hungry gazes of an onrushing tryst, deeply worried him. All Benni needed now was for Ruth to marry an Irish Catholic and wind up living in America for the rest of her life.
Ruth O’Donovan. The sound of it made him miserable.
“I haven’t seen that pose since Maccabi Tel Aviv lost the basketball cup in ’seventy-nine.”
Benni looked up to see Ruth standing directly across the table, somewhat pleased at having caught her father in so vulnerable a posture. His elbows were on the table and his head was in his hands, and he quickly placed them in his lap and smiled up at her.
“Erev tov, yefefiah sheli. Good evening, my beauty.” The compliment was genuine, for as she pulled out a chair and slipped into it, he could see that her inherent physical traits had been further enhanced by grooming. Her hair was freshly washed, she wore a blue silk blouse beneath her camel coat, and the hemline of some sort of skirt revealed too much thigh.
“Abba.” She leaned across the table and kissed him on the cheek.
Perfume. And her blouse was not buttoned to the throat. Benni dipped his head around the table and glanced at her legs. “You’re wearing a dress.”
“It’s a jeans skirt, Abba.”
“You look very nice.” Stockings? Could not be. Not Ruth.
“Thank you.” She placed a small leather bag on the table and pointed at his plate. “That must be your second serving.” She had never seen a steak survive in his presence for very long.
“Yes.” He smiled weakly. “I already had the shrimp pasta.”
Ruth raised a doubtful eyebrow. Like most Israelis, her father was none too keen on crustaceans.
“Would you care for a drink?” The waitress appeared at her shoulder.
“A gin and tonic, please,” Ruth said, switching momentarily to English. She turned back to her father. “So here we are again, Abba.”
“I am so sorry, Ruti.” Benni squirmed, sure that she was going to reprimand him for his untimely departure. “I wish that I could . . .”
She placed her hand over his fist and stopped him with her smile. “It’s all right, Abba. Really.” She spotted his Marlboros and plucked one from the pack. “You know, in the past three days we’ve spent more time together than in the past five years.”
Benni nodded, holding his breath like a defendant as the jury foreman rises from the box.
“It was very good.” Ruth’s eyes sparkled at him. “Much more than I could have expected.”
He had a profound urge to pull his daughter to her feet and crush her to him. Yet he just sat there, stunned by her magnanimity.
She lit the cigarette, sat back, and blew out a stream of smoke. “Ahh.” She sighed with pleasure. “Hoo-kanah. The best brand.”
Benni smiled. Hoo-kanah literally meant “Someone else bought them.”
“So did you get a lot done today?” he asked, determined to maintain the friendly atmosphere.
“Caught up on all my homework, like a good girl.” She reached down to the floor and moved a small white shopping bag to his side. “There’s perfume in there for Eema. And I got Yosh and Amos both Maglites for the army. Don’t leave it in an airport lounge somewhere.”
“I won’t.”
“I also gave you a copy of my thesis proposal.” Then she added somewhat self-deprecatingly, “Might help you sleep on the plane.”
“Nonsense. I’ll be fascinated. Thank you.”
She shrugged and looked out at the other patrons.
“Would you like something to eat?” Benni offered.
She turned back to him, a hesitation in her eyes. “I thought you had to go.”
“Well, yes.”
“That’s all right,” she said quickly. “I’ll get something later.”
He sensed some sort of embarrassment in her tone, a censorship. Yet he did not press her. “I was going to catch the late-night flight back home, but I have to go to Washington now.”
“Really? And how is it going? Any further word of her?”
“No.” He very much did not want to discuss Martina. “And really, I am sorry we can’t have dinner.”
“Oh, stop it, Abba. You’ve apologized twice in two minutes. It scares me.”
Benni obeyed and forced a smile. He watched his daughter as she looked up at the silent television screen. Why was she being so complaisant? Where was her anger, her childlike admonitions? He was more comfortable with those emotions, in light of this strange acceptance of his departure. It was almost as if she could not wait for him to go.
“Ruti?” he suddenly said brightly as he pushed his plate of cold food aside, folded his hands together, and leaned forward.
“Yes?”
“How about coming with me?”
A small furrow appeared above her nose. “To Washington?”
“No.” He grinned foolishly. “Home.”
“I can’t take time off now, Abba. I’m in the middle of—”
“Not a vacation,” said Benni, still afloat on his deluded optimism. “I mean permanently.”
Ruth slowly withdrew toward the back of her chair, regarding him as if she had spotted fangs in his mouth.
“No, really,” said Benni, not heeding the warning signs. “You could go to Jerusalem U. We’ll get you your own apartment.”
“Abba.” She began to shake her head.
“There’s an excellent program on the Mount Scopus campus. My department uses the chief psychologist up there.”
“Abba,” Ruth said more strongly, her words expelled from between clenched teeth. “You are ruining it.”
“Why?” He pressed on, propelled by his own emotions now, his fear. “Why not?”
“Because,” she snapped as she violently stubbed out her cigarette. “I am not some child who needs to be monitored by Mommy and Daddy.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“That’s exactly what you mean.”
“You don’t understand the dangers.”
“What dangers?”
“Have you been blind the last three days?”
“No, I haven’t been blind, Abba.” She leaned toward him now, the fire in her eyes. “I have not been blind at all. You’ve tried to treat me like a child every step of the way. You were angry every time I tried to contribute.”
“That’s not true.” Benni wagged his head. “You don’t understand.” There was no way for him to explain his predicament. He could n
ot give over enough facts to mount a reasonable defense.
“Oh, I do understand,” Ruth snapped. “I think you’re jealous. You can’t stand having me compete on the same level.”
“Nonsense.” Benni dropped a hand on the table, making the cutlery sing.
The waitress had sneaked inside their confrontation and slipped the drink to Ruth’s side. Ruth snatched up the gin and tonic, took a long slug, and stuck out her chin. “I’m afraid it is not nonsense,” she said with a psychologist’s superiority.
“Ruti,” Benni tried again, ignoring her huff when she heard her childhood nickname. “I am only concerned for your welfare. You can call it drama, if you like, but there is a very dangerous woman on the loose. She knows me well, and she might threaten you too.”
“Oh, please!” Ruth expelled a sarcastic laugh. “I’ve been riding the New York subways for years, and you never worried about that!” Her raised voice turned the heads of some other patrons. The language was foreign to them, but a fight was a fight in any tongue.
Benni sat back, lowering his head. “Yes I did,” he muttered, and the rest followed in unverbalized confessions. I was scared breathless. Always. Forever. Every day, from the minute you were born.
And all at once he was stung by his own ineptitude, how quickly and clumsily he had torn the scab from a healing wound. We must be eternity’s fools, he thought, to dream that there might ever be peace, when I can’t even maintain a three-day cease-fire with my own daughter. What gave him the right to be so bloody arrogant? What psychotic insecurity made him strive for command, for control, for positions where his word was always the last one? What kind of pathetic cowardice had he unleashed upon Ruth, trying to shackle her like some helpless autistic? He should have simply said, “I am worried about you. I love you and I am frightened of dangers beyond my control. But you are a grown, intelligent, resourceful woman, and I trust your judgment.”
His shame brought a deep flush to his face. He would apologize once more, say it all, even if it fell flat. He raised his eyes to look at her and was momentarily heartened to find a smile at her lips. Yet she was not looking at him.
Detective Michael O’Donovan was crossing the floor. The tall American was clearly off duty, sporting a black turtleneck, blue jeans, and a woolen baseball jacket with green leather sleeves. The significance of this casual attire was not lost on Benni, whose optimism faded quickly to a dark resentment of the intrusion.
The Nylon Hand of God Page 23
