Quill of the Dove

by Ian Thomas Shaw

  Chapter

  64

  Tel Aviv – October 2007

  AARON RABIN SITS PATIENTLY in the hospital chair. His old friend will soon awake. He has time. Better to let him sleep a little longer. His injuries are extensive. He’s found what Bronstein had asked for. A name, a motive, irrefutable proof of a conspiracy. The fingerprint and DNA had pointed them in the right direction.

  The nurse enters to change the bag of IV fluid and morphine.

  “Your friend is still not out of danger. His heart was badly bruised. His ribs are healing slower than they should. He told us he wanted a discharge. You should convince him that it’s too soon.”

  Aaron nods politely as the nurse leaves, but he knows that Bronstein wouldn’t listen to him anyway.

  “She’s a pretty one,” Bronstein says, his voice gravelly.

  Aaron looks at the hospital bed. Bronstein is smiling through his pain and trying to pull himself up. The morphine is working its magic.

  “Good to see that you noticed,” Aaron says. “But take it easy. Lie back. I have what you want.”

  “Show me!”

  “It’s all up here,” Aaron says, pointing to his head.

  “Fine, tell me then.”

  Aaron walks Bronstein through Hussein Harb’s file. The bomber was a poor farmer coerced into serving in Haddad’s South Lebanon Army. He was given refuge in Israel when the Hezbollah and Lebanese army regained control of the South. Palestinian gunmen returned to his village and took their retribution out on his seventeen-year-old son. After that, Harb was never the same. In Israel, he eked out a pauper’s existence by occasionally working as an informant for the Mossad.

  “So why would he kill himself to attack us? What was Arkassa to him?” Bronstein asks.

  “It wasn’t Arkassa at all. It was vengeance. I mean, it was Harb’s payment for the vengeance that he couldn’t exact himself.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The day before the bombing, three Palestinians were assassinated in Sidon. They were the men who had murdered the son.”

  “Who killed them?”

  “Our people.”

  “What? On whose orders?”

  “I think you know who. There’s only one person in the Mossad so insane to make a deal like that.”

  Bronstein rolls his eyes to the ceiling. That Moldovan psychopath!

  “Look. I need you to get me something.”

  “Do you mean this?” Aaron pulls a rectangular case out of a small gym bag. He stands up and opens it.

  “What’s its range?”

  “Two kilometres. It’s the best that we have, and it’s completely polymer. You can take it even through a metal detector.”

  Bronstein puts his hand on his friend’s forearm, and whispers: “Thank you. Now tell that pretty nurse to get me out of here.”

  Chapter

  65

  Ramat HaSharon – October 2007

  EVERYTHING’S THERE. AARON is a real professional. The building’s roof offers a direct line of sight to the parking lot. Bronstein takes out Epstein’s current photo and his daily schedule. On it is written the type and plate of his car. He adjusts the scope on the gun. Within seconds, he locates the vehicle. It’s twenty metres from the entrance. Twenty metres for Epstein to walk. He checks the schedule again—5 pm. It should be all over in a few minutes if Epstein keeps to his routine, and the Moldovan is a creature of routine.

  Bronstein bolts shut the roof ’s door and sets up the gun mount. The building is a full kilometre away, but it’ll be child’s play for him. His skills have not waned over the years. Not these skills at least. The pain shoots through his chest, distracting him for a moment. He hasn’t taken his morphine today. He needs all his focus. Then he feels it. A small tremor like a hand squeezing his heart. He stumbles forward for a moment, but it passes.

  Epstein packs up his things. The inquiries by Military Intelligence have reached his bosses. They don’t have any proof of his involvement. They don’t need it. They’ve had enough of Epstein, and jump on the chance to kick him to the curb. Even his friends in the cabinet can’t save him this time. It doesn’t matter. Why should it? He’s achieved everything he set out to do. Arkassa is dead. Taragon and ‘Akkawi are dead, and when he has the chance, he’ll put a bullet in that traitor Bronstein. He doesn’t need his employers for that. He knows the seaside apartment building where Bronstein lives, the cafés he frequents, his news-stand by the beach. One day, he’ll take a morning stroll and cross paths with the traitor.

  Epstein wipes the corner of his mouth. It bothers him that he has recently started to drool. He reminds himself to see a doctor. He looks back at his desk. It’s clean. He’s always valued cleanliness—purity. He walks to the elevator and says goodbye to the two young agents still in the office. They don’t acknowledge him. He curses them. How easily they dismiss him. Don’t they know what he’s done for Israel, now and thirty years ago. He holds his head high.

  Bronstein’s hand shakes a little when he adjusts the scope. It has never shaken before. Is it the impatience—the waiting? The target has stayed much longer in the office than expected, and the parking lot is almost empty. All the better. He’ll have a clean shot. The sun beats down on his uncovered head. Sweat rolls down his brow, and the back of his head begins to throb. The pain from his chest and ribs has returned, this time in full force. He feels the pressure around his heart, like a hand pulling to jiggle it free. Impatiently, he shifts positions.

  Epstein looks out the door. The sky is bluer than he’s ever seen it before. For a brief moment, he feels good, free to do whatever he wants. No one will be able to hold him back now, to tell him what to do and to scorn his advice. He’s the master of who lives and who dies, just like so many years ago in Lebanon.

  His elation passes. The finality of his last step out of the building pulls him down. He wipes the drool from the corner of his mouth. There’s not much left for him. Years of bitterness have driven off all his friends, at least those who hadn’t died as warriors. Good deaths. He would’ve preferred to die like them, still serving his country. Instead, he’ll probably rot away senile in a filthy apartment.

  Bronstein watches the man stand at the entrance, still three-quarters inside the doorway. What is he waiting for? He puts a bullet in the chamber, 43 grams of copper-clad lead that leave no chance for survival. Just one step forward, come on you bastard, take that step!

  Epstein isn’t a remorseful man, but suddenly a scene from years ago disturbs him—a woman covering with her dead body the corpses of her two elderly parents. He remembers ordering Hussein to turn the woman over. He wanted to see the face of a woman who would defy them even in death. He recognized her immediately from the many photos he’d studied. He recalled she had a young daughter, but no child was with her then. Now that child has ruined his career. He curses the woman. He curses Nicosia … and steps forward.

  The dove swoops down as if it has been waiting for him. He pulls back to avoid the bird, just as the bullet whizzes by.

  Bronstein swears and puts another bullet in the chamber. Too late. His target has ducked inside the building. Bronstein’s anger flares. He’s never missed before. His chest tightens. He rolls on his back and struggles to breathe. He sees the bird fly high into the sky as the iron grip twists his heart. The blood flow to his brain slows. He closes his eyes and allows the sun to pull him up. He is flying, flying with the dove. Cities appear beneath them—Tel Aviv, Haifa, Beirut. The roads between them fill with throngs of people, human chains making the land one. No boundaries. No walls. Anger leaves him. The flesh abandons. And high above the hills of Alonim, he is free.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Novels are rarely written in isolation. In my case, I was lucky to have benefited from the comments of more than 25 fellow writers who volunteered their time to read wholly or partially one or more of the novel’s three drafts. I hope that I have done justice to the suggestions and insights that they generously shared with m
e. I am especially grateful to the early readers from the Deux Voiliers Publishing writers’ collective, the Ottawa Independent Writers and the Quebec Writers Federation, all of whom are part of my literary family and companions on my writer’s journey. In bringing Quill of the Dove to fruition, I had the privilege of benefiting from the editorial direction of Michael Mirolla of Guernica Editions. I hope that the novel has lived up to his expectations and Guernica Editions’ quest for publishing literature with no borders, no limits.

  I am thankful to the many good people I met during my travel, studies and work in the Middle East. They are the inspiration for this novel. One of them was a young Israeli girl living near the border with Gaza in 1994. I was returning to Gaza from Jerusalem and pulled into a roadside nursery to buy some plants for my garden. The young girl helped bring the purchases to my car. When she saw the Gaza licence plates on the car, she asked me what I was doing there. I told her that I ran a development program for Palestinians. She returned to the nursery and came back with a gift of six more plants. I asked her why. She said, “Your work is important. It will help improve the conditions for the people there who will be our neighbours. We want to live in peace with them.” When I told my Palestinian staff of this encounter, each and every one of them echoed the Israeli girl’s sentiment. It rooted my belief that the starting point for peace is empathy and the common people when given the chance can rise above the petty narcissism of their political leaders and reach out to their neighbours. I hope that in some small way Quill of the Dove will encourage just that.