by E. L. Pini
The camp at Shabwah had been destroyed, along with its missile bunkers. It’d take them at least six months to reorganize. Imad Akbariyeh was dead. An unknown number of PETN-stuffed human bombs were still walking around. At the moment, it seemed they were keener on exploding in Europe and Saudi Arabia. They’d probably come our way when they felt better prepared. Our intelligence-gathering agencies, and those of our colleagues, had analyzed every crumb of intel. R&D had been working 24/7 to develop monitoring and scanning equipment that could recognize the stuff, but R&D took time—and I was the one who was supposed to buy that time. This was my next mission. I’d provide this precious resource through three main channels. The first, and most urgent, was to prevent the stuff from leaking into our neighborhood—a move requiring exceptionally accurate intelligence and an immediate, even spontaneous, reaction. The way things usually went, we wouldn’t know until it was too late, too close. Froyke had managed to move this task to the top of the intelligence community’s priority list. The second move would be to locate and dismantle the supply routes, providers and distributors. The third and (so far) final move was also the costliest, and the most complex: neutralizing the Chernobyl explosives factory, deep in the heart of Putin’s Russia. At that point, the politicians would waltz in and do their best to turn absolutely everything to shit. Life, unlike what they teach us, is a black-and-white sort of ordeal: Good vs. Evil, black pawn takes white pawn. No grays. Either kill, or be killed.
Okay, then what? I needed to catch up on some sleep. See Dr. Shahaf for Garibaldi’s teeth appointment, which had been postponed far too many times. Then the crazy Irishman’s book. Unless I was distracted, I could finish it by the afternoon, including a lunch break, as Paleolithic as possible. For the grand finale, I had schemes of a dinner with the lovely Dr. Verbin, and so I called the hospital and asked for her. She was taking the day off, they told me. I soon discovered she wasn’t listed, either. I dialed the hospital again, and they predictably suggested to take down a message.
“I need to speak with her urgently. There’s a problem with the dosage she prescribed my uncle, and she told me I should call—that I have to call, really, if there’s trouble, twenty-four hours a day.”
“Sir, if you’d leave your contact information…”
“Fine, thank you,” I said. I hung up and called Nora. After fifty-four seconds, I had Verbin’s number.
“Doctor Verbin?”
“Excellent diagnosis, Mr. Ehrlich. How are you?”
“Great, thanks. You?”
“The usual. How’s Froyke doing?”
“Fine, I think. Are you hungry? I mean, will you be hungry, later? Can I ask you to dinner?”
“I’d like you to, but I have a shift starting at seventeen hundred.”
I was silent.
“Mr. Ehrlich? Are you still with us?”
Seventeen hundred, both looks and attitude. She was a catch, this one.
“Ehrlich?”
“Yes.” I tried to sound as tough and businesslike as possible.
“I’m delighted by this invitation. Really. Very gentlemanly of you. Please try it again, or I will. Thank you. Goodbye,” she said and hung up.
Good conditions—shitty outcome. My disappointment was understandably great. “Try again.” Of course I’d try again.
34.
I indulged in another hour’s swim and deliberated whether to send her roses, and risk seeming like an overeager child, or wait for her to call. The phone suddenly vibrated, but it was playing the Takbir—a keening “La ilaha illa Allah; Muhammad Rasul Allah.” Ami Kahanov’s ringtone.
“If you ask me, it seems you’ve taken a day off.”
“And you took it upon yourself to ruin it.”
“You wound me. I wanted to cook you a Paleozoic dinner.”
“What do you want, jackass?”
“I have a fascinating tale for you.” A “fascinating tale,” in our code, was the sort of tale that required immediate attention.
“Where are you?”
“Tel Aviv. Want me to stop by Zalman’s in Jaffa?”
“Affirmative. Get a nice cut of rump cap. About three pounds. And about two pounds of ribeye. We’ll make some Yudalach. Get parsley, too, and some onions.”
“Fire up the grill,” said Ami. “I’m on the way.”
I renewed the supply of coals in the grill. They’d be white-hot by the time Ami got here. The smell of the citrus coal tossed my mind back to Eran, who loved these dinners with “Uncle Ami.”
Five years had passed.
It had happened in the middle of the week. The kid was with his team at facility 500 down in Tze’elim. Urban warfare exercise. At the end of the exercise, he was supposed to get some R&R, and we’d planned, barring any of Murphy’s usual bullshit, that we’d take the ATV and finish the southern stretch of the Israel National Trail.
I was sitting under the pergola, barefoot and free. Ya’ara was performing a pipe organ recital at the Abu-Gosh church, and I was supposed to pick her up at midnight, when it was over. In the meanwhile I was listening to Pavarotti and friends—James Brown was singing that it’s a man world, but it wouldn’t be nothing, nothing, nothing without a woman. Nulla ha più senso te si vive solo per sè, agreed Pavarotti—nothing makes sense when you live only for yourself. Mom would probably say it was an opera for football players. I leaned back, puffed at my cigar, and expelled fragrant blue smoke rings at the reddening sky, imagining the moment when I’d have them back in my arms—my angelic Ya’ara, and Eran. Life could be truly beautiful, when it so pleased.
“W…what? What is this?”
A group of people were approaching. Kahanov at the lead, followed by “Colonel” Mizrahi in dress greens, and Froyke and Bella bringing up the rear. A surprise party? I wracked my brains and could find no meaningful dates, nothing. More people were coming up the path. Dovik, then commander of The Unit, in his usual battered fatigues, along with Dr. Agranat, who had been The Unit’s medical officer back in my day. He’d been discharged from the military years ago—what was he doing here? Probably reserve duty12. And Leibowitz, our own staff physician. What was going on? I choked.
“Eran?”
Something had happened to Eran. That had to be it. It was the only possible explanation. No. No. No, I won’t have it.
“Oh God,” I said. God, a word I hadn’t uttered since kindergarten. God, make it be something else—not Eran. God, no. What the hell did he have to do with anything?
Kahanov leapt past the steps leading to the terrace. I tried to hand him my glass of Macallan. He placed it on the floor and hugged me forcefully. The rest of the group stopped in their tracks. I tried to wriggle loose, but Kahanov held me there. My mouth was pressed against his sweaty shoulder.
“Eran?” I spoke, an odd, strangled grunt. Kahanov nodded. Bella broke into tears.
“Sit him down,” ordered Dr. Agranat. Froyke and Kahanov lowered me gently into the chair, as if I were a child. When had I gotten up?
“RP”—Agranat pulled out a syringe—“I’m going to administer something to calm you down.” He fiddled around with a small bottle.
“No!” I said. Agranat retreated with the syringe.
“What happened to Eran? Will someone fucking say something?”
Dovik approached me, knelt, brought his head next to mine and whispered, “Eran jumped on a grenade, Avner. A Mills 26. He saved his team.”
It sounded like an apology. Dovik’s forehead pressed against mine. “His father’s son.”
Bella couldn’t stop crying. She occasionally managed to pause briefly and take some deep breaths, and then a new wave would hit. Froyke was rubbing her shoulder, avoiding my gaze. She referred to herself as “Grandma Bella” whenever Eran was around. They had this adorable grandma-grandson thing, despite the lack of any blood relation.
“Where’s Eran
? I want to see him!”
Mizrahi shook his head, crossing his arms in an “emergency stop” gesture, as if to say, There’s nothing to see. You know what the aftermath of a grenade looks like. I sank into the chair. Agranat took the opportunity to jam his needle into my arm. I either fell asleep or blacked out. When I came to, Kahanov was sitting on the floor next to me. He waved a nearly empty bottle of Macallan in front of me and shoved a glass into my hands.
“Drink, drink now.” I did, and collapsed again. This time, I definitely blacked out.
A cloud floated into my brain. Something pricked my arm and fell into a hazy abyss.
I woke up the next evening, twenty-four hours later. Kahanov told me that the Mossad shrink defined my long sleep as “temporary catatonia.” Bella handed me a cup of coffee, her eyes raw.
“Ya’ara, where’s Ya’ara?”
Bella squeezed my hand. “She’ll be okay. She fainted and we took her to the hospital. She’s going to be okay.”
I later found out that Ya’ara had suffered a nervous breakdown, from which she’d never manage to truly recover.
“The funeral’s at five, at the military plot at Mount Herzl. The prime minister is probably coming with the director. We arranged for the cemetery to be closed, they’re preparing a full military ceremony and a firing squad and—”
“No! No ceremony,” I cut her off. “No prime minister, no cemetery. Eran will have a plot right here, with me, where I can look after him. Where I can finally do my job and look after him.”
After thirty days, Eran came home. And we talked every day, even when I was out of the country.
“Generous and chaotic and painful—the spring is so brief around here.” Grossman’s lines cut into my consciousness, as they occasionally did. “Brief and abrupt and heartbreaking.… It was mine for a moment, then taken away.13”
The poem shattered into a million pieces, and I along with it. Five years had passed, and time didn’t heal shit. The abyss just grew deeper.
35.
When Ami arrived, the coals had whitened, and the smoke rising from them was thin and white.
The rump cap cooked slowly, giving Ami time to tell his fascinating tale. “So old Qawasameh from Balata, the one who got the thirty-thousand-dollar grant from the Iranians, set up a mourning tent. Some of my guys came over to offer their condolences and pay their final respects to the shahid. His name was Bassel, and guess what—he’s the guy we identified from the da Vinci Airport security footage.”
Ami fell silent, chewing on a small slice of rump cap. I knew him well enough to know something big was about to follow this pause. “After some lively poking and prodding—we’re forbidden from anything more, as you know”—he grinned—“we discovered that when the deceased—may Allah rest his soul in peace—came back to visit his hometown, he let slip that after Pakistan, he’s being sent to Yemen, to serve a tour of duty in Shabwah.”
Despite myself, I let out a low, appreciative whistle. Ami shot me a smug glance.
“And he let slip another thing, too. Turns out your buddy, Imad Akbariyeh al-Nabulsi, was his direct superior.”
Finally! The holes were still pretty big, but I could make out the vague shape of a net being woven. The motherfucker who had blown up in Rome and killed those pensioners was working for Imad—concrete, specific confirmation for Anna’s more general intel.
I took the rump cap off the grill, peeled off the layer of fat with a knife, and we dipped the slices in chimichurri with hot sauce à la Ehrlich.
It would be wrong to say that life is beautiful; it is not. But it has its moments. The pups appeared, seemingly out of thin air, and stood beside the table with their muzzles in the air.
Ami threw each of them a slice, on the condition that they both leave immediately afterwards, as “this is highly classified information. Shake on it?” he said. The dogs did not budge. “I see your word is worth nothing,” Kahanov reprimanded them.
“This Imad Akbariyeh, by the way, has since found peace in the bosom of Allah,” I said and told him about the assassination.
“Praise the Lord. I guess when you’re as righteous as Avner Ehrlich, your work is done by others.” He pointed two thumbs at his own chest. “But wait! There’s more!”
I made several impatient gestures.
“Tawil sabrak, my brother, Tawil sabrak… il-ajaleh min elshitan.” Be patient. Haste is the devil’s work. And when Ami started with the Arabic, he was building for something big.
“Abu Seif reports that Hezbollah just acquired one thousand and five rocket launchers. Guess who the seller was?”
“Victor the Chechen,” I said, ruining his big reveal.
“I’m glad the cholesterol hasn’t clumped up your brain yet,” he responded dryly. “But that’s not the point. The Chechen’s regional representative is a guy named abu Nawata. Do I need to wag my fucking tail to get a fucking steak around here?”
I placed some rib eyes on the grill and covered them with the slices of fat wrapped along with them, courtesy of Moyshe from Zalman’s. Ami opened two beers.
“Na zdarovje.”
“Na zdarovje,” I replied, anxious to see what bombshell would follow this pause.
“A while ago I told you that this Chechen might also supply that stuff you’re looking for, but it’s just a shot in the dark.”
He had told me that. I nodded.
“Well, if you ask me, it’s not a shot in the dark anymore,” he said, fixing his eyes on mine. I tensed. This could be it.
Sensing my impatience, Ami took another pause to play with the dogs a bit. He then shifted the steaks around to a safer location on the grill, poured some beer on the small flames that flared up, and tossed the rest of the fat and cartilage to the dogs. They each hopped to grab the pieces from the air.
“Abu Nawata, remember?”
I nodded, but he seemed compelled to build up instead of just getting to the point. “He’s the Chechen’s local representative, and he asked abu Seif, my guy from Ghajar, to see if any of his clients would be interested in… a tanker truck full of PETN liquid explosive. When abu Seif asked what the stuff’s even good for, Nawata presented a veritable family tree of bombings, in Rome, Paris and Riyadh, explaining that it’s the only known explosive to pass every single type of security screening.”
I watched as Ami peeled the last slice of fat from the grill and swung it from side to side. The heads of both dogs followed the motion, left and right, left and right, before he tossed it into the air, smack between the two of them, like a basketball ref. The dogs both lunged into the air after it, banged their heads together and landing on top of Ami, who crashed to the floor along with his chair. I helped him up, laughing. There was something fascinating about tracing a tangled web, spreading from bombings in Rome and Riyadh, and who knows where else, passing through Afghanistan to Hadhramaut, and it turned out to have started right here, in your own backyard.
“I’m calling Froyke,” I said, already dialing.
Ami pointed at his watch to remind me how late it was. I briefly wondered if he wasn’t aware of the importance of this new info, or was just underplaying it like a bashful adolescent.
Froyke, unsurprisingly, knew exactly why I was calling. “Have you found the schmucks?”
“Affirmative,” I said. “Tomorrow—well, today, I guess—at oh six hundred?” I addressed the question to Ami as well. He nodded.
“Good night.”
I tossed Ami some towels and sheets, and as he got settled in Eran’s room for the night, he received an alert from up north—abu Seif was gone. He’d missed a meeting with his handler, wasn’t at home, and wasn’t answering calls. They’d activated the location on his phone to find it abandoned at his house.
Ami washed his face and took off.
As I desperately tried to use the few remaining hours for some sleep, a phon
e call from Abrasha woke me up. He eagerly informed me that he’d received a message from the chatroom we’d visited together. It took me a second to realize he was talking about the secure darknet chatroom.
Abrasha didn’t wait for my response, and I had to whistle several times to grab his attention and stop him from rambling into the phone. I told him I’d wash my face and get back to him. I gave my face and neck several minutes under the cold water and called him back on the secure line.
Abrasha’s theory was that Victor Zhdaniev was antsy, because he had a large quantity of the stuff that he’d gotten from the manufacturer, but Imad—being dead—was no longer buying it. Now Victor was stuck with a tanker of liquid PETN, without a potential buyer, and without the cash he was due to pay the Chernobyl factory. And no one wanted to fuck with the Chernobyl mafia; “not even Victor the Chechen.”
Abrasha drew a deep breath and continued, “You have a chance to buy the stuff now, at a good price. I recommend you do so, ASAP, before it gets snatched up by some other bunch of assholes. If you need help with funding or anything else, you be sure to tell Papa. Good night.”
“Good night,” I replied, knowing there would be no more sleep for me tonight.
36.
Ami and I got to the prime minister’s office at 06:00. We met up with Froyke and then sat there and waited, as per usual. We were all still forced to wait there for a few minutes. No one really talked at the waiting area by the prime minister’s office, because he might pop out at any minute and catch you in the act, so I spent the time thinking. While it was extremely fun to cross intel from two different, reliable sources, which had arrived within two hours from one another—it was also disconcerting. Someone could be feeding us misinformation. Still, I couldn’t afford the assumption; I had to chase this lead, and I had to chase it now. Who knew when that unidentifiable, explosive-filled tanker might show up? If Nawata had offered it to abu Seif, it was already in the neighborhood. Most likely in Lebanon or Syria. The dozens of warring factions there made for an excellent marketplace. But Jordan was also nearby, and sometimes, the unlikely option was the likeliest. The tanker could be in Sinai. It could be in Iraq.
