by E. L. Pini
Shabi and Imad got out, and Verbin drove the minivan to the entrance to Avner’s property. The dogs ran beside the car until she parked. She helped Gertrud out and took her to the couch under the pergola, looking out at the view. “Rest here for a couple of minutes, then I’ll examine you.”
Verbin’s phone rang. She ignored the call, as she always did with blocked numbers, but it rang again, this time from a cell number she knew but couldn’t place. She picked up. It was Marciano, from Ami Kahanov’s team. He sounded cheerful as usual and told her he was on the way there and they needed to talk, “in person.” Verbin assumed they were preparing some surprise for Avner and told Marciano he was welcome to drop by. She walked back with a glass of cold water, a bottle of orange juice and her medical bag. She handed the glass to Gertrud, who slowly sipped, and pressed a stethoscope to her chest, listening intently.
“Good, everything seems fine. Thirty minutes of rest and you’ll be good as new. Drink your juice. And, Miss Miller—I’d like to apologize for the dogs’ behavior.”
“Oh, don’t worry about it… I got too close, they must’ve felt threatened.”
“Drink the rest of the juice. Right now you need plenty of glucose.”
“Thank you. Of course, thanks so much. I hate to bother you like this. Is it okay if I wander around a bit, look for the best angle for the shot?”
“No wandering required—the tallest point is right up there. Take the stairs”—she pointed to the roof and the external stone staircase leading up to it. “Can I get you a cup of coffee? Espresso?”
“I’d love some, thank you. Are you sure this isn’t too much trouble?”
“Absolutely,” said Verbin. “I’ve been… pretty much on my own up here.” She smiled a bit.
“Thanks, anyway. I’ll try the roof, then, if that’s okay?”
“This way. Watch your step, and don’t let their barking get to you.”
“You called the dog… ‘Baldi’?”
“Yeah, short for Garibaldi. The other one, the jumper, he’s Adolf.”
“Adolf?!”
Wandering the roof, Gertrud photographed every possible angle of the gate, the fence, access routes, the dogs, the motion detectors and security cameras.
“Coffee’s ready! Do you take sugar?”
Gertrud didn’t reply. She considered kicking the little doctor down the stone staircase. She’d likely break her neck, and if she didn’t, Gertrud was happy to help. That would make such a beautiful shot for Imad, she thought. On second thought, it was too soon—escape routes weren’t ready, the crew would testify that Gertrud was the last person to see her. No, bad idea. Later—they’d do it later, and properly.
She smiled broadly at Verbin when she joined her on the roof. “Thanks again, you’re so kind. You’ve helped us so much. The view from up here is astounding.” Verbin walked toward the western edge of the roof and pointed southwest, at the sunset.
“The chimneys down there are the Ashkelon power plant,” she said. Gertrud snapped more photos.
“It supplied power to the entire region, as well as the Gaza Strip.” Verbin turned to her right. “And those chimneys are the Reading plant, in Tel Aviv. Over to the north, that’s Herzliya.”
“Herzliya,” mumbled Gertrud. “Interesting.”
She placed her hand on Verbin’s shoulder. When Verbin turned around, surprised, Gertrud planted a kiss on her cheek. “You’ve been so kind. Can I ask, what kind of doctor are you?”
“Oncology,” replied a still-startled Verbin.
The little whore’s a doctor, she thought. I guess Imad’s not the only one who’s got a thing for doctors. One kick, and I make this oncologist Jew a shahida.
The setting sun colored the mountains a hot, reddish pink.
79.
At a gas station not far from Agur, Gertrud and Imad got rid of the Israeli film crew. Gertrud headed out to Tarqumiyah, on her way across the border and eventually to Amman. Imad waited for the film crew to get out of sight and joined Professor Barghouti, who was waiting for him in a white Mercedes with yellow Israeli plates. They made their way to Jerusalem. This was their first meeting since back when the professor had recruited Imad a decade ago and groomed him all the way to Stanford.
Imad didn’t talk much, but the professor, like most professors, was exceedingly fond of the sound of his own voice. At first, he told Imad about the servers at his university, which were ready to receive and transmit the footage from the mosque. “From us it’ll go to Al Jazeera, Al Arabiya, CNN—also Facebook, Twitter, Instagram…” He went on to speak of the Almoravids—Al-Aqsa loyalists who would flood the Temple Mount, armed with high-resolution smartphone cameras—and then plunged headfirst into a flowery, sentimental description of the combined Arab attack on the Jewish state—“An attack that will take place immediately after the world watches the destruction of the holy mosque.” Imad realized from the professor’s descriptions that he had also watched the video, and he wondered who else had. Though he knew professor was a close friend of the sultan’s, and perhaps because of this, he decided to share some of his reservations. He told the professor that, while the sultan was generously providing the technical means and financial support, Imad often got the feeling that this was all a game, a spoiled child’s ego trip. “If he could buy a plaque reading, ‘Look at me, Dad—I’m the Calipha of the entire Arab world,’ he would have.” He added that abu Bachar was also, oftentimes, difficult to read.
The professor tried to put him at ease, telling him that these feeling and doubts were perfectly normal—after all, Imad was at the heart of a historically monumental task.
“But you can’t let them distract you. We’re closer now than we’ve ever been to bringing about real change. You, Imad, you are the seed of that change. It all comes down to you.”
Imad didn’t respond. The excitement that had gripped him near Ehrlich’s house resurfaced; he envisioned Avner handcuffed and humiliated, begging Imad to release his tortured and bleeding woman and child in exchange for his own life.
He immensely enjoyed imagining how thorough he’d be with them, chopping off bit after bit as Avner watched. He will undoubtedly offer his own life for theirs, but I will have no reason to comply, thought Imad. I will have him already. They already knew that he had a son, Eran—annoyingly, Gertrud hadn’t managed to find him yet. He would have to urge her.
“Is Mahajna ready?” Imad asked after a while.
“Of course. Normal procedure—one from him, one from you, three short howls from him. I don’t believe you’ll really need him, though.”
Imad remained silent.
“I’m dropping you off at Haj Kahil’s,” said the professor. “This is the place. Look out for the old man.” Imad raised an eyebrow, and the professor explained, “Haj Kahil is one of our activists. He coordinates the Almoravids whenever we need to kick up some intifada33. He’s aware of the plan. But the old haj, he’s the spiritual leader, and he gets word that someone plans to so much as scratch his holy mosque, he’ll slaughter that someone like a lamb.”
***
Haj Kahil’s halal butcher shop sat on the corner of Ha-Shalshelet and Suq El Qatanin, in Jerusalem’s Muslim quarter. The blood drain in the meat cutting room, chocked with animal corpses, could be pulled up to reveal an entrance. Iron rungs were set into the wall leading down from the drain, leading into the hidden basement where the Almoravids’ weapons and ammunition were stowed.
Aïcha, the haj’s wife, gave the Almoravid wives their salaries when she handed them the change from their purchases. Over the past couple of days, dozens of women had arrived at the butcher shop laden with bags and handed Aïcha black-and-gray UNRWA blankets, thick and woolen. According to Imad’s instruction, the blankets were nailed to the ceiling of the hidden basement, to absorb the noise of the jackhammers drilling away at the wall. Right beyond the western wall of the baseme
nt was the complex network of tunnels that lay below the Old City. After nine hours of digging, the breach in the wall was widened enough to allow the passage of the explosives and the rest of the equipment into the tunnel on the other side. The tunnel, less than fifty inches in height, was a combined effort of sorts—its western wall was built by the Muslim waqf34, to keep Jews from entering the Temple Mount, while its eastern wall was built by the Jewish Temple Association, to keep Arabs from entering the Western Wall Tunnel.
Digging through the waqf wall was relatively quick work—it had been constructed with little concrete and plenty of sand, and it easily succumbed to the jackhammers. The original contractor had filled in the wall with piles of wooden planks, wire and random garbage; the engineers pinched their noses and shifted it all to the sides of the tunnel. Imad’s instructions had been clear: not a single ounce of debris would see the light of day.
Nine metallic knocks on the metal drain alerted the engineers to the arrival of Ayach the Bedouin.
“The merchandise is here,” he told them. From the back of the cooling truck parked at the rear entrance of the butcher shop, Ayach, Imad and the two engineers moved sixty packages of regulation IDF Semtex into the tunnel.
Evening came to Jerusalem, scattering its dwellers off the streets and into evening prayers in synagogues, mosques and churches. The protective din of the busy market streets had died out, and despite his impatience, Imad decided to halt the work rather than risking discovery. He’d also decided against returning to Balata that evening, thereby wasting precious time. He ordered his men to prepare to sleep there that night and regain their strength. The young Haj Kahil, who at the age of thirty had already received acknowledgment as an imam, arrived as planned. Imad made sure that he was fully informed and ready. The collapse of the mosque must be seen as a direct result of the Jewish bombing within—therefore, the haj mustn’t act before Imad’s go-ahead.
“Where will you be?” inquired the haj.
“On the Mount,” said Imad, “and then back here. Is my bike ready?”
“Just where you asked it to be,” said the haj, slightly distracted by thoughts of his father, and how he would react upon realizing what had happened. Father would understand, he reassured himself. Certainly, he would understand…
Imad was ordering him to procure some more gear—three IDF uniforms and regulation rifles, preferably M-16s.
“Oh, that won’t be a problem,” said the young haj. “We have plenty of those.”
80.
The discussion at the Ministry of Public Security had gone exceptionally quickly, a blessing prompted by the heavy sense of imminent danger. Nora, who had been assigned to a multiagency team including the Shin Bet, the IDF, the police, the Mossad and a representative from the Ministry of Public Security, reviewed the intelligence we currently had. I had the disorienting sense of knowing both everything and nothing at the same time. We knew they were targeting the Al-Aqsa Mosque, but neither when nor how.
The DM had just returned from Riyadh, where he’d been forming a coalition with the Saudis, the Egyptians and the Jordanians. More than half the Jordanian population was comprised of Palestinian refugees who considered the Jordanian government responsible for the Temple Mount and the Al-Aqsa Mosque. This made them every bit as motivated to avoid this catastrophe as we were, and they therefore provided some fascinating intel: they handed over to us a supervisor from the Allenby bridge border crossing, an Israeli resident, who would apparently grant passage to anyone or anything for the appropriate sum. It turned out the Jordanian intelligence agencies had been employing this asshole’s services for a while. He was interrogated, and he confessed. At least now we knew when and where Imad’s shahids were. Kahanov’s team began to trace their paths from the entrance points. Photos of Imad and the three shahids were passed along to all field teams. Civilian and Border Police bolstered security, setting up barricades and roadblocks. Teams of undercover operatives from the Shin Bet, Border Police and Unit 217 patrolled around like hungry dogs. Unit 8200 increased phone tracking and the seemingly impossible task of tracking the Almoravids activities on social media and their university intranet networks.
Like the CIA, the Mossad doesn’t operate within Israeli borders, and so I was brought in as a chief consultant, with no operative role and no properly defined assignment. This suited me well. I was less pleased about the inflated security detail forced on me by Kahanov.
A car from the Service clung to me the moment I left the ministry, and I wondered what good they would be if these purported assassins set up an ambush on the side of the road and fired a shoulder missile, or attacked from the air with a UAV. I almost picked up the radio and asked them but decided against it. If I displayed so much as a sliver of concern, they’d latch on even harder. I would never get rid of them. I dialed Verbin and got her voicemail. I called the landline, and the lady at the hospital let me know that she was indisposed.
I injected a great deal of concern into my voice and asked her when the doctor would be available for an important conversation of a personal nature, an intimate family matter of great importance and urgency. It worked—the lady promised to ask the doctor to return my call as soon as possible. Several minutes later, Verbin called me back, saying that she did not recall any intimate personal business she had with me, “and if you’d like there to be any, you should really get your ass home and make a dinner worthy of a woman as positive as me. I’m talking mussels, you hear me? Mussels.”
“Positive, what… what do you mean, positive...?”
It took me a few seconds. The test. The test came back positive!
I screeched to an emergency stop and pulled over and gripped the steering wheel as if holding on for dear life. A sequence of broken images flashed through my mind with terrifying speed, Mother and Father and Eran and Ya’ara and Guli, Kahanov, Agranat, Eran, and Eran and Eran and a blinding white light. I took the deepest breath I was capable of and wiped my forehead.
“Boy or girl?” I asked.
Verbin burst into her rolling laughter. “They’re still deciding.”
“Who is?”
“My ova. Currently in the midst of negotiations with your sperm.”
“Get home quick,” I told her, “quick! I have to ‘consecrate you according to the laws of Moses and Israel,’ before we pop out a little bastard…”
“I’ll do my best.”
She hung up, and I invited Pavarotti to share my joy—“La donna è mobile,” he roared for the rest of the way to Agur, singing of his own fickle woman, and I conducted him with large, enthusiastic gestures. At a time like this, even Mother would excuse those sour notes I could never hear.
81.
I nodded at Marciano, who’d been posted at the front gate, and made a quick trip to the house to bring him a beer and two ham and cheddar sandwiches. He took off his kippah and ate.
When Verbin’s Beetle stopped by the front gate, the two monstrosities charged the inner gate, barking and wagging ecstatically. Verbin replied with similar enthusiasm, and the barking reached a crescendo. Marciano, who functioned as the responsible adult among the Shin Bet kids, dismissed the car that was following her.
“Good evening, Miss Verbin.” Marciano smiled.
“I told you, Marciano, no more Miss. It’s Verbin, okay? How’s your mom?”
“She’s doing much better.” He grinned. “Much better. Thanks so much, Miss Verbin.”
“Good. I’m glad to hear it. Okay, then. Am I on the list?”
Marciano nodded and radioed me. “Avner, a Miss Verbin here to see you…”
“A who?” I replied with excessive bafflement.
“A Dr. Verbin, sir.”
“A what now? Oh… her.” I sighed dramatically. “Fine, let her in. After a full cavity search, of course.”
“Avner, come on, man—” I could practically hear him blush.
Verbin grabbed the radio from his hand. “Keep this up, mister, and I’ll come in there and perform a rectal colonoscopy, sans Vaseline. Capisce?”
Marciano opened the inner gate, and Verbin parked and headed up the path to the house, the two puppies leaping around her. I have no idea why, but watching her approach, I found myself thinking of her father. Professor Verbin had come to Israel fresh from the Nazi camps and landed a teaching post at Tel Aviv University. They’d fired him when they’d found out he was a member of Maki, the Israeli Communist Party, and he had gone on to teach at a high school, from which he was also fired. He was a true underdog, constantly angry, exceedingly brave. Verbin was, in many ways, the opposite—her ferociousness and courage were hidden underneath a kind, pleasant demeanor. Anna had that kind of toughness, but it had always been unstable.
When I was done kissing every square inch of her, paying special attention to her belly, the positive lady asked me, “So how do we clean the mussels?”
“It’s pretty easy.” I grinned at her. “Take them out of the net. If they’re open, toss them. If they’re closed, scrub them under the tap and throw them in the colander.”
As she took over the mussels, I melted a slab of butter in the high-sided sauteuse pan. I added chopped shallots and a third of a Riesling bottle I had acquired from Doron at the Sphera Winery.
“Now, when it’s simmering, mussels, parsley, black pepper. Simmer again. Cover, leave it for two minutes, stir once with a wooden spoon. Take the lid off. Chopped tarragon, and a shot of Pernod is always welcome. Ta-dam! All done. Butter. Baguette. Wine. That’s it.”
Verbin tore off some baguette, dipped it in the mussel sauce, and chewed with her eyes closed, absorbing the flavor of the sea. I thought to myself that I’d cook the entire planet just to watch her eat. I grabbed the sauteuse and dropped it at the center of the table, pulling my hand back with a loud “Ow, scheisse!”
Verbin took my hand.
