by E. L. Pini
“Oh no, your ring finger.” She frowned and then kissed the burn and cooled it with her tongue. She then examined the area closely.
“This too shall pass,” she announced.
“Ring finger? It’s already passed,” I said and held out my other hand. She laughed and kissed it too, then tackled the sauteuse with considerable success.
“Open wide,” she giggled, “here comes the airplane.”
I divided the rest of the wine between us and shoved my nose into my glass.
“Smell it,” I said.
Verbin swirled her wine around and inhaled. The fumes rose through her nasal cavities and into her brain, pleasantly numbing. Sunflower and eucalyptus fields on the sides of dusty roads. A painfully bright sky. The scents of the small orchard during a heat wave, when her father turned on the sprinklers and filled the entire house with a cool, fragrant mist. The better Israel, the Israel taken from us through the schemes of rabbis. And her Gil, rotting away in Loewenstein.
“Come here, you fat man.” She patted the seat next to her. I sat down and she placed her head in the crook of my neck. I kissed her hair and a few tears escaped her—I collected them with my tongue, then slid my hand down her jawline to tip her head toward me, scratching under her chin. She laughed and let out a small bark, before her eyes finally met mine.
“Have they found him?”
I shrugged. “If they had, I assume Kahanov would already be here with a scalp hanging from his belt.”
“Are you afraid?”
“Those who are afraid die seven deaths—and those who die seven deaths fear only once,” I said with an exaggerated Arab accent. “Don’t worry. Kahanov’s guys are good at their jobs. This is a cakewalk. And statistically, we should be fine.”
“Statistically?”
“I’ve neutralized a lot more people who wanted to neutralize me than the other way around. Fact: there are zero neutralized Avners on the scoreboard.”
“You are truly and thoroughly insane. No textbook could prepare me for this kind of crazy. I want to—scratch that, I’m going to force you to marry me,” she declared.
I swirled my wineglass and sniffed. “Excellent wine. Just needs to breathe a bit…”
Verbin burst into laughter, and I followed.
“You’re right, it needs to breathe… but not too much. Don’t want it to—”
I tossed back the wine like it was a shot of vodka, deciding that I would drink deep from the poison cup—and like Socrates, I would do it with a smile.
“Ave dotore, morituri te salutant,” I announced theatrically. Those who are about to die salute you. “Where’s the ring?”
“Ring?”
“You’re proposing without a ring? What sort of man do you take me for? Let’s go. I’ll sanctify you by consummation, like in the olden days35.”
“Now?”
“Here and now. No time like the present.”
I lifted her up onto the marble countertop.
“Music?”
Verbin batted her eyelashes like a stoned princess.
“Sting or Pavarotti?”
“Both.”
Pavarotti started and Sting joined in. By the time “Panis Angelicus” came to an end, we were married.
“Listen closely, my little Mrs. Dr. Rosa Luxemburg-Verbin-Ehrlich-Ne’eman-et al., because I’m only going to say this once. I love you. And I will protect you. And I will clean the dust from your wrinkles, if and when you ever deign to finally grow old.”
She held out her hand. “Come with me.”
“Where to?”
“Close your eyes until I say otherwise.”
I followed her, my eyes closed, and suddenly a gushing torrent of water showered us from all directions. When I was permitted to look, I saw the biggest rain showerhead I’d ever seen. We cuddled on the tiled floor, surrounded by the wonderfully heavy rain. Verbin told me that she had a vision of me folded up inside her uterus, smoking a cigar. I tried to oblige, but the cigar refused to remain lit under the water, so I gave up.
She told me about the odd visit of the Bavarian TV crew, and the German director who had taken photos from the roof for her B-roll, and the platinum-blond cameraman. We eventually started to doze off beneath the water, and so we took off our wet clothes and went to bed.
Around four in the morning I woke with a start, drenched in cold sweat. Just who the fuck, I thought, were those Bavarians? I turned to wake Verbin, but she wasn’t there. I frantically checked every room in the house. The guy who’d replaced Marciano told me no one had left the property. The dogs were also nowhere to be found. What in the unholy fuck was going on?
Eventually, I spotted her by the grave. Garibaldi and Adolf were lounging beside her. She was talking to Eran, telling him about the little brother cooking inside of her. I dared not intrude.
I quietly went back inside, got dressed and left to find out who those Germans were.
I left her a note on the pillow, under a daisy I’d picked from the yard.
“Work. Went out. Will call.”
82.
The photos of the bald director and the bleached-blond cameraman, pulled from the security cameras, stared back at me from Nora’s computer screen. We were at her temporary desk at Kahanov’s Jerusalem office. The Service’s sketch artist placed a recent close-up of Imad by the screen, pulled by Albert from the cams at Gatwick, and worked the photo of the cameraman on the screen, removing the earring and sunglasses, then dyeing the hair black. My heart sank.
That motherfucker, Imad Akbariyeh al-Nabulsi, was in my house. He was a knife’s throw away from Verbin.
I experienced a new, violent breed of petrifying terror. Nora gave me several worried glances and then disappeared into a series of phone calls informing Kahanov, Bella, Froyke and the DM of the new state of affairs.
After a while I came to my senses, reevaluated the situation and came to a decision—I was flying Verbin out of the country, and not letting her back in until I destroyed that schmuck once and for all. Bruno’s summer home in Umbria and O’Driscoll’s farm in Jonesboro, GA came to mind. If she wouldn’t agree to a flight, there were VIP guest rooms at the Mossad facility.
I drove to the hospital, where I found Kahanov just finishing up Verbin’s debriefing. As expected, she outright refused any solution involving what she considered to be abandonment. In the meanwhile, she received phone calls from Froyke and the DM, who also tried to convince her to leave the country. At least they doubled her security. Now the little doctor had two broad, muscular guards at her side.
“Two?” she grumbled. “Is this really necessary? They’re making my patients uncomfortable.”
“Only one of them is for you. The other’s securing my kid.”
Imad’s photo, both blond and dark-haired, was distributed to all patrol units and roadblocks around the Jerusalem area. The Shin Bet increased their pressure on their informants, and Unit 8200 perked up their ears. Everyone went to DEFCON 2. Two new members were added to the multiagency task force—the chief of the Combat Engineering Corps, and Professor Ben-Porat, an archaeologist who knew the ancient underworld of Jerusalem tunnels like the back of his hand. They employed a team of engineers to locate the likeliest destinations of an attack meant to demolish the mosque. The DM arrived at the operations room, along with the head of the Service, the police commissioner, the captain of the Jerusalem PD, the chief intelligence officer and the prime minister’s bureau chief.
The chief combat engineer quickly reviewed the tunnel warfare capabilities of the Samur unit36. Someone from Electronic Warfare presented their Netline system, which uses PJPs—jamming grenades—to locate and sabotage electronic devices and communications.
Kahanov reported preventive arrests of Almoravid activists, as well as activists from the northern Sheikh Ra’ad Salah sect, who never missed an opportunity to incite trouble.
>
The seemingly endless meetings, crowded and verbose, made me feel useless. I was soon restless. I asked Froyke to take over for me and went underground, to Kahanov’s operations room, from which I could keep an eye on Verbin and my little Eran. Much closer, and much more effective.
83.
Imad left nothing to chance. After a brief conversation with a terrified young Haj Kahil, Imad ordered his engineers to wrap the charges around the eastern support pillar, 360 degrees, all the way up. That way, even if one of the charges failed to trigger, the chain reaction would go on. Haj Kahil was occupied with thoughts of his father’s reaction upon finding out that his son had taken part in the destruction of his beloved mosque.
The charges had all been attached to the support pillar, which now held the appearance of a large, bandaged arm. Only then did Imad, now sporting a large silver beard, break the radio silence he’d imposed on the rest of them. He radioed Professor Barghouti and reported, “The uncle is ready for surgery and will arrive tomorrow morning, right after the prayer at the Temple Mount.”
He then left for the mosque, to meet and brief the three shahids for the final time. Entering the Old City, they found security at the Damascus Gate stricter than usual. The queues were exceptionally loud. Imad spent the time visualizing tomorrow’s events.
Phase 1—The shahids will arrive at the Mount, each entering through a different gate, and convene near the eastern column in the prayer hall.
Phase 2—They wear their kippahs and tallits and begin praying like Jews.
Phase 3—Imad raises his hand and Ibrahim cries out the Jewish shahada: “Shema Yisrael, adonai eloheinu, adonai echad.” Anwar and Latif will echo him, loudly and clearly.
The dozens of smartphones distributed among the Almoravids would capture the Jews defiling the holy mosque and transfer them to the main server of the Bir Zeit University’s Science and Technology Department. Professor Barghouti will then relay them to his people at Al Jazeera and the social networks.
As the worshippers in the mosque swarmed the three “infidels” by the column, Imad would lower his hand, and Ibrahim would set off the charges stuffed inside them. There would be commotion, injuries, deaths. The eastern column would crack, and even if it didn’t no matter. What mattered was the footage—live footage of the Jews defiling the mosque, trying to tear it down. The Israeli and Jordanian security cameras and the sound of explosions would alert the Israelis, who would charge into the mosque with full force, trampling everything in their path. Another fantastic photo op.
And then, the final phase, the coup de grâce. Once the professor confirmed that the material had been transmitted, he would signal Haj Kahil, who would be waiting at the butcher shop. The charges attached to the underground support pillar would activate, and the mosque would crumble on top of thousands of worshippers, in what would appear to be the natural conclusion of the first explosion. The Israeli forces below would undoubtedly open fire, adding to the chaos. The Muslim world would lose its mind. A new, raging intifada will ensue, and the Arab coalition would be forced to unite and prepare for their inevitable retaliation. And then Imad could finally move in to his own final phase—the phase that would avenge the greatest loss he had ever suffered. And if not, then perhaps there would at least be some comfort in it.
84.
Professor Barghouti had been declared a suspect, but not wanted, and so until this point he hadn’t appeared in Unit 8200’s list of dangerous wanted activists. The long phone call he made to the sultan, however, piqued the curiosity of the already-anxious duty officer.
Missiles. Explosion. Semtex. Nasrallah. Temple Mount. Muhammad. Al Jazeera. Imad. Each keyword listed in the search database raised the call higher on the urgency list—but the combination of all of them shot it to the very top. Within seconds, the information was passed on to the task force. Plans were put forth and strategies considered. Soon, Operation: Holiest of Holies was underway.
A general curfew was placed on the Yesha37 territories. The civilian and border police and the Shin Bet were reinforced with every scrap of available personnel. Central command received approval to bring in reserve duty units. The Samur fighters from Combat Engineering, along with Professor Ben-Porat and an Electronic Warfare team, scoured the tunnels under the Old City. Inch by inch, bent over in the crammed tunnels, they made thorough, but excruciatingly slow progress.
While this was going on, three hundred inner-circle Almoravids were arrested during a beautifully coordinated operation by undercover Unit 217, Sin Bet and police operatives. The questioning strategy dictated by Kahanov included a fast initial classification of threat, and a brief and aggressive interrogation for each suspect in custody, followed by either release, continued detention, or another round of more thorough interrogation.
This was how we found Ibrahim, one of the London stuffed shahids, who was detained in one of the roadblocks. Finally, our first break. And it could explode in our faces at any moment. Kahanov took charge and handled the whole thing with superhuman efficiency. Ibrahim was placed in a remote, isolated cell, in an abandoned basement. A wall of sandbags was erected around it, and in under an hour a team of technicians arrived with a Netline system and a portable X-ray machine. Diagnosis: Ibrahim’s belly was jam-packed with gel-form PETN. The electronic activation system, however, hadn’t been installed yet. They’d apparently decided to postpone that until the last possible moment, due to the substance’s volatility.
We decided to proceed with the interrogation, but Ibrahim wouldn’t stop puking, and he passed out during the second round of questioning. The interrogators had to take him to the battalion aid station, where they managed to revive him to a certain extent. According to the interrogator that escorted him there, the Almoravids had been recruited to take videos of some Jews that planned to go up the Mount and pray in the holy mosque. The offensive prayer, a flagrant act of defilement against the holiest of holies, would then be broadcast to the world and was meant to pressure the Israeli government into forbidding any Jews from approaching the Temple Mount.
I wasn’t really buying it, though.
The battalion surgeon was telling me that, unless Ibrahim underwent surgery within the hour to clear the toxins spreading inside his abdomen, he could die.
“How much would that bother you?” I asked.
He twisted his knit kippah in his hands and replied with a heavy American accent, “The greater good is what matters now.” I couldn’t agree more. I sent him and Kahanov away and remained there with Ibrahim.
Kahanov was subject to a veritable slew of restrictions, like any Shin Bet interrogator. I, however, wasn’t a professional interrogator. And with Imad threatening my family, I had no notion of restrictions. An odd vision flashed in my mind—Imad was walking toward Verbin and I fired, round after round into his forehead, and Verbin was telling me off: he’s wounded, she’s treating him, seeing to his injuries. She was taking a selfie with him, smiling. I shook the image from my mind, unnerved.
I remembered a story that used to be told around the intelligence community’s proverbial watercoolers: after two interrogation teams had failed to extract from a suspect information critical to the prevention of a suicide bombing that was already underway, Agent Y took over the interrogation. He placed the suspect in a large sack, which he then hung from a hook in the ceiling and beat with a shovel as hard as he could. Two hours later, he had the information they needed. The suspect never spoke again after that.
I asked Kahanov to leave us. He hesitated for a moment, then left.
I regarded Ibrahim. His face was a bright, nearly luminescent green. I gently tilted his head back and poured some water down his throat. I asked him, as softly and nonthreateningly as I could, where the pain was worst. He indicated a large, oozing surgical scar on his lower abdomen. I tore the sheet that covered him, wrapped my right elbow, placed it on the scar and leaned my entire weight into the wound.
Ibrahim screamed, gurgled, foamed and eventually passed out.
I woke him with a sharp slap and gave him more water. He gagged and swallowed.
I explained to him that Imad was threatening my family, my wife and my child, and I would do whatever I deemed necessary to find him.
He remained silent, and I grabbed the chair, smashed it against the wall in a fit of rage, and brought the iron-plated tip of my boot to the wound in his gut. A perfect match.
“You choose,” I said. “Who gets to operate on you, me or the doctor? I’m cheaper, but there’s no anesthesia, I’m afraid.”
Ibrahim didn’t know how to reach Imad and started mumbling incoherently about a second phase, activated from the imam’s butcher shop, before he slipped back out of consciousness.
I poured water on him, shook him—no response. It was only when I applied pressure to the scar again that he woke up and started weeping.
“One last question,” I said, “and then you’re dismissed. Phase two, explosion at the butcher shop. What’s phase one?”
Ibrahim opened his eyes and smiled. His speech was clear and fluent. This, I knew, would be his swan song—and he seemed happy to be relieved of the burden.
“Phase one begins Friday morning,” he said. “Anwar, Latif and I will go up to the Mount, walk into the mosque, wear kippahs and tallits. The Almoravids will film the whole thing. The entire world will be watching.”
He then proceeded to die.
I gave him back to the battalion surgeon and the medic, who transferred him to the field hospital for an autopsy.
I ran up to Kahanov’s room and told him about the imam’s butcher shop. But phase one, at the Temple Mount—that, I kept to myself, contrary to all directives, protocols and common sense.
To quote Kahanov—fuck protocol. Losing him once was more than enough.
85.
The Samur team, followed by the Electronic Warfare team and the archaeology professor, blasted through the entrance gate to the Western Wall Tunnel. After six minutes of bent, painful running, they stopped beneath Haj Kahil’s butcher shop, near the wall blocking the entrance to the Temple Mount’s underground. Across the wall stood the eastern support pillar. The Electronic Warfare team set up the Netline system and started their slow, nerve-wracking scan for the electronic components of the explosives.
