by Paul Usiskin
Aviel was talking about the hanging of the British sergeants.
Amos: It took off from the Eliyon, Hareven’s boat.
Dov: It’s a yacht even if it doesn’t have sails. It sleeps at least twenty.
Amos: Yes.
Dov: Where’s Brenner been?
Amos: Flight originated Brazzaville, to Cairo, then Beirut where yacht met him. No sign of Barry.
Dov: Keep him under full surveillance pending arrest.
He scanned the faces, as Aviel got to the British sergeants episode, there were no expressions of horror at the fate of the sergeants, as he’d felt as a schoolboy when he first read of it. He speculated on who might be an Hareven acolyte at this table. He glanced at his iPad; the Man’s email had come in. He opened it, saw the scanned in signature, tapped, ‘I acknowledge receipt of your instruction and will act on it immediately.’ Something else was trying to reach his conscious thoughts, a new thought burrowing away in its tunnel to reach the surface. But all he could see was the Man and hear his bullying voice. Wouldn’t it be great to get away from this and give himself and his febrile instinct-powered brain a rest. Where to go? Somewhere by the sea with a nice long beach. He showed the Man’s email to Aviel.
‘Why the ‘traitors’ reference in the message to Dov on TV? ’ the young Shin Bet man was asking from the screen.
‘Only the person who chose to put that in the voice message could really answer you,’ said Aviel. ‘I’ve given you the history, we’d also like to know why this clue was there.’
‘It was all such a long time ago,’ the Shin Bet man said. It sounded like a throw away line. Dov picked it up.
‘So was the Exodus from Egypt.’ Dov showed Aviel the Man’s email.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Telem was demanding.
‘Yes, we all want to know,’ said Hassid.
Aviel ignored him and gave Dov his cue with, ‘We’re about to arrest a key suspect on the Prime Minister’s instruction. Dov has been requested to interview the individual concerned.’ Dov stood, enjoying the range of reactions. He told Irit to observe Aviel’s next session with Eli Eliyahu. Hassid demanded to know who was being arrested and Dov whispered Brenner. The Minister looked momentarily dubious.
The helicopter climbed above the snow covered capital, heading out to Har Shmuel. Dov’s mind played the synthesized voice message over and over. It was categorical: ‘Traitors we hanged.’
The weather was threatening to close in with another snow storm and the pilot said there was a choice, he could land Dov and his two YAMAM minders near Brenner’s house but couldn’t guarantee safe take-off or return to the Ministry. Dov chose to return.
29
Aviel was finishing his latest session with Eli Eliyahu, the Shin Bet guy a silent presence. Irit, sitting behind the one-way glass, sensed Aviel’s frustration.
Perhaps Aviel lacked Dov’s finesse. The evidence he got was what interrogators called ‘data-lite’. It was crucial but needed substantiation: Where was the ETA the unidentified helicopter pilot confirmed to Eliyahu he was five minutes from? Where in the Judean desert had dirt in his combat boots tread come from?
Eliyahu had admitted he identified politically with the settlers, hated Palestinians, would vote for The Jewish Land party and opposed any move towards Palestinian statehood.
Aviel was convinced Eliyahu was implicated in the abduction operation, but he looked like he was enjoying stymying Aviel’s questions. There had to be a breakthrough but even combing Avi Mazal’s apartment once more hadn’t produced it. None of Eliyahu’s colleagues were willing to squeal, not even Zvi Yaakov who clearly detested Eliyahu and was sure he was complicit in Avi Mazal’s death.
Aviel had once again replayed to Eliyahu the recordings of his calls to Mazal that Zvi Yaakov had bugged, asking why he was threatening Mazal. The man opposite was forty-ish, had ginger hair and reminded Aviel of The Simpsons’ Troy McClure, the almost forgotten muscle-man actor.
‘I wasn’t.’
‘You weren’t asking after his health.’
‘That’s your interpretation.’
‘You kept telling him ‘I’m watching you’, and ‘don’t forget what I told you’, and ‘did you do it?’ What was he doing? What would he forget? What was he supposed to do?’
‘I don’t remember. You were a police officer. You know how hectic life in a police HQ is and I’m heading up a new unit.’ He scratched his ear.
‘And all these calls to and from Reuben Levin and Jerry Stein?’
‘What about them?’ The scratching continued down his cheek.
‘What’s your relationship with them?’
‘Brenner Tech, the company they work for, was bidding for a software design package for the HQ. Police communications and data storage are increasingly complex and demand a high level of security. They were installation experts and they offered excellent solutions, highly competitively priced.’
Eliyahu’s bank account showed no suspicious deposits. He had covered his tracks. CCTV showed up nothing unusual in his travel patterns, the sun glinting off his 4x4 going to and from the HQ each day.
Aviel had begun reviewing all there was, looking for any clues. He reviewed the tunnel and the HQ CCTV footage and checked the times. They coincided perfectly with the timing of the abductions of the young Palestinians Hisham had finally managed to produce, worked out on the basis of times of first reports of the missing youths and last sightings. It was good solid police work, Aviel told him, impressed.
He asked for CCTV enhancement of the driver of the 4x4 and what he saw made him watch several sequences again. After that he looked at maps of the HQ, and then he’d called Zvi Yaakov and left a voice message.
‘TNT2, Eli,’ Aviel said. ‘What do you know about them?’
‘They’re a so-called Jewish terrorist unit suspected of the abductions both of that family and the seven youths. I don’t know anything more.’ He was scratching his forearm, leaving red marks on the skin.
‘So-called?’
‘Yes. Anyone can claim responsibility, those Palestinian cockroaches do it all the time, Liberation this, Resistance that, Front the other, murdered this Jew, butchered that Jewish child, blew up innocent passengers on that bus, set off a suicide bomb at this café. So some Jews may have done things, and used TNT2 as their name? So what?’
‘You said cockroaches.’ Come on Zvi, call back!
‘Yes. They are.’
‘It’s how TNT2 referred to them in their message after killing that student.’
‘It’s also how a Chief of Staff described them; he said they should be collected like cockroaches in a bottle and thrown in the Jordan. No one arrested and interrogated him.’
‘You sound hard done by.’
‘Yeah I’m pissed off. They are cockroaches, the Palestinians, anyone who’s trying to stamp them out gets my vote, but that doesn’t prove I’m involved in anything.’ The scratching had gone up to his other cheek.
Aviel’s cell buzzed and started vibrating across the table. It was Amos saying that the surveillance on Brenner showed he was still at his home and they would keep tabs on him overnight. Weather permitting, Dov wanted Aviel to bring Brenner in with YAMAM support.
Aviel said, ‘OK.’
The Shin Bet guy spoke for the first time. He said, ‘Eli, do you need some ointment for that?’ Eliyahu said ‘What?’ and Aviel called for an escort to take Eliyahu to the Russian Compound police holding cells. He opened the door to find Irit standing there.
‘I’ve a couple of suggestions after observing you,’ she began. The Shin Bet guy was behind her, listening.
‘Sorry, they’ll have to wait,’ he said neither liking nor trusting her. He was very tired and needed to sleep rather than hear Irit’s observations. At the front of the Ministry building, he watched the snow falling, more heavily t
han before, as he went down the steps to the waiting SUV. On the way Zvi Yaakov called at last. Aviel listened, punched the air and called Amos.
‘Bring Eliyahu back to the Ministry, I think we’ve got enough to charge him. Someone else was driving his 4x4 every day. The HQ transport pool confirms he signed out a jeep for the week of the abductions. And there’s a track that goes out behind the HQ complex down to Route 1, a kind of emergency exit, used in evac exercises. Shall I tell Dov or will you?’
‘Sounds too easy,’ said Amos.
‘Wait, there’s more,’ said Aviel. ‘Faruk Shehadeh’s Mercedes was found in Eliyahu’s neighbor’s garage under a tarpaulin.
‘Tell Dov.’
Shimon Ben Shimon came to say his team had finished their initial check and new firewall installation. ‘We haven’t covered everything,’ he told Dov, ‘only what we thought was urgent. Firewalls are only as good as the programer. Errr there’s always a better firewall, we’ve put in my latest.’ He waited for a thank you, instead Dov asked, ‘Have you contacted 8200 yet?
‘Errr just finished here ... we’re winding down for the night, errr we’re staying at the errr Inbal...’
‘Not at our expense you’re not. It’s a luxury hotel,’ said Dov. ‘Find somewhere cheaper, and I mean a lot cheaper and let Amos know where you are.’
‘Errr what’s cheaper, an errr Arab hotel? We’re not staying at a plotnik Arab...’
‘I don’t care Shimon,’ Dov nodded at the open door. Shimon exited, Amos entered, asked if Dov needed him, that Irit was still around and Dov told him to go home and tell Irit the same. After he’d gone, Dov stood at his office window, waiting for the jeep returning with Eliyahu.
Snow always conjured up memories of Grandpa Dudik. You’d think someone who’d spent decades in the Middle East sun would be used to it, enjoy it. But Grandpa Dudik missed the snow. He told Dov he’d been born in the shtetl during a blizzard. In snow up to his thighs, as a boy he’d go tramping through forests to trap animals for their skins and their meat with his father. Those forests were dangerous. As winter deepened, animals became hungrier and more desperate. ‘I’ve seen a pack of wolves, the last scavengers to survive in subzero temperatures, with enough strength to attack a sleeping female bear and kill it and her young. It was one of the most terrifying spectacles I ever witnessed. You should learn from it, Dov, never let the wolves scent you’re weaker than they are.’
Eliyahu was taken down to the interrogation suite and zip-tied to a chair, where he sat waiting, twisting his wrists uncomfortably.
Dov entered the room. Eliyahu ignored him.
Dov sat back, appraising him.
‘Why am I being held?’ Eliyahu finally broke the silence.
Dov said nothing.
Eliyahu kept his eyes on Dov, but shook his head. After another minute, and nothing from Dov, he shook his head again. ‘I was doing my duty,’ he said and repeated, ‘my duty.’
Dov left the room and entered the suite’s monitoring room, set the electric lock to shut on the interview room door, switched on the microphone to relay his voice through the built-in speakers to Eliyahu, who heard the clunk of the lock and the mic click and started looking for the source as Dov checked the two way glass, altering it to opaque, giving Eliyahu that to stare at. Which confused him, as it was meant to. Dov turned the thermostat up in the interview room. And stayed silent. He’d done temperature changes before with good results. Anything to unnerve the subject.
Eliyahu began to look and feel uncomfortable. After five more minutes of heat and still nothing from Dov, he said, ‘I don’t know anything. I was told to take a jeep and...’
‘Did they tell you to steal Farouk Shehadeh’s Mercedes?’
‘They’re stealing ours all the time, distributing them through chop shops,’ said Eliyahu brazenly.
‘An eye for an eye, a car for a car, is that it?’
Eliyahu said nothing.
‘You involved in a chop shop network? Is that why you took the Merc?’
Eliyahu’s silence lengthened.
It got hotter in the interview room. Sweat trickled from Eliyahu’s face, drops collecting on his chin, through his shirt under his arms, and across his chest. He contorted himself in his chair, straining against the nylon strips, doing a square search of the opacity, knowing Dov watched him.
Amusing, Dov’s little voice said, were it not for Lana and Yakub. Yeah, well this guy knows something about what happened to them. After another minute he turned the thermostat to its coldest.
Soon after, Eliyahu was shivering, his head whipping back and forth as his teeth began chattering, still trying not to lose sight of the opaque glass. ‘You fucking bastard! All I did was coordinate transport. I wasn’t involved in the kidnaps!’ he shouted.
The temperature shot up again.
Another twenty six minutes, according to Dov’s watch, of swings from unbearably hot to icy cold, and Eliyahu muttered something.
Dov spoke for the first time. ‘Repeat!’
Eliyahu’s voice cracked. ‘Stein’nLevin,’
‘Repeat.’
‘STEIN AND LEVIN!’
‘Stein and Levin? You confirm that they provided you the operational data for the kidnap of the children of the West Bank mayors?’
‘YEEESSS!’
‘Who gave you the orders to kidnap Lana al-Batuf and her son?’
‘I SAID STEIN AND LEVIN!’
‘How were those orders delivered to you?’ He set the thermostat to automatic.
Eliyahu spoke meekly for the next few minutes about coded text messages, chance meetings in public, calls from unlisted numbers to one of three throw-away cell phones he’d been given. He did not admit to operational responsibility for any kidnaps, including that of Lana and Yakub.
‘You sound like you’ve been running transport logistics. You knew nothing about the targets, your job was to ensure the vehicles were properly maintained, fueled and ran on time. It’s bullshit.’
Dov switched off the mic, turned up the thermostat for the last time, doused all the lights, locked the suite and left.
Half an hour later, in a break in the weather and driving slowly in an endless queue of Tel Aviv bound traffic, led by a snow-clearing municipal JCB, Dov called the Ministry duty officer and told him he’d left a suspect in one of the interview suites. The duty officer said he’d check the suite. He called back minutes later. ‘The suspect’s not conscious.’
‘Get a medical team in there ASAP...’
‘On their way.’
‘...and keep me updated on his condition.’
Dov reached his apartment just after eleven. It had taken nearly two hours and he was drained. He showered, made himself a light meal, finished a quarter bottle of his favorite red. Nothing tasted right and he got ready for bed with a headache and a bitter aftertaste in his mouth. It was a stress reaction, he told himself, swallowed a couple of pain-killers and lay down. His little voice asked meekly, Eliyahu, was he one of the wolves who scented fear? If he had, not any more, Dov murmured, so Shaddup! I’m going to sleep now. It took ages, odd because he felt nothing for Eliyahu, yet bits of the interrogation kept replaying in his head.
Amos woke him, his voice had an electronic echo, down to Shimon and his cyber clones he said. Jerusalem had had extensive snowfalls over night, it had taken him nearly two hours to walk to the Ministry from his flat in south-east Jerusalem. Blasts of wind and rain rattled and spattered Dov’s glass balcony doors.
‘He and his cyber clones were here, somehow, when I got in. The roads are mostly impassable, Jerusalem’s cut off, no road or rail traffic and only emergency chopper flights. What happened with Eliyahu?’ he sounded querulous.
‘Nothing while I was with him,’ said Dov curtly. ‘How is he?’
‘He was still conscious when you left the suite?’
&nbs
p; ‘Yes. I had to make some follow up calls, locked up, left the heating on so he wouldn’t freeze, and had the duty staff check on him.’
‘You sound bored.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Maybe bored’s the wrong word. Blithe?’
‘Blithe as in I’m sounding happy with the world? My son’s been kidnapped with his mother, and I’m blithe?’ There was silence from Amos. ‘You still there?’ asked Dov.
‘Yes.’
‘So how is he?’
‘Eliyahu’s in an ICU at Hadassah Mount Scopus.’
‘It’s a good hospital. Symptoms?’
‘Severe dehydration and shock.’
‘Shock is just a state of mind. Who did you order Yakub’s bicycle from?’
Amos named a store in Tel Aviv.
‘Can you check on the delivery vehicle’s plate and whereabouts?’
‘OK.’
‘Thanks.’
Aviel called. ‘I’m in one of two armored personnel carriers ferrying Brenner back to Jerusalem. The roads are... well you know. I vetted the unit on Brenner before we went to arrest him. One said he approved of Brenner’s politics so I had him replaced...’
‘It’ll take a while for the APCs to get to the Ministry, keep your eyes on Brenner, we can’t afford mistakes.’
Aviel reacted with swear words Dov had forgotten.
‘I’ve got something else,’ he told Dov.
‘You’ve caught a cold?’
‘Will you shut up with the quips! When we did a search of Brenner’s home, we found evidence of burned clothing in a mangal.’ He used the slang for a barbecue.
‘He was barbecuing in the snow? How original. A sudden yen for singed meat? Rich people and their idiosyncrasies. Describe.’
‘Hard to say but it is odd, this time of year, and why burn clothing? Call it a copper’s suspicion.’
‘The old days huh Aviel, when we were mere policemen? Whatever. I’ll get it flown down to Abu Kabir when you get to the Ministry.’
‘Thanks Dov.’
‘What?
