Just People

by Paul Usiskin

‘Nothing.’

  When Dov reached Abu Kabir, it was raining incessantly, the winter sea wind blew the downpour straight at him as he exited his vehicle and headed for Ephraim’s room. He was wearing his father’s long winter coat, he took it off, shook it and left it on a radiator. It gave him another pause for thought. He called Amos.

  ‘Call YAMAM HQ and ask if they’ve quizzed the original safe house team yet.’

  ‘Done that,’ said Amos coolly. ‘I’m waiting for the results. The protests over Brenner’s arrest haven’t reached a crescendo yet and the media will be voracious about it. Obviously Minister Hassid wishes to avoid all that.’

  ‘That’s verbatim isn’t it?’

  ‘Of course and he’d like to know when you’ll be commencing Brenner’s interrogation.’

  ‘Naturally. Did he really say commencing? Tell him ASAP from me.’

  ‘Dov...’

  ‘You can tell him Amos, you know you can. Tell him to refer any more queries about Brenner to the Man.’

  There was a long sigh and Amos hung up.

  Ephraim stifled a yawn. ‘I have been to the safe house, so to say, to see how the MAZAP people are doing.’

  ‘That wasn’t necessary Ephraim, MAZAP are very efficient, overstretched but very good at what they do, and...’

  ‘They do not need an interfering old pathologist looking over their shoulders?’

  ‘No, I didn’t mean it like that...’

  ‘Perhaps not, but you must understand something Dov, Yakub, is... he is very special... to me. So I had to be there. Call it my contribution to finding him and his mother. The MAZAP team were very solicitous, happy to have the perspective of a senior professional, so to say.’

  ‘What have they found?’

  ‘Wait, Dov. Lana and Yakub have been kidnapped and I cannot imagine how you must feel. But the more our work in detecting is hurried, the more we might miss some vital data that would help you locate and rescue them. Forgive me, but I know you. I know your methodologies. I ought to, I taught you some of them. Your instincts? Well they are God-given, so to say. You must not rely on them completely. But I am one of the very few who knows all your masks, yes?’

  Masks, thought Dov, that’s a new one. What can I say? Which mask am I wearing today?

  ‘Ephraim you’re right, I’ll be patient.’

  The old man grunted, not convinced. ‘I heard how you dealt with Mr Eliyahu and I am surprised he did not end up here for me to determine how he died. I am pleased that is not the case.’ He didn’t smile as he watched for a reaction. ‘I see,’ he said, when there was none, ‘The not so safe house? Nothing sheds light on the perpetrators at this time. Whoever this was, they were almost perfect.’

  ‘Almost?’

  ‘So to say. The YAMAM team would not have let them in unless they complied with whatever security protocols were in place. So far we have no DNA, but then MAZAP has not ended its micro-search of the place. This looks like it is is the work of pseudo-pros, so to say. Let us see what MAZAP comes up with. The pseudo-pros shut down the CCTV feed to the flat, maybe they forgot to put their gloves on for that, or left prints on the recorder when they wiped its memory, you know, on the recorder controls. ‘

  ‘You said something when I was last here, whenever that was, about fingerprints on the Barrett?’

  ‘Yes indeed. They match the cadaver formerly known as Levin.’

  ‘Formerly known? Are you into Prince? Not your kind of music surely.’

  Ephraim gave him a withering stare, ‘Whose grandfather enjoyed a popular music ensemble called Led Zeppelin?’

  ‘Yes indeed. Re my instincts, they’re no good without evidence to back them up. Always.’

  *

  Dov had taken to visiting Liora’s grave whenever he could. On a warm Tuesday, taking a break, he saw a short, blonde woman standing at a grave. She had an aura of despair that touched his heart. She was alone, silently reciting prayers he assumed, but he felt he couldn’t walk past without wanting to offer his sympathies. Fate followed him at a modest distance.

  All he said, at what he thought was the right moment was, ‘My deepest sympathies.’ At first she didn’t respond. Then she turned to him. ‘Thank you. Did you know my husband?’

  ‘No I don’t think so, but...well, I’m guessing we’re both going through a tough time and I wanted to help, share a little. It might be a little easier...for...both of us?’ He introduced himself and she did. Her name was Orli. He told her briefly about Liora.

  Orli took off her sunglasses. There were deep dark shadows under her eyes which were red and moist from tears. She nodded once, and again said quietly,’Thank you.’ Then she looked into his eyes. ‘She must have been beautiful.’

  He hadn’t thought about Liora in that way since the funeral. He gave an incipient smile. After a pause he said ‘I didn’t want to disturb your prayers.’

  ‘I wasn’t praying. I was talking with Liran. It helps better than prayers.’

  He couldn’t help himself. ‘Liran Gelfman?’

  ‘How?...’

  ‘A premonition,’ he said, ‘an instinct.’ He said he and Liran had been Facebook friends for nearly three years. He was in fact the only Facebook friend Dov had. He was a very private individual, not used to sharing his views, political or otherwise with a large number of people. He’d discovered that Liran had a big following. What he couldn’t avoid was the synergy of their purview of Israel. They came from similar backgrounds, Liran also born and raised in Tel Aviv. He’d become a maestro computer programer, with none of Shimon Ben Shimon’s idiosyncrasies. He had tired of the further and further rightward shift in the Israeli polity, and its consequences, enough to decide to leave the country of his birth for America.

  There, one minute he was flying off to another part of the States on behalf of a multi-national computer company. The next, he was posting that he was on his way to a hospital in New York for tests. And then silence. Two months later, one of his two sons posted that Liran had sadly died. It was a month before Liora’s death, but Dov didn’t learn of this tragedy until he read the son’s post, a week after Liora’s funeral. So he told Orli.

  Now she smiled once more, tinged with sorrow, but genuine enough to brighten the suddenly overcast sky. ‘I haven’t visited his Facebook page, or his emails, since he died. But he mentioned you often. He called you a kindred spirit.’

  It was Dov’s turn to smile.

  ‘You’re very kind,’ she said. ‘I have to get going, back to the airport. I’m flying back to New York this afternoon.’

  ‘Oh? No time for a coffee or something to eat?’

  ‘Sorry. My sister’s picking me up at the main entrance here.’

  ‘Can I give you my email address?’

  ‘Sure. Here’s my cell number, you can text it to me. And thanks again Dov.’

  He texted her, watching her walk away.

  A day past. Orli’s face kept popping into his mind. Then late on Thursday she emailed him. She wrote via Messenger that she was very touched that he’d spoken with her at the cemetery and appreciated how he’d wanted to share and help. She went on to write that she’d finally looked at Liran’s emails and discovered that his very last one was to Dov, wishing him happy birthday. Then she’d looked at Dov’s Facebook posts. In English she wrote ‘I can recognize the thread of your thoughts. Odd how we met. Kismet?’

  The difference in time zones, Tel Aviv was seven hours ahead of New York, made him decide to reply the next day.

  He briefly mused in his reply about Kismet. ‘I don’t know about fate. I prefer the philosophy behind the title of the song לו יהי - Let It Be.’ He asked how she was doing. She wrote ‘Day by day. How about you?’ He talked about how difficult he found the readjustment without Liora, assuming Orli’s marriage had endured, making no reference to the break up of his. ‘When people te
ll me that time will heal all, I want to say can’t it be quicker than this?’

  Orli wrote ‘So true. I feel the same way.’ She added that she was busy in her day, but it was painful, and wanted to know about him. He talked vaguely about his Justice Ministry status, but in sparse detail, and said one or two of his friends had suggested he should seek bereavement counselling. He hadn’t, but didn’t rule it out. Orli said she’d tried it and it had helped and ended, ‘I will write to you again. I wish we could speak more. I am head of a university department, Jewish Studies. My days and evenings are very full. Thank you again for being so kind.’

  *

  Evidence of a kind materialized next morning. The minivan Dov had seen leaving the safe house building turned up. Nothing had happened to it and for once his famous instincts had let him down. It was simply making a delivery to the building. But another identical minivan had been found burned out in dunes south of Tel Aviv. Ephraim told him, ‘Cordova instincts say this second minivan was connected to the kidnaps and that if there was anything to find, MAZAP will find it.’ Then another minivan, the same model, turned up also burned out, on an unprotected beach area near Haifa. Ephraim reiterated his plea for patience. It was worth the wait. Matchsticks at both sites were retrieved, together with parts of a burned out cell-phone, and hair fragments.

  ‘Do you have or can you get items of clothing, bedding, toothbrushes, hair brushes belonging to Lana and Yakub, anything that might help in DNA matching?’ Ephraim asked.

  It took Dov half an hour to find the property key-holder and access Lana’s apartment. He felt as he did when he’d cleared out his parents’ places after they’d died.

  Going in to Yakub’s room, with no idea when or if he’d see him again, produced waves of rage and pain so intense, he sat down on Yakub’s bed. In memory flashes, he saw Yakub, from the first time outside the mosque when he had no idea Yakub was in the world, through ice-cream outings, and his first time in Dov’s apartment, enthralled by the remote control plane, and on the beach, instantly able to make it do things his father hadn’t dreamed of. This was tinged with guilt; he couldn’t remember similar events with his children Yaniv or Yael.

  Many minutes passed before Dov could search for the items Ephraim had requested. Entering Lana’s bedroom was as emotionally difficult. Was this where she and her new lover had been together? There was nothing more heart-aching than heart-break. That thought was too much and he shut it down as he searched for and found the laundry basket and took two sheets and pillow cases, some underwear and from the bathroom, toothbrushes and combs. Leaving the building, Amos called.

  ‘The Minister’s been demanding your presence every half hour, meantime YAMAM emailed copies of the safe-house team’s statements and photofits of their so-called colleagues who’d carried out the safe-house kidnap.’

  ‘I’m going over to Abu Kabir again and then I’ll come to the office,’ said Dov.

  ‘I’ll tell the Minister. He won’t be pleased.’

  ‘Tough,’ said Dov.

  ‘I won’t tell him that,’ Amos said. ‘I’ve scanned through the statements and you were right in shutting down your comms. Shimon says whoever the hackers are, they’d known the passwords for the safe house and everything else besides, and the statements suggest they appeared to be what they said they were, YAMAM. The team leader at the safe house was convinced they were genuine.’

  Dov said flatly, ‘Eli Eliyahu maintained he didn’t know any of the kidnap victims or the units carrying it out. He insisted he’d only been a conduit for operational details passed on to him by Stein and Levin. But he must have known them. I think he supervised the Palestinian abductions and Lana’s and Yakub’s. We need a full confession. Stein and Levin worked for Brenner. Brenner is answerable to Hareven and that’s not limited to business matters.’

  ‘Two things,’ said Amos. ‘8200 decryption of the steganographic communications is complete; I understand you got Shimon Ben Shimon involved, it helped a lot, they told me, he’s written brilliant new programs for 8200. I’m e-mailing a précis of the results. The message was in a dot in the painting’s monkey’s tail. Brenner’s been very cryptic.’

  ‘Ha,’ said Dov at a loss for a suitable joke about the tail, and Amos resumed, ‘Brenner was writing about business deals and deadlines but none of it is proof that these were sent to Hareven, and whoever Brenner was writing to hasn’t replied as far as 8200 could tell; there was that one communication in which Brenner used Barry by name, it looks like a slip up, but in all there’s nothing else that specifically says Hareven. What would break this is access to Hareven’s e-mails, and he’d employ the very best firewalls to protect those. Maybe they’re Shimon Ben Shimon’s?’

  Dov said Ha again then, ‘I’ll ask him.’

  Amos continued, ‘Re YAMAM, their HQ’s checking to see if the photofits match any actual YAMAM staffers.’

  ‘Deadlines? You said deadlines. See if any of Brenner’s match dates of the kidnap operations. That would corroborate what we’d get out of Eliyahu in a confession. And you’d have to ask why Brenner is encrypting his business communications, but this? Sending business communications via a dot in a famous pointillist painting? What’s Brenner got to hide?’

  Amos said, ‘Thirdly...’

  ‘You said two things...’

  ‘Thirdly Dov,’ Amos took a deep breath, ‘you should not handle another interview session alone.’

  He hadn’t gone too far with Eliyahu. He hadn’t used water-boarding or attached nipples and genitals to a battery, or anything like that; Lana’s and Yakub’s lives were on the line together with the kidnapped Palestinian teenagers, he didn’t think he’d gone too far. But...

  ‘If I question Eliyahu again, either you or Aviel’ll be in the observation room. OK? The YAMAM imitators...

  ‘I wanted to tell you...’

  ‘Aha, Amos instinct now is it? You were going to say that they’re rogue elements working inside our police and military with Hareven’s backing, and we have to track them down. Just a small mountain to climb, vetting our entire military and police personnel. Call me when you hear back from YAMAM HQ.’

  ‘There’s no proof it’s Hareven. He’s your bête noire.’

  ‘Enough amateur psychology.

  ‘You said you’re going back to Abu Kabir. What’s at Abu Kabir?’ Amos asked.

  ‘It’s the national forensic institute and the chief pathologist’s a lovely old man called Ephraim Cor....’

  Amos ended the call.

  The lovely old man told Dov that they’d had a break through. ‘There is a purpose for placing a cordon around a crime scene,’ Ephraim began. ‘A micro-search is essential. You know this. But how wide you set up the cordon to make it sanitaire, so to say, is often a matter of luck.’ What’s this with French all of a sudden, Dov didn’t ask. ‘So is what you find inside it. DNA had been retrieved from the matchsticks and the burned phone. But the last is best, yes? Residue of sputum, and the sample from that will help enormously.’ He took what Dov had brought from Lana’s apartment and promised he’d call if the samples matched.

  Aviel called to say the two APCs were about thirty minutes . His life revolved around cellphones, he mused, how slow had investigations been before them? It was all relative. Life didn’t pause, it moved at its own pace, whether by foot, horse or internal combustion engine. Crime and corruption persisted, keeping up with life. Very profound Dov, said his little voice. Oh shut up!

  The snow had moved on, as Dov was helicoptered back to Jerusalem buffeted by off shore winds. Turning away from the coast, Dov saw angry waves pounding at the beaches. Beaches. Yes somewhere with sea and sand would be good, and sun, how could you forget the sun? Where’d this come from? Oh yes, the need to give myself a break. Where? Somewhere you’ve been before? Yes. When? Can’t remember. When did I last have a proper holiday. Holiday? Summer holiday. Childhood holidays
with Mum and Dad. Banker Dan had arranged the finance for a luxury resort development at Maoz Yam and its developer owner had given him free access to a suite whenever he’d wanted. Maoz Yam? Gas storage spheres, big ones. He’d seen them walking along the beach a year ago, spheres that Hareven had had his partner the Defense Minister build to store that valuable natural gas from which they’d both planned to make millions in gas exports. But I wrecked the whole enterprise. You hide two sergeants in a metal cell. Could you hide people in empty gas spheres?

  Nahum Brenner began with, ‘You look like there’s something disturbing you, deeply,’ and Dov looked at him and away almost dismissively, then came back with, ‘Yes you’re right. You’ve hit the nail on the head,’ making it sound like praise, ‘you got it dead center of that miserable bull’s eye. I am deeply disturbed.’

  Dov sat back and Brenner did too, wanting to cross his arms, impeded by the wrist zip-ties, thrown by the icy tone of Dov’s words and the placid face that spoke them. Dov removed his jacket carefully, and put it over the back of his chair. It sagged with the weight of his automatic in the right pocket. He rolled up his shirtsleeves and before he put his hands in his lap, his right index finger touched the remote under the desk to lock the door. Brenner seemed not to notice the soft clunk, so intent was he on Dov’s eyes.

  Amos sat in the observation room, behind the one way glass, alerted by the sound of the lock, anxious that Dov wasn’t wearing an earpiece; he couldn’t communicate with him or get into the interview room.

  ‘You do look troubled,’ Brenner said.

  ‘With good reason.’

  ‘Share it with me?’

  ‘Sure,’ Dov said leaning in a little to create extra intimacy. ‘I’m an orphan,’ he said in a small voice. ‘Both my parents are no longer alive, they died just a few years ago. Then my wife died tragically, very recently. I’m also an only child.’

  ‘I’m really sorry,’ Brenner said. ‘You should know no further sorrow.’

  ‘Thanks. Yours are still with us?’