by Paul Usiskin
He began, ‘Hareven is the core. Early this morning I spoke with Ephraim,’ he detailed what he’d learned. ‘I’m bringing Brenner back. His interrogation was a fuck up ... my fuck up. I want one of you to get a full confession out of Eliyahu. On our way back from Washington, we evaluated why sex was the key factor, using Yardena as the vehicle for it, and Aviel suggested Hareven was somehow behind it. You remember? You said it was extreme even for her.’ Aviel nodded.
‘Right, but my start point was who would have cause to come at me, and Hareven was my first choice, someone with the kind of reach to do that, because of things he knew I knew.’
‘I factored in my own experience, the honey trap,’ Dov added. ‘I’ve no proof at all that Hareven was involved in it. But his modus operandi is to destroy anyone in his way; he doesn’t by-pass them, he goes right through them, leaving nothing behind. And sex, if you like sexploitation of me and the woman in the honey-trap, had his signature. I have no idea how many other rivals he’s disposed of. I have nothing to show he was in the porn industry which I was working to destroy. But, the coincidences in that period were too freighted with links to Hareven to ignore, and sex was the stand out element: Sara Moledet, who now we’d call a sex-worker, was the honey; the girl known as Mint Tea was murdered before she could give evidence against her traffickers in the sex trade; then after a gap in time came Yardena Rotem’s rape claim. In that gap was the Defense Ministry scandal and the end of the Minister’s career and he was tied to Hareven, and the corrupt gas storage project they worked on went down with the Minister. It’d be hard for Hareven not to conclude that I did that. You’re right Aviel, Hareven wanted to derail your career because of what you discovered during that scandal, that he had Hassid and other senior members of government in his pocket, but I wasn’t out for the count after the honey trap scandal, I’m still standing and I’m running this investigation, homing in on ...’
Aviel’s exasperation spilled over. ‘This is still not about you Dov.’
‘Ha,’ said Dov.
‘It’s not funny; Hareven’s only target is you? That’s the reason for Palestinians’ kidnapped? His motive for election manipulation is getting you?’
‘No, I agree, I’m not the sole target,’ said Dov deceptively low key. ‘But tell me, why kidnap Lana and Yakub? That’s aimed at deflecting me. I think he made Sara Moledet the honey in the trap. And how would Hareven know to use her? Only if he knew the sex trade.’
‘I know, and it seriously damaged me too. The truth? Even now with all you’re saying, it isn’t conclusive proof that Hareven was behind it?’
Amos’ head moved back and forth like a tennis umpire.
‘OK so after I was toast,’ said Dov, his tone clipped, ‘career, marriage, Sara was murdered. Here’s a clue, as close to a fact I can find, the message Sara sent me. It’s in a verselet in English.’ He wrote the cryptic verses on the whiteboard:
What’s in a name?
My first is a land that is mother’s or home.
The second is a mountain all made of stone.
Who am I? And who is he?...
‘Sorry’ the last word should really be.
Sorry too about Mint Tea.
But it isn’t. It’s goodbye.
Aviel said, ‘I remember what happened with Mint Tea.’ Dov wasn’t going there again, and didn’t have to. Without his prompting the others got the Mount and Stone, for Stonemount, and Hareven.
Amos said ‘Verselet?’ Aviel said, ‘ Couldn’t you be a little more obscure,’ as Amos offered, ‘Homeland? Is that here or homeland, as in where she was born, motherland. In other words her mother’s land?’
The two older men looked at him, as the last part of the message finally slotted into place. ‘Estonia. That’s where she was from,’ Dov said. He thought some more and asked, ‘Who knows about the sex trade, not now, but as it was when Sara Moledet aka Sophia Gulkowitsch was part of it in Tel Aviv?’
‘We got to Mint Tea through that woman running a help line for trafficked girls. She’d know about those Russian-Israeli mafia days in our porn industry,’ Aviel said. ‘Can’t remember her name.’
‘I do,’ said Dov. ‘Nurit Keter. You have any other contacts from those days?’
‘Well, not sure, but a Tel Aviv cop’s only as good as his snitches, and yours was always on the money,’ and for the first time since either could recall, a genuine smile widened across Dov’s face.
Nahum Brenner shrank in his chair when Dov came in. Amos was on the other side of the glass, the door wasn’t locked but Dov still didn’t wear the earpiece. if Amos thought Dov’d gone too far he could say so via the mic and speakers or he’d come in.
‘Let’s do a deal; it’s what you’re best at isn’t it, after steganography? No more threats if you promise to stop bullshitting me about what you know, what you did. How’s that?’
His peripheral vision caught Amos’ glower.
‘What I did?’ Brenner asked. He bent down to rub the mark in his forehead against his restrained hand, looking like a wild animal when the tranquilizer in the dart starts working.
‘I want to know where the seven Palestinians are being held and where Lana al-Batuf and her son are.’
‘And I told you already, I don’t know.’
‘A lie isn’t a lie unless you believe it’s true. You don’t really believe that lie.That doesn’t work with the cell structure you said Hareven uses, if it was hermetically sealed. You addressed Barry in one of your coded communications, that’s Hareven, Baruch Barry Hareven.’
Brenner began to pale.
‘You lied and it’s time to stop. You were no conduit, like Eliyahu. It was a lie with a heart of truth, and you convinced yourself of it. But only for the few seconds after you uttered it. Hareven didn’t take decisions alone. He had to have had ideas for them, and you offered him yours. They were based on the combination of your hatred for Palestinians and your desire for political change. Only one man could have put it all together and presented it to Hareven. It comes down to the well-worn maxim, means, motive, opportunity. You had them all. These crimes were yours and Hareven willingly ordered them to be committed.’
Brenner tried to speak, his breathing was labored.
‘The disappearance and murder of the Shehadeh family.’
‘Ah... ah...’ Brenner gulped for air, the gasping slowed and ceased and he admitted, ‘Our research...the profile... they were a typical successful Palestinian family, ah....Gurwitz said what the role-play was about... I thought, Oh my God! The Palestinians are suffering? If that’s the point of the role-play message... here’s our reply, the Shehadehs... won’t suffer anymore and...’ he bent over trying to pull at his collar button, his breathing becoming a rasping wheeze.
‘All your idea Nahum, like the other kidnaps and murders, yes? What was that Nahum?’ Dov urged, ‘For the microphone’, motioning to Amos to increase the record levels.
‘Yessss’, came from Brenner’s lips, an almost audible susurration, which he repeated, then his head dropped, he grunted, eyes flickering, body slack, no more sound from his mouth. Dov watched for a moment, leaped up, released the zip-ties, laid Brenner out on the floor in the recovery position, told Amos to get the medic, loosened Brenner’s clothes, checked his pulse, ragged.
‘No signs of anything serious,’ the medic said minutes later, ‘an anxiety attack coupled with severe physical and mental exhaustion. He could do with a meal and a sugary tea and sleep, the longer the better.’ He and Amos got Brenner back on his feet.
‘Get him back to our holding cell Amos, get him some food and the tea. You can tuck him in and tell him a story, invent one about Dov the big bad bear, but I want him under close observation. I’ll check in with you in the morning.’
Dov’s day began early the next morning along the sands of the Tel Aviv beach. It was winter with a high sea propelled by a mighty wi
nd showering spray across the water breaks. It was 9-10 C, cold for this most dynamic of Israel’s cities. Dov left his apartment, the wind rushing at the tower, roaring at his windows. He wore an old raincoat and a flat cap pulled down against the gusts. The water breaks shielded the beaches in a series of man-made lagoons, so the tide never came up to the promenade, and Dov could brave the shore without being swamped by waves.
It was what made Tel Aviv for him, this stretch of the Mediterranean whose illusion of being his he enjoyed, as if it was his, my sea, my sand, my best place to swim. No other waterfront held him in the same way, and when he’d visited others, they hadn’t the same magic. Of course he didn’t own it, but it was always there, a constant presence giving him a peculiar sense of freedom. He would gaze at it and see no other land, no hordes streaming across it to take it from him and his. He felt at ease with it, even when it was in turmoil.
He walked a few meters breathing in the untamed air, bracing his father once described it. Only the most committed health fanatics braved the winter weather, the joggers in track-suits, not the skimpy shorts and bare sweaty torsos of the summer. He walked up towards the lifeguard station on Frishman beach, with its red digital time and temperature display, otherwise locked tight against beach bums seeking refuge. The sunshades and loungers were stored away somewhere, so it all looked bare. He was uncertain whether the beach snitch got his voice message. Called criminal informants in America, a title with no legal status, but such people earn money from police officers, and may get lenient sentences in return for crime information. Most police departments wouldn’t function without them. This guy had been invaluable to Dov back in the day when he was a rookie. Was the man still a beachcomber, a useful cover? Was he still in this world? He glimpsed a familiar shape, an elegant hound trotting regally along.
He looked north along hotel row, the backs of the better ones regularly repainted, not as they’d looked in the past. One hotel had had a famous artist design the rear facade, but had let the beautiful pastel colors flake and peel, and appear shabby.
It hadn’t been like this when Dov was a boy, freely roaming the streets and the beaches of his city. Then Tel Aviv felt like it was on the very edge of the shelf of land it sat on, no water breaks and the sea raced up across the waterline but never quite flooded the then narrow boardwalk overlooking an unregulated beach with sewage pipes exposed and leaking and the skyline sparsely populated. Now hotels and apartment blocs spread like a wild forest. He didn’t know which he preferred, the rawness of his childhood in a city not yet sure of its identity in a new old struggling country, or this vigorous almost sensuous pulsing place that knew no bounds.
Reality clashed with these memory-scapes, from a warm snuffling at his hand, as if the Saluki had had him stroke its elegant head only minutes before and came back for more, barking a bright hi how are you, where’ve you been? Dov knelt down and spoke soothingly, asking the hound how he was doing, that he’d missed him, and where was his owner? The Saluki growled warmly. His owner came moments later, as he’d always done, well behind the Saluki, this time not breathless, dressed in a good quality hoody, sweater and jeans, his Nike trainers new. The beach snitch looked prosperous, standing tall and not bent by years of scratching at the sand, looking better fed than the Saluki. He still looked like his dog, ageless, a long narrow face and long ears. When he’d been one of Dov’s regulars the Saluki always gleamed and his owner looked emaciated.
‘Mr Chizzik,’ he said, ‘I was busy when you called.’
‘We’re paying you too well then,’ said Dov.
‘You’re not paying me at all. I don’t do that anymore. I’m more of a private investigator these days.’
‘You’re a beach dick? Can I afford you?’ he asked.
‘Depends what you’re after.’
Dov told him. ‘Clear?’
‘As the sky Mr Chizzik, as the sky,’ he said looking up at the billowing rain clouds. A noise followed that, something between a cackle and a croak. It was the beach snitch laughing. ‘And this one, it’s for free,’ he said, as the Saluki barked farewell and loped off, its owner unhurried, talking furtively into his cell phone. Dov watched him walk away.
Amos called. ‘Dov, Brenner’s dead.’
Stop. Stop everything. Stop now. No. I have to. No you mustn’t. You have to go on, for the sake of the kidnap victims, for Yakub and Lana. You can’t stop. But, they’ll say I killed him. Yes, they will, they’ll try to bury you for it ... I did not kill Nahum Brenner ... no you didn’t so don’t stop now!
The Man hadn’t heard yet and when Dov called and insisted that he instigate an inquiry into Brenner’s death, he didn’t remonstrate. ‘I’ll talk to Hassid,’ was all he said.
The meet the ex-beach snitch set up was in a place that took Dov back to those days when he first knew him. Except that then, the guys who ran prostitutes and backstreet money-changers didn’t drive the latest slope-roofed tinted windowed Range Rovers. But the back room of Vadim the money-changer was dingy in the way so much of Hayarkon Street had been then, with walls that looked like you could huff them down. Which was weird, because the shop front was all now-design and the little interior in front of the teller looked like any high street bank, complete with mini CCTV cameras, security glass and built-in microphones.
Dov was buzzed into the back room. Vadim was chunky, his head sloped back like his Range Rover’s roof. He was Dov’s height and similar age. Dov liked him. He spoke in clunky sentences. Vadim had poured himself into his little-boy tight black suit, open neck black shirt with double collar buttons and he stood during their conversation, Dov surmised, not because the place was filthy and the furniture stained and ripped, but because he couldn’t sit down, his outfit didn’t allow.
‘Beach man with dog tell me you need history from my old days. I do it for to help government. They good for us. You work for them. You good for us, yes?’
Dov nodded once and let Vadim tell him about a Russian who came to Israel in the 80s and introduced business by war to the sex trade. No one knew his name or what he was capable of. ‘He must to learn techniques in army, not Russian army, our Zhid army.’ Vadim smashed his fist suddenly into the palm of his other hand, making a sound like a whiplash. ‘Big violence. From nowhere. More and more. Every time were bodies. Every time after, he had took another someone business. I work for him. Was good. Never saw him, but one time heard name, Kamien Boris. Not know if this name is this man. He build empire. He make much money. No one see him. I had many call girls, classy girls for big businessmen from other countries. Make me much money. Someone try to attack his business. You? Super Cop, yes?’
Dov waited for the ribald sneer, but Vadim didn’t do it. A tiny ping in his brain tried to send him a reminder. What was it? Not about Sara Moledet, though he was tempted to ask Vadim if he’d known her. Something about men with money for expensive sex. Who had that kind of money? The ping sounded again. Conglomerates, hi-tech investors, merchant bankers...What was his name? Vadim was still talking. Dov refocused
‘Then he gone. No more bodies. No more war. Empire went to new group, also Russians. But they not make it like him. Never same after.’
‘When was that?’
‘January, February ‘99. No more Super Cop?’
‘No he was long gone by then.’
‘Also this man, maybe Kamien Boris. OK? Finish history? I help government?’
‘Yes you did.’
‘Good.’
Yes it was good. Vadim had helped ... Vadim ... Dimi ... Dimitri Demidov. That was the name from fifteen years back, the murdering merchant banker. He shook Vadim’s hand with, ‘Yes Vadim, brilliant!’
While Dov met Vadim, Aviel found Nurit Keter. It was an uncomfortable call. She didn’t want to meet, cut the call and was only marginally less abrupt when Aviel called again and invoked state security as the reason for his urgency. Nurit was still running a help line
to aid women trafficked into Israel for the sex and porn industry.
She’d agreed to help Dov with Mint Tea, a Romanian girl who’d been trafficked across the Egyptian border, raped and fed to customers in Tel Aviv and starred in sex videos. Dov had offered her police protection in return for information about a particular porn outlet he’d targeted in his war on porn when he ran TPI. Through Dov’s negligence Mint Tea had disappeared off the streets, no body, nothing.
Aviel cajoled, politely, and Nurit gave him a name, Boris Kamien and a time frame when Kamien was known to have been in business. It corroborated what Vadim had told Dov. Nurit confirmed that Kamien’s name emerged in the late 90s but he wasn’t in business anymore. No one had ever seen him, and the name, Nurit concluded, was a nom de guerre that came and went in the murky mists of Tel Aviv’s underworld.
Amos got Eli Eliyahu’s confession. When he and Dov viewed the recording of the session they were impressed. True, Amos was confronting a partially broken man, but he handled him consistently, gently prodding and pressing, all the time peeling away with a scalpel. It had taken a whole day, starting with transferring Eliyahu from hospital to the Ministry. Amos made sure he was hydrated and had a medic in the observation room throughout. He got dates and confirmation of the targets, the seven children of West Bank mayors. But Eliyahu gave no location data, no names of his team. He knew the kidnap of Lana and Yakub had been considered, but he had no operational data.
Later that day, Aviel saw two missed calls from Dov and a voice message, with two questions, ‘Dimi Demidov? Had cousin from Russia, ran call girls?’
‘Talk about a blast from the past!’ he said optimistically when he reached Dov.
‘Yeah isn’t it.’
They shared the Boris Kamien updates as Dov left Route 1 and the wooded Jerusalem foothills for Route 3, headed for the Highway 6 toll-road. He asked Aviel to search Hareven’s companies to see if there was any synergy between the end of Boris Kamien’s sex business career and the start of Hareven’s burgeoning business interests.
