Just People

by Paul Usiskin

First they knotted it, then they did their own little tug of war to test it. It held. Next they ran the long loop they’d created, back and forth through the holes and under the ice. The driver looked Dov up and down as if measuring him, and took smaller lengths of rope and tied them to the loop. Then the two police men tied Dov’s hands and feet to the loop and tested those knots for slippage, they were very thorough, and they held him feet first over the nearest hole, the black water beneath. The driver cradled him as if he was a piece of balsa wood. His comrade went over to the other hole and began pulling at the rope. Dov felt it tugging at his feet.

  ‘Yo like Latvian yoke?’ Oto asked waving his automatic in the air. First vodka, now eggs? Oto announced, chortling, ‘Two Latvians. First he say: ‘Is so cold.’ Second he say: ‘How cold is?’ First he say: ‘Very. Also dark.’’

  The three policemen laughed hugely.

  ‘Very fun Zhid , no? Also cold and dark in water under ice. Hah! Hah! Hareven Barry, vere?’

  ‘I... DO... NOT... KNOW!’

  That voice came from the man with no boots, his feet dangling over the edge of the first hole in freezing lake-waters, in a coat that flapped open in a sudden gust, blown snow flakes blinding him. Where was Dudik’s lovely hat?

  Oto shoved his gun into his trouser belt just under his jacket.

  More laughter.

  Then.

  They pulled him feet first, face up, into the black water under the ice. They did it slowly.

  Nothing.

  He could not have imagined the shock of the cold so he ignored it. But that had been easy. He’d had boots and socks to insulate his feet until they’d caught him. Now his investigator’s professional detachment, and all emotions shut down; but neither had ever been tested raw like this before.

  He intuitively slowed his breathing and told himself not to struggle and tried to keep his mouth shut and his head above the surface, even if it meant the ice scraping his forehead and nose.

  He allowed his mind to take him on a journey.

  He was way up above the water, the ice, the snow, the lake, the forest, Valka, Valga. From there he could see two men fishing with a rope between two holes in the frozen lake surface. Another man watched and laughed. The anglers were patient, and soon caught a very big fish indeed. It was long with ten black eyes, and it looked like a manta ray, its mass flaring out on the ice as it was landed.

  Oto bent over Dov, pulled the coat down from his head and slapped his face.

  The agony brought Dov’s journey in suspended animation to an abrupt halt.

  ‘Hareven Barry?’ Oto shouted.

  ‘Dunno,’ a voice replied through clenched uncontrollable chattering teeth, maybe that was me, Dov thought, trying not to move his mouth and that way avoid moving his jaw and the waves of pain throughout his head that such movement would produce. The chattering teeth did it and the pain was incessant.

  They hauled him over to the first hole again.

  The second mind journey commenced with a return to the floating view above the water, the lake, the forest, the twin towns, from which he watched the anglers put their big wet black fish back into one of the holes in the ice. Why did they push it back? Didn’t they want it? He could hear laughter and Grandpa Dudik was there telling him a poignant story about how uncompromising his father, Dov’s great grandfather, was. He’d been to a restaurant in Moscow and ordered veal. What reached his plate was burnt around the edges and the underside was blackened. He called the waiter who took it away. He came back with the same piece of veal, whose burned edges had been trimmed off and whose underside had been scraped and the whole piece reheated. Dudik’s father looked at it, forked it up and dropped it on the floor. ‘I’m not eating that,’ he said, ‘it’s been on the floor,’ and he dropped enough coins for a small tip next to the veal and left. Dudik had laughed. Dov had smiled uncertainly. His great grandfather had been a hard but subtle man. In a particularly Russian way. Or should that be a Jewish way, that characteristic, ageless, you’re not going to fuck with me. Just before he was hauled back on to the ice, Dov saw Hareven’s raptor’s eyes. He decided at that moment to adopt a purely Dudik philosophy. For a few precious seconds, he allowed himself to count snow flakes. Beautiful. The snow falls, he observed. Then it stops. Life goes on. Then it stops. His little voice sounded. ‘Hah!’

  ‘Hareven Barry?’ Vitols barked as Dov was hastily hauled from the second hole in the ice, thinking to say ‘OK, OK, he’s on his yacht,’ and Oto bent forward, and slapped at his face again with his bare hands, and Dov’s third journey of the mind stalled as the pain brought his heartbeat up, the Hah! echoed in his head, and his fingers moved and flexed away from the sodden rope they’d gripped above his head when he was under the ice, the rope that had pulled him under now loose, and first they grazed then grabbed the Gyurza butt jutting out of Oto’s belt, his thumbs almost froze to the notched metal of the hammer, pulled it back and Dov took the gamble that proud Oto Pistole Vitols always carried his ‘avto-pistol’ loaded, and he summoned some unknown strength and pulled the trigger and kept on pulling it and all the time the words that shaped in his mind were in big black letters: ‘YOU TRY TO DROWN ME?’

  Dov couldn’t count how many times he fired; in fact he emptied six of its eighteen bullets into Oto’s stomach before his fingers couldn’t do any more.

  The driver drew his gun, but he couldn’t fire because the shooting of Oto was such a total surprise, the stupid clown forgot to remove his gloves so his trigger finger wouldn’t fit into the space between the trigger guard and the trigger. But he kept on trying. A tiny laugh sounded in Dov’s head. Now you’re back?

  No one was more shocked than Oto when his body kept jerking as bullets kept penetrating him and he tried and failed to shake the gun from Dov’s frozen hands, and at last, Oto knelt heavily down, one hand pressed to his belly, feeling something trickle over his fingers and onto the snow covered ice, little crazy zig zags of spilled tomato ketchup that kept dripping from the wide wound channel inside him, and fascinated him so much he tried to run a finger across them when a childhood memory of the ripple ice cream he’d adored formed in his mind and it was his biggest thought as he slowly curled up and lay down, the side of his face imprinting a patch of snow that had escaped boot marks, his eyes searching through the thick flakes for certainty in the line of the lake’s surface meeting the trees and above the white to the graphite sky.

  The driver looked at Oto, at Dov, at the gun he couldn’t get his gloved finger to fire and at his comrade. The larger policeman didn’t go for his holster flap. Self-preservation took over and he began running as fast as his snow spike boots could carry him. It wasn’t his reaction at seeing Vitols looking like a culled seal, or the gasping puffy blue faced Zhid lying near Vitols. It was a noise, like an automated woodpecker, tap-tapping above the clatter of one of two military helicopters, producing a neat trail of bullets from the pod-mounted auto-cannon which was cutting a line in the ice, slicing a pattern on the surface beneath his feet. The bullets chopped the running policeman in half, in a spectacular overkill, disappointing the Latvian Special Tasks and Estonian Special Operations units sent to rescue Dov, because their orders were to arrest the culprits who were trying to kill this very important Ebrejs/Juut from Israel.

  Dov’s last act before everything combined and he passed out, was moving one of his hands incrementally to Oto’s pocket to retrieve his scarf. His little voice whispered You Are Crazy, then petered out.

  The Estonian Defense Forces medevac unit in the second helicopter was busy moments after they got onto the ice, implementing protocols developed in Afghanistan, retrieving Dov, treating him for hypothermia and blood loss, very gently cleaning his face and anesthetizing his jaw; the army surgeon accurately diagnosed the fracture. The medevac unit then looked at Vitols, and began dealing with his stomach wounds. He was dead by the time he arrived at the Valka hospital ER. The surviving
policeman was arrested.

  Ami Wolf translated and tried to comfort Dov on the flight to the trauma clinic at Tartu University Hospital. Dov pulled at Wolf’s hand and mimed writing and Wolf produced a pad and pen, as Dov managed to say, ‘Russians want Hareven. Urgent he is taken and hidden.’ Wolf called the ambassador with Dov’s message, and the trauma clinic’s diagnosis and details of proposed surgery. The ambassador called Jerusalem. After the Man and Aviel exchanged information on Dov and a status update on Hareven, Amos was told to call a maxillofacial specialist at Hadassah and minutes later a cell-phone consultation between the medevac doctor and the Hadassah specialist took place. A short trail of high level Jerusalem-Washington calls followed and an hour later a two seater USAF fighter jet climbed out of a base near New York en route to Tartu carrying a US Army Medical Corps specialist in maxillofacial repair. He’d successfully trialed a new procedure which eliminated jaw wiring. The consensus the Man and the new Justice Minister had reached was that a successful Hareven interrogation depended on Dov, and that meant he needed to be as pain free as possible.

  Orli was in his thoughts and his heart all the time he was hospitalized. He couldn’t speak so he didn’t FaceTime her; his appearance would have scared her. His texts were brief, asking how her day was and so on. She always replied.

  35

  After the new technique for his jaw repair had taken, Dov was flown home. The American specialist said Dov would be able to eat and talk in ten days; after a week he was doing both though he wasn’t fully recovered and the pain though controlled hadn’t entirely dissipated. The specialist told his Israeli counterpart that this was normal; Dov was experiencing shadow pain, psychologically produced, similar to amputees, and it would pass.

  Physically he’d been in marginally better shape before Valga. Mentally was another matter. Aviel’s repeated confirmation that Yakub was at Maoz Yam, ‘We know exactly where he is,’ reduced his anxiety levels, but he couldn’t stand the inaction forced on him by his continued hospitalization. Then came the news Yakub had been rescued.

  ‘Look Dov, first of all I came to wish you a speedy recovery,’ Yosef Hassid said as he entered the ICU room, complaining about the security check he’d just undergone, put in place at the Man’s request. Hassid was now an ex-Minister and not yet used to thorough security checks. ‘I’m not sure my successor will be as sympathetic with your instincts and in-field hands-on preference in investigations,’ he said.

  ‘We’ll have to see,’ Dov was able to say without too much discomfort. Saying more, like just how close had Hassid been to Hareven, because with time to mull, Dov saw that once more Hassid had intervened over Ron Calev, at Hareven’s behest, Dov had been deflected, and it was clear to him that the Justice Minister had been in another Hareven pocket. Hassid walked out of the room, no good wishes or handshake, a non-farewell, leaving the distinct impression he blamed Dov for the end of his ministerial career. Oddly, Dov was sorry if that was the case; he found himself liking Yosef Hassid for all that. But then began to feel anger. The Biblical ‘Justice, Justice, Shall You Pursue,’ for Hareven, had been thwarted Hassid.

  The new Justice Minister, a woman in her mid fifties on the good side of zaftig, was a former Foreign Minister and had been in the Mossad. Stories abounded about her operating in honey-traps. Aviel had called it ‘fucking for the state,’ when he’d visited. Dov thought that disgusting but then compared to the bloodshed for the state he’d been involved in, decided it wasn’t so bad. Then he wondered if she had, like him, lost sight of the line between actions that were justified by the state’s need for security, and those taken by a state’s servant on their own. The word expedient came to mind, as flexible a word as ever was abused.

  She’d sent a big bouquet of flowers and a solicitous hand-written card, ‘Looking forward to working with you. I wish you a speedy recovery.’ Very gratifying. The nurse showed him the flowers and then took them away, curtly declaring, ‘We don’t allow flowers of any kind in our hospital.’ The new Justice Minister emailed him later that morning wishing him good luck in completing the last stage of Operation Trigon and offering any help he might need. Professional and encouraging. What she meant by last stage and what he wanted, were not the same.

  Aviel came to report two events he believed were linked to Hareven. The first was confirmation that Yakub was safe and whole. The second involved a shooting in the Demilitarized Zone on the Golan Heights. A male and a female had been trying to cross into Israel. The source of the shots was from the Syrian side, though who’d fired them was unclear. Technically the two victims had made it onto Israeli soil, but someone didn’t want them to survive. IDs on their bodies showed the male to be a geologist from Damascus University and the female an attorney from an Alawite village close to the zone. The male had a computer stick containing details of a geological survey of the Syrian Golan.

  ‘I think I need to tell you something about Brenner, about how he died,’ Aviel said evenly.

  ‘Go on,’ said Dov.

  ‘I killed him.’

  ‘You ...what? How? Why?’

  ‘Remember when we met after the Freund attack?’

  ‘You said you were working out daily, something about a new Krav Maga strike? Essential I think you said?’

  ‘Your memory isn’t impaired then, and yes it was a cupped hand strike, and if its done right the victim’s death’s delayed, and it leaves no visible external marks. It’s not fail-safe and I guess I was lucky.’

  Dov gazed at Aviel trying to summon an appropriate reaction. All that came out was, ‘It made me lucky too.’ Aviel looked unsure at that so Dov explained. ‘The reason for Brenner’s death is natural causes, and that ended the investigation into it.’ Left unsaid was that the slate between them was spotless.

  What remained of Operation Trigon, its last stage as the new Minister had written, was the interrogation of Baruch Hareven.

  While Amos explained how they’d tracked Dov and used a US intelligence satellite pass and an Estonian drone to pinpoint him, Dov thought about finishing the job. Is that what it was, just a job? Could he separate his personal from his professional need, to finish Trigon/Hareven? Could he go on to something fresh or had he this time allowed so much of himself into it that anything new that didn’t involve settling scores wasn’t worth doing? That made him sound like a cross between an avenging angel and a hit man. Wasn’t that what an inquisitor did? Maybe he was tired of tidying up all these national messes, prying into the dirtiest darkest corners of people’s minds. Let someone else do it.

  Was it worth it, at the end of the day, when all you had were a complicated electronic lock on your steel plate front door and an empty place in your heart. Oh and a Segway for the summer on the promenade and Yakub. When would he see him? It couldn’t be too soon. Yakub made it all worth it.

  Someone must love me.

  Yes, Amos and Aviel love you, said his little voice, enough to protect you.

  They’re just part of the job. Without me they can’t end Trigon. I’m being altruistic, right, but it’s honest.

  Yeah, but they saved your life.

  They did, they did.

  How that worked in Latvia was very clever, the threads on my father’s coat replaced with electronic fibres and the buttons were mini GPS beacons. Amos’ idea. They’d shown up on the US satellite.

  That’s love?

  That my friend is as good as it gets.

  Self-rationalization is usually a much shorter mind game than it feels as you play it, but it works, even if in fact it isn’t that rational and you convince yourself, as Dov did, that you aren’t loved. He slept with those contradictions and woke up clearer minded and that was a contradiction he ignored. And there was Orli. Love? I think so.

  He looked at the photos of the Gulkowitsch graves on his iPad and said a silent farewell to Sara-Sophia. Yes, I could have found your grave here in Israel, but somehow t
his way feels right.

  Amos confirmed that the arrest warrant for Hareven had been issued; he was aboard the Eliyon at Maoz Yam.

  *

  I don’t know. I thought I did, but I don’t. How did this happen? Why did I let it?

  I know the mechanics of renditions. I’ve used them myself.

  I can’t understand why I’m here in this cube.

  It’s white when they want it to be and pitch black when they choose.

  I don’t know how long I’ve been here.

  I was in my stateroom, checking out figures, taking calls, answering e-mails; I don’t use the so-called social media, they’re not so social and they’re not secure. And I don’t trust the Internet, except where I am certain I won’t be spied on. I use Freenet and also the so-called Dark Web. I was updated on the abductions. Brenner’d asked about a response to the deaths of Stein and Levin. It made perfect sense to me that there should be one, another example of how you have to act to balance matters, exactly as you do with profit and loss. Losses always have to be rebalanced. Yes they’d made a show of taking Brenner. He’s dead, a heart attack if the media reports are credible. I don’t believe them. There’ll always be another Brenner .

  Of the five options Brenner had suggested, I’d chosen to take Chizzik’s Palestinian whore and their son. I wanted it done carefully. Damaged goods are worthless in a deal, whether there was to be one, now or later or at all, didn’t matter, holding them was like a reserve, a contingency and contingencies can always be dispensed with once they’re of no value. The bodies of a male and a female abductee were later found at the rear of the Prime Minister’s residence in Jerusalem. I didn’t approve of them being placed in a wheelie bin. That was emotion getting in the way of strategy. When you take someone out of the orbit you’re trying to control, the fact of removal is enough in itself. There’s no point in going beyond that. Those responsible have already been dealt with.

  Yes I’m an Estonian, but my formative context was Russian and I learned from it that the only way to control people is through fear - Strakh in Russian, Pakhad in Hebrew. The language doesn’t matter, it’s the effect that counts. Fear has been the underlying strength of my work. Fear is the foundation of any empire, mine especially. Don’t tell me that the Prime Minister wasn’t scared, frightened of losing the election because of the challenge I posed. And Dov Chizzik? Exactly the same. In the face of taking the woman he loves, and their son who he loves even more, don’t say he’s not been terrified of what I could do with them, and can still do, even now. But, fear has another element, sex. You have to make people love you, as they fear you, and when they do, you have them, in the most fundamental way, and then they will move heaven and earth for you. And yes, life is based on paradoxes. I understand it’s key. If that makes me an aggressor, sexually or otherwise, so be it. It works. No hate, or love, or pity. Some might say that I’m already dead. No, that’s not true. Here I am.