Pattern crimes

by William Bayer

  "The one thing I don't get is Hurwitz. We know he dealt with Ephraim Cohen. But we know Cohen wasn't the phony cop who took the names at the scene of the accident."

  "Suppose 'Hurwitz' was a floating false identity. Shin Bet guys like tricks like that. Suppose everyone involved in this thing carried Hurwitz papers. Whenever one of them needed a false name, he simply called himself Igal Hurwitz. And if anyone asked any questions, he'd just reach into his pocket and pull out his Hurwitz ID."

  "That's good, David. Sure. That makes sense." Micha hesitated. "Now what do we do?"

  "You go down to Tel Aviv and check with Immigration. See if there's any record of a Harrison Stone entering Israel this past spring."

  The following night he was staring out at the city while Anna struggled with her music. For a moment he thought he heard something promising, as if she were breaking through at last.

  The telephone rang. He went into the kitchen to answer it. "It's me." He recognized Stephanie's voice. "I can hear her practicing. Works late, doesn't she?"

  "She works," David said, "until she gets it right."

  "Yeah-well, that's really great." Another pause. "Listen, about our last encounter, I know you're not too happy about some of the things I said."

  "Forget it, Stephanie," David snapped. "Just say what's on your mind?"

  "Strictly business. Okay. I called because for a while now I've been hearing various odds and ends. You may remember that we discussed your murder case."

  "Way I remember it, you tried to warn me off."

  "I was worried for you, David. Then I heard you were off of it. I forgot about it until this afternoon when I happened to pick up something new."

  "What?"

  "The ninth."

  "The ninth what?"

  "I don't know. But there was something emphatic about the way this source of mine-"

  "Who?"

  "Can't tell you that."

  "What can you tell me?"

  "Come on, David, give me a break. This man, whom I'm not at liberty to name, moves in what we call extremist circles. He keeps his ears open, and, for as long as I've known him, he's been a highly reliable source. Today, at our regular get-together, he mentioned he's heard that something big is due to happen soon. Then he muttered something about the ninth. Since today's August fifteenth, I figured he meant a month from now. But there was this sense of urgency, you know-of imminence. And since it was in the context of the killings, which he once told me meant a lot more than met the eye, I thought I should, though I have no idea what any of this is about, call you up and pass the information on."

  "Tell me more."

  "Can't. Can't jeopardize this relationship over an internal Israeli matter."

  "How do you know it's just internal?" She was silent. "Have you any idea, Stephanie, how many times I've been deliberately misled on this? I hope you're not trying to do that now, because-"

  "You're fucking impossible! I try to help you and you practically accuse me-oh! never mind! You know, David, I think that sometimes, really, you do expect too much. Anyway I'm running late. So, anyway," she paused, a little mournfully, he thought. "I hope we run into each other one of these days…" And, when he didn't respond to that: "Well, that's it, I guess. Good-bye."

  When Dov's photographs came in, he showed them to Shoshana. "Piss-poor pictures, David."

  "Show them to her anyway."

  She glanced at her watch. "I'd better hurry then. School lets out in twenty minutes."

  "Yeah, David, he was here all right." Micha was telephoning from Immigration Central Records. "Harrison Stone, U.S. citizen. I'm looking at his form."

  "Date of entry?"

  "One day before the accident."

  "Departure?"

  "The day after. Not too bad."

  Another rush of excitement. "What else is on the form?"

  "He gives tourism as the purpose of his trip and the Tel Aviv Hilton as his address. I just checked with them. He had reservations there, but then he canceled out."

  "So where did he stay?"

  "Hey, David, I only just got this a couple minutes ago."

  "You're down there now, so you work Tel Aviv. Check everywhere. I'll have Uri call around up here."

  "David-"

  "I want to know where the hell he stayed. So stay on it till you find out. Good-bye."

  Shoshana was pouting. "Amit doesn't remember him. For a second there I wanted-but then I remembered what you said about not trying to lead her on."

  "Forget it, Shoshana. She's just a kid. And now we're getting close. I want you to work now with Uri. Help him find out where Stone spent his nights."

  Dov called again: "Big roaches here. Between them and the heat you nearly die. Okay, with Gael Rubin's help, I finally got in to see Peter Crownshield. He's Stone's public relations representative, whose job, according to Gael, is to deflect all queries and protect Stone from the press. This Crownshield's a real smoothie. He wanted to be sure to set me straight. Mr. Stone's a firm supporter of Israel, rumors notwithstanding that his support is based on Biblical prophecy. 'What prophecy's that?' I asked, playing the not-too-bright Israeli journalist. 'That the Second Coming of Jesus Christ,' he said, 'cannot occur until Israel is destroyed.' He's talking about the prophecy of a war of Armageddon. And he wanted it clear that Stone doesn't think that way. 'Mr. Stone,' he said, 'sees no reason why Christ can't return to earth tomorrow. His support for Israel is unequivocal. Far as the foundation's concerned, Mr. Stone set it up to nurture art and beauty in the Holy Land.' "

  "So that's it?"

  "Pretty much."

  "How's Miss Rubin?"

  "She'd like to come over for a visit soon."

  "American girls are nice."

  "I know you're an expert, David-that's why you're living with a Russian. Seriously, I don't think there's much more for me to do over here. I've got reserve duty…"

  "Come home, Dov. You've done a terrific job."

  David had never been inside Mishkenot Sha'ananim, although he knew the "Peaceful Dwelling" well. One of the first buildings constructed outside the walls of the Old City, this nineteenth-century landmark had been converted, after the Six Day War, into a guesthouse for visiting writers, artists, and musicians.

  He and Anna walked to it from Abu Tor. Anatole Rokovsky met them in the lobby. He embraced Anna, gravely shook David's hand, then escorted them down a flight of stairs to a corridor off which there were numbered doors, and a series of small perfectly kept internal sky-lit gardens.

  This was the first time David had seen Rokovsky; he studied the Russian as he led them along the long stone corridor. Thin, stooped, his thick gray hair cut almost to his scalp, Rokovsky loped along gently on the balls of his feet. The way he moved reminded David of the surreptitious gait of a jailer who sneaks around the halls of a penitentiary trying to catch the prisoners breaking rules.

  Targov's greeting was effusive, his handshake powerful. "Come in! Come in! We have tea prepared. And also we have vodka. I'm so glad to see you again. And Anna, too. I always love to see her." He grasped Anna in his arms.

  When David mentioned he'd never been inside Mishkenot, Targov took him on a brief tour of the apartment. There was a master bedroom and bath, a kitchenette, a study, and, on the second floor, a second bedroom suite. When they returned to the living room, Anna was reclining on the sofa sipping tea from a tall glass and speaking Russian with Rokovsky.

  "They treat us well here. No disturbances so we can work. And if we want to meet somebody-anybody, including the president…" Targov clicked his fingers. "…like that! It is instantly arranged!"

  David sat beside Anna. "In the matter of Sokolov-"

  "Yes, yes!" Targov leaned forward eagerly. "I'm dying to know: What did you think of him?"

  "Not too much really. A complicated man. A man who knows not to ask questions when there's money on the table. A man who doesn't care about anything, except, of course, survival. No more ideologies, no more loyalties or principl
es for him. In short, a man who in a situation like this, offers himself as the perfect shnook."

  Targov glanced quizzically at Anna.

  "A Yiddish word, Sasha. David means he thought Sergei was more than willing to play the patsy."

  "Yes, that seems right. He's a hard old zek. But don't forget-convicts become experts at concealment."

  "Concealing or not, he claimed he didn't know anything. He'd been paid to sign the drawings and that was good enough for him."

  "And the extra pay? What did he say about that?"

  "He denies he asked for or received any extra pay."

  "He's a liar! Rokovsky heard him."

  "I know. That's why I'm here. I want to know why he lied about that. It must have had something to do with the photographs you gave him. If you still have some from the same series, I'd like to see them."

  Targov snapped his fingers. Rokovsky jumped up and headed for the study. "When I handed them to him," Targov said, "I pointed out that there'd already been erosion. I wanted to be sure he saw how quickly his masterpiece was deteriorating, and that it couldn't possibly last."

  Rokovsky returned with a sheaf of Polaroids.

  While David examined them, Targov fumed on. "'Circle in the Square.' It's ludicrous. If that's what passes for sculpture these days, then maybe it's time for me to think about retirement."

  "We thought it could be some sort of ideogram," Rokovsky said. "A symbol. Or writing. Ancient Hebrew perhaps."

  David looked closely at the photographs. "It's no kind of writing I've ever seen."

  "So-what is it?"

  "Perhaps not a symbol. Not abstract at all. Perhaps something very concrete."

  "Such as what?" Targov asked.

  "Who knows?" David shrugged. "Perhaps some kind of replica. Perhaps even," he paused, "something that points to something…some kind of chart or map."

  Uri found the hotel: Stone had spent two nights at the King Solomon Sheraton in Jerusalem. The suite had been reserved a month in advance through a Dallas travel agent.

  David spoke to the manager and informally requisitioned a copy of Stone's bill. No log, of course, of his incoming calls, but Stone had phoned out four times. The first call was to Dallas. David dispatched Shoshana to the telephone company to track the other three. Then he recalled Micha from Tel Aviv, suggesting he meet Dov's plane and bring him up as well.

  Half an hour later Shoshana was back with names and addresses. The first local call, to TWA's Jerusalem office, was made to confirm Stone's departure the following night. The second was to the Histadrut Street office of the Holyland Arts Foundation, and the third, made at precisely 11 A.M. the day of the accident, was to a public phone booth in front of the Alba pharmacy on Jaffa Road.

  "That was the contact point," David was. "The meeting was prearranged."

  "So that's it," Uri said.

  "Not quite. It's still a theory."

  "Come on! He makes two sets of hotel reservations, then puts the one he cancels on his immigration form."

  "Pretty suspicious," Shoshana said.

  "Forget suspicious. We need something solid."

  Uri and Shoshana looked at one another. David wondered: Was Stone going to be another dead end like the van?

  "Somehow they got him back to the Sheraton," Shoshana said. "Found a taxi or took a bus. Trouble is, no one would remember now."

  "But suppose they didn't get him back so quick. Remember: He was injured. Suppose they took him to a hospital first?" He could feel their excitement. "Well," he said, "what are you waiting for?"

  They called hospitals, spoke to registrars, checked the records of emergency treatment rooms for the day of the accident. Then, when nothing came of that, they started calling every private physician in Jerusalem. When Micha turned up with Dov, who was jet-lagged and blinking and longed for sleep, David put them on the phones too. At four o'clock Uri stood up.

  "Okay, I got him nailed."

  Dr. Shmuel Mendler, interviewed in his Balfour Street consulting room, remembered his American visitor well.

  "Oh yes," said the middle-aged orthopedist when David showed him the TV-set photographs, "this is the gentleman, Mr. Gerald Morris. No doubt of that. He came to me that day on an emergency basis, referred here by a friend. He'd been in a little automobile accident, he said, and he was in a good deal of pain."

  Dr. Mendler reviewed the patient's chart. "It was his knee that was injured. I X-rayed it. Nothing shattered, nothing serious. I gave him a shot of Demerol and taped him up. He was flying out to the States that night. I advised him to see his own physician immediately on his return."

  "And who was this friend who had referred Mr. Morris?"

  "A neighbor of mine actually. We live in the same building around the corner."

  "On Arlosoroff?" David asked.

  "Yes, that's right."

  "A man named Ephraim Cohen?"

  "How extraordinary," Dr. Mendler said. "How absolutely extraordinary that you should know."

  David entered Stone's name in the middle circle on the blackboard, then stood back and shook his head. "Gati. Stone. Katzer."

  "So what does it add up to? You told us the middle guy would be the link."

  "They don't belong together, that's for sure," Uri said."

  "Why not?"

  "Two Jews and a Christian. That's some weird kind of match."

  "Yeah, but what kind of Jews are we talking about? And what kind of a Christian? Two Israelis, one a fundamentalist rabbi. And the Christian's a fundamentalist preacher too."

  "So what's Gati doing there?"

  David thought about it. "Maybe we've been looking at this wrong. Maybe Gati's the real link." Silence. "…Three very different guys and all three claim great devotion to Israel. We've got right-wing Jewish politics and fundamentalist foreign money and in between we've got a military mind. Enough there, seems to me, for one hell of a conversation. And then we've got a half-blind old Russian paid off by Ephraim Cohen, fronting for Stone's Holyland Arts Foundation. He signs drawings of an environmental sculpture that no one authorized, no one cares about, and that's practically impossible to find. Whatever the hell's been going on, we ought to have enough now to put it together. So let's sleep on it, meet here tomorrow at seven, lock the doors, and brainstorm until we figure it out."

  That night he told Anna: "I keep coming back to this: Ephraim Cohen was a flight commander in Gideon's squadron, and later he was detached to Gati's headquarters as a special aide. You see how it links up. This is just a guess, but suppose Ephraim wanted Gideon to perform some sort of unofficial military mission, the order coming down from the general. When Gideon killed himself, his flight group was out on a practice exercise, each plane fully armed. Then, when Gideon peeled off, no one chased after him or tried to call him back. Gideon was an expert in precision bombing. He'd been one of the sixteen pilots on the Iraqi reactor raid. Gati himself told me Gideon was one of the most talented pilots he'd ever had in his command. Suppose Ephraim told him to fly somewhere and use all those deadly armaments. Suppose that was the mission Gideon refused to perform – to fly someplace and drop his bombs."

  After she fell asleep, David thought about Gideon flying the reactor mission. Enough had been published about Operation Babylon for him to replay the mission in his mind. The planes had taken off mid-afternoon from the Etzion base, descended to less than a hundred feet off the desert floor, then had crossed the Saudi Arabian frontier, and flown for two monotonous hours barely skimming the sand. As they'd crossed into Iraqi territory and approached the reactor, the pilots had suddenly turned up into the sky. Focusing on the great dome of the Tammuz reactor, they dove for it, one plane at a time, each attacking from a different angle and direction. They unloaded their bombs, and screaming up again, flew very high in pairs until they reached Israel and home.

  The dome, the great dome of the reactor-it was so thick, so strongly reinforced, that it required direct hits from every plane…

  At five o'clock that m
orning he woke up in a sweat. At last the design was clear: The craters!

  There had been no craters in the original drawings, or in the photographs taken just after "Circle in the Square" had been completed. But craters were clearly visible in Rokovsky's Polaroids. They were what had excited Sokolov and sent him rushing to the foundation to try and extort extra money.

  Craters meant bombs. Bombs meant a bombing target. The pilots who'd flown against the Iraqi reactor had practiced for months against a target carved out in the sand.

  "Circle in the Square" was a practice target for bombers. And this time too the target was a dome.

  He shook Anna awake.

  Now I know," he said. "I know what they're going to do." The Ninth! He reached for the phone.

  "Rafi?"

  He shook his head. "Today's the Ninth of Av, anniversary of the destruction of our ancient temple. No time now to go through channels. I have to go directly to the minister."

  TO DIE IN JERUSALEM

  After Targov woke up he lay in bed, eyes closed, breathing in the sweet aromas. These scents, released from the terraced gardens surrounding Mishkenot, seeped into his room each morning through the barred windows he left open to the breeze. Sometimes there was another smell too, dry and ancient, that came to him from the Old City across the ravine. And occasionally a stray Jerusalem cat would jump through the window, and he would chase it around the apartment, finally corner it in the tiny kitchen, then the two of them, old sculptor and slinky cat, would bare their teeth at one another, then Targov would grin, yield, and turn away.

  But this Thursday morning as he lay in bed his mind struggled with the puzzle of the earthwork. He had been astonished by what David Bar-Lev had suggested: that it was not an ideogram, not abstract, that it could be some kind of replica or map.

  But a replica of what? An image of the thing, which he now wanted to recapture, had come to him in his sleep. He had seen it from the air, just as he had on his first visit; there was a terrible roar and then Sergei's markings had grown larger as he'd approached. Yes, he'd been flying toward the earthwork, soaring down upon it like a hawk. What was it then? The idea was within his grasp. Recalling a line from Macbeth, he opened his eyes: "0! full of scorpions is my mind."