Taking Morgan

by David Rose

  “Please get out.”

  Wherever they are, it is eerily quiet.

  “You hear that sound?” Khader asks.

  “What sound?”

  “Listen. From up there.”

  Adam makes out a buzzing, so faint he could be imagining it: high pitched yet muffled, like a faraway dentist’s drill.

  “An Israeli drone,” Khader says. “A spy-plane. We cannot see it, but the sound means it is there, and its operator, who is looking at us on a screen in Beersheba, can send us an F-16 airstrike whenever he happens to feel like it. Remember this, Mr. Adam. Even if the Israelis are your friends, this could be the day they kill you.”

  As they stand, the calm is shattered for the second time that morning by an explosion. This one seems different. There isn’t just the seismic bang; it comes accompanied by the sounds of things shattering, and, within a few seconds, by screams, shouts, and sirens.

  “I don’t know what’s happening,” says Khader. “We had better go inside.”

  Adam feels himself being led into a building. Inside, the blindfold is removed, and he sees he is in the bare concrete stairwell of an apartment block. Despite the oncoming summer, it feels chilly. Khader motions to him and, together with the driver and the man Adam thinks of as the guard, they climb the stairs. When they reach the third floor, Khader pushes at an unlocked door. Several men are already inside the apartment, preoccupied, rushing in and out of the main room. The furniture is sparse and utilitarian: a few rough shelves with some books and box files; a desk and a computer; some steel-framed chairs; and in one corner, a coffee table and a cheap brown couch and armchair. On the wall is a huge poster of Jerusalem, dominated by the golden Dome of the Rock, with a border of white Arabic letters printed on a background of brilliant green, the colors of Hamas.

  “So. You are here,” says Khader. “You will sit. You would like some tea?”

  “Yes, thank you,” says Adam, trying to smile.

  “I must ask you to give me a few minutes. There has been another attack, and I need to find out what is happening.” Khader heads into the adjoining room, and for more than hour, Adam waits. No one pays attention to him. At last Khader comes back.

  “The situation is bad, and it is still developing. It started with a bomb near the Islamic University. Four of our people have been blown up in their car, and now there is firing. I think also some of the Fatah soldiers have been shot. Every day, it is getting worse.” He shrugs. “Either it is Fatah, or the Israelis.”

  Adam nods, as if a bombing and its attendant bloody chaos were just another everyday hazard. “You know why I am here. Can you help?”

  “Can we help find your wife?” Khader does not look encouraging. “Please understand, I want to assist you, Mr. Adam. You are my guest, and Ahmad Mahmoud, your client in America, is the cousin of one of my teachers. He is a very respected man. But you are here because Bashir gave you my phone number, and after you met him he was arrested by the Israelis. How did this happen?”

  “I don’t know. I swear to you, I have no idea how they found him, and the one thing I do know is that it was nothing to do with me.” Adam is aware he is gushing. “I’ve gone over everything that happened that night and I just can’t figure it out. I am sure no one was following me. I told no one where I was going. Look, if you’re suggesting I’m working for the Israelis, surely you can see I would not have come here—especially after Bashir was captured. I’m here because I honestly believe that you want to find my wife, almost as much as I do. I am also convinced that she is being held by your enemies.”

  “How would you know who is holding her?”

  Of course: Bashir would not have had time to get a message about their meeting to his friends in Gaza. Khader doesn’t yet know about the video.

  “A DVD was sent to the US embassy. Morgan was on it, she looked terrible, she was wearing a Guantanamo-style orange jumpsuit and I’m certain she had been tortured. Behind her was a banner, which said she was a prisoner of the Janbiya al-Islam. Do you know this group? Is it connected to Hamas?”

  “So many questions.” Khader shakes his head. “No. It is nothing to do with the Islamic Movement. We know who they are. They are takfiri, extremists. They think it is fine to kill other Muslims in pursuit of their goals. But if they have your wife, it is not good news. You have seen a little of Gaza now. You have seen enough to know how hard it will be to find her.”

  As they speak, another man in a leather jacket rushes into the room and whispers into Khader’s ear, then hands him a small object. Khader’s face darkens. He uncurls his fist, revealing a tiny circuit board.

  “Do you know what this is, Mr. Adam?”

  Adam looks blank, and he shrugs. Before he can speak, Khader stands, raises his hand, and brings it down across Adam’s face with sudden, shocking power.

  “You do not know? You have been carrying this, and you don’t know what it is?”

  “I—I haven’t seen it before.” Adam can feel his cheek swelling, but the shock prevents him from feeling any pain. “I swear to you. What is it?”

  “Well, let me educate you, Mr. Adam. This is an RFID, a radio frequency identification device; a tracker. After we searched you on the way here, my colleagues discovered it behind the leather in the wallet where you keep your passport. We have deactivated it. It is useless. But I do not believe you. Who gave it to you, Mr. Adam?” He jabs Adam in the chest, with a force so strong he sprawls backwards across the spongy foam of the sofa, pushed off balance.

  “I have no idea! This is nothing to do with me,” Adam yells. “I’m here to find my wife, not take sides in your battles with Fatah or the Israelis. I’m a lawyer! I’ve spent the past few years of my career trying to defend your movement’s supporters’ constitutional rights, not get them wiped out in an airstrike.” Even as the words spill out of his mouth, he grasps their incongruous absurdity, and a first quiver of fear deep in his viscera. “I wanted to meet you only to ask you for help. Why else would I take such a risk?”

  “You want to find your wife.” Khader’s voice is suddenly measured, calm, threatening. “And is this how you plan to do it? By spying on us? You want to find Mrs. Cooper. Well I think you must know that this is how the Israelis found Bashir—another man you asked to help you, who now faces years in prison.”

  On the table there is an ashtray, and Khader puts the chip in it, then applies the flame from a cigarette lighter. In a moment, it is a blob of bubbling plastic. “Now that we cannot be followed, we will go somewhere else. Who are you spying for, Mr. Adam? Israel or America? The Shabak or the CIA?”

  “If you don’t believe me, speak to the family of Ahmad Mahmoud. Ask them how I have kept their hopes alive.” Adam has recovered his composure. “I am truly sorry about Bashir. He saw me in good faith, and unwittingly, I betrayed him. But if I was carrying a tracking device, it was planted on me, and I do not know who was responsible. I have come to you because I do not believe the CIA has the slightest clue where Morgan is, and I feel certain that in time you will.”

  Khader says nothing, but his eyes betray doubt. They get up and leave, Adam and the same three men as before. At the bottom of the stairs, the blindfold is again tied around his head. They march him to a car and push him in.

  “You say your wife has been kidnapped by the Janbiya al-Islam,” Khader says as the vehicle begins to move again. “Hallas. If she is in Gaza, we will find the truth.”

  Again the bewildering movement. This time, the drive seems to last longer, but the car is slower, sometimes barely moving. As they drive, Adam becomes aware that something is happening on the streets outside. At first the noise is distant and almost indiscernible, but slowly it grows louder: shouting, tumult, and then gunfire. He remembers a wild-eyed Australian he met at some Washington party, who had spent years covering the war in Iraq for one of the TV news networks. Unprompted, he had spoken about nothing except his life’s many terrifying confrontations, his words an unstoppable torrent, as if he were unable to
comprehend the miracle of his own survival. He recalls that the Australian called firefights “stoushes”—a term, Adam discovered only later, from Australian and New Zealand military slang. With a squirt of adrenaline, Adam realizes he’s probably heading into a stoush himself, accompanied not by trusted comrades but a possibly homicidal Hamas security cadre. He should be petrified. Yet mingled with the fear, he experiences a strange elation. Now no one can accuse him of not trying hard enough. Bizarrely, he recalls his adolescent reading of Jean-Paul Sartre. No longer a besuited litigator, he has seized his destiny.

  The vehicle stops altogether, provoking a torrent of angry, frightened Arabic from the driver. Khader shouts back, and Adam feels the car begin to shake and rock. The invisible mob outside is screaming unintelligible chants and slogans, and on top of the men’s deep roar there’s a piercing descant: the shrieks of ululating women. A hand lifts the blindfold and Adam turns to look at Khader, seeing that his eyes are wide with fear, and then at the scene outside the car windows. They’re in a wide street, apparently close to the middle of the city, and in front of the car is a sea of men in keffiyehs. Most are clean-shaven, and that, Adam realizes, means they’re Fatah, not Hamas.

  “We’re going to have to run for it!” Khader’s voice is an octave higher than it was when they were in the apartment. He tries to open the door, but finds it jammed by the pressure of the crowd. Through the windshield, maybe a hundred yards ahead, Adam sees three swaying coffins born aloft by mourners, draped in Fatah’s colors. How did this happen? How can Khader’s driver have been so stupid? They have blundered into a political funeral. According to Arabic custom, the bodies will be fresh, probably shot in an earlier phase of this burgeoning “stoush” earlier this same day. Now it seems that every eye is on their car, and fists are being raised; it’s only too obvious that Khader and the others are Hamas.

  “Lock your door,” Khader shouts. “Maybe we can somehow drive out of this.” But the press of bodies only grows. Even were the driver able and willing to run people down, the car cannot move. Time seems to slow as Adam looks up and sees the incongruous trappings of normality: a balcony with plastic chairs; some laundry draped on a drying frame; the usual square, concrete buildings. But so many people. So many of them young, and yet so angry.

  Just ahead, a phalanx of the guards in black, the well-equipped guys who Colin said had been trained with American backing, emerges from a side street, and as he catches sight of them, Adam feels a surge of relief. At last: order.

  “Khader, look.” Adam points.

  But when Khader sees them, he pushes the door again with renewed, desperate force. “They are Force 17,” he says. “These are the worst. We must go now or we die!”

  Adam doesn’t see who fires the first two shots, but they seem to have come from behind, perhaps from a gunman hidden on one of the laundry-draped balconies. The Force 17 men scatter as the bullets thud into the concrete of the building above their heads, and he gazes in horror as one of them takes cover by the side of a van and raises his weapon. The crowd’s screams are no longer coordinated and they rise in volume, while Adam pushes at the car door with his feet, his back braced against the front passenger seat, drawing on every reserve of his strength. With a surge of triumph he feels it open, and he keeps his legs rigid so it cannot close. He grabs Khader’s wrist, and, dragging him with him, he dives from the car. But even as they make their exit, the Force 17 militiaman fires twice. The windshield shatters and the driver slumps forward, a cataract of blood pumping from his neck and forehead. As he leaves the vehicle Adam feels the spray, and for a fraction of a second he thinks he has been hit. He turns away as a third shot hits the Hamas guard who had been next to the driver. He may not be dead, but if they try to rescue him, they soon will be.

  The shock of the shooting has made the crowd draw back in case more bullets, maybe not so well-aimed, are coming, and in the instant before the mob can regroup Adam and Khader start to run, away from the coffins, back down the street in the direction they drove in from. There is no more firing, and within two hundred yards the crowd has thinned. In a hundred more they have the street to themselves, but they keep on running, careless of the heat and the sun overhead. Away from the mob and the men with guns, the streets are empty, the windows shuttered. Adam has no idea where he is, a fugitive in an alien city. Then, through a gap between buildings, he catches the gleam of the sea, and mentally he orients himself; he must be heading north—toward Erez!—parallel to the coast. He racks his memory for the Gaza maps he has spent hours poring over on the Internet. Depending where he started from, he is either going to end up close to the haven that is Colin’s office, or in the chaos of the Jabaliya refugee camp, the seething cauldron being fought over by a dozen militant factions. At last they reach a junction, and Khader stops.

  “You go that way,” he says, pointing. “Just go straight. It will take you back to Unknown Soldier Square. And you will need these.” He reaches into his jacket, and gives Adam his wallet and passport. “I’m afraid we destroyed your cell phone. We had to be sure there was not another chip.” He holds out his hand. “You saved me. Now, habibi, I believe you.”

  “But what about you? Where will you go?”

  “Don’t worry. There is a Hamas house near here. I will be safe. Now go. Insh’Allah you will come back, and then we will find your wife. But it is for later. This is not the time for you to be in Gaza.” Khader waves, then walks quickly downhill, toward the beach.

  Adam starts to jog again and makes his way along the wide, silent street. From somewhere behind, he can hear more gunfire, but soon, not so far ahead, he can see the square. Here there are still men sitting outside the cafes, and they look in astonishment at this sweating, bloodied Westerner, running alone along the sidewalk. He pushes the plate glass doors and stumbles into the Kafarneh Building lobby. The air conditioning feels like a sudden immersion in a cool mountain waterfall. The security man says nothing as he summons the elevator, then rides it to Colin’s floor.

  Colin has been paying a visit to the restroom and happens to be on the marble landing when the elevator doors reopen. He scans Adam carefully, taking in the blood spilt across his safari shirt. “Aha,” he says. “I see you’ve been getting to know Gaza. You’re going to need the washroom, and I can lend you a T-shirt. And then we’d better get you home.” Adam looks at his watch. It is three forty five in the afternoon. He has made Colin’s Gaza deadline with fifteen minutes to spare.

  Adam had been warned that the security at Erez would be intense, and it lived up to expectations. He wanted nothing more than to be back in Tel Aviv, to take a shower and wash away his fear and frustration. First, however, he had to stand in the Erez security area, obeying the orders that were broadcast through a speaker system by staff looking down from a high-level viewing gallery, protected by blast-proof glass. “Turn out your pockets. Place your wallet and passport in the plastic tray and put it on the conveyor belt. Remove your belt, watch, and shoes. Now stand in the explosives detection booth ahead of you.” Even without a bag, it took forty minutes. Afterward, back in the passport hall, he and Colin joined a long line of journalists, aid workers, and a few privileged Palestinians. For almost an hour, it did not move, because there was no one in the inspection booth. It was almost six before they emerged, back in the land of Israel.

  He felt disoriented and traumatized, trying to come to terms with what had happened. On a few occasions while climbing in the Alps, he had, he knew, come close to death. Once an innocent snow-slope that he had just crossed was suddenly filled with a mass of falling boulders, some the size of cars, which had been melted from their icy moorings by a heat wave. Another time, he and a friend had been benighted while descending from a notorious ice-climb, the north face of the Aiguille de Triolet; had they not stayed active all night by digging an enormous cave with their ice axes, they would have frozen to death. But somehow, surviving the worst that impersonal, implacable nature could throw at him seemed easier to deal with
. The Force 17 men who had killed Khader’s driver could just as easily have killed him, and they would have done so through an exercise of hostile, human agency. Worse, men who were equally dangerous, and just as culturally alien, were still holding Morgan. That he had gained a somewhat greater personal insight into what she was going through only intensified his anxiety.

  Adam said little about his day on the drive back to Tel Aviv, hoping that when they arrived, Colin would join him for a beer. But he had to get back to his new wife in Jerusalem, and so after his shower Adam took to the streets alone, past the bars and restaurants thronged with tourists and on down to the seafront, where happy little clumps of young people were flirting as they always did in their flip-flops and shorts and miniskirts. He sat and watched the sunset on a bench, and as darkness fell he walked to an outdoor café, picked at a pizza, and drank most of a bottle of wine, but though the alcohol soothed him, his stomach could barely tolerate the food. He wondered whether Morgan could see the same evening stars. What seemed hard to believe was not Gaza, so near and yet so distant, but Tel Aviv. Three well-groomed American women in their early thirties sat down at the next table and tried to engage him in conversation, announcing they were from Milwaukee, and inquiring whether he could give them advice about the best way to arrange a visit to Masada. He answered politely but declined their request to join them, fearing that if he did, the only subject he would be able to talk about was how to survive your first firefight.

  Before turning in, he checked his email. Among the spam was a message from Ronnie Wasserman, sent early that morning. “Dear Adam,” it began, “I spoke to your mother-in-law today and she explained you’re in Israel. I imagine you know she came to see me a few days ago, and she gave me her number. Well, this is quite a coincidence, because I’m on the way there myself. Only for a week, unfortunately, but I really needed a break. I’ll be staying with my sister in Ramat Hasharon, a few miles north of Tel Aviv. I’ll be on my own—Theo’s parents have agreed to take care of the kids. Anyhow, if you’re free, it would be lovely to see you. I’m due to arrive tomorrow. Send me an email or call my US cell phone xxx R.”