When Shadows Collide (An Arik Bar Nathan Novel Book 1)

by Nathan Ronen

  He circled slowly from behind, intending to surprise the thieves from that direction. Drawing closer, he limped as quickly as he could toward the figures through the plowed field. The sky was covered with heavy clouds that concealed the moon. He hoped that the sound of crickets would distract the thieves from the noise he made as he crossed the plowed field. The large clods of dirt made it hard for him to walk. He was as slow as a slug, walking laboriously as he leaned on the single crutch, breathing heavily as drops of sweat streamed from his forehead, fogging up his single working eye. He wiped his forehead with his hand. And then, the crutch sank into a gopher hole. He lost his balance and found himself stumbling and falling forward. He held onto the gun with all his might, but as he fell, a noisy shot escaped his pistol, piercing the stillness of the night. The noise frightened the young foals, which began to go wild in their paddock.

  Cornfield tried to rise and looked for the crutch. He saw a large figure running toward him with a crowbar. He pointed the pistol at the running figure and fired but missed. The crowbar smashed powerfully into his skull. Another hard blow upon his hand forced him to drop the gun. But his finger still had time to squeeze the trigger, and another bullet shot out at close range, aimed downwards. The figure screamed and cursed in pain. Blood stained the pants from a leg wound. The figure kneeled behind the exhausted, defeated Cornfield, grabbing onto the curls on his head. A commando knife was unsheathed, and with the skill of an experienced sheep slaughterer, slit Cornfield’s throat with a single slash of its razor-sharp blade.

  Cornfield grabbed his slit throat and felt himself choking. Large spurts of blood flooded his throat from the severed neck arteries, making him feel like he was drowning. Within a short time, he lost consciousness. The large figure took his gun from him and limped toward the massive truck, cursing in Arabic.

  The sound of the shots woke Amira. She ran to the window, just in time to see a large truck of the kind used to transport cattle break through the wooden fence surrounding the estate and disappear down the dirt road weaving through the area settlements, heading east, toward Ramla and Lod.

  The frightened Amira screamed in terror and ran barefoot down the wooden stairs, dressed only in panties and one of Cornfield’s old t-shirts. She turned on the lights and ran out to the garden, yelling out her husband’s name in despair. The back door was wide open, and the tracks of one heavy military shoe and a metal crutch on the moist ground led her toward the field and the stables.

  She hesitated to walk into the field barefoot; she had always been afraid of snakes. Amira looked in the direction where she thought he might be. She yelled out his name again but received no answer. The neighbors’ lights came on.

  She hurried to return home and picked up the phone receiver, pressing the speed-dial button on their landline marked “Yavne Police.” She waited for quite a while before hearing a sleepy voice reply, “Yavne Police, hello.”

  “Come quick!” Amira screamed. “I’m in Kfar HaNagid Village, first house when you enter from the right, across from the nursery. There are thieves here! My husband’s disappeared! And shots were fired!”

  The sleepy voice answered wearily, “Ma’am, it’ll take some time. Our cruiser is out of order. We’re just a substation for the Rehovot precinct. I’m going to assign this incident to them.”

  Amira hung up in despair and ran to the encrypted red Anemone phone in the living room. She picked up the receiver. The young voice of a female operations officer answered immediately, “Yes, sir.”

  “It’s Amira, his wife! I heard shots!” she screamed. “I think Cornfield is hurt! Come quick!” She began weeping bitterly, dropping the receiver. Sounds of running drew nearer to her home. It was the neighbors, who had come to see what the source of the shots was; some of them were armed.

  “I think he went that way!” Amira pointed toward the empty stables and fainted.

  Less than fifteen minutes had gone by when a black Blackhawk helicopter landed with deafening noise in the fallow field between Cornfield’s house and Intercity Road 42. Two combat crews from Shaldag Special Forces Unit ran out of the chopper. They spread out in the area and began to search the house’s surroundings, scanning for terrorists. The helicopter took off once more and began an aerial scan, illuminating the area with a powerful spotlight.

  A minute later, the helicopter’s searchlight froze, focusing on a large figure lying motionless, face-down within the plowed field.

  The pilot directed the soldiers over the two-way radio, and they ran toward Cornfield. Unintentionally, the soldiers contaminated the murder scene, their boots obscuring the killers’ tracks, the DNA from the murderer’s blood, and the tracks left behind by the truck on which the pricey horses had been loaded.

  An ambulance arrived within a short time, only to declare Cornfield’s death. A police cruiser from Rehovot, along with a jeep carrying Border Patrol volunteers from the local security force, arrived twenty minutes later, after the ambulance bearing Cornfield’s body had departed for the Abu Kabir National Center of Forensic Medicine. A mobile forensics lab that arrived an hour later found the crime scene in total disarray.

  Chapter 23

  Eva’s Apartment in Heidelberg

  Eva’s apartment was located south of the Heidelberg University campus, on 12 An der Neckarspitze Strasse, close to the Neckar River. It was a small, two-story house, surrounded by a garden.

  Arik and Eva were sleeping in the main bedroom on the second floor, spooning in their favorite pose. Two-year-old Leo was asleep in the adjacent room, with his little sister, Ethel- Hannelore, in the crib next to him.

  Around three a.m., the phone rang. Arik woke up immediately but did not pick up the receiver as he was not fluent in German and did not always understand what people were saying. He expected Eva to wake up but taking care of the kids and her slow recovery left her very tired, and she was sleeping soundly.

  Arik rose from his bed and walked toward the cordless phone, which was on the more distant night cabinet, next to Eva. He picked up the receiver and whispered, “Von Kesselring Residenz.”

  On the other end of the line, someone recognized Arik’s voice and immediately began speaking in Hebrew.

  “Arik, it’s Alex,” he heard a frantic voice.

  “What happened?” Arik asked in concern.

  “Cornfield was murdered in his house tonight,” Alex said, tears in his voice.

  “What?” Arik found himself yelling into the space of the room. He felt the blood draining from his head, knowing he had to sit down. But he did not want to wake Eva. “Hold on a minute, Alex. Just one second. I’m going down to the living room.”

  He sat down, pouring himself a shot of plum brandy.

  “Who did it? Terrorists? Iranian retaliation?” he asked in disbelief.

  “I don’t know,” Alex said. “He was slaughtered in the garden of his home. The circumstances are unclear. The head of the Shin Bet has ordered a full media blackout on the investigation, and the censors have been asked to block any publication of the events until his funeral. It might also be Iranian intelligence striking back at us and signaling it can get to us, too. I really don’t know. We’re locked out of the investigation.”

  “When’s the funeral?” Arik asked.

  “Apparently it’s tomorrow afternoon. I thought you’d want to come,” Alex said, carefully choosing his words and navigating his path. “I mean, only if Eva is already feeling well enough.”

  “Of course I’ll come!” Arik announced decisively. “Ask the Travel Department to book me a flight, maybe from Frankfurt or from Heidelberg. They should tell me how to arrive, where from, and which passport to use, and send the flight’s e-ticket details to my Chameleon.”

  Somehow, Eva miraculously sensed something dramatic taking place around her and opened her eyes. Arik’s covers were thrown back and he wasn’t there. She heard sounds from the living room. She p
ut on her robe and came down.

  “What’s going on, my beloved man?” she asked gently, noticing his shocked expression.

  “Cornfield was murdered in his home in Israel tonight,” he replied.

  She was briefly silent, then immediately said, “You have to fly back to Israel immediately. Your place is there now. We’ll be okay here. We’ll wait for you until things become clearer. My mother will stay here to help me.”

  “Are you sure?” Arik asked.

  “Yes. Go,” she replied confidently. “At the moment, they need you more over there. I’ll be fine. Don’t go to the airport in Heidelberg, it’s too small. Take a taxi directly to Frankfurt. It’s a large international airport, and flights leave for all over the world all the time. It’s just an hour’s drive away.”

  “Excellent idea. Can you call me a cab while I get dressed?” he asked.

  “Of course, lieblich.29 Dress warmly, it’s cold outside. Should I make you some coffee?”

  “I’ll have some at the airport. I want to get home to Israel as fast as I can.”

  Eva wanted to tell him she thought that home was wherever his family was but decided to keep quiet. Although he had refused, she made him a tall espresso, pouring two cups into a thermic glass, and called a taxi.

  * * *

  29“My darling” in German.

  Chapter 24

  Yavne Cemetery, near Ben Zakai Village

  The cemetery serving the city of Yavne and the settlements of Gderot Regional Council stretched south of the city, surrounded by a natural Mediterranean grove, peppered with thorny burnet bushes, and carob and mastic trees. The landscape was rustic, bordering upon tall cornfields and the chickpea fields of the community of Aseret.

  Arik stood across from the speakers’ podium. He was staring silently at Cornfield’s large body, which was displayed upon a small stage, laid out on a stretcher and covered by his personal prayer shawl. Amira and their three children were standing side by side, crying quietly, inconsolable. At the beginning of the funeral, the rabbi had walked over and symbolically tore at the clothes of the deceased’s children with a razor blade, in accordance with Jewish tradition. A friend had cut the lapel of Amira’s blouse to signify mourning.

  Cornfield’s oldest son, a talented musician and a professor at the Julliard academy of music in New York, talked in a mournful voice about his father, a respected public figure who had not always been an easy father, a beloved man who had been focused mainly on security matters, and less on his family. He apologized to his father for having escaped all the way to the United States to study music, much to the chagrin of Cornfield, who had wanted his son to follow in his footsteps. Many of the attendees wiped away a tear.

  Arik himself was scheduled to deliver his eulogy on the stage in several minutes. He had composed his speech during his flight from Germany but had not had time to copy out the draft into a more orderly version. The page was full of scribbles, lines, crossed-out sentences, and arrows. He silently prayed he would not get confused. The wail of approaching sirens caused the entire audience to shift their gaze to the main gate.

  The prime minister’s entourage, accompanied by a police cruiser, made its way with blaring sirens to the plaza. Prime Minister Ehud Tzur, arriving significantly late, exited his car. He walked over to Amira for a handshake; she offered him a cold hand. Cornfield’s children refused to shake the prime minister’s hand. Ehud Tzur did not need any more than that to figure out that he was not wanted among them. He mumbled some words of apology about an urgent meeting to which he had to travel and headed back toward his vehicle. His bodyguards, two heavyset gorillas, cleared his path. None of the attendees came over to shake his hand, and he was also booed several times. As a seasoned politician, he knew how to ignore such incidents, assuming a professional smile as he waved to the audience.

  Tzur hurried to return to his secured limousine, which immediately left the cemetery. The convoy drove about 200 yards, stopping by the turn leading to the village of Ben Zakai. The military secretary, Brigadier General Ami Oren, disembarked from the vehicle and walked back to the cemetery plaza. He signaled Arik, telling him, “Prime Minister Tzur needs to talk to you urgently. He’s waiting for you outside the cemetery. Come with me!”

  “I’m very sorry,” Arik replied. “I’m going up there now to eulogize my commander and mentor Ben-Ami Cornfield. Tell the prime minister I’ll find him later.”

  Military Secretary Ami Oren signaled him to wait a moment and called the prime minister’s vehicle. He concealed his mouth as he spoke, then got back to Arik.

  “Tzur says he’s waiting in his car outside the cemetery gate. You’ve got fifteen minutes. Don’t you dare try anything funny with us, you hear?”

  Arik looked at the immense audience, which had arrived from all over Israel and the world to say a final farewell to Ben-Ami Cornfield. All the military attachés, the entire diplomatic staff, the heads of the foreign intelligence bureaus stationed in Israel, officially or unofficially. The rabbi from Chevra Kadisha, an organization offering Jewish burial services, asked for segregation between men and women, but an audience comprised of Mossad personnel would not obey such instructions verbatim. They utterly ignored the rabbi’s appeals and stood together as couples, families, friends, andwarriors, until the rabbi gave up and stood, humiliated, on the sidelines, muttering incoherent words to himself.

  Arik climbed up to the podium.

  “Hi, everyone. My name is Arik Bar-Nathan and I’ve been asked by Amira to say a few words on behalf of the friends at the Office. Cornfield, as we called him at the Prime Minister’s Office, hated to be pitied. He wasn’t one for big words and hated chatterboxes who talked endlessly, and so I’ll be brief, not because I’m afraid of boring you, but because I’m still scared of pissing him off.”

  The attendees laughed with tears in their eyes.

  “We’re not the type of people who know how to talk in front of an audience,” Arik continued. “I’m a guy who has gotten used to living under the radar, in a world of masks and shadows. I look around and see warriors here. Present warriors and past warriors, Cornfield’s friends from a glorious career as a warrior and commander during an entire life cycle. And it’s here, in the ‘house of life,’ as Judaism refers to this place, that I want to tell you, from my personal experience, that warriors often think of death. They live with it, they accept it, they expect it, some of them even want it. But deep in their hearts, they want it to be fair. ‘I’m facing off against him and may the best of us win.’ Warriors want death to be dignified. Whether they win or lose, they want it to arrive with some kind of meaning. A warrior slaughtered in his home by a despicable murderer, when he was already an old man and severely disabled, is the greatest insult. It’s a matter of disrespect. It’s abusing the helpless, and we, this man’s subordinates, will not forget and will not forgive until we catch these contemptible killers, and that’s a promise!

  “I want to tell you briefly about Ben-Ami Cornfield, the man, the commander, and the manager. Cornfield could be a real bastard, but he was also one hundred percent a mentsch, a person of integrity. He’d always tell me, ‘Not everyone who talks in a bass voice is necessarily right.’ He hated all the self-righteous politicians speaking in pretty words, all full of themselves, but when something went wrong, they were always looking for a scapegoat to whom they could assign blame, while evading their own responsibility. In that context, he once told me the story about the frog and the scorpion when he wanted to give me an allegory for the relationship between politicians and professionals. I’m sure you all know the story. Do I need to tell it again?”

  A flurry of smiles shot through the audience. “Tell us, tell us the story!” some of the attendees called out.

  “There was once a poisonous yellow scorpion who wanted to cross a wide river in order to visit his scorpion wife. It walked over to a frog and said to it, ‘Plea
se take me on your back when you swim to the other side.’ The frog, very apprehensive, asked the scorpion, ‘And what if something happens on the way there and you sting me?’ The scorpion chuckled and said, ‘It wouldn’t make sense for me to do that, because if I sting you, we’ll both drown.’ That made sense to the frog. The scorpion climbed onto the frog’s back and the frog swam off. In the middle of the river, the scorpion could not control its urges and stung the frog with its tail. As the frog was dying, it rattled out, ‘Why did you do that? Now we’ll both drown.’

  “‘I’m sorry,’ the scorpion replied. ‘I can’t help it. It’s in my nature.’”

  Arik took a long breath and continued. “Anyone who didn’t know Ben-Ami Cornfield would, at first sight, think that they were meeting a bull in a china shop. But that was far from the truth. If we at the Mossad could see from afar, it was only because we were standing on the shoulders of giants. And Cornfield was not just a giant in the physical sense. Cornfield knew how to act while respecting the authority of the elected class over the appointed class. He also knew how to prove that being subordinate didn’t mean subordinating your values. He never imagined he would find himself serving under a new prime minister with whom he disagreed on nearly every subject. However, the two found a modus vivendi in order to work together. Cornfield swore he would never allow an inter-agency war to break out, and he picked his battles opposite the elected rank, based not on criteria of ego, but strictly on ethical grounds. His line in the sand was justice, integrity, and belief that the State of Israel was founded to be a Jewish, liberal, and democratic country. He knew what was worth fighting over and when to give in. He introduced the Mossad to the importance of collaboration with all Israeli intelligence agencies, leading the way in a businesslike, amiable manner, based on trust, transparency, and professionalism, with endless dedication and a unified vision. Cornfield once asked me, ‘Do you know the difference between a pessimist and an optimist? Both of them die in the end, but they live very different lives.’”