Promised Land

by Martin Fletcher

  “Better than a trumped-up murder charge. Anyway, you can talk, with all the stuff you get up to.” He put the file back into the safe and locked it. “I saved my soldier’s life in a tank once, he’s now a police detective, and he paid me back by saving me from potential embarrassment. That’s all, I…”

  “Arie, you’re insane. Potential embarrassment? More like a genuine murder charge. You’re just digging a deeper hole for yourself. We’re done. I didn’t hear any of this, I don’t know about it, this conversation never took place. I have to go.”

  “Oh, come on. Don’t play the innocent. I know why you’re getting so angry. This is about you and Tamara…”

  “This is not about Tamara, you damn fool.”

  “Yes, it is. I may not be the best husband, but she’s my wife, and always will be, so you stay away.”

  Peter turned from the door, each step toward Arie a little firmer, each word more deliberate. “She’s not your property. The way you treat her, she should have left you years ago.”

  “Then why didn’t she? Because she loves me. Me, Peter. Me.”

  “But you don’t love her. All you do is cheat. On her, in business, on everyone. And she deserves better…”

  “Better? You? Stay away from my wife, Peter. I’m warning you.”

  “You’re warning me? Of what? You think I’m Yonathan Schwartz? You’re going to smash my head with a rock?” Now Peter was a meter from Arie, the vein throbbing at his temple. “Or do you get somebody else to do your dirty work these days?”

  His heart was pumping, his mind racing, yet oddly focused. Mahmoud al-Faradis. Arie. Guns, death, fear. His brother was big, strong, fearsome, but with the thrust of a knuckle he could immobilize Arie before Arie even raised a fist. Instead, Peter stepped back. “Get a grip, Arie. You’re threatening your own brother?”

  “Stay out of my marriage, Peter. Stay away from my wife. Don’t push me.”

  Peter forced himself to stay calm. If he spoke up now there was no going back. It was one thing to call Arie a bad husband; quite another to announce himself as a rival; to confirm Arie’s fears. Keep him guessing. His breathing calmed, his training took over. If you make an enemy, don’t let him know it.

  Anyway, it isn’t up to Arie, or me, he thought, it’s up to Tamara. Who does she want? Truly?

  MOSHE

  TEL AVIV, ISRAEL

  October 1964

  Moshe thumped the final key and called out “Done!” to the walls of his living room. The headline always came to him last, when he had finished writing the column: “Murder in the City of Light”—Yes! He liked the “Light” reference: it was ironic, it played off how dark the story was.

  When Mahmoud al-Faradis was shot dead by the cheese stall of the Rue de la Gaîté market in Montparnasse, French tabloids called it payback for gambling debts, a cover story the French police put out.

  But Moshe had two solid sources for the real story behind the murder of the Egyptian army officer. The man on the motorcycle, his face hidden by goggles and a helmet, who shot al-Faradis three times in the head and raced away along Avenue du Maine, was a hit man for a rival Palestinian group fighting Yasser Arafat’s new Palestine Liberation Organization. Moshe’s third paragraph quoted an Israeli intelligence source: “The Palestinians are organizing against Israel but already they kill each other. It’s a sign of how fragmented and weak they really are, despite all their empty threats.”

  Peter chuckled the next day when he read the newspaper. He must remember to congratulate Moshe on his “scoop.” And also the guys on the information desk who had planted the false story that Moshe had picked up. There was nobody better than Mossad at planting disinformation and sowing discord. Moshe’s inaccurate column would be picked up by the international media, translated into Arabic, and pretty soon the so-called Palestinians really would be killing each other.

  “You shouted ‘Done.’ What’s done?” Tamara said as she entered Moshe’s living room, laden with groceries. She kissed her father on the forehead at the dining table where he worked, and carried the bags to the kitchen, calling out, “Ima.”

  “Your mother’s out, she had to go to school to talk with the principal about Peter’s boys. More trouble. It’s all getting a bit much.”

  “What is it this time?” Tamara said from the door.

  “Don’t know.”

  Tamara returned minutes later with two glasses of mint tea. “What’s done?” she asked again.

  “Oh, my next column, let’s not talk about that now. I wanted to ask you something. About Arie.”

  “Not that again. Please, Abba, don’t ask.”

  “What again?”

  “Us. Me. Him.”

  “What about you? Is everything all right? I wanted to ask you about his business. I read he’s investing even more heavily in industry and construction in development towns, and expanding his garages and service stations. I want you to tell him not to invest so much. I think the economy is going to stop booming and slow down dramatically…”

  “It isn’t his money,” Tamara interrupted. “It never is, it’s investors, bank loans … and anyway, he’s interested in politics, he thinks investment in these places will help him climb inside Mapai. He’s thinking of his future, maybe Parliament. God help Israel.”

  Moshe laughed. “Prime Minister Arie Nesher. At least he gets things done. But as for the economy, he has to pay interest, and eventually pay back the loans. My next column will be about the recession around the corner. It’s been too good here, too long. And it isn’t based on production, that’s what I’ve been researching.” He stirred two sugars into the tea. “The boom is based on German reparations money flooding the country, American aid, Israel bonds, it’s all smoke and mirrors, it can’t last. Arie may be one of the richest men in Israel, but he’s also by far the most overextended. His debts vastly exceed his assets. I’ve been studying it. He needs to retrench before the recession hits.”

  “Well, he’ll be here soon, tell him yourself, you think he listens to me?”

  “He should, if he’s so rich then so are you, and you’re a smart lawyer, of course he should listen to you.”

  “Well that’s hard because we rarely talk. Anyway, so why do you think the economy is about to collapse?”

  “Not collapse, but the prime minister’s advisers tell me Eshkol will have to rein in spending. People will have to make do with less. He’ll give a big speech soon on the economy. So this is what will happen, this is my next column: Money becomes tighter, businesses which depend on loans can’t pay the interest and collapse, people lose jobs, and at the same time immigration is slowing, fewer Jews come to live here, while others leave because it’s too hard, so there’s less demand for housing, less demand for goods, more businesses collapse, more people lose jobs, and finally people here will have to live on what they make and not on what they borrow. Two of Arie’s biggest businesses, transport and construction, will be hit hardest.”

  “But why should all that happen?” Tamara asked. “The government wants more people here, not fewer. And they need homes.” But was Arie in trouble? Maybe that explained his foul mood lately.

  “I told you, we’re living in a fool’s paradise. The government needs to reduce spending and increase productivity. Anyway look, what do I know, I just write a column, but I tell you, Arie needs to be careful, he’s been riding a wave and it’s hitting the rocks. I like that!” He wrote the phrase in his notebook.

  A car drew up outside and the door slammed.

  “Well, tell him yourself, here he is.”

  The engine was still running when Arie entered the apartment. He looked around. “It’s about time you moved to a larger place, Moshe. I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Ah, the perfect opening for me,” Moshe said. “No thanks, Arie, I’ll stay right here where I can afford it. And if I were you I’d take another look at my finances.”

  “Why, what’s wrong with your finances?”

  “Funny guy. I mean
t yours.”

  “What do you mean? Things were never better. Darling,” he said, turning to Tamara, “I can’t stay after all, Yaacov is waiting to take me to a meeting, I just wanted to say hello to your parents. Moshe, how are you, apart from giving me financial advice, which I think you’re not exactly qualified to do, no disrespect intended.”

  “None taken.”

  “What kind of meeting?” Tamara asked again.

  “Business of course. Moshe, don’t worry, everything’s on the up. The country’s exports are close to a billion US dollars, Israel is barely sixteen years old and already we’re about fifteenth in the world in per capita GNP, we’re producing most of what we eat. In short, stop pissing in the tent.”

  “Yes, all true, but we’re spending way too much on the military, more than ten percent of the budget, inflation is rising every year…”

  Tamara interrupted. “Another business meeting? Who with this time? Batia? Naomi?…”

  “Enough!” Arie raised his voice so that Moshe looked up sharply. “I told you this morning, you’re fantasizing, there’s no one else, it’s all in your head.” He all but shouted the last word and emphasized it with a fist.

  Tamara almost hissed. “Not in front of Abba. Go, then. Go to her, whichever one it is. Don’t come back.” Her body tensed, she felt the muscle in her arm. Oh, how she’d like to slap him. “Go on, get out.”

  Arie shook his head, as if in disbelief. “I’ll come home as soon as I can.”

  She slammed the door after him, muttering to herself, “Yes, at four in the morning.”

  When she turned, Moshe was staring at his notes.

  “Sorry, Abba,” Tamara said quietly.

  After a moment he said, “I am too,” and held out his hand. Tamara took it and sat down heavily next to him. They sipped their tea, until Moshe dared break the silence.

  “How bad is it?”

  Seconds passed. Tamara’s shoulders trembled. She squeezed her father’s hand until it hurt, and a tear fell from her eye. And then another, and another, until she was sobbing in Moshe’s arms, while he stroked her head, wishing he could find the right words to comfort his daughter. How long could she bear that man?

  Rachel entered the room but before she could react he shushed her with a finger to his lips. Arie, he mouthed.

  After a final sob that turned into a grunt of frustration, Tamara slipped away from her father’s arms and hit the table in vexation. “Look at me,” she said, half to herself, drying her cheeks and trying to laugh. “My job is to help people look after themselves. But I can’t help myself.”

  “What can you do, that’s life,” her mother called, striding across the room, opening a package. “Here, have some cake, it’s Egyptian cinnamon, Peter’s girlfriend Etti made it. What a cook, it’s delicious. Have a slice, you’ll feel a lot better, my dear.”

  PETER

  TEL AVIV, ISRAEL

  November 1965

  Mossad’s new deputy head of special operations waited impatiently for the room to settle down, until all eyes were on Peter Nesher, glaring from the head of the laminated conference table. They knew him as a legendary field agent and saw his frustration. For Nesher had swapped the back streets for the boardroom, the pistol for the pen.

  He shifted uncomfortably, in his third meeting of the day. “I’ll start with the good news: the last of the German scientists are leaving Egypt, to work in Europe at about double the money. But the bad news is we’re losing the intelligence stream from those Germans just as Nasser is ratcheting up his threats against us.” Peter scanned the familiar faces around the table, feeling he was on the wrong side.

  “To make it worse, when Wolfgang Lotz was captured in March we lost the best source of information in Egypt we ever had, and the same in Syria in January when Eli Cohen was caught. Our two best assets, lost within six weeks of each other, thanks to Russian radio monitoring equipment. Together, that may be the biggest blow we’ve ever suffered, just when it’s clear we’re heading for another war and information is critical. In the north, the shelling from Syria means that thousands of our children spend days, weeks, sleeping in bomb shelters, while the new threat from Palestinian terrorists, based in Syria and Jordan, threatens those same communities with ground attacks every day. Too many of our citizens live in fear.”

  Peter could have added that a week earlier he had visited his friends Wolfie and Mayan on their kibbutz near the Sea of Galilee. Their five-year-old daughter Sophia hummed herself to sleep with the sound of a siren, and earlier when Peter’s son Ezra had picked up an overlooked case of cucumbers in a field, Sophia had almost screamed, Don’t touch it! It may be a bomb!

  He heard himself continue. “The next round is approaching fast. We cannot overestimate the Arabs’ thirst for revenge. However, as usual, our colleagues over at military intelligence disagree. Aman believes there is no chance of war with Egypt until ’69 or ’70, while Moscow prefers to keep the pot boiling, with no real war. But our own analysis shows that war is inevitable, and soon. Our task is to prove it.”

  Next came forty-five minutes of reports by section heads on the covert war—assassination, sabotage, paramilitary operations and psychological warfare—until Peter Nesher wrapped up the meeting with a deep sigh. He missed the action, but what could he do?

  He had dodged the issue as long as he could, until Gingie and Tamara had forced him to face the obvious: Peter wasn’t Israel’s only secret agent, and right now his children needed him more than his country.

  His twins had become too much for Rachel to handle, Noah and Ezra had grown into the original dreadful duo. When they weren’t fighting each other, they fought with other boys at school, while at home they were morose, uncommunicative, and rude. Only when they played with their little sister, Diana, did their gentle souls emerge. They bathed and fed her and took turns telling her bedtime stories. Rachel told Tamara, Tamara told Gingie, and finally Peter got the message: Stop going away all the time. His twins were sweet but wild. It was three years since Diana had died, and at twelve years old they needed a parent at home—they needed their dad.

  Although frustrated behind a desk, Peter had to admit that as a dad he was like a fish in water. At weekends he swam with his sons in the Mediterranean, took them for ice cream at Montana at the port, played football in HaYarkon Park, and in the apartment they wrestled, which he now understood was really just a boy’s way to cuddle. There were no more vexed calls from the school’s principal.

  His boys reminded him so much of their mother that he shuddered at the shallow nature of his affair with Ayelet, who he had been seeing on and off for half a year. When he ended it, she had merely shrugged, picked up her jacket, said, “Go to hell,” and walked out. He had watched the door close behind her and knew Ayelet would never cross his mind again.

  It was his brother’s wife who occupied that space. Even though he rarely saw Tamara, at birthdays and bar mitzvahs for the most part, he couldn’t get her out of his head; seeing her left him empty and alone. He had loved Diana deeply, yet even when she was alive and Tamara was her closest friend, he had felt an unseemly attraction for Tamara that unsettled him. Forbidden then, forbidden now. Oddly, it was Arie’s anger with him that gave him most encouragement. If he’s so angry, there must be something to be angry about.

  When the family had last gathered, three weeks earlier, to celebrate the birthday of his twins, the only jarring notes were the frosty looks between Tamara and Arie. It seemed the more cars in their driveway, the grander their home, the more modern their furnishings, with old master paintings, imported rugs, and ornate sets of china, the more distant the couple became. They barely acknowledged each other. It at once saddened Peter and almost gave him encouragement. But what to do? It was hopeless.

  And then she approached him. For the wrong reason, he thought, but it was a start.

  She asked to meet him on a park bench, overlooking the sea by the new Hilton hotel, at seven o’clock in the evening. The sun, nearing t
he horizon, sparkled on the crystal water, which lapped onto the beach below them. Peter, early as always, stood as Tamara approached.

  “You’re the last polite man in Israel,” Tamara said with a smile and a kiss on the cheek. “Or the first, I’m not sure which.”

  “It’s the German in me,” Peter replied. “Here, I brought some orange juice.”

  “Fresh?”

  “Of course.”

  They sipped quietly, sitting on the bench, facing the sea, the sun warming their faces. Tamara sighed, and Peter stole a glance. She brushed his cheek with her fingers. “You need to shave.”

  His heart leapt, until he remembered why she wanted to meet.

  “You said it’s about work,” he said.

  “Sorry, but yes,” she said, nodding. “I have a new client, and he said some things that made me think you may be involved.”

  “Me? Involved? In what?”

  “Can you keep a secret?”

  Peter laughed. “Me? Never.”

  Tamara smiled. “I’ll take that as a yes. Do you know the name Mahmoud al-Faradis? He was murdered in Paris a year ago.”

  “No. Why?” A puzzled look.

  “His brother came to me asking for help. He has a strange story. I can’t go into it all with you, you know, client privilege, but it’s the old story, Shin Bet is blackmailing him, they’re threatening to deport him from his home, make him live in another town, they’re refusing him a permit to take his wife to the hospital nearby, but instead of becoming an informer, he wants to fight them.”

  “So.”

  “Well, he says his brother was killed by Mossad.”

  “Okay.”

  “Peter, I know you too well.”

  “What?”

  “I mean you’re being monosyllabic. That means you’re not being honest.”

  Peter laughed aloud and took Tamara’s hand. “I love that you know me so well. Is that my giveaway sign? I’ll have to find some longer words.” His face crinkled in delight and he laughed again. “I’ll never play poker with you.”