by Y. I. Latz
He went on. “You understand that we’re not a rescue unit for Israeli girls pulling stupid stunts.”
My aggravation increased—
I hadn’t been expecting this sort of scolding.
However, I understood he wouldn’t have bothered to meet up with me solely in order to scold me.
I tried to keep my spirits high.
He continued. “Do you have any idea why Washington put a hit out on you?”
“Washington? On me? You’re sure?”
“Do you have any idea why?”
“No,” I lied.
“Other than you and your family, who else knows about your daughter’s arrest in Colombia?”
“No one.”
He went on. “In the message you sent to us, you mentioned you had a surprise for us. Can you elaborate on that?”
“It’s in my backpack.”
“What is it?”
“A laptop.”
“And why should it be of interest to us?”
“When you see it, you’ll understand.”
He had poured some tea for himself, but hadn’t sipped it, and continued to ignore it. “Who does it belong to? Your Navy? The Mossad?”
“The CIA.”
His face remained immobile. “How did you obtain it?”
“Is that important?”
“No.”
“Thank you.”
“Do they know you have it?”
“Yes.”
“Do they know you’re in Bogota?”
“Yes.”
“Do they know about me, us, or your relationship with us?”
“No.”
“Why are you so sure of that?”
“I’m not sure of anything. Including about you.”
Even this gibe at him did not induce his face to divert from its frozen expression.
He paused for a moment and then asked, “Are you a moron?”
◊◊◊
He disappeared for about twenty minutes. Maybe more. I thought he wasn’t coming back.
He did.
“I understand you have more possessions that belong to Uncle Sam.”
“Yes. No. Why?”
“And your final answer?”
“Yes.”
“Like what.”
“Is that important?”
“Yes.”
“A camera and a cell phone.”
This time there was no pause before he took another jab at me. “Are you a moron?”
◊◊◊
He disappeared for only three minutes this time.
Then came back.
“Where are the two other items?”
“Somewhere safe.”
“What do you consider to be somewhere safe?”
“Sorry?”
“I asked what you consider to be a safe location. Colombia? London? Your country?”
“Israel.”
“What do you intend to do with them?”
I echoed his question. “What do I intend to do with them?”
“The Yanks aren’t like us. They can inflict a lot of pain when they want to.”
“I’m not scared.”
This time it was his turn to echo my words back at me. They were dripping with sarcasm. “You’re ‘not scared.’ London asks whether you intend to bargain for them.”
“No.”
“Well, then?”
“I just want to make sure my daughter’s released.”
“And you think this stunt with the three items will help you?”
“Yes.”
“Then you really are a moron.”
◊◊◊
This time, he disappeared for an hour. I ordered more coffee until I began to feel a mild sense of heartburn.
He returned.
“London is interested in the three items.”
“Impossible.”
“Don’t you value your daughter’s life?”
“Impossible.”
“Would you be willing to explain to why it’s impossible?”
“I don’t have them with me.”
“And when you do?”
“I’ll hand them over.”
“All three items?”
“Two.”
“London wants three.”
“Tell London two.”
“Three.”
“Two.”
“The laptop and the cell phone.”
“The laptop and the camera.”
“And the phone.”
“Just the camera.”
“Why not the phone? Did they already promise you more? Who? Tehran? Damascus? Moscow? Have you sunk that low? Are you now betraying not just London, but your beloved Israel?”
I leaped to my feet.
He leaped up after me.
We were standing head to head. His head was a head higher than my head.
“You said the laptop was in your backpack. Where’s your backpack?” he asked.
A million flashes of light blurred my vision. The pressure in my temples increased. I was frightened by the transmissions my body was sending.
“Under the table,” I replied.
“This table?”
“Yes.”
He froze. “At least I see you know,” he said.
“Excuse me?”
“That you’re a moron.”
◊◊◊
My aggravation increased. As did my indignation. It was clearly reflected on my face. The affront I had suffered suffused it. This was the thanks I got from them for this impressive intelligence achievement they hadn’t even dreamed of?
“Leave the backpack under the table and get the hell out of here,” he placidly instructed me and headed toward the door.
“But!” I called out after him.
“They’ll get it,” he replied without turning around. In two or three steps, he had left the sprawling lobby.
I darted swift glances all around me. Who among the restaurant’s patrons belonged to his people? None of them looked right for the job. On the other hand, I didn’t exactly fit the profile either.
The moment I followed him out of the dimly lit hotel lobby, my eyes were blinded with sunlight. I realized I had forgotten my sunglasses.
I hurried back inside. No more than half a minute had gone by. My sunglasses were on the table, where I had left them. The backpack was no longer under it.
◊◊◊
I flew back to Medellín around midnight. The moment I entered our unit in Ilan’s House, tired and frustrated, my wife and daughter assaulted me with loud cries.
“Our embassy has been searching for you high and low!” they called out accusingly. “Where did you disappear to? They sent people here all the way from Bogota! Why aren’t you answering your phone? What do you think, that you’re here for a vacation in South America? They’ve been waiting for you since noon while you’re out having fun!”
“What embassy?” I asked, worn out from the hassles of travel. “The British one?”
“Ours! The Israeli Embassy! Why would you say British?”
Two Israelis were waiting for me in a rented car parked near the guesthouse. One was older, while the other was the young man I’d already met. The embassy’s security officer. I was invited to come in. The car stank of cigarettes and fried food.
“I’m Yehiel,” the older man introduced himself. “I work at the embassy.”
The security officer was sitting behind the wheel, saying nothing.
“Let’s go out for a coffee, okay?” Yehiel asked.
We didn’t drive far.
They stopped at the entrance to a gas station.
“I suggest we talk here,” Yehiel said. “It’s a
lready late, and we shouldn’t waste time.”
I noticed he hadn’t told me what his role at the embassy was. He signaled the security officer with a slight hand gesture. The security officer grunted in indignation and exited the car. Yehiel joined me in the back seat.
“You’re being summoned to an interrogation in Israel as soon as possible, and I suggest you don’t try any funny business,” he said.
“What interrogation?”
“I don’t know and I don’t really care. I was simply asked to find you and tell you about this in person. And as you can see, that’s what I’m doing.”
“I still don’t understand why.”
“Listen, my friend, and listen carefully. You can pretend and you can be a wiseguy. It’s up to you. I told you what I was asked to tell you. But if you want some good advice—and you look like a bright enough guy to want to get some good advice now—get your ass back to Israel the first chance you get. It’ll save you a lot of sorrow and regret down the road.”
“I still don’t understand.”
He sighed.
“Do you have a Korean girlfriend?”
“No.”
“No?” He was truly surprised.
“She’s just a friend,” I corrected him. As if that was the truly important part at that moment.
“A friend, a friend with benefits. Call it whatever you want. She regained consciousness.”
Bam!
Apparently, my shock was clearly written on my face. He continued, his tone triumphant. “So you do know her. Well, you didn’t hear it from me. Not only is she recuperating nicely, but she’s also singing like a canary. And guess who the guy is who keeps coming up when she sings?”
“Drive me back to the hotel,” I asked.
He ignored my request. “And from what I understand, you don’t come out looking too great in her story. On the other hand, she’s not exactly a saint, either. We both know what her deal is. Is it a wonder that those guys in Tel Aviv want to exchange a few words with you?”
My heart began to be overtaken by fear. “Take me to the hotel. Please.”
“‘Hotel?’ Some hotel. You call that fleabag full of every kind of drug under the sun a hotel? A man your age can’t afford a more respectable establishment?”
He left the back seat and returned to his position in the passenger’s seat. The security officer gladly returned to the car. Yehiel lit a cigarette.
“What should I tell them? When are you coming back to Israel?”
I didn’t answer.
A few minutes later, we stopped outside Ilan’s House.
I hurried to get out of the car.
He opened his window and called out after me. “How old are you? Fifty? Fifty-five? Someone your age has to have seen that famous Western with Clint Eastwood from the seventies—I’ve forgotten what it was called at the moment. Remember what the hero told the villain in that last scene? Huh?”
I stared at him blankly.
“I’m sure you remember,” he insisted.
I continued to stare hollowly.
“‘Don’t go out on the street today. But if you have to go out, always make sure there’s no one behind you. Not even your own mother.’”
◊◊◊
Smadar was waiting for me by the door. Her expression was worried. She came at me, full of questions.
Before I could answer, Neta appeared. She was holding a ball. “Are you coming?”
Smadar and I gazed at her in surprise.
“No! No way!” Smadar responded for me. “Your dad just came back after a long day!”
“He always chickens out when it really counts,” our daughter said in derision.
“Give me a minute, okay?” I said, hurrying to our room to change. “Even half a minute is fine,” I yelled out to her from afar.
The ball was revealed to be a simple, deflated soccer ball. The lot behind the guesthouse was made of asphalt. It was illuminated with pale yellowish light. Various old metal hulks were stacked on the sidelines.
None of this bothered me. My heart was singing, the way it used to, when Neta was a child and I was her coach.
“Who gets to be goalkeeper first?” I asked.
“You.”
I stationed myself between the beams of a small wooden goal with no net. Behind me was a brick wall. She placed the ball only thirty or forty feet away. I didn’t comment that she was too close. This wasn’t fair play. She retreated a bit and kicked forcefully. Like a cannonball coming right at me. The ball hit me in the stomach before I could intercept it. It hurt. She kicked again. With every kick, the distance between us grew shorter and the kicks grew more powerful. Every ball that didn’t hit me slammed into the wall behind me or into the iron debris, with an impact that sounded like an explosion.
She ignored my cries of pain. Even when I was lying on the ground, all bruised and battered, she continued to shoot her balls at me.
What had I done to our child?
Chapter Twenty-Five
Going Home. But Where Is Home?
The British proved once again that they were my cup of tea. When they wanted something, nothing would stop them. At four in the morning, my cell phone came to life. It rang for a long time before it infiltrated my sleep.
Finally, it was Smadar who woke me up. I had fallen asleep in my clothes and shoes. My body was burning up, achy and battered after the soccer practice with my daughter several hours earlier.
Joe was on the line, his voice razor-sharp. “There’s a blue van waiting outside your guesthouse. The last three digits are seven-one-one. The three of you need to wake up now. Get going! Quickly!”
“What? Where?”
“Where do you think?” came his mocking answer.
“Now?” I asked. I looked at my wife and daughter. They didn’t seem capable of embarking on a nocturnal journey. And actually, neither was I.
“Now. And don’t forget your daughter and your wife.”
That stodgy English bloke had a sense of humor after all.
My knees were shaking.
I urged both of them to hurry up until they both turned on me at once. Every step they took seemed like an eternity to me. They weren’t convinced that the urgency was justified. Smadar even stationed herself in front of the mirror and put her makeup on.
Finally, we left.
We immediately found the vehicle whose license plate ended with seven-one-one.
A man and a woman were sitting inside. The woman was older than the man.
They didn’t greet us in any way. The moment we entered the van, it took off like a bat out of hell. This was a fitting expression. At first we flew down the main road, and after a few miles, we veered off wildly, going down a narrow, unpaved and bumpy side road.
Smadar’s fingers clamped down on my arm.
“Where are we going?” Neta asked the obvious question.
When she didn’t get an answer, she repeated her question, yelling it out this time.
She was spared a reply.
Another van was waiting for us in a forest clearing. A business logo was prominently drawn on either side of its trunk: an image of three plump children grinning from ear to ear and a slogan in Spanish.
We were ordered, with sharp cries, to switch over to the new van. When we didn’t comply quickly enough, the shouting increased.
Smadar wanted to answer them. She began to say, “I don’t think we should.”
Behind us, from the direction of the bumpy road we had just gone down, two black SUVs appeared. They were hurtling toward us at breakneck speed.
“Go fuck yourselves!” the man and the woman in our car were screaming at us. “Can’t you move your arse any faster?”
In light of the new circumstances, we moved as quickly as we could.
The doors of the m
ostly windowless van closed after us, and we sped off immediately. Three seconds later, we heard the sound of a collision. We quickly peered out the back window.
The blue van was blocking the narrow road, preventing the two vehicles in pursuit from getting through. Apparently, they had simply rammed into it.
“Goddamn Americans,” our driver blurted out, accelerating even more.
There was no internal partition between us. We looked at the driver curiously. A handsome black man wearing a light jacket and a T-shirt. As we put some distance between us and the other vehicles, he spat out three more words. They were the last words he said to us.
“Go fuck yourselves.”
I didn’t know to whom he was referring.
◊◊◊
Six hours later.
Aeropuerto Internacional El Dorado—
Morning in the international airport in Colombia’s capital city. It’s considered one of the busiest in South America, but this was not apparent at this hour.
We had been transported here on board a regular commercial flight, in a light, eight-seat plane, from the airport in Medellín.
Joe was waiting for us in the Departures lounge. He shook hands with all three of us ceremoniously, and did not stop chewing his gum even for a moment. He pulled me by the arm to a nearby newspaper stand and handed me two envelopes. I found Neta’s passport in one of them. In the second were three British Airways tickets to Ben Gurion Airport, with a lengthy layover in London.
Neta popped up behind us and snatched the tickets from my hand. She peered at them, her irritation apparent. She asked Joe directly—without bothering to inquire who he was and what role he played in our lives—whether she could exchange her ticket to London for a ticket to Sao Paolo in Brazil, so she could continue on her trip.
Joe looked at her as if she had just dropped down from the moon.
Until a moment ago, and for three weeks, she had been buried ten feet underground, with no apparent way out, while now she was acting like a capricious customer visiting her travel agent. His chilly expression answered her question.
He took advantage of the opportunity and departed.
“Freakishly tall and full of himself, but hot, too,” my daughter decreed, tracking him with her eyes. She and Smadar wanted to know who he was and what his connection to me was, but no answer was forthcoming.
I was tired of lies, and it wasn’t as if I could tell them the truth.
