The Amateur Spy

by Dan Fesperman

  The City of David was now in sight. It supposedly marked the spot where the conquering young king, long after slaying Goliath, established his capital more than three thousand years ago. Revisionist archaeologists now view the enterprise with skepticism, arguing that, at best, the Jerusalem of that era was a modest hill town of Canaanite farmers. I suppose that’s why the new dig was such a sensation. It was the latest shot fired in a long and bitter war within the war.

  At the moment, no one was at work. The dig was surrounded by chain-link fencing covered with battered tarpaulins and bamboo screening. I climbed onto a large stone to peek through a tear in the plastic. Most of the work was covered by black blankets. In the few bare spots all you could see was an uneven line of huge stones. It was disappointing. Was this really all that remained of a once glorious palace? No wonder the skeptics were in full cry, although I was certainly not qualified to judge. Maybe if Omar could see this place, he, too, would no longer be upset enough to pour money into opposing it. Assuming that was even what he was up to. And if that was his great, dark secret, I wondered if Black, White, and Gray would be disappointed.

  The ticket office for Hezekiah’s Tunnel was just around the corner, and when I saw there was no line I decided to follow Ben-Zohar’s advice and check it out. The brusque vendor told me I had to buy a flashlight because the tunnel wasn’t lit.

  “You will need sandals, too,” he said. “Water runs along the entire route, sometimes knee-deep, and the footing is not so good.”

  I tied my shoes together by the laces and draped them around my neck, with the socks stuffed inside. Then I plunked down a pile of shekels for the cheapest flip-flops and one of the sturdier flashlights.

  I made my way to the entrance, a steep stairway down through a shaft in the rock that led to the Gihon Spring. Then I rolled up my trousers above the knees. Already I could hear the echoing voices of children and the sounds of splashing fluting up through the mouth of the tunnel. I stepped into the water—clear and cold, but not unbearable. The current was surprisingly strong, but at least it was headed in the same direction, tugging the cheap rubber sandals forward with every step. I rounded a corner into total darkness and turned on the flashlight, and the water almost immediately went from ankle-deep to knee-deep. Unable to see the bottom, I stepped awkwardly on the uneven surface and almost fell. I splashed the bottom roll of my trousers, and cursed lightly. Already the walls had narrowed until the passage was barely the width of my shoulders. There were only a few inches to spare overhead. The stone walls were cool and slick, and the sounds coming from ahead were an incoherent tumble of voices. But when I shone the light, there was no one within fifty yards.

  At times all of the splashing from ahead sounded like a waterfall, and I experienced a momentary feeling of panic, remembering the clouds I had seen on the horizon and contemplating the possibility of a flash flood. Then I slogged on, continuing around the first of several bends. Any hope of rushing the pace had been dashed by the uncertain footing, and I had to stop several times when one of my sandals came off and floated forward in the current. It didn’t help that the ceiling was now even lower than before. I had to bend my neck and also my knees. The water was still knee-deep. My breathing was labored, and I realized it was due mostly to discomfort and a mild spell of claustrophobia. So I stopped for a moment to try and relax. I tried switching off the light and was cast into perfect blackness, which softened the sounds from up ahead. It was oddly peaceful, and the tension in my chest muscles eased. No one seemed to be near me either forward or behind, or I would have seen at least a glimmer of flashlights.

  Breathing easier, I flipped on the light and continued on my way. No sense in trying to rush. At the end of a long straightaway I stopped again before making the next turn, wondering if anyone had yet entered the tunnel behind me and was now gaining ground. I again turned off my light and peered back into the darkness. By resting a hip against the wall to my left I could slouch more comfortably as I paused, although I still had to stoop to keep from bumping my head against the ceiling.

  It was during this moment of repose that the magnitude of the effort to build the tunnel became evident. Down here it was easy to imagine the arduous and harrowing labor as men hammered their way through the stone. All that strain and bother just to reach a water supply in case of a siege. The same mentality had prevailed ever since—everything for defense, for insulation and separation. And such a fitting symbolic result, too—a deep seam through intransigent stone, set in eternal darkness. Ben-Zohar was right. It perfectly summed up the region’s hopes and fears. I was about to enjoy a small laugh on his behalf when a voice called out from behind with the suddenness of a gunshot.

  “Freeman!”

  I bumped my head in startled reaction, and nearly dropped the flashlight in my haste to switch it on. The beam showed no one at the far end of the straightaway. But the voice nonetheless called out again, this time with a hint of impatience.

  “Freeman!”

  Was it Ben-Zohar? Had he followed me here like a prankster, just to give me a scare?”

  “David?” I called out. “Is that you?”

  “No!”

  “Who is it, then?”

  Our echoing voices seemed to have taken over the confined space. The splashing from up ahead was now faint, as if it had advanced around several curves.

  “No one you need to know. I am a messenger.”

  “Messenger?”

  “You must leave Israel. This is not the concern of your work.”

  Odd phrasing, I thought.

  “How do you know that?”

  “You must leave. Today. Before the border closes.”

  “Who are you? Who are you working for?”

  Then there was nothing. Only the sound of someone sloshing against the current, a figure working alone in the darkness. He seemed to be receding, going the wrong way, and for a moment I was tempted to follow. But what would I say? And if I caught him, might he carry out the threat implicit in his warning?

  I turned and resumed my progress forward, trying to go faster now. The next time a sandal slipped off I let it go, and then kicked off the second one. The rocks on the bottom were sharp, but it was easier to keep my footing. All I wanted now was to get out of here. But the roaring of voices and splashing from up ahead grew louder, and as I rounded yet another curve I spied someone just ahead in the beam of my light.

  The first thing I saw was a Galil assault rifle slung across someone’s back. It was not a soldier, but a civilian in a red polo. He turned and grinned into my light, a bearded face, middle-aged. He was probably the chaperone of the loud boys ahead. He resumed walking, and the barrel and butt of his rifle bumped the walls with every step. At first it was a relief to have company, even if the gun was a little unnerving, banging around like that. But then the man stopped, and the noise from ahead rose to a din. It was almost unbearable, and after a few seconds it became clear we were making no further progress. I shone my light around the bearded man and saw that the boys had all turned out their flashlights. They were in their teens, maybe sixteen or seventeen, and they scowled and shouted angrily in Hebrew at the probing beam of my light. I then saw that several of them were turned sideways toward the walls, bobbing and bowing in prayer—as much as one could in this confined space—and chanting loudly. In the section where they stood, the ceiling rose much higher, to about twenty feet above their heads. We must be near the end of the tunnel, and they had stopped for devotionals. Some were reaching as high as they could stretch up the walls. I turned out my light to give them the atmosphere they wanted, and the chanting and sloshing continued. Looking behind me, I noticed the flicker of an approaching light. Thinking it must be the man who had warned me earlier, I panicked.

  “Move!” I shouted in English to the praying boys. “Move it now!”

  I turned on my light again, and they were still at it, calling out to their God from deep in this shaft dug by their ancestral king. Is that the connection they
must feel with this place? A sense of doing whatever it takes to survive, to outwit the enemy?

  From behind me came a burst of laughter and more sloshing. It was a family, a younger couple with two kids in their early teens. All four were speaking German. I tried asking in their language if they had passed anyone going in the opposite direction, but in my haste I mangled it.

  “Hast ein Mann du passiert?”

  “Ein Mann?” the daughter asked.

  “Nein,” the son said. “Kein Mann.”

  “Was ist los?” the father asked. He gestured with his flashlight toward the bottleneck of boys just ahead.

  “They’re praying,” I said in English. “Religious students, probably.”

  The father translated for his family, and everyone nodded respectfully. They wouldn’t have dared shout “Move it!” as I had just done, especially not in German, down here where the tunnel would make their voices sound like bullhorns, orders shouted by guards along a fenceline.

  Eventually the boys moved on, a sluggish procession that soon found its way to the light. They stood off to the side of the Siloam Pool at the mouth of the entrance, putting their shoes back on and drying their legs. I blinked against the sudden glare and kept going, leaving wet footprints on the warm stone walkway. I expended the last reserves of my nervous energy in making the long, steep climb back toward the visitors’ center.

  I finally sat down to calm myself at an overlook, just as the midafternoon call to prayer began from the speakers of Al-Aqsa Mosque in the Old City, droning out across the ravine. Answering in short order were two mosques on the Mount of Olives, one in a younger voice, the other almost wheezy. It left me at the center of a triangulation of prayer in an auditory target zone.

  There was just no getting away from it here, this assault by faith. First I was besieged by prayer in the tunnel. Now I was taking Muslim fire from three sides. In Jerusalem, belief as a form of aggression achieved near perfection. Whether you went deep in the earth or climbed the highest hill, someone’s faith would track you down, catch you in its sights, and demand that you choose sides.

  I waited a while and watched the people who had been behind me in the tunnel straggle past. No likely suspect emerged, not that I expected him to. I slipped on my shoes, deciding I had better leave soon for the border before someone else opened fire. Next time the ammunition might be more lethal than prayer.

  30

  Washington

  In a smaller, newer tunnel in another part of the world, a tunnel not known to tourists, historians, or government officials, Abbas Rahim crouched with a small shovel in his hands at 5 a.m., digging the last three yards of the necessary twenty.

  He had put away the power tools yesterday, and the Arab man who had flown in to help had departed the day before that.

  Just as well on both counts, Abbas thought. The power tools, while essential, had been noisy. They risked attracting unwanted attention from above, even though almost no one ever inhabited the church sanctuary or its basement during the week.

  The man, too, had seemed like an unwarranted risk, although his expertise in certain matters had admittedly been invaluable. All technical questions were now answered. The proper materials were in place.

  But it wasn’t as if Abbas needed any company. He found it far easier to concentrate when working alone, same as when he was at the hospital. The nurses were always necessary, of course, but he never would have wanted an extra surgeon at his side. And that’s how he thought of this job, as a sort of macro-level surgery. He was performing a public service on behalf of the world’s greatest medical emergency, a case of geopolitical addition by subtraction. He was excising a spreading tumor from America’s body politic. The malignant hubris had to be removed before it metastasized further and killed more of the innocent.

  The beauty of it all was that he could accomplish this without doing a single unethical thing. He was still holding to his oath in treating the senator. If anything, he was keeping the man alive with more zeal than ever, knowing that preparations here were not yet complete. But soon enough, God—if there were such a thing—could have his way and take the man. And then the real work could begin.

  The final action would, admittedly, be a bit blunt. That’s the way it could go with large tumors. You had to destroy good and healthy tissue along with the insidious stuff. That was where your medical judgment entered into it, making those big decisions that affected lives. Sacrificing the few to save the many.

  So he worked away as hard as he could, arriving at 2 a.m. in the darkened neighborhood of rats and ne’er-do-wells, descending into his locked underground chamber to lay out his tools and prepare the patient. Five hours later he emerged at first light, tired and grimy. Then he drove home to shower and shave before a day at the hospital. A grinding schedule, made possible only by getting to sleep every night at 7 p.m.

  Every day he awoke in the darkness of the bedroom at 1:20 a.m., always his lowest moment until he swallowed the pill from the orange plastic vial, which was right there on his dresser top now that he no longer had to hide it from his wife. Aliyah had been effectively removed from the operating theater, because even though she may have meant well he had worried that she would eventually have second thoughts. That could have been disastrous. He knew because he had seen it happen before—a squeamish rookie nurse in attendance, not yet accustomed to all the blood, disrupting everything and endangering the patient.

  At times Abbas wondered how she must be faring over in Jordan. Their radio silence stood like a wall between them, between past and present, too. He experienced a vague ripple of unease on her behalf as he began to contemplate what their life would be like after he completed this surgery. Mustn’t think of that. It led in too many directions he didn’t want to go. It led only to more blackness and worry. So he swallowed a second pill while still on the job, because these darkest of thoughts would only stand in his way, unless he pushed harder. Then within an hour or so he felt better, and life continued according to plan.

  Keep pushing, he told himself. Just keep pushing, and complete the job. It’s all for the best. A service to mankind. Addition by subtraction.

  And genius, sheer genius.

  31

  I awoke late that night to the sound of the mouse behind the baseboard.

  Already my sleep had been troubled by dreams of falling—into wells, down staircases, over the sides of high stone parapets—long and heart-stopping plunges that inevitably deposited me at the bottom of some deep pit of darkness, where I scratched and clawed as the walls closed in.

  No mystery where any of that came from, I suppose. The scare in Hezekiah’s Tunnel shook me up more than I had wanted to admit. Then the mouse provided the sound track.

  I threw back the covers. They were soaked with sweat. I stood barefoot on the chilly stone floor and decided to make a cup of tea.

  The border crossing had taken even longer than usual, and the atmosphere on both sides had been akin to the electric crackle in the air before a cloudburst, a whiff of something disastrous. Or maybe I was hypersensitive because the Jordanians again phoned Amman while inspecting my passport. As a result, I had arrived back on Othman Bin Affan Street well after dark, and too weary to go out for dinner. So I had scraped together a meal from what was in the refrigerator. Then, just before bed, I padded onto the dark lawn with a flashlight to dig up the gun. I could have sworn the spot looked different, but the gun was there, so I wrote it off to an overactive imagination. Then I caught up on the daily papers and went to bed, only to be troubled by my dreams.

  I took the steaming mug of tea back to the bedroom. Just as I came through the doorway there was a popping noise, and immediately afterward the lights went out. Silence followed. Even the mouse was still. I set the mug on the floor and groped my way back to the kitchen, where, as luck would have it, the light switch still worked. The fuse box was just around the corner, and I saw that one of them was blown. But the replacement also burned out with a tiny burst of lig
ht only seconds after I screwed it in.

  I dug out a candle from a drawer and stepped back down the hall to investigate. As soon as I entered the bedroom I smelled something burning, and not just the candle wax. Stooping to investigate, I saw a tiny wisp of smoke issuing from a seam in the baseboard. I was alarmed. The wiring in some of these older houses was notoriously unreliable, and for all I knew a short circuit was about to burn the place down. I quickly retrieved a stout, sharp knife from the kitchen, wrapped the handle in a sock for insulation, and began prying back the baseboard, working from the seam. A six-inch section snapped off, which surprised me until I saw how chewed it was in the back, presumably from the mouse. Then I saw the body, small and gray and singed. The tiny head was still smoldering, and there was a sickening stench of burned fur.

  For a moment I actually felt sorry for my little housemate. The mouse had bitten into a wire, and from what I could tell it wasn’t entirely his fault, because the wire never should have been there to begin with. It was attached to a small plastic box, which I unscrewed from its place by using the knife blade. Then I placed the candle on the bedside table and forced open the box on the bed.

  I am no expert on surveillance electronics, but it seemed quite obvious that this was some sort of microphone and transmitter. Who knows what its broadcast range was, or where the listeners might be? The manufacturer’s name, however, was printed clearly—it was straight out of the U. S. of A. At the sight of it my temper flared.

  If this was supposed to demoralize me, it had just the opposite effect. I was more determined than ever to get things moving. In fact, it was time for the next step in the advancement of my autonomy. I vowed then and there to confront my employers. In the morning I would take this item straight to the American embassy and demand an audience. Better to assert myself now, when the only casualty was a mouse.