by Ward Larsen
“Think about it,” Bloch interceded
“Think about what?”
“What’s already happened. Two nuclear weapons hijacked. One turns up harmlessly in Eastbourne. And then what? The Israeli government has a swift and predictable shift. Zak becomes Prime Minister. They tell you Slaton is the guilty party, without offering anything to back it up. Remember, he wasn’t supposed to survive the sinking of Polaris Venture. But since he did, he would have been a threat, the one person who might unravel everything.”
Chatham said, “Sir, I’ll grant that politics is not my strong suit, but how could this make sense? Zak is only temporarily in charge, until elections are held, isn’t that the case?”
“That’s how it works on paper. But go on to what Slaton is suggesting. Let’s say that second weapon does go off Monday morning. Maybe it detonates fifty miles off the coast of Israel, on a ship. The government, Zak’s government, says it was a botched attempt at finishing off the Israeli state once and for all. The country faces her greatest threat. The Green-wich Accord is dead and a nation rallies around its leader. That’s what happens in times of crisis.”
They all saw how it fit.
“This can’t be happening,” Christine said wishfully.
“Proof!” Chatham insisted. “There’s no way to prove any of this. And without it we can’t act!”
Bloch stared at the floor. “Proof? There might be some. I could do a quiet run-up on Zak and this Pytor Roth fellow, whoever he is. Over the years there has to be a trail, something incriminating. But it would take time, a couple of days at least.”
“There’s one other thing,” Christine said.
The two men looked at her numbly. Christine addressed Bloch.
“You know David had a wife and daughter, and that they were killed in a terrorist attack many years ago. But it wasn’t the Arabs. He believes it was this group, Zak in particular, who was responsible.” There was no easy way to say the rest. “I’m afraid David is still out there because he intends to assassinate the Prime Minister of Israel.”
Bloch and Big Red escorted Christine back to her quarters.
“I’m going straight to Tel Aviv,” Bloch said. “Hopefully, I can dig up some hard evidence and explain everything to the right people.”
“You don’t have much time. I think David’s shooting for Monday.” Christine winced at what she’d said. Bloch didn’t seem to notice.
As they approached her room, Bloch took her by the arm and stopped. Big Red’s gaze sharpened, but the security man made no move to step in. He crossed his thick arms and stood a few paces away, giving them a degree of privacy.
Bloch spoke quietly, “There’s one thing I’d like to tell you, in case David calls again. It’s something only a few people know, and it really isn’t important anymore. Except maybe to him.”
Christine eyed him warily. The unflappable stone of a man she’d gotten to know over the last two days seemed to be, for the first time, unnerved.
“I’ve wanted to tell him myself, many times,” Bloch said searchingly. “There were moments when it seemed like the right thing, but I never…”
She thought he looked pale. “What is it?”
“It has to do with his wife and daughter, how they died.”
“I don’t see how the details are important. There were some killers and David believes Zak was among them. They stopped a bus, got on with machine guns and grenades.” She paused at the terrible thought. “And they didn’t stop until everyone was dead.”
“Yes. That much happened. And it might have been Zak. Except David’s wife and daughter weren’t on that bus.”
Christine drew back and her voice went to a whisper, “What?”
“They were waiting for a different bus, over a mile away. A drunk driver bounced up on the curb and ran them down. It was an accident. The kind of tragic, senseless thing that happens every day, even in war zones.”
Christine leaned back against the hallway wall. “But why? Why did you let him think … what he thinks.”
Bloch sighed, “Someone knew David was being recruited. I don’t know who, and it’s not important. But when they found out about the accident, it dawned on them to make a connection. The police reports and autopsies were quietly altered. His wife and daughter were gone, so it was used.”
“You mean—?”
His voice filled with angst, “What better way to motivate a prospective assassin than to make him hate the enemy. To make him think they’d murdered his family.”
Her body half-turned, crumpling against the wall. She felt like she was choking, drowning in a sea of deception and hatred. Then the anger began to well.
Bloch said, “I know, it sounds barbaric.”
Christine exploded. “You’re monsters, all of you!” she shouted. She lunged toward Bloch, but Big Red intervened and Christine felt herself being tugged away. “You tortured him all these years! Just to use him, to make him as hateful as the rest of you!”
Heads peered from doors along the corridor as people tried to see what the ruckus was about. Two more sturdy men, obviously cohorts of Big Red, materialized in seconds and positioned themselves between Bloch and the agitated American doctor.
She lowered her voice, but only slightly. “There’s no way to justify something like that! I don’t care if it was somebody else’s doing. I don’t care if there was a war going on. It was wrong! Wrong!”
Bloch could only nod, a defeated expression on his leathery face, “Yes. It was wrong.”
Big Red gently pulled her away and the other two men guided Bloch in the opposite direction. “I think we should put an end to this visit,” the security man said.
Bloch acquiesced, “Yes, I understand.” He spoke over his shoulder as he was being ushered off. “If you talk to David again, you have to tell him. It’s time that he knows.”
Big Red’s arm was draped around her, steering her down the hall. Christine shrugged away, still seething. A few days ago she never would have believed there were such warped, manipulative people in the world. Christine wished she could rescue David from all of them. I’ll tell him, she agonized. I’ll tell him if I ever see him alive again.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Slaton left the hotel at 9:20 that evening, having settled on the time after some deliberation. He would have to climb up the fire escape and let himself into Dhalal’s upper flat, the type of task usually best left for the small hours of the morning. The problem was the box. Home improvement shoppers weren’t typically out at 3:00 a.m. lugging packages around. This in mind, he’d settled on the late evening. It would be dark, but the streets still busy with people ending their day’s business and beginning a night’s leisure. He would blend in on the sidewalks, then disappear into the alley behind Dhalal’s.
He took a cab, not wanting the exposure of the tube on a busy Friday evening. The driver tried to chat at first, but Slaton was minimally receptive and the fellow finally gave up. When they arrived at the prescribed address, two streets south of the tobacco shop, Slaton handed over his fare along with an average tip and bid the driver a courteous good evening.
From that point Slaton walked quickly, a man with things to do. There were plenty of people about, and he realized that by holding the box upright as he carried it, he could partially shield his face from oncomers. When he reached the mouth of the alley, he stopped. Slaton pulled the receipt from his box and pretended to study it. He might have been looking for an address that had been scribbled down, or double-checking the price he’d just paid. When the sidewalk was clear, he slipped deftly into the narrow passageway.
To his left were the businesses that lined Crooms Hill Road. Among them, fifty yards ahead, was Dhalal’s smoke shop. To the right the configuration was similar — the backsides of small buildings, some with residences above. At this hour the businesses were all closed, except one at the very end which Slaton recalled was a restaurant. The alley was much darker than the street had been, only a few shafts of illumi
nation straying from the flats above. To each side lay a shadowy assortment of trash cans, crates, and grungy boxes. Slaton heard a stereo playing soft jazz, and somewhere overhead two jagged voices, a man and a woman, were locked in a profane argument.
He reached the back of Dhalal’s shop and gauged his task. The building opposite was unlit and quiet. Unfortunately, Dhalal’s was not. A light shone brightly from the window of the owner’s second-floor flat, and Slaton could hear a television blaring a variety show. The fire escape was also a problem. It looked in worse shape than Slaton remembered, rusty and crooked. Strangely, something else came to mind — another fire escape, the one that had been by the window at Humphrey Hall. Slaton had spent hours looking past it as he tried to concentrate on The Excelsior Hotel. As he tried to spot the enemy. As he tried not to watch her. She had fallen asleep on the couch, her long limbs stretched languidly under a blanket, her lovely profile silhouetted in a soft, indirect light. It was a captivating, distracting picture. Until the two men had come. Then he’d woken her and brought her back to the nightmare of reality.
A loud voice echoed at the end of the alley, interrupting Slaton’s mental excursion. Backing into the shadows, he waited and listened for a full minute before deciding there was no threat. Slaton cursed under his breath. He studied the ladder, briefly wondered if there was any better way up. He felt exposed standing at the bottom of the fire escape.
With a good look to make sure no one had just entered the alley, he scrambled up the steps. The crusty metal framework creaked and groaned under his weight, flakes of rust sprinkling to the ground. He was making too much noise, but there was no turning back now. Sacrificing stealth for speed, he made it to the third floor in seconds. Fortunately, Dhalal had not discovered the open lock on the window. Moments later, Slaton was in with his package, closing the window behind. He fell to the floor and listened.
The television still blared from below. He heard voices outside, but soon realized it was only the argument flaring louder in the other building. He realized how incredibly stupid that had been. Why had he been in such a hurry? What if the window had been re-locked? Slaton lay still. He closed his eyes tightly, but the vision would not be pressed away. She was there, sitting on the beach, an inquisitive look on her face as she tried so hard to understand—
The television suddenly went silent in Dhalal’s flat. He heard rustling downstairs, then someone on the inside staircase. The soft, quick steps were receding, going down. Creaks as the front door of the shop opened, closed, and then a faint click as the lock tumbled into place. Shrivaras Dhalal was going out. Slaton remained motionless. What was happening? He’d lost focus and done a completely amateurish thing. It had to be the fatigue.
Slaton forced his mind to acquire order. He listened carefully for ten more minutes, then went to work. It might have been a simple task had it not been for the small confines of the attic. It was little more than a crawlspace, and he had to keep movement to a minimum as the business end of forty-year-old roofing nails scratched at him from above. It also didn’t help that he had to perform the entire job by illumination of a small pen light, held in his mouth. After forty minutes, though, the preparations were complete. Complete to give him the one chance he needed.
Ehud Zak looked out the window of the BBJ, Boeing’s 737 business jet derivative. The night sky was clear and the blinking lights that had been their escort of Israeli F-16s were no longer in sight. The aircraft had peeled off, he was told, back when they’d entered Italian airspace. Over the open Mediterranean you could never tell, but the Italians didn’t shoot down transiting heads of state.
The pilot announced that they were over central France, and Zak looked down to see a network of lights across an otherwise black void. It reminded him of a starry sky, except the lights were clumped together in bigger groups, impossibly dense constellations connected by spindly offshoots that must have been roads. He had never been to France, but he would go soon.
Zak settled into a huge leather chair and played with the buttons that made it move. The back tilted down, a leg rest moved up, and something bulged under his lower back. He chuckled. He’d been on the new state aircraft once before, having taken it to a funeral in India. It hadn’t been quite important enough for Jacobs himself to attend, and the Foreign Minister had been in South America, so the duty had fallen on Zak to convey official condolences. On that trip he’d traveled up front. Nice enough, but nothing better than a typical airline’s first-class section. The rest of his entourage was milling about there now, while he enjoyed the solitude of the Prime Minister’s suite that had previously been off-limits. Zak looked around appreciatively. He was surrounded by the finest in furniture, fittings, and accessories. Dark wood, royal colors, crystal fixtures. And in back, in an adjoining room, was a sleeping compartment with a huge bed, an entertainment system and mirrors everywhere. Zak delighted in the prospects.
A knock at the mahogany door interrupted his thoughts. “Enter,” he said loudly. He had meant the reply to be weighty and important, but it came off sounding imperious. No matter.
A steward marched in and directly replaced the warm coffee pot with a fresh, hot one. “Will there be anything else, sir?”
“No,” he said, “not now.” Zak suppressed a smile. That had been better. Dismissive, but keep the fellow on the hook.
The steward disappeared, and Zak again looked out the window. A huge area of lights was coming into view. It could only be Paris. Zak sat mesmerized and reflected on how far the merchant’s son had come. He wished his father could see him now, the bastard. He had gone and died four years ago, but even then the old goat had seen him rise to become a Knesset member, far above what anyone could have expected from the son of a second-rate peddler. The old man might have had money, but his son had acquired power, now more than ever.
Strangely enough, Zak and his father had been born with the same gifts. They had used them, however, in very different ways. His father had been the definitive trader. Imports or exports, textiles or condoms, whatever sold. Talk fast and think faster, that was the key. As a boy, Zak had watched and learned. Learned it was all right to buy out a struggling partner for pennies on the dollar, or foreclose on a competitor’s widow whose insurance had lapsed. It wasn’t being heartless. It was simply business. Send a check to the local homeless shelter and the conscience always came around. The trader’s son had shown great promise, and expectations were universal that he would carry on the family business, perhaps even exceeding the mercantile standards set by his elder.
Unfortunately, those dreams were dashed — as so often is the case for young men — by a woman. At nineteen Zak became infatuated with Iricha, a waitress at the Café DuBres. It was a romance both fast-paced and passionate, and after four weeks young Zak had gone to his family to declare enduring love for the woman. And to announce their intent to marry. His father gave no doubt that, in his eyes, the union was beneath consideration. Not only was Iricha a divorcée and ten years older than young Ehud, she was also Palestinian. Zak brought Iricha to meet his father, to prove what a wonderful wife and mother she might be, but the elder refused even to see her.
He had fumed at his father’s bigotry, but the rift solidified. Soon his father decreed that if the marriage should come to pass, Zak Trading Ltd. would not. In fine adolescent form, the defiant son answered with the most rebellious act he could imagine. He joined the Israeli army.
This had two results, first being that his father made good on his threat to sell the business, retiring early and well on the proceeds. The second, and the one that took him completely by surprise, was a sudden coolness that developed in his relationship with Iricha. She eventually made a tear-laden confession that, although her love for him was boundless, life as the spouse of an enlisted man in the IDF was not the idyllic future she had envisioned. She then went about devising any number of schemes by which they could rescind his enlistment and return to the good graces of his family. Her favorite idea was to fake a pr
egnancy, which she imagined might lead to a hardship discharge for Ehud, and a softening of his father’s stance. Then, a quick marriage-miscarriage strategy would put them back on the road to enduring happiness and prosperity.
It was here that Zak united the concepts of love and war. He had grown up watching his father, the master artisan of trade, deal his way to success. Getting a customer to pay more for less while believing it was he who had gotten the bargain — that was the elusive masterpiece. Yet it was Iricha, the buxom, raven-haired waitress from Haifa, who made him realize that slickness and manipulation were not limited to the world of commerce. He finally saw that his fervent Palestinian lover had been negotiating her own contract, one in which he, and the security of his family’s wealth, were the commodities in question.
Then there was the matter of his enlistment. Zak’s father was not without influential friends who probably could have orchestrated the loss of his enlistment papers. But the choices had been made, and his father would make him live with them. Stung by this realization, Zak did the only thing he could. He jettisoned his bride-to-be and stuck with the Army.
The string of events served to form Zak’s life in many ways. He knew in the recesses of his mind that he could just as easily have been duped by an Israeli woman, or for that matter a Greek or a Latvian. But resentment grew within, and he started to despise and distrust that entire race of people who were generally considered “the enemy.” This ember was fanned easily, as Zak lived and worked within the IDF. Like most military sub-societies, the culture was close-knit, conservative, and completely suspicious and intolerant of the enemy. That meant all things Arab, and particularly all things Palestinian.
Within the first year of his service, Zak received word that Iricha had gone on to marry a wealthy Lebanese banker, a man more than twenty years her senior, and the flame was stoked ever more brightly. First Zak had lost his family and fortune, then his soul, all to an amoral temptress. It created a vast emptiness within him. But the void filled quickly with hatred, with an urge to extract payback on the people, the way of life, whose product was Iricha and her carefree evil.
