Agent on a Mission

by Rose Fox

  At the second gathering the representatives of the members of the United Nations Security Council were present and the cameras documented the arguments and stormy mood. The Italian ambassador threatened to sever relations with Russia because of an incident between the ambassadors.

  He stood up, raised his arm and shouted, “Italy will not countenance Russia’s impertinent remarks. Russia is two-faced. With one face it supports the Arab countries with arms, plans and financial aid and today, puts on its other face of trying to mediate in the conflict. You always played the role of the double agent!”

  The face of the Russian ambassador, Waldav Dubrovny, changed colors. He turned to the Chinese chairman of the committee and yelled:

  “I demand that the Italian ambassador be removed from this chamber. The man is a Fascist and his accusation should be brought to the International Court of Justice.” Afterwards he turned to him and screamed out loud.

  “You are a clone of that notorious Fascist, Mussolini!”

  The Chinese chairman tried to silence the hawks. He stood up, raised his arms to either side, in an attempt to lower the flames of anger. The commotion was so great that he announced the closing of the session for the day and postponement of the discussion to a later date.

  * * *

  On the Sabbath, the newspaper published a bold headline:

  THE RANSOM HAS BEEN REDUCED TO TWO THOUSAND FOUR HUNDRED LIVE PRISONERS.

  THE ORGANIZATION IS PREPARED TO RECEIVE 550 BODIES OF SLAIN TERRORISTS, BURIED IN ISRAEL.

  On the same page, under the article, an interview with one of the leading American emissaries to the Middle East, Tommy Messenger, appeared.

  IN MY OPINION, THE ISRAELI PRISONER EXCHANGE DEAL WILL ONLY ENCOURAGE ABDUCTIONS ALL OVER THE WORLD.

  IT IS IMPORTANT NOT TO ACCEDE TO DEMANDS AND NOT TO RELEASE MURDERERS.

  The newspaper lay in the living room of the family of Giora Shechtman, a former Minister of Foreign Affairs. Photographs of the two hostages stared out from its pages. In the Shechtman home, voices were heard arguing in shrill high tones.

  His wife, Ora, a former celebrated singer, and now a successful businesswoman, yelled,

  “I don’t understand how those despicable people dare to behave like this. It’s enough just to see the face of that terrorist Hamdallah to make me to go wild!”

  “Never mind his face. When I hear how many prisoners they are demanding, I feel like exploding. They want three thousand murderers released so they can go out and kill again without any difficulty!”

  “What is there to think about? I don’t understand. What is happening to us? It seems like a troupe of clowns in running our country.”

  Giora answered in a calmer vein. “What’s to be done? I actually understand that. In this case, it’s a matter of long and exhausting negotiations.”

  “Listen to yourself, Giora. Not one prisoner should be released.”

  “So, how can we get them back? You’re just talking nonsense.”

  “No, I’m just going out of my mind. I feel like screaming for both the kidnappers and their hostages to be sent to hell. I even dare to suggest that we give up getting our hostages back. At this rate we’re going to have to give away half the country for them.”

  “Ora, think logically,” Giora replied. “It’s not that simple, the matter is very complicated, believe me.”

  Their son, Arieh, roared on top of his voice from one of the rooms in the house.

  “Stop! I’m sick of this subject. You’ve turned our home into a parliament and you’re driving me nuts! Keep quiet and let me study!”

  The two stopped arguing and looked at one another. Giora went to the entrance of the room where his son sat in front of his open books.

  “Hey, Arieh, what are your classmates saying about the issue? After all, you’ll be enlisting in the IDF this coming August. Is there talk on the subject?”

  “Sure there is. We argue about it all the time and we also find it very frustrating.”

  “Tell me, what are they saying? For example, how many prisoners do they think should be released for the two of them? That is, if any should be released.”

  “The truth is that a large section of our class is excited as hell, shouting that the price we’re going to have to pay is very heavy, like Mom says. Most of them yell that Sheikh Hamdallah should be eliminated, plain and simple. Nobody ever talks about releasing prisoners.”

  “Well,” Giora said, “that’s just the ranting and babbling of youngsters.”

  “And are you experienced adults making sense? I think you’re insane. How can you relate to that ransom demand? Are you prepared to release three thousand prisoners for two? Do you think you’re right?”

  “Come on, really, Arieh, then how are we going to release them or solve the matter?” He paused for a moment and asked out of curiosity, “aside from objecting and disagreeing, do you have any constructive suggestions?”

  “Sure, there are tons of suggestions. Do you want to hear? Please. There are suggestions that we sit down and negotiate and while that is going on, we send crack units led by a top commander to the area where they are presumed to be held and trick them into releasing the hostages. Wait, that’s not all.”

  “Okay, what else?”

  “After we free the hostages, the kids say we should demolish the place. Oh, and we mustn’t forget to spread salt all over; coarse cooking salt, I mean. And why? So that nothing can grow on their land. Like Joshua Ben-Nun did after he conquered the city of the bitter enemy of the wandering Hebrew tribes and threw salt in their soil. We’re studying that now for our senior certificate exam.”

  Giora turned away as he mumbled:

  “Nonsensical chatter of youngsters. Full of fantasies and daydreams. Oh, how I envy you.” and he heard Ora laughing out loud.

  “I’m off to a meeting,” he said. "I’ve been invited to an urgent meeting; I wanted to say another urgent meeting on the subject.”

  “Ah, really? Listen, I have a suggestion for you.” Ora said, still laughing, “take your son with you to the discussion. Believe me, these kids’ ideas are more realistic than we understand and, certainly, better than those that will come up in the deliberations at your meeting."

  Giora shrugged. “Ora, who knows better than I do that there is simply nothing to talk about. Believe me, I know what I am going there for now. It’s just to show I’m doing something. All they can come up with are discussions, discussions and more discussions.”

  “When will you be back? When will the discussion end?”

  “Who knows,” he mumbled quietly and then said out loud,

  “It’s impossible to know when a meeting fixed for four o’clock in the afternoon, will end. Don’t forget, it’s taking place in Jerusalem.”

  Before he closed the door, he heard Ora shout,

  “Don’t forget that tomorrow evening at eight, we’ve arranged to meet the Dichters at the Azrieli Towers!”

  She heard Giora say, as if to himself:

  “Okay, fine, I’ll tell them they have to finish before eight o’clock tomorrow evening.”

  The Prime Minister had invited his Ministers of Foreign Affairs and Defense to the meeting, but this time he decided to invite the former Foreign Affairs and Defense Ministers, who now sat in the Opposition rows.

  A folder lay before each chair and listed the rules and instructions regarding the behavior of the enemy. None of the participants bothered to browse through it.

  When Giora entered the conference room the discussion was already well under way. The Foreign Minister, Nathan Dichter, was speaking.

  “I say that we release a statement refuting Hamdallah’s claims.”

  “Okay, say we deny their accusations. What would you say?” Giora interjected as he sat down. They all looked at him quizzically and he explained. “What will you deny? Will you say we didn’t send them to collect information and spy on them? Or would you scold him for trying to use our error to his political advantage.”
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br />   “Can you stop with the cynicism, Giora?” Nathan objected and waited for a response.

  The Minister of Defense, Uri Mofet, stared at the current and former Minister of Foreign Affairs. “Have you kids stopped squabbling?”

  “Wait, if you object to that, let’s hear what you suggest,” Shaul, the former Minister of Defense, proposed.

  “Good, I’m asking, what do we hope to get?”

  “What do we hope to get? We hope to get our hostages back,” was Giora’s reply.

  “Wait, why do you object so much to what is happening or being said here?” Shimon, the current Minister of Defense turned to him.

  “Because we should be thinking of a way to liberate them instead of all this babbling and talking. Have you thought of that?”

  The Prime Minister intervened. He joked and said, “right, we have to liberate them. Who will do that? Rambo, perhaps, or maybe Superman? Find them among us and I promise you that tomorrow they’ll be back here with our friends.”

  “That’s quite right, good for you. How come we didn’t think of that earlier!” someone called out from another corner of the table.

  “Hey, guys, who will volunteer to go in there and get our friends out?” the Minister for Infrastructure challenged.

  “Any candidates for suicide? Sorry, I mean volunteers,” the Minister of Interior laughed.

  Laughter and ridicule took over the conversation. Words and sentences were thrown into the air, as if they would never lead to a solution.

  “Perhaps that’s enough! Really, that’s enough of your futile ideas!” someone shouted.

  They all focused on the person. It was Giora, who stood up, angrily threw aside the booklet that lay in front of him on the table, his face livid with rage.

  “Tell me, have you lost your minds?! Do you hear yourselves?!”

  “My friend, what has happened to you?” Dichter inquired. Calm down get a grip on yourself.”

  Giora rose from his seat, moved the chair back to the table and moved to leave. When he had almost reached the entrance, he turned around and spoke to them quietly, without anger.

  “We’re a bunch of incompetent clowns. Even my son, of seventeen, who is due to enlist in the army with his friends this August, tells me that the only solution is to get rid of Hamdallah."

  They all looked at him in silence. He was already grasping the doorknob and continued speaking calmly.

  “When I asked my son if the youngsters had any suggestions to make, he threw out the idea that a small unit headed by a top commander should be mobilized to go and liberate the hostages in a scorched earth campaign, leaving a wasteland covered with coarse salt behind them, to teach them a lesson.”

  After a few seconds of silence, the people around the table burst out laughing. The Minister of Defense banged his hand on the table, threw his head back, roaring with laughter till tears ran down his cheeks. Giora gazed at them, his face deadly serious as the level of his anger steadily rose.

  Suddenly Dichter stopped laughing and asked, “How did you answer your young son?”

  “I responded much like you, like an idiot. I told him he was fantasizing, that those were the dreams of young people who don’t understand anything. Between us, what do these kids, on the point of enlisting, know about running a country?” After a minute he added with affected importance, “after all, we’re the big experts. We know how to speak, to deny, to go out to the press and tell stories. That’s the way to run a country!!”

  “Wait, tell us, do you really want us to send a vigilante unit to liberate the hostages and then burn the place down? Do you think we’re a gang of belligerent teenagers?” the Minister of Defense yelled.

  “If only we were. All we know how to do is to sit on chairs and talk, babble and hold conversations.”

  Giora did not yell now. “Do you know what? I’ve already been Minister of Foreign Affairs, I’ve reached the end of my candidacy and I’m done with the stories. I have had enough of the idea that just keeps repeating itself, doesn’t release anyone and doesn’t achieve anything. I’m fed up with it. I, Giora, am no longer with you.”

  He opened the door quietly and went out.

  They could not look one another straight in the eye. Silence reigned in the conference room.

  * * *

  The head of the armed wing of the Abbas army, Hamdallah, appeared on television. He made his announcement and ended with the same statement.

  “As usual, we won’t say whether the two hostages are dead or alive.”

  Leila stared at his image on the screen and balled her hands into fists. A bitter smile was drawn on her lips until his image disappeared. She bit her fists hard because that was the only way she could stifle the scream that threatened to come out of her throat.

  The American emissary, Tommy Messenger, was being interviewed.

  “We are negotiating with an organization that is holding two of our citizens and the question being asked is how much are they worth?”

  “I am thinking out loud,” Tommy intercepted the interviewer. “How do you expect to sit and talk with someone who seeks your annihilation?”

  Leila got angry and spoke to the screen,

  “Oh, really smart guy, so who should you talk to if not the enemy. They say you can only make peace with enemies.”

  The day before, Yosef had suggested that she meet with the wife of the other hostage but he felt that his words were falling on deaf ears. Leila would not listen to any words of consolation. She was encased in her grief and didn’t allow those around her to pierce that shell.

  Her granddaughter, Arlene, scampered around the tents and she rejoiced in her childish voice. The toddler gave meaning to her life and sweetened the air, she breathed a little.

  That morning, Arlene nestled up to Leila, looked into her grandmother’s eyes and asked. “Wenou Mama? (Where is mother)? Wenou Raha’at? (Where did she go)?”

  Leila pulled her tightly close, hugged her and rocked her from side to side.

  Arlene made futile attempts to free herself from her grandmother’s grasp, but Leila rested her head on her and wept aloud. Arlene got a fright. She hadn’t expected such a reaction and stroked her grandmother’s face with her little hands as she said,

  “Nana is crying.”

  This was the first time that Arlene had dared to ask what had become of her mother, whom she hadn’t seen for a long time. It was the first and last time that Arlene asked. Now she grasped and understood from her grandmother’s reaction that she might never see her again.

  In these hours of heat, Naim’s grandchildren played in the tent with little Arlene. A sudden breeze wafted in through the raised folds of the tent to the north and the south and cooled them. In spite of their young age, the children were aware that something had happened and that there was no chance of winning the attention of the adults around them so they went outside.

  A notice announcing ‘breaking news’ appeared on the screen and Leila straightened up. Adel came through the opening and entered his mother’s tent. He sat down beside her.

  “There has been a development in the matter of our hostages,” the newscaster announced.

  The Minister of Defense, Uri Mofet appeared on the screen. He was addressing students at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and declared:

  “Israel undertakes to examine the possibility of releasing prisoners who do not have blood on their hands, which means, those, who have not themselves murdered or maimed people.”

  Leila responded. “Oh, great, so they will only be prepared to discuss ten people out of three thousand because they’re the only ones who aren’t killers! That’s crazy! It’s actually as if they were now saying that they aren’t prepared to negotiate with regard to any of them.”

  Adel threw her a quick glance but remained silent. He wasn’t in the mood to confront his mother.

  A car was heard outside and Adel went to look.

  “Journalists and news photographers,” Adel reported.

 
; They got out of the car, waving their arms excitedly, trying to explain that they wanted to meet the mother.

  “I want to ask the mother to beg for the life of her daughter, Abigail. It’ll look much better than a meeting of the U.N. Security Council or all the other chat flying around.”

  Yosef stood facing them and clicked his tongue. Indeed, he knew what the reaction of his wife, Leila, would be but something about the idea appealed to him and he decided to try. He poked his head into the entrance to the tent and looked at Leila. Yosef asked her with his eyes and she waved her hand in refusal.

  “Did you hear their suggestions?” he asked her, but she shook her head in refusal and Yosef spread his arms out to the side and answered:

  “I’m sorry,”

  A quick-witted photographer, standing very close to Yosef, managed to move his camera lens forward and press the button. He caught a picture of Leila sitting upright, her face expressing infinite sorrow and bitter grief that were worse than death.

  When the noise of the motor and the cloud of dust its departure raised, dispersed into the air, there was an announcement on the news that a large demonstration for the release of the hostages was to take place in the streets of Tel Aviv and would gather at Rabin Square. Leila turned the TV off, saw that there was no one beside her and sobbed into her scarf.

  * * *

  The demonstration was planned to be largest Israel had ever seen.

  Already, in the early hours of the morning, preparations were in full throttle in Rabin Square. Streets within a one kilometer radius were closed to vehicles. Many youngsters participated in the preparations. They climbed trees and stretched giant fabric banners between them. They unrolled long banners that dropped down and covered the facades of the buildings with slogans from their top floors and roofs.

  JUSTICE ADAM AYALON IS NOT NEGOTIABLE AND NOT FOR SALE