Leventhal turned to Karp. “We are about to begin our operation. You must return to the bedroom, where Devra will look after you. If we are unsuccessful, she will help you get to safety. But under no circumstances are you to attempt to leave here by yourself. Is that clear?”
Karp started to object, then shrugged and went back to the bedroom. The curtains had been drawn over the glass door and the blinds on the window were closed. The only real light came from a tiny nightlamp plugged into the baseboard. By its glow Karp could make out Devra sitting in the armchair, her knitting in her lap. Karp lay on the bed. Outside, it grew darker. The woman stopped knitting. They were silent, waiting.
The noises started, a string of pops far off, shouts, once a shrill cry like that of a tropical bird. Karp wiped the sweat off his palms and concentrated on breathing.
Something exploded outside the room and a red glare shone through the glass of the sliding doors. Then the doors exploded inward, and a man leaped into the room amid a shower of glass and curtain rags.
He really does look just like a snake, was Karp’s first thought. The man was small and lithe and dressed in army fatigues. The face was so narrow and the yellow-brown eyes were so close together as to be almost a deformity. The mouth was a nearly lipless V, the nose two pits in a flat bump, and Sergio Ruiz had skin trouble too; his pale ochre face was covered with shiny bumps and excavations, adding to the reptilian effect.
On leaping into the room, he had crouched, sighting down the barrel of his Armalite automatic rifle into the four corners of the room in approved infantry-school fashion. He was angry and upset. He couldn’t understand why he was having all these problems with shooting one man, nor did he understand why his people were being shot down in the dark outside by hidden strangers. He wanted to do the job as quickly as possible and get out of this crazy place.
Ruiz saw the woman first, sitting wide-eyed in her armchair. A woman was no danger, another piece of the furniture; he would deal with her later. Turning a quarter turn, he spotted Karp sitting up in his bed. Even in the dim light the target was unmistakable. He raised his rifle, sighted on Karp’s chest, and touched the trigger. Karp had at that instant begun to roll off the bed in the direction of the nightlight. His hand reached out to swat it from its wall socket.
As soon as Ruiz’s eyes were no longer on her, Devra Blok reached into her knitting bag and drew out one of the little alloy .22-caliber automatic pistols the Mossad issues to its agents when they are in foreign parts and need to kill people. In one long-practiced motion she yanked the slide back to chamber a round, pointed, and fired twice into the back of Sergio Ruiz’s head. The assassin’s hand tightened reflexively on the trigger as the slugs tore into his brain and the Armalite erupted.
Karp landed on his bad knee and grunted in pain. He was down in the narrow space between the bed and the wall, trying to make himself small and reaching for the nightlight with a shaking hand. Above him, Ruiz’s assault rifle roared and bits of plaster, wood, and pillow feathers fell down on him. He waited for the pain of the bullets and worried fleetingly about wetting his pants. Then the firing stopped and he felt the bed jerk with the impact of a weight falling upon it.
He stuck his head up cautiously. Ruiz was facedown on the bed, his head in the center of a spreading red stain. One of his legs was twitching rhythmically. He was still breathing, a hoarse rasp, but Karp could see, and smell, that he had lost control of his bowels and bladder. Karp saw Devra Blok bend over Ruiz, as if to examine him. He saw the little dark gun in her hand and saw what she was about to do. He said, “Hey …”
She pressed the muzzle of the pistol against the base of Ruiz’s skull and pulled the trigger twice. The shots made almost no sound: bnff! bnff! Ruiz stopped breathing. Karp looked at the expression on the woman’s face. It was neutral, somewhat fatigued, like a suburban housewife who has just brought a load of garbage to the curb.
Their eyes met. She said, “Are you all right?”
Karp nodded. He stood up unsteadily, shaking, and felt an urgent need to visit the bathroom. He looked at the stinking corpse, then at Devra. She was sliding a fresh clip into her gun. “No more Anne Frank, right, Devra?” he said. She looked at him blankly, her brown eyes as innocent as a seal’s.
19
KARP STOOD IN the living room window, watching them stack the bodies of the Cubans in their own white van. The Israelis had killed six of them, including Ruiz, and the others had escaped in the Cadillac. Natan and Yaacov tossed the corpses in with an easy, swinging motion, as if they had done it all many times before. The entire battle had taken no more than half an hour. It was now nine-thirty on a chill and cloudy night. The men worked by the glare of the floodlights that illuminated the driveway.
“Does this disturb you, Mr. Karp?” Karp turned to see Ben Leventhal standing by the doorway, wearing his own gray coverall assassin suit.
Karp shrugged. “No. Not unless you’re going to put me in the van. Are you?”
Leventhal smiled and shook his head. “I can’t understand you, Mr. Karp. We are the good guys. We’re on your side. How many times do we have to save your life before you understand that?”
Karp tried to summon up gratitude, but it curdled in the horror he felt in the presence of these decent, clean-cut, efficient killers, his people. Landsman.
Natan and Yaacov finished their work and slammed the doors of the van. Yaacov got in and drove off, rattling gravel. In a moment Karp saw the blue van follow down the drive. He let the curtain fall.
“Where are they going?” he asked Leventhal.
“The river is close by. They will be back shortly.”
“Good thing we’re not in New York County. We’re not, are we?”
“No, Mr. Karp, we are not,” Leventhal said with a chuckle. “Why? Would you arrest us if we were in your jurisdiction? I confess, I have never been able to understand the legal mind. People studying words scratched on paper while the world falls apart around them.”
“Well, that certainly shitcans two thousand years of Talmudic history, doesn’t it? I thought we were supposed to be the People of the Book.”
“Oh, yes, and we know where all that ended up. In the slaughterhouse! On the ashheap! At least we know what justice is, believe me! Did you want us to leave Eichmann in his little house in South America to plan another escape while we waited for extradition papers? Let me tell you, Mr. Karp, nobody is ever going to murder Jews again and get away with it. Never! Not while we are strong.”
“Of course,” Karp said mildly. “Agreed. The problem is where you draw the line. Snatch Eichmann? Sure. Pop a couple of Arab terrorists? OK. How about some guys who might be thinking about terrorism? Why not? It gets easier, Leventhal, and the problem becomes how to stop. It’s hard, once you’ve got a government committed to going around killing people and a bunch of guys who’re good at it on hand. Those guys out there stacked in the van: we hired them to fight commies, and then we hired them to break up a terrorist organization in Miami. More killing people in a good cause. It’s not surprising they start using their one marketable skill in a cause that’s not so good. I mean, we didn’t hire them because of their ability to make fine moral discriminations, did we?
“Your boy Dreb, same thing. He escaped because somebody thought spying on the Reds was more important than nailing him for all those murders he did in the war—”
Leventhal broke in angrily. “That is not the same thing at all. Israel is fighting for its life.”
“Right. Of course, a lot of people thought that the U.S. was fighting for its life against the red menace back then. Also, I think we both know that this particular caper has very little to do with Israeli national security and a lot to do with your personal desire for revenge.”
“Justice, Mr. Karp. It is not the same thing. You are a good talker. Very logical. I am not so. Perhaps if I had you with me, I could have convinced those idiots in Jerusalem of what I know to be true about this man. But it’s hard to be logical when the vo
ices of these murdered children are always in your head, crying for justice. I see you think I am being over-dramatic, no?”
“No. I think I can understand what you’re feeling, though. I spend a lot of time with innocent victims, and sometimes I have to explain to them why the people who hurt them can’t be touched, or can’t be hurt the way they’ve hurt their victims. It’s hard to make the law serve justice, but I guess I think it’s better to keep trying.”
“And while you are trying, the monsters eat you alive.”
Karp sighed. He had heard this argument from a hundred cops, a thousand victims. “Not all the time. We win a few. The point is, when you get down to it, the only difference between us and the bad guys is that we have rules and they don’t. They get to do what suits them and we tie ourselves up. I think that’s what makes us good guys. I’m not a bleeding heart, Leventhal. If the laws of the State of New York required me, after proper adjudication, to take Josef Dreb apart with a nail scissors, believe me, I would do it. Meanwhile …” Karp shrugged.
“Yes. You will not help us. I hoped, I really did, that you would come to your senses and act as a Jew. But no. Fortunately, I have taken precautions. Come with me. I want to show you something.”
Leventhal took him to a room he hadn’t seen before, a small bedroom upstairs. The room contained two wooden folding chairs and a plywood trestle table covered with a litter of tools and wires and, ranged along one wall, a steel rack loaded with electronic equipment.
Leventhal sat in one of the chairs and flipped some switches on a large reel-to-reel tape recorder. As the spools turned, he said, “This was made several hours ago. I understand that tape recordings do not make good evidence in court. I can see why. You see, whatever else I am, I really am the Stereo King.”
Out of a small speaker on the table Karp heard the ringing of a phone, then a click as someone answered. Then he heard his own voice say, “This is Roger Gimmel Karp.”
“Karp?” said the man on the phone, surprise in his voice. “Are you OK? I heard somebody snatched you.”
“I’m fine,” said the Karp voice. “Yamada, right?”
“Yeah. What happened? Where the hell are you?”
“I’m safe. Look, I need to see Karavitch. Tonight. At my office.”
“Tonight? Why tonight?”
“It’s an emergency. A lineup. I’d like him there in two hours. Can you?”
There was a moment of hesitation, and then Yamada said, “Yeah, sure, they’re your prisoners. Two hours. Say twelve.”
“Right,” said Karp’s voice, and the connection was broken.
“It was the stereo,” Karp said. “You bugged my place.” He felt an involuntary surge of anger mixed with intense embarrassment. If they had taped this, then they had taped his argument with Marlene and its passionate and noisy resolution.
“Yes,” Leventhal replied, “your phone too, but the tone is better if you take it from a room. Then you cut up the raw tape and reassemble it into useful phrases and put them on tape loops in these cassette players. Naturally, if the person on the other end decides to launch into a conversation on the theory of relativity, or demands some specific word we don’t have, then we could have a problem, but otherwise we can handle it with loops we have made for all the little conversational sounds, the ‘uh-huhs’ and the ‘yeahs.’ The fake conversation is played through this mixing board, like an organ. It sounded quite natural, didn’t you think?”
“Leventhal, if you had this, why did you go through that song and dance to get me to help you?”
“Oh, that. Well, first of all, I would not have taken you if it had not become necessary to save your life. And it would have been less risky if you had cooperated. That policeman could have become suspicious. As I said, perhaps he would start a conversation we could not follow on the tapes. So it would have been better. And perhaps I wanted to give you the opportunity to help Israel.”
“Oh, helping Israel. Is that what you’re doing? Well, thanks, but I hung up coats for Hadassah ladies for five years, I figure I paid my dues in that area.”
Leventhal gave him a look of undisguised contempt. “You really are disgusting, Mr. Karp. I almost believe you are anti-Semitic.”
Karp said nothing as he followed Leventhal out of the room. The man had touched one of his secret bruises. It was true, and a source of shame. He was tired of it all: Israel, the Holocaust, the whole us-and-them of it. None of his close friends were Jewish. His girlfriend was Italian. He certainly didn’t like any of his relatives. And the three young Israelis repelled him in a way he didn’t quite understand.
“Hey, Leventhal, tell me something. Just out of curiosity, what’s wrong with your troops?”
Leventhal stopped. “Wrong? How do you mean?”
“You got them on drugs or something? No talking, no sense of humor—they’re weird. I mean, it probably doesn’t mean much coming from an old Nazi like me, but they don’t seem very, um, Jewish.”
Leventhal favored him with a chill smile. “They are kibbutzniks. They all three come from a very old-fashioned kibbutz in northern Galilee, near the Golan. They still practice communal rearing there. It makes for certain … differences in the personality. But they make the best soldiers. More than you would expect of the officers in the Israeli armed forces and in this line of work here are kibbutzniks.”
“Like janissaries.”
Leventhal looked pained. “No, not like janissaries, Mr. Karp. Janissaries were taken from their parents by force and raised to be soldiers of an empire. It’s not the same thing at all.”
I rest my case, thought Karp, but said nothing.
They left for the city in the blue van. Karp sat in the rear seat between Leventhal and Yaacov. He was wearing his suit trousers and a pajama top with the sleeve cut away from his wounded arm. His overcoat was draped around his shoulders the way Italian movie stars wore them. The van was warm, but he felt cold clear through his vitals.
Natan was driving. Devra had stayed behind in the house, to watch the store, Karp supposed. They blindfolded him on the drive to the city, taking the scarf from his eyes only when they hit Seventh Avenue at midtown. It was nearly midnight when they got to the courthouse, which was still open. Justice never sleeps. The guard at the desk at the main entrance was dozing, however, and Karp had no difficulty in talking his way through.
He unlocked the door to the Criminal Courts Bureau outer office and turned on the overhead lights. The three Israelis followed. Leventhal sat Karp on the battered leather couch next to the outer door and placed himself in a swivel chair a few yards away. Natan stood at the inner side of the door, and Yaacov hid himself behind a filing cabinet on the opposite side, both in good ambush position. They waited. Karp looked longingly at the telephone on the secretary’s desk. There was no hope that he could get to it now, but perhaps there would be a struggle when they jumped the cops who were bringing in Karavitch and he could get free. The need to do something, anything, was as frustrating as the itching of his arm under its plaster cast.
A door clicked open, but it wasn’t the outer door. It was an inner door, the door to the bureau chiefs office. Two blond men came out fast, jumping into the center of the room. Both were carrying heavy automatic pistols in a way that showed they were not unfamiliar with their use. Natan glanced at Leventhal, who gave a tiny shrug. There was obviously no point in resisting, not yet at any rate, and in Leventhal’s extensive experience people who pointed guns at you and did not immediately kill were not particularly fearsome.
The two frisked and disarmed the Israelis and herded them and Karp into the center of the room. Leventhal said dryly, “Very good, Mr. Karp, I give you credit. However did you arrange this reception?”
“Give me a break, Leventhal. I never saw these guys before—” Then he had to take a deep breath, because through the same door now walked two people he did know. One of them was the Yugoslav translator, Stefan Terzich, with a gun. The other was Marlene Ciampi, unarmed but for a smile.
“Butch, what are you doing here?” she said.
“Yeah, right,” said Karp, looking closely at her. Her face was tense. She was frightened under her cockiness. He gestured to Terzich. “But also, what’s he doing here?”
Terzich said, “We do not have time for lengthy explanations, Mr. Karp. I am here for the same reason you and your friends are here: to take charge of Djordje Karavitch.” He said something in Serbo-Croat to the two blonds, who ushered Marlene, Karp, and the Israelis into the bureau chiefs office. The big blond hauled out a huge clasp knife and opened it. Karp tensed and looked around for throwable weapons, but all the man wanted was to cut the wires on the desk phone. Then he reversed his pistol and knocked the twist handle off the inside door latch. He smiled unpleasantly and left, taking the phone and his partner with him.
The door closed behind them and the bolt lock was turned; the office was now a cell. Karp immediately flung his arms around Marlene and they embraced like orphans in the storm, but with more mouth action. When she could breathe again, she said, “What happened to you? I heard you were shot. Is this it?” She touched his cast gingerly. “Does it hurt?”
“No,” he lied, suddenly aware again of the three others locked in with them. The two younger men were exploring the room like recently caged leopards, looking for a way out or for some weapon they could use. Natan was fingering an ornamental letter opener; Yaacov was examining the sill outside the window. Leventhal was observing Karp and Marlene, a faint smile on his broad face.
“What are you smiling about? You’re in deep shit.” Karp snarled.
“It always gives me pleasure to see lovers reunited,” said Leventhal blandly. “And as for being in, as you put it, ‘deep shit,’ we will have to see. But tell me, Miss Ciampi, however did you inveigle the New York rezident of Yugoslav Military Intelligence into helping you in this way?”
Depraved Indifference Page 33
