by Jack Gardner
28
“I know it sounds all-too-familiar, maybe even corny, but still, don’t you think it’s time for a strong leader who would lead the party and the state?” Mitchell stirred his coffee and looked straight into his interlocutor’s eyes.
They were sitting at Sophia, a café located in a luxury neighborhood that was not too central, allowing for discrete conversations in a simple, quiet atmosphere. A café for those in the know.
“I thought we had one of those before the last election,” replied the Northern Branch Secretary, who had a crucial influence in the party, “and where did that get us?” It was a rhetorical question.
Mitchell picked up his coffee cup and sipped on it. He took his time before replying.
“The man had credentials, but it is true that at the decisive moment he turned out to be a disappointment.” And what a disappointment, he thought to himself, remembering the man’s mistake that dragged the entire country to dangerous, unwarranted obligations.
“But because of that,” he went on, “exactly because that is what happened, we now face immeasurable dangers. I wouldn’t be exaggerating if I say that this is our last chance to prevent what may be a disaster.”
He paused for a moment in order to make sure the man in front of him understood his words.
“This is the last battle to stop it. Only after it will we be able to curb the danger until we have it under control. Therefore, the most important thing right now is to realize that only one person can successfully spearhead this battle.”
The Secretary examined his face, as if he were waiting to hear a particular name. Mitchell, however, did not rush to provide him with that name. Instead, he said, “After all, you know I am not a politician. I am a businessman and a registered party member since the moment I was aware of having an opinion. These are the values I was raised on, and I see nothing but what is best for the party and the country in front of my eyes. Today, I can see the enormous threats we face. Today, I know that we stand before a crucial moment. But I alone can’t do anything. The power is in your hands—you who have the voting rights in the forums that count. But I could not sleep at night had I not known that I’ve done all that I can do in order to alert and express my opinion so that you could consider it when you vote.
The Secretary’s eyes squinted. “Who are you thinking of?”
“If you ask me, there is only one person who could take the wheel right now and steer the boat through these difficult times.”
The Secretary frowned. “If you’re thinking about who I think you’re thinking of, you know my view on this. He is not one of us.” He meant that the man was not always a party member, but joined it a few years earlier, as part of a political move.
Mitchell knew it was time to attack.
“Yes, it is true, he was not always one of us. He was even identified with the left wing for a long part of his life, but not because his opinions tend left, or even close to it. The man had a military career and we know exactly who was in government then. He never publicly supported the left wing policy—even though people assumed that his silence was proof of his support of the ruling party. But if we look at his actions—and after all, that is what counts—it is clear that he was always right wing. And you know what? When I think about it, I think he not only tended to the right, but even to the extreme right. The man believes in the values we were raised on. He is a serious man, far from forcefulness, with a good grasp and a high social awareness. Those who support him see him as a hero and believe in him; in fact, most of the nation sees him as a hero, and his enemies—even in the political system—are few and far between. That is not so surprising, in fact, because the man respects his rivals. He’s an honorable man.” Mitchell ended there, knowing how important honor was in the party.
“I don’t know…” said the Secretary, scratching his head.
“The truth is,” Mitchell scratched his head too, knowingly imitating the motions of the man sitting in front of him, and smiled, “that it is a little odd for me to try and convince you of all people that this man is fit, especially considering his loyalty to the northern region. You know how committed he was to supporting you when you faced serious crises, and his support was shown in actions, not in words.”
Mitchell knew just how far he could pull on that rope. “Think about it, please,” he said, “and by the way, from what I heard, the other candidate is not considered to be a supporter of our interests, us being northern and all.”
The Secretary tensed up a little bit and gave him an inquisitive look. “Did you say ‘the other candidate’? Does that mean the man is going to be a candidate?”
Mitchell looked at him in a straight, determined look that he often used with his business colleagues. “As I told you, this is a state of emergency. It is not the time to hesitate. Our man is not too interested in pushing his way in; he would rather be called to the flag. But on the other hand, these kinds of etiquettes are not our top priority at this critical time. We have no time to lose; I believe he will agree to the candidacy, and I would very much like it if you were one of his first supporters.”
“We’ll see,” the Secretary said in an uncommitted tone. End of speech.
They started chatting about other things. As far as Mitchell was concerned, the ball started rolling, and he would roll it on and on until he achieved his goals.
29
‘What the hell is going on here?’ Eddie asked himself, and not for the first time that day, as he parked his car in his driveway in a small suburban town close to the city.
Something did not really make sense in that supposedly simple picture that the system showed him.
People commit treason for different reasons, all known: some traitors do it for money and others for ideology. Another kind of traitors disclose secrets because their conscious will not allow them to go on as part of a system to which they object. And there was also the last kind: those who betray for reasons of ego, those who think they have been wronged and look for revenge, or those who decide that they make their own rules and goals and so whatever it is that they do, treason included, serves these rules and goals. Eddie knew all of these from his many years at the Bureau. But there was something else, and that is where the problem lay.
When exposed, these traitors habitually do everything in their means to disappear, and they especially don’t stay in the place where they might get caught, or try to meet representatives of the organization that is trying to capture them. Moreover, this was not a naïve traitor, someone who did not have enough information or could not estimate the danger he was in.
These thoughts returned to him again and again, like waves reaching the shore. The man called the Bureau and most likely wanted a meeting. Meaning either that he had a message or that he was trying to negotiate something; after all, he is not naïve, he knew exactly who he was facing.
The Bureau, on the other hand, seemed completely uninterested in talking to him. Isn’t that strange? Logically, they would want him around so that they could supervise him and keep all the cards close to them. That is, for example, how the police would act with someone who committed a felony and wanted to turn himself in. That is how these institutions like it: the fly walks into the maze of spider webs on his own, and there they decide what to do with him. But the Bureau was taking a wholly different tactic: it accepted contact, but then sent assassins to the meeting…
After he researched the event at Davis Café, Eddie was now totally convinced that it was an assassination team. After all, he knew these operations first hand. Why would the Bureau take such measures? Unless this was not the organization’s policy…
Unwillingly, Eddie considered this option, even though it was certainly difficult for him. What if there was a certain group of people in the Bureau who did not want the man’s arrest publicized, or maybe not his arrest, but rather, what he had to say?
And there was one more thing he could not ignore: Why did they not want to listen to what he had to say? The
Bureau trades in information and would never miss out on an opportunity to get more knowledge. There could only be one reason—they think he does not know anything they don’t already know!
Could it be that someone feared the target knows certain things, so much so that they would want to kill the man? That did not sound like the organization’s policy…
On the other hand, Eddie thought, all these ideas, as reasonable as they may seem, are no more than theories. And it is a well-known thing that there are a thousand mistaken theories and only one truth. So what if this is just one of a thousand wrong theories? What if all of his instincts are wrong and his conclusions are simply the result of his own lack of knowledge? After all, it was made clear to him by the highest authority that the whole subject is secret and classified from him, too, even though he was asked to assist in part of the activity. But what part? And where is all this leading? He kept on thinking about this, frustrated by his inability to see the bigger picture. After three days of work, he was still in the dark. No, he did not appreciate this situation.
As he walked into his three-bedroom apartment, closing the door behind him and double locking it, Eddie headed straight to the fridge and pulled out a cold can of beer. He had to let go for a while, he thought, or else he would be locked on this idea, which was very dangerous in the kind of mission he had.
He collapsed onto the comfortable living room couch, the can of beer in his hand, and slowly surveyed the room. His eyes drifted to look at the functional (not to say spartan) furniture, which fit his personality so well. Most people would have considered that room cold and uninviting, but not Eddie.
The large couch, the one he was comfortably lying on, was part of a set he inherited—if one can call it that—from his ex-wife, who gave him first right to whatever furniture she no longer needed. The thought of her brought about good memories. These couches, he thought to himself, have seen better days but that did not change how comfortable they were, which was all that mattered. He placed the can on the low coffee table, crossed the room, and put on some quiet music.
Once the sounds of the piano started filling the room, he returned to the couch and the beer, taking a book published by the Guggenheim in New York with photographs of one of his favorite things: motorcycles.
He got his first drivers license for a motorcycle on his sixteenth birthday. That was a long time ago. He allowed the memories to carry him dozens of years back for a moment. There he was, standing in his home’s underground parking lot, with a heavy Kawasaki KLR 650. He truly liked that bike, even though he would never admit it to anyone. He leafed through the book, stopping to look at the impressive photographs that became stepping-stones in the development of motorcycling culture. He drank the rest of his beer and started to feel a warm sleepiness flowing through his body. He let it take over for a few minutes and then got back to his senses, crushed the empty beer can with his fist, and got back to reality.
At 8:00 p.m., after a shower and a quick glance at the newspaper, Eddie decided to make dinner, which he considered his daily health food portion. While most people like to vary their meals, Eddie believed in one daily meal whose ingredients are identical and to which the body is accustomed to, therefore benefitting from its nutritional value to the fullest. The time he took to prepare dinner was also his time to organize his thoughts, sum up his day, and start planning the next.
And so, as he moved around his small but functional kitchen, between the fridge to the right and the oven to the left, Eddie thought about the fact that no matter what kind of plan one may prepare for himself, at the end of the day, events that have nothing to do with you might determine what happens to you. Only that you can do nothing about it.
He clearly saw those elements of the mission where he had already achieved some progress, and even though he could not point out any real achievement on the way to his goal of locating the target, he had a good feeling that he was on the right track.
He finished preparing his meal and sat back on the couch, happily looking at the colorful, healthy food in front of him. Then the phone rang. Eddie gave the pasta that was getting cold a sad look and hoped the call would be short. It was the Vice Head of Operations. He gave him directions in a voice that tried to sound calm but still disclosed the fact that the man was under so much pressure he could barely handle it.
As of this very instant, the Vice Head of Operations explained, Eddie’s cell phone might ring any minute and he will be required to perform according to the target’s directions. No, it did not matter right now how contact with the target was established. The directions left no room for doubt: he has to do exactly as he is told. He has to report to Judy as soon as he receives the call and then as soon as he completes the mission. If things should go wrong or if there is a delay, he must update them according to his discretion about the level of the delay. In case he receives any kind of material he must hand it over to the office of the Head of Operations directly. And no, he may not read or examine the material he receives in any way. And no, he is not authorized to initiate anything that is not part of the directions he will receive from the target. “Is it all clear?” Sammy asked, and Eddie approved that yes, it was clear, and put down the receiver.
‘So that is the situation,’ Eddie thought. He had a new role as the contact man with the target. It is no longer about research and locating. It was also obvious that the Bureau did not know where the target was, because had they known, they wouldn’t have needed Eddie’s services. Therefore, he assumed the man had made another attempt at contacting the organization.
The good news was that the target was still in the area; but there’s bad news as well, which was that the target was still keeping the cards close to his chest. He initiates, he activates, he determines the schedules and the methods. He probably demanded a new contact man and Eddie was chosen. Why Eddie? Probably because he was already there. Like Mount Everest. Someone didn’t want any more people involved in this. They could have allowed him to go on with his attempts to locate the target according to his own means, thus creating an alternative to the actions they already took, only that they preferred not to do so. Why? Was their unwillingness to get any more people mixed up in this story more important than any other consideration, or was time pressing and the slow, patient work of locating and bating no longer practical? Many questions and very few answers.
And the most important thing: the opponent. Time and again, he proved just how worthy of an opponent he was. Eddie couldn’t help but appreciate the man, even though deep down inside he felt a strong objection to any positive feeling toward him. But the facts spoke for themselves: this experienced man headed into enemy territory knowingly. Was he really an indifferent professional, or was he simply a vain and brave man who was quite stupid? ‘What the hell is going on here?’ Who knows how many times Eddie asked himself that recently.
He got up and walked over to the window overlooking the street. It was an autumn evening and the treetops were moving with the wind. The sky was cloudy and the moonlight barely evident; the yellow streetlights cast puddles of light that were returned from the tops of the parked cars. The street was quiet, but Eddie knew that was only an illusion. Hidden behind the curtain, he carefully and thoroughly surveyed the line of parked cars in front of his house. There was no point looking near the light. If someone was indeed there, he was hiding in the dark. Less than five minutes later, luck was once again on his side: a match was lit and for a split second, it illuminated the interior of a white Opel parked about sixty feet from his house. Eddie spotted two shadows in the car. Operational recklessness, he thought, only that this time it played right into his hands. Apparently these two will accompany him—or maybe they are only the beginning of the tail that would follow him to his meeting with the target.
He carefully retreated, knowing that he was being watched, he was careful not to show himself, and went back to his meal. The phone hadn’t rang yet, so he had time to eat. He picked up the knife and fork, while thi
nking and analyzing this new situation.
It was clear that his role became that of bait that would lead the hunters to the target. As things seemed right now, he had no real freedom. As the minutes passed and there was less and less food on his plate, the situation seemed more and more disagreeable to him. This was not a sophisticated mission, meant to examine motivations and discover why a man acted the way he decided to act, but a trap of the most primitive kind. If the trap was indeed set, the man would most likely be eliminated and the entire story would remain a mystery except for those few people who stood behind it. Those who might have something to hide. But on the other hand, Eddie thought, the target had already lived through one such attempt and in all probability, was even more suspicious now. The chance of him falling into this trap was, therefore, quite slim.
He couldn’t avoid the thought that when the guns would fire he’ll be standing at the center of the ring, in the line of fire. In all likelihood, the target will see him as part of the trap, and he will never get the opportunity to explain that that was not the case. Eddie scratched his head and started thinking of a plan. A smile slowly formed on his face. After all, no one told him about the tail, and therefore, as a good operations man, he had no reason to drag a tail with him wherever he went. To the contrary: he could not bring him! ‘This might prove to be an interesting exercise,’ he thought to himself, and only his self-restraint wiped the smile off his face.
He glanced at the wine glass he poured himself, hesitating for a moment whether or not it would disrupt him when he needed to be concentrated, and then drank it in one gulp. Now he was definitely ready for the target’s phone call.
