by Ragen, Naomi
After the festivities, he’d been given the option of staying on to work at a kibbutz, and he’d taken it. It hadn’t lasted long. Like most Eastern Europeans, he was not amenable to the socialist ethic so many Israeli leftists still romanticized, despite the proven failure of Communism to solve any of the world’s problems and its unenviable success in inventing many new ones. He’d tried to convert the kibbutzniks, but had found them closed minded as well as utterly convinced of their liberalism.
So instead, he’d gone to work as a volunteer in a hospital storeroom, packing, unpacking and delivering medical supplies. And on the weekends, he’d roamed around, hitchhiking up to the luxuriantly verdant land around the Sea of Galilee, and down to the almost frighteningly bare desert of the Dead Sea. Such a tiny country, but such a jewel. Every imaginable landscape was located within its borders.
Its human landscape was equally diverse, embracing more cultures, races, languages and religious customs than almost any place else in the world. They called themselves Jews, but they had never really decided what that meant. It was certainly not a race, because the beautiful black Ethiopian immigrants with their dark skins and European facial features bore no resemblance to the Georgian Jews of the former USSR, with their squat foreheads, light skin and almost Mongolian eyes. Was it a religion? Except for the ultra-Orthodox in their black outfits, practitioners of the faith seemed to make up the rules as they went along. Some ate pig and shellfish, while others wouldn’t. Some wouldn’t eat pork in the house, but somehow didn’t mind eating it at a restaurant. On Yom Kippur, some prayed and fasted, while others went to the beach and stuffed themselves with pita and humous. True, the men were all circumcised. But what of the women? Girls in Tel Aviv looked like Britney Spears whore-chic-wannabes while Orthodox girls in Jerusalem were covered up from neck to ankle, with long dark skirts and under-the-chin blouses, not unlike Muslim women.
The native-born were pushy and brash, kind and warm, full of love for life and human beings. Everything they did became personal, whether they took you in their cab or sold you a package of gum. The driver, the grocer would often butt into your business, asking nosy questions, and giving kind and unsolicited advice that often turned out to be extremely helpful. It was an easy place to get lost, go broke, and not speak a word of the local language. Everyone knew directions, even if they were wrong; everyone would shove his hand into his pocket to give you a few shekel for the bus or a phone call; and everyone spoke a zillion languages and seemed open to strangers.
Only once did he encounter open hostility because of who he was. It was a woman he’d been sitting next to on a bus in downtown Jerusalem. She’d seen him reading a Polish newspaper.
“How are you enjoying your visit?” she’d begun in Polish, pleasantly enough.
He’d answered: “Very much.”
“Unfortunately, I was also in your country. But I didn’t enjoy my visit.”
Only then had he seen the blue numbers on her arm.
“This country was built by broken-hearted people like me. Take my tears home with you along with your other souvenirs,” she’d told him.
He’d sat there, speechless, for the rest of the trip. “I’m very sorry,” he finally said, hanging his head. What did it matter that his grandmother had not been part of it? So many others had, their hatred making the horrors possible.
“I’m also sorry. You are a young person. It’s not your fault. Here, take a cookie.” She offered him one. “I made them for my grandchildren.”
“I heard that,” the man behind him said, tapping him on the shoulder. “Don’t feel bad. We Israelis aren’t vengeful.”
“That’s what’s wrong with us,” the woman on the other side of the aisle piped up. “We don’t know how to hate. We forgive too fast, take chances with our security for so-called peace . . .”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about. That’s what’s right with us!” the man answered her.
By the time he’d reached his stop, the discussion involved half the bus and was still going strong. He’d held the cookie in his hand and waved good-bye. Almost everyone had waved back.
There was no unity. Everyone thought the rest of the country were dopes, and wrong-headed, and delusional. Yet, if there was a war, or a terrorist attack, they would lay down their lives for each other unhesitatingly, whether as soldiers and policemen or simply as passengers on a bus with a suicide bomber whose hands needed to be kept away from the detonator.
Often, in the last few days, he’d asked himself what he was doing here, getting mixed up in a story that had nothing to do with him. But the more he understood the scale of the human tragedy that was unfolding in this part of the world, where ordinary, good people were on the front lines fighting big, well-funded terrorist machines, the more he realized that no decent person could stay uninvolved. Terrorism had to be stopped, before it destroyed civilization altogether, and no man, woman or child anywhere in the world was safe from its terrible reach.
He looked up at the flickering lights on the board showing incoming flights. Flight 774 from Zurich had landed a half hour ago. That was the flight number Esther had given him on the phone when she called with her urgent message to get down to the airport and give John Mellon a ride and all the information he could. That it was a matter of life or death.
Who was John Mellon? And could he be trusted? And what did she mean by “life and death”? And most of all, what was taking him so long, he thought irritably, his toe throbbing, his body heavy with fatigue. Just as he began thinking about sneaking out, he noticed a large, muscular man elbowing his way past the other passengers, staring fixedly in his direction.
Russell Crowe on steroids, he thought, a little alarmed. Whatever conflict there was, you’d want him beside you, not facing you (armed) from the other side. The stranger approached rapidly, a sudden grin making him seem less lethal.
“Hello!” Milos began.
But the fellow put a warning finger to his lips and shook his head. He took out a pad and wrote: “Don’t speak to me,” showing it to Milos, who then gestured an offer of help with the luggage, an enormous duffel bag.
But the man just shrugged as he took in Milos’s slight build, as if to say: Who are you kidding? And with no more effort than it would have taken to fling back a scarf, he hoisted it over his shoulder.
Milos walked ahead silently toward the exit and the car park, fascinated and concerned about this sudden descent into cloak and dagger.
The man threw his bag into the backseat, then climbed in beside it. Milos sat behind the wheel. No one spoke. Finally, Milos took out a pad and wrote: “Where to?”
“Jerusalem,” the man wrote back in a clear, military script. “But first let me check over your car”
He crouched down, running his fingers over the dashboard, tearing off the seat covers, opening the glove compartment. “Oh, very nice, Milos. Do you know any Israeli girls?”
Milos shook his head, wondering if it was some kind of code, or if the guy was just plain nuts.
“Do you think you could stop at the next gas station? I need to take a leak,” he said.
Milos nodded.
When they pulled into the station, the man got out first, retrieving his bag, and asked the attendant for a key to the washroom. He motioned Milos to follow.
Inside the tiny stall, he took out a paper and wrote: “Take off all your clothes and leave them outside the door, then lock it.”
Babcia, what have you gotten me into . . .? Milos thought, panicking as he undressed, thankful it was after midnight and practically deserted. Naked, he opened the door, throwing his clothes outside, then locked the door behind him. God. If there was a police raid, how, exactly, was he going to explain this when they locked him up on some sleazy vice charge . . .?
The man handed him a towel from his duffel bag. “Here. Sorry. Okay. Your clothes are probably bugged too.”
“Too?”
“Well, it’s that or your car. Or both. I haven�
�t yet decided.”
“My car? Impossible.”
“Possible. One wrong word and we could both be in deep trouble, not to mention certain others not with us right now.” He arched his brows cryptically. “I understand from Esther Gold you have some important information? That’s the reason I asked to have you pick me up. Because we are working on a very tight deadline, and I didn’t want you to risk transfer-ring it by phone.”
“Yes. But, first, who, exactly, are you?”
“Oh. Sorry. I thought you’d been briefed. I work for Esther Gold—I understand she and your grandmother are friends?”
Milos shook the extended hand. He felt his fingers crushing in the firm grip. His extremities, he thought, were not having a good day. “When you say work, what do you mean? In what capacity?”
“Okay. Let me tell you what you need to know now. I mean, just in case they threaten to pull out your fingernails, or cut off your dick, you wouldn’t want to know anything you might feel compelled to hide, now would you?”
Milos swallowed hard, pulling the towel around him more tightly.
John grinned. “It won’t come to that, I’m sure. I work for an organization called IKARM, International Kidnapping Rescue Mission.”
“Is it private? Public? Government? Army . . .?”
“Totally private. We are hired by the families and companies of kidnap victims. And we do whatever is humanly possible to free them. Right now, as I said, we are working for Mrs. Esther Gold to free Jonathan and liana Margulies.”
“You’re mercenaries?”
A slight frown moved over the giant’s face. “Do you get paid for what you do?”
Milos swallowed. “I didn’t mean to be insulting . . .”
“Sure we get paid for what we do. But what we do is rescue victims of kidnappers, terrorists and other scum. Not like police and secret service—government employees—who get paid good tax dollars to safeguard the lives of their citizens, but don’t think that’s a high-priority item. When we take the money, we actually do the job.”
“You don’t think the Israelis are going to rescue Margulies?”
His jaw flexed. “That depends.”
“On what?”
“If their politicians will let them. If this country really cared about its people, they’d have gone into Gaza and blown it up the first time one of their buses blew up. Instead, they pussyfoot around, kill a terrorist here, another one there, talk, sign papers. You’ve got thousands parading in the streets for every scum funeral. Just bring in some planes and bomb the bastards.” He shrugged. “I guess the suits got their reasons. But we’re not like that. We’re different. We have one consideration only: how to get the victims out alive and kill the terrorists.”
“There’s an ‘A in IKARM. What does the ‘A stand for?”
“Are you being funny?” he said belligerently.
“No. I’m a writer. Words interest me,” he said nervously.
He calmed down. “A writer, huh? Because this is no laughing matter. Those terrorist scums are taking over the world, with the help of all those fucking reporters . . . Idiots. We are going to crush them, desiccate them, annihilate them . . . “ His face grew red.
“Ahhjohn?”
“What!”
“You meant ‘decimate,’ didn’t you? And you were talking about terrorists, right, not reporters?”
He rubbed his chin sheepishly. “I guess I tend to get carried away . . . Now, that information you spoke about?”
“Oh. I believe that a BCN driver, a Palestinian, has some connection to the kidnappers. He’s the one that delivered the tape from them.”
“His name?”
“Ismael Abadi. He’s forty-one. His family lives in Tul Karem. Wife. Five kids.”
“This is what he told you?”
“Yes.”
“Thanks. This saves time. We’ll check it out.”
“Ahh.John?”
”Hmmm?”
“My clothes?”
“Oh, sure. But when you get home, burn, or dispose, of anything you had on tonight, and check your pockets carefully.”
“Why are you so sure I’m bugged?”
“Well, I have this little thingamajig that vibrates when it locates a bug. It’s been shaking its maracas off since I met you. But hey, that’s not a bad thing. It means there’s a pretty good chance your information is worth something. But it also means you gotta watch yourself, cause Big Brother is watchin’ you. Know what I mean?”
Milos felt dizzy.
“You can get dressed now, but remember, don’t say anything personal to me at all. It’s all right to talk nonsense, that will throw them off. That’s why I asked you about the girls, you know. Write down your cell phone number. And if you need to contact me, here is my e-mail address. Best to do it through a blind cc.”
“Whatever you say. Just wave your hand when you want to be dropped off.”
The rest of the trip to Jerusalem was spent in silence, the radio blaring Arabic music—John’s idea. At the entrance to Jerusalem by Sakharov Gardens, right before the turnoff to the residential Jerusalem suburb of Ramot, he signaled for Milos to pull over. In one swift movement, he got out, grabbed his bag and disappeared into the night.
Milos felt his body slump as a slow chill crawled up his spine. He was too exhausted to visit Elise now. And anyhow, he needed a change of clothing, disliking the eau de public bathroom scent of his current outfit. He decided to go home—a fleabag hotel with an unobstructed view of the site of several suicide bombings on Ben Yehuda Street. Inside his hotel room, he turned his clothes inside out, shaking out his pockets.
There was nothing.
Boy, he thought, exhaling in relief, a foolish grin spreading over his face. That guy really had me going. He leaned back on his pillow, taking out his nearly empty pack of Lucky Strikes, determined to dig out the last cigarette. As he did so, his finger suddenly and unexpectedly met a small metal object. He tore open the pack and stared. A single cigarette stared back, along with a tiny black transmitter.
Chapter Twenty-three
Krakow, Poland
Thursday, May 9, 2002
4:00 A.M.
“MARIA, FOR THE first time in my life, I don’t know. I can’t pray. How can God do this to me, after everything I’ve gone through? How?”
Not like her at all, Maria thought with alarm, listening to her friend Leah’s almost incoherent voice. Leah, who even in the camps hardly ever cried, who held on to her faith. Leah, who always said: “Better pray than cry!” holding on to that precious half-burnt prayer book she’d found in the forest that had almost cost her her life. “Leah, you were always the one who told us not to confuse the works of God with the works of men. This isn’t an earthquake, or a flood or fire. This is the work of evil men.”
“What if she loses the baby, and then something happens to liana, Jon . . .?”
Maria was silent. What was there to say? Anything was possible in this world. But somehow, her heart told her it wouldn’t come to that. It was just too cruel.
Or was it just wishful thinking?
She had a sudden idea. “Leah, why not do that ceremony?”
“What ceremony?”
“The one from the kabalah . . .”
“The Pulse de Noura . . .” Leah’s voice wavered, full of a strange discomfort. “I don’t even think I’d remember how . . .”
“Don’t worry. I will never forget it. None of us will. It saved us once. It can do it again. We will all come to Jerusalem and do it together.”
“But your health! The traveling . . .!”
“I’m healthy Polish stock . . .”
“But the cancer . . .”
“That was five years ago. It went away along with my breast. It wouldn’t dare come back after all that money Esther spent on it getting the best doctors, flying me to Los Angeles . . . Besides, what’s the point of living if you are afraid to do anything? I will take Communion, go to Confession and get a blessing. And
then I will come.”
“Maria?”
“Yes?”
“When is it going to be over?”
“They didn’t win then, and they won’t win now. You’ll see, Leah. You’ll see.”
“God bless you, Maria.”
“And God bless you, my little sister.”
She hung up the phone, then crossed herself.
The young, bald girl standing naked beside her in the showers who’d reached out to hold her hand as they waited for water or poison gas to pour from the ceiling, not knowing which. The girl ready to die for a prayer book, who’d given her back her faith. The girl who she’d convinced her German camp boyfriend to get a job in the sorting room where she would be warm, where she could steal food and clothes. The girl whose friends had become her friends. Ariana and Esther. The four of them together sharing bread, dreams, clothes, warmth . . . life.
She paced her small apartment, looking at the phone, hoping Milos would call with some good news. She couldn’t help feeling frightened and guilty that she had involved him in all of this. But there was no choice. Not really. She’d made a Covenant. And she only knew one way to keep it. She only knew one way to live.
She looked out the window at the dark, deserted streets. What is wrong with life is human memory, she thought. What is the point of life and history—all that human beings sacrifice and endure, overcome and rejoice over—if we do not remember? What point are the centuries, years, months, hours, minutes, if they slip through our fingers, if we learn nothing?
After the war, she had had such hopes. The enemy had lost. She was determined to go home and retake all that had been stolen from her But again and again she had been bludgeoned by new calamities. Her father’s death. The poverty and devastation of the country she loved. Still, she’d managed to make a life for herself.
She’d met Jozef on a bread line. He was standing behind her when she fainted from hunger and cold. He’d wrapped her in his coat and brought her a warm loaf. Jozef, she thought, quick tears coming to her eyes. Like a mountain with a laugh that made the dishes clatter . . .Jozef, Jozef.
