What would happen with the diplomatic mail? The money? The warheads? The fact was that I didn’t care anymore. Shoshi finally pulled the gun out of my mouth, and I tasted blood. I had bitten it too hard. I nursed my injured shoulder and strained to breathe. She was stuck in the corner of the elevator, looking at me with real hatred.
“You’re fucked!” I told her. “Everyone knows you.”
“Do you really think so?” she asked, putting on a redheaded wig, which she had drawn from the depths of her shoulder bag. The curly-haired joker? Shoshi? Who would have thought?
I pushed the stop button, then the secret security switch.
“You shot Jay!” I screamed, shocked by my own words, by the very idea. Whiny Shoshi?
She shot me again. Again on the same shoulder! So simple, without saying a word. I found myself on the elevator floor. The pain almost overwhelmed me. She had a really itchy trigger finger.
“Son of a bitch!” she swore and started playing nervously with the buttons.
“So you were behind it all!” I groaned in admiration. She did not react and cursed the elevator.
"Everything?” I wondered. “The murder of Jay? Sasson? Mevorach? What was it? The UIA dark money? You’re working with these warhead lunatics!”
"Not Mevorach. And forget the warhead, you idiot. We’re talking about the Third Temple. That is a noble goal. Definitely worth more than you or a thousand like you! Stay down!” she ordered. I was worried she’d shoot again without warning, and I did not intend to get up.
"And Almog?”
Almog’s name made her jump. “He’s a chauvinist pig! I will make Noni the consul general. Very soon.”
If I had not been writhing in pain, I would have writhed in laughter. Noni! She was really crazy.
"Get this elevator moving before I kill you!” she shouted.
"But why Jay?” I asked.
"Idiot!” she snorted contemptuously. “He was a traitor. An informant.”
"But the money went to Angela.”
"She was a lousy messenger. She stole it from us. All in all, we had procedures in place for the work and the money transfer.”
“Drug money from Bogotá in the diplomatic mail?”
“It doesn’t matter. The sacred ends justify the means. Angela only had to exchange the money for diamonds, so that it would be negotiable. I don’t know what got into her head."
"Without the money, you’re sunk,” I needled her. I thought I was about to lose consciousness.
"Nothing has been lost. The shipment left tonight, even without the Pentagon’s directive. Someone will do the job even without it.”
“The money… it’s back in the consulate.” I tried one last time
“You’re lying,” Shoshi glared at me with hatred, trying to find the elevator’s power button.
"You have no chance of getting that shipment out.” I had to keep her busy. Someone was sticking a crowbar between the elevator doors. Through the gap, I could see the number 6. We had stopped on the sixth floor, then — for the most part. We were still several feet above the floor, as I could only glimpse people from the waist up.
From the other side, we could hear a commotion. The curly wig would not help Shoshi for much longer.
“Go ahead! You think the Galveston cops won’t be waiting for you there?” I had to get the details out of her. I had to play her for more time. “Angela told us the whole story.” I was really groping in the dark, but as long as she didn’t start shooting again, it was worth it.
"Dirty thief!” said Shoshi. “Seattle is a small place, you will see. And you’ll return the money, to the last penny.”
"And Barkat?” I asked. I had to know who the mastermind was.
"Barkat...” she said, as the outer elevator doors were opening slowly. “Keep lying on the floor!” she hissed, now holding the gun in her bag, aiming at me.
"Give me your hand, carefully!” the building superintendent called to her. People were clustered around, watching the rescue with interest and anxiety, afraid to approach the gap between the bottom of the elevator car and the sixth floor, which must have been about three feet. Shoshi backed up, keeping her face toward me. A gasp went through the small crowd as they saw the gun and backed away from the elevator.
“No, stop!” the super called out to her in despair as she whacked her head on the exposed side of the shaft. She lost her balance, falling out and rolling into the gap with a last look of astonishment, as the super failed to grab a hold of her. I heard her scream, “Barkat!” as she fell down the shaft. I scrambled to get out as quickly as my condition allowed, the super and the others helping me. The sound of her scream as her body slammed into the walls of the shaft all the way down echoed in our ears — until it was cruelly cut off.
54.
The crowd on the sixth floor which had rescued me peered into the shaft, trying to figure out how to get Shoshi out. Or at least, what was left of her. My shoulder was soaked in blood, and the sharp pain had become dull. Where had that last bullet hit?
With my undamaged left hand, I tore off the shredded right sleeve and tied it over my shoulder from the outside. The bleeding continued and worried me greatly. It was not clear how long I could remain conscious. I started down the stairs, occasionally leaning against the wall. Firefighters, who arrived first, were gathered in the lobby. The doorman of the building loaned me his cheerful jacket; it’s blue with yellow stitching, the name of the Galaxy building embroidered on it brightly. I could not call Giora, even from the payphone in the lobby. I had no idea who might be listening.
I took to the street, already flooded with emergency vehicles. Two firetrucks and maybe ten police cars. They had arrived in less than three minutes. Everyone rushed into the building, so I left relatively easily, to the Lincoln rented for the minister’s visit, a gleaming and exuberant white car. Automatic, so I could drive with one hand.
After five hundred feet, I stopped at the entrance to Boot Town, a huge store selling only cowboy boots. Next to the restrooms, I found a payphone and called Giora’s number. It turned out to be the front desk of a Motel Six. I asked to speak to Mr. Tarop.
“Hello.”
“It’s Mickey,” I said in English.
"Hello, what’s the matter?” Giora replied as if we spoke English every day.
"Where can I pick you up?” I manage to utter somehow, without explaining anything, and he did not bother to ask.
"At the door of Mark’s house.” He meant the Red Roof Inn at the airport where Sasson’s body was found. I signed off with, “Yalla, bye.” Okay, that was only half English.
He let me wait for two minutes at the entrance to the motel, and just as the staff was about to ask me to move my car, he got in without saying a word.
My bleeding had stopped, but everything was going blurry. The bone might have been damaged. He agreed to change places with me and drive. I leaned against the passenger seat back, ready to lose consciousness.
"You look awful,” he said as we set off.
"You took the words out of my mouth.” He had a fake mustache and a cowboy hat that made him look like a Southern clown, also known as white trash.
"Where to?” he asked.
"Galveston. Tomorrow night these fine fellows are going to take the warheads on the road to Florida.” I told him everything I knew.
"I’m flying out now.” He turned the car in the direction of Hobby Airport, used mainly for domestic flights. “Join me if you can. We cannot be seen together.”
"I cannot drive."
"So you’d better not come,” he concluded. When it was all over, he could spend years in an American jail. He did not intend to beg and argue.
“Tomorrow night I’ll wait in this white Lincoln in front of the main gate of the Air Force base,” I said.
“Did you resolve anything with Ginsberg abo
ut the money?”
This was the first time Giora returned to the question of the ship I acquired when he’d sent me to Ginsberg, the financial wizard.
“We have a general cargo ship, the Laure, which is in the port of Galveston. It is going to sail to Macau tomorrow morning via the Panama Canal.”
“Can you delay the departure for a day?”
“I can do whatever I want, for a small payment. It’s mine, no?”
“We have thirty-six hours to wrap this all up.” He looked at his watch. “Try not to get killed before then.”
55.
The back room of the Cadillac was one of the last places that was safe for me in Houston; I called Almog to let him know that the mission was being carried out.
“Where are you?” he demanded, exactly as Laure entered the room, with a shocked expression. Sue Anne, who had magically found Laure, put a hand on my forehead and shook her head in disapproval and sorrow.
"You must go to the hospital,” Almog continued.
"I’m not done yet,” I said. Something in his voice worried me. It sounded disingenuously cheerful. “Did you hear me?”
“Absolutely,” he replied good-naturedly. “We are all worried. The minister wants to see you immediately. He is worried for your safety.”
"Extend my warmest regards,” I said and hung up immediately.
"You look awful,” said Laure. “Did someone try to devour you?”
"Something like that.” She looked like a dream.
"You must see a doctor.” She was startled as she looked under the bandage.
"After Galveston,” I promised her. “We’ll find a place for us.”
"Like in a song.” I heard the smile in her voice.
"I just need antibiotics and sleep until tomorrow morning, Michelle.”
"Michelle?” She was amazed. “I’ll kill her."
"Laure.”
"I’m here.”
"Where’s Michelle?”
“Sleep. You are hallucinating.”
The bar is swinging like a hammock, steam rising from the floor, and I looked straight into the laughing eyes and mesmerizing breasts of Michelle, my old girlfriend. So maybe this was the stage of the mind leaving the body after you die, seeing you from the outside?
But what about Michelle? I had known her since I was sixteen. My mother could not stand her. This was already an important point in her favor.
Michelle Bitton was two years older than me. One day after I finished with Yvonne behind the kitchen of the boarding school, instead of saying a polite thank you and moving on, she said to my surprise that she wanted me to meet her sister.
"But why?” I asked. “We have something good together.”
"I have a boyfriend now,” Yvonne said shyly.
“So what? That’s nothing new.”
"But now it’s serious. I want you to meet my sister. She’s really smart. Not like me.”
It happened three months after my father decided to crash his Cessna. My mother was in the midst of an effort to take over the family business. My brother Dubi thought it was a great idea for me to have a regular girlfriend, because he thought we’d be facing a very unstable period. Dubi has perhaps been the only one I listened to seriously.
On Friday afternoon, instead of taking the shuttle to Tel Aviv, I walked with Yvonne to their house in the Shaviv neighborhood of Herzliya. Their semi-detached house had once been used for the housing of new immigrants. There she introduced me to Michelle. Since then, that house on Bar Kokhba Street became my second home, to my mother’s chagrin. I would leave the boarding school in the evenings and spend most of the time on the second floor of the adjoining semi-detached house, in the apartment of an elderly man whom Michelle would cook for and take care of. He was half paralyzed, so after she put him to bed, we could fuck to our hearts’ content, without noise, without panic, without haste.
I remained loyal to Michelle all my six years in the military. Sometimes there were office girls, and we’d screw like cats in the yard. Or in the bathrooms of steakhouse, or during breaks on battalion movements, with the smell of burnt tires and shit. Still, basically I stayed true to Michelle, with whom I had a lot of comfortable laughs and silences, and the most imaginative, generous, and enthusiastic fucks.
On the day I was discharged from the army, Michelle organized a party for me, hosted by her friend Aliza, with whom we had many mutual friends. After the party, we moved to a room she had rented especially at the Acadia, and it was clear to me that she was expecting something. I already knew I was going to an El Al security course. The next morning, in front of the sailboats of Acadia Beach, I informed her that she had to find someone new, because she could expect nothing long-term out of me, and her opportunities would not remain open for long. Even though Michelle cried for almost three days, I knew I did not want to and could not promise her anything.
Now, Michelle was already married and the mother of two sons, looking forty at the age of thirty. She had come to visit Houston and stayed with the wife of her cousin, who was detained awaiting sentencing. I knew her husband Charlie, who was a driver for Egged in Herzliya. He had been a platoon commander in the Golani Brigade, two classes above me; from a good family in Kfar Saba.
I felt grateful to Charlie because it was important to see Michelle taken care of. She was a girl with a lot of heart. However, when it came to Charlie, personally I did not really care. So I did not object to meeting Michelle every night she was in Houston. But the hugs and touches overall were pretty boring and sad, although Michelle tried very hard and was already willing to do all sorts of new things she had learned since then, weird and special, which only put me off more. However, I tried not to show it.
Michelle left after a week, though she had been willing to stay longer. Her cousin was transferred to Elmira Prison in upstate New York. Dorothy got her visitation rights in prison through her connections. She got the rabbi of the community in Buffalo to claim that the prisoner was not being allowed to exercise his religious rights. The solution was that Michelle was allowed to visit her cousin three times a week, each time bringing him a printed page with Mishna to study for two days, or on Friday the Torah portion of the week. She left Houston reluctantly, but I felt great relief. I was more comfortable alone.
I was very comfortable on this special trip that the pain relievers offered me, and I even seemed to hear the hum of my favorite Liberator over the bar music. I was trying to roll over on the bench in the back room of the Cadillac when I felt a metal tube pressed hard against my eye. With a supreme effort, I opened the other eye and looked for Laure, but instead I saw the gun with which Barkat was ready to blow my eye back into my skull.
56.
From the small local airport, Giora took a taxi. He was careful to keep his answers monosyllabic, so he wouldn’t betray his accent. He would have to kill a few more hours until night fell and he could enter the dank accommodations of the Pink Poodle.
He knew exactly what he was going to do and hated the idea. Although he was in great shape, he thought he was a little old for active covert operations. The greatest agony was not being able to call home. Giora still loved going into the field, but now had a hard time saying goodbye to Anat. When she had still been in the United States, he had been accustomed to telling her he’d try to get back that night, even though she knew it might last for three days or more, but she would not press him.
The last time, his daughter Noa had been preoccupied with a loose tooth. He had known that she would place the tooth, once it fell, under her pillow at night. He, who was the tooth fairy in the family, had the job of taking the tooth while she slept, being careful not to wake her, and leaving something in its place. Maybe a coin. In Noa’s kindergarten, it had already happened to Susan and Elle. He had not wanted to disappoint her, but couldn’t return in time, and Anat had refused to do so in his place. She did not bel
ieve in tricking children.
Now they have been evacuated to Israel. Without him. There had been no choice. He pictured the frantic packing, the hollow promises of “Don’t worry,” and “The rest will be shipped to you.” What had Anat done? She would not have believed them. Who could she ask? Who was left for her to trust? If only he could pick up the phone and call her; but he wasn’t there, and he could not reassure Noa and answer her thousand questions.
The Pink Poodle was a gay bar of ill repute, and perhaps that was why it was a favorite of the troops on the base. MPs didn’t frequent it, nor the press. Apparently it was by special arrangement of the owner, so it was quite safe. A delicate-looking keyboardist played rhythmic music and sent Giora flattering looks as he entered. Giora was taken aback. The scene was foreign to him, bizarre and base.
“Can I offer you a drink?” The man who sat next to him was in his mid-thirties. No distinguishing features, save a well-groomed mustache. Wearing blue cotton pants and a plaid shirt, his body measurements were similar to those of Giora. And he was wearing nail polish.
"Whiskey,” Giora agreed.
"Are you from Denmark?” the man asked in a pampered voice, and Giora confirmed, hoping the man did not speak Danish. His interlocutor was an electronics technician at the base. Luck from heaven. He lived off-base because of “personal preference,” he said.
His house was very close to the water line and stood on pillars. Galveston had long been plagued by floods. The window offered a wide and relaxing view of the bay. Giora regretted for a moment that the man was about to suffer; he did not intend to spend the night with him only to make his move in the morning. As the man approached him from behind, he turned around at once and slapped him. The man groaned and looked at him startled. Giora grabbed the side of the man’s neck and pressed. Not too much. The man lost consciousness. Giora bound his hands and feet tightly, with insulating tape he found in one of the drawers, and after making sure he was breathing through his nose, taped his mouth shut as well.
The Consulate Conspiracy Page 28
