Damascus Gate (67 page)

"You don't want to discourage him from writing his book?"

"I respectfully submit," Zimmer said, "that through it we can refer discreetly to our accomplishments. For our friends' benefit. You can tell me which accomplishments, and I'll whisper in his ear."

"Our accomplishments," Lind said reflectively. "
Chaver
Shaviv, what would you say were our accomplishments?"

"Ah," said Shaviv, "well, let us see." He stood up, walked to the window and began counting off on his fingers. His pale eyes reflected the coppery landscape beyond the tinted glass.

"Accomplishment one: you,
Chaver
Lind, are restored to the service of the state."

Lind bowed and interrupted. "Not so important," he said, mocking modesty.

"Accomplishment two: we set the Jewish undergrounds, the Temple bombers, back five years." He thought about it for a moment. "Well, three years."

"Two," Zimmer said.

Shaviv continued enumerating accomplishments.

"We flushed out the most violent elements in the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, forced them into a premature move. We provided a reason to legislate against the cults and the Christian missionaries. Which will please certain of the rabbis, whose support we shall need one day.

"We hurt the elements here who were cooperating with the American religious right. We demonstrated, I think, that such a policy has a downside. We penetrated the Colombian connection and we have a clearer understanding of how Yossi was using the dope smugglers. These are all good things."

"And the other side of the ledger?" Lind asked. "The losses?"

"Acceptable," Zimmer said. "We're not responsible for the death of that boy in the Gaza Strip. He was not a casualty of this operation. The terrorists got what they deserved.

"And the Communists—well, they would understand. We sent them a message that they won't be needed, that their day is over and that the lives of our people are extremely important to us. Whereas I'm sure they realize that ... how does the movie line go? The problems of two little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. They were under their own discipline. Died with their boots on. Line of duty. So forth. And that woman had no business here."

"As always," Shaviv said, "the American dimension is sensitive."

"I certainly hope no one holds me responsible for the death of any Americans," Zimmer said. "The police made repeated attempts to get that De Kuff fellow out. We still don't know how he turned up in there. We tried to look out for him."

"How's young Melker?" Shaviv asked.

"Still in a coma," Zimmer said. "But he was using heroin that day. So we have concluded that his coma..." He shrugged.

"Is the result of a drug overdose?" Shaviv suggested.

"Exactly," said Zimmer. "We're in touch with the U.S. embassy. The parents may be coming over."

"Sad," said Lind.

"How does he look?" Shaviv asked.

"Like he was beaten," Zimmer told him. "The way users often end up looking."

Shaviv sighed. "It
is
sad. A life."

Zimmer said nothing more. He had not cared for Raziel.

"I suppose," Lind said to him after a while, "you'll want to be getting back to town."

"Yes," said Janusz Zimmer.

They had the security man telephone the café in Dimona where Fotheringill had gone and arrange for him to be readmitted. Eventually, they saw the Scotsman and his jeep outside.

"Where on earth," Shaviv asked, peering through the window, "did you acquire that preposterous person?"

"Mr. Fotheringill?" Zimmer smiled slightly. "Mr. Fotheringill and I met in Africa. We always work together. Especially when the operation is ... unofficial. The Englishman—you know, Lestrade, the
momzer
—he was sure Fotheringill was going to kill him."

"I don't blame him," Shaviv said.

 

The route back through the desert lay between two stark reefs of ironspined mountains. As they drove, Zimmer turned his gaze from one range to the other, from the granite massif in the west to the sandstone hills in the east. The vast fateful landscape, which he had seen only once or twice before, inclined him toward recall.

At sixteen—he might even have been fifteen—he had been a fighter with the Polish Communist irregulars during the time of chaos that followed the war. He could remember arriving in Zielce just after the pogroms of 1947, working with the
ex-résistants
of the Bricah, the Zionist group that organized displaced persons for the journey to Palestine. In those days, the Joint Distribution Committee and the Bricah men and the Communist fighters were close. Ben Gurion's Socialists had not yet purged Communists from the Jewish intelligence services.

In the winter of 1947, he had stood guard at the bridge that the Bricah had built over the Oder to carry DPs into Czechoslovakia, and across it into Austria, bound for what would become Israel. But he had never gone along. Wearing his red and white guerrilla armband, he had looked on as columns of weary survivors passed. They had glanced at him, just another Polack as far as they could see, as they hastened to wipe the dust of Central Europe from their shoes.

He had stayed behind and tried to remake the world, watching his fellow operatives drown their apostasy in vodka. He ended up traveling endlessly, running the kinds of errands the Communists ran for their brutal, corrupt creatures in the Third World, attempting to help them prevail over the corrupt, brutal creatures of the Americans.

If he had gone to Israel then, of course, his life would have been different. He would have cast off ideology sooner. He might have occupied the space where Lind and Shaviv now thrived. Instead of being what he had always been, a secret agent, a striker behind the scenes, a representative of that Israel which the country preferred the world to know little about. To know just enough about to strike a little caution in the anti-Semitic heart.

Before long, he thought, despite his best efforts, the underground would succeed in destroying the mosques, in beginning the war that would remove the Arabs. Out of it would come a different Israel. It would be less American. It might just partake of the purity of purpose that had been lost.

And though it was his job to abort that process, he could not help speculating on what hope such a purifying wind might bring. How it might make the Land the singular place it had been meant to be. And just as he could not keep himself from sympathizing, in a certain way, with the Communists, neither could he keep from feeling a bit the same about Rabbi Miller and the football coach and the others who were ready to subsume their lives in the Cause.

Lind and Shaviv and the other politicians in the papers every day—the prime minister, Sharon, Netanyahu—so many of them were like the men who had run Eastern and Central Europe between the wars. The men around Colonel Beck and King Carol and Admiral Horthy—mediocre opportunists, living for their foxes' portion. How difficult it was not to require something more. But, he thought, I am getting old.

"Everything go all right, squire?" Fotheringill asked. "Did they appreciate us, do ye think?"

"I don't think they appreciate us, Ian. But I'm sure we'll be paid."

They would be paid. Fotheringill in Swiss francs, he himself in various complicated ways of his own devising, ways in which money did not necessarily feature. He had enough, he thought.

He had secreted the hand of Sabazios in the nominal custody of a few museum officials whose fortunes he controlled. In fact, the piece was his to dispose of.

As a part of the national patrimony, Zimmer thought, it might be pressed into service, both in his own and the state's behalf. For Zimmer, there was no serious conflict of interest.

For security purposes, he reasoned, the thing to do would be to coat the original with plaster and paint it so that it would resemble a plaster cast. Then it would be possible to produce several actual casts. Properly weighted, they would be superficially indistinguishable from the original. As trade items and objects of desire, such things might prove infinitely useful. The hand and its imitations might touch off a frenzy among collectors from Cairo to California.

The desert sun began to cast its light aslant the distant mountains. The worst of the day's heat was easing, reluctantly, the glare giving way. Just as the underground would one day destroy the Haram, Zimmer thought, one day the Muslims would assemble a nuclear bomb in America. That particular stork would come home to roost. And who knew what might follow? No doubt, in the long run, the Muslims too might feel their certainty, their sense of purpose, flagging.

Before long it would not matter. He might go and live in Africa. A man might acquire some Italian fascist's former villa in the Ethiopian highlands. Walk in the cool of the morning. Rest under thorn trees hidden from the blaze of noon, watch the sunsets, listen for lions.

"The airport, squire?" Fotheringill asked.

Zimmer's single traveling bag was packed in the back of the jeep. He picked up a plastic bag from under his seat, riffled through the dozen passports he kept there and selected one, Canadian, that listed his place of birth as Vilnius and showed the date of his naturalization. Several men were waiting at different ports of entry to take charge of the jeep and his identity equipment.

"Allenby Bridge," Zimmer said. "Over Jordan."

O
VERLOOKING THE
Valley of Hinnom and the Old City walls was an outdoor restaurant run by secular Jews from Romania. It was where Lucas had often stopped with Tsililla when they went to movies at the Cinematheque down the street. Tsililla especially liked going to movies on Friday nights so she could give the finger to the
haredim
who protested hysterically outside the movie house, howling over the violation of Shabbat.

More than once she had come close to getting them both torn to Orphean shreds by giant bearded berserkers. After they had succeeded in passing unhurt through the ranks of demonstrators, she invariably led him to a table at the Romanian joint, whence the caterwauling pious thugs could follow them. She would choose a table as close to the sidewalk as possible so she could give the
haredim
the finger again.

It was this place, because of its wonted quiet on weekdays and its view of the city, that Lucas chose for his afternoon meeting with Faith Melker, Raziel's mother.

Mrs. Melker was a handsome woman with kind brown eyes that beautifully bespoke her grief. She was superbly coiffed, her hair jet black and silver. She wore a finely cut khaki suit with simple gold jewelry. There was about her and her outfit a self-imposed severity, as though she had restrained her striking good looks out of mourning. Looking at her, Lucas could see the source of Raziel's passion and attractiveness. She also reminded him a bit of his father's wife.

"A very nice young woman at the consulate here suggested I talk to you, Mr. Lucas. I'm afraid I've forgotten her name. Is it Miss Chin?"

"Yes," Lucas said. "Sylvia Chin."

"It was good of you to take the time to see me. With the situation as it is, you must be very busy."

"I'm glad to, Mrs. Melker. And I'm very sorry about Raziel." She looked at him uncomprehending. "About Ralph, I mean." He was at the point of explaining the name thing. Then he thought better of it.

"Sometimes I think he can hear me," she told Lucas. "Sometimes I think he responds. He moves his fingers."

Her pain was hard for him to bear, underlined as it was by her cool courage. Her brilliant, funny, multitalented son was lost to her, walled off within his own darkened brain.

"So many families," Lucas said, "have been hurt by drugs." He immediately regretted the banality.

"I try to remember," she said, in kind, "that we're not alone in this. That among the less fortunate in our country so many others have gone through the same thing."

Well, Lucas thought, she was a politician's wife. But there was no question of her sincerity, her generosity in bereavement. He liked her very much. She made him wish he felt sorrier for Raziel.

"With someone as talented and intelligent," Lucas said, "I mean, the more talented and intelligent someone is, the greater the loss."

As if she needed him to tell her. He could, he thought, hardly blame Sylvia for passing the buck. But Faith Melker was nobody's
freier,
as they said in country, nobody's fool. A Detroit girl, even one so gently reared, would presumably waste little time before sensing a cover-up.

The American Presence, the Israeli government and the unknown conspirators behind the events of the previous days had a mutual interest in keeping Faith Melker from tasting of the apple, maintaining her in a state of grace. Somewhere, in letters of fire, was written a narrative of good and evil it was important to all of them that Mrs. Melker not behold.

No one wanted Mr. Melker—the former ambassador, the congressman—arriving at Lod in a state of outraged curiosity. Moreover, Lucas thought, it was just as well they knew the minimum. For everyone, even themselves. Or at least that was the way many of those involved would see it.

His own relations with her would be somewhat different, at least if he planned to persist with the book. They would be meeting again, inevitably exchanging information. At some point, to gain her goodwill, he would have to offer certain insights. He had reason to believe that more of the nature of the story would be revealed to him in the future. He would come to possess information that would require considerable discretion in handling.

Discretion was not his strong point, not one of his native virtues. He had blown the Grenada story for that reason.

"We knew that Ralph had been having problems with drugs," Mrs. Melker said.

"He was"—Lucas hastened to correct himself—"he's a seeker. After absolutes. Sometimes that will do it."

"You knew him well," she asked, "didn't you?"

A difficult question. Difficult to know the answer to it. Problematic in terms of the answer's effect.

"I only knew him a short time," Lucas said. "But I was impressed with his desire for faith. I think the drugs sidetracked something much greater. A much greater yearning."