The Israel Bond Omnibus (13 page)

“And yet,” thinking he was still talking to himself.

“And yet,” M. chimed in with a knowing smile, “you still have some doubts. Then go to Loxfinger, guard him and while doing so satisfy those doubts. Keep your eyes, ears, nose, and throat open at all times.”

He knew she was about to favor him with one of her proverbs, which would afford him a guidepost to understanding.

“Remember,” she said, purling a difficult hound’s-tooth stitch, “give me the mind of a child until he is eighty-three and I will dominate him.”

She’d hit the nail right on the point again! Good old M.! “I’ll get down there posthaste,” he said.

“I don’t care how you go, as long as you get there fast,” M. said. “You will be working alone ... unless something extraordinary comes up. In that case, you will be contacted by Agent D., only if necessary.”

Agent D.! Again the mention of that shadowy figure behind the scenes.

She anticipated his next question: “Do not ask me about Agent D., Oy Oy Seven. Now go.”

One more stop—the quartermaster’s where he would receive any equipment he needed, reload the mezuzah and requisition an automobile.

He walked into the office of Lavi HaLavi, quartermaster and inventor of diabolical espionage devices. There was a plaque on the wall with one of Mother’s sayings. Each office had its particular favorite. This one read: “ON THE HIGHEST SLOPE OF MOUNT KILIMANJARO IN AFRICA THERE WAS DISCOVERED THE FROZEN, DRY CARCASS OF A PATTERNMAKER FROM A NEW YORK CITY GARMENT CENTER FIRM. NO ONE HAS EVER EXPLAINED WHAT HE WAS DOING AT THAT HEIGHT OR HOW HE GOT THERE.”

HaLavi hardly looked up from a diagram he was sketching.

“Shalom, Oy Oy Seven.”

Behind him was Oy Oy Two, a grizzled veteran of many dangerous missions into enemy territory, testing a powerful new flamethrower. “It works,” he told HaLavi. “The tip of the cigarette is definitely smoldering.”

“Good,” said HaLavi. “Bond, look over there. You’ll be driving that baby to the kibbutz.”

The grill of a gleaming new MBG grinned at him. A Mercedes Ben Gurion! And a powerhouse, too, Bond guessed.

“She’ll do 375 poods per dunam, but that’s not all,” HaLavi chuckled. “Sports some fairly interesting features, triggered by this row of buttons ... sixty of ‘em ... on the dash.” He licked his lips, an enthusiastic schoolboy showing off his collection of dead Japanese beetles. “This one ... you press it and a 125-mm. machine gun slides out of the right fender. This one ... a similar gun slides out of the left fender. Then they open fire—on each other. Needs a little work there.”

“Fascinating,” Bond purred.

“This one ... converts your ashtray into a Lazy Susan. Here ... windscreen and windows that become completely opaque in case you’re driving and don’t want to be seen. You can’t see either, but it’s a sacrifice you’ll have to make. This little button makes the dual exhaust pipes blow bubbles ... more of a fun thing than anything else, Oy Oy Seven. Radical new turbojet motor. Runs on any liquid whatsoever. So drink heartily, old man. Homer radio signal planted in the horn. It lets you pick up signals from a similar device planted in the rear axle. And this one ... I love it... the new Sunbeam laser beam. Shaves you without a blade ... or a razor. Then the master button ... this red one ...”

“Yes,” said an interested Bond.

“Only, I repeat, only to be used in the direst emergency. Chips down and that sort of thing. Press it and the whole car converts into one big goddam button. Frightens the deuce out of anyone who’s ever seen it.”

Bond glanced at the diagram on HaLavi’s work table. “This looks very complicated, Lavi. What’s it all about?”

“Oh,” the quartermaster smiled shyly. “It’s a highly involved and frankly unproved theory of mine. May never have a practical use at all, but who knows? It’s an old pet project... the vacuum-voids mystery. Basically, it’s this: How many voids could we get into an unfilled vacuum? There’s a lot of spatial-time continuum calculating needed here.”

“I can imagine,” said Bond. He could see HaLavi working himself into a burst of enthusiasm. It would do well to bolster it. HaLavi brought a zeal to his work that needed constant sympathy and praise. “No doubt, you’ve got it licked, Lavi.”

“Well, not quite but I’m getting close,” the quartermaster admitted. “My reasoning goes thusly: If we assume that there is total emptiness in a vacuum and that such a vacuum is infinite in terms of dimensions—that is, if we even
knew
that a vacuum or vacuums—and there could be an infinite number of them, too—if we knew a vacuum or vacuums actually was or were infinite— and, if indeed, it ... or even they actually had dimensions—for if vacuums, presuming there are more than one, and we don’t know that either, to be perfectly truthful—well, if vacuums are infinite, how can we say that they are bound by dimensions? For would not a dimension which bounds an infinite vacuum of necessity itself be infinite? So ... can the infinite enclose the infinite? That’s why we must find out all we can about vacuums before we even go into voids. For after all, voids, too, are just mere emptiness. Are voids then also infinite, without boundaries, uncontainable? If they are, how many voids can we fit into vacuums? But if, as I suspect, the reverse is also true, why can we not cram vacuums into—pay attention now—into voids?”

Bond lit a Raleigh.

“So the problem seems to be,” HaLavi continued with scholarly eagerness, “the shoving of one kind of total emptiness into another kind of total emptiness. Wait!” He slapped his forehead with a self-deprecating hand. “Bond, you’re looking at a horse’s ass! Why should there be just
two
kinds of total emptiness? Cannot the number of total emptinesses themselves be infinite? Or at least isn’t it feasible to suggest that there is at least a third kind of emptiness unit that could accommodate both vacuums
and
voids? Presuming, of course, that this third force, so to speak, is
itself
boundless and capable of that kind of magnitude. So you see, Oy Oy Seven, it all boils down to one question: Where’s my blanket? I want my blanket! And if I don’t get it I’m going to make a big
caca
all over the floor.”

Bond, who had seen this coming and had whispered a few words of alarm into the Nippo, waved the three husky black-hooded men into the room. They swept HaLavi into their arms and carried him off, but not before he got in a parting scream: “Memorize the master list of buttons, Bond! The right button could save your life! Listen to me, Bond! Bo—.” The door slammed with finality.

Poor chap. Bond had noticed his increasing nervousness of late. Between his arduous tasks for M 33 and 1/3 and his own private researches, he had suffered too much mental strain. Bond hoped HaLavi would return to his post someday. If not, his absence would leave the service with a void that would be hard to fill. Or could it be filled? Even with a vacuum? For if a void ...

I’m getting the hell out of here, Bond said.

Even as the MBG sped deep into the desert, Bond pondered HaLavi’s last pitiful scream ... something about the right button. It was a typical Negev day ... unbearably hot. The sun shimmered off the rippling mirages, blinded his eyes, caught the rocks in a crystalline flash, dropping into a Wadi for a ground rule double, scoring Maris and Downing, who had come in to run for Mantle.

Five hours later he swung the vehicle down a tiny road one would have great difficulty finding on the map. Indeed, Bond had experienced six kinds of fits trying to find the map.

The unpaved road led him past an encampment of nomads, some on camels. It recalled to him a plaintive advertisement he had once read in the
Jerusalem Post
: “Having left my Bedouin and boardouin, I, Ayesha Kassim, am no longer responsible for any debts or diseases unless contracted by myself.”

Then a sudden patch of green, incongruous in this tan-colored nowhere, and Bond knew he had come to the kibbutz, K’far K’farfel, which was playing host to Loxfinger & Co. He motored past groves of lemon trees. Lovely, he mused, with flowers very sweet. But he knew the fruit of the poor lemon was impossible to eat.

K’far K’farfel was one of the newest yet most famous of all the kibbutzim, these brave little desert settlements. It was here that the great Dr. Saul Rossien, the French Jew, had done some of his most illustrious work with hybrids, cross-pollination and the like. He had crossed a date palm with a breadfruit plant, getting a tree that produced nothing but date-nut bread. A New York City restaurant chain, Chock Full O’ Nuts, had willingly underwritten the expense.

Under the shade of that very tree sat the dreaded Macaroon, who obviously found the sun too taxing for his usual display of karate. He seemed content to sit and split popsicle sticks with his pinky.

“Hello, Macaroon,” said Bond affably.

“Why ye not lay doon anna die, yo’ mothuh humpah?” said the mulatto with an unfriendly growl.

“If you’re to use that phrase at all, it’s ‘mater-violator,’ at least in my circles,” Bond snipped back. He’d taken all he was going to from this creature.

Then he heard Saxon’s voice, just a snatch of it, as he pushed open the noisy screen door.

“...taken care of ...” and something that sounded like “my” ... then “furor.”

Saxon and Loxfinger froze, ceased their palaver at the sight of Bond. “You were not expected here so soon, Mr. Bond,” said the doctor somewhat accusingly. “Mr. Saxon was just telling me about the furor my ‘Plowshare Papers’ have created in the world and the highly salubrious reaction among Arab leaders. I have further news, Mr. Bond, which as a security person you’ll doubtless be told of eventually. The Knesset has given me permission to stage top-secret exploratory peace talks with two key Arabs. We shall convene on a dhow in the Red Sea very shortly. Around the Passover season, I believe. Confidential, of course.”

“Fantastic!” Bond could only shake his head in wonderment.

“Yes, my friend, these talks could yet achieve that final solution to this nation’s problems which I see just beyond the hills of doubt and confusion.”

A twinge in Bond’s cheek, mirroring something horrible stirring deep down inside. Something as yet nameless.

“In fact, Mr. Bond,” Loxfinger went on, “I hope this meeting ...”

But he could be heard no more. Hundreds of children, bronzed and glowing kibbutzniks wearing costumes of antiquity, burst onto the scene. Rushing to the doctor they began filling his hands with hamantaschen, the three-cornered pastry of the Purim holiday. “The song! The song!” one shouted. And they began boisterously:

Oh, once there was a wicked, wicked man,

And Haman was his name, sir.

“What in the world is this outburst?” Loxfinger, nonplussed and a trifle irritated, asked Bond.

“Why, sir. Surely it’s slipped your mind. It’s Purim, of course, and the little ones are serenading you with a traditional ditty about Haman, an evil potentate who long ago tried to destroy the Jews of Persia. The cakes are hamantaschen. But you know all this, sir.”

He tried to murder all the Jews,

And they were not to blame, sir.

Loxfinger was shaking ... violently. His pasty white face was being invaded by an angry red flush.

One of the children stepped out of the pack, handed a bouquet of desert wildflowers to Loxfinger, and in a halting recitation said: “Dr. Loxfinger, oh blessed one of Eretz Israel. You are living proof that no Haman, be he ancient or modern ... uh ... shall ever again threaten your people with ...”

“Be gone, brat! Go! Go!” Now the face was stark black. I do believe he’s going to hit the kid, an amazed Bond thought. The child fled in tears and his playmates, silent and afraid, drifted after him.

“Dr. Loxfinger,” Bond began. “I ...”

Saxon broke in quickly: “Go, Bond, go! I’ve seen this happen to him before. The sight of children reminds him of past unhappiness in the bad times. I’ll take care of him. Please go!” The P.R. man led the muttering philanthropist away. He seemed to be in a hypnotic state.

Bond was totally agitated himself. Poontang! He had to talk to Poontang. “Where’s the girl?” he asked the giant.

“Comin’ through the rye, ofay fool,” said Macaroon. The ugly incident seemed to have invigorated him. He picked up one of his ubiquitous boards, brought the calloused right hand down. It exploded into splinters.

The exhibition had no effect on Bond. He had heard the beeper from his MBG. Someone was trying to reach him. “Bond here.”

“Bond? Monroe Goshen. Listen, I’m in Israel. No time for explanations. AAA Priority. Meet you at Tel-Aviv Sheraton.”

AAA Priority! Was Israel in danger from the Arabs? The American Automobile Association? He did not dare guess. Bond started the motor, but suddenly Lazarus Loxfinger reappeared, his dark mood gone, strangely smiling now. “You must forgive the eccentricities of an old man who has seen too much sorrow, Mr. Bond.”

“Of course, Doctor.”

“Mr. Bond,” he said in that confidential tone. “We sheenies stick together, don’t we?”

“Not as much as non-Jews think, but we try, sir.”

“Uh, Mr. Bond.” The voice halting, about to divulge something delicate. “I am a man with great human frailties. Women the greatest one. I gather from your dalliance with my secretary that you, too, are a man of the world.”

“You know about Poontang and me?”