The Heat of Ramadan, page 30
The Colonel knew his men’s personal records by rote. He knew how to hit them and where. He knew about Eytan’s financial problems, his apartment and his wife’s longing for a holiday with her husband. He knew too much.
For want of a gavel, he slammed a palm onto his desk top.
“Dismissed.”
Eytan could not move. He was stunned. His hands opened and closed. He wanted them around Itzik Ben-Zion’s throat.
“Get the hell out of my office!” Ben-Zion roared.
Eytan took a step forward, but Heinz was there quickly. He took Eytan’s arm and pulled him out the door.
* * *
Colonel Ben-Zion was alone. His officers had left and he had finally released his exhausted secretary. He sat behind his desk and looked through the large windows as the Jerusalem night began to go violet, and the chatter of the starlings only aggravated his brooding.
He should have gone home as well, but Tzahala was a long drive off and a nap on the sticky vinyl of his office couch seemed more appealing than the image of his sad wife in her frumpy nightdress. She had been so beautiful once, Shula, yet now the light was gone from her baggy eyes and a thin whine had replaced the throaty voice that had lured him so long ago.
It was like that with so many of the career officers’ wives. The men were strapping, handsome, youthful, middle-aged warriors in crisp uniforms. And you were shocked to see their women, heavy with their days and nights of longing, filling their emptiness with food, all but widows except that their absent husbands still lived.
He reached down into a desk drawer and removed a glass and a rarely touched bottle of brandy. He poured a few centimeters and drained it neat. And then he poured some more.
He did not like the way he felt about Eytan Eckstein, for Itzik was not a stupid man and he knew that his anger was misplaced and unfair. He also knew where it came from, but he could not help himself.
Feldenhammer . . .
It returned to him every day now, and every night. He lived with it like a crippled limb, or the loss of a child. . . .
It was the summer of 1973, and Itzik was a young officer, on loan to Mossad from the army for Project Quest. The horror of the Munich Massacre was still fresh in the minds of his countrymen, and Itzik was proud to be one of the team leaders chosen for a dangerous mission approved by Golda Meir herself.
Vengeance assassination was, at the time, an untried tool of the Israeli intelligence community. The Israeli justice system did not even have a death penalty, and that reluctance to kill the enemy was only set aside on the field of battle.
Yet the massacre of her athletes at the Olympic Games had pushed Meir over the edge, and she ordered the assembly of Project Quest. One by one, the architects of the Munich terror were executed, by bullet, bomb and booby trap. They were felled in the alleys, fields and waterways of Europe by righteous, idealistic young agents like Itzik Ben-Zion.
Yet unlike his comrades, Itzik was not sobered by the bloody chase. The killing did not quench his vengeful thirst, nor stir an inkling of remorse. Ali Yassin Abdallah, the ultraterrorist, the mastermind of Munich, was still at large and Itzik was not only determined that it be his team that made the hit, but that he himself be one of the heroic shooters to do the deed.
And then, Feldenhammer, the tiny town in Norway where it all went wrong. It was Itzik who incorrectly identified the innocent waiter named Samir Amkari as the terrorist Yassin Abdallah, and it was Itzik who arrogantly insisted that his target analysis was irrefutable, and it was Itzik who led his team into committing a murder that blew Quest wide open.
Just a few seconds of Itzik’s misplaced gunfire, and all at once the righteous chase was reversed: the hunters became the hunted. Having allowed the heat of pursuit to cloud their judgment, the Quest team members suddenly found themselves in a remote Scandinavian village. There was no urban populace with which to blend, no massive, sprawling city into whose slums and alleyways they could fade. The Norwegian security forces flooded the flat, uncrowded highways, and within three days all of the field operatives were awaiting trial in Norwegian prisons.
Except for Itzik. Somehow, he managed to slip through the net.
Back in Israel, the embarrassing revelations of roving Jewish hit teams caused a spectacular uproar. Yet upon his return, Itzik was unrepentant. He had done his job and done it well, and who the hell cared about one lousy Arab waiter when his team and the others had shown the world that Jewish blood was no longer a cheap commodity?
Even as a junior officer, Itzik was damn sure of himself and loathe to admit even the remote possibility of an error, unless it could be proved to him. He had not made a mistake. He had correctly identified Ali Yassin Abdallah, the “Blue Knight.” But then his team had been set up to kill the wrong man, as Samir Amkari was inserted into the picture at the last minute before the kill. Yes, his professional judgment was sound, his instincts correct. There had been no error—only clever enemy action.
Itzik’s superiors did not have much time in which to dispute his claim. In October, the Yom Kippur war erupted, dwarfing the significance of the Feldenhammer Fiasco. Many of Itzik’s peers perished in the all-out struggle for Israel’s survival, and most of his superiors were forced into retirement for failing to predict the cataclysm which nearly destroyed the Jewish State.
Itzik Ben-Zion had been on assignment in Europe for almost a year, his hands awash in blood, yet clean of blame for Yom Kippur. His career was catapulted forward. . . .
Now, Itzik was well on his way to becoming the Commander of AMAN, and someday perhaps, the Chief of Staff. In his mind, Feldenhammer had been relegated to a footnote in an officer’s tactical education, part of the adventures of a young man.
And then, out of nowhere, it happened. Captain Eytan Eckstein, one of his best young team leaders, a veteran of five perfectly executed anti-terror missions, suddenly mirrored Itzik’s historical blunder with that cataclysmic murder in Bogenhausen. How could it have happened again? How? Hadn’t Itzik warned his agents time and again to be careful, to be absolutely certain? Hadn’t he ordered them to withdraw if there was even the slightest doubt?
Perhaps if Eckstein had also been self-righteous, bull-headed, refusing to take the blame for the Bogenhausen Fiasco, Itzik could have stomached him. But the captain’s pathetic acceptance of responsibility left the Colonel’s heart cold and pitiless. As commander of Special Operations, Itzik was ultimately responsible for Eckstein’s screwup, and the captain’s admission that the murder of Mohammed Najiz was anything but an act of God brought every one of Itzik’s fears and insecurities thundering to the surface.
Only a handful of AMAN officers were aware of Itzik’s past, and they were forbidden by regulations to reveal it. But the arched eyebrows and whispers of “Feldenhammer” in the hallways certainly did nothing to allay his suspicions.
Now, no matter how much he denied it, it seemed that another head had regenerated itself on the Medusa of Arab terrorism. Like the ghost of the Blue Knight himself, Amar Kamil—or another like him—was on the move, and Itzik’s empire could crumble.
Every time Itzik saw Eytan Eckstein, he was reminded of his fragile self.
A shattering crash made Itzik jump in his chair. He looked down, realizing that the brandy glass had slipped from his fingers. The jagged shards glittered in the dawn light that was washing the hard tile floor, and he saw the yellow liquid oozing away, like the lifeblood of his career.
* * *
The Shabak security teams were already out in force at Ben-Gurion Airport when the morning El Al flight arrived from Athens. Despite Itzik Ben-Zion’s apparent disdain for Eytan Eckstein’s “fantasies,” the Colonel had reminded Uri Badash, before dismissing him from his office, that internal security was really the responsibility of the General Security Services. Badash did not need to be prodded. With three Israeli operatives now dead, and the theories of an AMAN captain—who seemed perfectly sane to him—ringing in his ears, Uri had already ordered an upgraded security alert at all ports of entry.
But Amar Kamil barely attracted a nod.
He appeared quite rested, almost jaunty considering that he had been flying all night after first doubling back to Greece. His face and arms were lightly tanned, though you could not tell that the color came from a bottle. He wore a blazing white polo shirt, navy baseball cap, sunglasses, blue jeans, and Topsider boat shoes, and he carried a two-suiter and a golf bag, of all things. You had to really be a fanatic to want to play that scruffy course at Ceasaria.
He not only looked the brash American, he sounded it too, careful to not be overly loquacious, yet responding through a bright smile and armed with plenty of “Yups” and “Nopes.” He was quite secure in his cover, having used it once to gain access to a TWA baggage repository in Frankfurt. The results of said penetration were still making worldwide headlines.
The choice of the passport was a good one, as Americans were not required to obtain a visa prior to visiting the Holy Land. Upon ordering the document from Horst in Munich, Amar had taken care to specify that the name be decidedly Jewish.
He breezed through passport control, unquestioned by even one of the steely-eyed security agents who stared past him, examining the faces of those travelers who “fit the profile.” The GSS men seemed rather jumpy, and the Arab behind him in line was all but strip-searched right there in the terminal.
An attractive female control clerk took his passport, examined it briefly, and stamped it with a metal plunger.
She looked up, compared the photo with his handsome features, and smiled as only the young can smile at that hour.
“Welcome to Israel, Mr. Goldstein,” she said warmly.
“Thank you,” said Kamil. “It’s good to be home.”
11: Ramallah
7:00 A.M.
YUSSUF HASSAN WAS NOT REALLY A TERRORIST.
He knew nothing of sabotage and had never fired a weapon. He could not land-navigate or fight with a commando knife. He had never run through the flaming obstacle course near Sidon while gleeful instructors fired Russian rounds at his feet. He could not tell Semtex from Silly Putty, an F–16 from a MIG–23, and he had never attended a seminar at Sanprobal.
In point of fact, even as a boy Yussuf had not participated in anti-Zionist demonstrations. He had never thrown so much as a glass marble at Israeli troops, nor climbed a telephone pole to drape Arafat’s flag under the levantine stars. Even on the walls of a distant well house, he had never dared to scribble Ilyawm Al-Quds, Ghadan Falasteen.
Yussuf Hassan was first, last, and eternally a musician. As far as acts of terror, his only crimes along those lines would have been the occasional alarming of his neighbor’s sheep when he would forget himself and practice his oboe past the midnight hour.
Yussuf lived alone in a small stone house on Sabah Street, at the edge of a huge grove of olive trees. He was a slim, bespectacled, hunched fellow, whose love for music had superseded all attraction to materialism, politics or women. Or perhaps, due to Yussuf’s own recognition of his physical detriments, he had found in his beloved instrument an excuse for his social ineptitudes.
For the most part, Yussuf played his oboe in a local classical quartet. Given that the indigenous inhabitants of Ramallah had little appreciation for Stravinsky, the audiences were usually Europeans who soothed their consciences by working in the refugee camps under the auspices of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. He was not paid for these concerts, though he did manage to gather a few shekels teaching the children of the more cosmopolitan parents in the city. He taught the boys clarinet. To most Palestinian children, the oboe sounded like a dying goat.
Most of Yussuf’s money, which had afforded him the opportunity to study music in Amman, came from a small stipend in an East Jerusalem bank. It had been deposited there regularly for nearly ten years, and the young man had almost forgotten why he received it.
Besides his oboe, Yussuf’s only apparent obsession was his radio. Had he been fortunate enough to have friends or family, they might have noticed that his bulky, incongruous, portable Aiwa radio-tape only received attention from the hours of seven to eight each morning. No matter what, Yussuf never failed to hear the breakfast broadcast from Radio Al-Quds in Tunis. He did not like the fanatical rantings of the PFLP announcers and could barely stand the whining Arabic ouds and thumping tambours. Yet his addiction to the show seemed borderline religious. On the very few occasions when he had known that he might miss the program—an overnight performance in Hebron, a trip to hear the London Philharmonic in Amman—he had laboriously taped down the Aiwa’s record button and carefully affixed a Shabbat light timer that he had bought from a religious Jew in Jerusalem.
On those rare days Yussuf was as nervous as a camel in a snowstorm. Like an obsessive-compulsive worrying over a gas range, he would recheck his mechanical improvisation over and over before leaving his house. However, his fear was justified, for if he missed the program just once on the wrong day, his stipend, his livelihood, and his music would be gone forever. Not to mention his life.
Yussuf was the classic Sleeper—although he would not have recognized that term. He did not know who paid him, nor the full scope of his mission, and for his Master he existed only to perform a single act.
He sat at a small table in the kitchen corner of his salon. Unlike most of his neighbors’ homes, his modest two-room house had Western-style furniture, although the chairs, table, dresser and bed were scuffed leftovers donated by his UN admirers. He rejected the notion that to be a true Arab, you had to consume your meals while seated cross-legged on a pile of worn pillows, picking at your bowl with your fingers like a prisoner of war.
He sipped his tea and reread a program from a recent performance of the Israeli Philharmonic. He had not attended the concert himself but had obtained the copy in the same way he came by his furniture. He would have loved to hear Zubin Mehta perform his magic, yet he dared not be seen mingling with the Jews in a grand public forum.
He was trying to keep his tie out of his khubz and zibda when he suddenly froze, his hot glass lifted halfway to his mouth, his wide eyes fixed on a spot of sun on the far wall. He had long trained his ears to relegate the annoying utterances of Radio Al-Quds to subliminal background noise, while leaving one small part of his brain alert to that single snippet of music which might set him free from his vigilance. Now, like a messiah whose appearance he never really expected, it was there in the room, and he did not believe it. Slowly, he lowered the glass of tea to the table, not even feeling his scorched fingertips. He dropped the slice of bread to the plate, and he focused his hearing as he turned his head toward the Aiwa.
A large group of men, handsome tenors and basses and baritones he imagined them, perhaps the Yale Glee Club, were singing We three kings of Orient are. . . . He blinked at the machine and hardly realized that he was rising to his feet, reaching up to remove his steel-rimmed glasses, cleaning the lenses with his skinny black tie as if his eyes rather than his ears deceived him.
When the music ended, there was a long moment of silence. Yussuf began to think that he had imagined it, that he was actually still in bed and dreaming, until the announcer opened his microphone.
“That was an early holiday greeting from Mr. Theodore Klatch,” the voice said in Arabic. “Apparently he likes to begin his Christmas well in advance.”
Immediately the station cut to a Pepsi advertisement, the jingle incongruous in its Tunisian accents. That was it. It was over. The song, and a Christmas greeting.
It was mid-August.
Like a farmer wading through a swamp, Yussuf walked slowly to the radio, reached out and switched it off. Then he turned and walked across the room, feet nearly dragging on the worn carpet, to his old black telephone.
He was not hypnotized or brainwashed. He was simply shocked by the wash of relief and the rising heat of fear that clashed in his brain like cold rain striking a blacksmith’s forge. His hands appeared before his face like disembodied limbs as they reached for the telephone, and the number popped from his brain as clearly as if it were blinking on the stone wall in orange neon.
He dialed, sure that it would not work. After so many years, it was impossible. The line would be dead, or the number changed. Or, if it did actually ring through, the party would have long since departed.
“Sabaah alkhayr.” A deep voice answered almost immediately with a morning greeting.
Yussuf could barely get it out. He felt that he should chat first, maybe establish that he had the right person on the other end. But his instructions were clear, the phrases burned into him like the brand on a Bedouin lamb.
“This is Yussuf,” he croaked. Then he cleared his throat. Allah, he did not want to have to repeat himself. “I just want to wish you a Merry Christmas, in case I’ll be out of town.”
There was no response, just silence coursing down the wire. Yussuf hung up.
He began to move more quickly now. He could almost taste his freedom, and he started to fantasize as he hurried through the house. No longer would he be chained to his breakfast table, no longer would he be afraid of fatigue, cold with dread that he might oversleep. Tonight, when he returned, he would smash the hateful Aiwa. So, he would miss a few evening BBC concerts. He would buy another radio-tape. A clean, new, innocent, virgin one.
Beneath the sink in the kitchen nook there was a white metal cabinet. He opened it and behind the battered pots he found a hammer and a stone chisel wrapped in a moldy towel. He took them to his bedroom, and with his meager muscles he hauled on his rickety French closet until it came away from the far corner wall. He pushed it aside with his shoulders, then remembered the front door, ran to lock it and returned.
His hands were shaking as he bent to his task, chipping at the loose cement that held the jagged stone in place. It seemed like an hour until he was finally able to dislodge the rock, and though the morning was cool, the sweat ran through his eyes and dripped off the end of his nose. His glasses were fogged into uselessness, and he folded them into the soggy pocket of his white shirt.
