I remembered what Kate had said about how solitary the fighter pilot was in the cockpit just a few minutes after fooling around in the air crew clubroom.
"Okay," I said. "I know the score and I'm asking, 'cause I don't get it."
"Listen, buddy," he answered, lighting a cigarette for the first time since I'd met him and gazing at me through the smoke with tired eyes. "Get off my back. I'm not going to say anymore than I already have. Forget her. I did. Somebody decided to take her out of the picture."
Beneath his tough shell, I sensed he was dejected and vulnerable.
"Who decided?" I asked, almost shouting.
Avihu glanced around as if he were looking for some way to get rid of me.
"Gadi?" I asked. "Gadi Crane?"
He blinked, but didn't say anything. I saw the answer in his eyes. I fell silent. He, too, kept his peace, tracing the contours of the plastic ashtray over and over again with his finger.
"Did you treat her well?" he asked suddenly, and I could tell he wanted to know how she was and if she still remembered him.
I didn't answer.
CHAPTER NINE
The next morning I called the consulate. Gadi wasn't there. The following day he called me back at the restaurant. I said I had to see him right away and he didn't even ask why. Avihu must have talked to him.
"Meet me at the bus stop on the corner of 42nd and 11th Ave., the south-west corner," he instructed, and hung up.
By the time 42nd St. meets 11th Ave., it's a lot less busy and a lot less colorful than it is two blocks to the east, but there were still hookers and junkies wherever you looked. I declined the ladies' generous offers and ignored the freaks. It had been an hour since Gadi had called, but he wasn't there yet. I was about to sit down on the curb, like most of the people around me, when I saw him getting out of a cab.
Every hair was in place. One hand was in his pocket, and the other was playing with an enormous cigar. He greeted me with unsettling warmth, throwing his arms around me, telling me how awful I looked, cursing New York and the horrible weather, and pulling me along the river. We walked side by side in silence until we reached the pier for the Circle Line tour.
"Let's take a ride in this tugboat," he said. "It's safer than most other places."
He knew as well as I did that we'd be trapped on the boat, but then so would everyone else on board, at least until it docked.
A cheerful steward in a captain's uniform served as our guide, speaking in glowing terms of the wonders of the city, its ports and its piers. Herds of excited tourists snapped photos obsessively. Gadi and I sauntered over to the far side of the stern where no amateur photographers ventured. It was so foggy we could barely make out the New Jersey side of the Hudson River.
For a long time Gadi stood there in silence, fiddling nervously with his cigar, but I didn't want to rush him. I knew we had at least three hours on the water. We sat down on the upper deck, trying to warm up, he in his elegant jacket and I in the leather jacket that once belonged to one of the twins. It was freezing. He glared at the clouds as if he were trying to decide if it was going to rain.
"How serious are you about the woman?" he barked at me abruptly.
"Very serious. I'm not going to let go of her."
"What's with you?" he said with a slight turn of his head, and then went back to examining the clouds. "You’ve never been like that, never had woman trouble before. What’s so special about her? And even if she is,i ndeed, special, you know very well you can't go on like this. What's gotten into you?"
I looked at him and didn't see any reason not to tell him the truth. On the contrary, maybe my answer would do me some good. Her blue velvet butterfly barrette and her open desperate almond shape eyes flitted through my mind again.
"To begin with, I felt something with her I never felt with any other woman." I was speaking slowly. I had to phrase my answer not just for him, but for myself too. “Do you know what it's like to feel electric currents running through your knees and pressure in your chest?" He gave me an inscrutable look and chewed on the end of his cigar.
"Number two, and most important, I promised to protect her, and I intend to keep that promise. That's something I have to do for myself, you understand?"
He didn't.
"Why did you guys double-cross her so ruthlessly?" I asked bluntly.
"Ruthless, my ass! If you really want to know, then listen to this. Six months ago..." he paused for a second, considering whether to go on, and then picked up his story at dictation speed, as if he were delivering an intelligence report. His voice was crisp and businesslike.
"Iraqi artillery opened fire near a town called Shamas in northern Iraq. There was nothing unusual about that; the town had been shelled for a long time. Remember the `employ target' shows we used to put on in the exercises at Shivta?"
I thought he might be getting diverted by nostalgia, but he went right back to the Kurdistan heights.
"The town was actually a Kurdish village that had grown to a giant town. That's because of its location in the heart of the mountains. Thousands of rebels, Kurds and otherwise, tried to hide out there from the arrests and terror tactics of the Iraqis. The Kurdish rebels held a few positions outside the town, and from time to time, long-range Iraqi artillery would aim its guns at them. But that afternoon, 15th April, was different."
The tour guide was relating the history of New York during the Depression and the Second World War, praising the brave spirit of America. I could see the crumbling piers and the abandoned warehouses that lined them. It looked like a set for a film about the day after the bomb. The fog descended over the piers, and for a while it seemed like we weren't moving. I had no idea where that story was leading to, but got ready to hear the rest of it.
"What was different about it?"
"Why don't you just listen?" Gadi said with his characteristic civility. "The first barrage blew a few craters in the ground. They were just ranging shots, to make sure the next shells would hit the target. Then the really heavy shelling began. Three batteries, six guns each, kept it up for forty minutes. But the shells didn't actually explode. Instead, they broke open and released thick yellow smoke, like in a sandstorm in the desert."
"Chemicals?"
"Nerve gas NG-4.We'd never heard of it before. Did you get that? You understand what it means? Of course you don't. A few minutes after the shelling began, the rebels, who knew the drill, started leaping out of their bunkers. They'd seen the shells weren't exploding, just letting off a blood-curdling hiss. They were in a frenzy, trying to find air to breathe, scrambling over each other - fathers trampled their children underfoot, women crushed their husbands. When you're that terrified, it only takes a few seconds to lose any trace of human feeling. Everybody becomes an animal. Just think about it.
"They were all goners by then. The shells kept falling with demonic regularity - one shell per battery every ten seconds. That means eighteen shells a minute from the entire battalion. There was no wind blowing, and for some reason the gas didn't dissipate or break down for a whole day. And that's really the point."
The sun came out from behind the clouds, and Gadi quickly stuck a pair of sunglasses on his nose. A white yacht had been sailing alongside us for a few minutes. Two boys and a girl waved, their faces hidden behind the edge of the cabin roof. Gadi tensed, but then they raced their engine and sped toward Ellis Island, and we got to see them throw off the thick blankets they'd been wrapped in and reveal themselves as naked and cheerful. As we neared the Statue of Liberty, the boat leaned to the right. Gadi and I were the only ones aboard who didn't rush forward to take some snapshots. Gadi ignored the crush of passengers and the squawking sea gulls keeping up with the boat and fighting over the crumbs tossed into the water. He picked up his narrative.
"The first ones collapsed seven minutes after the shelling started; the last, ten minutes after it stopped. Over five thousand people died. Their bodies were piled one on top of the other, their skin covered in blis
ters, their eyes wide open and their faces twisted in an expression of unbelievable pain. Fluids continued to drip from their bodies for days afterward."
Fishermen in yellow slickers stood on the Brooklyn bank. Again the wind brought us the amplified voice of the guide speaking in simple English. He said something about the high price of Brooklyn real estate: "Very trendy, very yuppie." We hadn't seen anything along the river except junkyards, an endless line of parking lots, and the traffic jams on Riverside Drive.
"That's very yuppie too," Gadi grunted derisively. He was quiet for a moment, trying to remember exactly where he'd left off.
"Okay - the Iraqis sent a light reconnaissance plane right after the shelling, but nobody knows what the pilot reported back. When the Americans looked at the satellite pictures taken two days later, nothing seemed to be moving anywhere. It was urgent that we get the real story about what happened there. For a long time, we'd known the Iraqis had developed a new kind of nerve gas using German equipment and French know-how, but nobody could have dreamed how powerful it was. As usual, the chilling fact that it was already operational came as a surprise to the Americans, but as you can imagine, it was especially horrifying for us in Israel. Syria was also involved in the project, and no political or military animosity between the two countries would prevent those hellish partners from bringing the new weapon right to our border.
"What was even more urgent was to find out the formula for NG-4. We put a lot of pressure on our sources in the Hakstaff Chemical Plant in Syria and the Halsa labs in Iraq, but they didn't turn up anything we didn't know. We were still missing vital information. The little we did know about what was going on there contradicted what we had learned from the communications between Baghdad, Damascus, Toulouse and Cologne."
"Hold on a minute," I cut him off. "I don't get it."
"What's to get? We had three Israeli agents in the area around Shamas. Two were in the city during the shelling and they were killed, along with the French and American agents there. We had to find out the formula for the gas and how come it was more effective and more stable than anything else we already knew about."
We passed Houston St. On the right we could see the abandoned naval shipyard with its giant, dead cranes; on the left was a red brick housing project that didn't look any less dead from where we were. Speed boats buzzed past us, leaving broad foaming wakes in the water. The clouds covered the sun again, abruptly chilling the air. I pushed my hands deep into the pockets of my borrowed jacket and zipped it all the way up, but I was still freezing. A young Hispanic couple seated opposite us on a pile of life jackets cuddled together. The girl's nose was red with the cold, but they didn't appear to be interested in the weather, or anything else for that matter, except each other. The lighthouse beacons blinked eastward. A small tugboat appeared on the other side, pushing a long barge laden down with garbage toward some unknown destination.
"What happened next?"
"Next, about two months later, we heard that our good friends the Americans had the information we needed. We found out from a European source that two people had survived the attack, an old man and his infant grandson. The grandfather put the baby on his back and started walking, like only the Kurds can. Four days later they were picked up by a Finnish anthropologist on a field study in southern Turkey. He heard their story and took them to the Finnish embassy in Ankara. That night they were moved to the American embassy and placed in seclusion. The next morning, under the identity of an American diplomat and his son, they were flown to Fairfax Laboratories in Virginia. There were still traces of the gas on their clothes. Something in their blood or their food made them immune to NG-4. But our loyal American friends didn't take the trouble to share this information with us. It was at this stage that a man named Benjamin Benson, a Jew and an American citizen who worked as a computer analyst in technical intelligence at the Department of Defense, the FSTC, decided to give us the information we needed, even though it was highly classified.
"Benjamin was brilliant, but a real eccentric. Our Embassy in Washington sent him to me. They were being very careful, didn't even want to start questioning him. Besides, they knew I had the necessary technical and scientific background, maybe more than anyone else they knew in the States."
Gadi sucked on his unlit cigar and let out a dry, unexpected cough. "Aren't you thirsty?" he asked, practically whining and not waiting for my answer. "Wait here. Don't move," he ordered, getting up. I watched him walk away, short and dapper. From the water I could see the Manhattan skyline, and could even see the people behind the large windows in the tall buildings. What would they think about NG-4? They were probably in the middle of their late morning fights, at the same time scanning the latest news of rioting, strikes, famine, fear, and despotic governments around the world. I could imagine them folding their papers neatly and going about their business, their early afternoon appointments at the office, the beauty salon, the health club, or their Weight Watchers group.
The trees on Roosevelt Island had shed their leaves for winter. They looked beautiful and sad. Ahead of us, in the north, the sky was black. A single ray of sunshine broke through the heavy cloud cover and painted Harlem a rosy pink. A basketball team was practicing on the Bronx side of the river. All around them were empty lots filled with rotting wooden beams and useless pipes. Gadi came back from the snack bar with two bottles of Coke. He shoved one into my hand and sucked thirstily on the other as he talked.
"It was obvious that Benjamin wasn't exactly stable," he went on, "but then, who is? He was smart enough to make contact with us and let us know he worked in an official position in defense intelligence. The agency, so he said, couldn't pass its findings directly on to us because of 'procedures' and when he tried to understand why we didn't get it through the 'procedures' the answer was that 'these are the orders from higher up.' By the way, this turned out to be true. He claimed that to simplify things for the decision makers, he'd been asked to communicate with us through the back door. It looked like Benjamin was putting on the act of his life playing the spy. The stupid fool was nervous - almost hysterical - shaking like a leaf, but at the same time he tried to puff himself up like a whizz kid who knows best and better than all of us, the idiots in the field.
"It wasn't like the Americans to send a Woody Allen type like him to open a secret channel of communications with us. They never communicated with us through any back door before, but you never know. By the time I found out it was all his own idea, it was too late to go back. The information was vital. I handled Benjamin like a ticking time bomb, but by then I needed him. You see, buddy, the rules of the game are completely different here."
"Are there any rules?"
Gadi hadn’t suffered from excessive charm before, but at this point he became utterly intolerable. "I'll explain it to you slowly and in very simple words. Maybe this time you'll understand. The name of the game is `information.' We live on the dark side of your daily life. Smooth politicians never come here. They know what goes on in this world, they use it, but they always play the publicity game. A good headline almost gives them an orgasm. A favorable TV spot and they're in seventh heaven. The light of the camera makes their adrenaline flow. A telephone call from a friendly reporter out for fresh blood puts a real smile on their face, I mean true happiness, not the smile they wear for the cameras.
"With us, it's different. We have to find solutions for a different kind of problem. I, for one, have only one loyalty...," he paused. "Actually, two. The most important one is to my country, Israel, which, as you well know, is the only guarantee of our survival. It's my duty to defend it against all enemies, from within or without."
"Hey, just a minute," I cut in. "I haven't heard that kind of Zionist drivel in ages. You surprise me, Gadi. It's not like you, and to try to sell it to me, of all people?"
"That's not the only thing that may surprise you, David. You've got a lot to learn. I believe in Israel with all my heart and, if you want to know the truth, I'm positiv
e that's why Benjamin contacted us, too. The poor bastard was convinced that without the State of Israel, there wouldn't be any Jews left in the world. They wouldn't be killed - at least not right away - but in a few years they’d lose their sense of Jewish pride, which is pretty fragile anyway, their identity, and eventually their lives. I agree with him entirely. It's like a brain-dead body that keeps on working: it eats, but why? It gorges itself, it secretes tons of shit, it moves - but with no direction, without purpose. The destruction of Israel would be like the destruction of the Third Temple – irreversible -final. The Jewish people will not survived evastation - not now, not ever. That's why I'm here. And that's why I held on to Benjamin regardless of the price. Israel must survive."
I watched his flushed face and his exuberant gestures and couldn't decide if he was a very good actor or if he really believed what he was saying. "What about your second loyalty?"
"Second?" It took him a second to catch up. "Oh yeah, it doesn't matter as much," he answered, lowering his voice, "but I'm still pretty loyal to myself." He noticed the surprise on my face. "No, no!" he said vehemently. "I'm not out for glory, fame and fortune. Forget it. I told you, I leave that to the politicians. But I'm a pro. You dig? A pro. Remember in the army when they had a real problem - a landmine they weren't familiar with, maybe an aerial bomb that didn't go off - and none of those blockheads knew what to do? They’d go to any lengths to find Gadi. You know very well that's how it was. I was - I still am - the best. And you know why? Because that's how I am. It's in my bones. Part of who I am. It never comes easy. You have to work as hard as you can, but I don't know any other way. Because of that, David, I don't follow the rules. I can't. I have to make them. air and square. Now I'm in the intelligence business, and I'll be the best in that too. We'll have more information, more qualitative and accurate, we'll interpret it faster, digest it better and beat everyone else to the punch. And all just because I, and others like me, will do the job right. Like professionals should." He tossed the empty Coke bottle on the deck and started chewing his cigar again.