He could never remember the names of her girlfriends. He barely grunted when she received an Aleph in a class. Her flute was nothing more than background music, and when at last the boys started to come around, he had not even looked up long enough to suffer a twinge of fatherly jealousy.
But enemy orders of battle? He knew them by heart. The résumés of terror stars? He could recite a thousand details. She was sure beyond a painful shadow of a doubt that the brain of Benjamin Baum, master counterterrorist, contained reams of telephone numbers and addresses, agents’ real names and their covers, mission plans and backups, safe houses and dead drops, weapon types, muzzle velocities, one-time pads, matrix codes, and the mind-numbing duplicitous plots for creating double agents, inserting them, extracting them, and, yes, eliminating them when “duty” deemed it necessary.
Oh, yes, she was sure he had never shirked a rendezvous. But her high school graduation? He had missed it.
Her father was not an unaffectionate man; he kissed and hugged his children freely. But when Ruth recalled the bearlike embraces and the wet smack of his lips on her cheek, these symbolic efforts made in passing from one appointment to another further enraged her. They required no more emotional effort than the repacking of his suitcase, and God knew for how many strangers he had also feigned affection, while simultaneously planning their demise.
On only one occasion had he actually expressed some pride, and that was when she had been selected for the Intelligence School at Training Base 13. Yet even then he clearly viewed his daughter’s military career path with the arrogance of a contractor whose son has finally agreed to take over the business. It was expected.
Ah, but when she announced her intention to muster out of the army, study abroad, and settle in America: that he noticed. Suddenly Benjamin Baum was on his feet! He was a child of the Holocaust, Israel had given the Baums everything they had, there was only one place on this earth for a Jew to feel secure and proud, and what right had Ruth to join that throng of selfish cowards who would abandon their homeland! The fights were thunderous, yet mercifully short, for Ruth’s greatest inheritance was her stubborn resolve.
And then she was gone.
For a while she experienced a terrible sadness, most of it focused on her mother. Maya Baum had labored hard to fill two roles, and it was surely through her compensatory efforts that Ruth and her brothers had escaped emotional crippling. However, as Ruth studied in her chosen field, even her pity for her mother was tempered, for she felt somewhat like the child of one parent who had abused her while the other stood by and witnessed it. . . .
Yet on this early-winter day in the fourth year of her studies, Ruth Baum was not thinking about her past. She was focused on the immediate future.
She sat at one of the small round tables in the psychology library on the ground floor of Schermerhorn. The room, with only a few reading tables, yellow vinyl armchairs, and steel stacks of periodicals, was not a full-fledged research facility. In general, Ruth rarely frequented libraries, for she had never been able to concentrate in such an atmosphere. To her, a large space crowded with concentrating minds was anything but silent, a bombardment of neural beams and heightened sexual energy where young and horny students hunched together, trying to ignore their groins.
But if she found the psychology library empty, she would settle there, searching for substantiation of her upcoming master’s research project. The paper was a high-risk venture, and she was looking for a way in which to make it palatable.
Presenting a master’s thesis on terrorist psychology would simply not do, for it would fall outside the bounds of “political correctness” and might endanger her progression to the doctorate. However, she thought now that she had a title that would dupe her academic overseers: “A Pattern of Early Growth Stimuli in Politically Violent Action Group Members.”
It was still risky, yet she could not help it. She was fascinated by the subject of terrorism. Her personal library was filled to overflowing with titles in Hebrew, English, and German: Uri Dan’s Etzba Elohim, Robin Wright’s Sacred Rage, Stefan Aust’s Der Baader-Meinhof-Komplex. The hard disk of her personal computer was jammed with a database of international terrorists and psychological profiles, and too much of her overburdened finances went to telephone bills that were slave to her modem. Having failed to force the obsession back into the realm of “hobby,” she had decided to put it to academic use. Without consciously realizing it, she was well on her way to becoming a competitive authority on the subject.
“Oh, if Abba only knew.” She would sometimes picture her father’s stunned reaction had she been able to tell him about her secret love. But she’d be damned if she would volunteer the information. Someday, she would just mail him her first published book on the subject.
She sat back now and rotated her neck as she stretched her arms. She dropped her hands onto her worn black denims and looked at them.
“Well, I guess it’s in the jeans,” she whispered, then smiled at her own pun as she began leafing through a pile of periodicals. She always got a kick out of Schizophrenia Bulletin, especially since she herself felt like a patient at times. She liked Motivation and Emotion, a small publication written without ego. But today the article titles seemed to sway before her tired eyes: “The Effects of Hormones, Type A Behavior Pattern, and Provocation on Aggression in Men.”
“Ya Allah,” she whispered. “Ma assiti l’atzmi? What have I done to myself?”
A group of chattering students pushed their way through the library turnstiles. Ruth gathered her materials and snaked her arms into a camel-hair coat.
She hunched against the wind and headed for the main administration building, a huge white edifice on the same plateau as Schermerhorn, with Athenian cupola and columns at the peak of two wide flights of marble steps. Her favorite spot for solitude was on a stair just inside the spacious foyer, where all sounds were softened by the vast cavern and she would be able to concentrate. She walked quickly around the building’s flank, watching her Doc Martens crunching patterns in the dust of early snow.
She missed Jerusalem, even as she fought it harder with each passing day. The letters from her mother were not enough, the photographs of her brothers in uniform only made it worse. She wanted to pull on a T-shirt, shorts, and sandals, to walk down Ben-Yehuda in the blinding white of spring, to find a man she understood and loved and trusted. To hold his hand and stroll the exotic alleyways as she had once done with her father, when her longings for his return were answered and he would spend a smiling morning of exploration with her. She wished that she could transport herself to Abu Tor, even for an hour, just to see her house, her mother, her brothers, to be sure it all still existed and was there for her.
At the top of the wide stone steps, just outside the entranceway of the building, she suddenly stopped. She blinked, pushed the hair back behind her ear, and blinked again. A flood of heat rose from inside her coat to her chilled cheeks, and her heart began to hammer so that her knees nearly buckled.
Her father was standing in the center of the marble hill, looking up at her. He was cradling a bouquet of red roses.
They sat together in the smoking section of the Cosmopolitan, a self-service coffee shop on Broadway near the corner of 114th Street. The floor was red industrial tile, the chairs were of bent metal tubing, and cheap Tiffany-style chandeliers hung from the ceiling like spacecraft from the planet Woolworth. Ruth liked the two brothers who owned the place and took pickup orders from behind the greasy glass counter. They always smiled and called her “our beautiful smart girl,” without being wolfish.
She was extremely proud of herself, so much so that she felt as if she had actually grown taller. She had not run to her father, thrown her arms around him, or cried, yet neither had she allowed her resentments to cause her to turn her back on him. Instead, she had calmed her racing heart and slowly descended the marble stairs. Her father’s face revealed his insecurity, hopeful yet afraid, like a field marshal surrendering his
sword.
Ruth stopped a step above him, looked into his eyes, then glanced at the flowers.
“Ha-indianim matziim mikteret shalom. The Indians usually offer a peace pipe,” she said.
“The florist didn’t have one,” said Benni, unsure if his daughter might not simply throw him backward into a somersault.
“Well, at the very least you should surrender your pistol.”
“I am unarmed, Ruti.”
His nervous smile faded, and as Ruth watched his face, she saw a look in his eyes that, certainly, few had ever witnessed. It was a plea. In the last two years, his age had finally come to those eyes. He had not lost a kilogram, nor had his bulky muscle dwindled, but somehow he looked smaller. She knew then that her own self-image had grown.
She did not kiss him or touch the roses, but she took his elbow and led him toward the Broadway gate of the university. During the long silence of the stroll, and until they actually entered the coffee shop, Benni still expected her to hail a cab, push him into it, and slam the door.
They ate hamburgers and sipped cherry Cokes. Benni suffered through the enervating small talk, while Ruth was on the “high ground,” enjoying his discomfort. Baum was the sole survivor of his German family, and Maya of hers, so there was little fodder for gossip. And Ruth refused to smooth their conflict over with a skein of idle chatter, saying only that her academic program and her life in New York were both successful.
She did probe him about her mother, Yosh, and Amos, a respite for which he was grateful. And he relayed some anecdotes about her brothers’ failed romances, which amused her.
“And how is the great General Ben-Zion?” she asked, for she often viewed her father’s commander as something of a Machiavellian influence.
“Sour, as usual,” said Benni. “But still healthily ambitious.”
“And Eytan?” Eytan Eckstein was the only coconspirator in her father’s world whom she truly liked. For a large part of her adolescence, she had even loved the handsome, quiet agent, with his blondish hair and sad eyes, a secret crush that set her young heart pounding whenever he appeared at the door to the Baum household.
“He was sent abroad on assignment,” said Benni.
“Without you?”
“Without me.”
“He is the good side of your soul, you know, Abba.”
Benni looked at her. He had not heard a term of endearment from his daughter’s lips in a long, long time.
“I know,” he said. “I miss him. But not as much as I miss you.”
Ruth did not smile, her expression suggesting: You should continue on this path.
“You’ve become so beautiful,” her father said. “It’s hard for me to look at you.”
“It’s not my beauty that’s making it hard for you, Abba. It’s twenty-six years of mistakes. Most of them yours.” She waited until he nodded. “And we will have to discuss that. Another time, but soon. We’ll probably need a few days. Do you have the courage?”
After a moment, in which Benni imagined the flood of anger and issues that would tumble out of Ruth’s mouth, he said, “I have it.”
“Good.” She finally smiled at him. “Temporary stay of execution.”
Benni relaxed a bit. They finished their lunch, and Ruth got up to fetch coffee. “So how did you find me?” she asked as they caressed the steaming white cups.
“The postgraduate office sent me to the psychology center. Some kids there suggested the main building. They were very helpful.”
“Meragel. Spy,” Ruth said. She reached out, took one of Benni’s Times, and lit up.
“I’ve heard the antismoking campaign here actually gets violent at times,” he commented.
“My father says smoking enhances concentration.” She repeated his favorite excuse for continuing the habit.
“True, but no American man will want to kiss you.”
“I do it to keep the kissers at bay.”
“Me too,” Benni said, and Ruth laughed. His image was anything but Casanova.
“Well, a few good men have braved the battle smoke,” she offered.
“May God go with them.” And then he quickly stuttered, “I-in a positive way, I mean.”
Ruth reached out and touched his meaty hand. “Of course. Und so, Herr Oberst.” She changed the subject in German, which along with Hebrew and English was one of the tongues of the Baum household. “What secret mission brings you to this land? Though naturally I expect a good cover story.”
I’ll tell you two truths,” said Benni.
“That would be novel.”
Benni ignored the gibe and went on. “I’m here for the consular bombing. But I just used that as an excuse to see you.”
Ruth watched his eyes, a technique learned from him. “And had there been no bombing?”
“I would have come anyway.” It was not a lie. The rift had pained him, and before the end of the year he would have been on a plane. “Eema has really suffered from this.” Ruth’s mother was clearly pushing Benni to make amends, but Ruth accepted that a stubborn nature needed prodding.
“I know,” said Ruth. “She writes to me.” Then she let him off the hook. “So tell me about your theories. I’ve been working at the Defense Mission, and everyone has an opinion.”
“At the Defense Mission?”
“Secretarial.”
“I see.” He would not offer her any money just yet. She might take offense. “Well, let’s see. What do I think?”
Benni instinctively looked around the coffee shop. The closest person to their table was an elderly woman, squinting at the obituary column of The New York Times. A young, dark-featured man was squeezed into a corner table, well out of earshot. Even so, he lowered his voice and detailed the attack in Hebrew. He told her about Moshiko, the bomber’s Hasidic guise, and the American girl who was killed in the explosion. He left out the part about Moshiko’s note and was about to change the subject, when Ruth suddenly began to interrogate him in a way that furrowed his brow.
“Tell me about the device, Abba.”
“The device?”
“Semtex? C-4?”
“We don’t know yet. Probably Semtex.”
“Fingerprints?”
“You mean, did he touch anything?”
“No, I mean a signature,” Ruth said. “Odd wiring. A detonator. Anything left?”
“Well, the Americans are going to try to put it all together.”
“They put TWA 206 back together and still came to the wrong conclusions.” She meant the jumbo jet that had been blown out of the sky over Hornesby, Scotland. Benni did not say anything, so she continued. “And what about this ‘Hasid’s’ face? Did Bar-El get it on video?”
“You know Hanan?”
“His Shabakniks work with ours at the mission. Well?”
“Yes, uh, it’s on his tapes. But the man was wearing a shtreimel, and the camera was up high.”
“How about a description from Moshiko?”
“He’s temporarily blind. He could make a description, but he wouldn’t be able to confirm a drawing yet.”
“Have him do it anyway, while it’s still fresh. A subject’s visual recollections are more accurate when his eyes are closed, at any rate.”
Benni did not respond. He was beginning to see his daughter in a strange light that made him squirm in his chair.
“Did the bomber say anything?” Ruth continued.
“Not that we know of.” It was a partial lie.
“Very unusual. He got up to the window, didn’t speak, and blew himself up without so much as a ‘Fuck all of you Zionist dogs’?”
“Apparently.”
“So you’re telling me,” Ruth said as she sat back and exhaled a long plume of smoke, “that a suicide bomber attacks an Israeli diplomatic facility, makes no statement, and then no one claims responsibility?”
“Those are the facts.”
“As you have them.”
“As I know so far.”
“Atypi
cal,” said Ruth.
“Yes, you could say . . .”
“Sounds like Argentina,” she added.
“Yes, as a matter of fact . . .” Benni stopped in midthought, “How much do you know about Argentina?”
“Probably as much as you do,” said Ruth. That bombing was still a perturbingly unsolved riddle. She stubbed out her cigarette, folded her arms, and squinted up at the ceiling.
A frightening instinct flashed through Benni’s mind. His daughter was behaving like a professional, so much so that it superseded the explanation of her own military experience. Was it possible that she was still employed by the government? Could she have been recruited by Shabak or Mossad without his knowing? Nonsense. Impossible.
“Tell me, Ruti,” he said now, very softly. “I would never insult your powers of logical deduction, but how is it that you are so ‘up’ on this subject matter?”
Ruth had been determined not to tell her father about her “hobby.” But he had come to her in an effort to reconcile, and she suddenly found the withholding childish.
“My master’s thesis is going to be an analysis of terrorist psyches. But I warn you, Abba,” she quickly added, as she pointed a loaded finger at him, “don’t you dare express an iota of pride.”
Benni stared at her, his jaw slack. He could certainly understand why she would think him proud, and a twinge of that emotion did register. Yet most of what he felt was a quivering chill, like a fighter pilot whose son had just declared his intention also to fly the supersonic coffins.
“Close your mouth,” Ruth said. “There are flies in here.”
“I will be very anxious to read it,” was all he could manage.
“So,” she continued, “you have a suicide bomber, Semtex, no political capital. Take a guess.”
“I don’t know yet,” Benni answered like a squeezed informant. “Maybe Hizbollah.”
“Too easy.”
“Ahmed Jabril, then. Abu Ibrahim.”
The Nylon Hand of God Page 10