by Dana Arama
This book is dedicated to you, my own Major Key. I fell in love with you the moment you taught me how to “write a battle”.
Producer & International Distributor
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Massive Attack
Dana Arama
Copyright © 2020 Massive Attack
All rights reserved; No parts of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information retrieval system, without the permission, in writing, of the author.
Translation from the Hebrew by Karen Akad
Editor: ELi Raphael
Contact: [email protected]
Content
Laura Ashton
Guy Niava
Murat Lenika
Guy Niava
Laura Ashton
Guy Niava
Murat Lenika
Laura Ashton
Murat Lenika
Laura Ashton
Guy Niava
Laura Ashton
Murat Lenika
Guy Niava
Laura Ashton
Guy Niava
Laura Ashton
Guy Niava
Murat Lenika
Guy Niava
Laura Ashton
Guy Niava
Guy Niava
Murat Lenika
Guy Niava
Guy Niava
Laura Ashton
Guy Niava
Murat Lenika
Laura Ashton
Murat Lenika
Guy Niava
Murat Lenika
Guy Niava
Laura Ashton
Guy Niava
Guy Niava
Murat Lenika
Guy Niava
Laura Ashton
Guy Niava
Murat Lenika
Laura Ashton
Guy Niava
Murat Lenika
Laura Ashton
Guy Niava
Laura Ashton
Murat Lenika
Laura Ashton
Murat Lenika
Guy Niava
Laura Ashton
Murat Lenika
Laura Ashton
Murat Lenika
Laura Ashton
Murat Lenika
Guy Niava
Laura Ashton
Laura Ashton
Guy Niava
Laura Ashton
Guy Niava
Laura Ashton
Guy Niava
Guy Niava
Guy Niava
Laura Ashton
Acknowledgments
Part ONE
“To be part of a family is to be part of a wonderful thing. It means that you will love and be loved for the rest of your life.”
Laura Ashton,
April 2015
“I asked when you last saw her.” I repeated the question and stared at the shrivelled up girl in front of me. Thus far, she’d refused to cooperate, but I’d left her with no choice. When I pulled out my official, formidable badge engraved with the unmistakable portrait of a bald eagle and the initials of a security organization she had never heard of, she realized it was official business.
I hadn’t wanted to go there. After all, this was a private investigation. Personal. If someone had bothered to check, I would likely lose my job and with it the ability to exercise any authority in my investigation. I undertook the risk with great care, and it was worth it because the clue that brought me here indicated that the girl had vital information.
“I don’t know when she disappeared,” answered the mousy looking girl. There was something malicious in the way she pursed her lips. Behind her was a desk, and on it was my sister’s laptop and a picture in a metal frame. The photo had been taken during my sister’s modeling years, when she was at the peak of her glamor. The juxtaposition of my sister’s beauty against the plain, bespectacled girl in front of me was startling. I wondered if her lack of cooperation stemmed from jealousy. I ignored my thoughts because, in spite of the hint of malice, she was the only person who could help me. I had entered her world without permission. I needed her. It was a desperate step for me, but I had no choice. She was the last living person who’d had contact with my sister.
“I want you to have no doubt,” I said, in a tone that I had adopted over the years which wavered between a subtle threat and a lifeline. “Your cooperation could merit a medal or an arrest. In the case of the latter, you can wave goodbye to all your future plans.”
She sat uncomfortably on the chair opposite me, clearly finding it hard to look me straight in the eye. Her evident panic prompted her to supply me with the answers I sought.
“I really don’t know when she disappeared,” she repeated, more softly this time.
“Okay, so she’s your roommate, but you don’t know when she disappeared.” I reflected on her words for a moment, but then insisted, “Did you notice when her behavior started to change?”
“That was hard to miss. It got really bad after she met that strange foreign exchange student.”
A twinge of sorrow almost made me retort that she was wrong, and that the deterioration started a whole lot earlier, but instead I continued. “What do you remember about the foreign exchange student?”
“That she was very popular. Not that Gail was less popular, but this foreign girl was in a league of her own. I think she was British with some sort of aristocratic title.”
“Okay, that’s good. This is very good information. It will help me in the tracking process,” I said encouragingly, motioning for her to carry on.
“I remember that after they met and started hanging out together, Gail stopped coming to classes. She would party the whole night. She would wake me up at three, four o’ clock in the morning, usually drunk…” She glanced at me apprehensively, then continued, “Maybe she was on drugs… and then she just stopped waking up in the morning.”
It was painful to hear. For a moment, I was seventeen again, receiving a concerned email from her teacher reprimanding me for not watching out for my sister, telling me that she was once again cutting classes. I now knew that, aside from cutting classes, she had also skipped her finals. In the end, she cut off contact and then disappeared.
Oh! Gail, why? Why drugs? My heart cringed, but I showed no sign of distress as I asked, “The British student, what’s her name?”
“Elisabeth something. Gail called her Lizzie.”
“Her surname? Try to remember.” And I added politely, “Please.” I was happy with this new information. I now saw how this case might fit in with my day job as a liaison officer. If I could look for my sister officially I could utilize all the sources of information I had at my disposal, along with the full force of the agency’s intelligence, and then I could stop fumbling around in the dark.
“I can’t remember her surname. Sorry.” For a moment her eyes lit up and she added, “They spoke about a friend who had arrived from England and who works in a casino. I don’t know if that helps.”
“Do you remember his name? Or where the casino is?”
“Some strange name. Not American. I am really sorry, but I’m bad with names.”
I believed her. Her body language told me that this wasn’t a trait she was proud of, but had accepted. “Do you remember where the casin
o is located?”
“In Atlantic City. I’m pretty sure they mentioned the place.” She reached into her bag and fumbled around for something. “Listen, she once sent me a text by mistake that I think was intended for Lizzie. If I haven’t deleted it, then I will have the name… his name.”
I waited patiently while she scrolled through the hundreds of messages on her phone. I looked around me. Their room was tidy, as was appropriate for two young and talented women. Two future scientists. Leaving the nest had freed my sister. She’d shed the chains that tied her to the past and to our family. This wasn’t the stereotypical escape of a girl leaving the protective embrace of her home. It was as if she were breaking out of jail, out of the claws of those who held her against her will. The university had given her a new start where she could be herself.
I knew the feeling. I’d left the house after three years, five months and three days. The feeling that I was no longer under his patronage had been powerful and liberating. Suddenly I could do whatever I felt like doing, but whatever I felt like doing turned out to be devastating. All at once, life had hit me hard in the stomach, the opportunities, the experiences. Through them I’d discovered all the ways in which one could die, because that was what I’d felt like doing. What had saved me from death or drugs? Her. I had to hang onto life for her. Her and the fencing, which had helped me focus on something apart from the pain. I had substituted the will to die with the will to win.
“Here, I found it.” The voice of her roommate sounded in my ears as if from another dimension. I leaned over her phone.
Lizzie I am at Murat’s. Come through. A laconic message, but to me it held so much.
“It really is an unusual name,” I stated. “Where can I find Lizzie? Where does she live? Do you remember?”
The girl looked frightened and maybe a little sad for me as she answered, “You don’t know? The whole campus is talking about it. It happened a few days ago. Some people in suits came and packed up all her things.”
“Why?”
“The rumor is that it was an overdose. She’s dead.”
Guy Niava,
Tuesday, November 10, 2015, 10:18 p.m.
I missed his first phone call because I was speaking with his father. This time was meant to be a period of decompression and reconsideration of my next steps. I’d been reassigned to an office job, something I considered a soul-crushing punishment and the complete antithesis of what I reluctantly considered my destiny: training the next generation to perform their duties perfectly. So I left the Mossad. No more life-threatening situations and their accompanying adrenaline addiction. I will eventually return home to a quiet, drama-free life.
In France, while undercover, I trained young boys, immigrants from Arab countries. For a long period of time, it was an excellent source of information for the Mossad, and also a way for me to get to know myself. I felt that I was bonding with the kids. I slept well knowing that I was giving of myself no less than I was receiving. I had realized that this was my calling in life, my future. Once I returned home, I intended to do something similar. I wanted to take up training again, and who better to support my decision than the professor? This was my older brother by 10 years, my father’s son from his first marriage. He had abandoned the family trade of agriculture to bury his head in books. He was the one I was speaking with when the first call came through.
I heard the second call, but didn’t answer because I was brushing my teeth. I remember checking my watch and automatically calculating the time in Tel Aviv and the time in Paris. Those were the two most likely places I could receive an unexpected call from, as the last two places where I had lived. Here in Philadelphia, I was on vacation, touring the country by motorbike and car. I’d been using this time to solidify my future plans. The Mossad had left me an unappealing open door, in the form of an office job. There were those that had said I had lost my cool reserve, that my trigger finger wasn’t as stable as it used to be, that I was burned out. They didn’t know how right they were. I was burned out. It had been so for quite some time. Burned from the inside, burned from the outside, burned in my former position. Burned so much that I had no choice but to change direction.
As I finished brushing my teeth, I heard the beep of an incoming text message, which was smart of him. It read, “Guy, I’m in trouble and you have to save me.”
He was supposedly in the adjacent room, watching television, maybe playing a computer game. At this hour, he may also be tucked away in bed under his thick duvet, but by the sound of the message, he was clearly somewhere else. I asked the obvious question in my response text: “Where are you?”
“Atlantic City.”
I wanted to ask how he had managed to get there. Dinner had ended so late, how had he found the time? Instead, I texted, “What happened?”
“I drove with friends to a casino. I didn’t feel like gambling, so I sat with my laptop and hacked into something I wasn’t supposed to see. I am being chased now.”
“So where are you?”
“Hiding in some woman’s closet.”
I definitely didn’t expect an answer like that from a good boy like Jonathan, so I just said “I am coming. Send the address,” then added, “Stay hidden.” I could see raindrops through the window and knew that, despite the urgency, I would need to take the car. I grabbed my keys from the counter, took my coat from the closet and called out, “I’m going out. I’m meeting a friend from the army. I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”
“Drive safely,” my brother called out from his office, where he sat behind a stack of students’ papers waiting to be marked. His wife came out of the kitchen, looking dissatisfied.
“Why did you agree to meet up at such a late hour? You could have invited him here for dinner.”
I smiled at her and put my hand on my heart as I said, “I promise that the next time we make plans to meet, I’ll invite him over.” I’d been to the States in the three years since my wife’s death in a terrorist attack in Jerusalem, but it had always been for work purposes, under cover. As far as my brother and sister-in-law were concerned, this was my first visit here. They felt the need to protect me.
But I felt a more urgent need to protect their son. Every time Jonathan touched his computer, he had the potential to start another world war.
I sat in my rental and asked myself how a bunch of seventeen-year-old kids managed to talk their way into a casino. They were smart, no doubt, and curious, testing their boundaries. Such a combination was a formula for disaster. Jonathan Niava, my nephew, and the boy I was now heading to rescue, was such. Inside the car, the darkness and the November chill hit me. The sun had set hours ago and it was quite cold now. The car thermometer confirmed this, showing a mere seven degrees Celsius outside.
My phone beeped and a message from Jonathan gave me the address where he was hiding.
“Maybe you should call the cops,” I texted.
“I can’t. I broke the law.” A second text beeped through immediately after that. “Hurry up, Guy, I’m really scared.”
I typed the address into the GPS system and hit the gas, hoping not to be caught breaking the law as well. The car lights tore through the darkness of the road and I flew across the asphalt at a low speed. What have you got yourself into this time, Jonathan? I threw the question into the air, then I laughed at myself. I could hear my father’s voice in my own. This must be the reason for the special bond between Jonathan and myself. We were the troublemakers of the family.
***
I arrived at the destination that the GPS indicated and let the car idle. For what seemed like an eternity, I surveyed the street. There didn’t seem to be any suspicious movement. I kept driving past the address. I saw a free parking space, yet still drove on. Only when I was sure I was not being followed did I return to the original address and park my car. The thermometer showed five degrees now.
My timi
ng seemed perfect, because just as I was about to knock on the door, it opened and two Asian men walked out of the apartment.
I poked my head carefully through the door and asked, “Is there anyone here?”
A woman approached, looking surprised. She was holding a diary in her hand. She asked, “Did we have a date that I don’t recall?” Behind the diary stood a sleek, blonde, blue-eyed girl, and by the sound of her southern drawl, she seemed to be very far from home.
I answered, “No,” then quickly added, “I have come to pick up your guest.”
She signaled me to enter, glanced both ways down the corridor to make sure it was empty, and closed the door quickly. It was a small studio apartment with a kitchenette that had obviously never been used, and another door that led towards what I assumed must be the bathroom. Jonathan emerged from the only closet in the studio, and quickly introduced us. “This is Ashley who saved me before and this is Guy who is going to save me now.”
I reached out and shook her tiny hand. “Very nice to meet you, Ashley.” I smiled at her. In this light, she looked too young to be out on her own after dark.
“Ashley Holding,” she emphasized. Maybe she felt that stating her surname would grant her a full personality. In a way, she was right.
I wanted to ask her what made her protect a complete stranger but I only said, “Ashley, thank you for doing this.”
“My father taught me to do the right thing…” She shrugged her shoulders as her voice trailed off, then tightened her short sheer robe around her body, as if this gesture would make her look more respectable. She looked towards the unmade bed and added an apology, “It may not look like the right thing to do, but it is only because of the circumstances.”
I didn’t have the right to judge her. I wanted to get Jonathan out of there, so that we could assess his situation quietly. If he was being chased, it was likely because it was worth the effort. There were questions to consider: What had he found? How much was it worth to whoever it was to keep up this chase? “Is there something we can do for you, Ashley?” I asked. I thought to myself that what we really could do for her was to take her out of her life as a prostitute but said aloud, “Maybe we could move you out to a hotel, so that you don’t get yourself in trouble for saving him.” I jerked my thumb at Jonathan.