by Dov Alfon
The audio tape did not provide conclusive information either. Did they stab him? Strangle him? Beat him? The microphone registered the echoes of the struggle, but the girl’s shouts prevented any exact understanding of what transpired. When the camera was kind enough to move again, the two Chinese were seen carrying Meidan’s body – dead? injured? unconscious? – over to the dark area, the shaft out of site just beyond the frame.
The camera came full-circle. The blonde was now standing with her back to the camera and although he could not see her face, it seemed to Abadi that she was crying. She took off her clothes. She seemed so fragile that, even with her back to the camera, watching her made Abadi feel guilty.
She stood naked, holding her clothes and staring at what from a distance looked like bloodstains on them. At first she tried putting on her skirt inside out, but then she noticed Meidan’s suitcase and pried it wide open on the gravel floor. She pulled out a suit, jeans, a sweater, and finally chose the easy solution – a classic long raincoat that the victim had probably thrown into his suitcase at the last moment.
She tried it on, wrapping it around her naked body like a towel after a long swim. She pulled out of the suitcase a pair of trainers, but they were too big and masculine. She walked back along the gravel to her red heels near the lift. The camera started moving.
The lively ding of the lift was heard in the background, then the opening and closing of the doors. At 10:53, as the camera shifted back to the scene, the two men were alone. One of them was holding a blonde wig and a red uniform. The other was rolling Meidan’s suitcase towards the shaft. At 10:54 the sound of the lift was heard again. When the camera pivoted, the area was empty – an abandoned, dreary construction site.
Six minutes. The entire event – from the victim’s arrival on the scene to the abductors’ organised retreat, including tidying the premises sufficiently to throw off the police – lasted just six minutes.
The first to break the silence was the juge d’instruction, still struggling to comprehend what he had just witnessed. “But if the passenger was murdered and not kidnapped, where’s the body?” he asked – the elementary legal question. Léger was the one to reply, his answer no less elementary: “They threw him into the shit,” he said. The juge d’instruction said nothing.
Next to speak was Chico. “All in all, this is good for us,” he said in Hebrew.
Abadi did not reply, forced into thoughts about language and possession. “It’s good for us.” The Israeli police official clearly did not mean “us” in its characteristic, representative meaning, the one instilled in all Israelis. He did not mean “us” as in the State of Israel and certainly not as in the Israeli public; he was not thinking about Meidan’s family or even “us” in the wider sense of solidarity. He simply meant “us”, the skeleton crew of investigators. In fact, he meant only himself. “It’s good for us.”
“How is this good, exactly?” Barak asked. Abadi was curious too.
“It’s obvious from the footage that they didn’t kill him because he’s Israeli, that they didn’t even understand who they had killed. This has no connection to the high alert from military intelligence. They probably meant to kill someone else. So for us, it’s good. Now I’ll quickly write up a report that this was a regular criminal event involving a case of mistaken identity. Nothing happened.”
Nothing happened. Every law enforcement officer’s dream.
“How is it that nothing happened when we have an Israeli murdered in Paris? And can we be sure that it has no connection to the alert if they meant to murder another Israeli?” Abadi said.
“You heard it yourself, four flights landed in this terminal more or less at the same time. What do the Chinese have to do with us, what are the chances that this gang has anything to do with Israelis? To me it looks like some drug deal gone bust, probably with Moroccans. One of the flights that landed after El Al 319 was an Air Morocco flight. Nothing happened. I’m going to bid the French “adieu” and run to the office to report it.”
Commissaire Léger received the news about his guests’ departure with undisguised relief, and nodded distractedly while the representative of the Israeli police laid out his new theory. Abadi took advantage of all the parting handshakes to pull Barak aside.
“I need one more small favour. Just in case they really were targeting another Israeli, I’d like to have as soon as possible the list of passengers with Israeli passports who were on that flight.”
“We’re not allowed to keep the passenger list after the flight lands,” Barak said with a blank expression.
“I know,” Abadi replied indulgently, “but you’re also not allowed to install secret cameras in a foreign airport, yet here we are.”
Chapter 18
After all the other officers had left the meeting room in HaKirya and when the secretaries had finished clearing away the last of the food and coffee, Oriana stood looking at the long table. It appeared menacing.
Zorro was still at the head of the table, the adjutant Oren to his left. They were waiting for her to sit down, and the seat they meant her to sit in was on Zorro’s right, facing the adjutant. So she chose the seat beside him. Zorro seemed to consider telling her to take the opposite chair, but decided against it.
“Aluf Rotelmann has asked me to apologise for the less than warm welcome you received here today,” he said. “We were not updated and we did not know who you were.”
And now you think you know who I am, she thought. On the table in front of him was a yellow folder with her name on it. She found it amusing that the head of the intelligence-gathering command, a man who controlled one of the world’s most advanced and expensive technological infrastructures, was trying to threaten her with a folder.
“So you were Mikey Talmor’s daughter,” he said, opening the folder as if to refresh his memory.
“I’m still Mikey Talmor’s daughter,” she said.
“Yes, yes, of course, I meant . . . I mean, the daughter of Mikey Talmor, may he rest in peace.”
She said nothing. What kind of nickname was “Zorro” anyway, she mused. True, her father’s nickname was “Mikey”, but at least his real name had been Michael. The head of the intelligence-gathering’s real name, as she had found out during the break, was Moshe. Who would choose to exchange the name of the most important biblical prophet for a character from an American television series?
“I have nothing but appreciation for your father’s work. He was a role model to every man in the intelligence community,” Moshe-Zorro continued, again using the past tense.
“I’m happy to hear that.”
“And I’m pleased to see that you’re carrying on his legacy, so to speak.”
She wondered why Aluf Rotelmann – by all accounts a man of superior intelligence – had chosen such an uninspiring man as his deputy, a head of intelligence-gathering who could not even track down the most basic information such as her father’s identity.
Perhaps he wanted someone who would suck up to him. “Let’s give a warm thank you to our commander”, “Your guidance, leadership”, “We don’t say it enough”, and all that rubbish? Could it be that these high-ranking officials, whose shoulders bore utterly formidable responsibilities, privately needed constant bootlicking, even if it came from an idiot? A type of lift music to accompany their rise to the top?
And would her new commander, the mysterious Aluf Mishne Zeev Abadi, also require doses of flattery from his deputy?
“Thank you,” she said.
“And we could see for ourselves in the meeting, the moment you called out the adjutant for breaching protocol, that the apple has not fallen far from the tree,” Zorro said, smiling, and he and Oren chuckled. She returned as wide a smile as she could muster.
“And rightfully so, rightfully so,” Oren said. “You were doing your job, I get it. And in some ways I’m even happy you acted as you did. Luckily, the material in the envelope was nothing urgent, just more evidence pointing to the murder of the
young Israeli at Charles de Gaulle airport as being criminal-related.”
“He was murdered? I saw a report that he had been abducted,” she said. She asked herself what the odds were that Abadi was in Paris purely by chance. Very low, she decided.
Zorro waved his hand in dismissal, a gesture meant to look confident and reassuring.
“The representative of the Israeli police just passed us a message on the matter. The murder victim had no connection to the intelligence units. Accordingly, this has nothing to do with The Most Wanted alert on the subject. It’s coincidental, we checked the matter thoroughly.”
Oriana said nothing.
Zorro gazed at the folder in front of him, appearing to have lost his train of thought. The silence stretched for long moments until the adjutant broke it.
“The fact is that we wanted to talk to you about the appointment of Aluf Mishne Zeev Abadi.”
“I’m not sure I understand,” she said.
“There’s no doubt we were taken by surprise by the departure of the former head of Special Section, Sgan Aluf Shlomo Tiriani,” Zorro said, evidently uncomfortable. “However, we are even more surprised by Zeev Abadi’s appointment. He’s a decorated officer, yes, but his loyalty to our values is unproven, and he is a man with very questionable people skills.”
Oriana had heard enough about Abadi to agree, more or less, with that description, but she was surprised it was being communicated so openly to a junior officer, the direct subordinate of the man concerned. There were many other questions on her mind. For instance, the significance the executive office was placing on the subject of who was going to command a section that until very recently had not been a high priority even within Unit 8200 itself.
“I did not make the decision,” she said mildly. “The section performed valuable work under the former commander, and I’m very sure it will continue to provide valuable results under Aluf Mishne Abadi’s command. But these are matters that ought to be directed to the commander of Unit 8200.”
Again it was Oren who pushed ahead. “I’ve been trying to reach him for an hour. But he’s on a flight from the States and there’s no way of conducting a secure conversation with him. We have also been trying to reach Aluf Mishne Abadi to share our concerns with him before we go ahead, but he too is abroad and is not answering.”
“We simply want to gain a better understanding of the considerations that led, within a single day, to the replacement of the head of Special Section without anyone updating the executive office,” Zorro said. “Only last week Aluf Rotelmann briefed the former head of Special Section in person, and in light of the new head of section’s particular record I find it difficult to see how Aluf Rotelmann will be able to trust him.”
This was becoming more interesting by the moment. So Tiriani had been briefed directly by Rotelmann, probably behind the 8200 commander’s back, and obviously without disclosing anything to his deputy. If memory served her correctly, she had never seen a summons from Aluf Rotelmann in Tiriani’s appointment calendar.
“I’m not sure I’m the person you should be speaking to about this,” she said.
“It’s important to clarify that Aluf Rotelmann has nothing personal against Abadi. As far as he’s concerned, Abadi simply isn’t the right man. It isn’t the right place, it isn’t the right time,” the adjutant said.
“Aluf Rotelmann wants to guide Special Section’s activities in the manner he finds most practical and professional,” Zorro said.
“It’s entirely professional, not personal,” Oren said.
Incredible, she thought, they’re like scissors: snip snap, snip snap. Well, they could take their dog and pony show elsewhere.
Zorro cleared his throat and sat up straight in his chair, his voice taking on a new and portentious tone.
“And that’s why, in the interest of all parties, we thought we would discuss with you the possibility of cancelling Abadi’s appointment and appointing you as a standin.”
“Obviously we’d want to expedite your promotion to the rank of seren, and you’d serve as an acting rav seren, with the special authorisation of Aluf Rotelmann,” the adjutant said.
“For all intents and purposes, you’d be the head of Special Section,” Zorro said. “For this to happen, we have to be sure you understand the implications. We want to run by you our conditions for this move, this office’s need to receive regular, thorough updates and for Special Section to be led according to the interests of the State of Israel and its Directorate of Military Intelligence, not only those of Unit 8200.”
“Or of some kind of angle the 8200 commander’s working on with his friend Abadi,” the adjutant said.
“So the ball’s in your court,” Zorro said, his voice losing all trace of the playful tone he had affected at the beginning of the meeting. “Are you interested, yes or no?”
So that’s how it works, she thought, that’s actually how it works. How was she supposed to react? Why did the Officers’ Training School teach astronavigation and urban warfare and other nonsense that had no use later, in real life? And why did her father raise her with principles that had nothing to do with her reality, and probably nothing to do with his reality either?
She was currently making 6,000 shekels a month. They had just offered her a base salary of 9,400 shekels plus a special remuneration of 3,200 shekels – a rav seren’s pay grade.
Zorro was impatient. “We’re waiting.”
“Sure, of course, it’s a yes,” she said, looking him straight in the eye. “We’ll stall and then sideline, no problem. I’ll bypass all of my unit’s control channels and report to you, behind my commander’s back, whatever you wish to know, which is anyone’s guess. And in return I’ll get the rank of seren with a rav seren’s pay grade. Sure, why not? Where do I sign? You know what, Zorro, you can just go ahead and sign for me, I’m guessing you have more experience.”
The adjutant was the first to come to his senses, and let fly. “You’ve got some nerve, you hear? You think you’re somebody, but you’re this small, a little pisher. Who do you think you are? Have you forgotten who you’re talking to?”
Zorro raised his hand and Oren fell silent. The Deputy Chief of Intelligence looked at her intently before saying, “Get the hell out of here. Now.”
She got up and walked towards the exit.
“Segen Talmor?” she heard him call out.
“Yes?”
“You’re not that stupid, so you must be crazy. I want you to go straight from here to the mental health officer. That’s an order, go get yourself examined. I think you must have suicidal tendencies.”
Oriana nodded and closed the door behind her.
Chapter 19
To feel at home everywhere is the privilege of kings, thieves and good prostitutes, Honoré de Balzac wrote. As far as Abadi could tell, this was only one of the characteristics he shared with them.
Commissaire Léger, on the other hand, was struggling to breathe where they were standing – next to the world’s biggest sewage treatment plant. The stench was unbearable. Boudin, the facility’s deputy director, a tall, bespectacled man in an immaculate white coat, continued to explain why the chances of finding a body there were between slim and zero.
If the Inuit really have dozens of words for “snow”, the French have more than a hundred words for “shit”. Abadi, a regular user of the word “merde” since childhood, kept a running inventory of the many synonyms in Boudin’s arsenal, ranging from “unpurified mud” and “natural returns” to “used water”.
The “Acheres” purification plant (“nothing to do with Asher from the Old Testament,” the deputy director said, at pains to explain the similar pronunciation, as if a biblical name might have damaged the sewage facility’s fine reputation) was built long before the airport, in the late nineteenth century. More than 380 tonnes of raw sewage a day surged into the plant from Charles de Gaulle airport and the neighbouring communities.
“You have to understand the uniq
ue difficulty of the situation you’re presenting,” Boudin said in the tone of a schoolmaster, perhaps because of the professional challenge placed before him, or perhaps because of the lack of enthusiasm the two investigators displayed towards his lecture. “Usually, large objects thrown into the Seine get blocked many kilometres before they reach the plant. If someone jumps off a bridge in Paris, the body does not end up here. If someone tosses an old carpet into Charles de Gaulle’s sewage drain, the carpet will not reach the plant. There are wire fences to filter out those kinds of things and enable only the unpurified mud to flow into the plant.”
Nearly knocked out by the smell, Léger was not up for an argument. Abadi tried to elicit some civil service solidarity from the deputy director: “You must understand the difficulty of our position too. We were assigned to investigate whether the victim of the abduction is alive or dead, in order to be able to notify his family. You’re the only one who can help us verify whether there is a body.”
“You don’t have to locate the body to understand he’s dead,” Boudin admonished him. “The French mathematician Urbain Le Verrier discovered Neptune without seeing it, just from simple deductive reasoning. You’re describing a situation in which a man was dropped from a great height into the shaft of a construction site, and landed in a container filled with neutralising chemicals. There’s no need to put the work here on hold to make sure he’s dead. It’s elementary, deductive reasoning.”
“So where’s his body?” Abadi said.
“If it had been a regular sewer, the body would have ended up a few kilometres from the facility. But the chemical toilet disposal contractors have a special permit to pump their containers straight into the plant, because their materials have already been neutralised. So the body is probably here, in the primary settling tank.”
“What’s the primary settling tank? Is it this?” Abadi said, pointing to the vast areas below them.
“It’s the building furthest to the left,” Boudin said and indicated a structure the size of a stadium. “The used water there undergoes carbon filtering. Luckily, it’s intended for agriculture purposes, so your body won’t do much harm.”