From Fire Into Fire

by Normandie Fischer

  She changed him, cooing, tickling his fat stomach, loving it when he rewarded her with a gurgle of glee. And then, while she tried to secure the dry diaper, he let loose, soaking the dry one with pee. She’d learned early on to take care so he didn’t douse her, and this time only the new diaper got drenched. “Thank you so much, boy-o.”

  He continued to grin and chortle as she fastened him into yet another diaper and pulled on another pair of overalls.

  In the kitchen, she plopped him in his highchair, gave him a plastic sippy cup of juice, and peeled some apple sections to tide him over while she worked. He chatted in baby talk and ate and showed off his few teeth. And he drooled, which was what he did when he had another one coming in.

  She would not think of their guest’s reasons for visiting as she set the table with multicolored woven placemats they’d picked up during a visit to Portsmouth, added cloth napkins and cutlery, and set about washing the lettuce and slicing tomatoes. The baby opened and closed his fat little fist. Concentrating only on him and the movement of her knife, she diced a tomato section and added the small chunks to his tray.

  Sweet baby. Sweet innocent.

  “That good, kiddo?” she asked when he stuffed them in his cheeks. “Chew now. That’s it.”

  He kept busy with tomato bits while she fluffed up pillows and dusted the end tables.

  She was wiping Tony’s face and hands when she heard the front door open and David call her name.

  “In here,” she answered, lifting Tony from his high chair. His legs kicked against her sides as if she were a pony he wanted to hurry along. That boy loved his daddy.

  David took his son and leaned in to kiss her cheek. Tony planted his palms on each side of David’s face to draw the attention his way. “You want yours, too, big boy?” David asked, planting a loud smooch on the baby’s lips. Tony giggled.

  “Honey,” David said, turning toward the living room, “here’s our guest, Eli Rosen.”

  “Shalom,” she said in welcome.

  Eli stood almost as tall as David, but he was thin where her husband had muscles. David enjoyed exercise, and she guessed Eli preferred a seat behind a desk and that he’d been occupying it for a while now.

  They spoke pleasantries in Hebrew, and Eli helped David with the grill while Tony supervised from his playpen and she sorted the deli food onto platters.

  Tony, happy with his audience and the finger food they put on his high-chair tray during dinner, made it all the way to seven o’clock before the fussies set in. She got him settled for the night while David cleaned up.

  When she joined the men, they were seated on the front porch, enjoying the cool breeze off the river. David handed her a glass of wine.

  “Great looking boy you have,” Eli said.

  “Thank you.” She wondered when he’d get to the point of his visit.

  “I was telling David that I met his father years ago, when he visited Israel to carry my cousin away with him. A fine man. He’d have loved watching that boy of yours grow up.”

  “Yes, he would have.” Meira spoke to spare David.

  “I’m glad your parents can visit you.”

  “Yes. I am, too.” Enough of this, Meira decided. “I doubt you came all the way here to talk about family.”

  The way Eli cleared his throat and then leaned forward, resting one forearm across his knees, made Meira want to retreat to the kitchen. Or ask him to leave.

  “You’re right, but can we talk out here?”

  “Why wouldn’t we be able to?” Meira asked. Their neighbors were exactly in chatting distance, and a hedge separated the driveways. She didn’t imagine anyone had come out to eavesdrop.

  Eli glanced around, then scooted his chair in closer. “We will speak in Hebrew,” he said, shifting to that language.

  It felt very cloak and dagger. “Fine,” she said, growing more curious by the moment.

  “We recently picked up a member of the Popular Front who carried a list of names in his pocket. One was yours, Meira.” Eli paused, whether for effect or just to make sure they listened, she didn’t know. “Your married name.”

  His words seemed to suck the breath out of her. “How? How could they have found it? Have they traced us here?”

  “We cannot be certain, but we did receive intel that there are operatives in place in this country. Whether or not one is actually in Virginia, I do not know.”

  “Could they have followed you?” Her voice rose. She heard it slide into panic.

  “I wish I could answer that,” Eli said, lowering his own voice in response.

  David stood as if the threat had shot him from the chair. And then he braced himself against the porch railing. “Why?” he asked over his shoulder. “Why do they still want her?”

  Eli shrugged. “Vengeance?”

  “You mean, because she saw a face and identified a murderer? He was killed because he’d killed, because he was trying to kill again. Why didn’t it end there?”

  “And,” Meira asked, “why only now? It’s been over three years. What took them so long?”

  “If it is the killer’s cousin Abreeq Husseini spearheading the effort, he only recently got out of jail again.”

  “Again?” Meira said.

  “This time for brandishing a knife at a soldier. He did not actually attack anyone, or he would still be locked up.” Eli sighed and rubbed a hand across his forehead. “I do not pretend to understand the minds of madmen. But that is what we are dealing with, madmen who hate and who believe in the law of retaliation. In their mind, you caused one of them to die, so the law of retaliation would allow—or even compel—his family to come against you.”

  “And my parents?” She almost whispered the words. “My brother?”

  “They have been alerted, but your father thinks they are safe enough.”

  “How? If I’m not, they’re not.”

  Meira glanced toward the door. Her baby. No one would touch her baby.

  “Their move to a condo that is not listed in their name gives us reason to believe they are relatively secure. The building is monitored and guarded. The same for your brother.”

  “And someone else lives in my childhood home.”

  He nodded. She had known when her father sold their house as a precaution, to help keep Ima safe. She’d known and wept, realizing once again that a moment out of time, when she’d witnessed something she wasn’t supposed to see, had wreaked havoc for her entire family.

  David moved to stand behind her chair, his hands on her shoulders. “I’m sure you didn’t come here just to tell us this. After all, a letter would have sufficed. Or a phone call. What else is on your mind?”

  Eli cleared his throat as if he were trying to dislodge more than phlegm. In the dim lighting, Meira saw him steeple his fingers in front of his lips, then lower them so he could be heard. “You both know, do you not, about the mess Lebanon has become?”

  Every newscast from Beirut revealed the destruction of what had been called the Paris of the Middle East. Once upon a time, her father had taken them by way of an aerial tramway to a beautiful restaurant on the hills overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. From that vantage point, the sea near shore had appeared a light turquoise, darkening to cobalt as it deepened. A stream meandered next to the restaurant with a couple of swans, maybe a duck or two, paddling around. There’d been mezza, the small dishes served with the arak her father’d accepted from their Lebanese hosts. Aba had said the drink tasted like licorice, but it turned a milky white when poured over ice.

  Beirut had seemed so European, and Meira’s heart broke to imagine the civil war’s devastation. Syrians had added their might to the other Islamic militants who wanted to wrest control from any who supported the former accommodation leadership that had included Maroni Christians in key government positions. The compromise government, which had existed since the French left after WWII, had drawn wealth and Western culture to what had been an enclave of sophistication. The tensions between the Chris
tians and the Muslims had always existed, but after Al Fatah and other radical Palestinian groups moved in, they’d stirred tensions by riling the poor, especially the Shia who felt disenfranchised by both the Christians and the Sunni majority. How sad that Beirut had fallen victim to these radicals. And here they were now, with the UN involved and the future looking dismal for that once lovely country.

  “What does Lebanon have to do with us?” David drew his chair next to Meira’s and sat close enough to take her hand. “With my need to protect Meira and our son?”

  “I am coming to that,” Eli said. “The Palestinian guerrillas are shelling Israel from southern Lebanon, drawing us into a nasty conflict that continues to intensify. The UN is useless, and we have had to defend ourselves in the world’s court of public opinion, while former allies within the U.S. wage another kind of war to discredit us. Fortunately, there are other factions here who support Israel.”

  “I’ve been a little out of that end of things,” David said. “Busy, you know. Living.” He coughed slightly. “Here.”

  Eli fiddled with a cigarette, but he didn’t light it. “We need all the help we can get.”

  “What do you mean by ‘help’? Because it looks like we have a few needs at our end.”

  She let David talk. All she wanted was to show this bearer of bad news to his rental car. To go inside and hold her little boy close and never let him go. To make herself and her family invisible to terrorists.

  “I do not think your needs and ours are mutually exclusive.” Eli spoke with an oily serpent’s voice. “When things settle down, we are going to need eyes on the ground, those who can help us by fitting into the culture in a casual way.”

  “Again, what’s that got to do with us?” David sounded surprised.

  She willed him to snarl at that man who was quickly becoming her own personal public enemy number two—directly in line after the terrorist, or terrorists, who still had her in their sights. She was a wife. A mother. Who now had to deal with hiding—and possibly running—from danger again. She was not going to listen to some do-gooder try to push his probably dangerous agenda on her too nice—and therefore gullible—husband.

  The interfering Eli continued to talk. “We have been formulating a different methodology for informal information-gathering over the last few years, some of it based on a task force put together by your father, Meira. Trained assets are needed everywhere to protect our small country from the hostile forces surrounding us, and ears on every piece of ground are hard to maintain.”

  Her father’s task force? The one he’d been working on when she and David had fled? Eli’s words felt like ice water pouring over her. She shivered.

  Stop, she wanted to say. Just stop. Go away.

  “So, you’re what?” David said, “Asking me—us—to join this fight? Sign up with Mossad or some other agency of yours?” His voice hit a higher note on that last question. She cheered him on with the nod of her head, but she clamped her jaw closed against words she wasn’t ready to voice. He paused, and the quiet settled momentarily. When he spoke, he’d regained control. “Look, we have a one-year-old son, and in case you hadn’t noticed, this is our home. A-me-ri-ca.”

  “But your home and your security are now at risk. You need to hide, and I can offer you a way to do that. Besides, your children will have a stake in Israel’s future—as your extended family does now. Israel is our homeland.”

  She squeezed David’s hand. In the light from the lamp at the back of the house, she saw his frown. And then he slapped at a mosquito, and the frown deepened.

  The breeze had stilled, bringing the nasty bugs out. “We should head inside,” he said. “We will listen, but only that.”

  They stood, moved the chairs out of the way, and headed into the living room, silent on the subject until they were settled, and Meira had replaced wine glasses with water.

  “Hiding from this latest threat to your family will require another name change and a move,” Eli said, switching back to English. “If you help us, we can facilitate that. We aren’t suggesting anything dangerous for you, but rather something that will allow you to hide in plain sight.”

  “In Lebanon?” Meira asked.

  “Eventually.”

  Tony voice cut into the story. “I don’t like that guy.”

  “Eli?” his father asked.

  “Yeah. He just wanted to use you and Mom. He didn’t care about me. And I was just a little kid.”

  “I think he did care, but he had a bigger picture in mind.”

  “What, like world peace?” Tony asked with a sneer.

  Meira smiled, ignoring the sneer and the sarcasm. “A lot like world peace.”

  “So he made you guys into liars.”

  “No, what happened next accomplished that,” David said.

  12

  David

  1983

  Trouble loomed. David felt his wife’s silence weighting the air around him like a fog so moisture-laden he could barely breathe. Her knuckles rose against his touch as her fingers curled in her lap.

  While this cousin of his droned on, David tried to listen, to give the man a chance to be heard. Eli spoke of people dying—their people—which was bad enough. But then he used the word courage. David resented anyone who resorted to emotional manipulation, and Eli’s performance could win him an Oscar.

  “Think how many lives could be saved if enough people provided correct and timely intelligence. If we knew what the enemy planned before they executed it.” Eli continued playing dirty by reminding them of the roles a few good people had played during WWII in trying to save Jewish lives. He claimed he was giving them an opportunity to do what they were both good at: befriending people of all nationalities and listening for clues that could help save lives.

  “Working with us shouldn’t put you in any danger or anywhere near actual terrorists,” Eli said. “And if one did cross your path, he wouldn’t know you were working against him. Snatches of conversations or gossip could point us in the right direction. You wouldn’t have to do more than that. If you see or hear something suspicious, we’d send in men trained to take care of it.”

  David sighed. “You have other folk doing this sort of thing?”

  “We’ve already had people send us gossip from a couple of countries, and we’ve used it to stop a car bombing and an assassination.”

  “Oh, my,” Meira said.

  Still skeptical, David asked, “Why us?”

  “You’re a logical choice. Avram approached me after he and Meira’s father spoke. Once they’d discovered your name on that list.”

  “Wait,” Meira said. “My father knows you’re here?”

  “He does. He wanted to be the one to approach you, but we couldn’t risk a phone call, and he couldn’t get away to travel. Besides, that might have alerted the wrong people. They picked me because of our family relationship and the fact that no one knows my real job, which meant I wasn’t likely to rouse suspicions.”

  “But why do you want to enlist us?” Meira asked. “Why would my father suggest it?”

  “Your father’s worried about this new threat on your life, which means a threat to his grandson as well. If someone is actually in this country looking for you, your lives could be in imminent danger, requiring immediate and radical changes for your protection. We all felt we could offer you greater protection and opportunity than anything you could manage on your own.”

  “But becoming spies?” she asked. “How does that protect us? Especially Tony? He’s a baby. He’ll be a child.”

  David heard the fear in her voice and almost called a halt to the discussion. Meira didn’t need anything else to stoke the tension she’d carried for months. If he guessed right, the tension was what had shut down her ability to paint, and the only time peace stilled her jitters seemed to be when she lay with him in bed or when she cuddled their son close to her breast. He was convinced her moodiness came from her isolated existence in this house, so far from home and fa
mily.

  Now, this new danger had dropped on them, another wedge between her and her home in Israel, between her and tranquility. But what Eli suggested wouldn’t bring her closer to them. Instead, it would isolate her further.

  Eli raised his hands, palms toward them. “Meira, take a deep breath—”

  David recoiled, because his wife hated anyone telling her to relax. “It’s not just Meira,” he said. “And I don’t know how you expect us to relax when you talk about sending us into enemy territory.”

  “I apologize, but you wouldn’t be spies in the traditional sense. I mean, no one’s asking you to go all 007 on us.”

  What? Did his cousin think this was the time for humor? Before David could speak, Meira said, “A spy is a spy is a spy. He has to tell lies and pretend to be someone he isn’t so he can gain knowledge that wouldn’t otherwise be available to him. I don’t care what pretty wrapping you put on it, that’s spying.” She paused for only a moment. “Just why would we want to do that?”

  Tony gave her a high five, bringing her back to the present. “That’s telling him, Mom. But how come you didn’t just make him go away?” He squinted at David. “What about you? Did you give him what-for?”

  David laughed. “I did my best. But there was a lot riding on our decision. Like your safety. And your mother’s.”

  1983

  David longed to tell Eli to go away and leave them to figure out how to protect themselves and Tony. If they agreed to this charade Eli had suggested, they’d have to deny, at least publicly, the generational, social, and religious tie to that preeminent relationship—their Jewishness.

  When Eli spoke again, he said, “It’s only a matter of time before the Popular Front or its cohorts find out more than your married name. You’re fluent in Arabic as well as English, French, and Hebrew, and, from what I understand, David’s always been a whiz at languages. You’re a perfect fit for the program. As an American, David won’t be expected to have the same proficiency you do, Meira.”