by Ran Weber
“No, no, no,” he shook his head nervously. “Absolutely not. That’s impossible.”
“Just for a moment, just to see what it’s about.”
“I’m sorry, I can’t let you see it.” His hand began to tremble a little and he stretched his neck.
“Could you tell me why? After all, you need to scan and encode it in order to use it.”
“Of course!” he said cheerfully, “that’s not the reason. I see that you know a thing or two… it’s just that I love song lyrics. I’m a collector. Some people collect paintings or coins, I collect rare manuscripts of songs, originals, even early, sketchy drafts. I love framing them and hanging them in my house. I managed to get a government budget to buy two Beatles songs written on a napkin and the beginning of a song written with a marker on a beer coaster. Bought them at an auction. Can you believe it? This song is being framed now. If you want, I could show you examples of other songs framed in my house! It’s exactly the same, it would give you a feel for it.”
“What song is it?” I ignored his attempts to avoid the subject.
“Oh… I’ll sing the first line for you, I’m sure you know it. You say you want a revolution.”
The next words of the song were almost forced out of my lips and I muttered them along:
Well, you know
We all want to change the world.
87
Tel Aviv
The fat guy heard his cellphone ringing but didn’t feel like answering. He was busy with feverishly surfing the web. He continued to ignore it until the caller gave up. The telephone rang again, the landline this time. “Yes?” he answered slowly.
“Listen,” said the voice on the other end of the line, “we don’t really know each other, but if you want to save your life, you’d better start listening.”
“Excuse me?”
“The Ministry of Justice’s accusations are against Rami and not against Yoav. Rami was the one who shot that girl, he lost his wits and started firing at her. Get it? Nothing happened there, he just went AWOL and shot her. Then, when Yossi began to scream, demanding to know what was going on…”
“Well, well,” said the fat guy and stroked the telephone receiver. He began to shift in his chair uncomfortably. “Hebron is over… You’d better watch out when you’re walking behind his back.”
“The facts in this case are blurry, but the only thing that’s clear is that Rami was the one who shot that girl. The Ministry of Justice knows that too, but they’re sweeping it under the carpet.” The fat guy said nothing.
“I guess you already know that.”
“Well?” the fat guy snorted, “have you got something else to tell me before you get the hell out off my line?”
“Do you know how Yossi was killed?”
“Yes. He was gunned down by terrorists.”
“But there weren’t any terrorists there.”
“He was shot by a Kalashnikov.”
“But there weren’t any terrorists there.”
88
Muir Woods, North of San Francisco, California
“Exactly!” cried Norman with admiration. “Well, I see that you’re a Beatles fan too.”
It was highly unlikely – a coincidence. It sometimes happens that you’re getting exposed to something, then start seeing it everywhere. Sometimes I think I see someone familiar and it’s not him, but a few minutes later, I actually meet him. There are coincidences in the world, and the fact that Binyamin had to scan the same song indicated nothing. A simple coincidence.
Still, it was the same song someone was framing for him and the trigger for the entire system. I felt like the skies were falling on my head.
“Framing? Where?” My heart started pounding.
“When I used to live in Los Angeles I had this nice neighbor called… eh… Binyamin,” he started to say.
Now my heart pounded with such intensity that I thought both Norman and the entire world were able to hear it. I tried to hold myself together so I won’t collapse. “Wolf?” I finished his words with horror.
“Exactly!” he said. “Very talented guy. You know him?”
“Not exactly,” I mumbled and added to myself, “I thought I did.”
Everything connected. Laptop, scanner, 450 DPI, Beatles, original manuscript, word games – let’s lie for me tender…
“We need to go,” I told Norman and pulled him after me.
“What?” he answered with confusion.
We reached the park entrance where a few taxis were parked. Great, Norman will get a ride home, the Feds are probably waiting for him anxiously. I pushed Norman into one of them, gave the driver a hundred-dollar bill and the address of the federal detention facility. The driver looked at the address, then back at me. After a moment, he glanced at Norman. “Don’t worry,” I told him, “they’ll be happy to see him.”
I looked at my rental car and realized that the feds were probably looking for it. I decided to notify the rental company that the car got stuck in the woods and took another taxi.
***
The Indian taxi driver did not understand the meaning of the word “hurry.”
“Shanti, shanti,” he told me with a calm smile.
I pushed a hundred-dollar bill into his hand. “Come on. Move. Move.”
“All right, all right, mister,” he said and hit the gas pedal. With his jalopy of a taxi, it didn’t make much of a difference.
The airport was still far, it was a big mistake not to get there with the jeep. He was driving so slowly that I felt I could get there faster if I’d get out and walk the rest of the way, or at least push the taxi up inclines and sit on the hood down slopes. I felt a sense of suffocation and a slight dizziness. My heart beat twice as fast. Terrible thoughts passed through my mind. Binyamin has something to do with the End-Time Foretellers? Binyamin was scanning the code for them? How come I hadn’t realized? How come I’d let him cheat me?
This didn’t make any sense. There had to be another explanation, I thought, a coincidence or something. The fact that he is framing the code doesn’t necessarily mean anything, I said to myself. On the contrary, maybe it could actually help me.
I looked at the Indian driver through the mirror. He smiled. “You look like a good person,” he said. “A little stressed, but a good person. Be careful in this country, you don’t want what happened to my uncle, Akash, to happen to you too. He was naive, too naive.” Then the Indian driver started shaking his head and talking to himself. I thought I could hear him muttering curses under his breath, I couldn’t understand a word.
Too naive, that’s what my mother had always used to say. Yoav the naive. Thoughts of Binyamin returned with an even greater intensity. How could I have missed it? Bottom line, this is the way things go in America, it’s all about money. I bet the Iranians are paying him a hefty sum and he cares about nothing else and doesn’t mind if Tel Aviv goes to ruin.
All his slogans about the love of Israel and his fellow Jews suddenly seemed empty, devoid of any meaning. All his talk about goodness and connecting with your inner goodness, everything crumbled in an instant. “Friends are the most important thing for me,” it had all been a shameless cynical manipulation of another human being, I shouldn’t have trusted him. I felt hatred. It had been the first time I felt something genuine and real, not cynical. I thought I’d met people with a real heart, far from everything I had known in Tel Aviv. Just like a naive child, something had opened-up in me.
Apparently, it had all been a lie right from the very start.
“Let’s lie for me tender?” I guess that was what Donnie had meant and Aharon tried to give a hint though the scrabble board. Let’s lie for me tender. I had tried to play with the order of the letters. It was obvious now. End-Time Foretellers… How had they found out about me? He must have prayed about it a lot, because he’d “fished” m
e right in his synagogue.
Or maybe he was just framing this song for a client and had no idea about what was really going on?
89
A taxi, on the way to the San Francisco Airport
“You heard me, Yoav. Take him out,” said Rami coolly.
“Excuse me?” I heard background noises coming from the other end of the line, someone was getting into Rami’s room. “Get the heck out of here,” I heard Rami screaming, “I’m on an important call. Get out, I’ll come to see you in a few minutes.”
He spoke with me again, this time in a quieter tone. “Take him out. Apparently, it was him all the way, the head of the End-Time Foretellers. Binyamin Wolf. I suspected him, but didn’t want to mislead you, didn’t want to tell you before I’d be absolutely sure.”
“Did not want to mislead me? The man is on his way to wipe out the world and you did not want to mislead me?”
“I had no proof, it was only a gut feeling. Get to the house and take him out. Collect the evidence and come back to Israel immediately.”
I felt a sense of discomfort. I did not know what to do. I felt torn on the inside, perhaps it wasn’t him?”
“Did you hear me, Yoav?” I didn’t answer.
“If you are not taking him out, then you are an accomplice. I’m relaying the content of this call to the federal authorities.”
The taxi driver looked at me through the mirror and smiled a wide and meaningless smile. I diverted my eyes from him. “Rami, we still don’t know anything.”
He hung up.
90
San Francisco International Airport
I rushed inside the terminal. To my far left, I saw the Southwest Airlines logo. I hurried as much as I could. I was sure the security guard would start running after me, but he didn’t. He continued to stand with his arms crossed and his face expressionless.
Vast glass walls separated the terminal building from the runways with the planes still waiting for takeoff. It was a bright day. I felt my heart wildly pounding in my chest, I ran and almost knocked down a little girl holding a plush dog toy. Her mother stared at me with terror and pulled her daughter closer to her, I barely managed to mutter a quick, “Sorry.” I almost bumped into an elderly couple slowly making their way, probably to the longed-for Florida vacation. The golden smile on the woman’s face instantly vanished and she looked at me with great disappointment. She probably complained to her husband about the poor moral standards of today’s youth, assuming he could actually hear her. He didn’t seem to pay a lot of attention to the goings on around him. The golden smile remained frozen on his face. Florida, here we come.
I arrived at the counter, gasping for air. An airline receptionist sat behind the counter, her face covered with multiple layers of makeup intended to blur forty-fifty years of frying under the blazing California sun. I was looking for efficiency rather than aesthetics. I quickly handed her my fake ID and my visa. “Cancel it,” I wheezed.
She looked at me with wonder, wearing the smile of a trained sheep on her face. “Excuse me?” she asked indifferently.
“Cancel this flight ticket and give me a ticket to the flight leaving right now.” I had managed to check the departure schedule and located a flight about to leave at any moment. I knew that in local flights, certainly in shuttle flights like San Francisco – Los Angeles, one could quickly change the time and easily board a different flight.
She typed a lot, way more than she actually needed to, at least in my opinion. Manicured nails; that explained her slow and cautious pace. I just hoped her nails wouldn’t fall off and force her to take a break. I nervously tapped the surface of the counter with my fingers and she raised her eyes and politely asked me to stop. I turned my back on her.
“Sir?” she finally said politely.
“Yes? Well, what?” I answered rudely.
“I’m so sorry,” she uttered a fake apology. The only thing that could genuinely make her feel sorry was if her nails would fall off or “Starbucks” would run out of coffee.
“What?” I cried out.
“You can’t change the date and time for this type of ticket,” she said. “It’s a very cheap ticket,” she added in a low voice. She almost looked paralyzed, as if the fact she wasn’t able to actually help me shattered something of her inner worldview. She winked, then smiled and nodded with exemplary customer service training course empathy. “Sorry, is there anything else I can help you with?”
I closed my eyes for a moment, then handed her my credit card again. “New ticket, San Francisco – Los Angeles,” I said laconically. Before she was able to open her mouth, I added, “One way.”
She smiled and said, “Of course, Sir, of course. Excellent choice. It could save you a lot of time, buying a new ticket. A lot of time and… you know, it could also save you a lot of uncomfortable situations.” She examined me closely and added, “if you know what I mean.” I knew exactly what she meant, but there wasn’t even the faintest chance she knew what she herself meant. I looked outside at the blue skies, the sun was still illuminating the world, but it started to come down.
91
The Valley, Los Angeles
The taxi stopped by the house. I rushed outside and hurried to the large vase outside Binyamin’s house. I picked up the flowerpot, my Glock was still there. I shoved it into my right pocket and hurried to my unit. I opened the door with urgency, the key got stuck for a moment. I ran inside, the safe was open and empty.
My heart pounded in my chest. My laptop with the codes for accessing the “Los Angeles Times,” wasn’t there. Great, Yoavi, I muttered to myself, you forgot that Binyamin has a key?
I fumbled under the bed. I found my backpack and took out the remote for the car bomb. I shoved it into my left pocket and drew my Glock. I went outside the unit and left the door open. As I approached Binyamin’s house, I saw that the door was ajar. I pressed myself against the wall next to the door and tried to listen to the sounds coming from inside the house. I heard nothing. I opened the door wide and stayed close to the wall. I took a small stone and tossed it into the house, then tried to listen for any sound of a reaction. I took out the remote of my autonomous car from my left pocket. I looked at the screen; it indicated 15:00. I turned the upper part of the remote and activated it. The minutes and seconds started running back. I returned the remote to my left pocket and went inside the house with a drawn pistol. I called Binyamin, but heard no reply.
I called Aharon as well. There was nothing but silence. I started looking for the laptop around the house. I couldn’t find it. I was filled with anxiety, I could barely move. Terrible scenarios ran through my mind. If Binyamin now had both the text and the codes… was it possible?
It was impossible, I calmed myself. Binyamin certainly wasn’t a great fan of the Arab nations. Helping the Iranians attack Israel? No way, he probably wouldn’t do anything against Israel, on the contrary!
My head was pounding with thoughts as I ran like a drunken mouse around the house, looking for the elusive laptop.
I saw that the basement door was open. I quickly descended down the stairs. The second door at the bottom of the stairs was also open wide. Everything was dark and damp. I heard the humming of computers and slowed down. Then I entered the basement and was dumbfounded. I found myself in a vast room with numerous blinking computer stations. I turned on the light and saw my laptop resting on the center of a nearby table, surrounded by several desktop computers with lots of wires and connectors. The wall was covered with newspaper clippings. I went closer and saw that they all dealt with news about the Pillar of Fire project.
I saw a picture of myself from my army days pinned to a corkboard and surrounded by written notes. Rami’s phone number, information about my personal life: where I lived, what my hobbies were, which games I had ordered for my store… My sense of dread intensified, what was going on here?
I looked at one of the computers. The screen showed some internet page, the End-Time Foretellers forum. I clicked the link to the forum’s main page and saw that I didn’t have to feed a username and password, these were already saved into the system. I looked at the connected username – Admin, the system administrator. I felt sick. The End-Time Foretellers’ computers were in Binyamin’s basement. It had all happened right under my nose, how could I have been so blind?
I heard a pistol cocking behind me. I turned around slowly and saw Binyamin’s fired-up face.
“And I will send a fire on Magog, and on them that dwell safely in the isles; and they shall know that I am the LORD,” he slowly recited.” Ezekiel 39. The Gog and Magog war, Yoav. Donnie was right, only his timing was wrong. I had to get rid of him, now I see that you’re going to be a problem too.“
My heart was beating wildly. My hand was inside the pocket, holding the car bomb remote. My palm was sweating, I felt the remote slipping from it. Let me die with the Philistines. I pressed the button, five minutes and it would all be over. The remote sounded a faint beep.
“What do you have in your pocket?” he asked.
“Your end,” I said simply, “an end to all this insanity. Five minutes from now, this will all be over, Binyamin.”
“Is that so?” Binyamin laughed wildly. “I don’t think so. Show it to me.”
I took out the remote from my pocket and tossed it on the table next to me.
“Pick it up and bring it to me!” he said firmly.
I sat in the chair and moved the remote a little.
“Bring it here, stupid.”
I picked up the remote and tossed it to him. What difference does it make? I thought, he couldn’t possibly cancel the activation.
“Three and a half minutes?” he said. “I need at least five minutes to feed the information to the newspapers. Do something, Yoav.”
I got up. He looked at me angrily. “I told you to do something!” he screamed.