The End-Time Foretellers

by Ran Weber

  “An alternate plan?” I asked angrily.

  “Yes.”

  “I thought you were sick and tired of the world.”

  “That’s right, I thought so too.”

  “So what happened?”

  “You restored my faith in people.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “Really. You’ve given up everything, you agreed to die with me. When that happened, I realized having someone else care is meaningful. I realized that there is a chance… I can’t quite explain it in words.”

  I was unable to believe him, but I didn’t know what to believe anymore. “You expect me to believe you?”

  “No,” he said simply, “but you don’t really have a choice. You’re stuck with me, and if you want to live, you had better cooperate with me.”

  I said nothing.

  “I wonder,” he said with a smile, “how did you do it? How did you agree to die?”

  “I don’t know,” I said sincerely. “It was a momentary flash of understanding, a realization. I made a choice.”

  “You chose to die?” he asked.

  “No. I chose to live.”

  “Explain.”

  “I suddenly understood the sentence ‘If you have nothing you’re willing to die for, then you have nothing worth living for.’ It wasn’t a conscious thought, it was a deeper knowledge. I’m with you, no matter what. If you won’t come out, neither will I.”

  “Selfless devotion. I’m not kidding. A selfless devotion to the truth, to goodness,” he paused for a moment, “to love.”

  I felt embarrassed. I felt exposed and vulnerable. “Tell me,” I said and took a deep breath, “can you explain to me what is really going on? Who is fighting whom?” I sat on the edge of the bed and looked at him.

  He sat in the chair beside me. “I thought you’d never ask. The Iranians want to destroy Israel, that much is obvious. Rami and the fat guy want the war to continue at any cost. Sorry, the fat guy had used to want that before he was assassinated.”

  “What do you mean by Rami and the fat guy? Are you talking about the Israeli Ministry of Defense?”

  Binyamin began to laugh. “Oh… no, no, buddy. This is what I started to explain to you earlier… The fat guy used to work for the Ministry of Defense, but he also worked for Rami.”

  “Rami?”

  “Yes. Rami has business interests. I know this guy back from my time in Hebron. He’s making a ton of money in arms deals, just like his enemy, Schetritt. This was why I drafted him for my project. Apparently, the dummy rose against its maker. He decided to take me out in order to cut down on the costs. Maybe he also wanted to be sure I won’t be hurting his agenda. I have a lot of information about him he wouldn’t want to go public. He must have decided to take me out, blame me for the whole End-Time Foretellers business and have the case closed.”

  “Sounds far-fetched.”

  “Far-fetched? Don’t you find it a little strange that Jim and Nash have so far been unable to bring Schetritt down and expose the End-Time Foretellers? Rami from Israel is one thing, but the FBI?”

  “Yes,” I admitted. “That’s a little strange.”

  “And don’t you find it strange that Norman Watts would tell you, a representative of the End-Time Foretellers, where to find the code?”

  I began to get upset. “So?”

  Binyamin smiled. “In short, this whole business is sponsored by Uncle Sam.”

  “The US government is behind this?”

  “Not exactly. The government is not officially involved and doesn’t want to be involved. There’s this one senator…”

  “Wilson.”

  “Right!” said Binyamin. “How…?”

  “Classified information,” I said and then added, “I saw his name on Jim’s computer.”

  “In short, Senator Wilson, not the most sympathetic of people, agreed to sponsor this whole project for Rami.”

  “Why?” I asked. “Why would the United States create such a defense system in Israel and then provide the Iranians with the code so they could fire a missile at Israel? This sounds unreasonable, Binyamin.”

  “Unreasonable?” asked Binyamin. “Tell me, you think the Americans only have Israel on their minds? This system is supposed to protect the Americans from North Korea, China and Iran, assuming Iran will develop long-range missiles, which is very likely. Remember what happened with the Iron Dome system in Israel?”

  “What?”

  “The system got some real legitimacy and budgetary support only when there was a tangible threat of a rocket attack from Gaza. It was only when the system managed to stop the rockets that everyone began to praise it. That’s exactly the point. The senator is trying to promote this system in America, but the costs involved are insane, so he decided to find a way to justify the need for the system. What you people call a ‘Beta Testing.’”

  I was horrified by the idea. The senator wanted to pass the codes to the Iranians so they would fire a missile on Israel and, assuming the system would actually work, receive authorization to deploy it all over America. Did he ever stop to think about the possibility the system won’t work? He obviously did not invest too much thought into it.

  “Where does he know Rami from anyway?”

  “Who? The senator?”

  “Yes.”

  “From the days Rami still used to work for the Ministry of Defense, before he became a freelancer. He was stationed in America for a time after that whole mess in Hebron.”

  “Yes, I remember. I had some peace and quiet from him at the time.”

  “Wilson is an avid supporter of Israel,” Binyamin paused. “At least when it suits his own agenda. He was a member of an inner committee dealing with the Iranian threat and Rami participated in it as an expert adviser. In the evening hours, they began to plan their cooperation. Rami told me about Wilson and said he thought he was the missing part of our plan, the End-Time Foretellers’ plan. I only met with him once. I couldn’t stand him from the first moment, but I can’t stand Rami either. I think he is the right person.”

  He paused, stared at me for a moment, then smiled.

  “What are you smiling about?”

  “Actually, when it comes to locating the right people, Rami is a real mastermind. Look at you, for example… You were the perfect man for the job, I’d never be able to think of a better choice. He told me about you, and I didn’t especially like what I heard, you sounded like the indifferent type. But Rami insisted and the idea of forging an indictment was a great one.”

  “Hold on, so the indictment was a forgery? There’s no legal process against me and I’m free to go back to Israel?”

  “Yes,” he said with a smile. “A pretty good forgery, eh?”

  I ignored his last remark. “So what’s the problem?”

  “Schetritt still wants to kill you and Rami must be in the in the area too. The Iranians as well.”

  “Go on.”

  “Schetritt wants money, but he also wants to destroy the state of Israel. As far as he’s concerned, if the Palestinians take over, it would be his sweet revenge. I assume Ehud is on your tail too.”

  “Ehud,” I said, “so pretending like you didn’t know him was just an act?”

  “No,” said Binyamin. “I honestly didn’t know Mr. Ehud Slotzky. He answered directly to Rami. There were details I preferred to ignore, because I didn’t want to get into trouble. In retrospect, it was a mistake. Perhaps I relied on Rami too much here. Slotzky’s change of plans, to get you involved with Schetritt so early, proved to be a grave mistake.”

  “Hold on, did you say Rami is in the area?”

  “I suppose so. If I know Rami – he won’t let any of us go about freely knowing that we have proof against him. If I were Rami, I guess I’d already be in the area, or at least on a plane to Los Angeles.”

/>   97

  “We have to neutralize him once and for all,” Rami said dryly.

  “But I don’t know where he is,” Ehud tried to avoid the task.

  “I don’t care.”

  Ehud wheezed on the other end of the line. “I think he exploded in Binyamin’s house. This case is closed, Rami.”

  “Stop lying, you piece of… now you listen to me…”

  “Really. I don’t have a clue,” said Ehud.

  “You don’t have a clue? You good for nothing…” muttered Rami angrily. “No problem, Slotzky,” he continued in a more tranquil tone, “I have other ways to take him down.”

  “I’m glad we could come to an understanding,” said Slotzky, “now about the money…”

  “Money? No money for you, partner.”

  “Excuse me?” Ehud cried out. “I’ve had expenses.”

  Rami smiled on the other end of the line and said, “No point in transferring money to a man who can’t make ends meet, and might just meet his own end pretty soon.”

  Ehud was silent for a moment.

  “Where are you exactly, Rami?”

  “It doesn’t matter, and it won’t help you to know. Let’s just say I’m here in the area to tie up all the loose ends.”

  ***

  “Jim.”

  “It’s Ehud.”

  “Oh. Slotzky… Slotzky… I was actually looking for you, you fell off the radar. Keep on talking to me for another two-three minutes and the system will track down your exact location.”

  “You haven’t lost your sense of humor, eh, Jim? If I really wanted to hide, even your most advanced system wouldn’t be able to find me.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I need to talk to you. I want to get into the witness protection program.”

  “Come see me. We’ll talk.”

  98

  The Nevada Desert

  “The stars really are amazing,” I said with admiration. Binyamin took me for a nocturnal walk around the cabin. The visibility in the desert was truly amazing, one could see star-strewn skies in every direction. “Yes, this is one of the advantages of the area.”

  “Tell me, who does this cabin belongs to?”

  “Donnie Milstein’s brother. He lets me use it when I need to. He’s in Israel now for a couple of months.”

  “When you look up at the sky, you see so many possibilities. Everything looks so…”

  “What?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. Possible, I guess,” I said and smiled.

  “How does it feel to save the world?” he asked.

  “Are you making fun of me?”

  “No. Why would I be making fun of you? You stopped the transfer of the codes to the Iranians. Without you, Schetritt won’t be able to get the codes, neither will Rami, or even Ehud. It wasn’t for nothing that I chose you for this task.”

  I remembered my picture on his basement wall. We stopped. He motioned for me to get back toward the cabin and said, “Sorry, but as you now know, you were the only one who could perform such a task. Rami and I had no idea how you’d be able to pull it off, but we knew you would. Understand, I can’t stand Rami, but I had to cooperate with him about that specific point.”

  I didn’t answer.

  “So anyway, how does it feel to save the world?” he asked again.

  “I don’t feel like I’ve saved it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because nothing’s changed.”

  The old, familiar pain burst through and filled me. I felt helpless, like a little child seeing his parents having a fight. A child who sees his neighbors not speaking to them, because there was something wrong with them. A child who met hostility and suspiciousness everywhere. A child who wanted to change things and ended giving up. What had actually changed?

  So I did it, I saved the world. Big deal. It didn’t feel like I’d imagined it would. Now what?

  I remembered Yossi, one warm day when we were waiting for our guard duty replacement shift next to the cave. Time crawled like a turtle. Ben-Gigi and Schneider were late. I looked at the rust covering the area connecting the two armored plates protecting the watch post’s northern side. Rust, Yossi had called it corrosion once and Ben-Gigi started laughing at him for being such a snot-nosed intellectual. Twenty minutes later, they were no longer late, they were very late. How long was their shift, anyway? Maybe it was about to end, I thought. Two more minutes passed when I finally saw them in the distance, quickly approaching us. Later on, they told us they’d been caught up in a killer backgammon game in some stupid championship tournament the guys had arranged. It was irritating, but gave Yossi and me some time to talk.

  “Did you ever stop to think about what would happen after?” he asked.

  “After what?” I asked.

  “After our military service, duh!”

  “Oh… actually, no. I’m just trying to survive the madness here, Yossi.”

  “You know, Yoav, that’s the thing. Think that everything here is over. Think that we’re discharged, that there’s nothing to pressure you anymore, nothing to threaten you. Now what?”

  I remember how he smiled this mysterious smile, as if he had an answer, as if he had answers for every question under the sun. I wanted to ask him, but Ben-Gigi rushed into the station just then and threw his flak jacket to the floor. He brought us cold coke and some stale bagels his mother made. “To compensate for lost time!” he squealed happily. At least he had good intentions. Yossi’s words had stayed with me and now they burst out into my conscious mind. “Now what?”

  “What do you mean?” Binyamin asked, bringing me back to reality.

  “What I mean,” I said, not having a clue where the words were actually coming from, “is that I feel this still isn’t saving the world.” I felt an inner fire washing over me. “I feel that saving the world means something else, that it’s about bringing some meaning into the boring lives we lead, that it’s about living life to the fullest. It’s not just something physical, not about whether the world would go on or cease to exist. This is only the beginning, of course, but I feel that saving the world is about something else.”

  Binyamin nodded and put his hand on my shoulder. “You should catch some sleep now, we still have a lot of work to do.”

  99

  I woke up late in the morning. I looked at my watch, it was 8:30am. I saw Binyamin’s tefillin and tallit carelessly left on the living room table. He had already managed to pray, apparently. From the corner of my eye, I saw him sitting in the kitchen, nervously staring at a laptop screen.

  “What’s going on, Binyamin?” I asked. He didn’t answer. I got closer. “It’s a mess?”

  “A big, giant mess,” he answered.

  “How about telling me what’s going on?”

  “Two very serious things.”

  “Why don’t you start with the first one?”

  “All right, the Iranians managed to get the codes. More accurately, Schetritt managed to get the codes. I’ve no idea how, but they are on his server now, and there’s no way of getting to that server.”

  I looked at him with amazement. “And…?”

  “What?”

  “What is the other terrible news?” I asked with horror.

  “Oh,” said Binyamin and closed the laptop. “Aharon and Donnie are on their way here.”

  We heard the sound of loud knockings on the door. Binyamin gave me a sideways glance. I motioned to indicate that I didn’t have a clue who it was. He took his pistol and went out the back door. I drew my own pistol and aimed it at the front door. Everything was quiet for a moment, then a few screams were heard and the front door opened.

  “Come on, let go of my coat, Binyamin, settle down.” It was Milstein. “Relax, will you? You’ll wrinkle it, it’s brand-new. Just got it in Target.” />
  I looked at him with surprise and lowered the pistol to the table.

  “Don’t shoot!” said Donnie and raised his hands. “It’s only Uncle Donnie and little Aharon.”

  “I’m not so little,” said Aharon angrily and walked into the house.

  “We’ve had some interesting conversation on the way here,” said Donnie, “didn’t we, Aharon?”

  Aharon crossed his hands and asked Binyamin, “Dad, is there anything to eat? I’m hungry. All Donnie brought for the road were some granola bars. I almost choked trying to eat them.”

  “Donnie can cook,” said Binyamin and put the pistol back in place. “You almost gave us a heart attack, Donnie.” He paused for a moment and added, “as always.”

  “Well, you already know me, don’t you, Binyamin?” Donnie smiled. “So what are you kids up to?”

  “Make some pasta and we’ll talk,” said Binyamin.

  I looked at him and he said, “Donnie can drive an elephant crazy, but he’s a great cook, has the talent and training of an international chef, but he doesn’t do anything with it. The world is waiting for you, Donnie.”

  Donnie muttered something, turned to the kitchen cabinets and took out two pots, a large one for the pasta and a smaller one for the sauce. He opened the refrigerator and muttered, “Empty, you guys are insane.” He checked the pantry and took out a packet of pasta, tomato sauce and a box of preserved mushrooms. “That’s everything,” he said. “I imagine you guys haven’t paid the local supermarket a visit yet.”

  “We were a little busy,” said Binyamin. He got up, turned his back to us and looked at the desert through the window.

  “Good to have someone appreciate what I’m doing here,” Donnie protested and looked at Binyamin. He made us all coffee. “Will you guys explain what is going on here?” he asked when Binyamin returned to the table.

  “Smarty pants here,” said Binyamin and pointed at me, “ruined everything.”