by Robert Stone
"You've been on Linda's case," the dark-haired man said. "You interviewed her ex-husband. You met her through Pinchas Obermann."
"It's a small country," Lucas said.
"You think you have a source in the Shabak?" the red-headed man asked. "I can tell you that nothing happens in Shabak or Mossad or anywhere—anywhere—that we don't know about. By the way, how come you quit your newspaper job?"
"Oh, that," said Lucas. "That was personal. And I don't have a source in the Shabak."
"You're being manipulated," the red-headed man said. "We can give you a better story and a chance to help the country. Or we can close you down."
It seemed to Lucas that he could understand their wanting to kill the Abu Baraka story. Because surely Abu Baraka was one of them. Or, more plausibly, several of them—their squad of enforcers. But what was the better story?
"This guy," he chortled, "this guy is a Mossad type. Shaygetzy-looking petzle. What do you think?"
The other man paid no attention to his friend.
"You claim to be an honest journalist. Well, let's see how honest you are. We can give you the story of a plot against the State of Israel," said the red-headed man. "And a plan to slander the active religious community."
Lucas did not reply.
"What's the matter, Mr. Lucas? Not interested?" He swore in Arabic. "To these bastards of the glorious free press, if the Jews fight back against terror, if they defend themselves against murderers, they're no better than Nazis. The Jews' place is to be a victim. Otherwise the world is out of joint, right, Mr. Lucas?"
"That's not my position," Lucas said.
"Your friends in this cult, Lucas, these foreign women and the men controlling them, are a bunch of drug runners and terrorists."
"I would have to see evidence of that," Lucas said severely. At the same time he had a nasty feeling he was about to see something like it. It sounded distressingly like Nuala, as though she had finally run out of slack.
"That, Mr. Lucas," the dark-haired man said, "is what you're going to see. And when you do, we're going to require justice of you, understand? You claim to be innocent of our comrade's death. Maybe we'll give you the benefit of the doubt. But we expect you to see to it that the truth of this story gets told. You were being programmed for a campaign of lies. Instead, you'll write the truth."
"Because," said the red-haired man, "the truth is wonderful. But you owe us more than the truth. You owe us a life for a life."
"I don't," Lucas said. "I haven't killed anyone."
"Sorry, friend. A man died. You were responsible. That one death could lead to others. The stuff on your hands—it's blood." The red-haired man made a gesture with his head that included the dry flats beyond the wall outside Kfar Gottlieb, beyond the fields of fruit and spinach. "There isn't anyone here who wouldn't die to keep holy what belongs to us."
"So we're giving you a story and the chance to break it," his colleague said. "From now until this is resolved it's important that you work with us. What do you say?"
"I don't know," Lucas said. So they produced Linda again, who told him about the hashish. Nuala and Sonia brought it through every week, she explained. They brought back weapons for Palestinian militias that sometimes collaborated with Shin Bet, like the Black Falcons or the Communist faction. They also sometimes brought Mister Stanley's Colombian cocaine for the militia's elite. Recently they had provided explosives from Iran for De Kuff's band of syn-cretists, who had some demented scheme involving the Haram. Linda claimed she had happened on it by accident and Sonia had confessed all to her.
But, Lucas thought, nursing his jaw, if anyone had destructive plans for the Haram, it would be the militants of Kfar Gottlieb, the superpatriotic creators of Abu Baraka—hardly De Kuff and Raziel's group of Kabbalist aesthetes, of that he felt reasonably certain.
Lucas, not in the mood to argue, decided to sort it out later. Meanwhile, Linda cried a lot and Lucas said OK to whatever they told him.
Sometime during the night Ernest from the Human Rights Coalition showed up at the settlement's gate. He had driven from the border with a nervous Palestinian driver to pick up Linda. The chaverim allowed Lucas to go along.
"How did you end up there?" Ernest asked Lucas.
"Long story," Lucas said. "I thought you were away."
"I was at a conference in Prague. But when I got back yesterday, I was told that Linda was here."
"Told by who?"
"We have some contacts here," Ernest said. "Not everybody who lives in Kfar Gottlieb shares the prevailing ideology. But I had to come myself."
He turned to glance at Linda in the back seat, who was pretending sleep. Ernest had had to come himself because he was one of the few people who could pass in increasingly precarious safety from Gaza City to the settlements.
He and Lucas exchanged a look.
"Did anyone get the women out?" Lucas asked. "Sonia?"
"Nuala and Miss Henderson are back at the Children's Foundation compound. Sonia's at the beach."
"The beach," Lucas repeated dully.
"You'll see," Ernest said. "So, what are they saying in the settlements? You look like you got roughed up. You can get some first aid at the beach."
"We can stop looking for Abu Baraka. Abu Baraka is them. What beach?"
"Figures," said Ernest. Linda fidgeted, as if in her sleep. "What else do they say?"
"They say God is on their side. And they're trying to plant some story on me."
"They're the left hand of God," Ernest mused. "The right one too."
"You know what I think," Lucas said. "God's going to get His fucking hand cut off someday." He was startled by a scream from Linda. He turned and saw she had put her hands over her ears.
"I guess there should be a trial," Lucas went on. He was half asleep himself. "After the Gnostic revolution, when the tikkun is restored, we'll put the Old Dear in a cage in Pisa and test His sanity. I personally don't think He'll score very well."
"Ask Him where he's been," Ernest suggested.
"A cage in Pisa," Lucas insisted. "Ask Him where he's been and what the fuck He thinks He's doing with his bombs and booms and thunder, and us running shitless around ground zero while He rings our hats. Ask for a poetry sample. He made Leviathan, but can He scan? I mean, I'm sorry, but desert sunsets and similar shit are not poetry."
"But He is poetry, Chris," Ernest said. "And the bombs are ours, not His. Anyway, He's got to be better than Ezra Pound."
"Two bearded old bums," Lucas declared, "and they both belong in cages."
"What about the settlers in Kfar Gottlieb?" Ernest asked. "Do they think God wants peace or war?"
"As far as I can make it out," Lucas said, "sometimes He wants both. Usually at different times."
"How can you laugh at that?" Linda demanded angrily, although they hadn't been, really. "It's historically valid."
44
FRESH FROM the wrath of the prophets, Lucas found himself at the foggy edge of the cold Philistine Sea, wandering among Hellenized youths wearing tiny, tight bathing suits. He had just reclaimed his rental car, showered, changed his shirt and put on a pair of baggy khaki shorts from his overnight bag. He was looking for Sonia, who was somewhere on the beach.
The Hellenized youths were mainly off-duty members of the Israeli navy. Their base straddled the Green Line, lying partly in the Gaza Strip and partly in Israel proper. Finally Lucas came upon Sonia, playing in one of their volleyball games. She wore a pale blue bathing suit. When he called her out, another girl was waiting to take her place in the game.
"Sort of consorting with the enemy, aren't you?" Lucas asked her.
"Who? These kids? They're no enemies of mine. I often stop here on the way to the Strip. They've always got a spare pass."
"Just another one of those anomalies of war, I guess."
"Chris, I'm not at war with anyone. What happened to your face? It's all swollen."
"I don't think anything's broken except my bridge. I have
to try and bend it back into shape. I've got a loose tooth."
"Did you get hit?"
"I got beat up at Kfar Gottlieb. Ernest tells me I'm not the first reporter who's been beaten up there."
"We should get some disinfectant cream or something."
"It's all right."
He took her by the arm and walked her along the water line, the wash of the slow waves breaking at their ankles.
"I just had it put to me that you're running hash between T.V. and the Strip."
"Who put it to you?"
"Hell," Lucas said, "I was hoping you might deny it. It didn't sound true."
"I do deny it," she said. "Of course I deny it. Do you really imagine I'm some kind of crazy drug queen?"
"Well, no," Lucas said. "But the settlers say it. What are they talking about?"
"About Nuala," she said.
"Shit," said Lucas. "I knew it! And you've been riding with her."
"I didn't know about it until the last time I came over. She's not doing it for profit, you know. It's some setup between Rashid and the Party fraction and Shabak. What do the settlers care? They must know that kind of shit goes on."
"Well, if you were after Abu Baraka," Lucas said, "it would be a way of making trouble for you. Because Abu Baraka is them. It's the settlers at Kfar Gottlieb. And the same goes for Nuala. She can't collaborate with dirty deals and crusade against the settlers at the same time. It just confirms all their suspicions."
"Who told them anyway?" Sonia asked.
"Linda. She's one of them. I mean, she was there when I got jumped on. She says she's seen large quantities of hash move and Nuala's carrying it."
"That rotten little milk-white bitch," Sonia said without force. "How about her? But she hasn't seen anything. I don't believe it. Someone told her."
"Well, there's more to it. They're blaming us for Lenny's death. They also say Nuala was running explosives. And they seem to think you were in on it. That the explosives were going to Raziel and De Kuff. Your guys."
Sonia laughed. "Explosives? They can't believe that."
"I don't know what they believe. But they want to lay a story on me. A news story. About a plan to damage the Haram. A sort of Willie Ludlum thing."
They had come to the rolls of razor wire that marked the end of the beach. The two of them stood looking down at it for a few moments and then about-faced and began to walk back the way they had come. Suddenly Sonia bolted from his side and was running into the waves, losing her footing, gaining it again, throwing herself headlong at chest level into an oncoming wave, disappearing, then appearing on the far side of the break. She swam parallel with the shore for a couple of minutes, then eased onto a wave and rode it to shore, staggering out of the surf where Lucas was walking.
"How many rides have you taken with Nuala?"
"I can't remember."
"How many?"
"Half a dozen over time. That was it."
"Enough to be recognized. And probably photographed. Why didn't you tell me she was running dope?"
"How could I tell you?"
"I don't know. I was riding with her, though. You might have tipped me."
"I thought you were tight with Nuala."
"Not really."
"Well, if they've got me," she said, "they've got you. Especially after yesterday."
They walked on. "You should have confided in me," he said.
"What do they want you to do?"
"Stripping it down, I'd say they want me to write something. A version of something."
"A true version of something?"
"Their version of truth. In their version, I think I'm off the hook. If I write it."
They walked up from the water and Sonia went through security into the women's locker room to change.
When they had driven halfway to Jerusalem, leaving the coast road, Lucas said, "It must have to do with the Abu Baraka business. You and I and Nuala are all involved in it. We're a weak link."
They drove on in silence for a while.
"I had a dream," Lucas said. "At least I think it was a dream. Maybe it was a hallucination. I was talking to Rudolph Steiner's little daughter, Diphtheria."
"There's a lot of bad Ex around," Sonia said. "Really. Down in Tel Aviv. All over. Someone's slipping it in the felafels. Or maybe in hash. What did little Diphtheria have to say?"
"She seemed to think like Linda Ericksen. One thing she said, though—she said, 'What people think, will be.'"
"Gosh," Sonia said. "Remember when we thought that was good? Where did you get the bad Ex?"
"I don't know. I had the dream in the Holy Sepulchre."
"It's a creepy place," Sonia said. "You shouldn't go there."
They fell silent for a few miles.
"I had a funny conversation with Janusz Zimmer a while ago," she said. "Like he was warning me about this. About some kind of underground."
"I'll call him," Lucas said.
"Be careful," she said. "He seems sort of off the deep end. And he's been keeping company with Linda."
"Christ," Lucas said. "Who's who? What do people want?"
It was hard to tell who anyone was and what they wanted because the emergency basis on which the state proceeded created constant improvisations and impersonations. Organs that were not in fact of the state represented themselves as being so. State organs pretended to be non-state, or anti-state, or the organs of other states, including enemy ones. Many people with firsthand knowledge of official security and military procedures had separated themselves from the relevant organizations, or partly separated themselves, or were pretending to have separated themselves, or had turned militantly against the relevant organs while pretending to work for them, or were working for the relevant organs while pretending to have turned militantly against them, or were unsure whither they had turned. Some people worked simply for fun or money. Then there were the pious and the patriots.
"Do you really think they care," Sonia asked, "if anyone knows they're slapping Palestinian kids around? People like the settlers at Kfar Gottlieb don't care that much about world opinion."
"I think somebody wants something on you, Sonia. I think we should see Ernest. I don't like this crap about the Haram. If anybody wanted to blow the place, it would be them. To build the Temple, right?"
"There's a demonstration on the Ninth of Av," she said. "During the summer, the day both Temples were destroyed. There always is. The faithful demonstrate. The Palestinians demonstrate. People get killed, usually Palestinians. You know," she said, "I better have a word with Nuala."
"While you're at it," Lucas said, "check with Raziel."
45
BACK IN JERUSALEM, Lucas drove Sonia to the bungalow in Ein Kerem. The place was quiet, the garden deserted.
"I'll be back," he told her. "Get some rest."
He drove the rental car to the garage of his downtown apartment building and went upstairs to shower and change clothes and minister to his wounds with aspirin and Band-Aids. It occurred to him that he might find a way out of their political difficulties by invoking nationality.
Despite what many in the region believed, and despite America's patronal relationship with the State of Israel, it was often difficult to bring the superpowerful weight of the Republic to bear on behalf of its private citizens. It helped to be perceived as a person of particular value, but since Israel was chock-a-block with individuals whose names and organizations resounded with political mellifluousness at home, the competition was stiff. Influence talked; snide journalists and colored ex-Fidelistas hoofed it.
Given the situation, Lucas was compelled to fall back on the goodwill of his crony Sylvia Chin. Although she was a small, solitary device in the giant machine of U.S. diplomatic research and information, he had found her disproportionately clever, discreet and resourceful. When he called her at the office, she agreed to meet him at a café on the edge of the Machaneh Yehuda market.
Sylvia arrived in a modest silk dress, her slender thr
oat adorned with an amber necklace. An expertly applied film of ointments concealed a tiny scar left by the nose ring she had worn in Palo Alto and removed on the day of her foreign-service exam. The hucksters of the market sang Ruritanian songs to her.
"Christopher," she told him at once, "I think you're in trouble." She frowned at his swollen face.
"I went to the Strip the other day. I saw some shit."
Sylvia looked coolly around the café.
"Did I tell you about our big drug enforcement operation here? Not just down in Tel Aviv but up here."
"I think you've referred to it."
"Well, I'll tell you, Chris, when the Latin lovers of the DEA get their big flat feet in the door, nothing gets them out. Now they're being romanced by Shabak and Mossad, which is really an irony when you think about it."
"Why's that?"
"Well, the last time Mossad helped out the DEA was in Thailand, when it penetrated a major heroin operation as a special favor to Uncle Sam-san. Mossad took the sucker over and ran it themselves, for spare change. So you'd think DEA would learn something."
"If DEA ever learned something," Lucas said, "the entire international narcotics industry would collapse."
"Right," said Sylvia. "Well, let me tell you something. One of your NGO buddies, the Irish girl, and her main squeeze the doctor, came to us for a visa yesterday. She seemed to think we owed her one. I think it was because her Shabak control told her we'd fix her up. She's bandying your name around quite a lot. You better watch it. You made a couple of significant shit lists."
"Great," Lucas said.
Sylvia leaned forward slightly and lowered her voice. "Something struck me during my conversation with Nuala. Our chat about her visa. Know what it was?"
Lucas considered the question for a moment. "If somebody over there really wanted to help her," he said, "they'd get her—"
Sylvia raised a finger to her lips and very quietly finished his sentence for him. "A false passport. Phony papers. They wouldn't send her shnorring for a visa."
"They're cutting her loose," Lucas said.