The Masada Complex

by Avraham Azrieli

  She pushed harder, and Abu Faddah resisted, but the tip of the dagger inched closer and closer. In a second it would penetrate his good eye, then his brain.

  The commander’s words were followed by the sound of a weapon being cocked. Another burst of Hebrew words from the commander had no effect on the Israeli soldier-she leaned downward with all her might, pushing the dagger at his eye.

  A gunshot exploded and she screamed in pain and dropped, hugging her knee to her chest. The hostages wailed in fear.

  Abu Faddah knew he had only a sliver of time before the Israeli commander corrected his aim. But there was no place to hide, no door to escape. He staggered to the cliff’s edge, preferring to join Faddah at the bottom rather than be shot in the leg and captured by the cursed Jews.

  The Israeli commander shouted, “Stop!”

  The hostages struggled to free themselves.

  More rocks tumbled from the barricade. “Stop!”

  Abu Faddah put his foot on the low wall, ready to jump. He noticed the steel cable slithering over the ledge into the room. He turned and pulled hard, freeing the cable from under the soldier. She looked up and began to crawl toward him.

  He pulled the grenade from his pocket.

  She groaned, dragging one leg on the ground, leaving a dark trail behind her as she clawed her way closer. Two of the hostages were on their feet, kicking loose the strings that bound them. On the opposite end of the room, the Israeli commander pushed more rocks off the barricade and squeezed in through the gap.

  Abu Faddah found the fuse ring and pulled.

  The woman soldier grasped for his leg, missing it.

  He tossed the grenade to the center of the room.

  She grabbed his shoe.

  Abu Faddah kicked free, leaving his shoe in her hand. He gripped the cable and leaped into the empty air just as a terrible blast pounded his ears.

  Almost three decades later…

  Arizona, Sunday, August 3

  A horse whinnied outside the banquet hall, barely audible over the murmur of the guests. Rabbi Josh Frank glanced over his shoulder toward the tall doors in the rear, wondering whether the Phoenician Resort allowed horses on its grounds. The darkened hall was packed with round tables and smiling faces.

  On the stage, Dick Drexel of Jab Magazine declared, “Welcome to the third annual award ceremony for Truth in Reporting!” His grinning face filled the huge plasma screen above.

  Amidst the burst of applause, Rabbi Josh thought he heard the horse again. He turned to Masada. “Are you ready?”

  “Not really.” She picked a cherry tomato from her small dinner salad and ate it. “Tastes like water.”

  He took her hand and felt her shiver. The hall was cooled by powerful AC units that pumped chilled air through large ceiling vents. The LCD banner along the base of the stage showed the time and the temperature outside: 7:30 p.m. — 112°F

  Masada leaned closer to him. “I can’t stand these things, but-”

  “Necessary evil?”

  Her white teeth showed against the tanned skin. She had shoulder-length dark hair that tended to fall over her face, adding another layer of mystery to this woman, who had enchanted him for nearly a year. She had lectured at his synagogue last summer, part of a speakers series organized by Professor Levy Silver, who was sitting across the table now, watching them with a satisfied smile. After the lecture, Rabbi Josh and Masada had lingered in the synagogue parking lot, arguing about her theme, America is the New Jewish Homeland. When she got into her Corvette, he asked her out, shocking himself-he had not gone on a date since his wife had died. But Masada agreed, and they met for a small dinner and a large bottle of wine, argued about Israel’s relations with Diaspora Jews, and made out like teenagers at her front door. They continued to meet and argue heatedly, but their intellectual fencing, rather than snuff out their passion, seemed to fuel it.

  Masada spoke into his ear, “You think they’ll notice if I bail out?”

  Rabbi Josh laughed, rubbing his five o’clock shadow.

  Across the table, Professor Levy Silver winked behind his thick, black-rimmed glasses and said, “Kinderlakh, you’re making the lights flicker.” He wore a red bowtie and green suspenders-they had teased him earlier about dressing up like a professorial cliche, to which he had replied, tugging at his gray goatee, “Every retired professor is a cliche.”

  Masada flexed her leg under the table, tilting her foot from side to side. Rabbi Josh had asked her about the bulky knee brace, but she dodged the question. He wasn’t offended. Even though she spoke and wrote like a native English speaker, Masada was still a sabra immigrant whose occasional abrasiveness meant no harm.

  The sound of muffled banging made them both turn. In the back of the hall, valet boys rushed in from the parking lot and shut the tall doors.

  On the stage, Drexel announced, “It is my pleasure to welcome this year’s winner for Truth in Reporting, the author and journalist, Masada El-Tal!”

  Rabbi Josh watched Masada make her way to the stage, pacing herself to hide the limp. She waved with a slender hand, acknowledging the applause.

  Drexel had to stand on his toes to peck her cheek. Back at the mike, he said, “Since earning her journalism degree at Arizona State over two decades ago, Masada has dedicated her life to the truth, expounding the accomplishments of good people, and exposing the failings of prominent ones. Her relentless pursuit of the truth has earned her many awards-”

  “And enemies,” she interrupted him.

  “And critics,” Drexel said, “and a Pulitzer Prize last year for her book,” he glanced at his notes, “Holy Land to Disneyland: Sabra Immigrants Embracing the American Dream.”

  The audience clapped politely, and Rabbi Josh smiled. He had suggested she should write a companion book about American Jews who had immigrated successfully to Israel.

  “Masada’s contributions,” Drexel continued, “to our Grand Canyon State, go beyond mere words. She is the only investigative reporter in modern history to bring down two state governors-each of them impeached based on her findings. Now that’s an laudable record!”

  “Not so laudable for the state of Arizona,” Masada said.

  Rabbi Josh laughed, together with the whole crowd.

  “The prize committee,” Drexel continued, “voted to award this year’s prize to Masada El-Tal for her most recent expose in Jab Magazine, which was titled: Senator Mahoney: For Sale. That report, as you know, rattled political fault lines from Arizona to Washington and all the way to Jerusalem!”

  The audience applauded meekly, which did not surprise Rabbi Josh. By exposing a bribe, Masada had forced Senator Jim Mahoney to resign and face a federal indictment. But the old man was still Arizona’s most admired politician, even in disgrace. His illustrious career, culminating in chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a viable presidential run, which he lost by a small margin, had brought Arizona a great deal of pride, as well as a number of lucrative Federal projects. According to Masada’s article, the senator had taken a large cash amount in exchange for pushing through a piece of legislation called The U.S.-Israel Mutual Defense Act. But she was yet to trace the source of the money, though all fingers pointed at the State of Israel as the likely culprit, despite its formal denials.

  A man in a blue jacket rushed onto the stage and whispered to Drexel, whose smile vanished. Shading his eyes, Drexel strained to see the rear of the hall. Rabbi Josh looked back and saw the valet boys lined up with their backs pressed against the tall doors.

  Drexel handed Masada a silver statue. “Congratulations!”

  “Thanks you.” She lifted the statue. “This boy is perched on a bundle of newspapers, announcing the headlines through a tin cone. That’s how they sold news before the Internet.”

  Rabbi Josh glanced again at the rear of the hall. Was someone trying to get in?

  “But whether we deliver the news by shouting it,” she continued, “by writing it, or by sending tiny electronic
signals to your iPhone, we’re only the messengers. When money changes hands for political favors, both payer and recipient betray the public, not the reporter who exposes the crime.”

  Rabbi Josh watched her, his fingers mulling the lapel pin on his jacket, a tiny combination of the U.S. and Israeli flags, joined at the stem.

  “I receive many e-mails from readers,” she said, “asking why a former kibbutznik and IDF veteran would publish an article that hurt Israel. They are correct. Every time I write about Israel, I’m torn between my heart and my professional duty. Last week, a woman told me about her visit to King Herod’s ancient fort atop the mountain I’m named for, how she cried for the Jewish zealots who killed their children and themselves on Mount Masada rather than become slaves to the Romans. But I worry about today’s Jewish children.”

  A murmur passed through the hall.

  “In Haifa, kids board a bus to school but instead arrive at the cemetery. In Jerusalem, yeshiva students study a page of Talmud and a moment later cover it with their blood. Teenagers on the Tel Aviv beachfront eat their last pizza ever. And boys who should be dancing at college parties are instead writhing in their burning tanks in the Galilee or near Gaza.”

  The last image generated a groan from the audience.

  “The Zionist dream of Israel as a safe haven for the Jewish people has failed to materialize. For decades now, major wars have interspersed with small wars, ending young, promising lives, leaving behind widows and orphans. Rockets continue to hit kindergartens in southern Israel, missiles land on factories in the north, and Palestinian men and women strap on explosive belts and go to a shopping mall. Since earning independence as a small Jewish state shortly after the Holocaust, in the six decades that have passed, not a single family in Israel has been spared grief, either for a son, lost in service to his country, a mother, blown apart in the marketplace, or for a grandfather, shot dead on his way to the synagogue.”

  Rabbi Josh glanced around the hall, where hundreds of faces watched Masada in silence, mesmerized by her intense eloquence.

  “Morally speaking,” she continued, “Arab terrorists and their sponsors are evil. Legally, Israel’s endless wars have been a matter of self-defense. And strategically, if Syria or Iran use their stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, Israel would rightfully retaliate with its own doomsday arsenal. But what’s really best for humanity? Or for the Jewish people? Killing again and again for decades, even if in justifiable preemption of attacks, eventually transforms the defender into an aggressor, the victim into an oppressor, the freedom-seeker into a occupier. And while Israel continues to fight its enemies, its own social fabric is fraying by factional infighting and constant political discord, and the emotional gap between Israelis and Diaspora Jews is widening.”

  A few heads nodded.

  “It’s painful,” Masada said, “to watch my former homeland bend under the pressures of senseless hate and lost friendships. But the perspective of many years away from Israel gives me the emotional detachment one needs in order to ponder the unthinkable: Is modern Israel, like the multiple Israelite kingdoms of ancient times, merely another failed experiment in Jewish sovereignty?”

  Rabbi Josh shifted in his seat, inhaled deeply, and exhaled. Masada looked at him from the stage, waiting, as if the hall was empty, as if she expected him to stand up and fire a retort.

  The silence was broken by banging on the doors in the back.

  Drexel said, “Shit!”

  The valet boys in the rear pressed against the doors. Muffled shouts filtered through, and a horse neighed outside.

  “I’m grateful,” Masada again raised the silver statue, “as an immigrant to this wonderful country, for the opportunities given me here. It’s America’s greatest virtue, that we open our doors to all who wish to work hard and prosper here, while keeping out only those who hate us.”

  The tall doors in the back of the hall burst open, swung to the sides and hit the walls with a bang. Rabbi Josh watched as a white horse, front hooves thrashing in the air, lunged through. The rider, in a long coat and a wide-brim hat, made the horse trot down the aisle between the tables toward the stage, horseshoes drumming on the marble floor. The audience stood up, applauding enthusiastically.

  Masada watched the senator press the stirrups to control the agitated horse, which rose on its rear legs before submitting to its master. The excited audience was on its feet, certain that this was part of the entertainment-a scripted stunt, orchestrated to amuse them. Masada knew better. She realized that, from this day on, her life would be dominated by tonight’s events.

  She saw Rabbi Josh stand up, his broad shoulders tense, and take a step toward the advancing horse. Masada signaled him to sit down. She clutched the silver newsboy, weighing it as a weapon.

  At the foot of the stage, the senator dismounted, turned the huffing beast around, and sent it back to the doors with a slap on the rear. “Sorry, my friends,” he boomed, “but the bastards from Washington took away my limo.”

  Another laughter exploded in the hall.

  “Miss El-Tal!” He approached the podium, and a slanted grin cut across his wind-beaten face. “Truth in reporting. What a novel idea!”

  “The truth hurts,” Masada said.

  His gaze fixed on her. “The heat must have scorched my old brain-wasn’t there also the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?”

  The audience clapped.

  Senator Mahoney stomped his boot on the stage and shifted his Stetson so it sat sideways on his head. “I’ve been clean all these years, while you media folks sifted through my garbage bins for dirt. Finally, you got me! Yes, I took money from an old buddy for legislation I would have sponsored anyway. But what about-”

  “No buts, Senator,” Masada said. “You took it, you’re dirty. End of a true story.”

  “My friends,” he surveyed the audience, “can you believe this girl? How can it be a true story if it’s not the whole story?” He pointed a stained finger at Masada. “A fat bag of greenbacks doesn’t come easy. Who’s really behind that Judah’s Filth-”

  “Judah’s Fist is a secret Jewish organization that logically must be controlled and financed by Israeli agents. That’s my logic.”

  “Logic isn’t fact. I didn’t ask for that money.” He rapped his coat pocket. “Sure as hell needed it to buy campaign ads from you media folks.”

  People laughed, though more hesitantly. The senator, who had lost a bitter and expensive presidential campaign two years earlier, was facing a tough reelection campaign for his senate seat against a contender who had been pounding at Mahoney’s his flip-flop positions on immigration reform.

  “Needed the dough,” he continued, “but never asked for it. Oh, no. They pulled a fast one on us, and you, Prize Girl, didn’t bother looking further.”

  “Don’t worry,” she said, “I’ll keep looking.”

  “Too late. Damage is done. When I was lying, broken up, at Hanoi Hilton, I swore never to be locked up again. Never!” His right hand swung back his coat, hooking it on the butt of a holstered revolver, which only Masada could see.

  “Are you done?”

  “It’s you who’s done. Give up the prize!”

  She tossed the silver statue, which fell on the stage.

  He stuck a cigarette between his lips and lit it with a plastic lighter, which he chucked after the statue. “When I was growing up here, before y’all came and spoiled this pristine desert, we used our guns on real snakes.” He blew smoke at Masada. “You kept your eyes open and put a bullet in that ugly head, because if the rattler bit your ride, you’d be walking home on your own sore feet.”

  Few in the audience laughed.

  The senator’s lips twisted in a lopsided grin. “Should have thrown you out when you showed up at my ranch with your rude questions and damn spy video.”

  Masada groaned at the mention of the video. Professor Silver must be frozen with fear. She had promised him the video would remain secret.

&nb
sp; The huge revolver appeared in Mahoney’s hand, the long barrel aimed at her face

  The audience gasped.

  “Senator,” she thickened her voice, “make my day.”

  “This is your day, girl.”

  “Guns don’t scare me. And I’m no girl.”

  “You’re no lady either,” Mahoney said, blowing smoke, “forking out lies to ruin the lives of those dedicated to public service.”

  “At least I’m not a coward, hiding behind a big gun.”

  “You kill without bullets. Words. More potent than a diamondback’s venom.”

  The smoke stung her eyes, and Masada realized what was coming. “Don’t do it. Think about your legacy.”

  “Ha!” His thumb cocked the hammer.

  Masada stepped forward, the gun an inch from her nose. “A bullet won’t bring an end to this story. It’s not over yet!”

  Senator Mahoney drew long on his cigarette. “Yes, it is. This horse is done riding.”

  “Senator!”

  His forefinger rested on the trigger. “See you in hell, girl.”

  When the shot sounded, Professor Levy Silver was ready with his fingers in his ears. Rabbi Josh ran to the stage, while the banquet hall erupted with screams, chairs falling over, glassware breaking as people pushed and shoved to get away. The professor snatched Masada’s handbag from her seat and hurried to the exit, elbowing his way through the mayhem. He wished he had more time to consider all the facts, weigh the options, and form a strategy, but there was no time. The senator had referred to the spy video, which Masada’s expose hadn’t mentioned. Now the authorities would be looking. It must be destroyed!

  Professor Silver huddled behind a potted cactus in the corner of the lobby and inserted his hand into Masada’s handbag, feeling around for the memory stick he had given her. He felt papers, keys, pens, and her Blackberry, but not what he was looking for.

  Where did she hide it?

  He peeked from behind the thick trunk of the cactus as a group of police officers ran through the lobby into the hall. His watch showed 7:51 p.m. He rummaged through her bag again. Was the memory stick in her Corvette?