Vicious Circle

by Robert Littell

  Signaling for the next slide, Dror took a sip of water as it was being focused on the screen. “You will all be issued briefing books containing printouts of these slides when we get around to discussing actual squad assignments. For the moment we want to give you the structure of the raid. We propose to set up blocking squads on the alleyways here, here, here and here. Also at the three doors and the loading ramp of the bathhouse. Also on the roofs here, here and here. We’ll post the sniper unit here on the roof of the Hospice Casa Nova, where they’ll have a good line of sight on the target building. Once the escape routes have been blocked off and the snipers are in position, the assault party will come in over the roofs from the northwest. To avoid friendly fire casualties, everyone participating in the raid will be issued a arm band, to be worn above the elbow on the left arm. These red arrows on the slide mark the route the assault party will take up from the street level and over the roofs. There will be sixteen troopers in the assault party, which I will lead. My second will bring up the rear and instantly take over command if I am put out of action. My third will follow twenty meters behind, with the medical unit, and take over if the second is put out of action. The first squad in will be equipped with night vision glasses and secure the stairway. In operations of this nature, everything—everything—depends on achieving surprise. Our only chance to attain surprise, which is essential if we are to free the Rabbi, is to break into the safe house without firing a shot. If the first squad encounters anybody, and by that I mean any body”—this elicited another titter—“you will eliminate him or her with silenced pistols or knives, depending on your distance from the body in question. We will not, I repeat, not take prisoners at this stage—or any stage—of the operation. The second squad coming up behind will be armed with explosives. In all of our past raids on terrorists hideaways, there have been doors, often reinforced with steel plating, to break through. The explosive experts will tape their plastic, fitted with radio-detonated fuses, to the door—an operation that should take no longer than two minutes—at which point they will fall back and let the actual assault squad though. They’ll blow away the door and storm into the hideaway. Okay. Any questions so far?”

  “Will there be any windows in the apartment through which light can enter or terrorists can escape?”

  “The original cassette the terrorists mailed to us after the kidnapping showed the Rabbi and his secretary sitting in front of a bricked-in window. Again, we’re guessing, but we think they will have bricked in the windows so that nobody outside would notice signs of life in the apartment, such as an electric light at night.” Dror made a tick on a file card, and looked up. “That brings us to whom we can expect to find in this safe house.” A full-face and profile of Rabbi Apfulbaum filled the screen. “Study these faces closely. You’ll each get copies. Look at them all day. Memorize them. Get to know them better than you know the faces of your father or brother. Make allowances for the fact that Apfulbaum will have been subjected to a lengthy inquisition. He is fifty-three years of age, five foot nine, extremely thin—around one hundred and thirty pounds—stoop shouldered, with oversized ears and a prominent nose. He will probably be unshaven and disheveled. Without his eyeglasses, which were found at the scene of the kidnapping, he is practically blind, so there’s a good chance he will be squinting. He speaks English and Yiddish and Hebrew and Arabic.”

  Sweeney’s image materialized on the screen, full-face and profile. “This is the American journalist. His name is Max Sweeney. He is forty-three years of age, tall, lean, with curly hair and a high forehead and prominent cheek bones. He has a way of listening with his head tilted to one side because he is deaf in his left ear. He speaks English and understands a few words of Hebrew, but not enough to carry on a conversation. The assault squad will accordingly consist entirely of soldiers fluent in English. In the confusion of combat you may want to order the Rabbi and Sweeney to hit the deck. All such instructions will be given in English.”

  “Is the American being held hostage along with the Rabbi? Will the terrorists kill him if they get the chance?”

  Dror avoided looking at Baruch and Elihu in the balcony. “We don’t know the answer to that one.” He nodded for the next slide. “This is the only known photograph of Abu Bakr, the leader of the so-called Islamic Abu Bakr Brigade. His real name is Ishmael al-Shaath. The police mug shot was taken when he was arrested for attempted murder twenty-three years ago. He was twenty-three years of age at the time, which makes him forty-six today. He is a medical doctor who runs a free clinic in the Old City. He is short and heavy-set. He may be dressed in a western style suit jacket over a long Arab robe. He wears thick eyeglasses, but even with them he is said to suffer from acute tunnel vision that renders him functionally blind. Don’t be deceived by the fact that he is nearly blind—he spent twelve years in prison for attempted murder. We now know that after his release he executed, with his own hand, twenty-four collaborators by shooting them at point-blank range in the brain. He personally executed the driver of the Rabbi’s automobile following the kidnapping, as well as the Rabbi’s secretary. He will in all likelihood be armed with a .22-caliber pistol, but he can only use it accurately at very close ranges.” Dror paused. “Abu Bakr is to be shot on sight, along with any Palestinians found in the hideaway.”

  “Does that include females?”

  “That includes females, yes.”

  “Does that include children?”

  Dror drew a deep breath. “What does it mean, children? Any person found in the hideaway will be an active member of the Islamic Abu Bakr Brigade, and as such, armed. If you don’t shoot them they will surely shoot you.”

  “You said that Abu Bakr operates a clinic. Why don’t we capture him when he goes to work?”

  “It will be too late. The deadline for murdering the Rabbi is the Feast of the Breaking of the Fast, which marks the end of Ramadan. Ramadan ends and the feast begins at sundown tonight, which will occur at exactly eighteen hundred zero six. We will start to move into position when darkness settles over the Old City, which will be at approximately nineteen hundred hours. The full moon will rise at nineteen forty-eight. That gives us forty-eight minutes of total darkness to get in and get out again.”

  “If the deadline for killing the Rabbi is set for the end of Ramadan, what makes you think the terrorists will hold off another two hours?”

  Dror glanced at Zalman Cohen in the back of the balcony. “The Prime Minister has scheduled a press conference for fifteen hundred hours today—he will announce that the government, bowing to pressure from the United States, has agreed to meet the demands of the Abu Bakr Brigade; El Sayyid Nosair, the Palestinian serving a life sentence for killing Rabbi Meir Kahane, along with the Palestinian prisoners, will be released at the Lebanese border at twenty-hundred hours tonight. We expect the terrorists to hold off killing the Rabbi until then, by which time the raid will be over.”

  A short soldier in the back row stood up. “You mentioned that the apartments on the third floor of the bathhouse had two rooms. What if we break through the first door and find a second door?”

  “That’s a good question,” Dror said. “If Abu Bakr and his hostage, or hostages, are barricaded behind a second door, they will obviously know we are there after we blow open the first door. At that point we will try to talk the terrorists into surrendering—we will offer them their lives in exchange for the lives of the two men in the room. The explosive team will tape charges to the second door while we engage Abu Bakr in a dialogue. Depending on his reaction, the terrorists will either open the door and walk out with their hands over their heads, or we will blow our way into the second room and hope for the best.”

  “In the unlikely event that Abu Bakr and the others surrender, do we at this point take prisoners?”

  “No. If we take prisoners, the fundamentalists will only take new hostages and offer to exchange them for these prisoners. Don’t lose sight of the fact that Abu Bakr is a serial murderer. Those who live by
the sword die by the sword. As far as the world will know, they were killed when we stormed the hideaway to free the Rabbi and the American journalist.”

  “Will the Rabbi and the American journalist have any way of knowing we are coming in? I’m asking this because if they had some way of knowing, they might attack the terrorists, or somehow divert them long enough for us to get through the door. At the very least they might hide under a table when the shooting starts …”

  “The answer to your question is: hopefully, yes. Without going into details, we have a method of warning them that a raid will take place. On the other hand, we cannot count on them assisting us in any way whatsoever. We have to go in and do the job ourselves.”

  “How will the different squads communicate with each other during the raid?”

  “They won’t. Squads will know their roles so well they will not have to communicate with each other. Under no circumstance will anyone break radio silence until the operation is completed.” Dror looked around. “If there are no further—”

  In the back of the balcony, Zalman Cohen waved a pudgy hand. “You mentioned at the start of the briefing that everything depended on achieving surprise. How are you planning to slip forty-five men—forty-seven including you and Baruch, who, as I understand it, will be going in with the medical team—into the Old City without someone phoning up CNN to tell them a raid is in progress?”

  At that moment, as if on signal, two soldiers pushing dollies with large cartons on them came through the swinging doors at the back of the theater. Dror flashed a grim smile. “We will get into the Old City without CNN, or the Arabs, knowing about it … by converting to Christianity.”

  FORTY-FIVE

  Id al-Fitr, THE FEAST OF THE BREAKING OF THE FAST, GOT UNDER way as the cry of the muezzin, broadcast from the minaret of the El Khanqa Mosque, drifted over the roofs of the Old City. “Allahu Akbar, Allah Akbar.” Shuffling along unsteadily on his numb legs, Rabbi Apfulbaum kept his right hand glued to the Doctor’s left shoulder as he followed him into the outer room of Abu Bakr’s safe house. “The blind leading the blind,” quipped the Doctor as he steered his guest toward the low round table in the corner.

  “Oh, God, I feel like a fish out of water,” the Rabbi groaned, massaging a wrist where the manacle had rubbed off the hair and chafed his pasty skin. He ironed creases out of his rumpled jacket with his palms, then threaded the fingers of one hand through his unkempt hair as he allowed Ishmael to gently push him down onto a cushion next to the table.

  “It is perfectly normal for you to feel disoriented,” the Doctor said, hiking his long robe and settling onto the cushion next to him. He waved Sweeney toward a cushion across the table. The el-Tel brothers, looking ill at ease (neither of them had ever broken bread with a Jew), took their places opposite the Rabbi. Aown removed the ancient British Webley from his belt and placed it on the floor near his thigh. Petra, who was cooking rice and zucchini and lamb chops on a small portable stove heated by a canister of camping gas, hummed to herself. She seemed very light-hearted. “The feast will be ready in five minutes, please,” she called shyly.

  The Rabbi squinted in confusion. “What feast will be ready in five minutes? Who’s got an appetite at a time like this? For God’s sake, Ishmael, let’s not drag this out.”

  Leaning toward the Rabbi, the Doctor patted the back of his thin wrist. “Isaac, I have magnificent news for you.”

  Apfulbaum’s lips produced a lopsided smirk. “I know, I know. Tonight I will sit at the right hand of God.”

  “It is not that at all,” the Doctor burst out. “The Isra’ilis have given in to our demands. Your Prime Minister himself made the announcement during a public press conference at three this afternoon.”

  Sweeney cocked his good ear. “You’re sure of what you say?”

  “I would have told you sooner,” the Doctor plunged on, “but I wanted to avoid torturing you with false hopes. I waited for the international press to confirm it. The radio has been filled with the news all afternoon. The Jews talk about nothing else, ya’ani. The opposition party denounces the Prime Minister for ceding to terrorism. The mother of a soldier excarnated by a suicide bomber says the life of every Jew is sacred and sides with the Prime Minister. Petra even heard someone grumbling over the Army wavelengths about the government’s shameful capitulation to Islamic terrorists. In any case, I thought it would be a marvelous surprise for you when you sat down to our Feast of the Breaking of the Fast.”

  The Rabbi, swaying slightly from side to side, appeared dazed. He opened his mouth and rolled his eyes and started giggling. Soon he was laughing uncontrollably. He laughed until his chest heaved and sobs emerged from the back of his throat and tears streamed down his sunken cheeks. “Ishmael, Ishmael,” he moaned, and he shook his head and laughed some more. Across the table, the el Tel brothers exchanged puzzled looks. The Rabbi breathed deeply and blotted his eyes on the back of his slit sleeve. When he was able to find his voice, he said, “Being blind is no excuse for not seeing the handwriting on the wall. The Israelis are trying to trick you—”

  “Perhaps I did not explain myself well, Isaac. They’re not saying they are going to negotiate, they’re not stalling for time. They are saying, in front of foreign journalists, in front of television cameras, in front of the world, that El Sayyid Nosair and the Palestinian prisoners will be released at the Lebanese frontier at eight o’clock tonight—that is less than two hours from now.” The Doctor jammed one of his Palestinian Farids into his mouth, lit it with a match and took several shallow puffs. “How could they lie about that, ya’ani? The whole world will be watching! When the prisoners reach the Lebanese side of the frontier, the Arab journalists will interview them. As soon as we hear their voices, we will begin making arrangements for your release.” The Doctor reached over and curled his fingers around the Rabbi’s gaunt neck and pulled him closer so that the bruises on their foreheads were almost touching. “You will surely sit at the right hand of God, my friend,” he said quietly. “But thanks to God, it will not happen tonight. Tonight you will celebrate with us the end of the holy month of Ramadan and the beginning of the rest of your long life.”

  Sweeney remarked, “You actually look disappointed, Rabbi. Anyone else would jump for joy—”

  An eyelid twitched in the Rabbi’s face. Veins stood out in his neck. “Who is this joker, Ishmael?” Before the Doctor could respond, Apfulbaum’s claw-like fingers snaked out and clamped onto his wrist. “You are being naive, ya’ani. Never trust a Jew, ya’ani.” He cackled wildly at his own little joke, then caught himself with a gasp. “You set a deadline, ya’ani. Ramadan has come and gone, ya’ani. It’s the moment of truth. Put up or shut up. I’m betting into four spades, so what. I’ll see your twenty and raise you twenty.”

  From Petra’s Army radio came the static-charged voice of an Israeli reporting, in the shorthand phrases of military Hebrew, from somewhere in the occupied zone. “Arabs … celebrating … fireworks,” the soldier said. “Teenagers … hundreds … dancing … barn fire … chanting Abu Bakr, mujaddid, Abu Bakr, mujaddid. We can hear them up here … hills above the town.”

  The Rabbi’s eyes, bulging and dark, darted in the direction of the green radio on the table near the door. “So what’s that supposed to be?” he wanted to know.

  “We monitor the Army’s wavelengths,” the Doctor explained, flicking ashes onto the floor.

  Apfulbaum snorted in derision. “Oh, for God’s sake, Ishmael, they know you monitor their wavelengths. The last thing they’re going to do is tell you what they’re up to on the radio.”

  Petra added the lamb chops, along with the zucchini and olives, to the steaming pot of couscous. Tugging the scarf over her head down around her neck, using the end of it to grip the handles of the pot, she came over to the table and began spooning food into each bowl.

  The nostrils in the Rabbi’s hawk-like nose flared as he sniffed at his bowl. Very pleased with himself, the Doctor announced, “In your honor, I
saac, the Feast of the Breaking of the Fast is kosher.” He peered across the table in Sweeney’s direction. “Be sure to include that detail in your story, Mr. Sweeney. ‘Arab terrorists serve kosher supper to Jewish hostage.’” He edged the bowl closer to Apfulbaum. “I instructed Petra to purchase the lamb from a kosher butcher in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City. I thought that combining your ritual with mine would give pleasure to you.”

  Petra, who had caught the word kosher, said in Hebrew, “Even the olives are kosher, Mr. Rabbi. They must be because I bought them in the Jewish shop next to the butcher.”

  It took a moment for all this to sink in. Then it dawned on Apfulbaum where he was being held prisoner. “I assumed I was in Aza …”

  “In the eighth century, ya’ani, Imam Ali said, ‘If you want to see a corner of paradise, regard Jerusalem.’”