Blood Rules

by John Trenhaile

  Celestine’s head was going round and round. She didn’t know if Hakkim had lied to her or not. All she knew was that she’d run out of options.

  “He wrote the card,” she heard herself say, “but how do you know he posted it?”

  Gazit’s eyebrows rose and he spoke a few quiet words of Hebrew to the nearest man, who scowled and shrugged. Someone brought Gazit a phone. He dialed. He kept his eyes on her face throughout what followed.

  “Hello? Ganei Hamat Hotel? I want to speak to one of your guests, his name is Sharett…. ”

  He spoke English, so that she would be able to follow everything.

  “Hello, yes … no reply from the room, I see. But he is still staying there? … Yes. Give me the manager, please, my name is Avshalom Gazit.”

  There was a long wait while they fetched the manager. The pain in Celestine’s side was spreading outward, down into her stomach.

  “Yes … yes, I’m that Gazit. You have a guest staying in your hotel, my old friend Raful Sharett; can you confirm that? … You can.” Another pause. “He is on a two-day tour of the Sea of Galilee. Thank you.”

  He was putting down the phone. “Describe him,” she heard a voice say. Her own.

  “Wait,” Gazit commanded down the phone. “This may touch on security. Describe Sharett to me.”

  She knew from Gazit’s smile that he was enjoying this little triumph, that he was glad to be asked to request a description. The smile was an active, living thing.

  “Yes? Yes … about one-seventy pounds, yes … um-hm. Okay.” He replaced the receiver and looked at Celestine for a long time through those faintly mocking eyes of his. Then he said, “Balding, fat, so high, so heavy … what did you think he would say, eh?”

  Celestine stared straight ahead of her, praying to God to staunch the pain in her abdomen.

  “Before,” Gazit said, “I frankly admit I thought you were insane, at the end of your days, harmless. Now I know you are part of a trap I can tell you that your age and health will not save you. Come, madam, tell us everything, tell us the truth now, or I shall hand you over to Shin Bet.”

  “I have told you the truth. Every word.”

  “No, every word is a lie. Let us review what we know. I killed your husband. He was financing the PLO, he was their biggest supporter. Did you know that?”

  “Yes.”

  This answer took him aback.

  “I knew what he was doing, but he did not.”

  “Explain.”

  “He was an idealist. He thought the Zionists had stolen the land from the Palestinians, whom he loved. He thought that a great evil. He trusted the Palestinian leaders. He did not realize they were using his money to buy cars and apartments in Paris and guns. He thought they would use what he gave them to house their people, find alternatives, work for the foundation of a democratic state where Arab and Jew could live and work side by side.”

  “No banker would ever believe such a fairy tale.”

  “That’s what you thought when you killed him. That is what I thought, too. I even warned him that he might be murdered one day. He just laughed.”

  “He laughed before I killed him too.”

  She looked at Gazit, hating him then, and said bitterly, “He thought you must be a friend. He thought everyone was his friend.”

  “And that is why he got his granddaughter to let me in?”

  “Leila had been told over and over again: Never let anyone into the house. Anyone! Even if you know the person, wait, let someone else decide to open the door.”

  “She disobeyed—why?”

  “My God, weren’t you ever a child? Anyway … she never got over it.”

  “Oh? I am sorry for her; no doubt that is why she blew up Sharett’s daughter.”

  Celestine stared. “She—”

  “You didn’t know? I’m surprised; I imagined it would have been a matter for pride in your family. She killed the daughter, and Sharett’s wife committed suicide. She, to use your own phrase, never got over it.”

  “Nor did Sharett.”

  “No.”

  “That’s why he’s on the plane, isn’t it? So he can have his revenge.”

  From the slight creasing of his forehead, she guessed the thought had not crossed his mind.

  “Do you have a passenger list, General? Have you checked all the names? Do you recognize any aliases, have you cross-checked the list against your own forged passports?”

  He did not know. He kept his face impassive, but he could not keep this certainty from her: he did not know.

  “I understand about revenge,” she went on quickly. “I’ve thought about it for years. I wanted to kill you for so long. It faded, like toothache. There but not there. Hate’s negative. Love’s positive. I love Robbie, and Colin too. I’m going to save them.”

  When he was silent, she knew what he was thinking: It’s odd this woman doesn’t have a weapon. Strange, how telepathy could work.

  “If I were still driven by hate, I wouldn’t be here. I’d be in some bar, drunk, cursing you, cursing Israel, wasting my energy. Hate does that to you, when you’re old and pathetic. It’s love that brought me here.”

  “Did you love your husband?”

  She smiled in appreciation of his simple psychology. “Oh, yes. I used to think he was part of the old Lebanon. The good old days, you know?”

  “And wasn’t he?”

  She shook her head. “When I looked back, I saw the parties, the drinking, the beach. Restaurants. Talk into the night about books and politics. Good business, money. Cars. Friends without number. Lebanon, Lebanon.”

  Celestine’s silence was more eloquent than words.

  “There never was an old Lebanon,” she said suddenly. “Myth. All of it.”

  Gazit did not move a muscle. Only his eyes clouded a little, and at last he said, “You make it sound like Israel.”

  She looked him full in the face, then, and could see that he shared her emotion: two old people who’d served different but equally romantic lies and were tired.

  “When you do the right thing,” she said, “it’s often for the wrong reason. More usually, it’s for no reason that anyone can understand. You came in 1978, and again in 1982, and you pounded us into the ground. You slashed and you burned. You stood by while the Phalange butchered their way through the refugee camps, and some of us cheered. You claimed to do all that for the safety of Israel; you said it was necessary, but you were muddled and you were frightened, and so you lied a lot. ‘Surgical precision bombing'; how we used to smile. Whenever you blew up an apartment building you told the world it was ‘surgical precision bombing,’ that the PLO leadership had been there moments before, such a pity! But now we know that your pilots came in over the sea at nearly the speed of sound, with one hand they were flying their planes and in the other they held photographs of the apartment building they’d been told to bomb. Have you tried doing that? Vroom-vroom, I used to say, what fun, I could do that to Tel Aviv; where can I sign up for flying school? Vroom-vroom.”

  “We did what was necessary.” His voice was cold. “For the salvation of Israel.”

  “As I now do what is necessary for the salvation of Robbie. I’m too exhausted to give you a good reason for my coming here. Just love keeps me going. Hate wouldn’t do that. You said this Sharett was your friend. You love him, I saw the worry in your face. He’s not at Tiberias. Why don’t you phone that hotel manager again and get him to describe your friend’s peculiarity?”

  “What peculiarity?”

  “He’s your friend, my God, not mine. How should I know?”

  The room was hushed, pregnant with possibilities. She’d rambled her way thus far, done what she had to do, and now let it all be in the hands of God. Nausea reasserted itself, the pain in her middle was growing worse, she had gone as far as she could go, and this was the end.

  There was a muttered conference. The men were subdued now, speaking without benefit of violent gestures, lost in a consensus of ignora
nce. When Gazit finally called for the phone to be brought, there was no opposition.

  It took an age for him to reestablish contact with the hotel manager. Celestine lay back on the sofa. She stared at one corner of the ceiling, where spiders’ cobwebs interlaced, and wondered who looked after Gazit.

  “Hello,” she heard him say at last, but as if he were in another room instead of within a few inches of her. “Look, we have a problem, all right? This man Sharett, your guest, how many times have you met him? … Um-hm. And when he is speaking to you, does he have a … a kind of nervous habit, a mannerism? … Nothing, I see. Let me try this on you: Have you ever seen him wink and shrug his shoulder when he laughs? … Yes, it’s kind of hard to describe, I know, I know that!”

  She lay there and stared at the ceiling and she thought, If I were that hotel manager I’d answer, Yes, sure, what the hell, anything to get rid of this nebbish.

  Then she heard Gazit speak. “Say that again?” That’s what he said, very low, maybe like a man at prayer, a supplicant.

  There was a silence.

  “The guy doesn’t do a Raful,” predicted another voice, close to where she was lying, and this man too was hushed.

  Gazit slowly revolved until he was looking at the one who’d just spoken. “The guy,” he said, “doesn’t smile. Or laugh. Ever.” He twisted his head around to look at each of his men in turn, and said, “He doesn’t … ever … laugh.”

  Another silence. Then Gazit was snapping the fingers of his free hand to summon his radio operator; a string of orders in Hebrew; the phone smashing back down onto its cradle; one man running out the front door and coming back moments later with a newspaper that all of them read, standing, while they mouthed names.

  They were checking the passenger list for anything familiar, anything suspicious, and Celestine knew hope. For the next couple of hours there was merely a string of radio messages and phone calls, while she lay quietly on her back, forgotten, and watched the spiders. There were three spiders. They did not move. Sometimes, however, they would twitch.

  “All right.” Gazit was standing in front of her, and his voice was urgent. “All right, this is the situation, now listen. The man at Tiberias, the man who posted the card, is not Sharett. We flew somebody up there with a wire photograph and the hotel manager is adamant: not Sharett. One of the passengers aboard that plane is called Randolph Stone. The photocopied pages you brought here were taken from this Stone’s passport. Our people in Tel Aviv confirm that some years ago Sharett signed out a forged passport in that name, to be used by a subordinate, who later died in circumstances where we would not expect the passport back again. Now, madam, you can sit up and prepare yourself, because the Shin Bet guys are coming and you will have to tell them your story again, from the start.”

  “Give me some water,” she croaked. “Please.”

  This time there was no hesitation; she could have asked for the Temple of Solomon and they’d have rung a contractor. She did sit up. She made an effort. But the stiletto of pain that drove into her side was as real as any blade, and she fainted before the water could touch her lips.

  She came to on a stretcher, with Gazit staring down at her with an expression she could not fathom. Somebody lifted the stretcher and the room wobbled.

  “Where are you taking me?” she asked, surprised to hear the words come out right.

  “To the hospital.”

  “No. Take me home.”

  The stretcher hovered for a moment; then Gazit jerked his head, the room wobbled again, and they had set her down.

  “I’ve told you everything. I can’t tell you any more. Send me home. Over the border. You can do that, I know.”

  He hesitated. “The road is rough.”

  “But you want me out, yes, I know. So send me up to Kharif.” She managed to smile. “You know the way.”

  She felt him take her hand and through it communicate his own awesome doubts. She squeezed his fingers. They’d deadened the pain, but she was fading and she didn’t want it to happen here.

  “You owe me,” she said quietly. And then, “Save my Robbie. A life for a life.”

  “I will try,” he said stiffly. “You have convinced me. To convince others may not be so easy.”

  She squeezed his hand again, and when this time he returned the pressure she knew she had won everything and closed her eyes, serene. Her last thought before she slept was of dear dead foolish Ibrahim: she wondered how he had managed to look after himself all those years in Paradise, without her.

  After a sojourn in darkness she entered upon a strange state, neither waking nor sleeping but in transit. She was aware of the ambulance, or whatever was carrying her, bumping along poor roads; it was hot outside and the vehicle’s air-conditioning couldn’t cope, but she scarcely felt the heat. The Israeli medics were good. They gave good shots. Their shots were as good as Gazit’s had been, all those years ago.

  She slept again, waking to darkness. The road, if anything, had worsened. She sensed she was alone and that they had crossed the border into Lebanon; it felt like home. That was all right, then.

  She slept and did not sleep. The sound of an engine, all-pervasive until now, was absent. How long ago had the engine stopped? She didn’t know. Through her haze of unconsciousness she was aware of being carried, but she was having such a lovely dream about Robbie that she refused to leave it. Let them carry her where the hell they liked: to hell, if they wanted. All her friends would be there … back off, that’s too frightening to be funny….

  She felt so calm about the whole thing, that was the amazing part. She had expected this to be stressful, and it turned out to be not drowning but waving after all. Back to the dream, now: Robbie and Kharif, and Leila too, only she was younger than Robbie, just a girl, how strange

  It was Kharif. Her own bedroom. She lay on the bed with a blanket thrown over her, carelessly, not covering her legs, which were cold. The dream. No, not the dream. Azizza stood at the foot of the bed. Celestine stared at her, wondering what she might be doing in her dream, until it dawned that this was reality. Azizza cried. Celestine couldn’t understand that. She’d gone to Israel, done what she could to save Robbie, made her peace with Gazit, had not an enemy in the world. Why cry?

  Azizza stepped aside. No, she was pushed. How annoying. Feisal stood where Azizza had been a moment before. His face spat malice.

  “Are you happy, Mother?” His voice came to her as if wafted up from the depths of Hades. “Did you achieve our downfall?”

  For a moment she stared at him in silence. She wanted to speak. She knew that time was short. But it was important to savor each dwindling moment.

  “Of course,” she said at last. Yes, the words sounded in the silence; she wasn’t dreaming. She could speak. “Now let Mama get a little sleep, mm?”

  She tried to roll over, blot out the sight of him, but her body would not respond. Damn nuisance!

  The pain was coming back. Celestine tensed. But on and on it came, surpassing all she had endured before; she felt as though someone were inflating her insides like a football, she could not bear this

  Azizza started forward; Feisal thrust her back again; she swung her fist at him but he grabbed it and slapped her face.

  “Izza!” she cried. “Izza, don’t!”

  But Azizza fought Feisal like a wildcat: sinuously, cruelly. He cried out when her nails lacerated his cheek. Celestine saw her son standing there at the foot of the bed, one palm clapped to his face and an expression of astonishment stealing over his countenance. The door crashed open, Feisal’s guards…. She heard a shot. Azizza fell forward, clutching her stomach, and as the echo rolled over Celestine, so too did the blanket of pain that God was slowly drawing up her body to cover her face; but not before she could see that she would have at least one old friend to chat with wherever she was going.

  She murmured, “Thank you.” She died.

  23 JULY:

  EARLY EVENING:

  AL MAHRA, SOUTH YEMENr />
  LEILA was in the cockpit.She sat there motionless and silent and alone. The Iranians’ helicopter was coming in to land. There would be messages for her. She did not care. She was so tired. The grand masters who sat beyond the horizon, the champions who presented themselves in the lists of these great tourneys of the mind, had given up trying to raise her on the radio. She knew what that meant. Negotiation had been crossed off the list of strategies. They would be turning their attention to the underwater charts. A submarine, of course.

  She knew when sunset was, when the moon rose, what depth of waters lay behind the plane in the Gulf of Aden. By now, “they” would know too. They would find a way of circumventing the Iranian frigate. They would land the team on the beach half an hour after dark. Perhaps tonight.

  She could not take any more speed. It was making her nauseous and thirsty.

  She looked at her watch. The hands made no sense to her. Like a swimmer struggling against the current, she laboriously matched the angle they made with things she knew. Things she’d learned as a child….

  Two hours to sunset.

  Her walkie-talkie crackled into life. Over the crunch of static she recognized the helicopter pilot’s voice. He spoke a word. !Zalzalah. Earthquake. That was the code word for today. Yes. When she leaned forward to take up the handset it seemed to recede; she watched it helplessly, through tunnel vision that made everything float up and down.

  “El Siif,”! she replied listlessly. The sword.

  “I have messages for you.”

  “I’ll send someone to collect the bag.”

  A few minutes later Selim came to the cockpit, carrying a canvas sack. She made a sign, scarcely perceptible, and he opened it before leaving her alone again. The bag contained emergency rations, revised radio frequencies and codes, an envelope with her name on it. She opened it.

  Randolph Stone, aged fifty, United States passport, born Los Angeles, California, February 4, 1934. He is the one who nearly aborted your efforts. Nothing is known about him. I suggest you kill him immediately if you have not already done so.