Raful was running for the helicopter. Men, sheering out of his way. A camera, dropped on the sand, still whirring. Colin raced after Raful, thinking only of the shots that would, must, come from somewhere behind him: “Run!” he shrieked. He was dragging Robbie along like an old duffel bag you humped when you were late for the train; the boy was crying but Colin had no time for that. Fifty yards to the chopper. Forty.
Someone behind him … and the rat-tat-tat of automatic fire.
Sharett slammed into the nearest member of the TV crew, sending him flying. Another man scrambled into the cockpit just as the Mossad agent reached the helicopter and laid hands on his shoulders. Two down, only one more and the pilot
A clang, several clangs. Bullets finding their target.
Feet behind him, very close now. Robbie crying. “Mother!", that’s what he was crying, “Don’t leave her, Dad, don’t, don’t!”
Two Arabs lying on the ground, still as still lifes. Colin thrust the boy at Sharett, who caught him and bundled him into the helicopter. By now the rotors were warmed up, turning at full speed, and Colin had to fight their downdraft. Through the window of the open door he saw two men run toward him in a crouch, zigzagging to avoid the bullets spraying out from the plane.
Suddenly there were no more shots. Colin understood. She had forbidden them to shoot in case Robbie got hit.
The chopper crewmen weren’t armed. Sharett was screaming at the pilot. Colin somehow forced himself into a seat behind. The two other escapers reached the chopper and climbed aboard, falling onto his lap, crushing the breath out of him. The engine changed pitch. They were rising unsteadily from the ground. There was the plane, below them, no longer part of them.
The helicopter slowly veered around to the northwest and began a weaving course away from the site of the downed aircraft. Colin convulsively hugged his son. He had sworn to God to get them out and he’d done it. He’d done it!
“Mummy!” The boy struggled, fought, pounded his father’s body. “You left her,” he screamed. “You left her to die!”
Colin stared at his tortured face. How to explain, where to start?
Somewhere overhead, another loud clang … the pilot was shouting at Raful, who roared back, his voice scarcely more than a whisper above the fearful engine clatter. Out of the corner of his eye Colin saw that they were over the lowest range of foothills, black and forbidding, with a valley coming up.
The chopper dropped fifty feet, and everyone aboard cried out in panic. Then it dipped to the left, lurched, and seemed to lock itself into a tight downward spiral. The pilot was wrestling with the stick, but the angle of their dive deepened. The bottom dropped out of Colin’s stomach. Robbie’s white face was pressed against his, the boy’s body held against him by G-force. The helicopter seemed to stop moving. Then, slowly at first but soon faster and faster, the cabin itself began to spin.
Losing height rapidly now … mustn’t let Robbie burn to death…. Colin saw the ground rushing up, the angle sharp. His chest tightened, air pumped into his stomach, he wanted to shout, No! but nothing came out. Then the helicopter miraculously righted itself for a second and slowed its fatal spin. They were perhaps twenty feet, no more, above the desert. Sharett bailed out, pitching forward in a kind of somersault. Colin didn’t calculate, he just followed. He pushed Robbie in front of him, not waiting for the boy to force himself through the gap before thudding into his back and diving after him, aware of yet another person at his heels.
The world spun crazily. Colin’s shoulder hit the ground first and he screamed as he felt something give. Panic kept him moving. He crawled forward on hands and knees, half conscious but alive: He had to get away before the crash.
He must have dislocated his shoulder, broken his arm, God alone knew in how many places. Couldn’t bear such agony. Bear it! Crawl! The sound of the rotors had risen to a fanatical whine, now right above him, now farther away, and now coming down, coming down
He was on his feet, the horizon rippling ahead of him while his right arm hung uselessly by his side and pain thudded through his skull like a nail battered by a hammer-wielding giant. He cried out with the shock, but still he went forward. Every step he took seemed to jerk his arm out of its socket; he dared not look at it, terrified of seeing it hang by a few bloody threads. He tottered forward, nearly fell, knew that if he did he’d never get up again. And all this occupied no more than a dozen seconds, the space of time it took the helicopter’s engine to give up the ghost.
Colin managed to run a few steps. Then he was flying through the air, gliding horizontally … his injured arm and shoulder erupted into fire and he screamed, flames everywhere, and then through all the pain and the clouds of nausea came realization: his shirt was on fire, the burning he could feel was real, he tried to roll over, couldn’t, metal and glass and chunks of flesh bounced about him while he burned to death
Something hot and heavy enveloped him so that he couldn’t scream, couldn’t even breathe and for a moment he fought this latest threat with a blind intensity that astonished him, even through the burning and the agony. Then darkness descended, though the pain remained. Leila stood on the threshold of the plane’s door, hands by her sides. She did not breathe. She did not swallow. Her eyes did not blink. She watched the helicopter’s precarious progress toward the foothills, knowing that a stray bullet had winged it, doubting if it could gain enough height to clear even that first low barrier. Inside her was merely an arid emptiness. There now remained only one duty left to perform. She must watch until the end. She owed him that.
The helicopter went down at an angle, disappearing behind an outcrop of rock. It had never risen very high, but she knew there was no chance of saving him. She knew what to look for, what to expect.
So it came. A peal of thunder rolled over the desert, yellow and red pillars of flame mushroomed into the sky beyond the first range of hills, and thick black smoke began to drift toward the sea behind her. After a while, she could smell it. The burnt offering. The sacrifice.
Lines wafted into her mind: Scorching winds and seething water in the shade of pitch-black smoke which is neither cool nor refreshing. The Koran’s description of Jahannam. Hell.
She was aware of events unfolding at a vast distance from her, in near but not total silence. Through the windshield she could see the pillar of smoke, listless now, at the mercy of a warm wind. A wind straight from hell.
She had promised Halib to stick with this hijack until their demands had been met. But now none of her demands could be met, because her son was dead.
She had trusted Halib, trusted him more than God. He had betrayed her. Not only here and now, with his cruel withholding of Sharett’s real identity, but before, over the past two years, constantly leading her on to what he knew to be a mirage; and even before that, in New York, when he had come to her and said, “They’re going to kill you.” Even then. And because of him, Robbie was dead.
She did not, could not, cry. Grief would come later. Now all she wanted to do was determine the moment at which she might have stopped Halib and saved Robbie’s life. It seemed important. She needed to know.
The pillar of smoke finally dissipated on the evening air. She watched it dry-eyed, expressionless, while the memories came.
1981: NEW YORK
Out of the blue had arrived an invitation for Colin to spend a year teaching at Columbia University. Leila, bored with motherhood and the rural life, had nagged him to accept, although in truth he hadn’t needed much persuading. She’d expected to fall in love with the city and so it came to pass: the curtain had twitched aside and there lay New York, waiting, star-spangled and exultant in its glory. All its notorious hassles faded into thin air, sucking her into the busy vortex of a dedicated life. When black skateboarders shoved her off the sidewalk, or some storekeeper called her a jerky bitch because she didn’t have anything smaller than a fifty, Leila didn’t care about any of them. The sun was out, the town soared above the East River as a glittering castl
e, and she no longer eked out an existence; New York was where she lived!
A month after they’d settled into their rented Upper West Side house, Halib had come out of nowhere, telephoning after years of absence to set up a mysterious meeting early one morning at the Statue of Liberty. She’d taken the ferry, obeying his injunction to tell no one, not even Colin, and arrived in a cold, all-embracing mist. Halib had materialized out of the veil, clasped her arm, and without any preliminaries said, “Leila, be strong, hold tight … they’re going to kill you. All three of you: Colin and Robbie as well.”
Her head felt as if someone had come up behind and slugged her, hard. She tried to speak but Halib held up a hand.
“The Mossad have tracked you down. Ever since 1974, the business in Beirut, they’ve been interested in you, but England was too hard for them and they had other things on their minds, more important. But now—” He sighed, shook his head. “You are here, in Little Israel, with sayanim behind every lamp post.”
“Sayanim?”
“The Mossad’s helpers. Committed civilians. There are several in your husband’s law faculty at Columbia.”
She could cope with the thought of danger to herself, but to Robbie? No, that was impossible. “What can we do?” Her voice was hushed.
Halib turned his head to look at her properly. He held her gaze for a long time. Then he said, “How is your marriage?”
“All right.”
The words came out pat, so pat that Halib laughed. “Well,” he said, “I ask because you’ve got hard choices ahead of you. What I have to do is get you out of here, back to the Middle East, into a stronghold where nobody can touch you. For you, no problem; but for Colin—”
Even while he spoke her mind was racing ahead to find ways of convincing Colin that this was the only solution. She could picture them in bed, discussing it. She would say this, and he would riposte thus, but she could counter him by pointing out the danger to Robbie and that, naturally, would clinch things.
“I can do that,” she blurted out. “I can convince Colin. Only—”
Halib had always known when to say nothing.
“He only cares about Robbie, now. They’re so close, I …”
She was becoming muddled. Things that a moment ago had seemed so clear now looked fuzzy.
“You want to get the boy out before he betrays you with Colin any further.”
“What?”
“In your position, I’d feel cheated too. Who did the work of bringing him up, eh? Who gave him life, made him what he is while Father was off playing here and there? Of course the boy is betraying you. So. Him but not Colin, eh? Two tickets to Beirut. Not three, two.”
“You’re wrong, you’re wrong. Listen, Halib, shut up about Colin … just tell me, what are we going to do?”
“Study art.”
She stared, used to his extraordinary utterances but floored by this one.
“You should start going to art class. I know the perfect woman, poppet: Cassia Jaccobovitz.”
Mrs. Jaccobovitz, it seemed, had stature. More to the point, she had mature students associated with Columbia University, where Colin was spending his sabbatical year, and they were people Leila ought to get to know.
“The wife of the Dean of the Law School studies with Cassia Jaccobovitz,” Halib said. “You should cultivate her, really you should.”
“Why?”
“She’s nice. Her husband is important. And if I’m to have any chance of protecting you, I need to insulate you, surround you with impeccable people.”
She couldn’t see the connection, no matter how hard she tried, but Halib kept on about the need for her to study art alongside the wife of the Columbia Law dean, and she did not question his judgment. Robbie’s life was at stake; that was all she needed to know.
So her habits changed, along with her friends. After the weekly art class there would be sessions in the Russian Tea Room, or shopping cruises along Fifth. She hosted a lunch party. Everyone loved the Raleighs’ Upper West Side brownstone, commenting on their Shaker furniture, the drapes, Leila’s artful use of mirrors to capture and enhance New York’s turgid daylight. Mrs. Cohen, wife of the Columbia Law dean, proved an interesting companion. First, little confidences passed to and fro, then bigger ones. Hers was not a happy marriage, Mrs. Cohen confided, but then whose was? Leila nodded sagely, implying she could tell a thing or two, had she the mind. The following week, she had the mind. And that was where the double life started to become particularly strange, for she discovered to her surprise that her marriage had turned some kind of invisible corner and was heading for happiness: all because she had set out to live a life of deception at Halib’s behest.
“How’s the poetry coming along?” Colin asked.
They were all in the kitchen: Colin and Robbie at one end of the table, working on their model of the Mayflower, and Leila at the other, poring over her Byron.
“Fine.”
She did not mutter this word to her book, as would have been the case a few months previously. She looked up at Colin in frank appreciation of his concern, wanting him to see how she felt. Deep down, however, she knew the wonderful and by now familiar frisson of deception, because her husband did not know that she was mentally encoding a message to Halib, for inclusion in the personals column of the Village Voice.
Colin had given her a volume of Byron’s poems as an engagement present. It was a common enough edition. She’d shown it to Halib and he’d said, “How interesting, we should use that to invent a code, so we can keep in touch.”
They’d laughed, but he’d shown her how easy it was for two people to make a simple code if they both owned identical editions of the same book. What began as a joke turned into something of an obsession with Leila, much as some people can’t go to bed without first solving the Times crossword. Throughout her marriage she would often send messages to Halib in what they came to call “the Byron code.”
She closed the book, rested her chin in her hand, and said, “I love to see you two guys schlepping around.”
They laughed. “You’re so American, Mum,” Robbie crowed.
“It’s a bit like getting a suntan, I guess: exposure does the job without any conscious input.”
Colin grinned at her and she smiled back. She liked to see them hard at work on their model. How strange, because when they’d started she’d done nothing but complain. They made too much mess, there was glue on the tabletop, they’d never finish it, they’d strain their eyes. What all this meant, of course, was that she resented being excluded from their private world. Now she was glad of it. She actually liked to see father and son happily engaged in some common pursuit, liked it when they went off to sit in the bleachers and watch a stupid ball game, or jogged around the park, or lined up to see the latest Hollywood hit before pigging out at Burger ‘N Beer. Because that meant she was at liberty to pursue her own plans, undisturbed.
It would not always be thus. She was working toward a specific goal: the removal of her son to a place of safety. Not overnight, not next month; but some day before midsummer it would definitely come to pass. July 1, 1982, was the deadline, because that was when Colin’s contract with Columbia expired and he would want to relocate to England.
She could take Robbie away from him. She had that power now, thanks to Halib. But she did not have to decide yet. Perhaps Colin could be made to see, after all, that life in Beirut was the only viable option. Once he knew that she was going to take Robbie to Lebanon anyway, he’d be bound to come too. For the boy’s sake, if not for hers.
Looking down the table at him, a smile in her eyes, she knew another reason why she was glad of his love for their son. When he was with Robbie he could not be
screwing around with some harlot masquerading as a student. She did not want him screwing around with anyone, mainly because she still liked it when he screwed her, even though that didn’t often happen anymore.
She loved her husband. She wanted Colin to come with them.
Yes, she decided, as he bent once more to the rigging, she really, really did. If he said no, it would break her heart. But if anything happened to Robbie, that would kill her. She’d done evil things; she knew that. But her love for Robbie was good. One day, soon now, it would redeem her.
Time passed. Colin was happy in his sabbatical work; Robbie made new friends at school and prospered; she became a competent watercolorist. A family in a strange land, the Raleighs coalesced under pressure into something better than before. And Leila kept the faith with Halib, each week scanning the personals for a message from her brother and sometimes encoding a reply. She had a purpose in life and, despite her fear, she was happier than at any time in the past five years.
Almost before she knew it, spring had come to New York, bringing unaccustomed early warmth along with a social invitation….
“So beautiful,” Leila breathed. “So moving.”
They were standing in the gallery of the vast Temple Emanu-El on Fifth Avenue and East 65th, looking down at the dim interior and trying to work out how on earth young David would be able to stand it, “it” being his imminent bar mitzvah. So much to learn and remember, Mrs. Katz sighed mournfully, and only another couple of months to the ceremony; so that Leila, right on cue, could come in with reassurance that if anybody in this world could master the intricacies of the Torah it was David Katz, so like his father.
“I’m glad to have seen this place at last,” Leila wound up. “You must be very, very proud to think of what’s going to happen here.”
“Well, I just hope the weather gets cooler. I mean, it’s only April, for goodness’ sake!” Geula Katz fanned herself with her purse. Leila smiled dutiful agreement, although truth to tell in here she was cold. Something about the dimly lit, cavernous synagogue struck her as watchful, even a touch sinister.
Blood Rules Page 33