Silver ota-1

by Steven Savile

  That shut the little man up.

  Frost turned his back on him and hit the dial-home on his earpiece.

  “Don’t you walk away from me!” the policeman shouted at his back as he walked away.

  Frost ignored him.

  “I said don’t you dare walk away from me!”

  Frost continued to walk away. He’d told the man all he was going to tell him.

  When Lethe picked up all Frost said was, “The idea is to call in the cavalry if I am in trouble. I’ll be here all bloody night trying to explain this away.”

  “And here I am, thinking you were going to say thank you,” Lethe said. “So? What happened? Tell me, tell me. Come on. The only excitement I get is living vicariously through you lot. I want all the gory details.”

  “We got a name: Mabus. There’s not much else to say. A normal day at the office.”

  “Ah, man, you take all the fun out of life, Frosty, you do know that, don’t you?”

  17

  Thirteen Shrieks

  Orla Nyren followed Uzzi through the warren of offices that made up the IDF Intelligence Building. Inside the world of spy versus spy, the Intelligence Directorate was better known as Aman. More than seven thousand people plied their trade in this world of Israeli secrets. Uzzi was Modash, IDF Field Intelligence. Field was something of a euphemism for special measures, which in turn meant collection and elimination. Uzzi Sokol dealt with national security issues inside the Israeli borders. Security, planning, dissemination of intelligence and overseeing foreign emissaries. He was much more than a babysitter.

  Despite his warning, the drive over had been uneventful.

  She had holstered her gun as they entered the building. Her heels clicked sharply on the linoleum-tiled floor.

  He gestured with a finger over his shoulder for her to keep up. The man really grated on her nerves, but he knew things she didn’t, and she was prepared to put up with his macho bullshit until he told her what she needed to know. He knocked sharply on the glass pane in the center of a door, once, and opened it without waiting for whoever was inside to answer.

  “She’s here, sir,” Sokol said. He stepped back to allow Orla to enter the office first. It wao put upirst trace of chivalry the man had shown since she had gotten off the plane.

  The man squeezed in behind the desk barely even looked like a man anymore. The top button of his shirt wouldn’t button up because there just wasn’t enough material in the shirt for it to reach all the way around his enormous neck. He did his best to hide it with a navy blue necktie that looked like a noose. The huge black circles beneath his eyes only added to the illusion. His complexion was sallow, his hair salt-and-peppered at the temples.

  The toad looked deathless. He could have been anything from fifty to one hundred and fifty years old. The only real clue to his age was the memorial plaque to his son, killed in the Yom Kippur War. Shimon would have been fifty five now, which meant he had to be in his early seventies at least. He licked his lips. The way his tongue slipped out put Orla in mind of a toad. He reached out a hand for her to shake.

  His grip was clammy but surprisingly firm for a man of his age. He was the parody of the fat incompetent general right up until the moment he opened his mouth. His voice was like honey. She could imagine thousands of women spending a lot of money to listen to any sex line the man voiced.

  “So pleased you could join us, my dear,” he said, his accent perfect Old School Tie English. “Please, sit down. Make yourself comfortable.” He turned to Sokol. “Uzzi, close the door on your way out. There’s a good man.”

  Sokol didn’t look pleased, being dismissed so matter-of-factly, but he didn’t argue, which meant the toad outranked him comfortably. The IDF was like any sort of military organism; it lived and died by its respect of rank and structure. Sokol was never going to argue with the toad. He closed the door and left them alone.

  “So, tell me, Miss Nyren, how do you like being back in our fair country? It must be very difficult coming back here after what happened in that camp, no?”

  They had done their research. She expected nothing less from Aman. They were methodical. Circumspect. And every bit as dangerous as they were careful. There was nothing hot-headed about Aman’s modus operandi. Stealth, cunning, reason and malice of forethought-those words best described her experience with the organization.

  Orla looked around the room as though admiring the beauty of the landscape beyond these four walls. The toad had decorated in the familiar military austerity chic. He had a row of black-and-white pictures and a single color one of himself. There was a line of books with battered cloth spines and faded gold lettering, and a faded globe with the old territorial boundaries of the fifties. The only concession to decorative softness was a scale mod of a soft top 2CV. It was a curious thing to be the only decoration, and then Orla remembered who the toad was, and why the car was significant to him.

  Gavrel Schnur. It was the car she remembered. The tiny 2CV and the woman. His wife, Dassah, had been killed in a car-bomb attack outside their home in the Ramat district to the north of the city. Gavrel had been a rising star in the Likud party back then. She looked at the figures in one of the black and white photographs and realized it was Menachem Begin, the former Likud prime minister. There was another of him with Shamir and Netanyahu. She remembered Gavrel Schnur as being particularly vocal in his opposition to Palestinian statehood and in support of Jewish settlers in the West Bank and Gaza.

  The PLO had placed the bomb in his car, not expecting his wife to be the one to drive it that day. Not that it really mattered to them one way or the other. Her death had achieved one thing-it had turned Gavrel Schnur into a poster boy for his party. He had stood on the platform in the days immediately after her murder and decried the Palestinians as cowards. He had sworn a vendetta against his wife’s murderers. His rallying cry had been that the Palestinians were a nation of godless terrorists, that death was in their blood, and that he would not rest until they were driven out of Judaea, Samaria and Gaza. And now here he was, guardian of the state’s security. There was something almost ironic about it.

  “It feels like home, Gavrel,” she said, enjoying the slight smile he gave her. They were like players on opposite sides of a card table, each keeping their cards close to their chests.

  “Very good, my dear. You do not disappoint. Tell me, what was it that gave me away?” He licked his lips again.

  “I remembered the car,” she said.

  “Of course you did, of course you did. Everyone remembers my great tragedy. Few remember the great triumphs of my life, but I do not blame them. Sometimes I can barely remember them myself, but Dassah, Dassah I never forget. Even after all these years I still expect her to come home from shopping. That is my great tragedy. But you didn’t come here to talk about my dead wife, did you?”

  She shook her head.

  He shifted his weight in his seat. The leather and wood groaned.

  The story, if she remembered it right, was that Gavrel had gone after his wife’s killers personally. She found it hard to believe, looking at him spread their in the chair, but he had apparently hunted down the bomber and the chemist that had built it, as we as taking out the man who had given the order. Gavrel Schnur did it the Aman way. He watched, gathering intelligence, making plans, until over the course of one long night in Tel Aviv everyone in any way remotely connected with his wife’s death fell victim to what on the surface appeared to be unconnected accidents and random acts of violence. The coincidences racked up and, come dawn, everyone knew Gavrel Schnur had had his retribution. That, more than anything, cemented his place within the political spectrum of the city.

  “I am sure Uzzi explained our interest in your inquiries. Most odd, someone asking after my old friend Akim after all this time. I had thought the world had forgotten him like it has forgotten so much else. But suddenly there his name was. You understand, I am sure, why it raised a red flag with our office. We, of course, did our homework. You
’re a very well connected young woman, Miss Nyren. Friends in those much vaunted ‘high places.’”

  Orla nodded. She didn’t say much. She waited to hear what the toad had to say. In this world, she knew, knowledge was hard currency. The adage that knowledge was power had been invented for the hallowed halls of spydom. Sharing knowledge was a matter of quid pro quo: giving on both sides. She had to decide how much she was willing to give up, and how much she thought she might get in return. She began with the bare minimum, repeating what she had already told Sokol back at the graveside. She outlined the insurance payouts from Humanity Capital, the numbered accounts at Hottinger amp; Cie, with their irregular deposits and withdrawals made by the dead man, and as a coup de grace showed the toad the two different Akim Caspis in the photographs she carried. When she was done she said, “Sokol said I needed to know about the Shrieks? I think now would be a fine time to find out what it is, exactly, that I need to know.”

  The toad nodded, the folds of flesh around his neck rippling. He didn’t seem the least bit surprised to see this second Caspi, or likewise, the least bit curious as to why the impostor had drawn the attention of foreign intelligence. There was something unnerving about the fat man. He seemed far too sure of himself. Orla didn’t like it.

  “They call themselves the Disciples of Judas,” the toad said. “They’ve become known to Aman as the Thirteen Shrieks.”

  “As in screams?”

  “Yes. It is some sort of unholy chorus, I believe. When all of their voices come together, the world will listen. You get the idea. It is all very portentous and not a little insane. What the world is meant to listen to, well, that is not even particularly interesting. They claim that Judas Iscariot was the true Messiah, not Jesus Christ. Shock, horror, I know. It seems the new millennium, even a decade old, is still obsessed with pseudo-historical-religious nonsense. You have to remember, in those days every man and his dog was walking around laiming to be the son of God. Tinker, Tailor, Candlestick Maker, Messiah, Beggar Man, Thief. What’s the difference? That was just the way it was.” The toad shrugged. “I always imagine it was like something out of that Monty Python movie, The Life of Brian, every street corner boasting its own Savior.” He smiled wryly.

  “But, I must admit I have a certain amount of sympathy for their argument. If you think about it rationally, there would be no Christianity today without Judas, would there? No resurrection. No redemption for the sins of the world. No clean slate for humanity. Of course being the Great Facilitator doesn’t automatically make you divine, does it? But, think about it for a moment, if Judas was the true Messiah, I would ask them, what did his death do for mankind? How did his sacrifice redeem us? It didn’t, did it? Or am I missing something?” Schnur said, reasonably. “I look around me today at all of the wars, all of the senseless killing and all that random violence, and wonder if we weren’t actually damned.”

  Orla looked at the fat man as he spread his arms wide.

  “I know, not a terribly fashionable sentiment. I am sorry. Some days I miss Dassah more than others. I find myself given over to melancholic rambling. I have thought about this a lot, though. It is the curse of living in this place and time. What do you think messiah means, Orla?”

  “The son of God,” she said. She knew she was wrong, but she wanted to hear what he said to that.

  “In Hebrew it means Anointed One. There have been any number of messiahs. Did you know that? In the Jewish tradition it was said that a son of the line of King David, a ben yishai, would return to lead the Jews from Exile, rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem and bring about a period of prosperity and peace. In that sense, belief in a messiah was nothing more than a belief in the restoration of Israel and an end to the troubles. Now would be a good time for a new messiah, I think. The messianic ideal changed through time, especially when Judaea was conquered by the Babylonians and under the rule of Emperor Hadrian. New gifts were associated with the word and suddenly they were talking about raising the dead, which is supposed to mark the end of days.

  “In Christian terms the Messiah was the divine one who would initiate the Kingdom of God on earth. Then you have the Ephraitic Messiah, a concept which existed in ancient Judaism and the book of Zerubavel, which tells of a woman named Hephzibah who accompanies the messiah ben Joseph into war with the enemies, where he is killed, and after his death she will save Jerusalem. In our own time the Rabbi of the Lubavitch Hassidim was worshipped as messiah. He never claimed to be the son of God. It’s such a strange thing that it has become so corrupt in meaning because of the rise of Christiany aThe concept of messiah is not part of biblical Judaism, did you know that? No, why should you? It was developed from folk tradition with countless variants, countless understandings of what it truly meant.

  “It’s the subject of Hassidic songs and even occurs in the Babylonian Talmud, but there it is about the time when Jews will regain their independence and all return to the land of Israel. It even says that all prophecies regarding the Messiah are allegorical, and the only thing important is that all religions return to the true religion, that Jews are free and we know the wisdom of the Torah. It’s all a bit different, isn’t it? So even the word messiah is just another thing Christianity has corrupted.”

  Orla didn’t know what to say. She hadn’t come here for a religious studies lesson, but she couldn’t help but think she’d just learned something, even if she wasn’t sure what. “Fascinating,” she said, more out of politeness than true interest.

  “Of course, on a personal level, I always found it fascinating that Judas isn’t mentioned once in the Gospel of Peter. Think about it. What does that tell you? The so-called great betrayer doesn’t even warrant a mention in the first saint’s gospel? That ‘betrayal’ bought this whole mythology we’ve swallowed whole, and it doesn’t even appear in one of the main gospels? But,”-the toad chuckled at the thought before he shared it-“if one is to believe that Judas was in fact the divine object, the-for want of a better word-Messiah, then surely that would turn the thirty pieces of silver that bought our religion into the most holy artifacts known to man, wouldn’t it? Instead of the cross people would be worshipping money.” He placed a single coin on the table between them. It was a new Israeli shekel with the word Yehud written in ancient Hebrew. Silver. “It almost seems like it is that way already, doesn’t it? Money, money, money. Still, they’re all just stories, aren’t they? But it is an interesting turnabout, don’t you think?”

  “Who are they?” Orla asked.

  The toad shrugged, his entire upper body undulating in place with the roll of his shoulders. The flesh of his forearms dug into the edge of the desktop as he leaned toward her. “Who are they indeed? We have as many guesses as there are days in the week. More. There have been a number of suicide bombings and other attacks in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv over the last few years that the Shrieks have laid claim to, but in terms of concrete knowledge we know very little. I would say they are ghosts, but they’re not-they’re more like wraiths. They feed on despair.

  “What we have managed to work out is sketchy at best, but we believe each disciple has his own followers. So rather than one cohesive organization we’re talking about splinter cells that have grown like offshoots from the core group. Essentially you’re looking at thirteen separate organisms, eh with one purpose-to spread terror. And when you have that image firmly rooted in your mind, then, my dear, you are beginning to understand the nature of the Shrieks. Think about the scope of it for a minute.”

  She did. She thought about the thirteen innocent people who, by burning themselves alive in thirteen European cities, started this entire chain of events she found herself caught up in.

  “Last year we did a sweep of the city based on an anonymous tip we’d received. We brought in two men we believed to be fairly well placed within one of the chains. They might have been dog’s bodies for all the use they were to us. If we think of each Shriek as a self-sufficient organism, each one seems to be structured in such a way th
at no one knows who the next step above them in the chain is, or who is two steps below them. They are each responsible for recruiting one man, and one man only, who works directly below them and reports only to them. The identity of their recruit is reported to no one-not even the disciple himself-so no one has a complete picture of how widespread the network is, what positions of authority have been infiltrated. They’re all working blind.

  “That kind of organizational set-up makes it damn near impossible for us to crack open. If we take out one man, we break the chain, but it doesn’t take long for it to grow a new tail. And those left behind simply become a new head for their own serpent. You try infiltrating that kind of set-up. It’s paranoia at its finest. It also means it is damned near impossible to stop them. We’re chasing our tails half the time, their shadows the other half. We hit them, they cut their man free and we’re left with nothing. It’s as simple and frustrating as that.”

  Orla nodded. She’d come across similar protection mechanisms in sleeper cells in Western Europe. It was part of the modern philosophy of fear. It was based upon distrust. No one could afford to trust anyone around them. They expected to be betrayed at any moment, so there were no secret hideouts, no conspiratorial meetings of gunpowder, treason and plot. It was difficult to be betrayed when people didn’t have the slightest clue who you were or, when it came right down to it, whether you even existed. Everyone focused on their own place in the chain.

  In a structure protected by distrust it was amusing that all any of the individual conspirators had to go on was the word of the man above them in the chain that they weren’t alone in what they were doing. She wanted to ask how the disciples disseminated their orders, how the word to fight was passed from link to link without it taking forever. How did the disciples make their will known to others in the chain? It was a basic thing, but in such a fractured chain of command it was hard to imagine them picking up a cell phone and calling the first man on the list beneath their name. She almost laughed at that. She didn’t. Instead she asked, “So the men you caught didn’t talk?”