Doha 12

by Lance Charnes

  Gur stared at his phone’s glowing screen until it turned itself off. The silence in the Suburban festered. He looked outside and realized they were going back the way they’d come, along a highway that cut through a blue-black slot lined with trees. Driving through the dark was an apt metaphor just then.

  His phone rang. Sasha. “Sorry, boss, I lost them in traffic.”

  “Of course you did,” Gur sighed. “It’s that kind of night.”

  FORTY-FIVE: Philadelphia, 5 December

  “So where’s this white van now, Mr. Eldar?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “We didn’t find any bodies, Mr. Eldar.”

  “They were there when we escaped.”

  “No blood, either. These kidnappers, did they bleed?”

  “It started raining hard. Maybe that washed it away.”

  And on it went, five hours in a six-by-eight interview room with an endless line of Philadelphia detectives. Jake gave them the gun, his fingerprints, a DNA swab, and a gunshot residue test. In between cop tag-teams, he worried about Eve and the hours since he’d last talked to her on the phone. He also wondered what the cops were doing to Miriam. He and Miriam had decided on their way back to the parking lot to not mention Hezbollah or anything else that might complicate matters. Was she still following that plan?

  Finally he asked for his phone call. He’d so very much wanted to avoid doing this. “Hello, Gene? It’s Jake. Yeah, I’m still in Philly. Um, look, I’ve got a problem…”

  An hour later, the cops cut him loose. They talked about charging him with possession of an unregistered weapon and discharging a firearm within the city limits, but finally told him it wasn’t worth the effort. “Don’t leave the country,” they warned him as if they meant it, but he could hear the heads shaking as he staggered out of the detectives’ offices into an over-lit corridor that supposedly would take him outside.

  Jake’s brain ached as much as his empty stomach. He didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed. He’d shot two men and got away with it, at least for now. The cops thought he was crazy. As tired, wrung-out and raw as he was, he couldn’t blame them.

  “Jake?”

  He snapped out of his daze and found Miriam parked in a plastic chair near the office door. Her empty shoes were lined up precisely under her chair, her legs outstretched, ankles crossed. With the impression Jake had formed of her, seeing her in her stocking feet was almost like seeing her naked. “Hi. You’re still here.”

  “Of course.” She slipped her feet into her pumps, rocked out of the chair and rolled back her shoulders. Her freshly-arranged hair bun contrasted with the circles under her eyes. “I wanted to make sure you’re all right. They let you go?”

  “Yeah. No evidence anything happened.” He plodded in her direction while he massaged the back of his head. “You have an accent. You didn’t this afternoon.”

  “It comes back when I’m tired or upset.”

  “Hm. How were the police with you?”

  “I’m sure they think I’m insane, but not enough to lock up. What will you do now?”

  He shrugged. His planning horizon had shrunk to less than five minutes. “Don’t know. Get a cab to the station, I guess. Go home, take care of Eve.”

  Miriam checked her watch. “The last train to New York left twenty minutes ago.” She looked down the hall away from Jake, sighed, then turned back to him. “You saved my life. The least I can do is offer you a sofa to sleep on. It’s not much—”

  “No, really, I don’t want to put you out. I’ll get a room downtown here, it’s—”

  “Jake.” Her voice took on a hint of steel. “You risked your life for me. I feel obligated.” Jake opened his mouth to object, but she shot up her hand like a traffic cop signaling “stop.” “No, don’t. I take my obligations seriously. Besides, those people might still be out there, and we have a better chance together than apart. Okay?”

  This was like arguing with Gene. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Good. Are you hungry?”

  “Starving.”

  She almost smiled. “So am I. There’s an IHOP a few blocks from my office, they’re open until two. Let’s get away from this place.”

  The waitress brought their drinks—decaf for Jake, hot tea for Miriam—and bustled away before they could say “thank you.” Miriam hid the lemon slice behind the plate holding the little plastic cream cups.

  The bright lights on the antiseptic white laminate and blond wood and multicolored upholstery made Jake’s eyes buzz and his headache shimmy. It felt like a hangover, minus the drunk beforehand.

  They hadn’t said much in the cab going to Miriam’s car or in her car on their way here. Sitting in the dark was a form of decompression. Now faced with the pitiless light, they exchanged sighs and glum smiles, like at the end of a sub-par blind date.

  “You don’t have an accent,” Miriam finally said. “Why is that?”

  “I was born here. Not here here, Long Island, a place called West Hempstead, heard of it?” She shook her head. “Nobody else has, either.”

  “When did you go to Israel?”

  “’87. I was ten, my sister was twelve. Mom and Dad got sick of Reagan and decided we were going to move to Israel. Next thing I know, we’re in Haifa. Welcome to fifth grade, huh?”

  Miriam cradled her tea mug in both hands. “Are they still there?”

  “Ohhh, yeah. It took Mom and Dad about two years to figure out that the ‘plucky little Israel’ they’d read about for years had turned into the neighborhood bully. They couldn’t admit they’d made a mistake, even with the intifada and Likud running the place.”

  “But you left.”

  “Yeah. Long story.”

  “We have time.”

  “Well, okay. I was in the army, then out of the army. Went to college, met Rinnah, married Rinnah. People were blowing up buses and cafes. We decided we couldn’t deal with walking out the door in the morning and not knowing if we’d ever come home. Plus we wanted kids, and I wanted my kids to be American. So we moved back here.”

  “Rinnah was a sabra?”

  “Yeah. We thought she might have trouble adjusting. But with all the Jews and Arabs in New York, it was like being in Tel Aviv, except the buses and restaurants won’t kill you. Usually.” The corners of her mouth turned up at the idea. “How about you?”

  The waitress delivered their food in a hit-and-run, pancakes and sausage for him, a chicken Caesar salad for her. Miriam didn’t answer until after her second forkful. “I grew up on a kibbutz.”

  “Yeah?”

  She nodded. “In the north, near Netu’a. My parents were old-time socialists, and our kibbutz followed some of the old ways. We grew lemons and avocados. One of the first things I remember, I was maybe five, going with the other children to see our parents working in the orchards. That was their idea of a field trip.”

  He couldn’t see her as a farm girl. He couldn’t see her as a little girl at all; little girls laugh and play and skip and make a mess, like Eve. Miriam was too grown-up to her core. “What happened?”

  “I hated it.” She stabbed her salad. “Especially when I got older. I hated working in the orchards. My father died in a rocket attack, and my mother married another man. I didn’t like him, and I don’t think he liked me. I didn’t want to end up like the older girls, marrying a kibbutznik boy and sacking avocados while I’m six months pregnant. So the day after I turned eighteen, I got a ride to Ma’alot and enlisted.”

  “Why the Border Police?”

  “I wanted to fight. It was 1994, women weren’t allowed in combat in the Army yet. The recruiter said, ‘I can get you a nice clerical job in Zefat, you can visit your family on weekends,’ and I said, ‘I want to get as far from here as I can, what do you have?’ He had the Border Police. I spent three years in Gaza.”

  “Wow. Tough duty. So how’d you end up here?”

  “I met a man.”

  “Your husband?”

  “Yes.�
�� This time, she did smile, very small, almost bashful. “Have you ever seen a Marine in his dress uniform?”

  “The blue coat and white cap? Yeah, they’re sharp.”

  “They’re beautiful. The first time I saw Bill, that’s what he wore. He was an Embassy guard. I went to a party there with my boss, and there he was. We got married a year later and we came here.”

  Jake smiled. “That’s great. Love at first sight.” He watched her eat for a few moments. When the blocks of ice behind her face melted, she was an attractive woman in the same Mediterranean way as Rinnah, with the setting desert sun glowing in her skin.

  “Is that how it was with you and Rinnah?”

  “Pretty much. We met at school, Tel Aviv University. Took us two years to get married, though.”

  “You didn’t have the Marines hurrying you along.”

  “No, we didn’t.” He finished his last mouthful of pancakes, washed it down with coffee, and leaned back in the booth. “So with your husband in the Marines, you must’ve moved around a lot.”

  “No. He went into the Reserves and joined the State Police. We stayed in Cherry Hill the whole time. He went to Iraq and came back. Then he went to Afghanistan…and he didn’t come back.” She dropped her gaze to the remains of her salad, pushed around some lettuce.

  It had been so nice to watch Miriam thaw that he wished he hadn’t asked the question. “What are you going to do now?”

  She glanced up over a forkful of greens, a slice of her previous wariness creeping back into her eyes. “You mean, after what happened today?”

  “Yeah.”

  Miriam chewed with more care than necessary before she answered. “I don’t know. I can’t just lock myself in my apartment. What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know, either. Go home, take care of Eve. Try to keep going, I guess. Watch out for white vans. You got kids?” She shook her head, a sad shake she seemed to have used before. “Got anyone you can be with? Family? Friends?”

  “I’ll be fine.” She rearranged her salad scraps with her fork. “They won’t give up, you know.”

  He hoped she was wrong, but knew she wasn’t. “I know. It’s how they’ve gotten where they are now.”

  “Yes. Our kibbutz was only two kilometers from the border. These thugs were always crossing over, shooting people, or shooting rockets at us from the other side. Once we found a mine in one of our orchards. The army would keep chasing them and killing them and shell them whenever they mortared us, but they kept at it.”

  “They were on their own ground then. It’s different here.”

  “Is it, Jake?” Miriam’s eyes grew heavy and serious. “Is it really?”

  FORTY-SIX: Cherry Hill, 6 December

  “Sorry about this morning.” Jake turned to watch tree-filled suburbia slip by the car window, hoping to cover the flush he felt seeping into his cheeks. “That was a hell of a dream.”

  “You really thought I was Rinnah?” Miriam asked, concentrating on traffic. Her accent was gone again.

  “Yeah. I saw her, like I see you now.” Miriam had wakened him on the sofa. In his dream—vision? hallucination?—Rinnah called his name, standing there fresh from the shower, naked, a white towel wrapped around her hair. He’d wanted her so badly he was sure the pain of it woke him. “Did I…say anything?”

  “Yes, you did. It’s okay, I understand.”

  “Sorry.” Now his cheeks were smoldering. Jake let the fire die down before he went on. “Where are we going?”

  “To the train station. You said we should stay around people, right? So why not a train?”

  Gabir jinked the van to the left so he could see around an SUV to the green Honda they were following. “Why do these people need such damn big cars?” he grumbled.

  “To go with their damn big houses?” Sohrab said. He knelt between the two front bucket seats, one elbow on Ziyad’s seat back. “Rafiq would know.”

  Gabir’s face turned even darker. “Yeah, Rafiq.” He hunched deeper into his black quilted parka. “I say we just drive past and shoot them now. I’m sick of sneaking around.”

  “We can’t be sure we’d kill them,” Sohrab said. “We’ll wait until they stop.”

  “That’s not what the boss wants,” Ziyad said. “He said, ‘follow them.’”

  Gabir laughed. “He’s not here. You want to wrestle with that woman again? Or maybe it’s my turn this time.”

  Ziyad watched the neat houses and lawns stream by, struggling to stay silent. That Zionist labwa was so unlike the soft, pliant women back home. The things he’d felt while her firm, muscular body writhed against his shamed him. Was that why he hadn’t mastered her? Last night he’d prayed for strength, for clarity, and for forgiveness. He hoped Allah listened.

  Kelila drove the Pathfinder three vehicles behind the white van. She pictured Raffi waiting at the airport for the plane that would take Amzi and Natan home. She’d volunteered to do it, but he’d insisted, said it was his responsibility. She’d have reached out to him if the others weren’t watching. He looked so alone, so tired. But something else lurked behind this, a low smolder in his eyes she’d seen a few times before. He was angry. His mood had infected the two men with her.

  “Let’s just run these assholes off the road and finish them here,” Sasha growled. His Russian accent made his Hebrew sound even more aggressive than his words.

  “No, it’s too public,” Kelila said. “Remember, officially we’re not here.”

  “Fuck that. These animals killed Amzi and knocked the hell out of Natan. Let’s get rid of them. David, you ready?”

  David shrugged. “Always am.”

  “No!” Kelila said. “We follow the boss’ orders. Just stick with the plan, okay?”

  “Yes, Mother,” Sasha grumbled.

  No seats were left on the train, of course; there rarely were. Miriam didn’t mind standing for the half-hour trip into Philadelphia; she’d learned how to stand for long stretches in various guard posts ringing the Gaza. She and Jake joined the line of commuters in the aisle as the New Jersey Transit train slid away from the bare-bones Cherry Hill station.

  “Is it always this crowded?” Jake asked.

  “It’s a little light today. It always is around the holidays.”

  She watched Jake take in what she’d grown so used to seeing. Blue bench seats, strip lights, aluminum overhead luggage racks half-full with briefcases and laptop bags, gray walls, dirty windows. Rustling newspapers, laptop keys clicking, murmured phone conversations.

  Jake said, “You look nice.”

  Really? She’d worn a plain black pantsuit, simple pale-green blouse and flat shoes, clothes that would let her move fast if she had to. “Um, thanks.” Jake looked rumpled and tired, his day-old shadow and now-limp shirt collar spoiling the effect of his crisp haircut.

  “Can I borrow your phone? I need to call Eve. I ran mine down yesterday while I was waiting for you.”

  “Okay.” Miriam fished her phone from her purse and handed it to Jake. He thumbed in a number. When he said, “Hi, Monica, it’s Jake,” Miriam tuned out and watched for anyone who seemed out of place. She realized that by looking around and even sometimes making eye contact, she was the suspicious one. Some things you just don’t do on a commuter train.

  Sohrab peeked through the doorway connecting the two train cars. He could just see the back of Eldar’s head; the Schaffer woman must be in front of him. Another man and woman stood behind them and the aisle was packed in front, so they weren’t going anywhere. Good.

  They hadn’t counted on a policeman being parked in front of the Cherry Hill station. They’d have to take the two Jews in the confusion of the Philadelphia station at the other end.

  He checked out the other passengers. Business people in suits, mostly white, absorbed in their reading or their phones. No one paid attention to three casually-dressed men who clearly didn’t belong. His father—a lieutenant colonel in the Revolutionary Guard Corps—had told him many times tha
t when the war between Iran and America finally started, it would be this inattention that would bring the Americans down.

  He turned to Gabir and murmured, “Keep Ziyad behind you. If the woman sees him, she’ll recognize him.” Gabir nodded, accepting the direction without question. Sohrab stood a little straighter. He should have taken over for Kassim yesterday, not Rafiq. After all, he’d be an IRGC officer after he gained more experience with Hezbollah. When he led the men to kill the two Jews today, Alayan would have to value him more than that Westernized mongrel Rafiq.

  Kelila wrapped both hands around a stainless-steel pole near the middle door of the second train car. While she braced against the train’s sway, she examined her fellow riders.

  She noticed three men at the car’s front, warmly dressed in casual work clothes. That alone was unusual. Stranger still, all three were darker than most everyone else on the train.

  Then the smallest of the three turned to look behind him. Their eyes met, then locked. Surprise washed over his face. A flash lit up her brain.

  Yesterday, in the car park. He was the one who’d almost run her down with the van.

  “She’s been frantic ever since you left,” Monica scolded Jake. “All she does is cry.”

  But once Monica handed Eve the phone, only an occasional sniffle broke the silence no matter what Jake said. Not even “I love you, Bunny” could coax a word from her.

  Jake disconnected, knuckled his eyes clear, then returned the phone to Miriam. Once again, a lead brick of guilt weighed down his insides. He should be with his daughter, he told himself, not some woman he barely knew.

  “How is she?” Miriam asked, eyebrows raised.

  He shook his head. “She’s not talking. Hasn’t since Thursday. I want to help her, but I don’t know what to say.” He buried his fists in his coat pockets. A good father would know. What did that say about him? “Anyway, thanks. That’s long distance, I’ll pay you for the call.”