Designation Gold

by Richard Marcinko

Avi turned left and drove past a tall wooden fence line, behind which stood perhaps half a dozen narrow two-story town house villas in various stages of construction. Avi pointed at the fence, on which was attached an artist’s rendering showing a dozen or so villas. “Those places will sell for more than three-quarters of a million dollars apiece,” he said. “Ten years ago, you could have bought most of the land on the block for that kind of money.” He turned right on a narrow, divided road that ran parallel to the Mediterranean shoreline. I remembered garbage-strewn sand dunes and patches of sharp-bladed salt grass. Now I saw manicured walkways, lighted tennis courts, wine bars, and glassed-in restaurants that looked like the ones that sit on the most exclusive portions of the French Riviera.

  He veered right onto a narrow side street that I remembered, drove another hundred yards, then pulled over in front of a pair of unfamiliar, heavy ornamental steel gates that sat athwart a stone driveway. Avi killed the engine and shut the lights off, pulled the ignition key, and handed it to me. “Suitcases.”

  We climbed out. I stretched—the Israelis still favor small cars. It is a throwback, I believe, to their frugal past (not to mention forty-plus years of Arab oil boycotts). I opened the trunk, Wonder and I retrieved the bags, and I slammed it shut.

  The noise was answered with barking and growling from behind the gates. I heard the sound of paws scraping at the metal.

  Avi dropped his suitcase in front of a tall, arched security gate set into the eight-foot-high stucco wall that was topped with shards of broken glass. It, like the wall and driveway gates, had been built since I’d last been here. The barks and growls shifted. “Sheket, klavim—shaddup, dogs,” Avi growled back. The noise stopped. He extracted a key from his pocket, turned the lock on the gate, and cracked it open. Immediately, a pair of huge black hairy faces insinuated themselves into the opening. Avi used his knee to move the dogs backward. “Shev—sit,” he commanded. Obviously, the dogs obeyed, because he pushed the gate open and beckoned for us to follow him. “C’mon, c’mon,” he said.

  We followed him through the gate into a courtyard lit by lanterns, just in time to watch as two of the biggest Bouviers I’d ever seen sprang from their “sit-stay” position, jumped Avi’s bones, and sent him sprawling ass over teakettle on the patterned stone that lead to the front door.

  “See how well trained they are?” he laughed between licks. He brushed the dogs off and sat up, his smiling face wet. You could see he was happy to be home.

  The Bouvier closest to me turned and sniffed in my direction. “This is Bilbo,” Avi said, by way of introduction. “The smaller one is Cleo.”

  Smaller? They looked the same size to me—large economy size. Bilbo approached cautiously. He sniffed my hand, my knee, and my crotch, did the same to Wonder, then walked back to where Avi had pulled himself to his feet and licked the Israeli’s hand.

  Cleo was more standoffish. She skirted me, approached Wonder and growled. “Cleo—” Avi spoke to the dog in rapid Hebrew. Immediately, there was a change in the animal’s attitude. She sat directly in front of Wonder and offered him her paw.

  Wonder took it, shook it, then ruffled the Bouvier behind the ears. “How do I tell her ’Good dog?’ ”

  “To-vah kal-bah” Avi said, speaking slowly and distinctly.

  Wonder stroked the dog and repeated the Hebrew. Cleo cocked her head and stared at him, then stood on her hind legs and licked his face.

  I looked at Avi. “I think that’s a match made in heaven,” I said.

  Behind Avi, lights were going on throughout the house. Then the portico lit up and the front door opened.

  Miriam Ben Gal stood in silhouette, framed by the doorway. “Dick, Ahlan W’asahlan—welcome.”

  I gave her a warm hug. “Shalom, Mikki. It’s been a while.”

  She looked over at Wonder and extended her hand. “I’m Mikki,” she said. “You must be the one Avi calls Stevie Wonder.” She pronounced it Vundaire and it had never sounded better. “Welcome to Israel.”

  She stood aside so that we could move inside. “It’s been a long time, Dick.”

  “Too long,” I said. I meant it, too. “I hope we’re not intruding, Mikki.”

  “This is the Middle East,” she said reproachfully. “In this part of the world we do things without reservations. Besides, the kids are long gone—Ori is married with his own children. They live in Ramat Aviv. Tamar’s at Technion, working on a master’s degree in economics. We’re what you Americans call vatchamacallit empty-nestairs these days. Just looking for some company. So, when Avi called from the airport to say you were with him, I told him I’d add some water to the soup and dig out two extra towels.”

  After dinner, I attached the phone to a jack in the living room, got a dial tone, and punched the JCS number into the keypad. I got through to Kenny Ross immediately. The admiral had good news and bad news for me. The good news was that the Chairman had done his job: the FORTE satellite was in position. There’d been all sorts of hang-ups—lots of back and forth with the Agency. But in the end, Ken Ross said, Langley had quite unexpectedly withdrawn its objections and FORTE had been shifted.

  It had made its first pass twenty minutes ago—and it had taken a perceptible reading. Shit—that meant the location was ripe for plucking. Excited as a motherplucker, I scribbled the coordinates down as Kenny read them off to me.

  I waved at Avi and mouthed the word map. He slid one over to me. They’d set the fucking site up just southwest of Damascus, between the Lebanese border and the demilitarized zone—convenient for Hizballah tangos, hard for the United Nations to monitor, and close enough to Israel to allow the use of conventional artillery—even 155mm would do the job—tipped with nuclear shells.

  Then came the bad news. My operation was to be put on hold mode until certain problems could be solved back in Washington and here in Jerusalem.

  Screw hold mode—I wanted specifics. “They’re so far above my pay grade,” Kenny told me, “don’t even bother to ask.”

  I asked anyway. After all, we were on a secure line and I had nothing to lose.

  “It has something to do with the White House and Langley and the Israelis.” Kenny Ross sighed. “I’m not privy to the details, but from what General Crocker tells me, the Israelis want something done a certain way, and at a certain time, and until it is, they won’t cooperate. All I know is that General C is steamed. I mean, he’s gol-darned hot.”

  “All the better to let me operate,” I said. “Time is short, Admiral—I want these suckers.”

  “So do we—believe me. But let me be explicit here, Dick, because my behind is on the line, too. Your op is shut down until you hear from me, or from General Crocker. Full stop. End of story.” There was a silence on the line. “Gotta go,” Ken Ross’s voice came hack at me.

  “Admiral—”

  “What, Dick?” There was exasperation in his tone.

  I waved frantically at Avi and mimed for him to get the laptop we’d taken from Lantos’s office. “Admiral, can you connect your end to a computer?”

  I could hear Ken Ross’s muffled voice as he clapped his palm over the phone and asked one of his people the same question.

  “They tell me we can, if you give us a minute or so, then hang up and redial.” He paused. “What’s the point?”

  “Before there’s any final decision,” I said. “I want the general to look at something.”

  “There’s already been a final decision.” Ken Ross said.

  “Admiral—”

  I guess the tone of my voice was urgent enough to convince him, because his own tone softened. “Okay, Dick—you send me what you have within the next five minutes and I’ll pass it on. But get your stuff here quick—he’s in a meeting, he’s already screaming for me, and I’m keeping him waiting because I’m talking to you.”

  “Roger, roger.”

  “Oh, and don’t count on anything—the Chairman’s up against it politically and I don’t think he’s going to be able to make any
changes right now.”

  “I try never to assume anything, Admiral.” I rang off. “Avi—”

  I explained what I wanted to do.

  “It’s a great idea,” Avi said. “Except we have a slight problem.”

  “Which is?”

  “Which is that the only modem in the house is made of high explosive.”

  He had a point. “Can’t we use your desktop computer?” There was a big, boxy IBM on a table in Avi’s den.

  “Nope.” He shook his head. “No modem.” He thought for a second. ’” We can attach the laptop to the printer, we can print whatever you want, and fax your admiral. I have a fax machine.”

  “How quickly?”

  “How much do you want to print up?”

  “Everything.”

  Avi scratched at his chin. “Twenty, twenty-five minutes.” He saw my incredulous look. “Hey, Dick, not everybody has a laser printer. I gave mine to Ori as a wedding present—all I have is my old wheel printer, which prints four minutes a page.”

  “You mean four pages a minute.”

  “No—I mean four minutes a page.”

  Doom on Dickie. I redialed Ken Ross and explained that the situation had gone to TARFU. He wasn’t happy. (And that, gentle reader, is an understatement.)

  But while he pissed and moaned, groaned, sighed, and threatened, Ken Ross stayed the course. “Just get me the gol-darn information,” he said, obviously upset as heck at me. “I’ll do what I can.”

  I set the receiver down and told Avi what I hoped would happen when Tom Crocker got the materials we’d taken from Lantos’s computer. He immediately excused himself and went downstairs to his basement office. Seconds later, I heard the tap-tap-tapping of the aged printer as it ground out the faxes we’d have to send.

  Three-quarters of an hour later I had ten pages of material to transmit. I sent the Chairman the weapons accounts, and a few pages from Lantos’s other financial portfolios, including the trust account he’d set up for Bart Wyeth in the Cayman Islands.

  By 2230, Mikki’d long ago gone to bed. Wonder and I sat in the living room, discussing our alternatives—there seemed to be precious few of them—and sipping red wine grown in Israeli vineyards that had been first planted with grapes long before B.C. turned into A.D. As we spoke, we could hear Avi, engaged in what sounded like a series of angry conversations in full auto Uzi submachine-gun Hebrew. When Wonder and I turned in at 0145, trudging upstairs to the second-floor guest room that we’d share, he was still there, on the phone, arguing.

  Then, all of a sudden it was 0320, and I sensed the dogs moving. Well, to be accurate, I heard their toenails tapping impatiently on the stone floors as they scurried back and forth. I rolled out of bed and into a pair of shorts, and slipped downstairs. Avi was standing in the night-lighted foyer in shorts and sandals, shrugging into a T-shirt. Bilbo’s and Cleo’s eyes were bright and their behavior animated, in anticipation of doggy fun.

  “It’s the only time I can get away with it anymore—walking them on the beach,” Avi explained as we stole out of the house, the two Bouviers bounding in tight circles around us, and strolled 150 yards to a long, steep stairway leading down from the street to the sea. “Used to be, everybody took their dogs down to the beach. Let ’em run and do their business. About five years ago the first condo went up—that one over there—” He pointed toward a ten-story, glass-and-brick tower 200 yards to his left. “They charged a quarter of a mil for a two-bedroom flat with a view of the Mediterranean—and they got it. There was even a waiting list,” he said incredulously

  “A quarter million shekels?”

  “Shekels, hell—a quarter of a million dollars. Cash money. Greenbacks. Anyway, then half a dozen other condos went up—and the prices went even higher, and now there are all sorts of regulations about what you can and you can’t do—including letting dogs poop on all that nouveau-riche sand.”

  He turned north, his left shoulder facing the sea, and we trudged along the high water mark, the dogs running long circles around us. We walked side by side for some minutes in silence, our hands behind our backs, lost in thought the way you can get lost in thought on a quiet beach in the middle of the night, with the sounds of water, waves, and wind playing around you.

  Finally, Avi said, “You know this isn’t going to be easy if we proceed.”

  I punched my left palm with my right hand. “Hey, c’mon, Avi—what’s life without a little challenge every now and then?”

  “No—I mean it. I’ve been told in no uncertain terms that what you want to do is out of the question.”

  “Fine—you pull out if you have to. I’ll go it alone.”

  He looked north and gave a short, low whistle, which brought the dogs romping back in our direction. “That’s not the point. There’s no question about my pulling out—we began this together, and it’ll finish that way.”

  I liked the sentiment, but wondered why. There was no overt reason for Avi to back me to the point of losing his own career, and I told him so.

  “You don’t understand,” he said. “There’s a lot more at stake here than Ehud Golan—although I’m convinced he’s a goddamn traitor—or Werner Lantos, or even all that smuggled dual-use equipment and Russian weapons. Sure, that’s all important. But what I’m really fighting for—what I’m willing to put my career on the line for—is the very soul of the State of Israel, Dick.”

  I didn’t understand what he was getting at, and told him so.

  “The point,” he said, “is that we’ve gotten ourselves in the middle of a complicated political situation. You started all of this with the blessing of your Chairman. I began with the blessings of my director. But things have changed.”

  “My Chairman still wants these cocksuckers done. He wants the site destroyed.”

  “So does my boss. Don’t forget, before he ran AMAN he was an operator. He went to Tunis and personally pulled the trigger on Abu Jihad. He wants us to go and do what has to be done. But as you know we’ve recently had a change in governments here.”

  “So?”

  “The emphasis has shifted. There’s a lot of pressure being put on the United States to keep its nose out of the region and let our government handle things its own way.”

  “That’s crazy, Avi—”

  “You’re right. It is crazy. But the fact of the matter is that there are a lot of people in Washington who’d like to see a shift in the way the U.S. does business in the Middle East. And our new government is making things easy for them. Now, as a soldier, I’m expected to carry out my orders and protect my country. No argument there. But as an Israeli—I was born here, too—I have a larger mission. That mission, as I’ve always seen it, is to make sure that my country doesn’t become …”—he groped for the right word—“… become immoral. Not immoral in the Sodom and Gomorrah sense, but in the political sense. I think there’s a danger of that happening now—and I’m willing to put my career on the line to stop it, just as you are.” He paused and peered over his shoulder. “The bottom line is that the political situation has shifted—here, and in Washington. Which is why your chairman has reneged.”

  “But he hasn’t reneged—he’s just put things on hold.”

  “Right. Sure.” The irony in Avi’s tone was evident. “Dick, face facts: it’s become obvious to me over the past few hours that your Chairman is fighting a nasty ground campaign with the White House, the State Department, the CIA, and who knows who else.”

  I started to say something, but Avi kept going. “I know all of this because my boss at AMAN is fighting the same damn fight tonight with the ministers in Jerusalem. And you know what he’s being told? ’Hands off the Russian Mafiya. Hands off Werner Lantos. Hands off everything.’ I work for a terrific guy, just like you do. But right now the director of AMAN seems to be getting screwed, and I’m the one he’s taking it out on.” He bent down, picked a shell off the sand, and threw it out into the water. “Things have changed in Israel, Dick. It started with Rabin’s as
sassination. And now—now, the state’s whole gestalt has, has …” He searched for the right word. “Mutated.” He looked at me, a pained, bemused smile on his face. “Oy, gestalt—has it ever mutated.”

  Avi balled both hands into fists. “Like tonight. Your op was shut down. Well, mine was, too. ’Break off. Do not cooperate with the American. Full stop.’ ”

  “Is that what you want?”

  “Of course not.”

  “So, let’s fuck ’em. Screw the apparatchiks. Fuck the bureaucrats. We just keep going—attack, attack, attack. Let ’em pick up the fucking pieces after we’re finished. In the meanwhile, we get to kick ass and take names and maybe even kill a few japs in the process.”

  “That’s too glib an answer, Dick—it’s the kind of bullshit you like to throw around to keep people off guard. You know very well we can’t go off like a couple of cowboys. There’s too much at stake.”

  He was right, of course. And, despite my rogue rhetoric, there was no way I’d risk putting my nation in jeopardy. “That’s why it was so crucial to get that information to Ken Ross.”

  “You think it will change the Chairman’s mind?”

  “I don’t think the Chairman’s mind need changing—but he needs something to help him secure the kind of political backup that’ll allow him to act. I believe we got it for him.”

  Avi sighed. “It’s gotten all so fucking complicated,” he said. He laughed bitterly. “Things were so much easier when it was just the two of us, sneaking around the Bekáa.”

  “With you making sure we always pronounced tomato correctly.”

  He smiled. “I hadn’t thought about that in years.” He paused. “Those fucking roadblocks—the tomato test. It was absolutely biblical.”

  I didn’t understand, and told him so.

  “The Lebanese weren’t doing anything that wasn’t already done in the Old Testament,” he explained. “In the book of Judges, the Gileadites set up roadblocks in the passages of Jordan to catch the Ephraimites. They asked them to pronounce the word shibboleth which means a small stream in biblical Hebrew. But the Ephraimites couldn’t pronounce the sh sound—they said the word as sibboleth. Which was their death sentence.”