by Alan Gold
Yael had compounded the tablets Bilal would have to take, doing it herself to avoid implicating any of the hospital pharmacists. She’d obtained the ingredients from the hospital, but asking different pharmacists on different occasions meant that they wouldn’t put two and two together. And she’d checked, and double-checked, that Bilal’s weight, height, and age meant that he could take the overdose without any long-term effect. Remembering that she’d had an intimate search the last time she came to the prison, Yael had placed the three anticholinergic pills inside the gap where a wire of her underwire bra normally fitted. It was unlikely that a search would find them. And she’d ensured that the hospital pharmacy had a good supply of parasympathomimetic drugs to reverse his illness when he was brought into the hospital.
“The doctor here at the prison will think you have been poisoned, but he won’t know how to treat you and he’ll call for an ambulance. You’ll be taken to my hospital.”
Bilal’s eyes darted back and forth but he didn’t move and Yael prayed that he was comprehending what she was saying and not planning to call for help.
“When you get there, I’ll be waiting for you. And I’ll give you a . . . um . . .” Yael’s Arabic failed her and she struggled for the word. “I’ll give you—”
“Antidote,” Bilal said softly. A palpable relief welled up inside Yael as he confirmed he’d understood the plan after she’d explained it as quickly as she could.
“So you understand what I’m saying to you?”
Bilal frowned but nodded.
“We can’t trust anybody. Not any Palestinian, not any Israeli. Nobody. This is the only way. You have to trust me . . .”
Yael heard herself say this last word and thought to herself how absurd it all seemed. Why should he trust her? Only because he had no other choice.
“So you are getting me out. Yes? But why? What can I do outside? Escape to another country? What do you want me to do?”
“The reason you have to leave here is to save your life. Your imam and the man with white hair are plotting to kill you. When you’re out, we will trap them and expose them. We don’t know how yet, but we will. But if you stay here, Bilal, you’ll die.”
“Why not tell the governor? If you tell him, maybe this time he will believe me. Maybe he will save me.”
“We don’t know who will come after you, Bilal. That’s why you have to become very sick immediately, and we’ll get you out of this place.”
Bilal looked deep into Yael’s eyes and said, “When I’m better, can I return to my home and my father and mother?”
She shook her head, feeling sorry for him. “No, Bilal. There’s no way I can get you home. You have to pay for your crime.” His face was stony and silent. “But we can make things better for you. For your family . . .” Yael felt as if she were lying, but her seemingly honest response, free of false promises, gave him confidence.
“Give me the tablets,” he said.
She looked over at the guard, who had turned to glance in their direction. “Not yet, not until he looks away. Just keep talking. I’ll keep my eye on him and the moment he’s not looking directly at us, I’ll slip them to you. Put them in your trouser pocket. Take them tomorrow morning immediately after breakfast. Don’t take them when you get to your cell because the guards might not look in for hours. If you take them with lots of people around, you’ll suddenly feel horribly ill. They’ll get immediate help. Do you understand?”
Bilal nodded.
“You cannot trust anyone, Bilal. Neither of us can . . .”
* * *
AT HALF PAST TWELVE on the following afternoon, two things happened in nearby parts of Jerusalem. The first was a prison van driven at breakneck speed toward the hospital. The governor had radioed ahead to police headquarters requesting a police escort for a van carrying a dangerously sick prisoner. They were to meet the van as soon as it had climbed out of the valley of the Dead Sea, and lead the way through Jerusalem’s frenetic traffic to the city’s main hospital’s accident and emergency facilities.
And at precisely twelve thirty in the afternoon, just two and a half miles from the emergency department where a nervous Yael worked and waited, a worried Yaniv Grossman walked into the offices of the ultrasecretive Shin Bet and asked to speak to Deputy Director Eliahu Spitzer.
The prison van screeched to a halt, and nurses and paramedics, already alerted, ran out with a gurney, an oxygen cylinder, and a crash cart. Bilal’s comatose body, still twitching and as cold and pallid as death, was carried to the gurney and he was wheeled inside.
The Palestinian surgeon, Mahmud, stood waiting. He had known Bilal was coming and knew this was now his part to play.
Yael had been nervous, almost shaking, when she drew him aside and asked him if he’d be willing to assist her in saving Bilal’s life. He agreed, although she could sense there was great reluctance. She told him what she wanted him to do. He could tell from the rhythm of her voice that her speech had been prepared, rehearsed. She had no idea how he’d respond and she was desperate.
Mahmud had tried so hard to fit into hospital work life while knowing full well that he might always be an outsider. He ignored the jokes and offhand comments, the passive but invasive prejudices that were normalized around him. And he tolerated the angry looks from his own people who saw him as a traitor. This was the burden he carried. And to shoulder the load, Mahmud had ardently sought to give no quarter, provide no space for the criticism or the glares or the mistrust. He worked longer, he worked harder. He smiled more and laughed more and let nothing be taken as offense. This was his defense mechanism, and it gave him place and purpose and solace within the fraught state of being an Arab-Israeli caught between two worlds.
But when Yael Cohen asked him to help Bilal escape from the hospital, escape from imprisonment for murder, Mahmud knew that if he assisted, then nothing would ever be the same again. There were no normal circumstances that would have made him agree to assist a terrorist—Jew or Muslim—escape from lawful custody; but Yael had explained very dramatically that the boy was a political prisoner, and that her own life was in danger. Reluctantly, he’d agreed to assist. No longer passive or apolitical, this would now be the moment when he crossed a line.
As he stood and watched the gurney carrying the comatose body of Bilal toward him, he was still not sure why he had agreed to help Yael. A dormant loyalty to his people’s cause? The righting of an injustice? No, these were not things that compelled Mahmud. What compelled him was the notion that in another time and another place, it could have been him, not Bilal, on the gurney, a gullible young Palestinian seduced into committing an atrocity and now paying for it with his life.
Bilal’s body was drawn up in front of him and he reached for the clipboard notes from the prison doctor, seeing that adrenaline had been administered two hours earlier. Mahmud squeezed only half of the syringe into the boy’s arm, running alongside the gurney as it was wheeled into the emergency cubicle that had been made ready.
Mahmud trusted Yael Cohen. He trusted her as a surgeon; he trusted her words. He knew if he was caught as part of this criminal deception against the State of Israel, the authorities would be merciless; but he also knew from Yael how endangered this young man’s life was in the prison, and so he’d agreed to join with her in effecting his escape. So for him this would be no political statement or act of irrationality; it would be the act of a doctor saving the life of a patient.
He examined Bilal’s pupils, listened to his heart, searched his lips and mouth for the typical discoloration of orally administered poisons, and looked over his entire body with care and precision while he instructed the ward nurse to take samples of blood and have them sent up to the pathology laboratory immediately for fluid, electrolyte, and other tissue analysis. He also wrote and signed forms for an MRI, chest X-ray, EEG, and nuclear medicine to identify what was happening in the patient’s internal organs. While these were being prepared in other parts of the hospital, he stuck receptors a
ll over Bilal’s body for an ECG to monitor his heart.
Mahmud knew full well what was happening to Bilal and didn’t need the battery of tests he had just ordered to bring him back to consciousness. But he played the part he knew he needed to play, to make the ruse plausible and his involvement invisible. It strangely ran against his instincts as a doctor to pretend at being unable to heal when the power to save was right before him.
He said to the nurse, “This is the kid who had the angiomyolipoma.” The nurse looked at him blankly. “Dr. Cohen’s patient.” Still the nurse registered nothing. Finally Mahmud said, “The terrorist who tried to blow up the temple wall.” The nurse suddenly nodded in recognition. “We need to prep him for an exploratory op.”
“Shouldn’t we wait for the test results?” said the nurse.
“I really don’t want to wait and have him bleed out internally. Dr. Cohen will want to operate immediately. You know what she’s like.”
The nurse gave a curt nod and for a second Mahmud doubted whether he had been convincing enough. But he was given no time to ponder as Bilal was set in motion again toward the surgical ward. There, Mahmud knew, Yael would be waiting.
* * *
YANIV GROSSMAN WAITED for a response from the man who sat opposite him. But instead of reacting, Eliahu Spitzer simply stared back at Yaniv, the slightest trace of a whimsical smile on his face. Yaniv was tense before going in, but Eliahu’s cold and calculating manner unnerved him even more as the great gamble played out in front of him.
It was an odd situation for Yaniv. Professionally, he was always calm and in control when he was reporting on television or interviewing a recalcitrant subject. He was known internationally for his incisive yet polite demeanor interviewing politicians or reporting from battle zones. His tall body and intelligent approach gave viewers confidence, and his ruggedly handsome face attracted a bevy of Israeli girls who were regular followers on ANBN’s Facebook page.
But sitting opposite the Shin Bet operative in his private office, the reporter’s eyes darting nervously from the view of the Old City through his window, to the ornaments on his desk, to Eliahu sitting smugly and comfortably in his chair, Yaniv was a picture of uneasy anxiety.
“And why should I do what you ask, Mr. Grossman?” Eliahu said quietly.
“Because I can help you put an end to this Bilal problem,” he said.
“And what problem precisely is that? And why do you think that I have a problem?”
“He’s identified you as the man he saw in an intimate conversation with the imam of Bayt al Gizah, and it won’t be long before the police work out that he’s the brains behind what Bilal tried to do.”
The ghost of a smile now broadened to a grin masquerading as a sneer. “I speak to many Palestinians, some imams, some mullahs, some governors, some mayors, and some street sweepers. Why is it unusual for me to have had a meeting with this imam?”
“Why did you try to kill me?”
“Me?”
“A motorbike delivering a car bomb in traffic? We’ve seen that move before.”
“To kill an Iranian nuclear scientist, perhaps, but not a reporter. That would be a waste of resources,” said Spitzer, masking a grin. “And not Shin Bet’s resources either. That’s the sort of thing that Mossad does, quietly and efficiently. It sends a rather strong message.”
“But I know that you organized it because you think I’m a threat. And I’ve been around long enough to know how deadly Shin Bet is. So I’m not here to play hero and I don’t want to die. I want to do a deal.”
“I deal with Palestinians and Israeli Arabs. Not respected American broadcasters, Mr. Grossman, even if one has become an Israeli citizen. I think you’ve come to the wrong department. If you want to do a deal, go to the Tax Office.”
“I’ll give you Bilal if you promise to leave me alone.”
For the first time since Yaniv had entered his office, Spitzer frowned. “Give him up? He’s in prison, awaiting trial. In a couple of months he’ll be an anonymous nonentity in a prison cell and he’ll be there for the rest of his life.”
“Is he still in prison?” said Yaniv, hoping for some reaction to play across Spitzer’s face. But the Shin Bet officer said nothing and gave nothing away. Yaniv knew—or at least hoped—his words must have had an effect.
“Very soon you’ll get a call telling you he’s gone. I’m the only one who knows where he is. And I’m offering Bilal in exchange for my life. I know you could have me killed whenever you want to, but I reckon that with Bilal alive, it’s the only bargaining chip I have to save my skin.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. I think you should leave or I might have to call the police.” The irony of a Shin Bet commander calling regular cops was not lost on Yaniv.
“You know you won’t do that. If I’m arrested, the wives of two Shin Bet operatives you had murdered will testify; I’ll testify; Bilal will testify; there’ll be so much mud thrown at you on every TV station you can name. It likely won’t stick, but it’ll make one hell of a mess and you’ll feel like you’re walking through a swamp. All I’m asking is a fair swap. My life for some miserable terrorist . . .”
* * *
70 CE
ABRAHAM BEN ZAKKAI decided to take the high road to avoid the suffocating reek of sulfur, the noxious fumes of death and decay that suffused the entire area. He dismounted from his donkey as the track started to become steeper, and pulled on the rope to lead the overburdened animal up the narrow path, full of white rocks that were stained with yellow ghosts from the destruction by God of Sodom and Gomorrah. The burning sun forced him to stop at regular intervals, exhausted from pulling the donkey when it refused to continue upward in places where the path was precipitous.
Finding a rock ledge shaded from the scorching intensity of the sun, he took two mouthfuls of water from his flask and fed his donkey from the bag of oats.
Abraham ben Zakkai looked down at the evil sea, indistinct now in the heat of the midday sun, swathed in a heavy gray-white mist that blunted the shore and made the distant Mountains of Moab invisible. Of all the places in Israel where he hated going the most, the Yam haMelach was at the top of his list. He didn’t like going to the hills of Galilee, either, because of the madmen, murderers, and robbers who seemed to infest the area, but he would happily be there right now, with its cool glades and abundant waters, rather than in this furnace, which God had abandoned when he destroyed the evil cities that once lived by its shore.
Being a man educated in many languages, he mused on the names used by travelers for the Dead Sea. The Jews, of course, called it Yam haMelach, the Sea of Salt; the Bedouin called it al-Bahr al-Mayyit, or the Dead Sea, a name Abraham thought appropriate; the ancient Greeks who visited the area called it He Thalassa Asphaltites, or the Asphaltite Sea, but later changed it to He Nekra Thalassa, taking up the Arab description of death; and the recently arrived Roman conquerors knew it as Mare Mortum, also the Dead Sea. He smiled when he thought of the Romans. Militaristic and practical, but not a creative idea in their brains.
Abraham visited the shores of the Dead Sea once a year, for five days at a time. He lived in the open air, lit fires from dead wood and branches to cook his food and frighten away the lions and other large beasts that inhabited the area, and spent his days collecting the leaves and branches of the tamarisk tree, which grew in abundance in the salty soils and crags of the wadis surrounding the Dead Sea. The tamarisk tree’s bark was invaluable for curing warts and headaches, and a distillation made by boiling it with a pinch of yellow sulfur was a certain way of curing diseases of the eye.
Abraham had learned his skills as a doctor from his beloved and revered father, Zakkai ben Jonathan, whose knowledge had been gleaned from a long line of healers, herbalists, rabbis, and priests. Though his father was long dead, his reputation would never be forgotten. Indeed, when Abraham ben Zakkai was descending and then living for the five days in the Dead Sea area, he would begin and end each day wi
th a prayer to his father, begging God to allow him to have the same skills and enjoy the same reputation throughout the land as the father, and the father before him.
After sipping his carefully measured drink from the flask of water, Abraham pulled his donkey upward along the path. There was still half a day of climbing before they reached the top and could travel along better roads toward Jericho and then rest for a day before finally returning home to Jerusalem. Always assuming, of course, that he didn’t meet a Roman patrol that would haul him into prison to question him about why he was traveling. It had happened twice before, and had cost him his entire supply of gathered herbs and spices as well as the free treatment of the illnesses from which the Roman soldiers seemed to be suffering.
But this time he made it back to Jerusalem without incident, and two days after he’d returned home and enjoyed the company of his family, he was summoned to the house of a rich merchant who lived much higher up the hill, closer to the temple. The merchant, Samuel, was known to be a friend of the Romans, and so, while he would give the same attention to Samuel’s servant girl who was suffering from fever as he’d give to any other Jew, he would also be cautious in what he would say to people. In Roman Jerusalem these days, any loose mouth could see its owner end up crucified.
The house was large and imposing. It had acquired the trappings of the Romans, with large marble columns on either side of the wooden front doors, a fountain in the courtyard, and niches for candles in the wall. Having lived and studied in Rome, Abraham was only too aware that such niches normally supported idols of gods such as Jupiter, Janus, Diana, and Minerva. But interestingly, Samuel the merchant had also erected a niche and small shrine for the household gods, or lares, spirits who were supposed to bring comfort and safety to houses that worshipped them. Abraham smiled. He wondered whether there was any trait of Jewishness inside Samuel’s body or whether, like King Herod, he was more Roman than the Romans.