False Flag

by John Altman

  Waiting in darkness, she conjured up the last time she had seen Zvi in person. She had driven him back to his base in the Golan Heights. The radio was tuned to Galei Tzahal, the army station. At the perimeter, Dalia had pulled over, and her son gave her a manful, back-thumping embrace. Then he left the car, humping his canvas duffel over one shoulder, and plodded up the hill toward the gate.

  In the twilight of consciousness, the memory played again, on a distorted loop. This time, as Zvi plodded toward the gate, he turned to look entreatingly back at her.

  Awake.

  Cold dawn nosed through the window. For a moment, the interplay between light and shadow suggested, to Dalia’s tired eyes, shuffling refugees. Mothers and children bundled in faded rags. Syrians, she thought. Or Jews, escaping annihilation by the skin of their teeth. Or Palestinians, driven from their homes by air strikes and ever-expanding settlements.

  Outside, a first-delivery truck prowled down the block, pausing every half minute to unload something. She found the glowing digits of the clock. In one hour, she would return to Hopewell to hear the verdict.

  She rose. Her weight had lain oddly on her left leg, and the foot was asleep. She hobbled around, bringing it back to life. Rubbed coconut-scented lotion onto dry elbows, stepped into her shoes, slung on her coat, and walked to Starbucks. She carried the steaming cup to the Fountain of Freedom, where ten-foot bronze statues depicted the Chinese zodiac: snake, horse, goat, monkey, rooster, dog, pig, rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, and dragon. At this hour, the plaza was deserted. She sank onto a stone bench, sipping her latte. The campus stirred, slowly coming awake. Students moved past: joggers, go-getters, walkers of shame sneaking back after an ill-advised sleepover. Her stomach growled. Her breath steamed beside the hot coffee.

  She remembered the last time she had seen Lee Chazan. Over dinner in a Ramat Gan restaurant, they’d had a loud and public argument. The subject had been David Grossman, one of Israel’s most popular writers. Grossman had lost his son in the Second Lebanon War. Yet his commitment to peace had only redoubled. “We cannot afford the luxury of despair,” he said. “We risk becoming a suit of armor with no knight inside.” Lee Chazan had called Grossman self-loathing. Dalia had called Lee, “shtick fleisch mit oigen”—Yiddish for “lump of meat with eyes.”

  Eventually she got up from the bench and walked back to her rooms, where she ate an apple and quickly washed up. The fire-hose American water pressure made her think of Liyana, her housekeeper back home. An IR, illegal resident, who had once claimed with a straight face that it was a pleasure to clean Dalia’s dirty dishes—the water pressure in Tel Aviv was that much better than on the other side of the Green Line. Dalia had gone to bed that night thinking of Voltaire: There is no God … but don’t tell my servant, lest he murder me in the night.

  She drove west over Cherry Hill and into Montgomery, houses thinning, forest thickening. Through a crossroads—technically, the town of Blawenburg—and past Brick Farm. Into Hopewell. Past the bakery, coffee shop, gas station, and dentist. Barns and silos. Woods heavy now, civilization left ever farther behind.

  She parked beside the silver Nissan Altima. Inside the cottage, Feigenbaum looked surprisingly rested. But Meir seemed not to have slept. Darkness puddled beneath his eyes, and he spoke in blunt, impatient bursts of Hebrew, like automatic-weapon fire.

  “Dalia,” he said as she settled onto the love seat. “You have my word. We’re doing everything we can. But you must listen. You must understand.”

  Feigenbaum calmly sipped his coffee.

  “I tried,” Meir said. “I’ve been trying. But it will take. More. Time.” He ran a hand through his thinning hair. “Full disclosure: we’ve had a report. Only a rumor, and vague at that, so take it with a grain of salt. From Khan Yunis. A prisoner passed through. Two years ago. Fitting Zvi’s description.” Pause. “Overly aggressive inquiries will work against us. Tact, finesse. Patience, patience.”

  “We need more time,” said Feigenbaum. “But this …” Indicating a USB drive sitting on the table, he did his artful trailing-off thing.

  “This.” Meir picked up the drive and shook it. “Can’t. Wait.”

  In her mind’s eye, a flashing strobe: Zvi plodding again up the hill to the gate. Turning to look imploringly back at her.

  Meir waggled the drive, inviting her to take it.

  Family came first. A mother could be only as happy as her unhappiest child.

  But Zvi was not her only family. Soon, her grandchildren would be taking up arms, taking their own turn in the crosshairs. Risking everything for a nation that had, in recent years, started banning books; labeling any dissenter a traitor, an “Arab-lover”; singing the anthem “Hatikva” even as they denied one-quarter of their citizens equal education, social services, infrastructure, employment, legal rights. The great democratic Jewish state had become, in practice, democratic toward Jews and Jewish toward Arabs. The calamity of the Holocaust, the Shoah, was being answered with the tragedy of the Palestinian Nakba—the catastrophe. We risk becoming a suit of armor with no knight inside.

  One last tic of hesitation.

  Zvi, forgive me.

  She nodded shortly, and took the thumb drive from Meir.

  North of Tel Aviv, Israel

  The ramsad’s eyes kept trying to slide back through the study’s open door, back to the living room, where Naomi now lay rolled up in an Oushak carpet. The drama played out yet again on the old man’s forehead, the great, furry brows crinkling together, almost touching before pulling apart again, like caterpillars meeting on a branch. The same drama that had been playing, with subtle variations, ever since Yoni’s arrival.

  “Drink,” the younger man urged gently.

  The chief of Mossad blinked, then seemed to remember the glass of wine in his hand. He drank slowly.

  Yoni returned his attention to the phone. He had reloaded deleted messages from the server. Now he scanned them briefly, lips pursing. He shut the email program, opened SMS messages, scrolled through threads.

  He turned to the computer on the desk. Beside it, pictures of Naomi were encased in a plastic cube: swim-suited with her husband on the beach, making a face after taking a sip of some exotic drink in a café, agitating for women’s rights with Nashot HaKotel at the Wailing Wall. (And in the process, if Yoni remembered correctly, causing her husband no end of tsuris with the Orthodox.) He found a USB cable and plugged the phone into the computer. After entering the serial number, he selected the operating system, disabled the autolock, and started data extraction. They watched the program count off seconds.

  He created a folder to receive the data, then skimmed through the cache: every email and SMS message ever to have crossed the phone. His eyes were drawn immediately to a massive audio file sent out twelve hours ago …

  … to Gavril Meir.

  His hands clenched into fists on either side of the laptop.

  Surrounded by enemies, barbarians at every gate, fighting for survival itself—and yet, the bitch indulged this. In-fighting. Spying. Betraying.

  He disconnected the phone and closed the laptop. Beside him, the ramsad was looking again into the living room, at the rolled-up carpet.

  Cold wrath burned in Yoni’s chest. How much damage had she done?

  However much, it would be contained.

  His lips pressed into a grim line. He would handle it personally.

  Forty-Sixth Street and Lexington Avenue, Manhattan, NY

  Reaching the awning, Dalia checked the address against her phone.

  The numbers matched. Yet there was no club name on the door. She found a mirrored surface and spent a few seconds trying to primp. Every trial of a long life seemed to have been carved deep in the grooves of her face. Those who live on vanity must reasonably expect to die of mortification.

  She was searching for the bell when a buzzer sounded. She entered a foyer of mah
ogany and polished oak. A uniformed man took her coat. Another lingered discreetly. When she turned toward him, he said, “Mr. Chazan is waiting in the game room.”

  As indeed he was: the only occupant, on this sunny weekday afternoon, of a high-ceilinged chamber with vaulted windows. Billiards table, chess and backgammon boards, glimmering gold and silver accents. He stood to meet her—trim, expensively turned out, hair a sophisticated gray. She wished she had put on some lipstick, at least.

  An indecisive moment turned into an awkward embrace. He squeezed hard. “So good to see you.”

  “It’s been a while.”

  “So glad you called. So glad it worked out.”

  “Thank you for making the time. I know how busy you must be.”

  “Feh. If I’d known you were in Princeton, I’d have called long ago.”

  He was drinking seltzer with lime. Dalia asked for Moroccan chamomile. Then she and Lee Chazan were left alone. They sat, just looking at each other for a few moments, smiling.

  Their affair had happened—God have mercy—a full half century before. Lee Chazan had come to spend a summer on the kibbutz. He had fascinated Dalia, questioning loudly every aspect of communal life, saying aloud what she had hardly dared think. Why were women so often relegated to service jobs, despite all the lip service paid to gender equality? And was it really right for children to be separated from their parents, raised in the Beit Yeladim? And the lack of emphasis on higher education. Yes, Jews must learn to work the land, to shed the image of pale moneylenders hunched over dusty ledgers in dark basements. But Lee, like Dalia, loved books and learning and had resented making himself stupid just to confound the stereotypes of others. They had first kissed during a hike among terebinth groves in the Galilee. They had first made love in the kibbutz’s dairy barn—a literal roll in the hay. Old milk cow lowing, chickens chattering. Chaff and straw in the air and up the back of her shirt. Lee’s fingers fumbling with her buttons, his erection a hard chisel poking into her belly …

  Her tea arrived. He waved the menus away. “Sorry,” he said, “but I’ve got to be at the UN in forty-five minutes.”

  Nodding, she considered and rejected several opening salvos. Looking around, Dalia then took out her laptop, plugged in flash drive and headphones, and beckoned him to lean closer.

  She could hear the reedy voices coming through the tinny speakers. As Lee listened, thunderclouds gathered on his brow. When the recording had finished, he gestured for her to play it again. After it had run its course a second time, he took off the headphones and leaned back, tenting his fingers. He did not look particularly surprised.

  “Is that …?”

  She nodded.

  His face was difficult to read. Some distress, perhaps. But also some cold satisfaction. Outside, a siren wailed in the distance. “And what,” he asked at last, “do you expect me to do with this?”

  She paused. “You’ve got the PM’s ear.”

  “And if I bring him this, what happens? You and I both …” He snapped his fingers.

  “Don’t be dramatic.”

  “Don’t be naïve. A recording of one of his oldest friends, making a move many would consider not only justifiable but inevitable—what do you think happens?”

  “It’s madness,” she said.

  “But not without a method. You can’t deny.”

  “Oh, yes. One hell of a pinpoint operation.”

  He stiffened, recognizing, of course, the reference to the then secretary of state John Kerry’s exasperated comment, caught on mike during an interview before cameras had started rolling, about the 2014 Gaza operation that had taken thousands of civilian Palestinian lives.

  “It’s reality,” he said after a moment. “Push hard enough, eventually we push back.”

  “A nahr bleibt a nahr.” A fool remains a fool. “I gave you more credit, Lee.”

  “Clear the shit out of your ears, Dalia, and hear what I’m trying to tell you. I bring this to the PM now, like this, mark my words: he gauges which way the wind is blowing, then chooses the path of least resistance.”

  “So we threaten to leak it.”

  “He’ll recognize an empty threat. God knows he hears enough of them.”

  “I won’t just stand by.”

  “Give me something solid, then. A fait accompli. There was a plot, but it’s failed. Now it’ll be exposed with or without or his blessing, so he’d best get on the right side of it.”

  He pushed back from the table and stood, then took a moment to smooth down his jacket. “A fait accompli,” he repeated. “Until you’ve got that, you’ve got nothing.”

  He left her staring after him.

  E Street NW, Washington, DC

  The woman was sitting three stools away. She was visibly bored, apparently alone, and pretty in a middle-aged sort of way: slightly broad-shouldered, with classical bone structure and lovely dark hair flowing past her shoulders. She was checking out Jana from the corner of her eye. When Jana caught her looking, the woman smiled.

  Jana smiled back. She ordered another drink and then nursed it. In the mirror behind the bar, she saw the woman’s chardonnay gradually become empty. Then her target sidled two stools closer, dropped down beside her, and signaled the bartender for another round.

  Jana crossed her legs. The motion was both protective—closing off her personal space—and provocative; the black mini she was wearing rode high up one lean thigh.

  The woman smiled. “Meeting someone?”

  Jana shrugged. “Are you?”

  “Yeah. I’m meeting you.”

  Jana laughed. “Ouch.”

  “I’m Bev.” Christina Thompson offered her hand. Jana looked at it, considered, and then shook it lightly.

  “Sophia,” Jana said.

  “Haven’t seen you here before, Sophia.”

  “Haven’t been here before.”

  The bartender brought another round. Christina motioned to have it added to her tab. A new song came on the jukebox—something with lots of jangly guitar. In the next room, a live band was setting up, lugging amplifiers.

  The woman leaned closer. Jana caught a hint of expensive perfume mixed with an adolescent cherry scent—lip gloss or bubblegum. “That’s a beautiful name: Sophia.”

  “Listen, you seem like a nice person and all, but I’m not interested. All right?”

  “You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t interested.”

  From the back room came a whine of feedback, an amplified tapping. Jana said nothing.

  “Let’s get a room.”

  “Oh, my.”

  “I’m direct. It’s one of my charms.”

  “Oh, my.”

  “That’s not no.”

  Cue the twinkle in the eye. “No,” Jana allowed. “I guess it’s not.”

  * * *

  The room was elegant but simple: desk, dresser, quilted bedspread. A peek-a-boo view of the Capitol dome between buildings. The air smelled of bloomy potpourri, emanating from a bowl atop the dresser.

  Christina came into the room behind Jana. The door had barely closed before she was reaching forward. Gently but firmly tilting back Jana’s head. Kissing her, lightly at first, then more insistently. Jana felt the woman’s tongue in her mouth. She pulled away. “Hold that thought,” she whispered.

  Into the bathroom.

  She slipped off blouse, black mini, bra, panties, socks. Folded them neatly, hiding the camera—a TT520PW wireless pinhole, broadcasting a high-resolution image directly to the memory card inside her purse—between layers. She took a moment, holding the eyes of the blonde stranger in the mirror, bracing herself. The white-power goons had been far more repulsive than Christina Thompson, and she had done that. She could do this.

  Five, four, three, two …

  She flushed the toilet and left the bathroom, casually
setting clothes with camera on a rolltop desk facing the bed.

  Christina had not undressed, seemed not to have moved. Now Jana took the initiative. “Let him make the first move,” Miriam said in the back of her mind. “Hang back. Be cool.” She unbuttoned the woman’s blouse and slipped free surprisingly ample breasts. Leaning down, she took one into her mouth, rolling her tongue until the nipple turned hard. Maneuvering slightly so the camera would have a better view, she lowered the woman onto the bed and worked her way down.

  The belly was still relatively taut. She reached a C-section scar, unfastened a zipper. Do the alphabet, she had heard somewhere, so she did, flicking her tongue. Aleph, bet, gimel. Christina’s pelvis began to buck. A few instants later, the legs clamped hard together, then relaxed.

  The woman was touching her shoulder, urging her to trade places. Jana complied. But from this angle, Christina’s face would not be visible to the camera, so Jana, under the guise of getting more comfortable, repositioned them both. She lay with eyes half-lidded, looking at the visible sliver of the Capitol dome. Eyes on the prize.

  She moaned, stirred, counted back from five again and again, and kept her gaze steady on the Capitol.

  Hopewell, NJ

  When Dalia finished speaking, the men did not immediately react.

  Meir examined an unlit cigarette. Feigenbaum looked blankly through a window, following the course of a blipping red dot across the night sky. Something man-made, thought Dalia. A plane, a drone, a satellite.

  “Er toig nit,” said Meir at last. He’s worthless.

  “Not necessarily.” Dalia rubbed one eye wearily. “In fact, he may have a point. But he needs his fait accompli.”

  “And how in hell do we give him that?”

  Feigenbaum seemed unperturbed. “You and McConnell enjoy good chevra”—comradeship—“eh?”

  She blinked. “I suppose so.”

  “You might offer your new friend a deal. A counteroperation must be mounted. On American soil. Outside the usual channels. No involvement of the White House. We supply the intelligence. He supplies the manpower. And with our combined efforts, we uncover the operative mentioned in the recording. Chazan brings her to the prime minister, who takes it up personally with the ramsad.”