False Flag

by John Altman

  Shvoye. Patience.

  * * *

  Around 5:00 a.m., the sky grew pink and quickly turned to rouge. The fog began to burn away, and the frosted trees to steam.

  Gooseflesh prickled beneath Yoni’s coat. Ice melting, dripping and trickling. He had been looking through the scope for the past twenty minutes without a break. The small of his back, his elbow and knee joints, throbbed. He gave his head a small shake and clambered to his feet.

  He relieved himself behind the nearby copse of balsam fir. Just as he was zipping up, he caught a flashing shadow behind a cottage window. He scampered back to his post, grabbing the binoculars.

  Behind a curtain, a heat signature moved. Another swirled in the other direction—an endless Möbius strip, a magic trick with no start and no end. Then came a waist-high spurt of color—a stove, perhaps.

  He assumed position again: facedown, right knee bent. His left hand picked up the phone, and he found the number corresponding to the squib nearest the front door.

  He conducted a last quick inventory: backup magazine, Jericho, knife.

  Ready.

  He triggered the first preset.

  The squib popped, spattering dead grass and frozen mud.

  His right cheek spot-welded to the stock, gooseflesh gone now, nerves alive. Front door square in his sights. First shot would be to center mass. Then the head shot. The kill.

  The door remained closed.

  Five, four, three, two, one.

  Lifting the rear monopod, he tracked to a window. The stirring shadow again. A moving corner of curtain. A glint, a pause. Another glint. Binoculars? Rifle scope? Mirror? Then a glimpse of a face. An intellectual’s wispy beard. Cigarette burning between clenched teeth.

  Yoni fired.

  The rifle kicked, but less than one might expect, thanks to the high-efficiency muzzle brake. Cold shot, but bull’s-eye. In the half-instant before the curtain fell closed, through the scope, Yoni saw the air behind the man’s head blossom in pink mist.

  The flat, dry echo rang back off the wall of forest. Birds startling into flight as Yoni worked the bolt, jolting another cartridge into the chamber. He took aim again. In the zone. Ready for anything. He couldn’t miss.

  His ears were ringing. He had forgotten earplugs.

  No sign of the other one.

  He traded the rifle scope for the Viper and found confusing heat signatures: another man or even two besides the one he’d hit, on the move. The spreading pool of blood was a purple infrared swirl.

  He considered taking another blind shot through the window. But the angle was chancy. He stood, keeping in a crouch. Taking the phone, the Viper, the Jericho, the knife, and leaving behind the rifle, he moved away in a clumsy loping squat.

  He caught a glint of brass. Later.

  He circled around toward the far side of the house. Gavril Meir would never know what hit him. Yoni had met the old man once, years ago. A conference at a seaside resort. The water blood-red beneath the setting sun. They had just found evidence of a nuclear reactor under construction at Deir al-Zur. The argument had grown heated, but Meir had stayed calm and counseled back-channel diplomacy. In that instant, Yoni had lost all respect for the man. The schmuck cultivated a hard reputation, but beneath it all, he was soft. Look how easily Yoni was sneaking up on him now—coming around the back of the cottage, glissading down slippery frozen mud, between trees, skittering toward an outdoor oil storage tank.

  His ears filled with a thin, singing ring. No matter. He was doing it. Burning away the deadwood, cutting away the necrotic flesh. Dragging the older generation into the only possible future. Nearing the back door, he raised the Jericho in his right hand, the phone in his left.

  A back window was cracked open. And the back door was swinging ajar, as if caught in a breeze. Almost lazily, a realization surfaced in his mind. Window open despite the wintry morning chill, back door flapping in the breeze. Put the pieces together, and what did you get? His surprise attack from the rear was not such a surprise after all.

  Something fast and heavy came blurring out the back door. Low to the ground, snarling. The gun jerked up and fired. Blood arced into the air. But the German shepherd still had momentum, even in death. Slamming into Yoni, it knocked him off his feet.

  He rolled the dead dog off him and sat up. A needle pricked him in the left shoulder. He grunted, more surprised than hurt, and saw in retrospect the muzzle flash behind the gapped window near the back door. Another shot cut the air a centimeter from his right ear. He returned fire, emptying the magazine, all nine shots, each jolting the gun in his hand. Window glass turning white. Splinters of stone exploding from the cottage facade and whining off into the trees. The oil tank rupturing, not exploding.

  Yoni half-crawled back up the slope and slipped around the thick trunk of a hoary old oak. He dropped the gun, the barrel steaming against the ice. He had not heard a single shot. The ringing ears. God damn them all to hell.

  He was shuddering. Going into shock? Motherfucker. Where was the bullet? His fingertips searched his right flank. Then his left. There was a lot of blood but still no pain. And no bullet. Maybe it had passed through. Maybe he had imagined it in the first place. He had never been shot before. He had expected it would feel like a kicking horse, not a jabbing needle. And had the dog bitten him? He could not find a wound beneath the coat, but the entire right half of his torso was a numb, glutinous mess. He smelled cordite mixed with blood mixed with shit. He could feel his breath bubbling, feel himself panting and grunting. But his ears conveyed nothing except that annoying tinnitus ring.

  He picked up the Jericho—still warm but not hot—ejected the magazine, and jammed in a fresh one. He used the mirror on the grip to look at the house. Hand shaking. Trembling and tilting. Leaking oil storage tank, spiderwebbed window, dead dog. No sign of Meir.

  The phone was somehow gone. There, in a puddle of spent shells and melting ice. He picked it up and set off every squib he had planted, out front and on both sides, in quick succession. Make the goatfucker think he was surrounded.

  He pushed up. Leaned against the tree. Steady. Two-handed grip on the pistol, keeping low, moving again toward the house. Quickly, quickly, before his trembling legs failed him.

  He stepped through spilled oil. No one fired. He could see curls of smoke from the squibs drifting over the snow-crusted chimney. The back door was eight meters away. He passed the dead dog. Now six meters. No trees between here and there. He reached the door. Still ajar. Still no pain, but legs dangerously weak. Glancing back, he saw the trail of blood he had left. Lots of blood.

  He pushed the door open with one foot. Went in gun blazing, like John fucking Wayne. Something flicked the collar of his coat. Something punched him in the chest. Returning fire, he emptied the Jericho again. Something fell heavily—he felt more than heard it.

  He pushed forward to find Meir, facedown in the narrow hallway. Fat, gray. There really was a tremendous amount of blood. His, Meir’s, maybe Feigenbaum’s mixed in. The hallway was dark. How much of the darkness was in the corridor and how much in himself, he could not guess.

  He slumped against the wall. His right leg was touching Meir’s face. A wire in his brain slipped. Darkness. Reconnected. He had to get moving. Cover his tracks. Gather the shells. Get the dead men into their car. Make them disappear.

  Flicker. The hallway. Flicker. The ramsad lighting a Gauloise. Jana on the balcony in Herzliya, naked, beautiful. Sweet plum wine. Dusk just falling. Jana. She would finish what he had started.

  Dead batteries. Empty glasses. Fallen trees. Dark hallways. Fading. He moved his right leg away from Meir. He didn’t want to be touching the man when he died.

  Flicker. Graveyards. Murky swimming pools. Wheeling vultures. Pits filled with dead children. His mother vacuuming in the next room.

  Flicker. Another hallway. Bright chrome. Flooded with l
ight.

  Flicker.

  One last effort, pressing against the wall, to regain his feet.

  He managed.

  Then he moved forward, into the bright hallway, into the blinding light.

  North of Tel Aviv, Israel

  An old school friend of Naomi’s was telling a story.

  Once upon a time, he said, he and Naomi had raided her parents’ liquor cabinet. Hoping to conceal the theft, they had taken just a taste from each bottle and mixed it all together. The resulting concoction had gotten them plenty fershnikit. Then they spent the rest of the night puking their guts out. And even as Naomi became the sophisticated woman they all had known and loved—a boldface name in the papers, a familiar sight at extravagant government functions—he had remembered with great fondness that young girl with vomit crusted around the corners of her mouth, moaning ruefully that she would never drink again.

  People laughed quietly. The ramsad forced a chuckle. Then he stood, murmuring an apology, and moved toward the kitchen. Past covered mirrors, past the folding bridge table covered with casserole dishes and Tupperware, paper plates and plastic utensils.

  In the bathroom, he washed his face. According to the rules of shivah, bereaved were not allowed hot baths, so for the past few days he had been making do with an occasional splash from the sink. He itched. He smelled. Superstitions, he thought resentfully. They should have long since left such rituals behind. But the kippah serugot—knitted yarmulkes—had influence beyond their number, and appearances must be maintained.

  Leaving the bathroom, instead of turning left toward the living room he went right, toward his study. He had almost made it when a woman cried loudly: “Gevaldikeh zach!”

  It was Sheba Zingel from the hair salon. She hugged him hard. “Poor thing. We were just saying how terrible you look. How are you holding up? Hard to keep it together, I bet. Behind every great man is a great woman, nuh?” Her voice lowered conspiratorially. “Or a great crime.”

  “Thank you for coming, Sheba. It means so much. Please forgive me …” He disengaged as gracefully as he could and continued toward the study.

  “You’re not working now,” she chided. “Shivah and Sabbath to boot.”

  He gave no reply.

  “A good man,” Sheba declared as he closed the door on her, “whatever anyone says.”

  His phone sat on the desk beside the plastic photo cube. Pushing aside the cube, he picked up the phone. Four missed calls. Condolences. A telemarketer. More condolences. And still more condolences. He checked text messages and email. He unlocked drawers, checked second and third phones. Not a peep from Yoni.

  Had there been trouble?

  Frowning, he locked the drawers again. In the direst scenario, the boy was expendable. Inside this very desk was contact information for the operation’s key players. But of course, the ramsad preferred to maintain a layer of insulation between them and himself.

  A polite tap at the door. Before he could react peevishly at being interrupted, hinges creaked.

  The prime minister of Israel came into the study, gesturing behind him for someone not to follow. He closed the door softly: a large man with an expensive haircut, wearing a suit impeccably tailored to his broad build, and a sorrowful smile.

  As a child, the ramsad recalled, the boy who would one day become prime minister had worn his hair in a homemade bowl cut. His secondhand clothing had hung loose, concealing a posture suggestive of a question mark. He had been an infamous bully—on the playground, in back alleys after school—sending many a weaker child home with a bloody nose.

  They embraced, kissed cheeks. The prime minister drew back, hands on the ramsad’s shoulders. “How are you holding up, my friend?”

  “All things considered, okay.”

  “She was a special woman. She was heylik.” Sacred. “Aleha ha-sholem.” May she rest in peace.

  The director nodded.

  “Leah sends her love. She’ll stop by tomorrow with some food.” The man gave a final squeeze of the shoulder, hard enough to hurt, moved a step away, and looked at his watch. “I wish I could stay …”

  “It means a lot that you came.”

  “You’ll let us know anything we can do.”

  “You’ve done it already.”

  The prime minister nodded. He turned to leave, then, as if having a last thought, turned back with his hand on the knob. “You should know, my friend, that the yentas are talking.”

  The director said nothing.

  “The scratches on your face … Of course, I trust you implicitly. But if you find yourself in over your head …”

  “Everything’s under control.”

  A thoughtful pause. “I believe that you know what’s best, in the long run. And I do count on you not to … burden me.”

  The director suppressed a lopsided smile.

  “I’ll keep the Mishteret off your back,” said the prime minister. “The least I can do during this difficult time.”

  A tight nod. “A shaynem dank, my friend.” Many thanks.

  One last awkward moment. The door opened, then closed. Left alone in the study, the ramsad stood still for a moment. He picked vaguely at the torn black ribbon tied around his left arm. The ribbon chafed. He wanted very much to take it off. But appearances must be maintained, now more than ever.

  He took a last moment to arrange his expression. Then he went to rejoin his guests.

  Ellicott Street NW,

  Washington, DC

  “So. What else are you thankful for?”

  Silas pondered. A small ridge formed between his eyes. For a few moments, he looked every bit his mother’s son. “TV,” he said finally.

  “Well, that one you can definitely spell. The letters are part of the word.”

  Silas nodded. His pink tongue poked out with concentration as he bent over, laboriously embarking on a letter T.

  The phone rang. Michael went into the kitchen. He didn’t recognize the number—local 202 area code. “Hello?”

  “Michael? Christina.”

  It took him a moment to make the connection. Christina Thompson from work. Calling him at home at seven thirty on a Saturday night. Was he in trouble? “Hey, Chris. What’s up?”

  “I hope I’m not interrupting.”

  He looked into the dining room, where his son had just finished the cross of the T. “Nope, nothing special.”

  “I know you’re busy, so I’ll get right to it. I’d like to put you on the pool feed at this year’s State.”

  He blinked. The State of the Union was his profession’s Super Bowl, Academy Awards, and first moon landing, all rolled into one.

  “Michael? You there?”

  “Yes. Thank you. Thank you, Christina. I appreciate the opportunity.”

  “You’ve earned it, Michael.”

  “I won’t disappoint you.”

  “First rehearsal tomorrow at 9:00 a.m. Okay? I know it’s kind of last-minute.”

  Stacy was picking up Silas at eight. “I’ll be there.”

  “You can say goodbye to your weekends through January. The good news is, it’s double time and a half.”

  “Thank you, Christina.” He felt himself smiling foolishly.

  “Like I said, you’ve earned it.”

  When he went back to Silas, the boy was working on the V. Together they Scotch-taped construction paper feathers to a teardrop-shaped body, fanning out wings. They surveyed their work:

  I AM THANKFUL FOR TOYS, DADDY, MOMMY,

  SCHOOL, HOUSE, LICORICE, NINJA TURTLES, TV

  And the pool feed, Michael thought, not quite believing his sudden stroke of luck. Christina could have chosen any of half a dozen operators for the job, but she had chosen him.

  He had earned it. He worked hard. And he was good at his job. And the missing leg surely hadn’t hurt. �
��Good optics,” as they said on the Hill. War heroes played well on camera for the inevitable behind-the-scenes C-SPAN special.

  He pulled his son close, burrowed into soft hair with a kiss. “I love you,” he said.

  “Love you, too,” Silas said absently.

  They pinned the paper turkey to the refrigerator with a magnet, spooned ice cream into bowls, and sat together on the couch, watching the “heroes in a half shell” travel back in time to stop the Triceratons from making a black-hole generator. Afterward, they snuggled side by side in Silas’ bed, reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as the cat kneaded a blanket with her front paws. “We are all a great deal luckier than we realize,” Michael read. “We usually get what we want, or near enough …”

  * * *

  Waiting in line at a quarter of nine the next morning, he found the card:

  THE OWNER OF THIS CARD HAS

  A PROSTHESIS THAT MAY ACTIVATE A

  METAL DETECTION DEVICE

  On the flip side were his name and photograph, Phil Eggleston’s credentials, and the hospital’s telephone number. After showing the card, he submitted to a pat-down and wand search. The wand buzzed at his leg. The Secret Service agent operating it gave an apologetic shrug and waved Michael through to take his place in another line before another metal detector.

  Ten minutes later, he joined the milling crowd inside Statuary Hall. Bronze and marble sculptures—Helen Keller, Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, Dwight Eisenhower, Samuel Adams, Daniel Webster—lined the chamber’s arcing perimeter. Beneath the coffered ceiling, the voices of several dozen men and women echoed and overlapped.

  But there was a sense of loose camaraderie, an early-morning coffee-klatch vibe, among coworkers who often socialized in their leisure time. Matt Gutierrez, on the far side of the room, saw Michael and waved but was drawn into conversation before they could make their way toward each other. Moments later, one of the Capitol’s two sergeants at arms cornered Michael with a story about a movie he had watched last night—something about a scandal in the church, an investigation, dogged journalism.

  With so many people pressing close, Michael had trouble listening. His fight-or-flight reflex kept trying to engage. He remembered a crowded public square in Kirkuk, Iraqis jostling him as his brothers in arms tried to clear the area. Rubbing his eyes, he had refocused on the robot camera. Through the viewfinder he had studied a nine-volt battery, an electric blasting cap, a 120-mm mortar shell. All wired to a Motorola 8530 radio. But no timer. Because somewhere nearby, the bomber was watching. A man Michael had never met—or a woman, or a child—was waiting to trigger a blast, without a thought for wives or husbands who might be widowed, children who might become orphans. Put on a uniform and you became a symbol, both more and less than a person. After Michael had come home, the same uniform that had made strangers want to murder him overseas had made strangers walk up to him on the street to thank him for his service.