If only the Poles and the Czechs, the Hungariansand the Romanies, as well as the haughty Germansand the impossible Russians, had not immigrated tohis country by such tens of thousands. They arrivedand the complications came with them. Factionagainst faction, culture against culture, each grouptrying to prove it was more entitled to the name Jewthan the others. It was all nonsense! They werethere because they had to be; they had succumbedto Abraham’s enemies permitted yes,permitted the slaughter of millions rather thanrising as millions and slaughtering in return. Well,they found out what their civilised ways could bringthem, and how much their Talmudic convolutionscould earn them. So
they came to the Holy Land their Holy Land, sothey procla"med. Well, it wasn’t theirs. Where werethey when it was being clawed out of rock and ariddesert by strong hands with primitive tools Biblicaltools? Where were they when the hated Arab andthe despised English first felt the wrath of the tribalJew? They were in the capitals of Europe, in theirbanks and their fancy drawing rooms, making moneyand drinking expensive brandy out of crystal goblets.No, they came here because they had to; they cameto the Holy Land of the sabre.
They brought with them money and dandy waysand elegant words and confusing arguments andinfluence and the guilt of the world. But it was thesabre who taught them how to fight. And it was asabre who would bring all Israel into the orbit of amighty new alliance.
Abrahms reached the intersection of Ibn Gabiroland Arlosoroff streets; the streetlamps were haloed,their light hazy. It was just as well; he should not beseen. He had another block to go, to an address onJabotinsky, an unprepossessing apartment housewhere there was an undistinguished flat leased by aman who appeared to be no more than an unim-portant bureaucrat. What few realised, however, wasthat this man, this specialist who operatedsophisticated computer equipment withcommunications throughout most of the world, wasintrinsic to the global operations of the Mossad, Is-rael’s intelligence service, which many considered thefinest on earth. He, too, was a sabre. He was one ofthem.
Abrahms spoke his name quietly into themouthpiece above the mail slot in the outer lobby;he heard the click in the lock of the heavy door andwalked inside. He began the climb up the threeflights of steps that would take him to the flat.
“”Some wine, Chaim?”
“Whisky,” was the curt reply.
“Always the same question and always the sameanswer,” said the specialist. “I say “Some wine,Chaim?’ and you say one word. ”whisky,’ you say.You would drink whisky at the Seder, if you couldget away with it.”
“I can and I do.” Abrahms sat in a crackedleather chair looking around the plain, disheveledroom with books everywhere, wondering, as healways did, why a man with such influence lived thisway. It was rumored that the Mossad officer did notlike company, and larger, more attractive quarters
might invite it. “I gathered from your grunts andcoughs over the telephone that you have what Ineed.”
“Yes, I have it,” said the specialist, bringing aglass of very good Scotch to his guest. “I have it, butI don’t think you’re going to like it.”
“Why not?” asked Abrahms, drinking, his eyesalert over the rim of the glass and fixed on his hostas the latter sat down opposite him.
“Basically because it’s confusing, and what’sconfusing in this business is to be approacheddelicately. You are not a delicate man, ChaimAbrahms, forgive the indelicacy of my saying it. Youtell me this Converse is your enemy, a would-beinfiltrator, and I tell you I find nothing to supportthe conclusion. Before anything else, there must bea deep personal motive for a nonprofessional toengage in this kind of deception this kind ofbehavior, if you will. There has to be a drivingcompulsion to strike out at an image of a cause heloathes. Well, there is a motive, and there is anenemy for which he must have great hatred, butneither is compatible with what you suggest. Theinformation, incidentally, is completely reliable. Itcomes from the Quang Dinh “
“What in hell is that?” interrupted the general.
“A specialised branch of NorthVietnamese now, of course,Vietnamese intelligence.”
“You have sources there?”
“We fed them for years nothing terribly vital,but sufficient to gain a few ears, and voices. Therewere things we had to know, weapons we had tounderstand; they could be turned against us.”
“This Converse was in North Vietnam?”
“For several years as a prisoner of war; there’san extensive file on him. At first, his captorsthought he could be used for propaganda, radiobroadcasts, television imploring his brutalgovernment to withdraw and stop the bombing, allthe usual garbage. He spoke well, presented a goodpicture, and was obviously very American. Initiallythey televised him as a murderer from the skies,saved from the angry mobs by humane troops, thenlater while eating and exercising; you see, they wereprogramming him for a violently sudden reversal.They thought he was a soft, privileged young manwho could be broken rather easily to do theirbidding in exchange for more comfortabletreatment after having experienced a period ofharsh deprivation. What they learned, however, was
quite different. Under that soft shell the inner liningwas made of hard metal, and the odd thing was thatas the months went by it grew harder, until theyrealized they had created created was their word ahellhound of sorts, somehow forged in steel.”
“Hellhound? Was that their word, too?”
“No, they called him an ugly troublemaker, which,considering the source, is not without irony. Thepoint is, they recognized the fact that they hadcreated him. The harsher the treatment, the morevolatile he became, the more resilient.”
“Why not?” said Abrahms sharply. “He was angry.Prod a desert snake and watch him strike.”
“I can assure you, Chaim, it is not the normalhuman response under such conditions. A man cango mad and strike in crazed fury, or he can becomereclusive to the point of catatonia, or fall apartweeping, willing to compromise anything andeverything for the smallest kindness. He did none ofthese things. His was a calculated and inventiveseries of responses drawing on his own innerresources to survive. He led two escapes the firstlasting three days and the second five before thegroups were recaptured. As the leader, he was placedin a cage in the Mekong River, but he devised a wayto kill the water rats by grabbing them from beneaththe surface like a shark. He was then thrown intosolitary confinement, a pit in the ground twelve feetdeep with barbed wire anchored across the top. Itwas from there, during a heavy rainstorm at night,that he clawed his way up, bent the wire back.andescaped alone. He made his way south through thejungles and in the river streams for over a hundredmiles until he reached the American lines. It was noeasy feat. They created a savagely obsessed man whowon his own personal war.”
“Why didn’t they simply kill him before that?”
“I wondered myself,” said the specialist, “so Iphoned my source in Hanoi, the one who providedthe information. He said a strange thing, somethingquite profound in its way. He said he wasn’t there, ofcourse, but he thought it was probably respect.”
“For an ugly troublemaker?”
“Captivity in war does odd things, Chaim, to boththe captured and the captors. There are so manyfactors at work in a vicious game. Aggression,resistance, bravery, fear, and not theleast curiosity, especially when the players
come from such diverse cultures as the Occidentand the Orient. An abnormal bond is often formed,as much from the weariness of the testing game asfrom anything else, perhaps. It doesn’t lessen thenational animosities, but a subtle recognition sets inthat tells these men, these players, that they are notreally in the game by their own choosing. In-depthanalyses further show us that it is the captors, notthe captured, who first perceive this commonality.The latter are obsessed with freedom and survival,while the former begin to question their absoluteauthority over the lives and conditions of othermen. They start to wonder what it would be like tobe in the other player’s shoes. It’s all part of whatthe psychiatrists call the Stockholm syndrome.”
“What in the name of
God are you trying to say?You sound like one of those bores in the Knessetreading a position paper. A little of this, a little ofthat and a lot of windI”
“You are definitely not delicate, Chaim. I’mtrying to explain to you that while this Conversenurtured his hatreds and his obsessions, his captorswearied of the game, and as our source in Hanoisuggests, they grudgingly spared his life out ofrespect, before he made his final and successfulescape.”
To Abrahm’s bewilderment the specialist hadapparently finished. “And?” said the sabre.
“Well, there it is. There is the motive and theenemy, but they are also your motive and yourenemy arrived at from different routes, of course.Ultimately, you wish to smash insurgence whereverit erupts, curb the spread of Third Worldrevolutions, especially Islamic, because you knowthey’re being fostered by the Marxists readSoviets and are a direct threat to Israel. One wayor another it’s the global threat that’s brought youall together, and in my judgment rightfully so. Thereis a time and a place for a military-industrial com-plex, and it is now. It must run the governments ofthe free world before that world is buried by itsenemies.”
Chaim Abrahms squinted and tried not to shout.“And?”
“Can’t you see? This Converse is one of you.Everything supports it. He has the motive and anenemy he’s seen in the harshest light. He is a highlyregarded attorney who makes a great deal of moneywith a very conservative firm, and his clients areamong the wealthiest corporations and conglomer-ates. Everything he’s been and everything he standsfor can only benefit from your efforts. Theconfusion lies in his unorthodox methods, and Ican’t explain them except to say that
perhaps they are not unorthodox in the specialisedwork he does. Markets can plummet on rumors;concealment and diversion are surely respected.Regardless, he doesn’t want to destroy you, he wantsto join you.”
The sabre put his glass down on the floor andstruggled out of the chair. With his chin tucked intohis breastbone and his hands clasped behind hisback, Abrahms paced back and forth in silence. Hestopped and looked down at the specialist.
“Suppose, just suppose,” he said, " the almightyMossad has made a mistake, that there’s somethingyou didn’t find.”
“I would find that hard to accept.”
“But it’s a possibility!”
“In light of the information we’ve gathered, Idoubt it. Why?”
“Because I have a sense of smell, that’s why!”
The man from the Mossad kept his eyes onAbrahms, as if studying the soldier’s face orthinking from a different viewpoint. “There is onlyone other possibility, Chaim. If this Converse is notwho and what I’ve described, which would becontrary to all the data we’ve compiled, then he is anagent of his government.”
“That’s what I smell,” said the sabre softly.
It was the specialist’s turn to be silent. Hebreathed deeply, then responded. “I respect yournostrils, old friend. Not always your conduct butcertainly your sense of smell. What do the othersthink?”
“Only that he’s Iying, that he’s covering for othershe may or may not know, who are using him as ascout an "infantry point’ was the term used by PaloAlto.”
The Mossad officer continued to stare at thesabre, but his eyes were no longer focused; he wasseeing abstract, twisted patterns, convolutions fewmen would comprehend. They came from a lifetimeof analysing seen and unseen, legitimate and racialenemies, parrying dagger thrusts with counterthrustsin the blackest darkness. “It’s possible,” he whis-pered, as if replying to an unspoken question heardonly by himself. “Almost inconceivable, but possible.”
“What is? That Washington is behind him?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“As an outrageous alternative I do not subscribeto, but the only one left that has the slightestplausibility. Simply put, he has too muchinformation.”
“And?”
“Not Washington in the usual sense, not thegovernment in the broader sense, but within abranch of the government a section that has heardwhispers about an organisation cannot be sure.They believe that if there is such an organization,they must invade it to expose it. So they choose aman with the right history, the right memories, eventhe right profession to do the job. He might evenbelieve everything he says.”
The sabre was transfixed but impatient. “Thathas too many complications for me,” he said bluntly.
"Try it my way first. Try to accept him; he maybe genuine. He’ll have to give you somethingconcrete; you can force that. Then again he may notbecause he cannot.”
“Andy”
“And if he can’t, you’ll know you’re right. Thenput as much distance between him and his sponsorsas is humanly and brutally possible. He mustbecome a pariah, a man hunted for crimes so insanehis madness is unquestioned.”
“Why not just kill him?”
“By all means, but not before he’s been labeledso mad that no one will step forward to claim him.It will buy you the time you need. The final phaseof Aquitaine is when? Three, four weeks away?”
“That’s when it begins, yes.”
The specialist got up from the chair and stoodpensively in front of the soldier. “I repeat, first tryto accept him, see if what I said before is true. Butif that sense of smell of yours is provoked further,if there’s the slightest possibility he has beenwillingly or unwillingly, wittingly or unwittingly,made a provocateur by men in Washington, thenbuild your case against him and throw him to thewolves. Create that pariah as the North Vietnamesecreated a hellhound. Then kill him quickly, beforeanyone else reaches him.”
“A sabre of the Mossad speaks?”
“As clearly as I can.”
The young Army captain and the older civiliancame out of the Pentagon from adjacent glass doorsand glanced briefly at each other with norecognition. They walked separately down the shortbank of steps and turned left on the cement paththat led to the enormous parking lot; the Armyofficer was perhaps ten feet ahead of the civilian.Upon reaching the
huge asphalt area, each veered in a differentdirection toward his car. If these two men had beenthe subjects of photographic surveillance during thepast fifty seconds, there was no indicationwhatsoever that they knew each other.
The green Buick coupe turned right in themiddle of the block, going through the open chasmthat was the entrance to the hotel’s undergroundparking lot. At the bottom of the ramp the drivershowed his room key to the attendant, who raisedthe yellow barrier and waved him along. There wasan empty space in the third column of stationaryautomobiles. The Buick eased into it and the Armycaptain got out.
He circled through the revolving door and walkedto a bank of elevators in the hotel’s lower lobby. Thepanels of the second elevator opened, revealing twocouples who had not intended to reach theunderground level; they laughed as one of the menrepeatedly pressed the lobby button. The officer, inturn, touched the button for the fourteenth floor.Sixty seconds later he walked out into the corridortoward the exit staircase. He was heading for theeleventh floor.
The blue Toyota station wagon came down theramp, the driver’s hand extended, a room key heldout, the number visible. Inside the parking area thedriver found an empty space and carefully steeredthe small station wagon into it.
The civilian stepped out and looked at his watch.Satisfied, he started toward the revolving door andthe elevators. The second elevator was empty, andthe civilian was tempted to press the button for theeleventh floor; he was tired and did not relish thethought of the additional walk. However there wouldbe other occupants on the way up, so he held to therules and placed his index finger over the buttonbeside the number 9.
Standing in front of the hotel-room door thecivilian raised his hand, rapped once, waited severalbeats, then rapped twice more. Seconds later thedoor was opened by the Army captain. Beyond himwas a third man, also in uniform, the color and theinsignia denoting a lieutenant, junior grade, in theNavy. He stood by a desk with a telephone on it.
“Glad you got here on time,” said the Armyoffi
cer. “The traffic was rotten. Our call should becoming through in a few minutes.”
The civilian entered, nodding to the Navy manas he spoke. "What did you find out aboutFitzpatrick?” he asked.
“He’s where he shouldn’t be,” replied the lieutenant.
“Can you bring him back?”
“I’m working on it, but I don’t know where tobegin. I’m a very low man on a very big totempole.”
“Aren’t we all?” said the captain.
“Who’d have thought Halliday would have goneto him?” asked the naval officer, frustration in hisvoice. “Or if he was going to bring him in, whydidn’t he go to him first? Or tell him about us?”
“I can answer the last two questions,” said theArmy man. “He was protecting him from aPentagon backlash. If we go down, hisbrother-in-law stays clean.”
“And I can answer the first question,” said thecivilian. “ Halliday went to Fitzpatrick because inthe final analysis, he d”dn t trust us. Genevaproved he was right.”
“Hoop” asked the captain defensively, butwithout apology. “We couldn’t have prevented it.”
“No, we couldn’t,” agreed the civilian. “But wecouldn’t do anything about it afterwards, either.That was part of the trust, and there was no way wecould live up to it. We couldn’t
The telephone rang. The lieutenant picked it upand listened. “It’s Mykonos, " he said.
The Aquaintaine Progession
PART TWO
Connal Fitzpatrick sat opposite Joel at theroom-service table drinking the last of his coffee. Thedinner was finished the story completed, and all thequestions the Navy lawyer could raise had beenanswered by Converse because he had given hisword; he needed a complete ally.
“Except for a few identities and some dossiermaterial,” said Connal, “I don’t know an awful lotmore than I did before. Maybe I will when I seethose Pentagon names. You say you don’t know whosupplied them?”
The Aquaintaine Progession Page 27