The Jerusalem File

by Nick Carter

  I bowed to the man who answered the door. "Many pardons, good sir," I said in Arabic. He nodded briskly and looked wary. I bowed again and pulled off the headcloth. His eyebrows shot up.

  "Nick Carter?"

  "You were expecting maybe Mrs. Nusbaum?"

  Uri Lampeck threw his arms around me and started grinning his wide grin. "You gontza meshuganer! Come on in." He looked at Leila and then back at me. "Still pulling the hardship assignments, I see."

  He led us to a small spartan room, offered us tea, cognac, food; told us Raisa, his wife, was asleep; yawned, and said he kept farmer's hours, was it anything urgent or did I just want a bed?

  I looked at Leila. "Two beds," I said.

  He made a philosophical shrug. "Lucky for you that's all that I've got."

  He showed us to a room with bunk-style beds, said "Shalom, boychik," and left us alone.

  I took the top bunk.

  I closed my eyes.

  I kept hearing Leila moving beneath me.

  It was driving me crazy that I couldn't see her.

  It would have driven me crazy if I could have seen her.

  Fourteen

  The Salient is the chunk of Syria that Israel occupied in the October war. About ten miles deep and fifteen miles wide, it extends east from the Golan Heights. The edge of the Salient was the cease-fire line. Only the fire hadn't yet ceased. It was many months after "the end of the war" and Syrian artillery was still firing, and people were dying on both sides, only they just didn't call it a war.

  Beit Nama was four miles east of the line. Four miles into the Syrian side. Beit Nama was where I wanted to go. Yousef's lead was the best one I had, and Yousef's lead was Beit Nama. Where Ali Mansour, who might or might not have been involved in a kidnap that might or might not have involved Leonard Foxx, might or might not still be living.

  And that was my best lead.

  Getting there was pretty iffy too.

  We debated the subject all morning. Uri and Raisa and Leila and I, over coffee after coffee in the Lampeck's kitchen. My map was spread on the wooden table, collecting souvenirs of coffee stains and jam.

  One way was to double back down south and cross into Jordan. No problem there. The Jordan border was business-as-usual. From there we'd go north and cross into Syria — big problem there — and reach Beit Nama through the back door. Mission impossible. Even if our papers got us into Syria, the cease-fire line would be ringed with troops and access to the area would be restricted. We'd be turned back on the road, if not thrown in jail.

  The other way was to cross the Heights and go into the Salient on the Israeli side. Not precisely duck soup either. The Israelis, too, were monitoring traffic. And there was no guarantee that a World correspondent or even an American agent could get through. And even if I did get as far as the front, how do you get across a firing line?

  "Very carefully," Uri laughed.

  "Very helpful." I made a face.

  "I say we go the long way. Go through Jordan." Leila sat with her feet rucked under her, perched Yoga-style on the wooden chair. Jeans and pigtails and a serious face. "And once we get to Syria, I'll do the talking."

  "Swell, sweetheart. But what will you say? And what will you tell the Syrian army when they stop us cold on the road to Beit Nama? Tell them you're Little Black Biding Hood and we're going to visit our grandma in the hills?"

  She gave me what some might construe as a dirty look. Finally she shrugged. "All right You win. So then we're back to your original question. How do we cross in front of the army?"

  The worst thing about that sentence was the "we." How I might cross in front of Syrian guns and how toe might do it were two different things.

  Uri spoke up. Uri could have doubled for Ezio Pinza. A big strong man with a big strong face, mostly white hair, a prominent nose. "I can see that you get from here to the line. On this side, I mean. If that's any help." He was talking to me but looking at his wife.

  Balsa only slightly lifted an eyebrow. Baisa's is one of those rare faces. Weathered and lined and every line makes her seem more gorgeous. That wonderful face, a thin but womanly body, and waist-length red-but-turning-gray hair caught in a clip at the back of her neck. If The Fates let me live to a ripe old age, I want a Raisa for the autumn months.

  "I'll get it," she said, and started to get up. Uri stayed her.

  "No hurry," he said. "Let Nick make his decision first"

  I said, "Did I miss something? What's 'it'?"

  Uri sighed. "There's time," he said. "The question still before the house is how you get across the line."

  'To hell with it" I said. "I'll get across the line. I don't know how. I'll just have to do it. Listen — Moses parted the sea, maybe hell part the Syrians."

  Uri turned to Raisa. "Did this man always make such awful puns?"

  "I think so," she said. "But we were younger then."

  Uri grunted and turned back to me. "Then that's your decision?"

  "That's my decision. Either way, I'll have trouble at the line, but I might as well have friendly guns at my back." I turned to Leila. "How'd you like to spend a few lays on a farm? I'm sure Raisa and Uri would…"

  Her head was shaking a definite no.

  "Then let me put that another way. You're going to spend a few days on a farm."

  She was still shaking nos. "I am given my own assignment to do. I must get over there with you or without you. Better for me if I go with you." She was giving me a fawn-in-earnest look. "And better for you if you go with me.

  There was silence in the room. Raisa watched Uri watching me watch Leila. The part about her own assignment was news. But suddenly it made some very good sense. A fast deal between Hawk and Vadim. The bosses scratch each others backs, and I wind up as an escort service.

  Uri cleared his throat. "And you, Leila? You agree to Nick's plan?"

  She smiled slowly. "Whatever he says will be the right thing." I looked at her and squinted. She looked at me and shrugged.

  Uri and Raisa exchanged a look. Forty-seven messages back and forth in the two-second span of that man-and-wife look. They both got up and left the room. To get "it."

  I turned to Leila. She was busy clearing the coffee cups, carefully not meeting my eye. When she picked up the cup that sat at my elbow, her hand brushed lightly against my arm.

  Uri came back, his hand clenched tightly around "it" "It" was obviously smaller than a breadbox. "It" was also nothing to joke about, judging by the look on Uri's face. "You will guard this with your life and you will get it back to me." He still hadn't opened his fist. "It will get you past any roadblock in Israel, but I warn you, if the Arabs find that you have it, you'd do better to shoot yourself than let them take you." He opened his palm.

  A Star of David.

  I said, "I appreciate the gesture, "Uri. But religious medals…"

  He stopped me with a laugh. A great big barrel-house laugh. He twisted the loop at the top of the medal, the one that joined the disc to the chain. The top triangle of the Star popped up and underneath was engraved:

  '/'

  A. Aleph. The first letter in the Hebrew alphabet. A. Aleph. The Israeli counter-terror group.

  So Uri Lampeck was at it again. He'd been part of the Irgun in '46. A demolitions expert. A man who wanted an independent Israel and believed in burning his bridges behind him. At the time I met him in '64, he was working with a bomb-detection squad. Now, at fifty, he was back making things go bump in the night.

  "Here," he was saying. "You put this on."

  I took the medal and put it on.

  * * *

  We left at night. We were out of costume for the time being, but I had Arab papers, brilliantly forged and weathered looking, and Uri's Star of David around my neck.

  You might as well travel the Heights at night. There's nothing to see. A flat basalt-black plateau, littered with the garbage of three wars. Twisted, rusting, burned-out tanks and the wreckage of armored personnel carriers, scattered like tombstone
s in the rocky fields, along with broken roofless houses, rusting barbed wire and signs that say Danger! Mines!

  Yet, back from the roads, eighteen Israeli farms exist, and Arab peasants till their fields and raise their sheep, and run, or don't bother, when the strafing starts. They're all either crazy or just human. Or maybe it comes to the same thing.

  We were stopped by a kid with an M-16. I showed my World press pass and he let us drive on. Only twenty yards later, around a bend, a whole blockade was waiting on the road. A .30 caliber machine gun, mounted on a tripod, pointed its angry finger at the Rover.

  The Israeli lieutenant was polite but firm. First he told me I was out of my skull to want to go anywhere near the front, that this was a war no matter what they called it and no one could guarantee my safety. I told him I hadn't come to cover a picnic. He still said no. Absolutely not. Loh. I took him aside and showed him the medal.

  I got back in the Rover and drove on through.

  We stopped at an Israeli position on the lowlands, a few hundred yards from the Syrian line. The place had once been an Arab village. Now it was simply a collection of rubble. Not war damage. After-war damage. The result of daily Syrian heavy artillery fire across the line.

  "It's like a weather report on their president's mood," the Israeli soldier was telling me. His name was Chuck Cohen. He came from Chicago. We were sharing some of Raisa's sandwiches and coffee, sitting on a three-foot-high stone fence that once upon a time was the wall of a house. "Ten minutes' fire — he's just saying hello. An hour and he's telling the whole Arab world that they can negotiate all they want but Syria wants a fight to the finish."

  "Do you believe it?"

  He shrugged. "If they do — we'll finish them."

  The Israeli captain sauntered over. The one who'd taken a look at the medal and told me he'd do what he could to help. Captain Harvey Jacobs was thirty years old. A tough, weary, wiry blond who taught Fine Arts at the university when he wasn't called on to fight a war, Leila poured him some coffee from the thermos.

  Jacobs asked me how I planned to cross the line. I didn't begin to have a plan, but when I did, I'd certainly tell him. No sense getting shot at from both sides.

  Jacobs' attitude toward me was guarded. The Aleph around my neck gave me unquestioned status, but seen from his view, it also spelled trouble. Was I going to ask him for moral support or was I going to ask him for fire support? Jacobs had troubles enough without me. I asked him if he'd simply show me on the map where the Syrian guns were nested. "Everywhere," he said. "But you want it on a map, I'll show you on a map."

  We walked through a busted-up marketplace and headed by moonlight for a big stone building, the tallest in town, the old police station. It had made a great lookout, and then a great target. The entrance was all that seemed to be standing. A thick double-door beneath a stone plaque that said Gendarmerie de L'Etat de Syrie and then the date, 1929, a time when Syria was under the French.

  We walked around, not through, the door and down some rubble-strewn steps to a basement. To Captain Jacobs' improvised war room. A table, some files, a single bare bulb, a telephone that still, miraculously, worked. I pulled out my map and he slowly filled it with X's and O's; outposts, checkpoints, command posts, tanks. A tic-tac-toe game played for keeps.

  I ran my hand over my eyes.

  "I assume the girl is combat trained?" He was standing, leaning over the table, the overhead bulb making forty-watt shadows on the shadows that were painted under his eyes.

  Instead of answering, I lit a cigarette and offered him one. He took my cigarette for an answer. He was shaking his head. "In that case, you're really crazy," he said.

  A soldier appeared in the doorway; stopped when he saw me. Jacobs excused himself and said he'd be back. I asked if I could use his phone while he was gone. I'd tried to reach Benyamin from the Lampeck's farm but I hadn't been able to track him down. This might be my last chance.

  Jacobs crossed back and picked up the phone. He jiggled the receiver three or four times and then said "Blum? Jacobs. Listen. I want you to put this call through — " He looked at me. "To where?"

  "Tel Aviv."

  "Tel Aviv. Top priority. My permission." He handed the telephone back to me, having proved that I was a VIP and that he was a very VIP. He left with his soldier.

  I gave Benyamin's red-phone number and ten or fifteen minutes later the quality of static on the phone line changed and through it I heard Benyamin say, "Yes?"

  "The Shanda Baths," I said. "What have you learned?"

  "Place is a — bwupcrackle."

  "Place is a what? All I got was the static."

  "Front for a dope trade. Used to be a depot for sending out opium. But after the Turkish poppy fields closed — crackle-bwuprrip — so the boss started dealing in hash instead. Local trade only. Small-time business."

  "Who's the boss?"

  "Bwup-crackle-bwwwuupp-st-crackle-t-bwup."

  "Again?"

  "Whole thing?"

  "Yeah."

  "Terhan Kal-rrip-ccrackle. Doesn't own the place, just runs it"

  "Is the dope thing his idea or the management's?"

  "Probably his. The place is owned by Regal, Inc. Regal, Inc. is a Swiss corporation — bwup. So we can't trace who the real owner is. Now, how about you? Where the — crackle-t?"

  "I'm…"

  "Bwup-crackle-sttt-poppp-buzzzzzzzzzzzzzz."

  Dead line.

  Sorry, David. And I would have even told you the truth.

  A few minutes later, Jacobs came back. "So?" he said.

  I shook my head. "I'll need a few hours to come up with a plan."

  "Mmm," he said. "I just want to warn you. They're shooting at anything that moves. I can give you cover from where my guns are, but I can't risk men to go along with you. Not on what's got to be a suicide trip."

  "Did I ask you to?" I raised an eyebrow.

  "No," he answered. "But now I don't have to worry that you will."

  I went back to the Rover and closed my eyes.

  It wasn't going to work. The Scarlett O'Hara Battle Plan, the I'll-worry-about-it-tomorrow stuff. Tomorrow was here. And I still didn't have any good ideas.

  Plan One: Leave Leila here with the captain. Take my chances of making it alone. To hell with the deal between Hawk and Vadim. If I left her, at least she'd be alive. Which was more than I could guarantee if she went with me.

  Plan Two: Turn around. Go back through Jordan or up into Lebanon and try to fake it through the Syrian border. But Plan Two faltered where it faltered before. I'd never even get near Beit Nama. Why was the place so close to the line?

  Plan Three: Move Beit Nama. Very funny.

  Plan Four — come on, there has to be a Four.

  I started to smile.

  Plan Four.

  * * *

  The bullets were flying. Missing our heads, but not by enough. It was just dawn and we were easy targets; two Arab figures running through the field. I jumped behind a rock and shot back, carefully aiming my rifle: Crack!

  I motioned to Leila to try for more yardage. Whizz! Boing! Bullets splayed the rock I was hiding behind. Much too close. It got me mad. I picked up the rifle and aimed; Crack! The shot whizzed right over Jacobs' head. Rat-a-tat-tat. He got the message. The next round he aimed at me missed by a yard.

  The Syrian guns hadn't started yet. They were probably busy doping it out. The Israeli fire wasn't aimed at them. It was aimed — aha! — at two Arab figures running through the field. Idiots! What were they doing? Trying to escape through Israeli lines? Rat-a-tat-tat. Jacobs strikes again. Crack! My shot really went wild. Leila tripped and fell against a rock.

  "You okay?" I whispered.

  "Damn!" she said.

  "You're okay. Let's keep going."

  We tried for another five yards. Jacobs' shots stayed a yard away.

  And now the Syrians opened fire. But not at us. The plan was working. The Israeli guns now fired at the Syrians and somewhere down the lin
e came a heavy boom boom as 105 millimeters of tank cannon outshouted a Soviet-made T-54. The armies kept each other nice and busy while Leila and I made our way across the lines.

  We were suddenly facing a Syrian soldier.

  "Mann!" he challenged. (Hark, who goes there?)

  "Bassem Aladin," I smiled. My name. I bowed: "Salaam." He frowned. "Imraa?" (The woman?) I shrugged and told him the baggage was mine. He told me to follow him, keeping his machine gun leveled at my side. I motioned to Leila. He motioned no. "Leave the woman."

  Now I was entering a Syrian war room. Another stone building. Another piece of rubble. Another table with another bare bulb. Another captain, tired and angry. I prayed to the many-tongued god of Berlitz that my spruced-up Arabic would get me through.

  I picked a personality. Humble, eager, slightly foolish. Who else but a fool would do what I'd done? A spy, that's who. I had to be either a spy or a fool. I was counting on the almost-perfect illogic that always dooms the most logical minds. I'd come across the border flagrantly, openly; shot at from behind by Israeli troops. It was such an obvious way to send a spy that no one would believe his enemy would do it. What's obvious, obviously can't be true. So goes the illogical logic of war.

  A soldier at the door took my rifle away. I smiled and bowed and practically thanked him. I bowed again to the Syrian captain and began to jabber, smiling, excited, words tumbling out and over one another. Alf shoukur — a thousand thanks; I'd been held by the enemy (adouwe, I remembered), they'd held me in my qarya, my village. Ila arm al-an — till now, they'd held me, but I'd knocked out the hairis and taken his mousadas — I pointed at the rifle I claimed to have stolen — and then, min fadlak, if you please, Good Captain, I'd found my imraa and ran over the jabal. I kept on bowing and smiling and slobbering.

  The Syrian captain shook his head slowly. He asked for my papers and shook his head again. He looked at his aide and said, "What do you think?"

  The aide said he thought I was a fool with haz. A lucky fool. I kept on smiling like the fool I was.