The Jerusalem File

by Nick Carter

  They asked me where I was going from here. I said that I had a sadiq in Beit Nama. A friend who would help me.

  The captain waved a disgusted hand. "Go then, fool. And don't come back."

  I smiled again and bowed my way out "Shoukran, shoukran. Ila-al-laqaa." Thank you, Captain; thank you and goodbye.

  I got outside the half-blasted building, found Leila, and motioned with my head. She started to follow me, ten steps behind.

  We got past the first ring of Syrian troops and I heard her mutter, "Jiyid jiddan". You were very good.

  "No," I said in English. "I'm just a lucky fool."

  Fifteen

  A fool and his luck are soon parted. I just made that up but you may quote me if you like.

  A mile down the road we were stopped by a road guard. An arrogant, brutal son of a bitch, the kind who's bad enough as a civilian, but give him a gun and a soldier suit and what you end up with is a runaway sadist. He was bored and tired and itching for fun: Tom and Jerry style.

  He blocked the road.

  I bowed and smiled and said "If you please…"

  He leered. "I don't please." He looked at Leila and grinned with a mouthful of black and green teeth. "Does she please? The woman? You find her pleasing?" He elbowed past me. "I think I see if I find her pleasing."

  I said, "No you won't, you heap of dung!" Only I happened to say it in English. I pulled out my stiletto and spun him around. "Abdel!" he yelled. "I've caught a spy!" I slit his throat but it was too late. Abdel came. With three others.

  "Drop the knife!"

  They were holding machine guns.

  I dropped the knife.

  One of the soldiers walked up and faced me. Dark and dark-eyed; his head in a turban. He socked me across the jaw, saying a word that Leila hadn't taught me. I grabbed him and spun him around in front of me, arms locked behind his back in a twist. In that position, he became a shield. I still had a gun hidden in my robes. If I could just…

  Forget it. The machine guns switched their focus to Leila. "Let him go."

  I let him go. He spun around and lunged at my throat. He was strong with fury and I couldn't break loose. I used my weight to bring us both to the ground. We rolled around in the rocky dust, but his hands were like steel. They stayed on my neck.

  "Enough!" said a gunner. "Abdel! Let him go!" Abdel paused. Just long enough. I rocked him off me with a punch to the throat. He pretzeled in the dust, gasping for breath. Tool!" said the short one. "You'll get us in trouble. The Colonel wishes to question all spies. He doesn't want us to bring him corpses."

  I was sitting on the ground, massaging my neck. Abdel got up, still fighting for breath. He spat and called me the intestine of a pig. The tall soldier gave him a sympathetic cluck. "Ah, poor Abdel, don't despair. When the colonel uses his special methods, the spy will wish you'd killed him now." He smiled, a wide black and green smile.

  Oh yeah. Terrific. "Special methods." I thought of the medal around my neck. No one had searched me. No one had frisked me. I still had my gun — and I still had the medal First things first Ditch the medal. I reached for the clasp.

  "Up!" came the order. "Hands up!" I couldn't find the goddamned clasp! "Up!" It wasn't the time for heroics. I put up my hands. One of the guys put his gun on a rock and came over and bound my hands behind me. He tugged at the ropes and pulled me to my feet. The guy had a face like a chipped plate. Cracked by sun and wind and anger. "Now," he said. "We bring him to the colonel." That's when Leila went into action. Leila, who'd been standing quiet as a rock. Suddenly, she screamed, "La! La" and started toward me, tripped and fell. She was down in the dust now, weeping and wailing, "No! No! Please! No!" The soldiers were grinning their Tartan grins. The guy at the ropes started jerking me back. Leila heaved herself up and ran; sobbing, wild, crazy, finally throwing herself at my feet, grabbing my ankles, kissing my boots. What the hell was she doing down there? Abdel grabbed her and pulled her away. Then he pushed her with the nose of his gun.

  "Move!" he said. "We go to the colonel. We go to the colonel in Beit Nama."

  Well, I thought, that's one way to get there.

  * * *

  The colonel's office was next to the lobby of what used to be the town's hotel. He and his men had taken it over and the Nama Hotel combined all the worst of brothel, barracks, and interrogation center.

  Music was coming from a room down the hall. Loud laughter. The smells of booze. The lobby was filled with local Arabs, some in custody, most on their own, while soldiers patroled with shiny rifles. Leila was led to a seat in the lobby. I was taken to see Colonel Qaffir.

  When they first brought me in, I couldn't see him. The colonel was standing with his back to the door. He was leaning over a small mirror, squeezing a pimple with great concentration. He waved the guards out and continued his work. Plop! His face unloaded on the mirror. He sighed with almost sexual pleasure. I watched him out of the corner of my eye. I was seated on a chair across the room, my hands still tied behind my back. Again, he studied his face in the mirror, as though it were a map of enemy encampments; the colonel debated where to strike next.

  I looked around. The office was lovingly, lavishly done in the grand tradition of Arab gloom. The walls were a deep yellow stucco, hung with grim, dusty rugs. Heavy furniture, carved-wood doors and small, high, stained-glass windows. Barred windows. No exit. The room smelled of dust and piss and hash. A door inside the office was slightly ajar. It led to a bare stuccoed cell. A single chair. And some kind of free-standing metal contraption. Something like a giant steel coat rack with a fat iron bar right-angled at the top. It almost grazed the twelve foot ceiling. A torture machine. "Special methods." Which explained the sour biological smell.

  The colonel had made his final selection. He dive-bombed two grimy fingers and struck. Bull's eye! Mission completed. He wiped his chin on the cuff of his jacket. He turned around. An olive-colored man with a sweeping mustache and a painful, lumpy, pock-marked face.

  He stood and gave me the kind of look that people must have given him before he was a colonel. He also called me the intestine of a pig.

  I had my speech all ready again. The same one I'd used at the firing line. The only guy who'd heard me speak English was the guy I'd murdered back on the road. I'd murdered him because he'd attacked my woman. Me, I was still Bassem Aladin, the foolish, humble, lovable jerk.

  What's known in the trade as "fat chance!"

  My performance was brilliant and flawless as ever — with one difference. Colonel Qaffir. Qaffir got his kicks by doing torture and he wasn't about to be cheated out of his kicks. The war just gave him a legal excuse. In peacetime, he probably hung around alleys, luring streetwalkers to fascinating deaths.

  Qaffir kept telling me to tell him my mission.

  I kept telling Qaffir I didn't have a mission. I was Bassem Aladin and I didn't have a mission. The answer pleased him. He was eyeing the coat rack like a fat lady eyes a banana split. A numbing weariness was taking me over. I've been tortured before.

  Qaffir got up and called his guards. He opened the outside door of the office and I got a drift of music and laughter, and saw Leila, seated in the lobby, between a pair of vigilant guns.

  The guards came in and closed the door. Two unpleasant-looking hunks of beef, uniformed and turbaned and smelling of beer. Now, I was frisked. Quickly, but enough. There went my old friend Wilhelmina. She sat on the desk, on top of some files, as silent and useless as a paperweight.

  There was nothing to do. My hands, as the saying goes, were tied. I'd bought it. Whatever the hell it was. And I still had that medal around my neck. Maybe Qaffir would know what it was. Maybe he wouldn't twist the loop. I was down to the bottom of the maybe barrel.

  Maybe…

  Maybe I just got a good idea.

  They led me back into Qaffir's game room.

  They threw me on the floor and untied my hands. The colonel tossed me a length of rope. He told me to tie my own ankles together. "Tight," he said. "
You make it tight or I make it tight." I tied my ankles together. Tight. I was still wearing high leather desert boots. The colonel also had a thing for my boots. A real, sick jerk. When he watched me do the ropes, he had stars in his eyes. I kept my own expression blank.

  He was starting to sweat. He released a lever on the giant coat rack and the bar at the top slid down to the ground. He nodded to his guards. They bound my hands with the same piece of rope that was binding my feet It left me hunched over and touching my toes.

  They slipped the ropes over the bar of the rack, and hoisted the bar back up to the ceiling. I was left there hanging like a sleeping sloth, like a side of beef in a butcher's window.

  And that's when the medal slipped down and around and showed its face in the middle of my back.

  The colonel saw it. He couldn't miss. "Aha! I see. Bassem Aladin with a Star Of David. Very interesting, Bassem Aladin."

  There was still a chance. If he didn't find the hidden "A," his finding the medal could actually help. Could fit right in with my good idea.

  "So that's what it is," said Bassem Aladin. "A Star Of David!"

  Qaffir made a sound like a snort and a giggle. "Soon you will not make many jokes. Soon you will beg me to let you talk. Of serious things. Your mission, for instance."

  He pulled out a long, leather whip. He turned to the guards. He told them to go.

  The guards went.

  The door closed.

  I steeled myself for what was coming.

  The robe was ripped away from my back.

  And then came the lashes.

  One.

  Two.

  Cutting. Searing. Burning. Tearing. Starting in my flesh and exploding in my brain.

  Twenty.

  Thirty.

  I stopped counting.

  I could feel the blood rolling down my back. I could see the blood dripping down my wrists.

  I was thinking the colonel had worse in mind.

  I was thinking my good idea wasn't so good.

  I was thinking I needed a little rest.

  I passed out.

  When I came to, it was hours later and it wasn't any gentle, slow dawning. My back was a small Chicago fire. The bastard was rubbing salt in my wounds. Fine old Biblical torture.

  I decided I'd just about had enough. Enough for country, pride, and duty.

  I cracked.

  I started yelling "Stop!"

  He said, "Your mission. You want to tell me about your mission?"

  "Yes… yes."

  "Tell." He was disappointed. He was still rubbing in the granular fire. "Why were you sent here?"

  "To… to make contact. Please! Stop!"

  He didn't stop. "Contact with whom?"

  My god, it hurt!

  "Contact with whom?"

  "M-Mansour," I said. "Ali Mansour."

  And where is this man?"

  "H-here. Beit Nama."

  "Interesting," he said.

  The fire burned, but it didn't get hotter.

  I heard him walking out to his office.

  I heard the door open. He summoned his guards. I heard him say the name Ali Mansour.

  The outer door closed. His footsteps approached. The door of the game room closed behind him.

  "I think you will tell me now the whole story. But first I will give you some more motivation. A little motivation to assure you tell the truth." The colonel moved around and stood in front of me, forehead throbbing, eyes glinting. "And this time I think we'll apply the pressure to someplace… a little closer to home."

  He threw back his whip hand and started to aim.

  * * *

  When the guards brought Ali Mansour to the office, the colonel was standing with his back to the door. He was leaning over the mirror again. He waved the guards out and continued his work. Finally, he turned and faced Mansour.

  Mansour's hands were bound behind him but he tried to hold onto a surly expression. Mansour had a round, almost boyish face. A fat, flat nose. Full, twitchy lips. A faceful of fear, posing as defiance.

  Qaffir was not about to tolerate defiance.

  He greeted Mansour with a whip to the face. "So," he said. "You collaborate with spies."

  "No!" Mansour was looking through the door. Looking at the hulk of raw flesh that dangled from a bar on a giant coat-rack.

  Qaffir followed the man's glance. "You wish to talk now, or you wish to be persuaded?"

  "No! I mean, yes. I mean — I know nothing. There is nothing to tell. I am loyal to Syria. I am with the Palestinians. I believe in the fedayeen. I would not… I have not… Colonel, I…"

  "You! You are the intestine of a pig! You have talked to Israelis. To American agents. You have put in jeopardy a certain plan. A kidnap plan. You and your scum of a pig-faced brother." Qaffir menaced his whip through the air. Mansour moaned and shook his head, his eyes like cockroaches, darting back and forth. "No!" he said. "My brother. Not I. And my brother is dead. A! Shaitan kill him. Now. You see. That should prove it. If I had betrayed them, I too would be dead."

  "Then why did that meat there that once was an agent tell me his mission was contacting you?"

  Mansour was in agony. He kept on shaking his head back and forth. "My… my brother, he talk to American agent. Maybe they think that I talk too. I wouldn't. I die first. I swear. Not me."

  "Say what you know, then, about your brother."

  "My brother was a fool. I didn't know that when I told him the plan. I said perhaps there would be much money. My brother wants money for buying guns. When the plan falls through, my brother is angry. He says he is going to get himself money. Next thing I know, Khali is dead. They say he had talked to American spy. He was waiting in Jerusalem for the spy to pay him."

  The story was falling into place. I gritted my teeth against the pain. Qaffir's uniform was grating on my back. I hoped to hell that I wasn't still bleeding. Though Mansour would think it was someone else's blood. The blood of the man hanging in the game room. The blood of the real Colonel Qaffir.

  "What do you mean — when the plan fell through'? The plan, that I know of, is well on its way."

  "The plan, yes. Our part in it, no."

  I remembered it was Ali's friend who was involved. Not Ali himself. "Your friend," I said. "The one who told you about the plan…"

  "Ahmed Rafad?"

  "Where is he now?"

  "At Rhamaz, I guess. If Shaitan is still there, I would think he is with them."

  "And now you will tell me what your brother knew."

  Mansour looked at me. "He knew — the truth."

  I toyed with the whip. "Don't tell me 'the truth.' I must know exactly the story you told him, so I'll know the story he told the spy. Also what gives you such Emir's pride as to think that you have been told the truth? Huh! You? They told you the truth? Huh!"

  His eyes crawled down to the floor. "Perhaps that explains it," he said to the carpet.

  "Huh? What? Speak up, you worm."

  He raised his eyes and with them, his voice. "Perhaps as you say, Rafad told me lies. Perhaps that is why I have not seen him since."

  The plan, as he told it, was to kidnap Foxx. To hold him in the Syrian village of Rhamaz. No, he didn't know which house in Rhamaz. Four men were hired to do the job. His friend Rafad was to fly the plane. "No, not a plane. A…" Mansour wanted to gesture with his hands. His hands were tied.

  "A helicopter."

  "A chopper," he said. "Is the same thing, yes? Rafad said they pay him a lot of money. Some in advance, more later. They tell him to look for other good workers. Not to hire — just to look." Mansour was looking scared again. "That is all that I know. All that I know."

  "And the plan fell through?"

  "Rafad said they changed their mind about hiring. They didn't want any others on the job."

  "And who are 'they?"

  Mansour shook his head. "I don't think even Rafad knows that. They only spoke to him on the phone. They said they thought it was dangerous to meet. They
knew he flew choppers. They knew he was loyal. They said that was all they needed to know. As for the rest — they sent him much money, and that was all Rafad needed to know."

  I screwed my eyes into nasty slits. "I don't believe you. You know who they are. If they didn't tell you, perhaps you guessed." I suddenly jerked him up by the collar. "What were your guesses?"

  "I… I had no guesses."

  "Everyone has guesses. What were yours?"

  "A… As Saiqa. I thought they were part of As Saiqa. But the papers say they are Black September. I… I guess that also might be so."

  I let go of his collar and held him with my eyes. "C-Colonel, please, my brother couldn't tell the Americans much. He only knew the things I told him. And all those things — I have just told you. And — and — in telling my brother, I did no wrong. Shaitan told Rafad to recruit, and Rafad said, yes, I could talk to my brother. I was breaking no trust. I was doing no wrong. Please, Colonel. You let me go now?"

  "I let you go now… to the other room."

  His eyes bugged. I took him into the other room. I sat him on the chair and bound and gagged him. We both looked up at Qaffir's body. His head was rolled forward and facing the wall. It would be a while before anyone missed him — before they bothered to look at his face.

  And when they did, I'd be miles away.

  Maybe.

  Sixteen

  You may want to know how I did it.

  You have to go back to the scene on the hill, from the point where the gunners said, "Drop the knife," to where Leila groveled at my feet. That was how I got Hugo back. Leila picked it up when she "tripped and fell," and then slipped the stiletto into my boot.

  I wasn't sure how I'd use it. Or even if I'd get a chance to use it. I didn't even know when I was in the colonel's office. All I figured when the guards came in was I wouldn't get to go and see Ali Mansour. And then what flashed was the Islamic proverb: "If Mohammed can't come to the mountain, the mountain will come to Mohammed." So I decided that Mansour would come to me. That I'd let the colonel do his stuff, that after a while I'd pretend to crack, and mention Mansour, and get him brought in.