Flash Point

by James W. Huston

  “That’s nice . . .”

  “In fact, I got a postcard from Tony just the other day. It took a while for the mail to get there. It was from Nahariya.”

  They smiled weakly, remembering.

  “It was sent the day before he and Irit went to Tel Aviv for her interview.”

  Miriam looked at Jacob. “What interview?”

  “With the airline. El Al,” Woods said.

  “She didn’t have any interview.” She looked at Jacob. “Did she?”

  “No. What interview? What for?” he asked.

  “Flight attendant.”

  They both looked mystified. “No, she didn’t have an interview.”

  “Then why was she going to Tel Aviv?”

  “She didn’t say, really. I guess she wanted Tony to see some of the sights. And I think she had some business.”

  Woods’s mind raced around considering the implications. “Government business?”

  “I suppose.”

  “She still worked for the government?”

  “Of course.”

  “And that was one of the reasons she wanted to go to Tel Aviv?” Woods drank from his glass. “Well, that’s interesting. But it probably doesn’t mean anything. Tony must have misunderstood her.”

  “Yes, that must be it.”

  “Well, we don’t want to take up all your time. We were on our way to see where Tony and Irit were murdered,” he said. The words chilled them.

  “Why?” Miriam asked, her eyes moistening as her husband fought back his own emotions.

  “I have to. I owe it to him.”

  “Not much there,” Jacob said.

  “You’ve been there?”

  He shrugged.

  “When?”

  “When it happened.”

  “Were you glad you went?”

  He sighed. “I’m not glad about anything. I’ve lost too much. You have children?”

  “I do,” Big said as Woods shook his head.

  Jacob looked at Big. “Ever lost any of them?”

  “Only in the store,” Big said, smiling, then immediately regretting it.

  “She was everything to me. I don’t know how to say it.” He drank his lemonade with a shaking hand. “She was the family. It is the only thing you leave. . . . You know what I am saying?” he asked anxiously. “When you leave the world, you leave only your family. Even then, after fifty years, nothing. But at least for fifty years, you have people. You made a difference.”

  Woods didn’t know what to say. Then to Jacob, “Would you like to come with us?”

  Big stared at Woods, his eyes enlarged in warning.

  “You mean to where it happened?”

  “You’ve been there. You’d find it faster than we ever would.”

  Jacob looked at Miriam, who smiled gently at him. She said, “I can’t, Jacob, it’s too hard for me. But you go if you want.”

  “All right,” he said. “You stay here tonight. I will drive you there first thing in the morning. Tonight, I will tell you stories about Irit, my little girl. Our only daughter.”

  “So?” Ricketts asked, somewhat annoyed that he had to ask at all.

  “So what?” Kinkaid replied. He had gone over to the DO, out of the task force area, to find Ricketts. Kinkaid had gone to the Director to talk to him about Ricketts. He had a bad feeling about Ricketts’s mission. He had to acknowledge to himself that it was probably because he didn’t know how the mission was to be carried out. But there was something else about it that gnawed at him. He had asked the Director of Central Intelligence, who was in charge not only of the CIA but all intelligence, to read him into Ricketts’s mission. He had refused. Not only had he refused but he said that the agreement he had with Ricketts was that no one else could be read into that mission, and Ricketts had to be personally notified if anyone else even asked to be read in. The DCI had told him that he now had to notify Ricketts of Kinkaid’s interest.

  The idea had made Kinkaid so angry he had almost quit the Agency on the spot. He was fed up with the distrust, the over-the-top concern for secrecy, especially when it involved an area that was supposed to be under his control as the head of the task force. It drove him nuts. He was able to extract one promise from the DCI though, one that he thought might just drive Ricketts crazy—which at this point would be okay in Kinkaid’s mind—the right to decide whether Ricketts could go at all. The go, no-go decision was Kinkaid’s. Just as Ricketts had implied when they’d talked in the parking lot. Kinkaid knew Ricketts had pulled that early morning stunt just to imply that Kinkaid had the power, knowing all the time that only Ricketts and the Director really had the clout to call off the mission. He had made Kinkaid lower his guard by making him think he had power he never really had. Well, now he did.

  Ricketts had decided he had to go now, and he had told the DCI so. The DCI had then informed him that that decision was now in the hands of Kinkaid.

  Kinkaid had found him in the coffee room.

  “Tell me why it has to be now,” Kinkaid insisted.

  “Why should I?”

  “Because if you don’t, I’m not going to approve it.”

  “I’ll see the DCI,” Ricketts argued.

  “He gave it to me.”

  “Then he can un-give it to you.”

  “Maybe.”

  Ricketts hated these games. “The location I have for our friend is only for an hour. Two at the most. I don’t decide when to do this, he does. I have no idea where he’ll be before or after. Just during that window. That’s it. If I don’t get him then, I’ll probably never get him.”

  “You sure?”

  Ricketts sneered. “You know better than that. We’re never sure. The whole thing could be a trap. But I’m prepared to bet my life it’s not a trap, and he’ll be there. That’s as sure as I ever get.”

  Kinkaid sighed. “Look, I know I’ve been hard on you. I just don’t like it when things I’m responsible for are outside of my control.”

  “You’re not responsible.”

  “The hell I’m not. This will come down on my head if you fail.”

  “I won’t fail,” Ricketts said.

  “When we get him back here, you going to do the interrogation?”

  “Personally. I’d like Sami to help.”

  Kinkaid was surprised. “Seriously?”

  “Yes. He understands.”

  “I’ll think about it.” Kinkaid turned, then Ricketts spoke again.

  “I don’t have to bring him back at all.”

  “We can’t do that,” Kinkaid replied, understanding exactly what he meant.

  “I can get someone else to do it.”

  “Nope. Bring him. We need to have a chat.”

  Ricketts nodded and walked past Kinkaid.

  19

  Woods wasn’t sure what he thought he’d find, but he was sure he expected to find something: blood, marks on the pavement, empty shell casings, something. But there wasn’t anything. He and Big stood there next to Jacob, the beach behind them, and stared at a very ordinary road.

  “Are you sure this is the place?” Woods asked.

  “Yes, I am sure. This is where they killed Irit,” Jacob said, his arms folded in front of him, his voice hardening.

  Woods stared at him, then at the water. “They came from the sea?”

  “Yes,” Jacob said. “In rubber rafts.”

  “Why did they do it?” Woods asked.

  “It is so hard for others to understand,” Jacob said wearily. His eyes met those of the American Naval officers. “They do it because they hate us. They hate Jews. Just like the Germans before them, and others before them; they want to kill all Jews.”

  “But why?”

  “Ask them. All we want is to be left alone. This is our land, given to us by God. The Promised Land. They think it is theirs and we stole it from them when we became a nation in 1948. They tried to kill us then, and they try to kill us now. They will always try to kill us. So we defend ourselves. But it
is never enough. They come and kill our daughters, our sons . . .”

  “I’ve seen enough,” said Woods with finality. “We owe it to Vialli, Big. We can’t just let this drop.”

  They walked to Jacob’s car.

  “What are you thinking? Another letter to your congressman?” Big asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Nothing we can do, Trey.”

  “Nobody cares. Nobody. Not Congress, not the President, not the Department of Defense, not anybody. Huge power, and no will to use it. That’s us.”

  Big looked at Woods earnestly. “Yep. That about sums it up.”

  Ricketts waited to board the airplane in Athens, Greece. He was wearing a fine gray Armani suit with a dark blue shirt and a designer tie, expensive loafers, and socks with a diamond pattern. His recently grown moustache was perfectly trimmed and his hair was oiled and combed back. A shiny stainless steel diving watch showed slightly below his French-cuffed shirt. He looked every bit the rich sophisticated Lebanese businessman he was trying to portray.

  The Middle East Airline’s clerk took his passport and ticket. She smiled, then addressed him in Arabic. “Going home?”

  “Yes. Finally.”

  She examined the ticket and checked his name and photograph on his Lebanese passport. “Beirut?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you from there?”

  “All my life.”

  “Me too,” she said. “What part?”

  “On the beach. My parents managed the Sheraton Hotel, until the city became like Berlin in ’45. We closed it down, and I have worked in many other hotels since. Now, I own my own hotel.”

  “Which one?”

  “It is in Spain.” He smiled warmly. “Much safer.”

  “Beirut is safer now . . .”

  He shrugged. “My parents say so as well. I just go to visit. I will return to live, and build a new big hotel on the beach, when everyone else is out. The Israelis, the Syrians, the Iranians, everybody.”

  “I will come visit your hotel,” she said. “I hope it is soon.” She handed him his passport and ticket and he joined the line of people waiting to board.

  “What are you doing here?” Big asked as he reclined on his bunk reading Tolstoy.

  “Taylor put in an emergency leave chit. I had to come in to sign off on it.”

  “I just don’t get it. This guy introduces a million characters in about fifty pages; they stand around at parties, ‘interact,’ have feelings, it’s boring.”

  “What is?”

  “War and Peace.”

  “Maybe you need to skip to the war part.”

  “I’ve been thinking about Irit’s picture. What do you think?” Big asked, closing his book.

  “I don’t know. I’m sure she said it was from birth. But I don’t remember talking to her about it. I can’t remember if Vialli said that, or if she did. If it was just him, he might have gotten it wrong. I suppose she could just tell people that so she doesn’t have to explain the accident every day. It might be too embarrassing. Maybe she got it caught in an elevator door or something.”

  “Right. Or maybe there’s a lot more to this.”

  “Like what?”

  “How about the whole fake interview thing?”

  Woods shook his head. “That one really got me. I mean Boomer even put that in his postcard. No mistake there.”

  “So what the hell is going on?”

  “Don’t know. We just don’t know enough.”

  “You going to the reception tonight?”

  Woods gave him a weary “oh no” look. “What reception?”

  “At the Air Force base.”

  “What Air Force base?”

  “Ramat David.”

  “Who is that?”

  “You know, Israeli Air Force, F-15s, F-16s. Guys with wings, cool guys, like us.”

  Woods pulled his T-shirt off and tossed it into the bottom of his closet. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Well, while you were out playing tourista to the Holy Shrines, the Israeli Air Force sent word to CAG that they wanted to sponsor a reception for all the aircrew in the Air Wing to come to Ramat David. We leave in two hours, by bus. You coming?”

  Woods sighed. “I’d love to talk to those guys. That sounds great. What’s the uniform? Is anybody else from the squadron going?”

  “Whites. Everybody.”

  Woods made a mental survey of the state of his tropical white uniform. “Maybe there’ll be somebody there who can tell us more about this Sheikh guy.”

  “Don’t count on it.”

  “Never hurts to ask.”

  The Americans were in their distinctive white uniforms and the Israelis were in their indistinctive olive-green uniforms. All were young and vigorous, and tried to impress each other. The pilots stood in small groups and traded stories. Many of the Israelis talked of combat victories and MiGs downed; the Americans stuck to carrier aviation, which the Israelis would never experience.

  Woods and Big were talking to three Israeli Captains. They were F-15 pilots and proud of it. Pritch hovered outside the group, not sure whether she could participate as a full member of the unspoken but recognized fraternity of fighter pilots. She had insisted on coming even though she wasn’t “aircrew.” She argued that she was an officer in the squadron and should be allowed to come. Bark thought it might be amusing to have her along.

  Woods was distracted. He had to write the flight schedule for the morning’s flights, some of which were to launch immediately after the Washington pulled out of Haifa, and he hadn’t even started it. “I’m sorry, what?” he said, realizing one of the Israelis was talking to him.

  “You went to Topgun.”

  “Not only did he go, he was an instructor,” Big said.

  “Thanks, Big,” Woods said sarcastically. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  “Is that true?” the Captain asked, impressed. “You were an instructor?”

  “Yeah. Two and a half year shore tour, flying F-5s and F-16Ns.”

  “Must be great flying.”

  “Best there is.”

  “Is Topgun a good thing for the Navy? It is just Navy?”

  “Yes. It’s a Navy thing. The Air Force has Red Flag; but there’s nothing like the original,” Woods said, smiling. “It sure made a difference in Vietnam when it started. Our kill ratio was 2:1 until we started Topgun, then it went to more than 12:1. The North Vietnamese told their pilots not to fight gray Phantoms.”

  “What do you mean?” the Captain asked, perplexed.

  “Gray Phantoms. Navy Phantoms, F-4s. Fight the Air Force Phantoms, the camouflage ones. They haven’t been to Topgun.”

  “Oh, of course. That’s good,” the Captain said. Grinning, he repeated this in Hebrew for his fellow pilots. They laughed weakly. “You think you still fly as good?”

  Woods smiled. “We like to think so. We’d love the chance to see how we could do against you.”

  Big stepped closer as the stakes went up. “That would be something. Since you guys are clearly the best in the world—because of your combat experience—it would be quite an honor to test ourselves against you.”

  “It would be our honor,” the Captain said to Woods. “And we would only hope to do well enough so as not to bring discredit on ourselves.” He studied the white-uniformed Navy pilots carefully. “I wish we could find out,” the Captain said.

  At the front of the room, someone tapped on the side of a glass.

  “May I have your attention please,” said an Israeli officer. Woods couldn’t figure out how to decode their insignia yet, but assumed the one speaking was in charge. “I am Colonel Yitzak Bersham. I want to welcome the American pilots from the Washington, and thank you for coming to Ramat David, our aircraft carrier that doesn’t move.” He smiled at his small joke. “The reason we asked you here tonight is to get to know you better, let you get to know us better, and talk about airplanes and the great traditions of
aviation. We also wanted to thank you on behalf of your country, for your constant support, and for the weapons you have provided us, without which we would never have survived.” He waited as the Israeli pilots clapped, endorsing his thanks.

  “Please make yourselves at home, get to know our pilots, and enjoy your stay in Israel.” He raised his glass and then stepped away from the microphone.

  A U.S. Navy Captain took the microphone and spoke to the crowd. “Good evening. I’m Captain Dave Anderson, the Air Wing Commander of the Washington. We wanted to thank you for your hospitality, and for inviting us to meet you at your air base. Several of you were able to visit us on the Washington, and next time perhaps the rest of you can as well . . .”

  Woods had stopped listening. He never liked speeches, or toasts, or any other times when people said things other than what they meant. He looked at the Israeli pilots standing next to him, then at his watch. He still had to prepare the flight schedule.

  “. . . and let me simply say that it is an honor to be with the second-best group of aviators in the world.” The Israelis hooted and laughed at the comment, although half were behind because of the translation lag.

  Commander Anderson moved away from the mile, and the officers began talking again. Woods didn’t feel like making any more small talk. He toyed with going out and waiting in the bus. “Lieutenant Woods,” the Israeli Captain said, “I want you to meet our Squadron Commander, Major Mike Chermak.” Chermak moved closer to Woods and extended his hand.

  Woods was surprised. “Your name is Mike?”

  “Yes.” Chermak smiled warmly. “Nice Christian name, yes?”

  “Interesting.”

  “No, it is short for Micah. Old Hebrew name. There is even a book in your Old Testament by that name.” He watched Woods, then recognized his name on his nametag. “So you’re the Topgun instructor,” he said softly. His brown eyes bore holes in Woods, making him uneasy.

  “Former instructor, sir,” Woods said. “Now I’m in a squadron.”

  “103?” he asked.