“Every Jew a twenty-two,” the Reb had said more than once.
A staunch proponent of the Second Amendment, the Reb had always supported a well-armed citizenry, which he believed was the only way to keep another Castro or Stalin or Hitler or Chavez from rising in America.
“The one thing that stops an evil government from seizing total power,” he once told Jack, “is fear of millions of armed citizens. The Brits learned that lesson a couple hundred years ago.”
Yet despite this tough talk, the Reb was genuinely a kind and friendly man. He acted as a missionary to fallen Jews he met in the streets of San Francisco, trying to bring them back to God. He’d saved many a drugged-out soul over the years, and they loved him for throwing them a spiritual life preserver when they were drowning.
In some ways, Jack was in need of a life preserver himself. And once he told his story, the Reb was all too happy to help.
* * *
“Try to look more serious,” the man behind the camera told him. “When was the last time you saw someone smile in a passport photo?”
Jack put on his best poker face. Hadn’t even realized he was smiling. He certainly didn’t feel much like it, standing there stiffly in his new suit with a black fedora perched atop his head. It didn’t help that the Reb had supplied him with a fake beard made by a wigmaker so that Jack could blend in with the rest of the Lubavitchers. The beard was surprisingly realistic, using human hair woven into a special netting, but the glue they’d used to secure it with was itching his skin like crazy.
He thought of Bob Copeland and the man’s love of cloak and dagger. Jack did not share that love.
The flash went off, Jack certain he looked appropriately dazed, then the man behind the camera—a Russian Jew named Falkovsky—popped out the data card and crossed the small room to a computer station.
“Your timing is good,” he told them. “Two years from now, who knows if I’m still in business?”
“Why is that?” the Reb asked.
Falkovsky, who worked out of a camera store, was an old-school documents forger who found the advent of computer technology a godsend. What had once taken him hours of precise work using special inks and printing presses could now be handled by a standard PC in about a third of the time.
“Biometrics,” he said. “The government is pushing for biometric passports and working on a slow roll-out to establish a database over the next couple years. There’s no final decision on whether they’ll implement, but some intelligence experts are worried that if they do, it’ll compromise their ability to operate. And I don’t need to tell you what it will do to me.”
Jack had heard about this. The “e-passport,” as it was called, used smart card technology to store standardized biometric information, including facial, fingerprint, and iris recognition. And intelligence agencies had a right to be worried. If these types of passports were adopted universally, they’d not only be virtually impossible to forge, but any leaks of biometric data could potentially put an agent traveling under a false identity in danger of being discovered by the enemy. All the phony beards in the world wouldn’t disguise them.
Fortunately, this wasn’t a concern for Jack right now. Jacob Samuel Heshowitz would be traveling with what, to the naked eye, looked like a standard-issue Israeli passport, properly distressed and carrying several travel stamps.
His cover story was simple. Heshowitz was a Borough Park Lubavitcher who had moved to Tel Aviv a year ago and sought citizenship under the Law of Return. A frequent traveler, he applied for and received an Israeli passport shortly after his arrival in the country.
The Reb had assured Jack that the passport would be flawless. Falkovsky—whom he’d met through one of his Mossad contacts—was very good at what he did.
The Russian pushed the camera’s data chip into a slot on his computer, then sat down.
“Give me about two hours,” he said, and waved them away.
* * *
Several hours later, after dinner had been served and the dishes cleared away, Jack and the Reb sat at Cousin Ohad’s dining table, admiring Falkovsky’s handiwork, Jack happy to be rid of the beard for the time being.
“What did I tell you?” Neershum said. “The man’s an artist.”
“He should be, for the price I paid. You sure you don’t have any qualms about all of this?”
The Reb gave him the look he always gave when Jack asked stupid questions. “Do you?”
“Not really, no.”
“Good. We’re at war, my friend. It may not feel that way sometimes and that in itself can be a problem, but it’s real, and real people die as a consequence—something you know better than most.”
“I can’t argue with that,” Jack said.
“This man you seek, I can assure you he has no qualms about breaking laws to further his goals. He’d just as soon see people like you and me buried under a pile of rubble.” The Reb absently stroked his beard. “No matter what a man’s ideology or religion may be, when he’s faced by a fanatic with a knife in his hand he should cut him down. No amount of reasoning will dissuade the true believer.”
“There are people who would disagree.”
The Reb leaned forward in his chair now, his gaze intense. “Then they deserve to die. They look at terrorists and genocide as abstract notions, lessons in history that fall on their ears like some ancient melody that no longer has any relevance. They comfort themselves with trivial entertainments, but how do you think they’d feel if that knife was pressed to their throats?”
“Ready to fight back.”
“Yes, then. Then, when it’s too late.” The Reb paused, leaned back again. “So I think God will forgive us for breaking a few rules for the greater good.”
He got to his feet, grabbed his glass from the table and drained the last of his potato vodka from the Ukraine. Clean. No hangover.
He let loose a satisfied sigh as he set the glass down again. “To bed,” he told Jack. “Tomorrow is a big day and you need rest. I only wish I were going with you.”
Jack finished his own glass. “You still can.”
The Reb shook his head. “This is a one-man job. I’d only be in your way.”
“I doubt that,” Jack said, getting to his feet. “But I understand. Are you heading back to San Francisco tomorrow?”
“Ohad has invited me to stay a while. I think I’ll stick around, enjoy the family.” He smiled. “Thank you for the holiday, my friend.”
Jack nodded and shook his hand. “Good night, Rabbi.”
“Lailah tov.”
* * *
Jack traveled with a group of ten, all Lubavitchers who were flying to Bristol, U.K., for a week-long sojourn—friends of the Reb who were happy to have Jacob Heshowitz’s company, no questions asked.
Despite knowing that he blended in, Jack felt conspicuous. The fake beard didn’t help, especially since it was itching twice as much as the day before. He caught a glimpse of his reflection as he moved with the others past a phalanx of armed guards to the airport terminal doors, and what he saw made him feel naked, like a high-school kid in the halls without pants.
He half expected one of the guards to pull him away and interrogate him, but they merely glared. That was the first line of security: to look intimidating and see who started to perspire. Jack couldn’t afford to; the spirit gum holding his beard would come loose. Fortunately, to them, Jack was part of a group of men no different from a thousand other such groups that would pass through these doors in the coming weeks. They dismissed him as harmless.
The group’s flight wasn’t scheduled to depart for three hours. Jack had been warned that airport security measures at Ben Gurion International were quite different than they were in the U.S., and he and the Reb had spent much of the previous night going over how Jack should act and what he should say.
As they moved into the check-in line, Jack was approached by a pleasant-looking woman in uniform. The Israelis called this second line of security, somewhat j
okingly, “the Fisher of Men.” The surly-faced guards made you uneasy. This was the one who reeled you in.
She spoke Hebrew. “Passport and ticket, please.”
Jack’s facility with the language was limited to a few brief phrases he’d learned from his mother and grandfather, and a couple the Reb had taught him last night. But he’d been assured that Tel Aviv was a melting pot, that most Israelis spoke English, and a relocated American with limited knowledge of the native tongue wouldn’t raise too much of a red flag. He could easily be a drifter who had only recently rediscovered his faith.
Taking his ticket and the forged passport from his inner coat pocket, he handed them to her, telling her he preferred to speak English.
She glanced at his suitcase, carry-on, and passport, then directly at him. “Where did you live before you moved to Tel Aviv, Mr. Heshowitz?”
“Brooklyn,” he said. “Borough Park.”
“I have family there. What area did you live in?”
“Near Eighteenth Avenue,” he told her. “Although I only spent about three years there. I was raised in California.”
As he spoke, she didn’t stop looking into his eyes. He knew he was being profiled, that she was trained to search for any signs of distress, and he did his best not to show her any.
His biggest concern was the beard. The wigmaker’s artistry was nearly as flawless as Falkovsky’s, but he couldn’t help worrying that this woman could see right through it. He just hoped his concern wasn’t showing in his eyes.
“Are you traveling alone?” she asked.
He gestured to the other Lubavitchers around him, grateful for the momentary break from her gaze. “We’re all together.”
She gave the others a cursory glance, then looked at his ticket and said, “I see you’re flying to Bristol today.”
“Yes,” he said.
Back to his eyes again. “And the reason for your travel?”
“Worship. We’ll be visiting the Bristol Chabad.”
Her gaze was unwavering, as if she wanted to find something suspicious—was just looking for an excuse to pull him into a back room somewhere and have him more thoroughly interrogated.
“And your luggage. Has it left your side today?”
“No.”
She stared at him a moment longer, Jack imagining the worst, then she suddenly handed him his documents.
“Have a pleasant trip,” she said with a warm smile.
When she moved on to the next person in line, Jack felt relief wash through him. There was still baggage screening and other checkpoints to get through, but the toughest test had been passed.
Now, if only he could get his chin to stop itching.
20
London, England
The flight to Bristol was mercifully uneventful.
Except for a moment prior to takeoff, when his fellow Lubavitchers started to pray together, there was nothing unusual about it. Jack had been warned of this and had joined in as instructed. As he genuflected and bobbed in prayer with the others, he felt out of place, like a conservative at Harvard.
After they landed, the group sailed through customs and immigration without a snag. Jack bid his escorts farewell, then traded dollars for pounds at the airport exchange and caught a cab to the Bristol Temple Meads railway station. He had a flashback to a story he’d once reported on about an undercover cop in San Francisco posing as a Chasid. The guy was spying on Israelis who were spying on us when he was assaulted by skinheads in a hate crime. His beard came off and his attackers were so stunned he was able to take them out with ease. There was no avoiding the publicity, which the SFPD used to its advantage: they said the guy was working to secure the safety of the Jewish community. He even got a citation from the Israeli ambassador.
In the men’s room, Jack stuffed the hat and the beard in his small carry-on, happy to finally wash the residue of the glue off his face, then smoothed back his hair, went to the ticket window, and bought passage to London.
Three hours later, as the train rolled into Westminster, Jack’s mind flashed memories of his week here with Rachel. They both thought they were in love at the time—who knows, maybe they were—and had wandered the streets of central London for hours, absorbing the sights and sounds, hitting all the usual tourist spots: Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, and of course, Trafalgar Square, with its beautiful fountains and majestic mid-nineteenth-century architecture. London had a unique vibrancy to it that was exhilarating, and it pained Jack to know that he was no longer welcome here.
Jack hired a cab and took a short ride to the Beresford Hotel. As they rumbled along Rochester Row, Jack looked up at Big Ben towering over the city and marveled at its overpowering beauty. Its movement was famous for its reliability, but when he checked it against the Hamilton Gilbert on his wrist—which he flawlessly maintained—he was surprised to discover that the great clock was off by a minute.
Jack suddenly felt uneasy. It was strange how psychological triggers worked. The need for order flared up inside him, and he realized he had been so focused on his mission, so alert, that he had neglected to maintain balance. He should have grabbed some sleep on the train. He should have given himself some downtime. Being so deep in something made you question the instincts you were trusting, made you second-guess your actions, made you wonder if you’d thought the whole thing through enough.
He had been so thoroughly guided by Bob Copeland’s sensible one-line mantra that he never thought that the trip to London might be too impulsive.
Listening to the hum of the engine, he closed his eyes and imagined the perfect mechanism of the watch on his wrist, or the Berliner on the wall in his apartment, letting the tick-tick-tick in his mind center him. It had been a long and stressful day and his first order of business had to be to get some rest.
The Beresford Hotel was an old redbrick monstrosity that had once been a school dormitory and looked it. Jack knew he wouldn’t be spending much time here, but he needed a base of operations that would take cash for a couple nights and ask no questions.
The room he rented wasn’t much bigger than a walk-in closet, with a lumpy twin bed and a rattling radiator, and the only plumbing available in the room itself was a dingy sink with rusty fixtures.
Throwing his suitcase on the bed, he peeled off his clothes, wrapped a large but rather gray-looking towel around his waist, then went down the hall to the communal bath and took a scalding hot shower to wash away the day.
Fifteen minutes later, he climbed onto the bed and slid between the sheets, letting the last of the tension drain from his body, the tick-tick-tick still in his mind as he fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.
* * *
It was dark outside when Jack hired another cab to take him across the Thames to East London. According to Abdal al-Fida’s personnel file, he lived in the Forest Gate section of the borough of Newham, an area known for its ethnic diversity and high concentration of Muslims.
Isaiah once again came to mind: “They come from a far country, from the end of Heaven … to destroy the whole Earth.…”
Jack had no way of knowing if al-Fida still lived there, or was even alive at this point. This entire enterprise was a huge gamble. But he had to try, for the sake of Bob Copeland. And Tom Drabinsky. And Jamal Thomas.
But most of all, he was here for his own sake. For that burning need-to-know that had consumed him ever since Drabinsky went up in that blast.
Jack hadn’t called his show Truth Tellers simply because it sounded good. Truth was the fire that fueled him. He’d spent his entire career cutting through the layers of horse manure that people often used to hide or deflect responsibility for their actions, always searching for the truth they were trying to hide. His interviewing style was direct and sometimes confrontational, but never without empathy, and he often thought of himself as “good cop/bad cop” rolled up into one. He believed truth was liberty’s Siamese twin, not her cousin. When truth was absent, liberty followed.
Jack su
spected that Adam Swain’s cover story about al-Fida being an MI6 mole was yet another layer he had to cut through. And the only way he knew to do that was to confront al-Fida himself.
He had the cab driver drop him off in front of a small pub on St. George Road, which was sandwiched between a Laundromat and a Classic Kitchens store. He went inside and ordered a pale lager, taking a few minutes to again center himself and weigh his options.
According to Google Maps, al-Fida’s flat was located about two blocks down, in a modest Victorian-style building across from St. Angela’s Ursuline School. Deciding the direct approach was probably best—just knock on the door and start asking questions—Jack drank his lager in three quick gulps, then threw some money on the table and went back outside.
As he stepped onto the sidewalk, he nearly collided with an olive-skinned man with a wispy goatee. The man was moving briskly, obviously in too much of a hurry to see Jack coming. For a moment Jack thought it might be al-Fida himself.
But no—this man’s face was older and more angular than the one in the personnel photograph, and Jack dismissed him as just another resident of the area. He muttered a quick apology that got no response, then crossed the street and headed in the direction the man had just come from.
Less than five minutes later he found al-Fida’s building and stood in the shadow of a large oak tree, next to the beige brick wall that bordered St. Angela’s.
He knew that al-Fida lived in Unit 2, which faced the street, but the window was dark now and it looked as if no one were home.
Jack tilted his watch toward the light of a street lamp and checked the time.
Nearly nine P.M.
Too early to go to bed, he thought, unless al-Fida was an early riser. Tucking his hands in his pockets, he leaned back against the wall and waited, hoping a car would come along at any moment and deposit al-Fida at his front door.
He was still waiting forty minutes later, increasingly convinced his target was either out for a late-night rendezvous or wasn’t coming home at all.
Abuse of Power Page 17