Fracture Point

by T. D. Mandowsky

  “In my time,” he once said to me, “we didn’t have pads or anything. We got into the ring and beat the shit out of each other.”

  There were no other handlers his age who spent as much time in the field as he did. After five years of working their ass off, most of them find themselves in much more comfortable positions. But when I saw Billal speaking on his phone about the wanted person he’s going to catch tonight, his gaze flashed with madness and passion that could explain how he still survives in this role.

  The jeep ground the gravel beneath its big tires when Billal abruptly stopped the vehicle less than half a meter from the locked gate. A soldier with glasses stood up and went outside the gate. Billal opened the window and waited for him.

  “Who are you?” the soldier asked.

  “I’m a cosmetician!” Billal shouted at him, and the guy flinched in horror. “And this guy next to me is the makeup artist. Who do you think?”

  “Ah . . . Do you have an entry permit?” the terrified soldier muttered.

  “Open the gate. Now! Open it already!” he shouted at the soldier who hesitated and looked over at the locked gate.

  “You know what? Forget it. I’ll call Oded, the company commander,” Billal said, taking out his phone.

  “No! There’s no need to.” The soldier jumped up when he heard his commander’s name. “You’re ISA, aren’t you? Here,” and he ran to open the metal gate.

  “Poor guy. Just going his job,” I said, butting in because I felt sorry for the soldier, but not wanting to be on the wrong side of Billal’s wrath.

  Billal replied with amusement, “I don’t even have his number.”

  I remembered that as a soldier I would keep people waiting at the gate for 40 minutes if they didn’t have a permit.

  “What can you do?” Billal said. “Sometimes when you identify hesitation, you just need to turn up the volume. It shortens procedures.”

  A convoy of military vehicles entered the village. The regiment commander was first and the medical team last. In this operation, we had an elite Duvdevan unit join us. There were no undercover forces, so that means that we move in quickly, act with full force, and get out. All throughout the drive Billal was yelling at the desk officer on the phone, asking, “Is there an indication or not?” The desk officer approved the operation a second before the call got cut off and there was no reception. The first rock hit the jeep.

  “Son of a bitch,” I said, but Billal didn’t even bother to say anything.

  “Right! Turn right!” he grabbed the radio from my hand and shouted. “Fence 1 from Fence 4, turn right here! Right at the supermarket. You’re ruining my arrest!” The convoy stopped. The company commander ordered the force to move back. Another rock hit the vehicle. Billal let out a curse in Arabic but that was because he had to reverse the 4-ton vehicle in the dark.

  The village residents came out on their balconies to see what the noise was about at this late, dark hour. This is the first stage in a situation’s deterioration. If we stay here for another 10 minutes, there’ll be a real mess. The commander’s vehicle reached the intersection and turned right.

  After 20 meters, the convoy stopped and the soldiers ran out towards the family’s house. I heard the banging on the door from the vehicle. You don’t knock on the door of a wanted Palestinian with your hand, you ram it with your rifle so that every knock sounds like an explosion.

  “The route is secure,” the commander announced, and this was Billal’s cue to start the race. We jumped out towards the target. Billal didn’t put on his helmet, even though I reminded him twice. In this village, he’s the sheriff, or, as he put it, “Let them wear helmets.”

  “Masa al-khir, good evening,” Billal shouted with his chest out as we entered the huge house of the Sidawi family. “Hello, Haj,” he said to a tall, broad-shouldered man who was sitting on the couch, looking every part the father of the family. He responded with a “Sabah al khir, good morning,” perhaps to remind him that it was 4:00 in the morning. The man stood up and I saw how huge he was. He was probably 6’4” and 210 lbs. Billal and the man were about the same age, and they looked like a truck and a scooter on a collision course.

  “Captain Billal,” said the huge man without hesitation. I stood in the small distance between them, as if I could stop a tank like him with my bare hands.

  “Ya Mussa,” Billal replied, looking into the giant’s eyes. All the men in the family − his brother Yihya and his two sons − were furious and pushed the first soldiers who came to restrain them. My gaze jumped from the handler to the brawl − but 15 soldiers who streamed into the living room forcibly sat the family down.

  “Enough,” Billal said, putting his hand on me. “Let me run this,” he said, softly and assertively.

  “Ya Mussa, Ya Haj, listen,” Billal said, quietly calling the attention of the father, who was glaring at me. Billal started talking to him in fluent Arabic. He spoke quickly and with perfect diction as if he were talking on one of the Arabic radio stations that always comes up when tuning the radio.

  Mussa shifted his look from Billal’s face to his hands, and the look on his face went from anger to confusion. “Mitfaham alay? Do you understand me?” Billal asked, and awaited his reply. The man’s mustache moved up and down, indicating that not only did he understand, but he also wanted to hear more.

  Captain Billal continued speaking, raising his voice. He leaned towards Sidawi, who took half a step back. Billal’s hands continued to fly all over the place and his right hand left the imaginary game of ping-pong he was playing with himself and pointed up as if it was drilling through the air. At this point, Billal was shouting, his face like that of a Muslim preacher in a mosque.

  He took another step forward and I thought I might need to tell Billal to calm down. If there was something I didn’t need right then, it was for someone to cross the clear line separating anger from violence. On the other hand, everyone in the room was silent and watching him. Those who knew Arabic were fascinated; the others were enjoying the show.

  Outside, the night began to turn into the dark blue of dawn. The commander knocked and looked at Billal, but he had a mission to complete.

  “Ya Yihya,” he turned to Mussa’s brother. “When did you get back?”

  “A year ago,” the man answered him and stood up. He was as tall as Mussa, but his body was thinner and he his right eye was slightly crossed. Billal put his hand on his collar and arranged it with the elegance of a mobster. “Where were you?”

  “Istanbul,” Yahya told him.

  “Doctor of Electricity.” Mussa’s wife added.

  Billal turned to the mother, the giant’s wife. “Ya Haja,” he addressed her.

  “Watch your children,” he said in Arabic. The woman whimpered and made an unclear sound.

  “This time, I only see your husband,” he pointed to Mussa.

  “Samani? Do you hear me?” he shouted, sending enthusiastic droplets of spit into the air.

  “Watch your children!” he shouted at them and the veins in his neck almost burst. The giant lost his balance as a result and leaned against the dining room table.

  Billal turned around and walked toward the entrance, muttering to the commander “Go ahead. Take him.” The soldiers cuffed the guy, who yelled at me before, and led him outside. When Billal and I were on our way to the vehicle, I heard screaming in the house, pots falling on the floor; it was a piece of a fight.

  Mussa was taken to the army jeep in handcuffs.

  “Come to the car,” I told Billal. He wasn’t bothered by the stones being thrown. He lit a cigarette and waited for Mussa to get into the military vehicle. He arrived bent over, handcuffed by two soldiers. Billal told the soldiers to stop and then he grabbed Mussa’s chin.

  “You piece of shit,” he told him in Arabic, “You had me scan half a village because of a fucking uniform? Who do you think
I am, your whore?”

  “You’ll pay for what you’ve done here,” Mussa told him. Billal smiled.

  “How should I pay you?” He approached him, and if not for the height differences, their noses would touch. “Cigars or whiskey?” he whispered to the giant.

  “Ya Captain, they broke my house. How many soldiers did you bring?” Mussa asked him.

  “Don’t worry, ya brother, it’ll be all right.” Billal told him in Arabic and patted him lightly on the cheek.

  “What are you looking at!” he yelled at the soldiers, who put him into the vehicle and stamped on the gas pedal.

  The transition that a diver feels when jumping into the water is similar to the transition we felt when Billal and I slammed the heavy steel doors of the vehicle. The shouts, the smoke from the garbage can, the hatred-filled faces of the residents, the sobbing mother . . . everything suddenly seemed so far away.

  “Don’t want to jinx it,” the tired handler mumbled as he turned left at the southern entrance to Jerusalem. “In half an hour, I’ll be in bed, showered and clean.” “What was that?” I asked him.

  “What?” Billal said.

  “Whiskey. Cigars.” I asked him.

  “Do you understand Arabic?” he asked me.

  “Some.”

  “Where from?” He asked.

  “From high school, from Afula, some from here,” I told him.

  “Fine,” Billal said, and didn’t let me or the fact that he was coming out of a burning street interfere with him texting his desk, “This Mussa is an agent I operate.”

  “So why all the violence?” I asked him.

  “We want to plant him into the Jonod Al-Takhrir infrastructure, and this is why we need to create a semblance of motivation to the dude.”

  “Is he aware of your plan?”

  “He invented the plan,” he grinned.

  Chapter 19

  It was one of those days that starts very early, but goes by quickly − the kind of exhausting outdoor days, which at the end of them the sun dives into the mountains and then it hits me: I haven’t eaten lunch. I looked at the calendar app in the middle of the day and I saw the date – October 10th – exactly a year since Corp. Keinan’s kidnapping.

  Mussa was stuck in Carmiel for three days in a B&B that looks like it was designed especially for cheaters. He drank a full bottle of medium-level whiskey, smoked a pack of cigars, and received 200 bucks in cash. Billal and Mussa said good-bye via the usual series of cheek kisses. Mussa was delighted, but Billal seemed worried, as usual. Bitton and I picked him up from there and drove toward the Gush Etzion police station, where he was expecting to be released.

  “What’s up, Doc?” Bitton asked him.

  “I’m not a doctor, my brother is a doctor.” Musa smiled.

  “Impressive,” Bitton said without being impressed.

  “What are your names?” Mussa asked just as I turned up the radio.

  “Yossi,” Bitton told him.

  “And I’m Liran,” I told him.

  The ride took two hours and was filled mostly by radio broadcasts and sometimes also the lush snoring of the agent.

  As we arrived at the police station, Mussa still was asleep. We called him three times, but his mouth remained open and his jaw loosened.

  “Come on Mussa! Wake-up call!” Bitton reached back and tapped his thigh. “Rise and shine, buddy.”

  Mussa woke up and blinked several times.

  “We’re here?” he asked.

  “That’s it,” I said.

  “Yalla, I go now,” he said and opened the door. As he closed it, I stepped on the pedal.

  “Wait a minute,” Bitton told me as I saw Mussa in the rearview mirror running after the vehicle, and shouting, “Hey! Seffi!”

  “What’s he screaming about?” I asked Bitton.

  Mussa reached Bitton’s window and knocked on it.

  “Seffi, wait,” he gasped.

  “My name is Yossi,” Bitton told him.

  “Yossi, yeah. My wallet,” he barely managed to say, pointing to the back seat.

  I reached out and handed him his wallet. He smiled, said “Shukran, thank you,” and left.

  “What was that?” Bitton asked me.

  “Seffi is not a common name at all,” I said, and Bitton responded, “Exactly.”

  We called Billal. He answered, “Not now,” and hung up. We called again, but he was unavailable.

  I turned and drove toward the station exit. Maybe we’ll catch him at the headquarters in Jerusalem.

  At the exit of the police station, we saw Captain Fajar’s vehicle. I honked like crazy.

  “What the fuck?” he said as he opened the window, sticking his phone to his ear.

  “Listen. . .” I told him. I tried to organize thoughts in my head; Seffi’s abduction was not published in the media, certainly not his name.

  “Guys, are you out of your minds?” Fajar shouted, “You’re blocking me. Get the hell out of here, right away.”

  Bitton interrupted him, “Agents are supposed to know the name of the kidnapped soldier?”

  “What? Who?” asked Fajar.

  “It’s about Seffi Keinan. Our agents are supposed to know him?” he asked.

  Fajar hung up the phone and got out of the car. “Definitely not,” he said and leaned against the car door as if he was going to snatch the steering wheel from me. “Now tell me exactly why you’re asking this.”

  His breath smelled of hunger.

  Chapter 20

  Undercover security operations are the most interesting; there’s something exciting in the notion that I know things that the people around me don’t.

  It was Monday afternoon. I had just finished my final errands at the university and rushed to get into my combat gear and police uniform with a fake name tag read “Liran Zahavi”.

  Captain Fajar was very happy to assume that Mussa Sidawi was hiding something from his handler, Captain Billal. He rushed to his manager and told him about Mussa’s “slip of the tongue,” and was rewarded with a ticket to the golden ring of his favorite show − a rebuking phone call from the manager to Captain Billal. The manager ordered Billal to call Mussa immediately for clarification and to report to him by the next day at midnight.

  Billal asked Amit that I personally come to secure this short catch-up. At first I was flattered, but when I entered the parking lot I understood why.

  “As if I didn’t have enough quality time with this Sidawi,” Billal retorted, “And you − listen to me carefully. Next time, you inform me personally about things related to my agents. Is that clear?”

  After my frozen blood melted a bit, I told him it was clear to me.

  I ordered iced coffee and pea soup. This was the second time I had been on an undercover security mission at Café Dalia, Next to Mamilla Boulevard. This is where we meet for brief, one-hour conversations. Sometimes the coffee is just an excuse for a disk-on-key delivery or, as in this case, just because the manager demanded.

  I planned the seating arrangement in the café carefully. Billal would sit at the table near the exit, two tables away from me. The tables were ordered in advance. I ordered table 14 for myself, table 26 for Billal, and table 43, outside the café, was ordered for Liza from the scanning-observing team. Liza ordered a large coffee to keep her warm as she looked out for suspicious movement outside the café. Since this job could develop in unpredictable ways, Amit told me to take a long rifle with me.

  “I don’t feel like walking around town with a long rifle,” I said.

  “What?” he asked.

  “It’d feel awkward walking around town with a long rifle,” I said again, but he was concentrating on a conversation with someone else and not listening to me.

  “Do as I told you. I don’t care if you have to dress up as the Border Pol
ice,” he said and hung up.

  “What’s the big deal? The man was just confused between the names ‘Yossi’ and ‘Seffi,’” Billal hissed on the phone to his manager. “I don’t understand what the fuss is all about.” I looked down at the pea soup, ashamed that I had wasted three employees of the state for an entire afternoon.

  “The object has arrived,” Liza said on the radio as Mussa entered the café.

  By the time Mussa entered, I had finished half of my soup. He looked over at me. Maybe he recognized me from the ride, or maybe he spotted me because of the police uniform.

  I heard the beginning of the conversation between Billal and Mussa on the radio in my ear. The conversation in Arabic sounded like typical small talk: the melodic pace was mixed with with the smooth, delicate hand movement that reminded me of painting.

  “What did you say?” The authentic orchestra was interrupted when Billal was unsure that he heard Mussa correctly.

  I looked up from my soup Mussa was silent and looked at Billal.

  “What did I say? I have never been to Halhul.”

  “Before that,” the handler moved his finger, as if he were rewinding a movie.

  “That I don’t have friends in Halhul?”

  “After that!” Billal barked in a manner that was inappropriate for the nice café. His gaze was direct and insane. I saw the back of Liza’s neck through the glass door. She didn’t notice the drama in the café. It seems like I was the only one who noticed. Maybe the waiter with the black apron who passed by and looked over at them for a moment also did.

  “I said that I don’t know anything about your soldier,” Mussa stuttered. He must have realized he said something he shouldn’t have.

  “Mussa,” Billal whispered. I heard him through my earphone. “Hey, Mussa, do you hear me?” They both froze like street cats discussing their territory. “What exactly did you say?”

  Mussa shifted the position he was sitting in, becoming more alert.

  “I said ‘the retarded soldier’ but that’s because he acted like he’s retarded. Who walks straight into the arms of . . .?”