The Siege of Tel Aviv

by Hesh Kestin

  Back to Atlanta, where despite his normal loathing for her, Damian Smith cannot help but feel Blunt is as much a television news pro as he is. The bitch. “Thank you, Connie. Stay with us for more on peace in the stormy Middle East, and regular updates on the northward march of what may soon become Hurricane Lucille. You’re watching Breaking News on CNN. Stay...connected.”

  3

  IN THE PRIVATE TOILET adjacent to her office, Shula Amit refreshes her makeup. This is one advantage men have over women in politics—that and not having a period, which at forty-seven Shula still has, in spades, ten bloody days a month. The extra-large breasts she developed at age thirteen are gone, however. As a child of privilege—her father’s contracting firm built much of Haifa’s seaport—Shula had them reduced immediately after serving her two years in the Israel Defense Forces, where despite custom-made restrictive bras she had to have her uniforms hand-tailored by her mother’s dressmaker, and twice asked her father to intervene with the chief of staff when her superior officers went beyond leering. Even then, she had in the back of her mind the idea of a career in public service, and knew she would be judged not by her ability to make decisions or analyze policy, but by her tits. To Israeli men, anything over a B indicates bimbo. A male politician may possess a huge dick but—aside from that bizarre case involving an inane congressman in America—the public does not see it, but a woman’s breasts, especially when so prominent, are the first part of her to enter a public space. Any public space. Even the Knesset plenum. Especially, she thinks, the Knesset plenum.

  Back in her office, Shula takes the usual afternoon call from her mother, whose mission in life is to oversee the nanny who oversees her two grandchildren.

  “She gives them watermelon for dessert.”

  “Ah, yes. Watermelon poisoning,” Shula says while reviewing her notes for the cabinet meeting that will begin in minutes—why is a caterer on the list of attendees? “People do eat watermelon from time to time and survive.”

  “But the children stop eating lunch. Once she puts the watermelon on the table—”

  “Mom, don’t you read the papers, listen to the radio?”

  “Peace, shmeace,” her mother says. “In seventy-two years of my life, how many peace conferences have there been?” She pauses for a moment of fraudulent modesty, a family trait: her late husband carried a hard hat with him a full thirty years after he had mixed his last bag of cement. He asked to be buried with it. “But what do I know? You’re the prime minister.”

  “I am indeed the prime minister, and just between you and me and the rest of the world, a happy one at the moment. Mama, this could be real.” Shula will not say more. Not even to her mother. Considering her mother’s inability to keep secrets, especially not to her mother.

  “From your mouth to God’s ear.”

  “Let’s hope She has one,” Shula says.

  This passes over her mother’s head. For years, the leading columnist at an opposition newspaper has signed off his column with, “And Shula speaketh to God, and God answereth, because Shula speaketh only to herself.” Nevertheless, Shula has a talent for political jiu jitsu, taking criticism head on and using it against her political rivals. When accused of being a person of privilege, Shula countered that this gave her no reason to take bribes. Still, the last thing she needs is an opposition party at home.

  “Mama, you’re right to worry about the watermelon. Just make sure they do their homework.”

  “Why bother?” her mother answers. “They’re like you. Five minutes after they return from school, it’s done.”

  A caterer. The press would have a field day with that. SHULA’S LIFE IS A CABARET! or CUTS FOR THE POOR, CUTLETS FOR SHULA! A caterer in the cabinet room? Once that is known, the whole world will know negotiations have not simply begun, but have been concluded—with festivities. The secret will be out. As agreed all around, the US president is to have the honor of making the formal announcement, and—at least domestically—taking the credit in an election year. If he is cheated of that, there will be hell to pay.

  A caterer, Shula thinks. I will have someone’s head.

  4

  THE BUILDING MAJOR GENERAL Dareh Niroomad enters, calmly smoking a Havana—he favors the Rothschild Magnum, but cigars with Jewish names are out of favor in Tehran, so this one is a Montecristo which, the general knows, because of its last two syllables, might soon come under similar prohibition—is faced with huge painted banners of the mullahs who rule Iran. Whether protectively or threateningly, take your pick, they look down on a fleet of black Land Rovers carrying the raised-rifle logo of the Revolutionary Guard, the most politically reliable force in the Iranian military, and the institutionalized motto of the Guard: Allahu Akbar, God is Great.

  For Niroomad, all this God stuff is something of a bad joke, but he long ago came to terms with the zaniness of the theological-political echelon. Like his father, who perished leading an infantry division in the Great War of Defense—what the West calls the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-88—he is prepared to die for his country, and to kill for it, but not to take seriously the sulfurous mouthings of the fools and brigands who run it. If the Shah manipulated Iranian nationalism to torture and imprison his own people, the mullahs manipulate religion to do the same. To Niroomad, it hardly matters: whether under a crown or a turban, the clowns decide and the military executes. That is all of it.

  As the elevator descends, carrying the general and his staff—all of them wearing the sunglasses that have come to be as much part of the uniform as epaulets and insignia of rank—to a secret war room that even some of the ruling mullahs do not know exists, Niroomad feels the old excitement rising within him. The deeper they descend, the more intense his excitement. This is what he was trained for and what he has worked toward for almost a year. On the elevator wall, a panel of lights winks from white to coral to pink to red. Four stories underground, the elevator doors open to reveal the future of the Middle East.

  5

  IN THE MAIN SALON of a fifty-two-foot Hatteras yacht moored at the end of a long pier in the Tel Aviv marina, Misha Shulman wears what is in effect his professional uniform of too-tight black silk shirt, long sleeves in the Israeli style rolled up over arms rippling with muscle, his trousers shot through with silver thread, his shoes pointy-toed and Italian, around his neck a gold chain so heavy gravity keeps it from shifting as he moves. In Shulman’s hand is a gold-plated CZ .40-caliber semiautomatic pistol whose extended double-stack custom magazine holds twenty-two rounds. This weapon he does not hold to the head of the man tied to the chair in the center of the yacht’s salon so much as he gesticulates with it as though it is a laser pointer and he a teacher in a class of idiots, each articulation yet another threat.

  The man tied to the chair is Alon Peri, at forty-five the same age as his captor, sweat pouring down his face like wind-driven rain so that in the harshly air-conditioned cabin he feels it turn almost to ice. Peri is a manufacturer of sophisticated technology, mostly under contract to the Defense Ministry. In size, his factory is tiny compared to the behemoths that make up Israel’s arms sector, but he specializes in delicate yet stable fuses and remote triggering devices without which the giants of the industry could not survive. Lately he has developed a line of near-microscopic firing mechanisms for the newest generation of Israeli drones, which permits a reduction in weight, doubling their effective range.

  While a dozen of Misha’s fellow hoods come and go in the salon, where a smaller group of four is intent on watching a television musical on the high-definition screen, Misha engages Peri in a long, if one-sided, negotiation.

  “Mr. Shulman,” Peri says, sweating, “I have a board of directors. I just can’t say yes or no. It’s a corporation.”

  “Board, shmord—you sell, I buy. It’s business.”

  “Can I be frank?”

  “We’re friends,” Misha offers. “Certainly, we could be.”

  Peri continues to sweat, the runoff burning his eyes. “Your nam
e can’t be anywhere near the deal. Not even a whisper.”

  “Whispering I can’t prevent. It’s a small country. Everybody knows everything about everybody. You want to know my shoe size? Ask a taxi driver. When the prime minister gets her period, it’s a national day of mourning.”

  “Mr. Shulman, your name just cannot be in it.”

  Misha turns to his colleagues, who, as if drawn by invisible strings, turn to him from the television. “Balls the man has. I give him that. Brains, it’s an open question.”

  Eight eyes return to the flatscreen. In many variations, they have seen this before, both on the screen and on the yacht.

  “Look, Alon—can I call you Alon?”

  “Sure,” says the man tied to the chair. “My friends call me Alon.”

  “I don’t come to you like a leech, to draw blood. But as a partner.” Misha smiles wide enough to reveal a gold mine in the rear of his mouth—the lowliest Russian dentist knows more about precious metals than any ten jewelers at Tiffany. “Alon, I want to make you money. I want to make us both money. There’s nothing wrong with that. Nothing illegal.”

  The man tied to the chair tries another tack. “Arms have a way of announcing themselves, Mr. Shulman. Every time I want to sell to, let’s say, a gray party, the government refers my request to committee. I’m not even sure there is such a committee. At bottom, it’s Washington that decides. The Americans don’t want to see our technology in the wrong hands.”

  “Hands they don’t control.”

  “Exactly.”

  “What you’re saying is, me they can’t control.”

  “Exactly exactly.”

  “True enough. In Russia, they sent me to the gulag for seven years, and still they couldn’t control Misha Shulman. From Siberia, I ran everything.”

  “If I deal with you, someone they’ve been trying to throw in jail for years, they’ll shut me down.”

  Misha shakes his big head slowly. The heavy gold chain around his neck barely moves. “Whatever happened to capitalism?” he asks.

  6

  AT PRECISELY THE SAME time, at a Syrian Air Force base so secret even the intelligence arms of the various rebel groups fighting at the country’s borders have not so much as a clue it exists, ground crews begin fixing air-to-ground missiles to the undercarriage of sixty-two SU-24 Sukhoi jet fighter-bombers diagonally lined up on the runway like dancers in some lethal corps de ballet.

  Because the Sukhoi normally carries fuel for a range of 1700 miles and only some 120 miles round trip will be required for this mission, the Russian-made jets are modified to carry four extra missiles instead.

  As the mechanics work, a general in a jeep passes down the line. He is nothing less than the Syrian Air Force chief of staff, thought to have been killed in a rebel suicide raid months earlier. Instead he has been working steadily in secret, totally focused on what he expects will be the capstone of his career. Compared to sending jets to strafe and bomb primitive rebel positions in the eastern hills, this will open for him the doors of paradise, where he will reside in eternal pleasure, to say nothing of assuring his place in the history of military aviation. Not bad for the third son of a grocer in Aleppo.

  7

  IN HIS STUDY IN a villa in Herzliya Pituach, a beachfront community just north of Tel Aviv that is home to Israel’s old wealth—anything over five years qualifies—Yigal Lev, barefoot in pajamas, sits dictating to his secretary, who is nowhere to be seen. In only a few hours, she will transcribe these recordings into letters, emails, and faxes and send them out to Yigal’s network of business associates. As he sits in his favorite leather chair, feeling the wetness of the sea air envelope him like a damp blanket, he is blissfully unaware not one of these letters, faxes, and emails will be sent.

  Isracorp, which Yigal founded twelve years earlier to coordinate the array of properties he accumulated based on a hunch—that Israel’s astoundingly successful high-tech sector would not merely generate fame for its originators but cash they would need to invest—is the country’s largest single business. It controls two banks, a shipping company, Israel’s second-largest airline, a phosphate mine at the Dead Sea, a boutique hotel chain, and the construction firm rebuilding the country’s railroad into a high-speed link that ties together its four largest cities, a nice complement to Isracorp’s chain of gas stations. “No bus company is for sale,” he was quoted in Globes, the Israeli business daily. “Otherwise, we’d have three out of three.” Outside the country, Isracorp mines gold in Zambia, grows pineapples in Sri Lanka, assembles cars in Brazil, tractors in Mexico, cell phones in Malaysia. To make this work, Yigal depends on a second hunch, which is that the same skills that created the technology providing key software for Microsoft, Apple, and Google can also provide the management talent for so many disparate companies. Both hunches proved correct.

  At forty-six, Yigal Lev is a legend in Israeli business and a major player in the world economy. Unlike others of similar attainment, he prefers to live in the country of his birth, close to his boyhood friends, to the son serving as a young officer in the IDF, to the armored brigade he has commanded for the past ten years, men he loves and trusts, and who feel the same way about him. He has spent most of his military life with these men, starting as a young tank commander in the now obsolete British Centurion.

  A model of that tank sits on the bookshelf opposite him the way another man might have a model of the Ferrari in his garage.

  Another reminder sits within him: a jagged bit of steel that lodged in his spleen twenty years before when his tank was destroyed around him. After a medic patched him up, he refused to be evacuated to the rear and instead took command of an orphaned Mk I Chariot whose commander had been shot by a Syrian sniper when he got out to take a piss. Over his years in the armored corps, Yigal insisted that every one of his tanks carry sufficient empty canteens.

  “Never leave your tin can,” he likes to tell his men. “It’s all you’ve got.”

  These tankists admire and respect him, not because of his career as a tank commander, but because once he briefs them he encourages them to fight as independent units, sometimes as a battalion, sometimes in platoons, and sometimes in individual tanks. Always he trusts the judgment and initiative of his officers, just as he trusts the judgment and initiative of his managers.

  Until they fuck up. Then he moves quickly to replace them.

  “Business and warfare are alike,” he likes to tell his military colleagues, for that—in typical Israeli fashion—is the way he sees them. “Small, smart, and devoted always defeats big, stupid, and indifferent.”

  Now, unable to sleep, half-glasses perched on his nose as he peruses the emails he was unable to get to during the day, he dictates in a voice that is at once flat and declarative, like a man giving directions to a tourist in a rental car. From time to time, he glances at the wall to his left, opposite the bank of windows looking out at the Mediterranean, which is almost invisible on this moonless night.

  “Marcantonio Feretti, Zamoni S.p. A., Milan. Dear Marco. While we have been considering restaurant chains for some time, organizing one in the US out of independent pizzerias strikes me as bold, which I like, potentially profitable, which my investors like, and strikingly perilous, which nobody can like. Yes, branding the neighborhood pizzeria could create a national, even international, chain out of a chaos of small businesses, but three problems must be overcome. One, how precisely to control quality in a business known for cutting corners; two, whether or not Americans or anyone else sees pizza as anything more than a commodity; and three, whether the current suppliers can easily be supplanted. As you know, I’m not above a fight, but I am concerned with whether a fight for control of such a business is worth the trouble. We’re still interested in the concept of rolling up independent businesses into a single entity, but I prefer to choose another battleground. With all good wishes, et cetera.”

  Almost without missing a beat, Yigal goes on to the next.

  “Yukio
Nasaki, chairman, Doyo Heavy Industries, Tokyo. Esteemed Yuki-san. Thank you for your recent communication regarding a joint venture in the South American market. My colleagues and I see a great deal of merit in both economies of scale and cross marketing. However, Isracorp does not engage in joint ventures in the international business arena. May I suggest that either Doyo buy out Isracorp’s investment or that we buy out your own? Considering that the impetus here comes from your side, we at Isracorp would be honored to consider an offer for our facilities in the area. Should that not come to fruition, we would be pleased to make a counteroffer for your own. With all good wishes for future success, et cetera.

  “Lawrence K. Stanton, Bloomington Corp., Bloomington Indiana. Make this a fax, the man doesn’t read emails. Larry, Isracorp is willing on condition as outlined. Let’s meet in Geneva next week and settle it. Yigal. Suzanne, find me a time slot for an hour that’s not dinner. The man likes to drink and the evening can go on forever.

  “Next. Via email to Sir Charles Murray, chairman, Olnay’s Bank, London. Dear Bunny, I share your hopes but not your optimism. Any deal with the Saudis remains dependent on the political outcome. For all we really know, the current noise is merely—”

  He looks up. Judy is standing at the door in a pajama top and heels. Lately his wife has taken up the bikini wax, which confuses Yigal because for twenty-two years he has been happy with the look God gave her. She does not seem to be the same woman.

  “—the product of the hopeful imagination of yet another naïve American president. To quote Ronald Reagan, ‘Respect them but suspect them.’ Let’s wait and see.” He turns to his wife. “What?”

  “My love, you must be the most cynical man in Israel. The whole country is celebrating.”