Five minutes later we passed underneath the pale stone arch of the Damascus Gate like a couple of jaded tourists and into the warren of narrow streets. Israel Defence Forces soldiers milled around. Elderly stallholders shouted out their wares in Palestinian Arabic. Tourist tat flooded the shopfronts: nargilehs jostled for space alongside alabaster models of the Dome of the Rock, menorahs with crucifixes; Yasser Arafats rubbed shoulders with Jesuses of Nazareth. Brightly coloured cloths hung down above the covered walkways; beneath our feet the smooth stone blocks that paved the Via Dolorosa led us on deeper into the maze of alleyways.
Scruffy kids, delivery men and tourist touts shouted and growled, coughed and whispered around us and through us and to us. Hijabed women in elegant abayas picked their way through the chaos, seemingly oblivious to the street theatre unfolding around them. Here and there a blue and white Star of David draped against the stonework – but the black, red and green of the Palestinian flag was everywhere. We followed briefly in the footsteps of Christ before I showed Baaz into the Al-Quds Café – a decent joint that served strong coffee and good street food.
Outside, half a dozen American girls sat by the door giggling, juggling water pipes and fingers full of kibbeh. Inside, the waiter greeted us in English and showed us to a table at the back.
I ordered mezze. Before Baaz could speak, I added: ‘Just the vegetarian stuff, please. No meat. And two glasses of fruit juice. Oh, and some extra hummus for my friend.’
Baaz relaxed.
The walls were hung with carpets, the tables topped with beaten metal. The food came quickly. We ate in silence. When he’d finished, Baaz gulped down the last of his juice and sat back in his chair. Crumbs of lakhma clung to the wisps of his beard. I pointed to the side of his mouth and he licked his lips like a cat.
‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘But what are we going to do now?’
‘Order coffee,’ I said.
And think. Every minute I sat still was a minute lost looking for Rachel. And all those minutes added up could make the difference between reaching her or not; rescuing her or not. If she even needs to be rescued, I thought to myself. The fact that it might be me that needed her help was a possibility too hard to hold on to.
I put my cigarettes and matches on the table and the waiter brought over an ashtray. I offered to move outside, but he waved away my query with a flick of his hand.
‘Please,’ he said, setting an old metal dish between us. ‘No problem.’
Baaz wrinkled his nose. He truly hated cigarette smoke. I should have truly hated him being there. But whether he’d been saved by the last gasp of my conscience or the diligence of his calculations, I was glad he was, all the same. The truth was that it was already too late to protect his family. He’d entered Israel on his own passport, made no attempt to hide his identity from anyone. As far as the Shabak – or anyone else – was concerned, he was up to his neck in it, whatever it was. In Paris he chose not to run; and that choice had consequences.
The waiter came back with our coffees – strong, spiced with cardamom and loaded with sugar – and pieces of sticky baklava.
‘The number on the note,’ I asked Baaz, as he sipped at the tiny cup, ‘what do you think it means?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said.
‘But what’s your gut instinct?’
‘My computer science professor in Chandigarh told me that gut instincts are very bad. There is a right answer and a wrong answer. Correct solutions are arrived at with facts, not hunches.’
‘What absolute bullshit, Baaz. Seriously.’ I shook my head and slurped the thick black coffee carefully, so as not to get a mouthful of the grounds from the bottom of the cup. ‘You’re in the catacombs. There’s been a cave-in. Or a flood. The route has changed. You use what you know to make an informed guess, right?’ He pursed his lips. ‘And don’t tell me you don’t, because I know you do. You’re still alive. No one could spend as much time down there and still be in one piece if they weren’t lucky – at least once.’
He shifted in his chair uncomfortably. I played with the packet of Marlboros.
‘OK,’ he relented, ‘my hunch is that the serial number is too unusual to be a coincidence – especially if you consider that the number itself is from an uncirculated print run. Besides, this man – Moshe? He says that the printer can add any serial number they like to a plate. So maybe that prime has a purpose? As a prime, I mean.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘OK, well this is going to sound totally nuts, but there are lots of numbers on that bill, not just the serial number. The letters, they could represent values, too. And then,’ he finished his own coffee, ‘there is something special on the reverse. This is actually exciting. Let me show you.’
‘What, here?’
‘Yes, why not?’
‘Because … Oh, fuck it.’ I dug the note out of my pocket and unfolded it flat on its front. ‘There aren’t any numbers on the back – apart from 100, of course.’
‘No, you see,’ he pointed to the blank white space on either side of the words ‘IN GOD WE TRUST’ cut in two by the spire of Independence Hall. ‘There are ones and zeros written in yellow. Twenty-four of them on the left, twenty-one of them on the right.’
‘Are you sure they’re numbers,’ I asked him, ‘and not just marks?’
‘There’s no difference. A mark is a number, if you ascribe a value to it. I told you it was exciting.’
‘If you say so.’ I folded the note away again and picked up the cigarettes. ‘Exciting how, anyway?’
‘How?’ His fingers drummed the table. ‘It’s like I told you in Paris. Ones and zeros. It’s binary!’
‘So …?’ He shook his head as if I was mentally incapacitated in some vital respect.
‘So, Rachel is a computer scientist. Writing in binary values is what she does. One, zero. On, off. Yes, no.’
‘Baaz?’ He looked at me, eyes wide with unfathomable possibilities. ‘There are billions of hundred-dollar bills out there in the world.’ I pointed towards the window. ‘And, you know, quite a few computer scientists, too. So …’
‘But there are not billions of hundred-dollar bills out there with that serial number, connected to one of the world’s leading computer scientists. What is the probability of that?’
‘Small,’ I admitted.
‘Small? It’s statistically impossible. And please don’t tell me that she fancied you, because you are totally rubbish at mathematics.’
I let that go.
I wondered if his professor had also warned him of the dangers of looking for false positives.
‘OK. Let’s assume you’re right. Back to my original question: what do you think it means?’
‘Probably nothing.’ He smiled at me and sat back in his chair. I made a strenuous effort to keep my hands on the table and not put them around his neck. ‘But prime factorization is extremely important in cryptography,’ he said, sensing my frustration.
‘Cut me some slack, Baaz.’
‘OK. You multiply one prime by another. The result is a semiprime, and that number secures the encryption. In order to break it, you’d need to know the numbers that were multiplied in the first place. It’s very fast to multiply two large prime numbers and get the result. But it’s unbelievably computer-intensive to do the reverse. Especially if you have a big prime.’
‘How big?’
‘The semiprime? Oh, up to 617 digits. Factoring them is an NP class problem.’
‘A what?’
‘Like I told you in Paris. A nondeterministic …’ He cocked his head, patronizingly. ‘A very complex problem that professors like Rachel can work on for their whole careers.’
‘OK,’ I said. ‘Let’s start at the beginning. How do you solve problems? Easy problems. One I could understand. Like …’ I tried and failed to think of an easy maths question, ‘a basic equation, or something.’
Baaz eyed me suspiciously. ‘Simplify,’ he replied. ‘Get rid of all the clutter, so you can see ex
actly what the definites are. And then …’ He paused.
I nodded at him. ‘Go on.’
‘And then you have to choose how you’re going to do it – by brute force, trying every possible answer consecutively, or by using a shortcut, an algorithm.’ He picked up another piece of the dessert. ‘Why, how do you solve problems?’
‘By eliminating their source.’
I stopped fiddling with the packet of Marlboros and pulled one out. I flipped open the book of matches that Talia had given me and tore a sulphur-tipped strip of card free of the base, and then looked again. There were only two other matches missing.
‘That’s strange,’ I said under my breath, closing the cover. On the front was a black 7 logo stamped over a yellow flame. Probably some spook bar in Tel Aviv. I opened it again and pulled the matches away from the back cover. Printed in neat handwriting was an Israeli cell phone number. I put my hand into the jacket pocket I’d kept the cigarettes in. Empty. I tried the other one, and there it was: an identical book of matches, only with half the matches missing and no phone number – the book Talia had given me. I stood up and left a hundred-shekel note on the table.
‘What’s the matter?’ Baaz asked, stuffing the last piece of baklava into his mouth.
‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Let’s go.’
‘Ken, rega.’
The bolts of the door scraped back again, the uncomfortable screech of metal dragging on metal. Moshe Mendel Katz’s face appeared with a breath of turpentine in the opening; by his waist, the close-cropped head of little Binyomen.
‘There was another question,’ I said, ‘that I wanted to ask.’ I stepped forward and pushed the door. He stopped it with his foot.
‘I’m sorry, but …’
I pushed harder and put my right shoulder into the door.
‘Don’t worry,’ I said, ‘it won’t take long.’ A shadow passed over the child’s face. He backed away. Moshe caught his right arm by the wrist. As he did so, I shoved past them and back into the dark cavern of the studio warehouse. Baaz stepped forward, too, into the doorway, blocking the glare of the day outside. Moshe reached for the light switch. I reached for the SIG. He paused.
‘OK,’ I said, ‘but keep your hands where I can see them.’ I turned to Baaz, my palm wrapped around the grip of the pistol behind me, hidden from the boy. ‘Come in and close the door,’ I told him. He froze. ‘Now!’
Baaz, startled, did as I said. He tripped the switch and the room flared to life. I turned back to Moshe. Under the unforgiving fluorescent strips he looked pale and scared. A film of sweat covered his face.
‘Who is upstairs?’
‘Please,’ he said. ‘The boy. I …’
‘Who is upstairs?’ I repeated more forcefully, cutting him off.
‘His mother. Only his mother.’
‘OK, Binyomen,’ I said, ‘be a good lad and go see Mummy. Grandpa and I have some business to discuss.’
‘Geyn,’ he said to the boy, letting go of his wrist. ‘Ikh vel kumen bald.’
The boy scampered off, across the storeroom and up the stairs, looking over his shoulder before he bolted through the door at the top. When he was out of sight, I brought the SIG around with my right hand. With my left, sandwiched between my first and second fingers, I produced the book of matches.
‘Smoking is bad for your health, Moshe.’
‘Max, what are you doing?’ Baaz was standing to the side of us, slack-jawed. For the duration of the walk back to the traitor’s gate, he’d been pestering me about what we were going to do. Now he knew.
‘Solving an equation,’ I replied. ‘With brute force.’
I winked at him with my left eye, so Moshe couldn’t see. I needed to relax him a little in advance of what was about to happen. I turned back to Moshe. I had a couple of minutes maximum before Binyomen and his mother and whoever else was really upstairs stuck their noses in.
‘What was it you said? “In God we trust, but it doesn’t hurt to have an insurance policy”?’
He put his hands up. I tucked the matches away. He’d given me a little gold, banking on it being enough to keep me at bay. It wasn’t.
‘Please, I …’
‘You know her, don’t you? You know Rachel Levy. That’s why the Shabak was here. Isn’t it?’
‘The Shabak? No …’ I moved towards him quickly, gun up, pushing his bulk against the wall with my left hand before he could finish his sentence. My shoulder flared with pain. We stared at each other. ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ he coughed. ‘I swear.’
I brought the pistol higher and placed the muzzle in front of his left eye. Then I leaned in, very close, and whispered into his ear.
‘I’m not like them, Moshe. No rules. No laws. So, either you answer my questions, or your little apprentice will be watching mame sit shiva for his grandad.’ I pinned him firmly with my left hand. ‘I’ve come a long way. And believe me, I’ve got nothing left to lose.’ He was breathing hard, rasping cigarette-scented breath into my face. ‘Or maybe I should kill him instead. What do you think? You, or the boy?’
‘No. Please.’ He rasped. ‘You don’t understand. I can’t …’
I pushed the muzzle into his eye socket. The metal split the skin by the bridge of his nose. He squealed with pain.
‘Sure, you can. You know Rachel Levy, don’t you?’
He began to cry. I pressed the SIG further into his eye.
‘Baaz, go and get the kid.’
‘Man, this is fucked up.’
‘Just do it.’
Baaz stepped hesitantly away from us. I cocked the hammer of the SIG.
‘OK, stop,’ Moshe begged, barely able to get the words out. ‘Please. Yes. Yes, I know her.’
I pulled the barrel clear of his skull and released my left hand. He collapsed on to his hand and knees, clutching his face. Deep sobs welled up inside him.
‘And?’
‘She asked me,’ he said, ‘to change that bill.’
‘Why? Why did she ask that?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Look at me.’ He kept his head low, hands on the floor. His body shook. ‘Look at me, God damn you.’ He raised his palms in supplication. Tears and snot matted his moustache and beard. Blood pooled in his eye and dripped along the side of his nose. ‘Did you forge the notes?’
‘No. I swear. It was the Russians. That’s the truth. I told you the truth. I was trying to help you.’
‘A lot of people are these days. Which Russians?’
‘I don’t know which Russians. The Russians. Those notes have been around for years. I only changed the number on that bill. That’s all. I’m innocent, I swear.’
I brought the SIG to bear in the middle of his forehead. If you threaten someone with a weapon, there are only two rules: be sure they can’t use it against you; and be sure you’re prepared to use it. There was no way Moshe was going to wrestle the SIG away from me. And, by this point, pulling the trigger was just a formality. Colour and sound ebbed out of the world. My ears filled with the flat hum that comes just before a kill. My mind emptied, tethered to the bullet. Suddenly it was just me and him. Nothing, no one else existed. Of the many things Moshe might have been, innocent wasn’t on the list.
‘Why you? Why did she come to you?’
‘She bought pictures from me. Horses. Always horses. She said they reminded her of home. The man who runs Gallery 7, the bar the matches come from. Avraham Landau. He buys from me. That’s his number.’
‘And he introduced you to Rachel?’
‘Yes,’ he nodded vigorously. ‘We talked. I talked too much about the past. She came back last month, asked me to add the number to that bill. To remove the serial number on it and add that one. I don’t know why. Please. I don’t know any more. That’s it. I swear.’
‘Say your prayers,’ I said, ‘to your God.’
We locked eyes.
‘Bad people,’ he said. ‘She told me the money, that money, came from bad people – peo
ple who wanted to kill her.’
‘And that’s why the Shabak was here?’
‘No, I swear. They were never here. Never. Just Rachel. She was scared. Terrified. She said they would kill her. I gave her passports. Fake ones. So she and the old guy could get out. She was crazy. Insane. Nothing she said made any sense.’
‘What, exactly,’ I placed the tip of the barrel against the frown lines between his eyes, ‘was she saying?’
‘Please, Max. Please. They’ll kill me.’
‘So will I.’ I adjusted my grip on the SIG. ‘Keep talking.’
‘She told me that …’
His shoulders slumped; his hands fell by his sides. He didn’t seem to be able to get the words out. He was as frightened of telling me what she’d said as he was of having a gun in his face. Time was running out. I lowered the pistol.
‘That what, Moshe?’
‘That she had looked upon the Destroyer.’
‘Who?’ Baaz asked, incredulous.
I turned my head to look at him. He’d stopped walking towards the stairs once Moshe had started talking and was staring at both of us. He was in shock, overwhelmed by the violence, the weirdness of what was happening.
‘The Destroyer,’ Moshe said. ‘The one Ha’Shem sent to kill the enemies of Israel.’
‘You mean,’ I said slowly, ‘she told you that she had seen Death?’
‘Yes,’ he replied, wiping the blood out of his eye, ‘that is exactly what I mean.’
‘And she used that word? The “Destroyer”?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘She used a Hebrew name, the folk name, from the Zohar. It means “the Helper of … Ha’Shem”.’
‘All right,’ I said, tucking the SIG back into my jeans, ‘and what folk name is that?’
He looked up at me. Tears and blood streamed from his eyes.
‘Azrael,’ he said. ‘The archangel.’
26
‘She was your girlfriend, wasn’t she?’
I looked into the dregs of my beer and then up at Baaz. We were back on the terrace of The Lemon Tree hotel in Tel Aviv. He was sitting upright, hands outstretched, like a puppy waiting for a treat.
Arkhangel : A Novel (2020) Page 23