“Leaks from the Foreign Ministry.”
The prime minister was silent, thinking for a moment.
“Whose interests does it serve?”
“Oh, it’s just the nastiness of Gelber, the deputy director general. But it could be that it started with manipulations by the scientific group in Houston. They were counting on that money.”
"And Almog? The consul general? He’s Avi’s man, isn’t he?”
"Almog is a good guy. Not very smart,” the military secretary interjected.
The GSS head looked at him, annoyed. “He’s not involved in it.”
“He’s not in touch with you?” the prime minister was surprised.
“On a very limited basis only. We have people on the inside and the outside. The business with the scientific group is about to blow up, and I believe that it will be carefully coordinated.”
“Why don’t you let Almog in on it? He understands things.” The military secretary felt that he had been reprimanded.
“Do not move forward without my authorization,” the prime minister added. The military secretary and the stenographer looked up as one. It was unusual for the PM to state things which were self-evident.
“That goes without saying,” the GSS head replied, perhaps in error, perhaps because he felt he had no choice.
30.
“Cheap girls cost you dearly,” Dorothy told me. She held the telephone up to her ear with one hand, while on her desk she arranged her rain sticks. When I didn’t respond, she added, “A call from Texas City. Satan’s asshole.” I tried to overcome my shock. This was the rescue. Giora hadn’t wasted his time in Houston.
“Felicity Bar?”
“Exotic dancers? Strippers? Finally you’re getting to your true destiny in Texas,” she concluded and went back to her rain sticks. She was tired of the Texas heat.
Now everything’s really gonna land on me, I thought as I took the receiver.
“Michael Markovsky?” a man’s voice asked. I confirmed.
“Bill McCallum, Felicity Bar.” He didn’t wait for my reply. “There’s a lady here who’d like you to come see her.”
“Okay, put her on.” I could tell McCallum had no interest in etiquette.
“She’s in no condition to speak.”
“What’s going on? What’s her name?”
“Angela.”
I tensed up. “Then why do I need to come?”
“She asked for it. She said you’d understand.”
“So she can speak.”
“Look, are you coming or not?” McCallum was starting to lose his patience.
“Where are you?”
“Texas City. Canal Street. There are only three bars here. You’ll find us with no trouble.”
“How do I know this isn’t a trap?”
“A trap?” McCallum’s voice went up in astonishment. “I have no idea. Maybe it is. She asked, so I told you. That’s it, bye.”
Texas City was a town of forty thousand, allegedly “the city that would not die,” although it was depressing enough to make you wish it had. Driving down there from Houston, you could see (and smell) the refineries of the world’s biggest oil companies: Texaco, Exxon, Shell, and many others.
It was also a deep water port, serving some of the massive ships passing through the Gulf of Mexico. Khomeini was dead, but if a putative successor wanted to bring America to its knees, blowing up the bayou here would do it. (Texas City already blew up once, in 1947, but that’s another story.)
Now, with sights and smells so unpleasant, its inhabitants were mostly workers in office buildings hermetically sealed off from the environment, staff and patrons of a couple of buffet-style all-you-can-eat joints, and miserable souls living in trailer parks who didn’t care what the place was like, as long as it was cheap. Trailer trash, as it were.
The noxious atmosphere made Texas City one of the cheapest places to live in the Houston metropolitan area. I didn’t think anyone would have gone there to have a good time, but it turned out that the strip clubs that couldn’t get a business license in H-town proper found Texas City more hospitable.
I felt I couldn’t refuse Angela’s request now. In fact, I no longer felt like blowing off even Giora’s request, to contact Ginsberg if I managed to find the money. Too many things had gotten complicated the last time I said no.
Before I went out, I thumbed through the Yellow Pages for Texas City. At 30 Canal Street, there were a number of law offices. I quickly memorized the map in the phonebook.
It was two in the afternoon when I arrived. The club had opened at noon, but only two cars were parked outside. Angela’s green Jaguar was not among them. I parked my Chevy Nova out front and pushed on a black wooden door, which led to me to another door. It was almost like the secure entrance to the consulate.
It took me a while to get used to the gloom inside. Along the bar were five stools. In the corner of the room sat a man with a wide-brimmed cowboy hat that hid his face. He looked in the direction of the stage, where a slender girl stood, as naked as the day she was born. She moved slowly, playing with a furry scarf that she ran along her neck, down her waist, and between her legs, back and forth. A Texas City business license allows complete freedom.
I ordered a Denzel Coke, which fortified the cola with Captain Morgan Spiced Rum, and the bartender asked if I was Michael.
“She’s over there.” He pointed at the opposite corner of the room. Sure enough, near the rear exit sat Angela. I took the cocktail and sat next to her.
She looked bad; it was hard to recognize her. Her face was black-and-blue, her shoulder bandaged, and her arm in a cast. Mainly, it was the warm, indulgent voice which allowed me to identify her.
“Thanks for coming.” She tried to smile.
“Trouble in paradise?” I asked her, and she burst into tears.
I gingerly hugged her bandaged shoulder and she in response buried herself in my chest and sobbed. By the time she recovered her composure, another stripper was already standing on the tiny stage of the Felicity Bar and started peeling off her layers.
“Sorry,” Angela said, futilely trying to pull herself together. “It was just awful.”
“What was awful? Your jewelry business? Activism? Philanthropy? What happened?” Even as I asked, I could guess the answers to my questions.
“Philanthropy? If you can call it that. They’re no longer looking or playing around. They are going to kill me.”
“They would have killed you a long time ago if they had found the money, whoever they are.”
She stroked her injured elbow. “I don’t have time,” she says. “I have to disappear. Immediately.”
“Why did you come here?” I had to understand.
“This is the safest place I know. Normal people don’t come here.”
“But who told you to come here??”
“Told me?” She really did not understand — or maybe she was a fine actress?
“You wanted to see me,” I said, giving up.
“Yes,” she said. “You have to take it. You were right. These animals— “ she points shakily at her cast, “—beat the shit out of me for not giving them an answer in time. You are absolutely right. If I had given them what they wanted, they would have killed me... what bastards!” She gasped in horror. “They really got off on it. It was terrible.”
“And then?”
“They dumped me in some parking lot. Just like that. It’s really hard to believe.” Again she began to cry. “For twenty years, they haven’t dared to touch me like that. To throw me away like a used tissue. Terrible.”
“Ever since you married Weinfeld, you mean?”
“No, even before that. I always knew how to take care of myself.”
“With Klein, too?”
She made an effort to smile. “Even before him. An
d he wasn’t too bad at taking care of business. But we have no time now. You must help me. Take the money.”
“Are you sure this is what you want?” Even when she was beaten and suffering, she still had to be in control. Who knew what she was cooking up?
“Sure I’m sure. Do you think I would have endangered myself otherwise?”
“I don’t know. Don’t you have any family? Isn’t there some charity for abused children you could have donated to?” Giora had said I would do my best. So I needed to at least understand what was going on here. My chance to get rich might have finally arrived. It was so close I could smell it. But I couldn’t disappoint Giora.
“The State of Israel is the closest thing I have to a family, the only one who will defend me, whatever you say.” She began to run her fingers through her disheveled hair. “Enough, enough. What do you have against the State of Israel?”
“The State of Israel, it’s just a lot of things. If you donate to the state, without specifying a recipient, the money goes to the Custodian of Absentee Property.”
“And what’s wrong with that?”
“You have no control over where the money actually goes. It could fund meetings.”
“I have no problem with that.” She tried to reapply her makeup, but the darkness in the club prevented her. She had to get rid of the money, no matter how.
“Okay, so you give me the money. Then what?”
The tears washed away what was left of her makeup. The humiliation was killing her. “Then I disappear to a safe place.”
The bored stripper shot a quick look at us. She was making a move on the only other customer, trying to sit on his knees. His chair was too far away for me to see his face.
“Look, all the money is sitting in my car. It’s parked out back,” she whispered. “I’m out of time. It’s over. Let’s get out of here.”
“Twelve million?” I still had a hard time believing it. “And what about your tax credit? And what about a receipt from the State of Israel? Are you giving up on all that?”
She shook her head. “Come, quickly,” she begged. She got up, leaning on my arm, and we threaded our way through the tables to the back door, leading to the rear parking lot, where her green Jaguar with the caved-in doors sat. She opened the trunk, and we started at the giant Olympia Fitness duffel bag that filled it.
“Everything’s in here,” Angela said. “Come, take me to the airport. I have a flight in an hour.” The lady apparently continued to plan her moves well.
Just then a black and red Dodge pickup swerved into the parking lot and stopped in a cloud of dust, in front of the Jaguar, blocking its way. I remembered this scary vehicle, looking like it was ready for a hunting trip, from in front of Angela’s River Oaks home. Whoever they were, this was clearly an ambush. Had Giora thought of that too?
The driver, curly-haired and chubby, waved his Beretta through the window. Maybe it was the lowlife from the airport?
The man from the bar rushed out. I could see now he was older and thinner than the driver as he reached toward the waistband of his pants. A real cowboy.
Luckily, the duffel bag was equipped with a handle on one side and wheels on the other. We hefted it out and I dragged it behind me. With my other hand, I pulled Angela back inside, crossing the bar in a matter of seconds. The dancer tried to block our way, as the bartender shouted, “You didn’t pay!”
Pulling Angela almost off her feet, I burst from the front of the bar onto the street. We maneuvered the duffel bag into the backseat of my Nova. Then Angela slipped into the front passenger seat, as I jumped into the driver’s seat. I turned on the engine as the car was already in gear, releasing the clutch wildly and roaring off, splashing mud and dust behind me at the door of the Felicity Bar.
“Those are the two of them.” Angela was shaking all over.
“Do you know who sent them?”
“Logan, I’m sure.”
“Klein is behind all this?”
“Klein wouldn’t let me be touched. Logan is taking over his business, the bastard.”
“And do you know either of those two?”
“I couldn’t say.”
The Nova sped along, my foot mashing the gas pedal to the metal as we made our way down the street.
On both sides of the street sat huge fuel tanks. Thick pipes ran above the road, over our heads. The stench was powerful, as if a herd of elephants had dropped their turds there.
"Don’t start with me again. Which of them do you know?” On either side of the road were sloping, grassy culverts. If I went off-road, the car would roll over. Then I saw the Dodge pickup, speeding toward us head-on. These guys were real lunatics. I kept hurtling toward them, playing chicken. I was confident they would not veer off, so at the last second I turned the steering wheel left and then right, then struggled to stabilize the Nova as it zigzagged on the road. The Dodge clipped our rear bumper, tearing it off and leaving it to crash and rattle on the road.
We were now speeding along an empty road, even though the squeal of tires from behind us told me that they had braked and were turning around..
I crossed the bridge over the Gulf Canal at record speed, then made a hard right into the anchorage of the Chevron oil company. Between two tankers, a motorboat was moored, though I had no idea what condition it was in. I pulled Angela out of the car, keeping a hand on her to steady her. Then I reached into the backseat to pull out the duffel bag. We ran to the motorboat as best we could. It was equipped with an ignition switch. This was not a boat that a sane person would try to steal. On the third try, I managed to start the motor, and I turned the speed up to maximum. This was a very old boat, which had a speed limiter installed in it because of traffic regulations in the canal.
The Dodge pickup arrived at the dock and stopped at the waterline. The curly-haired man pulled out his gun again, but his older companion restrained him. We were out of range.
The two of them looked at us, trying to guess our destination. Yes, the younger one was the one I had seen at the airport, I was almost sure. As for his older companion, the hat hid him well, but he still seemed familiar, as if I’d seen him walking somewhere. They went back to their Dodge to follow us along the canal.
About two hundred yards out, the canal split. I turned the boat to the right, but our limping pace was driving me crazy. There was no way of knowing how long the gas we had would last. Angela sat on the bench, which ran the width of the motorboat, drawing herself inward. In the cruel light of day, her bruised face looked twisted and terrifying.
“They really did a number on you,” I said, but she did not respond. “What do you want me to do with the money?”
“How should I know?” She is on the verge of crying again. “The main thing is to keep it from them.”
“Who are they?”
“The bastards from the gym.”
“What, from Olympia Fitness? What’s their story?”
“It makes no difference,” she replied. “It’s better if you don’t know. I’m sick of this whole sordid affair. I don’t know if you could possibly understand. You’re just too young. I’ve been lying my entire life. I just wanted, for once, to show them. Forget it, you wouldn’t get it.”
“Where are you flying?”
“It’s better if you don’t know,” she repeated. “I have a good friend somewhere very far away. Maybe I’ll send you a postcard.”
“What about your family?”
“They’re all cops. Good people, but they cut me off years ago.”
I saw a dock coming up, with an office building towering over it. A taxi station was next to it.
I turned the bow of the boat to the dock. A few feet before the pier, I stopped.
“Let’s get out,” she urged me. There were three rundown taxis at the station.
I didn’t answer.
“What’
s the matter?” The bruised face, which had begun to glow with hope, looked at me with fresh trepidation.
“Thanks for the money,” I said. “It’s very nice of you.”
“Should we jump out?”
I sat and looked at her.
“What? What do you want?”
“Who are those bastards? Who told you to come here?”
“Let’s get out of here. Come on, dock the damn boat already.” I saw the tears coming back. The lady had gone through a terrible day. “C’mon, enough already, it’s over.”
“Who is behind all this?”
She held her head in her hands and mumbled, “These are Logan’s people. I told you already. Let me out!”
“You’ve known each other for years. What’s happened now?”
“You’re crazy. It would take me hours to tell you the whole story.”
“Start now. What’s the story with the money, first of all?”
“It’s to fund the operation.” She swallowed, wiped her face and tried to reset. “They’re talking about a critical strategic advantage. Something about a warhead. Let me out!”
I shuddered; those words brought me back to Jay and the airport. So when had this affair really begun? I kept quiet, trying to digest the information, and she kept going.
“Minuteman missiles. They can threaten whomever they want. They’re deranged, that’s for sure.”
“Who is that in the pickup?”
Angela was pale and defeated. “He’ll kill me.”
“Yeah, that’s what he’s been trying to do. Who is he?”
“Jeremiah. Jeremiah Moses.”
“The protestor? The engineer who was protesting with you? What does he have to do with any of this?”
“It was Logan’s idea. He thought that our demonstrations would keep the consulate and the consul general busy, so you’d have no time to intervene or interfere.”
“Sarah too?”
“No, she’s a chronic protestor. They’re just using her, hiding behind her. She’s been leading demonstrations for years. She was very happy that we came to give her backup.”
The Consulate Conspiracy Page 16