The Consulate Conspiracy

by Oren Sanderson

  "It’s much more than that!” Noni protested, trying to save the honor of the community, or perhaps his status as the deputy consul in Houston.

  "What else could it be?” I could picture Avidor, grinning on the other end of the line.

  "Two Israelis arrested yesterday at an Air Force base, for example.”

  I tensed, ready to blow a fuse.

  "You mean the spying in New Mexico?” Avidor asked.

  "We can’t discuss it over the phone.” Noni was horrified.

  "I know.” Avidor sighed. “The censors also shot it down when I passed the story on. I had almost everything... what’s the story of the two arrested?”

  "Israeli civil servants.” Noni would pay dearly for that. If Avidor bought the story, I would rearrange his face.

  "From the consulate?”

  “Employees of the State of Israel,” Noni played it coy. Damn, did he want me to strangle him right here in the office?

  “Details, man, I need details!” Avidor pressed him.

  “That’s it. That’s all I can give you.”

  “And will you go on record with that.”

  “God forbid!” Finally, I breathed easy.

  “What a waste of time and energy,” Avidor lamented. “They won’t let us publish something like this without confirmation. I’ll try with the Pentagon spokesman, but if the Americans do not want to publish the story themselves, no one will let me publish it. I need another source. How are the Americans?”

  "They’re going crazy. Stories like this raise a lot of red flags.”

  "And what can I do about it in the meantime?”

  "Maybe it will develop later. It’s good to be ready.”

  "You wasted my time again,” Avidor complained. “What developments am I waiting for?”

  "I don’t know. Things have been off-kilter here ever since the new consul general arrived. And I have nothing against him.”

  "No.” Avidor chuckled. “Not a thing. You don’t have it out for him. You’re one of his biggest fans!” He burst out laughing.

  "Stay in touch,” Noni said.

  "Maybe if you have a sex scandal.” Silence reigned for a moment on the line. “Or at least some more murders.”

  47.

  The first phone call about the deceased was received by Dorothy, from Houston PD. Dorothy had a special sense of the macabre and séances that conjured the dead. She listened intently, realizing that this was an Israeli matter.

  "Beware of he who goes out to the eternal hunting grounds and seeks to take companions with him,” she warned, transferring the call to Shoshi. In slurred English and a jarring Israeli accent, Shoshi tried to decipher what was going on.

  The police officer explained to her the situation: an Israeli had been found dead in his room, at the Red Roof Inn by the airport. He had apparently been shot. As the decedent had an Israeli passport, the cops had reported it to the consulate, following standard procedure. HPD wasn’t happy dealing with murdered Israelis.

  Shoshi listened seriously, sitting silently for a long minute of thought. Then she cried out in panic, wrung her hands, and shouted, “Oy vey!” in a voice which alarmed the entire consulate. Noni rushed to her side, asked her to calm down and took the phone himself.

  From my corner of the consulate, I could hear him ask twice, “What passport?” For ten minutes, he exchanged questions with the police officer. Surprisingly, he seemed to stay on topic. He hung up, but had nothing to say.

  Two minutes later, he came over to me. “I have to go to the city morgue. Do you want to come with me?” I felt a stab deep in my stomach as I guessed who the victim might be.

  Noni was wearing a black pinstriped suit today, giving him the appearance of a mortician’s assistant. That was on-point for the day’s agenda. His expression was constantly apologetic, with some thought process behind it, which always seemed a little devious to me.

  "What’s the name of the victim?” I hoped I was wrong.

  "Mark Sasson, you know him?”

  "No,” I replied. The man who was my final ally, according to Giora, was dead. I felt like I was about to vomit.

  "Did you talk to Almog?” I asked. Almog wasn’t around. It was convenient to let Noni take command, and I wanted to stall so I could recover.

  "Are you okay?” he wondered.

  "Definitely.”

  "Sorry, no.” He was apologizing already. “You are pale. And Almog isn’t in,” he answered my previous question. “Besides, you can wait to release the information, can’t you?” He chuckled to himself. “The murdered Israeli is not going to wake up and disappear in the next few minutes or hours.”

  "Almog is at the gym now. In an hour I need to take him to a lecture at Rice, so I’m not sure it’s a good idea for me to come with you.”

  Noni’s voice rose. He was under pressure. “Come on, come and help me, you know the local cops. In half an hour we’ll be done, and you can go on to Almog. If you want, you can update him, and we can move beyond this distasteful task.”

  The city morgue was between St. Luke’s Medical Center, which specialized in cardiac medicine, and Anderson Cancer Center. We parked among the pickups and beaters driven by residents who worked at the hospital and pathologists who worked at the morgue.

  The entrance was properly air-conditioned and decorated, to my surprise, with children’s paintings and flowerpots. A medical secretary in a green lab coat, redheaded, freckled, and full-figured, greeted us with a broad smile.

  "Oh, ya’ll must be from the Israeli consulate, I can see that straightaway. I’m Barb,” she happily announced.

  Noni looked to the side, almost offended; but he was under great pressure to complete his task.

  "Is there a party here or something?” I eyed the ornate flower pots.

  "Well, what do ya’ll want? For us to wear long faces all day? Our clients here ain’t the kind to cause trouble. Anyhoo, you’re here for this fella… Mark Sasson, something like that, right?”

  "Yes,” I confirmed. “What exactly do we need to do?”

  Barb said, “Oh, there’s a whole mess of red tape, to satisfy the bureaucrats. We gotta confirm the fella’s identity, locate his kin, all that. First of all, rules say you’ve gotta view the body.”

  Noni exclaimed, “But we’ve never met him! How does that help you?”

  “There’s always time to make a good first impression, ain’t that the truth?” Barb smiled. “Besides, if ya’ll refuse to look at the man and identify his body, we can’t process it, so it’s best to get it over with.”

  "Come on, come on, how bad could it be?” I told him, again bothered by his pinstriped suit which gave him such a false air of importance. Was it the suit that was causing him to be so annoying to everyone?

  Noni stood his ground. “No, no, no, it makes no sense for us to identify someone we’ve never seen before.”

  Barb looked at him with a kind-hearted smile and declared, “Oh, poor thing, ya’ll are scared. They declared him dead twenty-four hours ago. He ain’t gonna bite, honey; he ain’t gonna do nothing to nobody.”

  "That’s not the point! There must be some logic in what I do, and I cannot be sure that if you show this person to me — this body, I mean — that it will not obligate me and the State of Israel to do something later.”

  “What in tarnation would it ‘obligate’ ya’ll to do?” Barb shook her head in disbelief. “Them’s the rules, and if ya’ll are asking me why, I reckon it’s because relatives sometimes get ornery down the line. Maybe something turns up missing? But this way ya’ll can see what condition this unfortunate man was in when he got here, to put their minds at ease. So stop chickening out, and let’s get this show on the road, okay, hon?”

  This convinced Noni, and we followed Barb down the hall. I wondered what the green lab coat was for. Now it was the only color in sight
, as the walls here were gray. “What happened to the paintings? The flowerpots?” I asked.

  “Well, it’s all business back here, hon, serious as a heart attack. It was hard enough for me, as is, to get approval to make that entryway tolerable!”

  We passed three pairs of sliding glass doors.

  “Those are the autopsy rooms,” Barb explained. “Ya’ll are welcome to stick around and watch one; a bunch of med students from the hospital are coming to observe soon. Ya’ll can join ‘em, and I guarantee you’ll learn something.”

  Noni was as green as her lab coat. “It might be a shock to you,” I said. “But maybe you’ll meet someone.” Teasing him never got old.

  "Okay,” Barb announced as we arrived in a cool room, which had walls lined with closed drawers. “This is what we call the fridge — because that’s exactly what it is. So it’s a little chilly, but we won’t have to stay here too long.” She looked at her papers and mumbled to herself, “D-12.” She walked over to one of the drawers, opening it to its full length. The body was wrapped in a sheet, the feet protruding, with a toe-tag reading: D-12: Mark Sasson.

  "Just like in the movies,” I said admiringly.

  Noni objected, “Come on, we don’t need a running commentary. Let’s get this over with.”

  In an almost-dramatic motion, Barb rolled the sheet down from the face, and with great astonishment we saw staring eyes; black, frizzy hair; and a hard vulpine face. “Kibbutznik for sure. Looks like a security guard,” Noni muttered to me.

  All I could think was that he didn’t look like a tech entrepreneur from Silicon Valley. And why did they not bother to close his eyes? I had no idea, but it didn’t really matter. She rolled down the sheet further, and we saw the sown-up incisions from the autopsy and three unmistakable bullet holes.

  I observed, “Dirty work, large caliber.”

  Noni said, “Okay, Okay, let’s get this over with.” He was really impatient. “Thank you very much, you can cover him up,” he told Barb, then ran out of the room.

  She grinned at me understandingly. “Well, Consul, what did we expect? Come on, hon, let’s get to work.”

  When we got to Barb’s office, she started filling out forms. She lingered over Noni’s personal details, and in the meanwhile, I examined the paintings on the walls. They were clearly the handiwork of children full of happiness and optimism. There were no tanks, no planes, no monsters. Must be nice.

  “Are these yours?” I asked.

  Barb chuckled over her paperwork. “I wish! Nah, those are my sister’s young’uns, two great kids. I’m no good at painting. Or parenting.”

  She went on to ask Noni his date and place of birth. He replied that it was un-American to ask him to divulge such things.

  “Maybe not, hon,” she allowed. “But you want this fella’s passport, right? So play along, and we’ll get you out of here in a jiff.”

  “I’m not sure I want his passport,” Noni grumbled. “I just want to get back to the consulate, that’s all.”

  Barb went on to ask about his diplomatic credentials, to check if he was registered at the governor’s office in Austin.

  “Yes, of course.”

  She asked him for his registration number, which stopped him in his tracks. He didn’t know it.

  “But I met Governor Richards!” he protested.

  “Pardon me?”

  “We’ve met, in person, twice,” he announced, puffed up with his own importance.

  “That and a dollar will get you a ride on the METRO; but I need a registration number in the governor’s office, so spill it.”

  Noni stood up. “I think this discussion is over.”

  “Suit yourself, hon.” Barb maintained her good humor. “If that’s what you’d like, ya’ll can deal with the HPD from here on down, because they’ve opened an investigation. Until they can get a handle on you, the police are gonna be mighty antsy. You want it, they’ll question you at the consulate in an hour.”

  He sat down again, and she exchanged a small smile with me.

  “In the meantime,” I asked. “What do the cops have?”

  "Cause of death is three gunshots to the chest.”

  "Brilliant deduction. What else?”

  “Nobody saw a thing, nobody heard a thing, except the front desk clerk thinks one person came in, but she couldn’t give a description.”

  “But…” I prompted.

  “If I were ya’ll, I’d ask around myself. This Mark Sasson case seems mighty muddy to me, and I mean the political kind. I don’t think there’s a soul at HPD who’s takin’ the case seriously.”

  As we left, Barb relented and gave us Sasson’s service passport.

  48.

  Noni asked to accompany me when I picked up Almog. He was already waiting for us outside the hotel gym.

  He looked a bit overcooked, as if he’d spent a bit too long in the Jacuzzi. Still, he was in a good mood: eyes shining; vital, refreshed, and quite pleased with himself. In the car, he deftly put on a tie with red and blue stripes, burying a hickey under his collar, along with a thin gold chain.

  "Hello, young man!” he said to me with considerable satisfaction; even Noni’s appearance couldn’t bring down his mood.

  "Welcome, Noni!” he called out to him, as if they were still in the army. He didn’t even ask Noni to what he owed the honor of his presence, but Noni volunteered, “We had a problem this morning,” he stated in a voice as low as his spirt.

  "What problem? That’s my bailiwick, I solve problems. Why am I only hearing about it now?”

  "There was no way to let you know,” I broke in. Noni glanced at me gratefully. “And it wasn’t really urgent either. Some Israeli was killed here in Houston."

  "Killed?” Almog shuddered. “Are you crazy, keeping that from me? What could kill an Israeli in Houston?”

  "Three bullets, in this case."

  He wasn’t amused by my attempt at humor. “This is bad, very bad.” Almog’s mood had soured. “Gang war? The last thing we need is Israeli organized crime showing up here.”

  Noni chuckled for a moment, as if to himself. I looked at him, worried, but Noni knew nothing. His laughter was just a weapon, ready at all times.

  "His name is Mark Sasson and he was identified by his service passport,” I explained.

  “His service passport?” Almog wondered out loud. “Do you have it on you?”

  “Yes,” Noni jumped in. “We were in the city morgue. We were forced to view his body. Nothing out of the ordinary, but they gave us his passport. I have to keep in touch with the police regarding the case.”

  Almog looked at the gray passport. “So the service passport is gray and the diplomatic one is black?”

  "Yes,” said Noni. “The service passport is for non-diplomatic officials.”

  "Ah.” Almog nodded to himself. “I understand,” he stated, flipping the passport pages from beginning to end and from end to beginning.

  "So this is an official passport for any government employee?” he repeated, demanding that Noni confirm.

  “Yes.”

  "Including the GSS? Including the Mossad?” Almog was setting us on a new path.

  "Yeah,” I agreed.

  "Six foot one. Tall, no? Black hair, green eyes. It means nothing to me. Born in ’62, so he’d be thirty, almost thirty-one. This is a complicated and very serious matter: an Israeli government official murdered here in Houston. I have a feeling what this could be.”

  He handed the passport back to Noni and looked out the window.

  "You know the story?” I asked.

  "I think so, but I have to check it out. What are you going to do about it?” Almog asked Noni.

  "There’s a procedure, more or less.” Noni knew the guidelines. “The most important thing is to fly the body back home to the family for burial. For that
, we must first locate the family. After that, there’s a body repatriation process. It’s all there in the Foreign Ministry guidelines. We need to make sure that the body is injected with formaldehyde, so that it does not rot on the way. We need a lead-lined coffin, I think, in order not to pollute the environment. Then we need a doctor’s authorization to make sure that the body is not infected with any contagious disease, so that the crew can safely handle it.”

  "Three bullets. Is that contagious?” asked Almog.

  "American procedures, you know. They have no flexibility. In fact, they hate flexibility.”

  "I’m familiar with that,” Almog stated ruefully. “Before anything else I want to know who Mark Sasson is, where he came from, and after that you will find out where he is going and make sure he gets there.”

  Noni called half the Foreign Ministry, with no small degree of hysteria, and managed to find out that the passport number had not been issued by the Foreign Ministry or the Interior Ministry.

  Almog had scored a point.

  "There are two groups of passports left,” Noni told me. “There are Mossad passports and there are GSS passports, but now everyone is too smart to tell me anything.”

  "Okay, so now what? We have to find the family.”

  "It’s really not that complicated. All we need to do is call Giora, the RSD,” Noni argued.

  "You better let the consul general do it,” I hastened to say.

  "Absolutely not.” Almog is unexpectedly reluctant, and again I came to the conclusion that he must know something about it.

  "Giora is back home,” I informed them. “The only one who knows what’s going on right now is Ofra.”

  "You,” Ofra says to Noni on the phone as we arrive back at the consulate. “You are not to deal with this matter anymore. Body repatriation procedure, official consular paperwork, everything — from now it all passes through us, clear?”

  "Of course it is clear. I would hope that this is also acceptable to RAD Hinenzon,” Noni reassured himself.