The Nylon Hand of God Page 2

  Much like Britain’s MI5 or the American FBI, Shabak handled counterintelligence. However, it was also responsible for supplying armed guards to El Al passenger flights, air terminals, consulates abroad, and close protection for heads of state. Young men fresh out of IDF combat units often became “GRs” (as the pistoleros were slanged), for widely accepted if less than patriotic motives. You could travel the world, taste foreign women, and save up some shekels. A few managed to rise through the ranks to become regional security chiefs, and some even returned to Tel Aviv and careers in the more sophisticated venues of spy hunting and mole trapping. But Moshiko no longer entertained such illusions.

  He was, however, harboring a secret from his coworkers, for which at times he felt pangs of guilt. He was going to resign altogether from the service. Worse than that, and perhaps smacking of treachery, he planned to stay on in New York and go to university.

  The reason being Kathleen.

  They had found each other at a Halloween party, to which Moshiko had been invited by an American friend studying at NYU. He arrived straight from work on a rainy night, so unlike the other revelers, he wore no costume, not even a cheap plastic mask.

  He was the enigmatic stranger, tall and well built, with wet black hair and blue eyes. Kathleen had long chestnut hair and Irish-cream skin, a freckled nose that poked from a pink bandit’s mask. She wore a purple dress and carried a magic wand, and she came right up to him and tapped him on the head.

  “And who are you supposed to be?”

  Moshiko held a glass of vodka, crackling over fresh ice, while R.E.M. blared “Losing My Religion” through the miasma of undulating bodies. And feeling somewhat protected by the anonymity of the others’ costumes, he answered spontaneously, if a bit foolishly.

  “A secret agent.”

  “Oh, really?” Her mask tipped from his head down to his feet, then back again. “So where’s your costume?”

  His response was extremely unprofessional, but perhaps it was at that moment that he realized he wasn’t making a career of this anyway. He pushed back the flap of his unconstructed blazer, showed her the pistol on his right hip, then closed it again and smiled.

  “Wow.” Kathleen stood still for a long moment, then lifted the mask from her face. “Where did you come from?”

  But Moshiko did not hear her query, for he was entranced by those eyes.

  Later, his recollections of the late evening played over in his mind a thousand times, his very favorite film. Her small apartment, the memory of his fingers, the wet wool of her coat as it opened, her breath in his ear, the cool smooth skin that grew warm to his own touch.

  In Israel, he was nothing out of the ordinary. Every other young man was like him. Almost every girl he knew carried her own pistol next to her lipstick.

  But here, to Kathleen, he was James Bond. She could not get enough of him. . . .

  Moshiko realized with a start that he had been lost in fantasy for some moments, his daydream so hypnotically real that now he crossed his legs and leaned forward, hoping to deflate the evidence of his erotic enthusiasm. It would not do for him to go striding back through the consulate, on his way to sign out, with a bulge in his trousers and a flush to his face. He would save that for later. He and Kathleen had long planned for this slippery weekend at an inn on the southern shores of Connecticut.

  The double doors of the elevator slid open, and for a moment, when no one appeared, he again had that unwelcome sensation. His fingers tightened at the edge of the counter. He stared through the glass, then stole a glance at his watch. One minute. It was nearly 12:30 P.M. of a Sabbath eve. No more “customers” after 12:30. No more.

  He snorted at his own stupidity when the figure stepped out into the waiting chamber. For the man was a Hasid, a devoutly religious Jew, replete with a wide black hat, long curling payis twirling down in front of his ears, and a bushy beard dripping rivulets of rain onto the carpet. From neck to ankle, the Hasid was enveloped in a long black woolen frock coat.

  Just another throwback to the nineteenth century, thought Moshiko with some relief. About as dangerous as a starving poodle. For indeed the man looked as if he had just stepped from the cobblestoned streets of an ancient Polish shtetl.

  Except for the shoes. Is it a religious holiday? Moshiko wondered. The man’s feet were cradled in sopping sneakers, the plain canvas-and-rubber basketball type. On certain days of observance, the religious took care to wear no skins of animals.

  As the Hasid strode slowly across the floor, Moshiko quick-scanned the face. Hundreds of such men passed this way each week, preparing their pilgrimages to the Holy of Holies in Jerusalem. They did not even appear on the GSS threat scale. If they waited too long inside the consulate’s passport section, you could often find them wrapped in a tallis, praying over by the windows.

  Moshiko stared at the man’s features, an attempt to match them to his expectations.

  The nose was wide and flat, the skin not quite as pale as the usual sallow hue of men who bent their eyes to prayer books in gloomy rooms.

  Something else. The dark eyes glistened, their pupils cavernous, the white orbs veined with fine yellow lines hinting at a touch of jaundice. It was almost a dreamy look. A blank, unseeing stare.

  A man lost to God, Moshiko decided, even as he watched the Hasid’s closed mouth, something playing at the corners of the lips. A twitch.

  The Hasid stopped a foot from the window. The redheaded girl looked up from a paperback book. Moshiko touched the microphone button.

  “Shalom. How can I help you?” he asked in English.

  The Hasid did not move or speak. His nostrils flared slightly with breath still steaming from the chilled air in his lungs.

  Moshiko cleared his throat. “Efshar lazohr l’cha?” He offered aid once more, this time in Hebrew. For perhaps the Hasid was Israeli born, just a visitor to Brooklyn. Here for a passport renewal. Going home.

  No response.

  Moshiko was debating whether to summon Bar-El, when the Hasid slowly reached into a pocket of the frock coat and came up with a folded piece of paper.

  For God’s sake, he’s a deaf-mute. Moshiko chastised himself with a mental shake of his head. He slid the teller’s drawer out to the poor fellow, who dropped the paper inside. Then he pulled back on the steel tray, extracted the note, and looked down at it.

  The scrawl was wavy, as if the hand that had scribed it was palsied. The letters were in large Hebrew script, just two words, but he could not discern their meaning. Was it a name? Maybe it was Yiddish?

  And even as he pronounced the phrase aloud phonetically, his heart thundered up through his body.

  “Allahu Akbar.”

  God is Great.

  The war cry of Islam.

  Moshiko snapped his head up, but the yell was choked in his own throat. For now, pressed against the glass, were the wet smeared features of the Hasid’s face, a smile spread from cheek to trembling cheek, and two rows of silver-rimmed teeth that flashed against the fluttering tongue, warbling something he could not hear.

  He saw the Hasid’s fist reach up to the top button of his coat, where fast as the claw strike of a jaguar it gripped the small plastic disk and pulled. And Moshiko was already launching himself backward, his hands pushing against the counter with every adrenaline-poisoned muscle in his arms.

  But he knew that it was too late.

  The Hasid’s coat must have been quite a burden to him, for it weighed twenty pounds more than on the day it was purchased. It was lined with forty strips of Semtex-B, a moldable plastic explosive of Czechoslovak manufacture that burned at a rate of twenty-four thousand feet per second.

  The detonator, a necessary booster to ignite the primary charge, was a fulminate-of-mercury blasting cap, cocooned with three more like it inside a pack of Marlboros stuffed into the Hasid’s vest pocket. The coat button was tied to a wire lanyard that closed a simple, battery-powered circuit.

  The Hasid disappeared into a sun of thundering hea
t that dissolved his own blood and bone, as well as that of the redheaded girl. A hundred blades of lightning flame leapt out at the walls of the waiting chamber. And true to the claims of its manufacturer, the security window did not shatter. It completely left its frame and flew intact, like a giant piston, into Moshiko’s booth.

  And in that final microsecond, before his world went black, before his body impacted with and passed right through the wooden door behind him, Moshiko realized . . .

  He should have listened to his instincts.

  Part One: HOGs

  Chapter 1: Jerusalem

  Lieutenant Colonel Benjamin Baum watched a final breath of pewter winter light as it sank below the stony turrets of the Cathedral of Saint Trinity. The silhouetted spires were capped in brilliant green ceramic domes, and from each crown another finger poked a golden crucifix into the falling night. Yet it was not the massive architecture that held Baum’s gaze, for he had squinted pensively this way a thousand times before. Rather, it was the rare vision of the structure’s eaves being dusted with snow, and the certainty that this unusual day, much like his career in the army, would soon fade forever.

  With a heavy palm, Baum smeared a circle of fog from his office window, discovering once again that the church resembled an upturned hand of Christian Orthodoxy sinking into a Judaic sea. It sat atop this promontory of Jerusalem called the Russian Compound, so named in deference to the Eastern pilgrims who had once sought refuge here. The cathedral was a stubborn anachronism, for the Compound now held a ring of other buildings, their inhabitants less deferential to their deity than the monks who swung their incense maces inside the church’s battlements.

  A low, flat structure at the Compound’s western side housed the interrogation rooms, communications centers, and dark and desperate holding cells of the National Police. To the east, a central court of high stone chambers echoed with the thunder of gavels, as judges sentenced restless queues of terrorists and thieves.

  And to the south, amid another block of bureaucratic buildings whose worn brass shingles lied to wayward visitors, the Special Operations wing of Israeli Military Intelligence still held its temporary residence. After five years, AMAN’s Special Operations personnel, its officers and analysts, its wizards, watchers, secretaries, and janitors, no longer dreamed of the promised new facilities. It might well be that somewhere down in Tel Aviv, a modern lair of steel-and-Plexiglas, plush-carpeted suites would soon spring up. But given the realities of Israel’s construction trade, the strikes and slowdowns, and the fact that the country’s best laborers were Palestinians, forbidden to work so sensitive a project, most of AMAN’s SpecOps people had long resigned themselves to call Jerusalem their home.

  Of course, to Benni Baum the promise of a new seaside facility would not have moved him, for he had always called Jerusalem his home. He had come here as a child of the camps, thankful now that his first recollectible images were of a sun-burned city of wondrous hills and alleys, shorts and sandals, the air a heady draft of desert dust and pine.

  There were cities on this earth whose faces never felt the sting of certain seasons, and he recalled how, long ago, before that first November chill, he too had thought Jerusalem blessed with endless sun. The images were for the most part true, of stony shadows thrown by a cloudless azure sky, of palm fronds waving above bronzed Israeli beauties, of pink-veined granite magically translucent in the white, bright days of six-month summers. And even as the winter came, it did so in bursts of effort between sunny days that would be spring in any other place.

  Yet once each year, on a day that Baum always relished with a child’s glee, it was as if God could not restrain his brush stroke, and it snowed. And on that day Jerusalem became like a sultan’s sandstone palace, sitting on a cloud of cream.

  “Are you converting to Christianity, Baum? Tell me now, so I can downgrade your security clearance.”

  Lieutenant General Itzik Ben-Zion’s rumbling tones echoed off the walls of Baum’s office. Benni sighed, yet he did not immediately turn.

  “Actually, I was praying for a stay of execution. No particular denomination.”

  He looked down at his hands, where he clutched a sheaf of papers, memories in triplicate. No one would ever need them, for everything was being swallowed by computers now. Still, he was quite sure that on one glorious day the hard disks, RAMs, and LANs would all come crashing down and there would be a mad scramble for fountain pens until someone straightened out the mess.

  “No one is forcing you out, Baum.”

  Benni turned from the window, eyeing his commander. Yes, his decision to retire was voluntary, but there were those who would revel in his departure.

  The general stepped into the office, bending his head to clear the frame. He was the tallest officer of any that Baum knew, which alone gave him some unwarranted recognition. His full head of wiry black hair was going salt and pepper now, but his hawkish nose still preceded every entrance like a tank’s cannon, his dark eyes and slanting brows completing the image of a giant bird of prey. The circles thereunder had grown darker with the years, yet the lines above his cheekbones remained shallow, as if he preserved his youth by the dictates of fashion modeling. Don’t smile unless you have to.

  Rank and power were the treasures Itzik coveted, yet as those coffers grew, his spiritual well had diminished. Yes, he was at last a general, but his wife had finally divorced him and his children kept their distance. Whatever unappreciated happiness had once been his now resided in someone else’s home.

  “I was referring to Operation Moonlight.” Benni suppressed a cynical leer. It was common for AMAN officers to wear civilian clothes, but ever since making general, Itzik almost always wore his uniform.

  “Well, it’s too late now.” Ben-Zion placed his fists on his hips. “That mission is running.”

  “We should look at it again.”

  “We have looked at it a thousand times. Let’s not beat a gift horse.”

  “I think you are mixing metaphors.” Benni regretted the comment as soon as it escaped his mouth. Challenging Itzik was a fatuous little habit he could not shake, which was why he would be leaving AMAN as a lieutenant colonel, while men twenty years his junior already wore three “felafels” on their epaulets.

  “You’re doing it again, Baum.” The general jabbed with a finger, while Baum dipped his head, attempting a mimed apology. “But this time you and your partner are not going to screw this up for me. We are going through with it.”

  Benni shrugged. Itzik was clearly still rankling over the recent power struggle that had resulted in the cancellation of one of his operational brainstorms. He had wanted to put a long-range reconnaissance team into the western Iraqi desert, to ascertain the revamping of Saddam Hussein’s Scud capability. Baum and his partner of many years, Eytan Eckstein, had killed the project by proving that the human risk was too great, instead striking a deal with the Americans to provide satellite coverage of the area.

  It was not the first time they had caused one of Itzik’s “babies” to be stillborn. Yet Baum’s and Eckstein’s field successes had also enhanced Itzik’s reputation, so no doubt the general harbored mixed emotions regarding Baum’s leaving.

  “We should go through with Moonlight,” said Benni, the sheaf of papers fluttering as he gesticulated with his beefy arms. “But I just can’t fathom why the other side is also so anxious.”

  “Yours is not to reason why.” Itzik’s finger was still trained on Benni’s nose. He holstered it in the pocket of his trousers and said, “Hofshi l’chol ha’avodot”—“Dismissed to all tasks”—an IDF expression forbidding further discussion. He turned to leave, then remembered why he had come. “And I reviewed your request to bring Eckstein out of Africa. Denied.”

  “May I ask why?”

  “You know why. You two are dangerous together.”

  “To whom?” Benni wanted to keep his mouth shut, but in Itzik’s presence the message from his brain to his lips was always waylaid.

&n
bsp; “I am not going to discuss this, Baum.”

  “You think you should keep us apart? Like cheating schoolboys?”

  “No!” Itzik shouted. “Putting you at different desks isn’t enough. You two have to be separated by continents!”

  “I thought he might be able to help us with this.” Benni kept his own voice even. “Maybe see something we’ve missed.”

  “Moonlight is yours.” Itzik was still yelling, a technique no longer effective once you got used to it. “You’ve handled it alone until now, and you will finish it that way.”

  And before Baum could outgun him with tactical brainpower, the general strode from the office and slammed the door.

  “Ken ha’mefaked. Yes, Commander,” Benni grunted, without a hint of deference.

  He sighed, once more looking at the papers in his hands. He was having trouble forcing the stuff into the burn bag, which hung more than half empty from an aluminum frame.

  Procrastination was a new habit for Baum, one he did not like. He barreled through his missions in the same way he still played weekend soccer, leaving breathless teammates and opponents in his wake. With his wide bald head and Dumbo ears pitched forward, his massive shoulders hunched above a belly full of Maya’s schnitzel, his trunky fifty-two-year-old legs bruising those of boys half his age, he thundered through his play, as through his work, with the mischievous eyes and quick grin that made him look more like the bratwurst seller he might have been, had he stayed in the country of his birth.

  Benni never let wait until the morrow an effort that could be handled now, no matter the discomfort. A few disgruntled AMAN officers disliked him for his bluntness, while envying his successes. There was no one in the unit who did not respect him. His superiors never wondered what he was really thinking.

  So being hampered by hesitation was a strange sensation. In nearly thirty years of intelligence work, he had never entertained a vision of these final weeks. Like other men of action, he had assumed, even hoped, that his career’s end would come upon him mercifully. Something loud and quick.