The Critical Offer Page 2

  As he used to in childhood, he silently exclaimed: “Here goes nothing!” He opened the drawer, took out the fountain pen bearing the ancient Polish symbol of a fierce golden eagle, gently removed the cap and decisively wrote at the bottom of the page:

  Approved. G.S

  When he replaced the pen in its drawer, his thoughts wandered back to an occasion twenty-nine years earlier, when another signature had changed his life.

  * * *

  There were three of them, that frozen Christmas of 1995: Ze’evik Carmon, the team commander and an expert in hand-to-hand combat, who many years later would become his second-in-command in the Mossad; Handsome Mickey, who according to everyone was headed for a bright future in the computer industry, but died two years later; and himself.

  It was a hard winter in Germany that year, and not even at Christmas mass in the old Cologne Cathedral could they escape the bitter cold. He recalled the British and American bombers that had demolished the city during World War II, and the tens of thousands of civilians who had perished in the extensive fires resulting from the bombings. He wondered why at the time the Allies had decided to spare the twin towers of the cathedral, with their dark stone crosses.

  The three of them stood silently killing time among the Germans, listening absently to the sounds of the pipe organ, the Benedictus Dominus and the Ave Maria, staring listlessly at the priests and the bluish, fragrant smoke hanging motionless in the frozen air of the cathedral.

  Ze’evik nodded toward the exit sooner than expected and they hurried back to their warm hotel rooms.

  At five past ten that evening they met on the sixth floor of the International Hotel, which often accommodated El Al cargo aircrews, and moved silently over the thick synthetic carpet. They stopped at the door marked 641; Mickey slid his plastic magnetic keycard into the electronic lock, a small green light lit up, and the door clicked open.

  They entered quickly. The room was hot and stifling. The rich brown tones of the wallpaper, the king-sized bed with its duvet lying crumpled on the floor, the double-glazed windows obscured by thick, chestnut-colored drapes, and the dormant television set - the luxurious room almost tempted the intruders to rest their weary heads, to enjoy its lavish comforts.

  Mustafa Barhum’s clothes hung in the closet. A fancy suitcase and a pair of glossy Italian shoes waited by his bed.

  Ze’evik immediately rushed in, seized the prone man on the bed and immobilized him with his powerful arms. Mickey grabbed the man’s head and shoved a rag into his mouth.

  The man on the bed was now flailing wildly, thrashing, kicking off his blanket. A strip of hairy stomach could occasionally be glimpsed through the folds of his blue silk pajamas. Gershon carefully studied his face, comparing it with the photos he had imprinted on his brain back in Israel. There’s no room for error! Don’t fuck this up! Fragments of sentences flickered through his mind, like they had back then in the burning Skyhawk.

  Ze’evik whispered urgently - “It’s him! Come on, Gershon, don’t screw this up now!”

  Gershon quickly pulled out a syringe filled with ketamine, the fingers of his left hand feeling for the trapped man’s pulse, while his right hand slowly aimed the needle at his victim’s carotid artery. Barhum’s eyes were red and bulging, nearly popping out of their sockets in horror.

  ...Like my mother’s...a fragment of memory arose in him. Forget about that now, focus! He voicelessly reprimanded himself. In one smooth motion he squeezed the contents of the syringe into the dark neck. So different from the rubber training doll, another unsolicited thought appeared.

  By this point, they were all dripping with sweat. The trapped man’s legs continued to kick frantically for several long seconds before, also covered in sweat, he fell asleep. Mickey rummaged through the man’s jacket, found his passport and whispered: “Lucky us! No need to break into the safe.”

  “Gershon, it’s him, no question! You have approval! Do it now!” Ze’evik ordered nervously. “Fuck me, it’s hot! You could die in here!” he continued in a low, angry mutter, unaware of any double meaning to his words.

  Gershon acted mechanically, as he was trained to do: a second syringe, much larger than the first and filled with potassium chloride, was already in position. Barhum, his head bald and glistening, with a black mustache and full, bristly cheeks, lay in silence, breathing heavily. This time Gershon aimed at a large drop of blood already beading on the dark neck. He penetrated the skin smoothly and easily, and once again squeezed the syringe until it was completely empty.

  None of them were worried about the investigation that the German federal police would most certainly carry out the very next day, which would inevitably lead back to them.

  That was a huge, dumb, rookie mistake, he would often later think to himself. Well, yes - we were negligent and sloppy not to have left a lookout to guard the hallway...

  Barhum was gurgling now. His eyes had opened, staring in sheer dread as his mouth gaped and foamed, gasping for air. They all heard the final groan of despair that emerged from his lungs. The scar above Gershon’s eye pulsed violently and reddened.

  Upon entering the elevator, they removed the surgical gloves, syringes and black ski masks, shoving them into the pockets of their El Al aircrew disguises. The receptionist in her golden-green uniform with its name tag was dozing, as they moved steadily through the lobby, its thick carpet dulling their footsteps as they crossed the twenty meters to the revolving exit door.

  Freezing rain was pelting diagonally from the skies, carried on a brutal wind. The Mercedes was waiting in the thick, black night with its engine running. Tires screeched and windshield wipers scraped across the frozen glass as they sped away eastbound towards the Rhine. The dark waters roiled beneath them as they crossed the bridge. They picked up speed on L 124 and proceeded to Autobahn 559, where they thundered over the concrete at 160 mph, all the way to Cologne Bonn Airport.

  The rain lashed down on the wet concrete that glistened in their headlights. A thick sheet of low cloud floated above them, faintly illuminated by the lights below. By the roadside, black foliage was bowing and whipping in the wind....Not a single partridge or seagull would venture out on a night like this...he mused, fixing his gaze on the low clouds churning above. He’s driving like a maniac! God, it feels so much more dangerous here than it did in that hotel room! he pondered uneasily, his heart still thumping with adrenaline at a hundred and twenty beats per minute.

  None of them said a single word throughout that journey…

  El Al aircrews would often arrive at the side gate. A uniformed German security guard, who reminded him of a Wehrmacht soldier in some old war movie, let them in with a bored nod of his head. The red-and-white barrier arm went up and the Mercedes headed towards the Boeing 747 parked on the dirty snow of the cargo tarmac that was striped with dark grooves, carved out by the wheels of heavy cargo planes: A four-engine behemoth awaited them, grimy, silent, and devoid of any identifying marks.

  Gershon couldn’t sleep until they landed back in Israel. The sight of the dying Mustafa Barhum, his wretched groans and unseeing, bulging eyes, would continue to haunt him for many nights to come. It wasn’t until he saw the Tel Aviv coastline approaching through the cloudy dawn that shone over the hills of Jerusalem, did the feeling of dread finally pass.

  ...I did it! I showed them..! He permitted himself a smile, addressing his fellow rookie pilots from the squadron back then, but mostly himself.

  Much later, he would tell Adam Ben-Ami:

  “It was the same, those groans and bulging eyes, that’s how I remember my mother’s face when she was dying… But do you know what, Adam? During the operations that came after that, though they were often similar, I never felt the same excitement - not to say, exhilaration - like I did during the Barhum mission. And even back then, I thought to myself: ‘So, this is it? This is all there is to Gershon Shalit, the life of an assassin,
following other people’s orders? Is that what I want? And when, for heaven’s sake, will this bloody business ever come to an end?’”

  “So?” Adam stared at him.

  “So I think it was already back then that I started to look for a way out, for some sort of solution. Not just for myself, but for all of us, in the name of the dreams that we used to dream…”

  Reschedule

  It was ten forty-five a.m. In fifteen minutes the meeting in his office will commence, and he was expected to lead it. His persuasiveness and apparent confidence could affect many lives today.

  Once again he stared at the palms bending in the wind along the coastline. He looked at his watch, which some anachronistic whim still compelled him to wear on his right wrist: a smashed and repaired Omega. He had received it from the commander of the air force himself, along with his peers, back when they’d graduated from flight course.

  “Fifteen minutes,” he said aloud, the way fighter pilots speak to themselves in their cockpits so that they would miss nothing. He then turned to go over the medical report he received after his last routine checkup.

  He liked to think of himself as somewhat knowledgeable in medicine and therefore scanned the report carefully. Something in his blood protein levels was indicating a steady, threatening rise above the normal range.

  Seeing as he’d already spoken to the Mossad doctor, who had referred him to a specialist “just to put your mind at ease,” he repeatedly told himself. “Okay, they needed to check, so they checked. And now there’s a country that needs handling. Healing it… Well, that’s a different matter altogether...” he spoke quietly, as if fearing he’d be overheard, drumming his fingers on his desk.

  He stretched, took a sip from the glass of water by his keyboard, and called out through the slightly open door at his bureau chief: “Dahlia!”

  “Chief?” she replied absently, engrossed in her own files, with her usual moniker for him - more a pet name than anything remotely official.

  “Is the meeting still on? Everyone going to make it?”

  “Affirmative. No cancelations so far. You should get ready. You have ten minutes.”

  “In ten minutes, Ben-Gurion declared the State of Israel… ” He attempted a smile, as the pain in his back worsened.

  A passenger airliner swept over his office with an angry rumble, seeking passage through the storm clouds. Heavy raindrops thudded against his dusty window, paving winding paths through the grime on their way to the ground.

  His office door swung open and Dahlia Haikin, his bureau chief, barged in. “Gershon!” she called her face tight with alarm, “A car bomb went off at the entry gate to the Knesset a few minutes ago. There are casualties, many of them! Sima from the prime minister’s office called to say that the prime minister won’t be making it to the meeting this morning.”

  Without waiting for his reply, she asked, “Should I tell everyone we’re postponing the meeting, or do you want to go ahead without her? And turn on the TV! The media panic should be starting any second now…” Her voice was still shaking slightly when she added, “Meanwhile we’ll go over all of our sources, get you a clearer picture.”

  He considered this for a moment and took another sip of water, still drumming his fingers on the desk. His mind began processing the new information, and the old scar reddened. Dahlia looked at him questioningly, wondering whether to return to her office. He dismissed her with a slight nod. She turned and hesitantly walked back to her desk, breathing heavily.

  He reminded himself of the purpose of the meeting. The reality of which had just evaporated before his very eyes: this morning the prime minister was supposed to authorize an operation proposed by the commander of the air force and emphatically backed by both the head of military intelligence and the chief of the general staff.

  The prime minister and the three big toupees were all supposed to visit “The Office,” as they often nicknamed it, in order to discuss the proposal. He was looking forward to the discussion, which could also serve as a convenient opportunity to show the senior military and political officials of Israel just how well he was leading the organization.

  “Dahlia, wait!” he called after her, turning on the large TV screen on the wall opposite him. He flicked through the channels and stopped when he landed on Al Jazeera.

  “First on the scene again, the bastards. The things money can buy…” he muttered angrily. “Their Arab reporters are everywhere, and in Jerusalem, most of all.” Finally, with a cynical victory smile and a scoff, he hissed, “the unified Jerusalem, of course. Now and forever...”

  The sights and sounds of the scene seemed disturbingly familiar and mundane: ZAKA Rescue and Recovery volunteer teams in their yellow vests running around with white plastic bags, collecting the remains of the dead; a faceless crowd staring at the road and the destroyed security booth, their eyes full of abject horror; police officers shouting orders and waving their hands; ambulances speeding away, the whine of sirens stretching behind them; dark lumps of human matter strewn across the road. Thick brown smoke rose, congealing into a murky cloud of foul mist that faded and dissolved with infuriating indolence above the scene of destruction.

  He was suddenly furious. The old fury aimed at them, and mostly at us, the rulers of this country. The small, intimate you-know-what-I-mean-Dahlia smile had disappeared from his lips. His face hardened, accentuating the redness of his scar.

  “Okay, Dahlia, copy that. Cancel everything and let everyone know. Coordinate with the prime minister’s office to reschedule - today, ideally.” his voice was low and authoritative.

  “Consider it done, Chief.”

  Dahlia had first met “her Gershon” or “Chief,” as she affectionately addressed him nowadays, back in the days when he had just hobbled away from the air force on his crutches, limping and permanently grounded, and was transferred to the intelligence corps. When they met again, he was a lieutenant colonel, chief of the special operations division, and she was the administrative officer of the entire southern command. “Practically embalmed in her starched uniform,” Adam Ben-Ami would later describe her. She hesitantly succumbed to the gentle flirtation of the impressive, married man. After his divorce, she finally agreed to become his right-hand woman, and Gershon began to move up in the world.

  She was with him when he advanced through the ranks of the intelligence corps and Unit 8200 and when he later served as military attaché in Singapore and Germany. Though he owed her much of his success, he adamantly avoided making her his partner in life.

  And now, still, many years after those few nights in which he shared her bed, nights which led to nothing, she still held on to a residue of anger and unrequited love, disguised as an inexhaustible eagerness to please him. The small figure of Major (ret.) Dahlia Haikin still ruled his bureau with an iron fist.

  Gershon watched her as she headed back to her desk: petite, wearing a skirt and an old-fashioned sweater vest, her waist and backside surprisingly narrow for her age, her graying hair cut short and not a trace of makeup on her face: Ever-bustling and her heart still futilely hopeful.

  It had been years since Nechama and the twins left. Under the cover of his handsome features and captivating smile, his jokes and his commanding voice - their absence injured his soul. He suddenly missed them dearly, a pain that mingled with the morning’s gray gloom.

  The sudden cancelation, however, also provided him with a rare opportunity - an unplanned window of free time in his impossible schedule. For some time he longed to leave the stuffy office and breathe the city air. He set his mind on visiting Adam Ben-Ami, who’d recently returned from sea.

  “Dahlia, have they sent back the test results from Dr. Zimmerman’s office?”

  “Not yet. But I’m sure we’ll get them soon. Don’t worry, Gershon, you’re fine!” she said, her tone all-knowing and ever optimistic.

  “I guess, if you say so
. What would I do without you!” he replied, but worry still ate at his heart.

  He wasn’t exactly neurotic, but he did feel a need to know, to investigate. He refused to hand over the onus for his well-being to the hands of doctors, believing that it should also be the personal responsibility of every individual. Even now, he found it difficult to impede the worry climbing up his throat, feeling nearly thankful for every day that passed without him finding out the test results. He knew he was just postponing the inevitable, and still he couldn’t seem to relinquish the stolen serenity of ignorance.

  The puncture wounds from his biopsy still hurt a month after those sixteen small, hollow tissue cores were extracted from his perineum.

  Once again he remembered the petrifying cold in the new MRI room at Ichilov Hospital and the face of the MRI technician Mustafa Barhum. He heard the shrieking growl of the scanner as it rotated faster and faster around him, felt the chill of the metal table as it dragged him back and forth from the belly of the machine to the blinding neon light, freezing and disappointed by the indifference on Mustafa’s face. But the technician merely smiled when he finally let him get up and get dressed, apathetic to his fears, “Don’t worry, sir. This is our best machine, three Tesla! The images will be exceedingly sharp and delivered directly to your doctor,” he said, as if Gershon was worrying about the performance of the gray monstrosity he had just narrowly escaped and not his own body.

  “Mustafa Barhum again…” he rolled the name on his tongue. Like the guy from the Cologne International Hotel. Has it really been twenty-nine years?

  But the diagnosis was already late in arriving. And he, whose decisions had sealed the fates of many, began to worry about his own fate.

  “Here goes nothing,” he said to himself when he eventually decided - without informing Dahlia - to visit the specialist Dr. Zimmerman himself for a consultation.