The Critical Offer Page 8

  He examined the road stretching ahead and behind him. Spotting no cars or police patrols, he made an illegal U-turn and sped away in the direction he came from.

  ...Okay, so god is forcing me to go back through the accident area. I hope the motorcyclist survived...This is what happens when you bargain with Hippocrates... accused his inner voice, the voice that insisted to maintain the noble image he always wore. If I’m lucky, the guy’s still alive... he tried to calm himself as he drove through the wet, sharp turns leading from Nazareth back to the mud drenched valley.

  A fierce, sudden hail took him by surprise, the crash of hailstones on the chassis obstructing his thoughts. Past the frantic windshield wipers he once again spotted the police cars and the yellow ambulance. He approached them and pulled over by the concrete barrier, cursing himself for scraping his magnificent spoiler against the rough surface. “We’ll handle that later,” he spoke, aloud and angrily, opened his car door and sprinted in the rain to the back of the ambulance, which he opened without knocking or receiving permission.

  He walked in and stood there, crouched, water streaming from his expensive suit and the top of his head, among the stretchers, oxygen tanks and medical equipment. The air inside the ambulance was wet, blue and heavy with smoke. Two weary-eyed, unshaven men in bright yellow vests were smoking peacefully inside, looking at him, puzzled.

  “Guys, I’m Professor Marwan Sultani, orthopedist from HaEmek Hospital, what’s his status?” he said, breathing heavily. The taller of the two, wearing a kippah and sporting a thick black beard slightly salted with age, observed him as if assessing his credibility. Eventually, he puffed out a small nicotine cloud and replied dryly: “He lost his right leg below the knee. Hit the barrier and took a lot of head injuries.”

  “Where is he now? Where?” he asked urgently.

  “We shipped him off straight to you guys. Other ambulance took him.” He smiled with unconcealed disdain.

  “And where’s the leg?”

  “Come on, doctor! What kind of show do you think we’re running, here? It’s in the cooler, on ice. We stopped the bleeding with tourniquets and dressed the wound, pumped him full of saline and morphine, and FedExed the whole thing to your ER…” he replied, returning the cigarette butt to his mouth. The two exhausted paramedics exchanged grins. “You’re a bit late, professor. But if you hurry, mister orthopedist, you might get there in time to sew his leg back on… if he still has any use for it,” both of them laughed callously at this.

  Marwan angrily slammed the ambulance door behind him and ran the rain-pummeled stretch to his car. The warm Insignia growled softly, waiting for him, its wipers languidly squeaking across the windshield in a wet, rubbery murmur.

  He sped across the glistening road, roaring irresponsibly and eating up the six miles leading from accident to the hospital.

  The line “I have no other land” was ringing annoyingly once more. After a two-second wait, the call connected: “Marwan! It’s Doctor Golan. We’re in the OR with the first patient, a nine-year-old female with severe cranial trauma from shrapnel and a shattered left hip bone. The quadriceps femoris is torn horizontally above the knee. Professor Mazor and his head injury team are already working on her. She’s under anesthesia, on a respirator, and sterilized.”

  “Okay. I’ll be there in ten. Tell Mazor we’ll take the left side of the table and stay out of his way. Get all her X-rays up on the light box. I estimate we’ll be finished before they get all the shrapnel out of her head.”

  “Okay, professor. The nurses and I are heading in. join us when you get here.”

  “Golan, Golan! Hang on,” he managed to squeeze in before his colleague hung up. “They’re about to bring in a motorcyclist from a traffic collision who lost a leg. Start on the girl without me! I’m operating on him and his leg before anything else. Get me an OR prepped and send a nurse out to meet them, right now, no delaying!” he said with as much as a commanding voice that his dry throat managed to produce.

  “Understood, Marwan. Drive carefully, we need you here!” he hung up.

  “Again, it’s happening again, goddammit. Where are we steering this oxcart, us and them?” he angrily muttered, clarifying neither to himself nor to his abstract listeners just who “us” and “them” were.

  The sun set somewhere behind the misty Ephraim Mountains. Darkness slowly crept over the valley.

  Speeding up to ninety on the final, steep section of the road leading to the hospital, headlights probing the wet road past the glitter of rain, the phone rang again. This time, it was his private line.

  “Hello?” he snapped, angrily.

  “Hey, Doc!”

  “Who is this?”

  “Vertebrae L-5 and L-4, Beit Levinstein, 1988! Ring any bells, doctor?”

  “Oh! Yes, of course! How are you, Gershon, my friend? Listen, I’m driving to the hospital, urgent surgery. Bombing in Tiberias with multiple casualties, you probably know more than I do.”

  “Possibly. Call me when you’re free?”

  “I’m always at your service, but the situation is pretty tense these days.”

  “That’s understandable, Doc. I’ll just quickly ask you this, then: when are you leaving for that orthopedic conference in Moscow?”

  “In a few days,” he replied, adding in Arabic, “Inshallah!” God willing.

  “Okay. Good luck with your patients, doctor. Good night, and drive carefully!”

  “Bismillah al rahman al raheem,” he replied with the opening phrase of the Quran surah: In the name of Allah, the most gracious and merciful. “See you around, Gershon.”

  Silence filled the car once more as he slowed on the approach to the hospital gate.

  If he were to look to the south, he might have recognized, past the growing darkness and the sheets of rain, past the high-rises that grew where there was once nothing but farmland – the tin roofs of the now empty and decaying cowsheds that had once been the pride of Kibbutz Giv’on’s dairy farmers, where his parents met. Fifty-nine years ago...

  A long, dense night fell over the Jezreel Valley, “From Beit-Alfa to Nahalal,” as the sad old pioneer’s song goes.

  Year of the Dragon

  Chun Chang was an anarchist, heart and soul.

  He was the single child of a mechanical engineer and a librarian in the Chinese National Library, both members of the New Generation and loyal supporters of the Communist Party. He went to the school for gifted children associated with Tsinghua University in Beijing, where he proved quick to grasp, even quicker to retort. Qualities not held by many…

  His hobbies were radio-controlled planes, computers, and caricature drawing.

  The planes, purchased by his uncle the diamond-trader in Hong Kong, he would assemble in his parents’ small apartment and fly them over practitioners of Qigong and Tai-Chi in the many Beijing’s parks. His plans were annoying citizens trying to focus on practices demanding the utmost silence and attunement.

  More than once he had been dragged into the police station near Tiananmen Square and sent back to his parents with a severe official warning: “You shall be held responsible for your child’s iniquities!”

  Since he had always been blessed with an eye for quick sketching, and a light, flowing line, he temporarily eschewed the RC planes in favor of exploiting his talent with the pencil. He sketched everything, but mostly portraits. At sixteen he had gained full sketch-artist status in the eyes of his peers. Once again he headed out to Beijing’s parks: this time to draw caricatures of passersby, earning several dozen Yuan for each quick sketch of whatever tourist or local he managed to lure in.

  At seventeen and a half he founded a subversive hacker group along with two of his friends from computer engineering class. For the amusement of his classmates he drew their faces humorously twisted, and the small gang began to quietly test their abilities with minor hacks: first into the
girl’s computers from their grade, and then to the school’s computers as well.

  He would draw the girls in his private journal, displayed in lurid nudes, straight from his imagination, inspired to great lengths by animated Japanese porn. Chun never bothered to learn the long, bloody history of Japan and China, and therefore never cared much about the ancestral enmity between the two.

  On summer evenings he and his friends would go to the massive plaza across the street, in front of the imposing Beijing Exhibition Center in north-western Beijing. They would congregate there, in the shadow of the monumental neo-classical style building the Soviets had given to Mao in the fifties. To the tune of western rock music sung in Mandarin Chinese by local singers, they’d skate, wildly swerving and gliding, their colorfully blinking LED blazing across the concrete court. Chun, who had never been particularly athletic or coordinated, would soon tire and plop down by the improvised speakers, jealous of the boys and pining for the girls.

  One day, he promised himself, One day you’ll all work for me! And he would look high and far at the glowing red star hanging above the building, against the starless night skies of the Chinese capital.

  When they’d finished school, armed with their diplomas and certificates of excellence, Chun Chang and his friends began to grow more daring: they hacked the local municipal system, the salary department. The identity of those who receive salaries, however, as well as those who issue them, are a state secret in the People’s Republic of China. Chang and his collaborators were captured. They were aggressively interrogated, and promptly sent to serve eighteen months in the Gangbei Prison in Tianjin Municipality, in East China, just an hour and a half from the capital via high-speed rail.

  And so, one overcast morning, warm and hazy, thick with heavy pollution originating in part from the Gobi Desert, in part from the coal and mazut-guzzling factories skirting Beijing, he was placed on an open-roofed military vehicle, along with his friends, his arms and legs bound, and shipped off to the prison.

  Always quick to intuit the weaknesses of his fellow men, Chun Chang noted that the prison warden was a bereaved father, who had lost his only son, and exploited this fact. It seemed to him that the warden took a liking to him, perhaps even sees his as a sort of replacement son. The warden soon became convinced that Chun’s potential in service of The Party would prove far greater than the need to keep him imprisoned.

  As it is well known in China - talent does not go to waste…

  Therefore, no time was wasted in presenting Chun Chang with an ultimatum, offered by the Secret Service and posed to him by the warden: he would be released, on the condition that he would completely and in perpetuity avoid any subversive activity, and unequivocally pledge to “serve the people” in any way deemed appropriate. The completion of his sentence was still there, waiting for him, should he fail to comply with these terms.

  As a token of his gratitude, on the day of his release, Chun gave the warden a flattering portrait drawn in pencil and aquarelle, depicting him in his uniform, wearing a cap with a red star in its center, against the backdrop of a glorious sunrise above the Forbidden City and the Great Wall.

  At the bottom of the painting, in Beijing-style Mandarin calligraphy, Chun inscribed: “To forevermore serve the beloved China with the deepest gratitude,” and added his own modest signature.

  The warden shook his hand and, his emotions getting the better of him, embraced him in a brief hug. Years later, Chun will interpret the gesture as a “fatherly hug.”

  He was sent to eleven months of reeducation in a Secret Service facility, during which he quickly internalized the Communist ideology of China, expressed his talents, and exhibited perfectly disciplined Party-ordained behavior.

  Chun was trained as a cracker – a novice hacking expert; and a flyer – an expert controller of RC planes, UAVs and electric drones. His pride and joy had been flying the large, brand new quad-rotor, the jewel of the Chinese drone industry: a true monstrosity, its engines mounted of a long wing, capable of tilting all the way from horizontal to fully vertical, achieving extremely high flight speeds and extended hovering capacity, all in utter silence.

  In January of 2025 he was, to his own surprise appointed Deputy Chief Security Officer and Senior Computer and Information-Security in Israel. He was to replace the previous deputy, who was killed in a hit-and-run in front of the Embassy in Tel Aviv.

  On his way to the Beijing Capital International Airport, he stopped by a stationary store and acquired some pencils, brushes, watercolors and a quality drawing block. On its red cover was a smiling golden dragon, perched comfortably on top of the earth, which lay clutched between its talons in what seemed like a blunt hint to the government’s intentions. “Never know when I might need to earn a couple of bucks from drawing caricatures in the park…” he mused in Mandarin.

  As was fitting for a young retired anarchist, brilliant and recently subversive, Chun Chang was also given the position of the Deputy Inspector for Appropriate Behavior for everyone working at the Chinese Embassy in Tel Aviv. His duty was also known as the Deputy-CSO.

  For years, the Chinese government has been concerned with losing its newly-rich to the west. New millionaires and recently wealthy party officials were immigrating to the States in alarming numbers. To combat the growing phenomenon, Chinese Security Services began tracking and perusing their rich elites, Falun Gong practitioners, and other enemies of the revolution and the regime.

  Chun was accepted into this system, at the very bottom of its food chain, to keep a watchful eye on the employees of the embassy and consulate in the City That Never Stops.

  Just for now... he said to himself, my time will come!

  His new position permitted him to abuse his colleagues officially, and with the CSO’s blessing.

  If he knew any Latin, he would have reminded himself that Rome wasn’t built in a day; as things were, he preferred the more positive Chinese proverb: A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

  But Chun Chang didn’t like working by the book, and certainly loathed the Israeli notion of an office job – whether it be in Tel Aviv or anywhere else in the world. He therefore thought up an idea, and concocted a plan. When that plan would come to fruition, he dreamed, he would be rich and famous, living in America, where all women would conform to his fantasies.

  But in the meanwhile, during the vast quantities of spare time in his possession, he began sketching the security personnel, the secretaries and the clerks from the consulate in his red drawing block with its golden dragon. He colored his humorous sketches with clear watercolors and secretly sold them to his models. Soon he began photographing his work and saving copies on his personal computer. Who knows what, in the future, could help me achieve my goals…

  Chun received permission from the CSO to create a modest website for himself. Without delay, he employed his expert computer skills in creating a low-cost, impressively designed website in which he introduced himself as a painter and a diplomat, and started publishing his caricatures as well as watercolors of the Tel Aviv landscape. He had filled the section describing the website’s owner with fanciful details of his days in art school and various exhibits he had participated in. Instead of a photo, he added a watercolor self-portrait: a silhouette imposed over the Tel Aviv sunset.

  “With quietness and carefulness!” he would repeat to himself in faulty, newly-learned Hebrew, having limited success with the hard R’s: “My time also arriving, soon!”

  But time flowed at its regular pace, failing to arrive any sooner… nothing of value occurred, his plan was not progressing, and boredom began gnawing at him. He requested a meeting with the CSO.

  The Chief Security Officer was a heavyset man, strong, with a round bulldog face. His anomalous stature and appearance made him stick out in the sea of unremarkable embassy workers.

  He sat imperiously in his chair, spread his legs apart, an
d placed two large, menacing hands on his desk and regarded Chun at length, waiting.

  “Speak!” he commanded eventually.

  “S…Sir, I have an idea…” he opened in a low voice, “th… that will improve the efficiency of our work in a way that nothing could escape our knowledge...” his glasses were vibrating on his nose to the beat dictated by his mouth, a slight sheen of sweat beading above his upper lip.

  “Speak!”

  And Chun, intimidated by the occasion, and somewhat by himself, spoke and spoke. And the more he spoke, the greater became his excitement. When he had finished his animated presentation, he raised his head slightly, and waited.

  The CSO listened silently, impaling Chun with a steady, chilly gaze. An uneasy silence stretched between them, which Chun felt was unbearably long.

  “Chun Chang,” the CSO eventually said, “as civil servants, members of the Communist Party, and representatives of the People’s Republic of China, we cannot authorize private initiative without the approval of the superiors!” he barked the short, sharp vowels.

  “That, sir, is why I’ve come to you,” Chun offered submissively.

  “You misunderstand, Chun Chang. The People’s Republic of China is governed by rules. The Communist Party has the final word. Only the directives of the central government, passed along via the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, are implemented in our embassies. We must represent the great Chinese people honorably in the eyes of the world!” he recited the summery of the directives for embassy workers, his voice stiff, rising toward the end.

  “Of course, sir.”

  “I will submit your proposal to the ambassador. He will decide whether to relay it to Beijing. Meanwhile, await instructions!” he barked in conclusion.