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CHAPTER 24

Nineteen minutes later, Ariel stepped on the elevator. He’d put the bloodied leather jacket and clothing and the gloves in a plastic bag that he tucked into his main bag, then changed back into slacks and a collarless shirt. He cleaned off his Doc Marten boots and flushed the wipes down the toilet, then slipped into his blazer to complete his transformation into the young businessman out on the town. He checked his image in the elevator mirror, and nodded to himself. He shook his head, remembering who he was only a few months before: pudgy, nerdy, loner geek who thought vampires were bad fantasy. The word “conversion” applied to him in more than one way, he decided. And if only the high school girls could see him now. His own mother would likely have had trouble picking him out of a crowd. That thought caused a deep pang in his heart, but after a breathless moment he consoled himself with the thought that her murderers were dead.

The elevator stopped and he moved past other guests onto the hotel’s main bar floor. It was a little busier than the night before, but not jam-packed. He looked toward the table they had occupied before the news broke last night, and sure enough, Mordechai was there, pointing a finger at him. Ariel began making his way toward the table, slipping through the crowd in the foyer and around the bar. One of the few times when being shortish and slim worked to his advantage, actually.

Most of the patrons he was ducking between were wearing name tags, and he remembered seeing signs in the main lobby about some kind of convention. Funny how quickly the country had rebounded from the alarmism of the Covid year, as most people thought of 2020. Once the vaccines were available in sufficient quantity to allow most people to escape the fear, most of life had fairly quickly returned to something like the pre-Covid normal. And although the modern workplace had been irretrievably changed to allow a lot more remote working and a lot more electronic meetings, there was still a certain urge, a certain need, to have real face time with other people, especially in certain disciplines. A lot of people discovered that remote meetings just didn’t satisfy the urge to connect. Studies were beginning to be published based on Covid year social data that indicated that a lot of people simply couldn’t empathize with someone unless they actually met them in person in real time. So bit by bit, some of the business conventions were beginning to come back; smaller than they had been, of course, but returning to life nonetheless. Other types of conventions were also flickering back to life.

Some of the people Ariel was moving through had a certain air of desperation about them, as if they weren’t sure it was real—that it wasn’t a dream from which they would awaken and discover that they were still back in the living nightmare. Ariel could certainly understand that, given the turn his own life had taken in the last year or so.

Ariel had made it most of the way through the crowd when a large man stepped in front of him and bumped him with enough force that in earlier days he might have been knocked down. He just stepped to the side, said, “Sorry,” and started to move past the man. A large hand that descended on his shoulder stopped his progress.

“Buddy, you need to be more careful about where you’re going,” a bass voice slurred. Ariel looked up. He was used to thinking in metric terms after his time in Israel, and he estimated the man was close to one hundred ninety centimeters tall. He probably weighed at least one hundred twenty kilograms, maybe more. His nametag read “Bob,” and he was seriously drunk.

Ariel sighed. “Look, Bob, I already apologized. Now if you don’t mind, I’m supposed to be over there talking to my boss about our next deal, so I’d appreciate it if you’d let go of me so I can get on with it.”

Bob blinked. “Kid, you ran into me and spilled my drink. You need to buy me another one.” He blinked again. “And where’s your badge?”

Ariel shook his head. “Look, dude, I didn’t run into you. You ran into me. And I’m not buying you a drink, because you’re drunk. Now let go of me.”

Now Bob frowned. “Son, you’re not old enough or big enough to play with the real men. Now, get me my drink.”

Ariel’s voice got hard. “I’m not your buddy, I’m not your kid, I’m not your son, I’m not your friend, and the reason I don’t have a badge is I’m not part of your group. Now for the last time, get your hand off of me.”

Bob tried to shake Ariel, but his frown deepened when he found his hand moving but Ariel not shaking. Ariel rolled his eyes, then spun in place and punched Bob right above the belt buckle. The punch only traveled a few inches, but it was powered by vampire muscles.

Bob’s eyes opened so wide there was white visible all around the pupils. His mouth opened in an O shape almost as if trying to imitate the eyes, and every molecule of breath in his lungs was expelled as his diaphragm was rudely compressed. Not a sound came out of his mouth. His hand fell off of Ariel’s shoulder.

Ariel was watching as Bob’s head jerked a bit and his jaw muscles suddenly stood out in relief. From his time at the Urgent Care he knew what that portended and swiftly stepped to the side, giving a forceful tug to Bob’s jacket sleeve as he did so. Bob began vomiting profusely before he hit the floor, which caused screams and shouts and curses among the crowd. Everyone watched in horrified fascination as he proceeded to empty his stomach. From the looks of it, Bob had had a lot of shrimp at dinner. Ariel wrinkled his nose as the odor of mingled gastric juices, shrimp, and mass quantities of alcohol began to rise from the floor.

“Charles,” Ariel said as the waiter appeared at his side, “it appears that Bob here has had a bit too much to drink. It might be good if his friends—if he has any—would take him to his room and pour him into bed.” He looked at the people between him and his table. “Excuse me, please.” A wide path opened as he moved around where Bob was on hands and knees, head hanging low, then skirted the noisome pool of ejecta.

“Nicely done,” Mordechai murmured as Ariel settled into his seat. “A bit public, perhaps, but nicely done, nonetheless. You moved so quickly I doubt anyone really caught what happened.” He lifted his glass of Glenmorangie, and tipped his head before he took a sniff. “Oh, by the way, Charles says they’ve had a run on the Perrier, so you’re drinking San Pellegrino tonight.”

“Fine.” Ariel twisted the cap off the bottle, poured it into the waiting glass, and took a sip.

Events like Bob’s must not have been uncommon, as hotel staff had it cleaned up and the floor mopped and dried in less than seven minutes. In another two the crowd was circulating across the area as if nothing had happened. Ariel’s mouth quirked at the observation.

They sat quietly for quite some time. Ariel was looking toward the crowd, but he wasn’t really seeing them. His thoughts were occupied with a mental replay of the events earlier in the evening. From parking the car, to walking to the warehouse, to opening the door, and what followed, it cycled through his mind in an endless loop.

The loop broke when Charles appeared beside the table with a fresh bottle of San Pellegrino. Setting it on the table, he leaned over and said in a murmur, “Your tab is on the house tonight. We’d been trying to get that guy to calm down for a couple of hours. He’d been harassing both men and women for most of that time. He’s out now, and the bar manager has banned him from the bar for the rest of the convention. I don’t know what you did, but thanks.”

Ariel finished his drink and opened the new bottle, pouring it into the now empty glass. “I’m not admitting anything,” he replied in a low tone, “but for what it’s worth, you’re welcome.” Charles flashed a grin and moved back into the crowd.

For the next little while, they didn’t speak. Ariel watched the movements of the people in the bar, and played with the bubbles in his water, all the while thinking about what he had just done.

He had killed five men, and been an accessory to the deaths of eight more. He refused to use the term “murder” in considering the event, because in his mind it was not murder. It was justice. It was illegal—no, extralegal—justice, but it was justice. But before the “conversion,” when he was the pale, pudgy, nerdy Jewish almost-prodigy Chaim Caan, would he have countenanced such a thing? Would he have condoned it? Would he even have contemplated it? He wanted to think so. He wanted to think he would have had the courage and the fire in his belly to want to bring justice to killers of Jews—to the killers of his parents. But the truth was, he didn’t know. And he’d never know, because he was no longer Chaim Caan, young American cosmopolitan Jew—he was Ariel Barak, soon to be a member of the Israeli Yamam, a vampire, a trained killer, whose system was filled with more adrenaline and anger on a daily basis than poor Chaim had ever experienced in a full year. His physiology had changed, was still changing. His hormones had changed. His brain chemistry had to be changing. Was he even the same person, physically, mentally? And what did it portend if he wasn’t?

Ariel snorted, and waved at Charles for a fresh bottle of San Pellegrino. As if it would make a bit of difference either way. He was what he was, and there was nothing he could do about it. He’d drifted into the fine Jewish sport of overthinking his problems and worrying about the results. “Jews are world class worriers,” he’d heard his father say once, “although Russian babushkas will give them a run for their money.” That thought gripped his throat for a moment. “It is what it is,” he muttered, and resolutely turned his mind away from the matter.

Charles arrived with the new bottle of water, which he delivered with smooth style and another flashing grin. Ariel poured a fresh glass and took a sip. As he set it down, Mordechai said, “Are you ready to talk about it now?”

Ariel looked at the older man. It dawned on him that Mordechai was an atypical Jew in more than one way. In addition to being a vampire, he wasn’t driven to fill a silence that lasted for more than three seconds. He was content to wait on the other person to speak, even if it meant he was listening to his own thoughts for a while. How unusual.

Turning the glass around and around in his hands, Ariel sighed. “I guess so.” He turned the glass some more, trying to figure out how to say what was in his mind. “Is it always like that?” he finally asked.

“What do you mean?”

“There were thirteen of them, and only two of us, but they didn’t really have a chance, did they?”

Mordechai pursed his lips and shook his head. “No. Even if they’d had major weapons in hand when we came in the doors, they probably wouldn’t have touched us. We’re too fast, too strong.”

Ariel stared off at the wall across the way. “I guess I was expecting to have to struggle, to have to fight harder in order to win out. I mean, yeah, it was crazy, and I see what you mean about experience, but still…”

“You were expecting a sense of victory,” Mordechai said.

“Yeah. I was. Instead, I feel…I feel like I just stepped on a bug that was in my path.”

“Oh, not just a bug,” Mordechai said with a small smile. “A scorpion, at least.”

“Huh,” Ariel grunted. “Yeah, I could buy that. A nest of scorpions, even.”

“Indeed.” Mordechai lifted his scotch and sniffed it again.

“So is that what it’s all about? Pest control? Is that what being one of the Gibborim is all about?”

“No.” Mordechai shook his head, rested his forearms on the table, and leaned forward. “No, it’s not. Sometimes you have jobs like the night club, where you rescue hostages and walk away feeling really good about being there and about saving someone’s life. Those are usually wonderful days.

“Sometimes you work a commission where you prevent someone from executing their plans, and thereby save who knows how many lives. Those are days when you feel a great deal of satisfaction about the work and about your part in it.

“Sometimes, you have things like this, where you’re coming behind the event, and you can’t undo the damage, no matter how much you want to. All you can do is whatever you can do to keep it from happening again.”

“Like now,” Ariel said.

“Like now,” Mordechai agreed. “There is no joy. There is, perhaps, a grim satisfaction at knowing you have stepped on that particular scorpion, and it won’t sting anyone again. Not pest control. Vermin eradication, maybe.

“And sometimes…” Mordechai’s face was grim, and his eyes had focused on the wall, “sometimes things don’t work, and all you can do is cause as much damage as you can and try to get out alive.”

“Like Warsaw?” Ariel asked.

Mordechai sat, motionless, for a long moment, then slowly nodded. “Yes, like Warsaw.” After another moment, he shook his head. “But regardless, unless they have unusual weapons, or unless you’re in a very dangerous place like a chemical plant, you’ll almost certainly survive and usually accomplish your task.”

“If that’s so,” Ariel said, “why did you have me trained in firearms? Why didn’t we have firearms here? I would have felt a lot more comfortable going into that building with that Glock under my arm.”

“I could have gotten weapons for us here,” Mordechai said. “I intentionally didn’t, because it was clear we wouldn’t need them to accomplish the task. And it would have been a problem for you in this case, in your first operation.”

“How so?”

“Because even though you’ve had the training, at this point it wouldn’t have been a tool for you, it would have been a distraction.” Mordechai sighed. “And we train with weapons because every once in a while, you will find yourself in a situation where you need to either deal with a lot of targets in a very short period of time, or you need to deal with someone right then who is farther away that you can physically move before it’s too late. I find it is better in that situation to have the weapon and the training to use it, instead of discovering you need it but don’t have it.”

Ariel lifted his drink and downed some more of it. He set it down and stared at it. “I guess…” he said again. “I guess I was just expecting to burn up all my anger and hate in this, and…” He stopped, unable to put words to what he was feeling.

There was a long moment of silence, then Mordechai asked quietly, “In the end, was it righteous?” He pointed a finger at Ariel. “Do you judge it righteous?”

Ariel stared at him. “Me? How would I know? I’m a nineteen-year-old kid. How would I know.”

“You’re a nineteen-year-old kid who will outlive your contemporaries’ grandchildren, and probably their grandchildren as well,” Mordechai said sternly, “and you will be dealing with the consequences of your decisions and choices and actions for all that time. You’ve had your bar mitzvah. You are a man before haShem. You need to decide for yourself if what you have done is righteous. The Torah will help. The Talmud will help. The rabbis will help. But in the end, only you are responsible to haShem for you and your choices. Decide. Is what you just did righteous?” He lowered his finger.

Ariel felt a surge of anger. “Yes, it was righteous!”

“Why?”

“Because they murdered fourteen Jews, including my parents.” Ariel bit the words out in a sharp tone. “Murder is one of the capital crimes in Torah. We invoked justice.”

His anger started to rise when Mordechai gave a small smile. He thought he was being mocked, but then Mordechai said, “That is a telling point. It supports your decision that what you did was righteous. But is it enough?”

That shocked Ariel. He sat back, and said slowly, “I think so, but obviously you have another consideration. Don’t dance with me, please. Just tell me what it is.”

“Do you know why Israeli courts are so reluctant to execute criminals that they’ve only executed two people in over seventy-five years?” Ariel shook his head, but said nothing. “For the same reason that most Jews are against capital punishment. It eliminates the possibility of repentance. If someone will possibly repent of their actions, all the rabbis say that is preferable to ending his life arbitrarily.”

“Okay,” Ariel said, his speech still slow. “I guess I can see that. And since you brought it up, you obviously feel that is a consideration here. But how?”

“In his masterwork Gates of Repentance, Rabbenu Yonah of Gerona—do you know of him? He was a cousin of Nahmanides—says that the very first step of achieving repentance is to recognize and acknowledge the sin. Until the perpetrator, for lack of a better word, achieves that, repentance will never happen. The door to repentance does not open without that. Now…remember what happened. Remember what those men said, especially their leader, Cord Campbell. Did he sound like he was open to repentance? What were his last words?”

Ariel shook his head. “No,” he said through gritted teeth. “His last words were ‘They’re only Jews.’”

“‘They’re only Jews.’ Does that sound like the mind of a man who recognizes that he has committed a sin and needs to repent?”

Ariel shook his head, not wanting to say anything further.

After a moment, Mordechai said, “Do you know why the Israeli court executed Adolf Eichmann?”

Ariel looked at him with a furrowed brow. “Because of his work in the concentration camps.”

“No, that was the excuse. That was the justification. I’ve read all the documentation of that trial, and you won’t find this in the records anywhere, but the real reason why they finally ruled to execute him was he would not acknowledge his sin. He would not acknowledge that what he did was a crime, a personal crime on his part. To the very end, he would not acknowledge it. That is why his execution was righteous, and that is why, ultimately, what we did in that warehouse was righteous. They committed a horrible crime, a horrible sin against the Jewish people, and they refused to acknowledge their crime.” Mordechai nodded, and pointed his finger at Ariel. “Remember that, Ariel. It’s not just a question of justice. It’s never just a question of justice. It never should be just a question of justice.”

He dropped his hand and took a sniff of his scotch. Ariel stared at the wall across the room, mind whirling.

After a while, Mordechai said, “We fly out to Atlanta early tomorrow morning. We’ll refuel there, and return to Tel Aviv. Once we’re there, we’ll go to the Western Wall.”

“Will I find answers there?”

Mordechai shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. But it may help you put it in perspective.”

Ariel drained his glass and waved a hand at Charles. He stared at the wall.


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