CHAPTER 17
Nine months later
“I’m done,” Adam Biton said, setting his empty beer glass on the table. “See you all in class tomorrow.”
“Good night,” Yael Malka said. Ariel echoed her, lifting his Perrier bottle in salute. As Adam walked away, the two of them looked at each other. “Last men standing,” Yael said with a grin.
“For certain values of men, anyway,” Ariel responded. She laughed and took a swig of her own beer.
Yael was older than Ariel by several years, but they were sharing classes together because she was a sabra and had spent time in the Israeli Defense Force before she started school. She didn’t hold it against him that as an immigrant he wasn’t required to do the same.
Ariel liked Yael. She was smart, pert, and very funny to hang around with. She was also, if not pretty, rather handsome, being at least a couple of inches taller than Ariel with warm brown eyes and wavy brunette hair. She reminded him somewhat of Elena, for all that she didn’t look anything like her. He was comfortable in her presence, which wasn’t something he could say about many girls. In another life he would have considered asking her out, but given his situation, he didn’t think that was a good idea right then—and probably not ever.
They’d hit it off fairly well at the beginning of the class session. They shared two different classes and a lab, all evening classes. She was consistently friendly with him, and didn’t seem to be put off by his quirks about food and drink, unlike some of his other classmates. She also had picked up on the fact that he understood almost everything the instructors presented the first time around, and she wasn’t shy about asking for help or note-sharing.
“Your Hebrew is getting better,” she said as she put her half-empty glass back on the table. “Your vocabulary is increasing, and you sound smoother.”
“Thanks,” Ariel said as he turned his water bottle around in his hands. “I’ve been working on it. I’ve had a couple of nights this week where I remember dreaming in Hebrew, so I think I’m finally getting there.”
“Your accent is shifting, too. Another couple of months or so, and you’ll probably sound like a sabra.”
Ariel shrugged. “That I don’t care so much about. But I need to be fluent as fast as possible, given the program I’m in.”
Yael nodded, then picked up her glass and took another swig. She set the glass down and turned it around and around in her fingers. “Can I ask you something? Personal, I mean? Feel free to tell me to get screwed if you want to.”
“Ask. Worst I can do is say no.”
She reached out and tapped his bottle. “You only drink water with us. You never eat with us. Is there a reason? Something besides just being weird? Are you pulling a Daniel on us? Or are you an android or cyborg?” Her smile lit her face up, but he could tell she was serious.
Ariel sighed. He had known this would come up sooner or later. At least it was Yael, who he thought would be pretty easy to talk to about it.
“It’s not a religious or philosophical choice, Yael. I’ve got some medical issues. My digestive tract has some real abnormalities. I’m on an extremely limited diet, and I basically can’t find anything that’s safe for me to eat at any restaurant. It would make me sick as a dog. I avoid alcohol for the same reasons.” That was the truth…it just wasn’t all the truth.
He reached into his windbreaker pocket and pulled out a magen bar that he happened to have on him. “This is one of the few things I can eat.” He peeled it open and bit a big chunk out of one corner. “See?” he said, mouth full, “you can tell everyone now that you’ve actually seen me eat something.” He chewed, swallowed, and grinned.
Yael reached over, took the bar from his hand, and bit the other corner off. She chewed it, eyes thoughtful, and nodded after swallowing. “Not bad. Bland, but not bad.” She took another swig of beer, and set her nearly empty glass down. “Okay, that I can understand. And that certainly explains your ultra-lean appearance. How low is your body-fat?”
“Under three percent,” Ariel admitted.
“I’d die for your metabolism,” Yael said, grabbing a handful of waist on her right side.
“Be careful what you wish for,” Ariel said. “You wouldn’t want the problems that come with it.” His voice darkened noticeably.
“Ah, right.” Yael turned her glass around a few more times before looking up again. “’Nother question?”
“Sure.” Ariel lifted his bottle to take his own drink.
“Are you gay?”
Ariel choked on the water coming into his mouth. It took a few moments of spluttering and coughing to get his throat cleared enough to talk. Yael had her hand up to her mouth, obviously suppressing a laugh.
“No,” he finally got out. “I am genetically and in gender a hundred percent male, and I am absolutely hetero in my orientation. So I can say with assurance that I’m not gay.”
“Well, that will disappoint a couple of guys in the class,” Yael said with a smile.
“Who…never mind. I don’t want to know.”
She leaned forward a little and looked into his eyes. “But that leads to why, when I or any of the other girls in the class flirt with you or strongly hint that we’d like to get together with you, you don’t respond?”
Ariel closed his eyes, and sighed. When he opened them again, Yael was still staring at him. He looked down.
“Yael, first, I…” He hesitated for a long moment. “First, I’m seriously introverted. The words ‘geek’ and ‘nerd’ could have been invented for me. Because of that I…don’t have a lot of experience with girls. So, I don’t…” His voice trailed away.
Yael touched a fingertip to the back of his hand. It almost burned. “I wouldn’t mind.”
Ariel forced himself to look up, remembering what Dr. Mendel had told him in that last conversation. “Well, secondly, let’s just say that digestive and metabolic problems aren’t the only issues I have. I’d…appreciate it if you didn’t spread that around.”
Despite his own turmoil, the look on Yael’s face almost made Ariel laugh—a mixture of horror and disbelief. She looked down and there was a moment of silence.
“Who do you work for?” she finally said, looking up again.
Ariel was a bit confused. “What do you mean?”
“You’re carrying a weapon…”
“How do you know?”
She looked at him with her eyebrows lowered. “Ariel, I was in an IDF combat squad for two years and I’m still in the reserves. I know what a pistol being carried looks like. You’re carrying a weapon, so you must have a weapon license. No one your age would have a weapon license in Israel without working for someone.” She raised her eyebrows.
Ariel’s mouth quirked. “I can’t tell you,” he responded.
Her eyes lit up. “But you are working for someone?”
“Yes.” He figured it wouldn’t hurt to admit that, since she’d basically figured it out anyway.
She sat back, satisfied. “Okay. I won’t bug you anymore…about any of it. No promises for the rest of our friends, though.” She held out a fist.
“Fair enough.” Ariel grinned at her, and bumped fists with her.
She grinned back, then took a pull at her glass. Ariel had his bottle halfway to his mouth when his mobile buzzed. He looked down to see a message from Marta. He tapped the screen.
DON’T FORGET APPT WITH DR HURWITZ ON THURSDAY.
Ariel sighed. “Yes, I know,” he muttered as he thumbed the Delete icon. He looked up to see Yael with her head tilted and one eyebrow raised. “Reminder for an appointment day after tomorrow,” he said with a grimace.
“Ah.” Her grin reappeared. “Mobiles—can’t live with them…”
“And can’t live without them,” completing the quote with a laugh.
* * *
One week later
Ariel tapped save on his workstation, and watched as his data was stored. He closed the app, logged off, and stood up with a sigh, looking around. He was the last one in the lab, which didn’t surprise him. He’d been late getting in, and then he’d made a false start on the exam because he’d misread and misunderstood the Hebrew wording of a question, which ended up costing him some time before he realized his error, backtracked, and started over. Fortunately he realized it before the first commit point in the test, so he was able to redo from the beginning rather than making corrections after the commit.
He gathered his notes and stuffed them in his backpack, making sure his mobile was in his jacket pocket. Taking a deep breath and releasing it, he stood up and made his way to the lab exit, turning the lights off as he walked out.
“Hey, Ariel!” He saw a group of his classmates gathered down by the exit. One of them beckoned, and Yael broke away and trotted toward him. They used English a lot, partly as a courtesy to him, because his Hebrew, while much improved, was still not second nature to him, and partly so some of them could practice their own English.
He watched Yael move toward him. He still enjoyed watching her, but then his attention was attracted by something else: Mordechai leaning against a hallway wall on the other side of the exit.
“Hey,” she said as she bounced to a stop. “We’re going to go to the Parallels Club to drink some beer and brag about how we think we did on the test. You want to come?”
Ariel shook his head. “Ordinarily, yeah, but I’ve got a prior commitment tonight.”
“Well, we’ll be there a while, so if you get done early, come check us out.”
“Got it.”
Ariel watched as she trotted back to the group, shared the response, and several of them waved at him as they headed out the doors. After they cleared out, he walked down to face Mordechai.
“Haven’t seen you in a while,” Ariel said in Hebrew.
“Had a commission in Turkey,” Mordechai replied.
“All done?”
“Done enough. There are some things that need to develop before I go back, but once they do, it shouldn’t take long to finish.”
“Good.” Ariel slung his backpack and stuck his hands in his jacket pocket.
The two men walked out the door together. Once they were well into the open space between the buildings, Ariel stopped and looked up at the night sky for a moment, where a sliver of the moon was riding high.
“Need to decompress?” Mordechai murmured.
“No,” Ariel responded in a similar tone. “Just…still trying to put the mosaic tiles in place to show the big picture, I guess. I’m committed to this. I know I am. But I still wonder sometimes if this is right for me…if this is righteous for Ariel Barak. Still wishing that haShem would give me a bit more of a clue if I’m in the right place.”
“My experience has usually been that that is something you learn by looking backwards.”
“Huh. In other words, I can see where I’ve been in the right place in the past, but the immediate moment is never certain because I’m in it? Kind of a Heisenberg kind of thing?”
Mordechai shrugged. “My experience.”
Ariel tilted his head for a moment. “Never thought of it that way, but you could be right.” He straightened. “John Bull?”
“Sure, if you want to take the chance.” Mordechai’s eyebrows lifted. “You do recall what happened the last time we went there.”
“I’ll take my chances. You drive.”
Mordechai chuckled as he straightened from the wall, and they walked out together. When they got to the car, Mordechai held his hand up. Ariel paused as Mordechai looked around, then put a hand in his jacket. What he pulled out he handed to Ariel.
It was a knife in a black leather sheath. Ariel pulled it out of the sheath. It was a glass knife. His eyebrows rose, and he looked at Mordechai. “Yes, it’s the knife the female terrorist had at The Grey Havens. It’s specially tempered glass, almost unbreakable, and almost undetectable by any security scanner in the world.”
“So why is it in my hands?”
“I thought you might like a memento of your first operation.”
“Doesn’t this constitute evidence?”
“If there was an investigation going on, certainly. Given that they were caught in the act, and all but one of them are dead, not really. It’s a legal curiosity. A legal problem as well, as it would be cluttering up an evidence room for no good purpose. So I claimed it for research purposes, signed it over to Rabbi Mendel, and after they did their tests, he gave it back to me. It’s now yours, free, clear, and legal.”
Ariel looked at the knife, inserted it back in the sheath, and put it in his inside jacket pocket. “Thanks, I guess. It will give me something to think about.” Mordechai smiled, made a small hand gesture, and opened the driver’s door to the car.
The ride to the so-called pub was uneventful, with conversation mostly centered on Israeli politics because of an upcoming election. This continued until after the young man who was serving the tables that night brought their order to them, setting a bottle of Perrier matter-of-factly before Ariel, but presenting Mordechai’s Glenlivet to him with a certain amount of what appeared to be respect.
Mordechai took a deep sniff of the scotch, and smiled. “Was that your last exam of the term?”
“Yeah.”
“How do you think you did?”
Ariel took a pull at his bottle and played with the bubbles in his mouth a bit before he swallowed. “Honestly? I’m sure I aced it. There may be a question or two I didn’t answer the way they wanted, but my answers are right.”
“So, you wrapped up your term, then?”
“Yeah, I believe so.” He took another pull at his bottle.
“Good. You feel like making a trip back to the US with me?”
Ariel frowned. “Why?”
“There’s an issue in New York I might like your help with.”
“Science issue, vampire issue, or Gibborim issue?”
“The last.”
Ariel took another drink, this time holding the water and letting the bubbles fizz for a long moment. He swallowed it bit by bit, letting the sensation die away slowly until the last bit of it was gone.
“Why me? Why not someone else?”
“Because I can’t be in two places at once, and the action needs to happen at the same time.”
“Ah. Is this righteous?”
“Very. Ehud ben-Gera would approve.”
“Then yes.”
Ariel drained his bottle and waved at the server for another. “How long will it take? The next term begins in three weeks.”
“Plenty of time. Shouldn’t take more than a week.”
“Good. Spar with me tonight?”
Mordechai nodded. “Sure.”
The second bottle of Perrier arrived, and Ariel took a big drink of it.
“You thirsty today?” Mordechai looked at him with a raised eyebrow.
“Hunger, mostly.”
“Ah. Well, after we spar, you can feed.”
“Yeah.”
“So tell me, how do you feel about your weapons training?”
“What, Shimon didn’t give you a report?”
“Of course he did,” Mordechai said. “But I want your report.”
Ariel shrugged. “Last round of target shooting, 99 score with right hand and 85 score with left hand. Last round of combat shooting, 95 score with right hand and 81 score with left hand. He introduced me to the M16 last week. He said I’m ‘adequate’ with that so far.”
“Not bad,” Mordechai said. “From Shimon, not bad at all. I’m sure he gave you his four rules.” That wasn’t a question.
“Oh, yeah. I got those the first night, and he’s repeated them at least twice since then, as well as the lecture on the difference between cover and concealment.”
“Good. He’s right about those rules, but he does go on and on about them sometimes.” Mordechai took a deep sniff of his scotch. “Have you decided what ammunition you will usually carry?”
“He’s let me shoot all the common loads. Right now I’m following his suggestion and carrying hollow points.”
Mordechai nodded. “That’s why Shimon has been training you with them. Not risk free, but less risky than the full metal jacket for our work.”
“Huh.” Ariel took another drink.
“You keeping up with Dr. Hurwitz?”
“Saw him last week. He says I’m developing along the expected parameters, whatever that’s supposed to mean.”
Mordechai chuckled. “No researcher likes to release information before the research is done. The only reason he told Rabbi Mendel and me anything is because the rabbi’s group is paying the bills.”
“I’ll have to keep that in mind for when I’m on that side of the table,” Ariel quipped.
“Speaking of which, school okay?”
“Yeah. Glad the term’s over, though. I need a break.”
“Your friends seem to like you.”
“Most of them, most of the time. I’ve got the reputation of being a bit weird because I won’t eat with them or drink booze with them. Had a couple of older guys try to bully me because I was new and was an immigrant. That didn’t last long.” He smiled a little before he took another drink from the bottle. “Biggest problem is holding off the girls that want dates.”
“To be expected, I suppose.” Mordechai lifted his glass for another sniff.
“Yeah, whatever. It would have made my mother happy.” Ariel frowned a bit at that thought.
“I saw the announcement in the local newspaper.”
“Yeah, I got a copy of that, too. Kind of weird seeing your own death announcement. Even weirder seeing the space in the mausoleum with my name on it. I’m halfway tempted to fly over and get a selfie of me standing next to it.”
“Probably not wise,” Mordechai murmured.
“Yeah, you’re probably right. If someone saw me, it might cause questions.” Ariel sighed. “But at least they’re able to move on. If I was still there, things would have blown up by now.”
“Even so,” Mordechai said.
“Yeah.”
They sat together in silence, occasionally lifting either the scotch glass or the Perrier bottle. They lifted together when Ariel took his last sip of Perrier, and set them down at the same time.
“Shall we go spar?” Mordechai asked.
“Let’s. I’ve got some angst to work off.”
Mordechai left a bill on the table, and they walked out together.
* * *
Two days later Ariel relaxed as their plane’s wheels left the runway at Ben Gurion Airport. They were flying in a corporate model jet, a Bombardier 8000,which as far as Ariel was concerned was the lap of luxury compared to most commercial airlines, even in the post-Covid era.
“Here.” Mordechai dropped a folder on the table between them. “Read through that, then we’ll talk.”
It didn’t take long. It was mostly newspaper articles about how an immigrant group had settled in a north Brooklyn neighborhood and slowly taken it over, then had started its own community patrols “for the safety of the neighborhood.” After a time, they even acquired a few cars to patrol in and had them painted in a uniform style that to some extent mimicked the police-force cruisers, complete to old-fashioned light bars mounted on the roofs.
The neighborhood in question was situated just north of a major Jewish neighborhood, a map informed him. His mouth twisted at that. And subsequent articles described the beginnings of a pattern of harassment of Jews along the boundary between the two neighborhoods, beginning with speech and progressing up to various physical accostings, frequently aimed at the elderly. A burning began to grow in Ariel’s stomach. He flipped through the rest of the pages in the folder, seeing the pattern continue to develop.
He closed the folder and gently laid it on the table, then swiveled his gaze to where Mordechai sat. “Well?”
“Well, what?”
“There must be more to it than this if we are flying in.”
Mordechai laid a tablet on the table. “Watch this.”
Ariel picked up the tablet and pushed the play button. He watched, teeth clenched, as a dashcam caught the image of its car running into what appeared to be an older man, Chassidic by his clothing, crossing a street at night. The car came to a halt. There was no sound, but the dome lights came on from the doors of the car being opened and two figures appeared in the headlights of the car, laughing and slapping hands together. They continued to laugh as they looked down at something in front of the car, almost certainly the pedestrian. The picture froze after a couple of minutes, and two thumbnail-type photos of two bearded men appeared in the upper corners of the tablet. After a moment, the screen cleared and another video began, this time of two uniformed dark-skinned bearded men beating a young man also dressed in Chassidic-style coat and hat. They beat him to the ground and continued swinging their nightsticks for some time. They eventually stopped, and straightened to walk away, laughing. Again, the picture froze, and two more thumbnail photos appeared in the upper corners.
The screen split, and both final pictures appeared a moment before the screen of the tablet cracked and crazed. Ariel realized his hands had squeezed tightly enough that the pressure of his thumbs had broken the tablet. He laid it back on the table. “Sorry,” was all he could say through his clenched teeth.
Mordechai nodded. “The first man was Abraham Miller, a resident in the Jewish neighborhood out for a walk at night because he had trouble sleeping. He made the mistake of walking through the boundary street. Daud and Ismail ran him down with their patrol car, then stood and watched as he bled to death from a severed femoral artery because of a compound fracture of the right femur. They called it in to the city police, said they found him in the street.
“The second case was Jonathan Goldberg. Khamis and Sajid claimed that he was harassing them and attacked them first. He was left a quadriplegic as a result of the beating, and died three months later. Both of them were in the wrong place at the wrong time. The state never prosecuted either case—for lack of evidence, they claimed.”
Ariel’s hands were tightened into fists so strongly that his knuckles were blanched white, and his breath was moving in and out of his nostrils almost like the wind of a storm. His teeth felt like they should be shattering, his jaws were clenched so hard. He stared at his fists, wanting…wanting for the first time in his life to hurt someone, to cause anguish with his own hands. He felt as if his head was going to explode from the pressure he was feeling in it. One part of his mind was horrified at what he had seen, one part of his mind was horrified at his reaction to it, and both those parts were overwhelmed by the rage that he felt.
He didn’t know how long he sat there, seething in his anger, starting to tremble from the intensity of it. At some point, his breathing began to slow down. He felt his jaws begin to loosen a bit, and his hands began to relax. It took more time before the trembling stopped and he was able to rest his hands on his thighs and look up at Mordechai.
“So…” Ariel stopped to clear phlegm out of his throat. “So what’s the plan?”
Mordechai tilted his head a bit, then gave a slow nod. “Are you ready for this?”
“I…think so. It’s just hard to believe this could happen in my own country.”
“Ah, but it’s not your country any more, Ariel. You’re not a citizen of the United States of America any longer, so what happens in its territory and within its borders shouldn’t be of concern to you.”
It took a moment for Ariel to fully absorb that. “But…”
His retort was stilled by Mordechai holding up an index finger. “But…you are still a Jew. And things that affect American Jews affect all of us. Never again.”
The Holocaust remembrance slogan struck Ariel as it never had before. “Never again,” he repeated.
Mordechai nodded again, this time with a bit of a sad smile. “The plan, as you call it, is to simply make these four men disappear.” He leaned back in his seat and steepled his fingers below his chin. “Their leaders were smart enough to make them vanish for a time, but they have recently returned to the patrol’s staff rotation, albeit only at night so far. They are still paired together.” He shook his head. “Short-sighted of their leaders, but still, if they were very smart, they wouldn’t have allowed this to happen at all. They have attracted our attention, which they will ultimately regret.”
“So how do we know this? We have people watching them?”
A hint of a smile appeared on Mordechai’s face. “Oh, to some small extent. There are many people in New York City who owe us something who don’t mind keeping an eye open. But mostly, this group’s notion of computer security is laughable. An eight-year-old with a student laptop could hack their files, and their attempts at encryption are just as feeble. So we know what is in their systems as soon as it is entered.” His smile broadened. “Israeli cyber-sleuths are among the best in the world—as noted by the fact that they are seldom noticed, much less caught.”
“Huh.” Ariel tilted his head as he considered his companion. “I’m still amazed at how well you function in the twenty-first century.”
Mordechai shrugged. “The aims, goals, and approaches of espionage and warfare have not changed appreciably in hundreds of years. Only the tools and some of the methods. Just as one does not have to be a talented pianist to appreciate fine music, one does not have to be a cryptologist to appreciate and utilize the work of a master spy.”
“But you do some of the espionage work? Like your trip to Turkey?”
Mordechai shrugged again. “Sometimes. I have certain…advantages, let us say, that a normal human does not. Advantages which you share, by the way.”
“I don’t have your experience.”
“This is how you gain experience, my friend. There is no substitute for doing the work.”
“I guess that’s true.” Ariel came back to his original topic. “So what’s the plan?”
“Both pairs of them work the graveyard shift, as it’s called in America. They both take a brief break at different locations in the middle of their shift. You and I will appear at their break spots dressed as a couple of our Chassidic brethren, and serve as bait. I doubt they will be able to resist the temptation.”
“Ah,” Ariel breathed. “And once they attack, we can respond in self-defense.”
“Oh, yes, that could be a factor if we were going to use the courts. But the courts have already served injustice here by not prosecuting them earlier. So we will rely on their own teachings. Mohammed is reported to have said in their own hadith, ‘As you would have people do to you, do to them.’ It is fitting, after all.”
“Indeed,” Ariel breathed.
“As they took lives in premeditation, so let their lives be taken.” Mordechai’s voice was cold.
“You said we would disappear them.”
“They will never check in from that patrol. There will be no traces of them. Their leaders and friends and families will be mystified and, just perhaps, will learn something from this.” Mordechai’s face grew hard. “If not, we will return until they do learn the lesson.”
Ariel said nothing, but he felt a certain warmness inside at the thought. Justice—not vengeance, but justice—would be done.
A long moment of silence passed, then Mordechai picked up the broken tablet and stood. “We’re about ten hours out from New York. Get as much rest as you can. We’ll be very busy once we’re on the ground.”