in Tel Aviv.
“Yet you are here. Still.” Avshalom’s long, significant pause was followed by a question larded with irony: “I wonder why?”
Raful knew his oldest friend had not given up half a Shabbat to come down the road to Jerusalem and shoot the breeze. Avshalom was one of those rare men who might have modeled for a biblical patriarch, if only he hadn’t kept his white beard so short and tidy. The chin was prominent, and because he always held his head upright it jutted out like a physical challenge. His eyes were huge and blue, better lie detectors even than the microwave respiration monitors they kept at the Allenby Bridge. But that weary, lined face was incapable of concealment: a bad trait for a professional spy, which is perhaps one reason why Avshalom Gazit never aspired to be other than somebody else’s deputy.
“I wanted to be where the action is,” Raful replied. “The biggest game in town has moved here: You know it, I know it.”
Avshalom nodded slowly, his whole torso moving, not just his head. “And yet,” he said, “I think that is only half the truth.”
By looking a fraction to one side Raful could glimpse the Western Wall out of his window. It shimmered in that very special kind of debilitating heat that only September Saturday afternoons seemed to generate. Sweat soaked his open-necked shirt. He felt tired, a little ill maybe, but there was nothing to go home to and here, in the Mossad’s headquarters, he could at least derive a crumb of comfort from the physical proximity of stenographers, communications staff, duty officers. He was stuck in this temple of truth, listening to his old friend speculate about half-truths, and for a moment Raful wanted to die because he couldn’t think of a single thing worth living for.
Then Avshalom picked up his briefcase, put it on the desk, and opened it in such a way that Raful couldn’t see its contents.
“I think,” Avshalom murmured from behind the lid of the briefcase, “that you are telling me only half the truth, and maybe this is the other half.”
He handed over a buff envelope, sealed in three places with blobs of wax connected by a thread. A few seconds of silence intervened, void moments when the old city and everything in it ceased to exist. Then slowly, very slowly, so as not to disturb the flicker of hope that had sparked inside his guts, Raful leaned forward to take it.
On the front someone had written the single word
goel.
This Hebrew word meant “the avenger of the blood,” one who, according to ancient Jewish custom, had the right of taking vengeance on the murderer of a kinsman, before retreating to the city of refuge appointed for his safety. Raful saw the word and trembled.
“What is this?” he asked softly, knowing already.
“What you asked me for. I am sorry things took so long. Coordinating classified material is a job fit for the devil.”
In the week after Sara’s funeral, Raful had asked Avshalom to do what he, Raful, had not the power to do: he had asked him,
begged
would be a more honest word, to use his friendships with the politicians, to play the Haganah card, as he’d called it, and demolish all interdepartmental barriers in the attempt to find Sara Sharett’s killers.
This was not a pointless request. The Mossad had its own files on terrorism, of course, but there were other intelligence records its officers could never hope to see: those held by Aman, by Reshud, by Shin Bet, and Shabak, murky organizations one and all. Avshalom Gazit, scourge of the British occupying force, war hero: he could see everything, and if “they” tried to tell him that certain of those records did not exist, he would also be able to see that they were lying.
“Show me the room, Raful. The shrine.”
Sharett’s hands shook. Instead of breaking the thread, tearing off the wax seals, they laid the
goel
envelope on the desk and clasped themselves together as if for mutual comfort.
“Shrine?”
But Avshalom
“Yet you are here. Still.” Avshalom’s long, significant pause was followed by a question larded with irony: “I wonder why?”
Raful knew his oldest friend had not given up half a Shabbat to come down the road to Jerusalem and shoot the breeze. Avshalom was one of those rare men who might have modeled for a biblical patriarch, if only he hadn’t kept his white beard so short and tidy. The chin was prominent, and because he always held his head upright it jutted out like a physical challenge. His eyes were huge and blue, better lie detectors even than the microwave respiration monitors they kept at the Allenby Bridge. But that weary, lined face was incapable of concealment: a bad trait for a professional spy, which is perhaps one reason why Avshalom Gazit never aspired to be other than somebody else’s deputy.
“I wanted to be where the action is,” Raful replied. “The biggest game in town has moved here: You know it, I know it.”
Avshalom nodded slowly, his whole torso moving, not just his head. “And yet,” he said, “I think that is only half the truth.”
By looking a fraction to one side Raful could glimpse the Western Wall out of his window. It shimmered in that very special kind of debilitating heat that only September Saturday afternoons seemed to generate. Sweat soaked his open-necked shirt. He felt tired, a little ill maybe, but there was nothing to go home to and here, in the Mossad’s headquarters, he could at least derive a crumb of comfort from the physical proximity of stenographers, communications staff, duty officers. He was stuck in this temple of truth, listening to his old friend speculate about half-truths, and for a moment Raful wanted to die because he couldn’t think of a single thing worth living for.
Then Avshalom picked up his briefcase, put it on the desk, and opened it in such a way that Raful couldn’t see its contents.
“I think,” Avshalom murmured from behind the lid of the briefcase, “that you are telling me only half the truth, and maybe this is the other half.”
He handed over a buff envelope, sealed in three places with blobs of wax connected by a thread. A few seconds of silence intervened, void moments when the old city and everything in it ceased to exist. Then slowly, very slowly, so as not to disturb the flicker of hope that had sparked inside his guts, Raful leaned forward to take it.
On the front someone had written the single word
goel.
This Hebrew word meant “the avenger of the blood,” one who, according to ancient Jewish custom, had the right of taking vengeance on the murderer of a kinsman, before retreating to the city of refuge appointed for his safety. Raful saw the word and trembled.
“What is this?” he asked softly, knowing already.
“What you asked me for. I am sorry things took so long. Coordinating classified material is a job fit for the devil.”
In the week after Sara’s funeral, Raful had asked Avshalom to do what he, Raful, had not the power to do: he had asked him,
begged
would be a more honest word, to use his friendships with the politicians, to play the Haganah card, as he’d called it, and demolish all interdepartmental barriers in the attempt to find Sara Sharett’s killers.
This was not a pointless request. The Mossad had its own files on terrorism, of course, but there were other intelligence records its officers could never hope to see: those held by Aman, by Reshud, by Shin Bet, and Shabak, murky organizations one and all. Avshalom Gazit, scourge of the British occupying force, war hero: he could see everything, and if “they” tried to tell him that certain of those records did not exist, he would also be able to see that they were lying.
“Show me the room, Raful. The shrine.”
Sharett’s hands shook. Instead of breaking the thread, tearing off the wax seals, they laid the
goel
envelope on the desk and clasped themselves together as if for mutual comfort.
“Shrine?”
But Avshalom
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