The Masada Complex

found it in the wrong file. She was right. The conviction was voided when she was released from jail, just as she claimed in the immigration court.”

Tara took the document. “I’ll make sure they restore her citizenship.” She saw Silver’s bag. “I’ll need these documents for my special report. It’s beyond comprehension. Masada really did prevent another Holocaust!”

Colonel Ness glanced at his assistant, who spoke into a handheld device. Rabbi Josh saw a man climb into the helicopter and take the professor’s bag. His bald pate was surrounded by long, frizzy curls, which dangled over his shoulders.

“Ezekiel,” the colonel said, “make a set of photocopies for the lady.”

“Excellent stuff,” Tara said. “Explosive.”

Colonel Ness asked, “What do you hear from Washington?”

“Everybody’s got egg on their faces,” Tara said. “They’re coming up with ideas for pro-Israel legislation-a new trade pact, military cooperation, the works. I hear Senator Mitchum announced he’ll sponsor the U.S.-Israel Mutual Defense Act himself, with identical language to the one Mahoney submitted before he died. He said it would be a fitting counteract to the monstrous Palestinian plot against Israel, which proved the necessity of a mutual defense arrangement. He said it would constitute biblical justice.”

The colonel shook her hand. “Thank you for helping our just cause.”

Tara hugged Rabbi Josh. “If you ever come back to Arizona, give me a ring.”

“I’m staying here,” he said.

The reporter left, followed by the man with the frizzy hair.

“Take a seat.” Colonel Ness beckoned the rabbi. “We’ll give you a lift to Jerusalem.”

“Wait!” Ness’s assistant exchanged a few sentences in Hebrew on her handheld communications device. She leaned over the colonel and spoke in his ear.

Colonel Ness sighed. He looked at Rabbi Josh. “Masada stopped breathing.”

Rabbi Josh turned away, unable to look at them. He felt pressure building up inside his chest. He took a few steps, bumping into the partition that separated the cockpit from the fuselage. He had failed Masada, as he had failed Raul, and as he had failed Linda. He knew he should be crying, but there was only numbness, as if he had become empty and dry inside. And there was also a pungent smell that penetrated through the mist of his agony, infusing him with a sense of danger. He turned his head left and right, sniffing. In the calm air, with the helicopter blades still, the scent assailed him. “What’s this smell?”

“Smell?” The colonel’s assistant shrugged. “I don’t smell anything.”

Rabbi Josh found a handle on the cockpit partition and opened it. He was hit with a whiff. Citrus blossom!

The pilot on the left was short, his arms thick and white. But the other man was dark, with slicked-back black hair and mirrored sunglasses. “You!”

The man smiled.

Rabbi Josh turned. “This man is an Arab!”

Colonel Ness didn’t respond.

“He’s one of them!” Rabbi Josh sprang forward and snatched Silver’s gun from the young woman’s belt, aiming it at the cockpit. “He was at the mosque with Silver! He started the riot!”

There was a long silence.

Colonel Ness cleared his throat. “His name is Rafi. The professor knew him as Rajid. He’s on my team.”

“What team? Who are you people?”

“Do you really want to know?”

“Yes!” Rabbi Josh threaded his finger over the trigger.

Colonel Ness passed his hand through his white hair. “In 1982 Israeli intelligence learned that a bright PLO activist in Jordan was planning to cross the Dead Sea with his teenage son and take hostages on Mount Masada. Our people analyzed his profile. They decided he could be made into a double agent, but with a twist.”

Rabbi Josh glanced at the cockpit, but the two men didn’t move.

“When he acted, I was ordered to eliminate the son and capture Abu Faddah alive. But he foiled our aerial attack by rigging up a sheet as a roof. Clever man. So we landed, and I radioed central command for new orders. Our psychological profilers had told us he wouldn’t use violence, and we settled to wait. Unfortunately Masada recognized her brother from the air and, being unaware of the secret plan, didn’t take well to the waiting game. She managed to grab my loudspeaker, made threats, things got out of hand, and her brother fell off the cliff. She attacked alone, I had to shoot her in the knee to save the bastard, and he repaid me by throwing a grenade.” The colonel rested his hands on the stumps of his legs. “So much for psychological profiling.”

“And you let him escape?”

“We had him picked up later by Bedouins on our payroll. After he recovered, we arranged transport to Italy and he adopted a fictional identity of a Jewish history professor. He chose the name Flavian Silver-funny, isn’t it? Faddah means silver in Arabic. And all along he thought he was working for his PLO brothers to destroy Israel, while in fact he was working for us.”

Rabbi Josh felt dizzy. “I don’t understand.”

“We helped him develop academically, produce reports on Jewish life in Europe, write about Nazi treatment of the Jews, and so on. We arranged for him to teach in different places and kept him on ice. It’s been a long run.” The colonel motioned at the dark man in the cockpit. “Rafi was twenty-one when he became Abu Faddah’s handler.”

“Twenty,” the man said with a lopsided grin.

The colonel nodded. “It’s not easy to run an agent who’s certain he’s working for your enemy, but we did it. A great success.”

“You call this a success?” Rabbi Josh groaned. “You almost destroyed Israel!”

“It went a bit out of hand.” Colonel Ness looked at the metal ceiling for a moment in contemplation. “We let him do what he wanted, execute his plan to bribe Mahoney on behalf of a fictitious Jewish organization, and cause a scandal.”

“A scandal?” The rabbi’s voice shook. “Do you realize what you’ve done.”

“We did nothing. Abu Faddah has done it all-planning and execution. In fact, we were going to tip Masada at the right time, help her expose him as a Palestinian agent and shift the blame to the Arabs. I mean, even he didn’t know he was working for us. And the cash we gave him was traceable to the Palestinians. It was perfect. We let him run with it because we knew we could shut him down any time we wanted.”

“But why would you want this scandal?”

“We wanted American Jews to experience a painful lesson, that even in America the gentiles are capable of violent anti-Semitism. We hoped it would cause thousands to make aliya and help bolster a Jewish majority in Israel. Then, before things got really bad, we would tip off Masada, and she would expose Silver as a Palestinian agent, thereby redirecting the public’s anger at the Arabs while rejuvenating Israel’s victim status. It was a simple, a fail-safe operation.”

“Obviously it wasn’t!”

Colonel Ness nodded. “We got more than we bargained for. He was doing his own thing, coming up with more phases. But still, the end result is excellent. This whole affair will help Israel regain popularity. The world witnessed firsthand how the conniving Arabs attempted to destroy U.S.-Israel friendship, take over Israel, and exterminate us.”

“But it wasn’t the Arabs!”

“Their evil plan-”

“Their plan?” Rabbi Josh thought he would explode. “It’s your plan!”

“Oh, no.” The colonel made a dismissive gesture. “The whole plan, from the bribe to the extermination of the Jews in post-Israel Palestine, was hatched by Professor Silver, otherwise known as Abu Faddah. And it’s not even his original plan. Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the grand mufti of Jerusalem, went to Berlin in 1936 and met Hitler and Eichmann to plan for the Nazi occupation of Palestine. They were going to build a concentration camp near Nablus to exterminate the Jews of Palestine. Abu Faddah was inspired by those old Arab plans. Hate made him terribly creative.”

Rabbi Josh looked at the gun in his hand. “This can’t be happening. It can’t!”