“Who told you Sroul’s dead?” Benny Meyuhas insisted.
“I’ll tell you in a minute,” Rubin promised; the deep tremble in his voice betrayed his horror and fear. “But before that, you tell me why you suddenly remembered that Egyptian doctor. What’s that got to do with anything?”
“I’ll tell you what,” Benny Meyuhas said, suddenly rising to his feet.
“I’ll tell you what it’s got to do with anything: there’s no room for you and me to form some sort of conspiracy now. It’s all over. I know that you … that you murdered Tirzah. That much I’m sure of. I knew it right from the start. And from that moment I didn’t care about anything else anymore. I have nothing more to lose. Did you know Sroul was dying of lung cancer? He had nothing more to lose, either. You did him a big favor, you know?”
“Tell me,” Rubin said coming closer to Benny, the threat in his voice supplanting the fear. “Did you say anything to them?”
Benny Meyuhas backed away. “To who?”
“Them. The police. Ohayon, Balilty. Whoever. Did you tell them about what happened back then?”
“I … I …” Benny Meyuhas stuttered.
“Did you tell them or not?” Rubin demanded in a threatening whisper. “Just answer me straight, no bullshit.”
“Sroul came to Israel to talk about it, did you know that?” Benny Meyuhas asked him hoarsely. “He told Tirzah about it, she was planning to leave me. She said, ‘You’re murderers! I can’t live with a murderer!’”
Rubin placed his right hand on Benny Meyuhas’s shoulder. “I know what she said to you, Benny. Look at me,” he said quietly. “Look at me, I know very well what she said. She said some things to me, too. But I didn’t run to the police to tell them, you know.”
Benny Meyuhas smothered his face in his hands. “I can’t look at you, Arye,” he said, sobbing. “You went too far, you should have …
we should have, right from the beginning … now you’ve become like some … like Macbeth, you’re wandering around spilling everyone’s blood. That’s what Sroul said, and he wanted—”
“I know what Sroul said, too,” Rubin told him, placing his left hand on Benny’s other shoulder. Now they were facing one another, very, very close. “Which means you don’t leave me many options,” he said, pulling Benny toward him.
The Special Investigations team heard Benny whisper into his transmitter. “I don’t care,” he said, “I have nothing left to lose. In any case I can’t—” At that moment Michael came out of his hiding place at a run and entered the wide corridor where they had found Tirzah. Arye Rubin spun around in surprise, and just then all the lights came on and Benny Meyuhas, who had collapsed as though he could no longer support his own body, was pulled out of the way and handcuffs were snapped on Rubin’s wrists.
“Where do you want him?” Balilty asked Michael quietly.
“Leave him here for a minute, leave me alone with him,” Michael said. “Before we take him out of here, I want … I’ve got to hear the whole story, before the lawyers move in and all that.”
“You’d better take legal admissibility into account,” Balilty reminded him. “Remember that without a lawyer you can’t use this stuff in court.”
“Yeah, I remember,” Michael said.
“What’s this story about the Egyptian doctor?” Balilty whispered.
“Some kind of skeleton in his closet, as they say? And all this time I was thinking—”
“Get everyone out of here,” Shorer ordered. “Remove everyone from the vicinity and leave him”—he indicated Michael—“alone with the suspect, as he requested.”
And so it happened that Rubin, in handcuffs, bent down to sit with his back up against the wall of the corridor, facing the Wardrobe Department, and Michael flopped down next to him.
A very long silence passed between them before finally Michael said, “People spend their whole lives worrying their wounds.”
“You don’t say!” Rubin cried, though the irony in his voice failed to drown out the grief. “What a discovery! Excuse me if I feel compelled to inform you that you don’t have to be a genius to understand that,”
he said, and then fell silent.
“I’m talking about with work as well,” Michael said quietly. “A lucky few hit on the opportunity to work in what it was that wounded them early on.”
“What are you talking about?” Rubin asked in quiet wonder. “I don’t understand you.”
“Don’t you think that the whole business of repairing the world that has become your life’s work has to do with what happened to you back then? Tell me,” Michael said, “who was it exactly who shot the Egyptian doctor in the back?”
In one swift move, Rubin stood up and looked around him. “Who told you about the Egyptian doctor?” he asked in a hoarse voice. “You just repeat what you’ve heard from others like a parrot, don’t you?”
Michael did not answer him.
“Was it Benny who told you?”
Michael said nothing.
“I’ve never talked about Ras Sudar with another living soul. Never.
Not even with Sroul or Benny,” Rubin said, his voice muffled. His blank expression did nothing to keep the immensity of his sorrow from his face.
Michael glanced at the stairs leading to the roof and at the strip of light that emanated from there.
“What is it you want now?” Rubin asked. “You want a story from history? From twenty-four years ago?”
Michael said nothing.
“Benny’s already told you,” Rubin said. “Why are you asking me?”
“Everyone’s got his own version,” Michael said after a long pause.
“And every person’s got the right to tell his own version. The differences are more meaningful than the similarities. In any case, that’s surely true here.”
“That means he told you,” Rubin said, his voice filled with contempt.
“I always knew he would. He’s weak, there are no two ways about it.”
Michael said nothing.
“All right, you want my version?” Rubin asked. “So you’ll get it.
Exactly as it happened,” he said, and his voice had altered as though it really mattered for him to tell these things to, of all people, Michael Ohayon.
Michael sat up straight, and Rubin sat back down next to him. Both sat with their backs to the wall, staring straight ahead. Later, when Emmanuel Shorer asked him why Rubin had agreed to talk, Michael told him that more than all the crimes that had been committed here, there was one wound that was so huge it dwarfed the rest of Rubin’s
life. The murders that were intended to quiet the voices and heal the wound did not quiet or heal; instead, they opened the wound even further. And Rubin felt it more than all the others, heavier and more violent than the crimes themselves and all the accusations about to come his way …
“It’s not like it seems,” Rubin said, turning his head to look at Michael’s face. When he saw that nothing had registered there, he continued. “It wasn’t just the two of us or the three of us; we were eight: Benny, Sroul, me; Bin-Nun, who’s since died of a heart attack; David Alboher, downed by a sniper’s bullet; Shlomo Zemah, who left for Brazil, and I for one have never heard about him since; Itzik Buzaglo, killed in a car accident; and Sasson. I have no idea what ever became of him.”
Michael stretched out his legs out in front of him and laid his hands on his knees.
“What do you want?” Rubin asked in a harsh voice.
“Me?” Michael responded. “I want to hear about Ras Sudar during the war, from your own mouth, without any mediators.”
And so they were, at that moment—the killer and the hunter—
complete partners in one matter; and this matter was infused more than anything with grief and disappointment.
“Okay,” Rubin said peacefully, his voice now distant and detached.
The words seemed to float up to the surface one after another, as if a boulder had been lifted from above
