'You already figured it out, David. You told me before they set you up to go chase after Peretz.'
Anna was lying on their bed, hands behind her head. David stood by the window staring out.
'Peretz-yes,' he said. 'But now I think there may have been something more.'
He gazed down upon Jerusalem. In the summer night the lights of the city made a pattern across the valleys and the hills. The Dome of the Rock seemed poised above everything, like a cap holding in the anger boiling out of the maze below.
'Suppose they were planning to create a case,' he said, 'a pattern case that would have to be assigned to me. Suppose they deliberately left a trail of killings that they knew would pull me in.'
'But why would anyone want to do that? What could they possibly gain?'
'Maybe they thought it would seduce me, and then, on account of some personal flaw, I'd botch it and then they could go ahead with whatever it was they'd planned.'
He turned to her. The shadows beneath her arms were pools of darkness. 'I wonder…'
'Yes?'
'I wonder if they did this so that maybe later on…' He shook his head. 'I know this is a bizarre idea, Anna, but suppose they did this so that later they could use me somehow…?'
He phoned Yehuda Merom at the Ministry of Defense. 'Can you get hold of my brother's medical file?'
'No problem…'
But later that afternoon, when Yehuda called him back, his voice had lost its confidence.
'David, I'm sorry, I'm not going to be able to give you what you want.'
'The file's missing?'
'Most of it, yes. It'll turn up eventually. Probably it was just misplaced.'
'The psychological portions?'
'Yes. But, David, how did you know?'
'It's been almost two years since he crashed. Are the records on a dead pilot kept secure?'
'They're supposed to be.'
'But not really, right, Yehuda? You had access to them, so other people did too. Any number of people could have removed them. And no one would have noticed because nobody cares once the officer is deceased.'
David was surprised. Israeli generals did not usually retire into luxury. They tended to favor simple farmhouses or the beloved kibbutzim of their youths. Yigal Gati, however, inhabited a penthouse in the most expensive area of the rebuilt Jewish quarter, the complex designed by Moshe Safdie that overlooked the Western Wall.
The scene below was fascinating as always, but observing it from here David felt detached. So vivid and engaging when seen from out-of-doors, the view seemed dead through Gati's wall of soundproof glass.
He turned back to the room. The general, sipping from a glass of mineral water, observed him from a sleek gray soft glove-leather couch. Except for a pair of expensive contemporary chairs the large living room was under- furnished and austere. Sets of thick glass shelves recessed in the walls contained a collection of archaeological artifacts. David examined them: superb examples of pottery, papyrus, and ancient coins illuminated by invisible lights. There was a large ornate menorah too, the kind one might have found sixty years before in a wealthy synagogue in Prague. And beside it, in a simple frame, hung a fine small glowing oil painting by Chagall.
Gati, offering no explanation as to how he had acquired these priceless objects, watched with curiosity as David took them in. Finally, when David sat down, Gati met his eyes.
'So-nothing can be done. I was afraid of that. Poor Gutman. I had hoped…' He made a gesture to show he understood the inexorable processes of the law.
'Still,' David said, 'we have loose ends. Gutman's case, it turns out, is not as simple as we thought.'
'Oh? I thought you found the Torahs in his apartment.'
'Yes. But now it's not the scrolls that interest us.'
'What then?'
'Collateral aspects. Certain statements the man has made. He's a strange fellow, clear one moment, barely rational the next. He sees us alternatively as friends and persecutors. In his paranoid phases he sometimes says the most extraordinary things.'
'Such as?'
'Well, for one thing, he hints at knowledge of inflammatory facts.'
'Is this what you've come to tell me?' Gati was studying him with the same cool evaluating gaze he'd employed on his unexpected visit to Abu Tor. 'You have something to say, David, go ahead and say it.'
David nodded. 'I know now why you came to see me, even though you always hated Gutman's guts.'
'Why did I come?'
'You were afraid he'd talk.'
Gati didn't wince or blink or exhibit any other symptom of stress. 'What could he say, that crazy old man?'
'He had plenty to say about you. Including the fact that you'd been recognized leaving the scene of a certain unreported accident.'
Gati laughed. 'Ever since his daughter was killed, Gutman's had accidents on the brain.' He continued to gaze at David. Then, after a long silence, he shook his head. 'You're bluffing. And what's more, you know I know you are.' He stood up, went to the huge window, stared out, then turned. 'Tell me-what do you really want?'
'Since you ask so bluntly, I'd like to see you without your mask.'
'An honest man. You're not like your father. I always found him a little…oblique.'
'And my brother? Do I remind you of him?'
'No. Not at all. He was a completely different type. Extremely talented, perhaps the most effective pilot I ever had in my command. But he was a coward killing himself the way he did. Not that there's anything wrong with suicide. In appropriate circumstances it can be honorable. The zealots of Masada; that Japanese guy, Mishima; Svidrigailov in Crime and Punishment. But your brother…look, if he wanted to take his own life, okay. But a single bullet would have done the job. To destroy a perfectly magnificent aircraft in the process -I'm sorry, I lose sympathy. I don't respect grandiose gestures designed to distract attention from-and let's be honest now-unsavory personal flaws.'
Gati seemed actually to froth as he said this. Now he stood in a defiant posture as if challenging David to mount a physical assault.
'I notice something about you, general.'
'Yes?'
'You like to stand in front of windows when you talk.'
Gati grinned. 'Not a bad observation. Though I'd have hoped for better from the 'best detective in all of Israel.' ' He shrugged. 'Anyway, since I'm standing here, let me say a few words about the view.' He turned his back, stood at parade rest, and stared out as he had done in front of David's window in Abu Tor.
'We hear a lot of talk these days about territory. It's become our national fetish. West Bank. East Bank. Frontiers. Annexations. Lines drawn and redrawn again and again. Parties are formed. Old friends become bitter enemies. People shout. People scream. But in the end they're squabbling over nothing. Because the real issue isn't territory. It's something else. It's character-who we are and what we want to be.'
He faced David again, then pointed through the window toward the Western Wall. 'Take the Wall. Sometimes I stand here and stare at it for hours. Such a tired bedraggled place. Such pathetic performances too. A wretched remnant. Old men bobbing up and down. Tourists gushing tears. But look above it. The Mount! Now there's something serious. We took it in '67, paid for it with Jewish blood. And then, like perfect idiots, we gave it back. Can you imagine? The high ground! Gave it back!'
He left the window, sat down wearily on the couch. 'I ask you: What kind of people are we that we would give up our temple site and settle for a moldy cellar wall? So you see, David, if I give long speeches while standing in front of windows, it's just the reaction of a bitter old patriot to a truly sickening sight.'
The man was crazy. It was time to leave. David leaned forward as he spoke.
'I'm going to be very frank with you, general. I didn't come about Gutman. He was my excuse. I came about certain personal papers stolen from my father. You took them, and I want them back.'
Then, for the first time since he had entered the apartment, David saw Gati shake. It was only a tremor, it lasted only for a moment; the general regained his composure almost immediately. But in that single instant of
