disappearance had been noticed, the car had not shown up on the monitors at Shin Bet headquarters.
After takeoff, the passengers’ headphones were tuned to an all-news radio station, which carried a live report from the Kings of Israel Plaza in Tel Aviv. In the early afternoon, dozens of buses arrived from all over the country, unloading cheerful revelers, who swarmed the surrounding city blocks with provincial excitement. The tight security arrangements included multiple checkpoints, traffic barricades, bomb-sniffing dogs, and horse-mounted riot police. A small contingency of anti-peace demonstrators had already been arrested for gathering without the appropriate license.
The helicopter followed the main highway to Tel Aviv, descending the Judean Mountains over the string of rusting skeletal trucks and buses, preserved as memorials to the fallen soldiers of the 1948 War of Independence. But soon the Ayalon Valley stretched before them, with open fields of honey-colored wheat and straight rows of vines.
Agent Cohen, who sat up front next to the pilot, suddenly turned and motioned at Gideon to change the channel on his headphones. “The car has just been traced,” his metallic voice came through. “Somewhere in the West Bank. We’re changing course.”
*
They took Freckles’ FN Browning handgun and warned him to remain mum about their visit. Ten minutes down the road, Lemmy stopped at an intersection: Left to the border crossing over the Jordan River, right to Tel Aviv.
“A fork in the road,” Itah said. “No pun intended.”
“The mother of all puns.” Lemmy pointed to the east. “We could cross the border and go to Amman. I have several clients among the king’s courtiers, and the Swiss embassy will take care of the paperwork and fly us back to Zurich.”
“Nice for us,” Itah said, “but the Israeli electorate will be left to watch a spectacle of corruption, deceit, and manipulation, leading to unearned election victory for Labor and a witch hunt against the political right.”
“It would seem less important from distant Switzerland. My father will join us, and we’ll spend Saturdays on the lake, eat and drink, and get to know each other.”
“Tempting.” She smiled. “But even your Swiss chocolate will taste bitter to me. I’m a reporter, and this is the story of my career. And I can’t sit back and let such fraud go through.” She reached for the door handle. “Let me go by myself. I can hitchhike from here, get to Tel Aviv, and call on a few media colleagues. We’ll expose the staged assassination, either before or after the rally.” She opened the door. “You go home to your family.”
Lemmy reached over and shut her door. “I’m going with you.”
“Why?”
He engaged first gear and waited as a convoy of three IDF jeeps reached the intersection and turned east toward the Jordanian border. “Because a piece of parchment and a glob of kosher wax won’t stop a determined assassin.”
“ How do you know?”
“ It wouldn’t stop me.” The Subaru’s rear wheels screeched as he accelerated in mid-turn, heading west toward Tel Aviv. “And it won’t stop Yoni Adiel.”
*
“ New information,” Agent Cohen said. “They’ve been to a settlement. Tapuach.” He gestured at the pilot, who banked to the left in a wide sweep.
Gideon adjusted the mouthpiece. “What about sending a ground unit to set up a roadblock and arrest them?”
Agent Cohen gestured to the nurse, who unzipped an elongated package and took out a long rifle, equipped with a scope. She cocked the weapon and glanced through the scope. Satisfied, she gave it to Gideon to hold while she changed places with the agent sitting by the sliding door.
“Why Tapuach?” Gideon gave the rifle back to the nurse.
“Freckles lives there.”
“Ah.” Gideon could see through the front windshield the barren hills of the West Bank. “Did he tell them anything?”
“Of course.” Agent Cohen used binoculars to inspect the narrow roads below. “He told them a bunch of bullshit. It’s his specialty.”
“Why would Spinoza risk capture? What did he expect Freckles to know?”
“Information about tonight! What else?” Agent Cohen’s tone grew impatient. “Freckles knows all the details of SOD’s fake assassination plan, which he helped us shut down. Spinoza needs every detail he could gather about tonight’s security arrangements. That’s why he went to see Freckles, and that’s why we have to stop him. Do you get it now, or do I have to spell it out for you?”
“I get it,” Gideon said, though he wasn’t completely convinced.
“Good, because I’m counting on you to bring down Spinoza before tonight. The peace rally must go peacefully!” Agent Cohen chuckled at his clever pun. “Peace…fully!”
The pilot adjusted direction again, heading west, down from the watershed toward the coastal plain and the Mediterranean. The nurse grabbed the handle and pulled open the sliding door, letting in the roar of wind and engines.
*
Other than the Dutch signage and abundance of tall nurses of both genders, the VU Medisch Centrum in Amsterdam wasn’t much different from Hadassah Hospital. The recent computer glitch had forced the staff to pay close attention to each patient, making sure the correct treatment was provided to the right person. Many beds carried cardboard signs with patients’ names, and family members stayed around the clock to guard against mistakes. Carl joked with a pretty nurse in the elevator, who seemed disappointed when he stepped off with Rabbi Gerster on the fifteenth floor.
Carl led him to a room across from the nurses’ station. “Best location,” he explained. “From such proximity, the nurses are motivated to empty the bedpans.”
Rabbi Gerster was still chuckling when he entered the room and saw Bira, holding a moist cloth to her mother’s forehead. Tanya’s eyes were closed. Her arm and leg were in a cast, attached to a steel-wire apparatus. Her face was impossibly white. He stared at her, unable to breathe.
“Can I help you?” Bira didn’t recognize him.
He removed the sunglasses.
Her eyes opened wide and she hurried around the bed. She stopped before reaching him, holding back, unsure of his reaction.
He stepped forward, opened his arms, and took Bira into a tight embrace. And to his great surprise, Tanya’s daughter, the tough archeology professor who had defied him repeatedly, buried her face in his chest and sobbed like a little girl.
*
The Cross-Samaria Roadway followed a moderate decline through the West Bank hills toward the Green Line and the Israeli city of Kfar Saba, a large bedroom community at the edge of the Tel Aviv metropolis. “Look at this view,” Itah said. “On a clear day you can see every Israeli city from Ashdod in the south to Hadera in the north. Basically, sixty-percent of Israelis live within sight of here.”
“And within range.”
Itah looked at him. The resemblance to his father was striking, but so were the differences. Where his father was a thinker, a deliberate leader who used words and gestures to influence others, Lemmy spoke and acted like a man of action-decisive, showing no hesitation. “Range is a relative term,” she said. “In sixty-seven, we worried about King Hussein’s artillery positions on these hills, and in fact he bombed our cities before the IDF destroyed his army and pushed him back from the West Bank. But in ninety-one, Saddam Hussein’s Scud missiles easily hit Tel Aviv from Baghdad, and the Americans forbade us from responding in kind.”
“And in a few years, we’ll be within range of Teheran’s ballistic missiles.” Lemmy sped up to pass a station wagon.
“That’s the reason Yitzhak Rabin decided to make peace,” Itah explained, “even if the Palestinians get to sit here and aim Katyusha rockets at us. He wants to create a ring of peaceful Arab countries around Israel-Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, as well as a Palestinian state-together forming a buffer against Iran, Iraq, and Saudi
