Damascus Gate (49 page)

"So," asked the dark-haired man, "why were you beaten?"

The answer, he believed, was "because of Lenny," though he did not volunteer it. Discretion came hard to Lucas, who tended to think slowly and aloud, but it was time to try a little harder.

"You saved my life," he told the men in the room. "If you hadn't taken me in, I might have been killed. So I don't really know why you're beating on me. I'm an American journalist, just as it says on the pass."

"Jewish?" the red-headed man asked.

It was hard for Lucas to keep from laughing. Over his few years in country he had been asked the same question every which way from Dan to Gilead, from just about every angle. Just when he had thought there could be no more variations in delivery, readings of the line, inquiring inflections, he would encounter a new one.

The red-haired man's version had not been particularly hostile. Rather, it was faintly welcoming.

"Partly," Lucas said. "My father was not an observant Jew. He practiced Ethical Culture. My mother was a Gentile."

Why am I telling these assholes the story of my life? he had to ask himself. It was one thing to be afraid, but this forfeiting of moral authority was humiliating. Still, he could penetrate his own logic. As long as he could believe in their relative virtue, he might reasonably expect them not to kill him. That expectation was the only possible place to work from. He was aware, however, that the revisionist underground groups during the British mandate had killed far better Jews than he. Real ones.

"How come you're not in the government?" asked the red-haired man. It was a joke between the man and his colleague, and Lucas thought it would be indiscreet to smile. Also, he did not wish to be hit again.

I'd be good enough to get in under the Nuremberg Laws, he thought. If I'm good enough to get gassed, I ought to be good enough for you. But he said nothing. One day, if he stayed alive, he might get to use the line. He had taken about all the punching out he felt he could manage.

The two men in the closed room spoke together in Hebrew, and Lucas passed out briefly. When his head cleared he found himself focused on the boxing gloves. He remembered the boxing matches, the smokers, he had had to fight as a child in the wrong school. He had been compelled to slug it out with every professed anti-Semite in the school, beginning with the boy named Kevin English. There had been a dozen.

How peculiar, he thought, how uncanny to be remembering all that here. To be calling up that childhood jungle world with its greasy stinks and godly Jansenist doom in a place like Kfar Gottlieb. But had they not certain things in common? Religion. The heart of a heartless world. How sentimental of Marx to call it that. And here at Kfar Gottlieb they had religion plus. Nationalism. Automatic weapons. Spinach. Lucas wanted it all to mean something. The idea that it did not made him angry.

"So what do you think you're doing, Lucas," the dark man asked him, "in this land of ours?"

"I'm a journalist," Lucas said. "You've seen my credentials."

"Sure, and you're like the rest of them," the red-haired man said. "You're here to defame the religious community. Maybe we can't stop you from doing that. But when you cause the death of a Jew, you incur a debt of blood. That we can do something about."

"We did everything we could do to save that man's life," Lucas said. "He walked away from us. The mob got him and we couldn't get him back."

"That's not what Linda Ericksen says. She says you went through an army checkpoint and said nothing. That you struck her, kept her from informing the army."

"That's not exactly what happened," Lucas said.

So they brought in Linda, swollen-eyed and post-hysterical.

"They hit me when I tried to tell the soldiers," she said bitterly. "They're responsible for his death."

"Linda," Lucas began, "you know better than that." But he understood there would be no convincing her. He was unsure himself what had happened. No one's sense of justice was likely to be satisfied.

"Look," Lucas told his two interrogators when Linda was outside the room. "I don't know who Lenny was or what he was up to, but I did my best for him and so did everyone else in my party. He walked into that camp by himself."

"What do you mean, you don't know what he was up to?" the dark man asked. "What were you doing with him?"

"My understanding was that he was taking Miss Ericksen and Sonia Barnes to talk to some Palestinians at Argentina camp. Miss Ericksen's a volunteer with the Human Rights Coalition. Sonia Barnes drove her out in a United Nations car."

"Yes?" said the red-haired man.

"When things started getting out of hand—when the riot started—I went out by taxi to look for Sonia. The next thing, we were in the shit."

"Why you?"

"Because I'm Sonia's friend. I'm writing about her."

"Writing what?"

"I'm doing a piece on religious groups in Jerusalem. Sonia has friends who belong to one."

"A cult," the red-haired man said.

Lucas shrugged. "It's a relative term." You should know, he thought.

"That's what you're writing about?" the dark-haired man asked. "Cults in our country? Like Ethical Culture, maybe?"

"I've been writing about religious obsession," he said.

"So who's supposed to be obsessed," asked the short, dark man, "out here? Not us, I hope."

"Present company excepted," Lucas said. He was feeling faint again. "Could I have some water?" They brought him a cup of heavily chlorinated water. On the wall behind them, he noticed, was a banner displaying a crown over a palm tree, with the letters
bet, daled, gimmel.

"So why are you so interested in Linda?" asked the red-haired man. "She comes out here and you show up."

"I've been interviewing Linda and her ex-husband for months," Lucas said. "I came out yesterday because Sonia Barnes called me."

"And why is Sonia interested?"

"We're going in circles," Lucas said. "Sonia got the NGO car. Linda asked her for it. Because she was supposed to be investigating the beating of kids by the guy who calls himself Abu Baraka."

Lucas tried to determine, as quickly and silently as possible, what the two young lions across from him wanted. At first he thought he was being beaten because of Lenny's death. But there seemed to be something about him they wanted to know.

"Who else did you see yesterday?" the dark man asked him. "Outside of Arabs."

Lucas thought about it. It was reasonable to conclude they knew whom he had seen.

"Nuala Rice from the International Children's Foundation. Helen Henderson from UNRWA. Lenny. Linda and Sonia."

"You've been on Linda's case," the dark-haired man said. "You interviewed her ex-husband. You met her through Pinchas Obermann."

"It's a small country," Lucas said.

"You think you have a source in the Shabak?" the red-headed man asked. "I can tell you that nothing happens in Shabak or Mossad or anywhere—anywhere—that we don't know about. By the way, how come you quit your newspaper job?"

"Oh, that," said Lucas. "That was personal. And I don't have a source in the Shabak."

"You're being manipulated," the red-headed man said. "We can give you a better story and a chance to help the country. Or we can close you down."

It seemed to Lucas that he could understand their wanting to kill the Abu Baraka story. Because surely Abu Baraka was one of them. Or, more plausibly, several of them—their squad of enforcers. But what was the better story?

"This guy," he chortled, "this guy is a Mossad type.
Shaygetzy-
looking
petzle.
What do you think?"

The other man paid no attention to his friend.

"You claim to be an honest journalist. Well, let's see how honest you are. We can give you the story of a plot against the State of Israel," said the red-headed man. "And a plan to slander the active religious community."

Lucas did not reply.

"What's the matter, Mr. Lucas? Not interested?" He swore in Arabic. "To these bastards of the glorious free press, if the Jews fight back against terror, if they defend themselves against murderers, they're no better than Nazis. The Jews' place is to be a victim. Otherwise the world is out of joint, right, Mr. Lucas?"

"That's not my position," Lucas said.

"Your friends in this cult, Lucas, these foreign women and the men controlling them, are a bunch of drug runners and terrorists."

"I would have to see evidence of that," Lucas said severely. At the same time he had a nasty feeling he was about to see something like it. It sounded distressingly like Nuala, as though she had finally run out of slack.

"That, Mr. Lucas," the dark-haired man said, "is what you're going to see. And when you do, we're going to require justice of you, understand? You claim to be innocent of our comrade's death. Maybe we'll give you the benefit of the doubt. But we expect you to see to it that the truth of this story gets told. You were being programmed for a campaign of lies. Instead, you'll write the truth."

"Because," said the red-haired man, "the truth is wonderful. But you owe us more than the truth. You owe us a life for a life."

"I don't," Lucas said. "I haven't killed anyone."

"Sorry, friend. A man died. You were responsible. That one death could lead to others. The stuff on your hands—it's blood." The red-haired man made a gesture with his head that included the dry flats beyond the wall outside Kfar Gottlieb, beyond the fields of fruit and spinach. "There isn't anyone here who wouldn't die to keep holy what belongs to us."

"So we're giving you a story and the chance to break it," his colleague said. "From now until this is resolved it's important that you work with us. What do you say?"

"I don't know," Lucas said. So they produced Linda again, who told him about the hashish. Nuala and Sonia brought it through every week, she explained. They brought back weapons for Palestinian militias that sometimes collaborated with Shin Bet, like the Black Falcons or the Communist faction. They also sometimes brought Mister Stanley's Colombian cocaine for the militia's elite. Recently they had provided explosives from Iran for De Kuff's band of syn-cretists, who had some demented scheme involving the Haram. Linda claimed she had happened on it by accident and Sonia had confessed all to her.

But, Lucas thought, nursing his jaw, if anyone had destructive plans for the Haram, it would be the militants of Kfar Gottlieb, the superpatriotic creators of Abu Baraka—hardly De Kuff and Raziel's group of Kabbalist aesthetes, of that he felt reasonably certain.

Lucas, not in the mood to argue, decided to sort it out later. Meanwhile, Linda cried a lot and Lucas said OK to whatever they told him.

Sometime during the night Ernest from the Human Rights Coalition showed up at the settlement's gate. He had driven from the border with a nervous Palestinian driver to pick up Linda. The
chaverim
allowed Lucas to go along.

"How did you end up
there?
" Ernest asked Lucas.

"Long story," Lucas said. "I thought you were away."

"I was at a conference in Prague. But when I got back yesterday, I was told that Linda was here."

"Told by who?"

"We have some contacts here," Ernest said. "Not everybody who lives in Kfar Gottlieb shares the prevailing ideology. But I had to come myself."

He turned to glance at Linda in the back seat, who was pretending sleep. Ernest had had to come himself because he was one of the few people who could pass in increasingly precarious safety from Gaza City to the settlements.

He and Lucas exchanged a look.

"Did anyone get the women out?" Lucas asked. "Sonia?"

"Nuala and Miss Henderson are back at the Children's Foundation compound. Sonia's at the beach."

"The beach," Lucas repeated dully.

"You'll see," Ernest said. "So, what are they saying in the settlements? You look like you got roughed up. You can get some first aid at the beach."

"We can stop looking for Abu Baraka. Abu Baraka is them. What beach?"

"Figures," said Ernest. Linda fidgeted, as if in her sleep. "What else do they say?"

"They say God is on their side. And they're trying to plant some story on me."

"They're the left hand of God," Ernest mused. "The right one too."

"You know what I think," Lucas said. "God's going to get His fucking hand cut off someday." He was startled by a scream from Linda. He turned and saw she had put her hands over her ears.

"I guess there should be a trial," Lucas went on. He was half asleep himself. "After the Gnostic revolution, when the
tikkun
is restored, we'll put the Old Dear in a cage in Pisa and test His sanity. I personally don't think He'll score very well."

"Ask Him where he's been," Ernest suggested.

"A cage in Pisa," Lucas insisted. "Ask Him where he's been and what the fuck He thinks He's doing with his bombs and booms and thunder, and us running shitless around ground zero while He rings our hats. Ask for a poetry sample. He made Leviathan, but can He scan? I mean, I'm sorry, but desert sunsets and similar shit are not poetry."

"But He is poetry, Chris," Ernest said. "And the bombs are ours, not His. Anyway, He's got to be better than Ezra Pound."

"Two bearded old bums," Lucas declared, "and they both belong in cages."

"What about the settlers in Kfar Gottlieb?" Ernest asked. "Do they think God wants peace or war?"

"As far as I can make it out," Lucas said, "sometimes He wants both. Usually at different times."

"How can you laugh at that?" Linda demanded angrily, although they hadn't been, really. "It's historically valid."

F
RESH FROM
the wrath of the prophets, Lucas found himself at the foggy edge of the cold Philistine Sea, wandering among Hellenized youths wearing tiny, tight bathing suits. He had just reclaimed his rental car, showered, changed his shirt and put on a pair of baggy khaki shorts from his overnight bag. He was looking for Sonia, who was somewhere on the beach.

The Hellenized youths were mainly off-duty members of the Israeli navy. Their base straddled the Green Line, lying partly in the Gaza Strip and partly in Israel proper. Finally Lucas came upon Sonia, playing in one of their volleyball games. She wore a pale blue bathing suit. When he called her out, another girl was waiting to take her place in the game.