Damascus Gate (50 page)

"Sort of consorting with the enemy, aren't you?" Lucas asked her.

"Who? These kids? They're no enemies of mine. I often stop here on the way to the Strip. They've always got a spare pass."

"Just another one of those anomalies of war, I guess."

"Chris, I'm not at war with anyone. What happened to your face? It's all swollen."

"I don't think anything's broken except my bridge. I have to try and bend it back into shape. I've got a loose tooth."

"Did you get hit?"

"I got beat up at Kfar Gottlieb. Ernest tells me I'm not the first reporter who's been beaten up there."

"We should get some disinfectant cream or something."

"It's all right."

He took her by the arm and walked her along the water line, the wash of the slow waves breaking at their ankles.

"I just had it put to me that you're running hash between T.V. and the Strip."

"Who put it to you?"

"Hell," Lucas said, "I was hoping you might deny it. It didn't sound true."

"I do deny it," she said. "Of course I deny it. Do you really imagine I'm some kind of crazy drug queen?"

"Well, no," Lucas said. "But the settlers say it. What are they talking about?"

"About Nuala," she said.

"Shit," said Lucas. "I knew it! And you've been riding with her."

"I didn't know about it until the last time I came over. She's not doing it for profit, you know. It's some setup between Rashid and the Party fraction and Shabak. What do the settlers care? They must know that kind of shit goes on."

"Well, if you were after Abu Baraka," Lucas said, "it would be a way of making trouble for you. Because Abu Baraka is them. It's the settlers at Kfar Gottlieb. And the same goes for Nuala. She can't collaborate with dirty deals and crusade against the settlers at the same time. It just confirms all their suspicions."

"Who told them anyway?" Sonia asked.

"Linda. She's one of them. I mean, she was there when I got jumped on. She says she's seen large quantities of hash move and Nuala's carrying it."

"That rotten little milk-white bitch," Sonia said without force. "How about her? But she hasn't seen anything. I don't believe it. Someone told her."

"Well, there's more to it. They're blaming us for Lenny's death. They also say Nuala was running explosives. And they seem to think you were in on it. That the explosives were going to Raziel and De Kuff. Your guys."

Sonia laughed. "Explosives? They can't believe that."

"I don't know what they believe. But they want to lay a story on me. A news story. About a plan to damage the Haram. A sort of Willie Ludlum thing."

They had come to the rolls of razor wire that marked the end of the beach. The two of them stood looking down at it for a few moments and then about-faced and began to walk back the way they had come. Suddenly Sonia bolted from his side and was running into the waves, losing her footing, gaining it again, throwing herself headlong at chest level into an oncoming wave, disappearing, then appearing on the far side of the break. She swam parallel with the shore for a couple of minutes, then eased onto a wave and rode it to shore, staggering out of the surf where Lucas was walking.

"How many rides have you taken with Nuala?"

"I can't remember."

"How many?"

"Half a dozen over time. That was it."

"Enough to be recognized. And probably photographed. Why didn't you tell me she was running dope?"

"How could I tell you?"

"I don't know. I was riding with her, though. You might have tipped me."

"I thought you were tight with Nuala."

"Not really."

"Well, if they've got me," she said, "they've got you. Especially after yesterday."

They walked on. "You should have confided in me," he said.

"What do they want you to do?"

"Stripping it down, I'd say they want me to write something. A version of something."

"A true version of something?"

"Their version of truth. In their version, I think I'm off the hook. If I write it."

They walked up from the water and Sonia went through security into the women's locker room to change.

When they had driven halfway to Jerusalem, leaving the coast road, Lucas said, "It must have to do with the Abu Baraka business. You and I and Nuala are all involved in it. We're a weak link."

They drove on in silence for a while.

"I had a dream," Lucas said. "At least I think it was a dream. Maybe it was a hallucination. I was talking to Rudolph Steiner's little daughter, Diphtheria."

"There's a lot of bad Ex around," Sonia said. "Really. Down in Tel Aviv. All over. Someone's slipping it in the felafels. Or maybe in hash. What did little Diphtheria have to say?"

"She seemed to think like Linda Ericksen. One thing she said, though—she said, 'What people think, will be.'"

"Gosh," Sonia said. "Remember when we thought that was good? Where did you get the bad Ex?"

"I don't know. I had the dream in the Holy Sepulchre."

"It's a creepy place," Sonia said. "You shouldn't go there."

They fell silent for a few miles.

"I had a funny conversation with Janusz Zimmer a while ago," she said. "Like he was warning me about this. About some kind of underground."

"I'll call him," Lucas said.

"Be careful," she said. "He seems sort of off the deep end. And he's been keeping company with Linda."

"Christ," Lucas said. "Who's who? What do people want?"

It was hard to tell who anyone was and what they wanted because the emergency basis on which the state proceeded created constant improvisations and impersonations. Organs that were not in fact of the state represented themselves as being so. State organs pretended to be non-state, or anti-state, or the organs of other states, including enemy ones. Many people with firsthand knowledge of official security and military procedures had separated themselves from the relevant organizations, or partly separated themselves, or were pretending to have separated themselves, or had turned militantly against the relevant organs while pretending to work for them, or were working for the relevant organs while pretending to have turned militantly against them, or were unsure whither they had turned. Some people worked simply for fun or money. Then there were the pious and the patriots.

"Do you really think they care," Sonia asked, "if anyone knows they're slapping Palestinian kids around? People like the settlers at Kfar Gottlieb don't care that much about world opinion."

"I think somebody wants something on you, Sonia. I think we should see Ernest. I don't like this crap about the Haram. If anybody wanted to blow the place, it would be them. To build the Temple, right?"

"There's a demonstration on the Ninth of Av," she said. "During the summer, the day both Temples were destroyed. There always is. The faithful demonstrate. The Palestinians demonstrate. People get killed, usually Palestinians. You know," she said, "I better have a word with Nuala."

"While you're at it," Lucas said, "check with Raziel."

B
ACK IN JERUSALEM,
Lucas drove Sonia to the bungalow in Ein Kerem. The place was quiet, the garden deserted.

"I'll be back," he told her. "Get some rest."

He drove the rental car to the garage of his downtown apartment building and went upstairs to shower and change clothes and minister to his wounds with aspirin and Band-Aids. It occurred to him that he might find a way out of their political difficulties by invoking nationality.

Despite what many in the region believed, and despite America's patronal relationship with the State of Israel, it was often difficult to bring the superpowerful weight of the Republic to bear on behalf of its private citizens. It helped to be perceived as a person of particular value, but since Israel was chock-a-block with individuals whose names and organizations resounded with political mellifluousness at home, the competition was stiff. Influence talked; snide journalists and colored ex-Fidelistas hoofed it.

Given the situation, Lucas was compelled to fall back on the goodwill of his crony Sylvia Chin. Although she was a small, solitary device in the giant machine of U.S. diplomatic research and information, he had found her disproportionately clever, discreet and resourceful. When he called her at the office, she agreed to meet him at a café on the edge of the Machaneh Yehuda market.

Sylvia arrived in a modest silk dress, her slender throat adorned with an amber necklace. An expertly applied film of ointments concealed a tiny scar left by the nose ring she had worn in Palo Alto and removed on the day of her foreign-service exam. The hucksters of the market sang Ruritanian songs to her.

"Christopher," she told him at once, "I think you're in trouble." She frowned at his swollen face.

"I went to the Strip the other day. I saw some shit."

Sylvia looked coolly around the café.

"Did I tell you about our big drug enforcement operation here? Not just down in Tel Aviv but up here."

"I think you've referred to it."

"Well, I'll tell you, Chris, when the Latin lovers of the DEA get their big flat feet in the door, nothing gets them out. Now they're being romanced by Shabak and Mossad, which is really an irony when you think about it."

"Why's that?"

"Well, the last time Mossad helped out the DEA was in Thailand, when it penetrated a major heroin operation as a special favor to Uncle Sam-san. Mossad took the sucker over and ran it themselves, for spare change. So you'd think DEA would learn something."

"If DEA ever learned something," Lucas said, "the entire international narcotics industry would collapse."

"Right," said Sylvia. "Well, let me tell you something. One of your NGO buddies, the Irish girl, and her main squeeze the doctor, came to us for a visa yesterday. She seemed to think we owed her one. I think it was because her Shabak control told her we'd fix her up. She's bandying your name around quite a lot. You better watch it. You made a couple of significant shit lists."

"Great," Lucas said.

Sylvia leaned forward slightly and lowered her voice. "Something struck me during my conversation with Nuala. Our chat about her visa. Know what it was?"

Lucas considered the question for a moment. "If somebody over there really wanted to help her," he said, "they'd get her—"

Sylvia raised a finger to her lips and very quietly finished his sentence for him. "A false passport. Phony papers. They wouldn't send her
shnorring
for a visa."

"They're cutting her loose," Lucas said.

"In the old days, the Soviets might have fixed her up. Not now." She smiled, largely, it seemed, for the benefit of anyone who might have been observing them. "She expects to see you over in Tel Aviv tonight. I would say maybe don't go."

"What about Sonia Barnes?"

Sylvia dabbed a sprig of mint from her upper lip.

"It doesn't help anything that Nuala Rice and her boyfriend are CP. Or what's left of it. It doesn't help either that Sonia has this Party background and spent all those years in Cuba."

"Maybe you can straighten it out," Lucas said to Sylvia. "If you think they were used."

"Maybe," she said. "But you know, Chris, sometimes things get so twisted they're beyond straightening out. It's like nobody ponders information anymore. There's more information available than there is stuff to know about, if you know what I mean."

"Of course," Lucas said. It seemed to him he knew that as well as anyone.

"Machines are dumb," Sylvia said, "but they never forget. Like elephants. Who put the jalapenños in their trunk. Who was a Communist when. Who lived in Cuba."

"So they're going to throw Sonia to the wolves?"

"Let me tell you this," said Sylvia, "and you can pass it on. Nuala and the Palestinian doctor are fucked. I don't mean to be cold-hearted, but they're really not my job. We go to bat for them, people will think they worked for us."

"Any good news?" Lucas asked.

"Maybe. Sonia might get off through Raziel, because his old man wants him home in one piece and we're supposed to make that happen."

"How?"

"Well, it'll be tough, because the DEA guys made him for a junkie at a hundred feet. But we try to keep tabs. The old man is paying a private security service called Ayin to watch him. Just happens to be the same one the New York bail bondsmen used to skip-trace the Marshalls,
père et fils.
"

"Small worlds," Lucas said. He thought of the tile room where he had been interrogated, and the structure of his newfound universe seemed a series of such rooms, expanding endlessly, aeons presided over by their demiurges.

"Ayin likes to tell us it's well connected," Sylvia went on. "They mean they're close to Shabak and have some political savvy. That's what they sell. Now, I don't know what Raziel's up to or what the Israelis have against him, but I very much doubt they would do anything too bad to him, considering his old man. Sonia's best bet is to stay close to Raziel. Maybe yours too. Be a working American reporter. A not very well-informed reporter."

"I hear you," Lucas said. "But what started this, what first got me and Sonia in trouble, as far as I know, was some settlers beating up on kids in the Strip. A story I didn't even follow up on. Is someone really so bent out of shape over bad publicity," he asked her, "that some settler, some soldier, bashes a kid or even kills one and the world finds out? Is that such a big deal to anyone of importance?"

Sylvia made a little half-shrug, raising her eyebrows, lifting her fingers from the tabletop. "I wouldn't have thought so. But Sonia's close to this dope connection. Also, we're getting a buzz that there's another plot to blow the Temple Mount. If Raziel or Sonia is anywhere near that, I don't know if anybody can help them. Because you know what could happen?"

"That's ridiculous," Lucas said. "They're like Sufis. They believe all religions are one. They're nonviolent."

"Good," Sylvia said. "I hope you're right. But don't come running to the U.S. consulate if the Temple Mount blows, because there won't be one standing."

"So where do I find you?"