Chapter 43 – A Man
Chloe figured her phone had done her as much good as it was going to do. She punched in Tina’s number and waited impatiently through one, two, three rings. When she realized Tina wasn’t going to answer, she felt salt burning her eyes. Five, six, seven. At least, let her voicemail come on, so she could hear the melodious voice once more. Click. Shit, it was going to cut off, no voicemail even.
“Hello?” Tina’s voice was faint against a background of loud music.
“I love you,” Chloe said at once. There, at least she wouldn’t go home without having said it.
“Sorry? I can’t hear well. Who is this?”
Chloe couldn’t remember being so crushed. “Chloe,” she said.
“What? Wait, I have to go outside. The reception here is terrible.”
Chloe heard crackling, and the line went dead. Shit! They were almost at the airport now. She saw the highrise hotels on her right, and cargo terminals loomed just ahead.
Her phone rang. Shit, she had forgotten to turn off the ringer. She quickly pressed the answer key and pushed it to her face. It was too late. David was turning around, and yelling to Shaul, “Yesh la pelephone.”
“I love you,” she said again into the phone.
“… too,” she heard just as the phone was torn out of her hand.
The van stopped next to a beige sandstone building that looked like a prison. Shaul left David and her in the van and went inside, the motor still running. A few minutes later, he returned and opened her door.
“Get out.”
She sat.
“Come on!”
It wasn’t going to take much to get him to use violence. Chloe ordered her heart to stop racing and her breath to stop coming short and quick. She stared straight ahead, resolutely not looking at Shaul or David. She scooted over until she was square in the middle of the wide seat, so that in order to pull her out, one of them would have to lie halfway across the seat. Not a dignified position from which to exercise authority.
“If you do not come now, I will use force,” Shaul said in the ritual words that so often preceded an ugly episode.
Chloe counted the wrinkles on her hands, one, two, three.
Her head smashed against the top of the door as he hauled her from the van like a sack of potatoes. Each policeman took an arm and they dragged her unceremoniously up the stone steps. They deposited her smack in the middle of a big room full of men, women, armed guards and luggage. Shaul delivered a kick for good measure before stomping out.
The eyes of forty or more people from every continent made her self-conscious. She doubted she made an attractive picture, sprawled out there on the floor. With as much dignity as she could muster, she stood up, straightened her t-shirt, combed her hair with her fingers, and looked around for a place to sit. There was not a vacant chair in the room. In fact, people were standing, three deep, smoking, chatting in fifty languages, drinking from small plastic cups that came out of the coffee machine in the corner. A clump of Africans over here, a cluster of Filipinas there, Russian speakers occupying the center. On one wall was a small barred window, behind which a uniformed woman exchanged Israeli money for the currencies people would need back home.
Chloe made her way to the corner furthest from the door and hunkered down, squatting on her haunches. The room cleared mercifully quickly. One group of ten or twenty names after another was called, and the people moved out with their suitcases, presumably to be searched and get on their flights. Soon enough there were plenty of chairs.
Her name was called after she had fidgeted for an hour and a half. What should she do? Sit still, keep silent, and hope to delay long enough to miss her flight? Or go and argue with the people that she wasn’t supposed to be deported yet, and hope that one of the officials was reasonable? When in doubt, do nothing, she decided. She ignored the voices calling her name again and again, and it seemed to work. Another hour passed. Who knew? Maybe she would pass years in this room. There was a guy she had heard about, a Palestinian, who had been living in the Paris airport for five years because no country would accept him.
She heard her name again. Trying to be surreptitious, she glanced up and saw Shaul standing in the doorway with two armed guards, whose uniforms were different from his. He saw her and pointed, and the three of them marched over to her, menace in their gait. Had he driven back to Hadera, and then turned around and come back in order to identify her? If so, she was sure it had done nothing to improve his temper. Hadn’t she missed whatever flight they were planning to get her on?
The two khaki-clad men with rifles slung over their chests yanked her out of her chair. One twisted her arm crazily behind her back. She gritted her teeth, unwilling to give him the satisfaction of crying out. When they started to walk, she could not resist walking with them; the pain was too intense. She was not cut out for torture. Well, who was? Maybe, if what you had to protect was worth it. Most people who withstood torture, she had heard, did so because they didn’t know anything they could use to stop the pain.
They half-carried, half-dragged her out of the building, to the El Al terminal, where the contents of her bags were placed methodically in bins and run through X-ray machines batch by batch. A woman ran that black wand over her clothes, that they used to check for metal, then set up a screen around Chloe and yanked her pants down to her ankles. They took everything from her things with Arabic writing on it and super-x‑rayed it again. Chloe wondered, did they imagine that you could hide a bomb in the little pamphlet she had gotten from Addameer about Palestinian prisoners? More, did they really think that’s where you would put the bomb, if somehow you had managed to get one into the prison and then the police van and then the airport?
Then Shaul was grabbing her arm and trying to make her run.
“Hurry, hurry,” he urged. “We don’t have time.”
“We have plenty of time because I’m not going anywhere,” Chloe told him for the fifteenth time.
They carried/dragged her back through the terminal and piled with her into the van. They drove in what seemed like smaller and smaller concentric circles until they were sitting on the tarmac, next to a Continental jet with its engine running. Its light was whirling on top and she could see the coolant discharging to eat away at the ozone layer. A flight attendant stood on the top step, waving to them frantically.
“We have been waiting for you,” she said to the police accusingly. “We are late.”
“She is a problem,” Shaul said briefly.
Chloe called on every reserve of fight and contrariness she had been saving up for the last ten months. She curled into a tight ball on the seat, squirming out of their grasp when they tried to grab her. She rolled off the seat and onto the floor, smacking her head on the floor of the van.
Once they succeeded in hauling her out, she lay on the ground, screaming at the top of her lungs.
“I am being deported illegally,” she yelled in the general direction of the chagrined stewardess.
The neatly pressed woman reached up and rubbed her temple. What ever happened to simple problems, like not enough champagne glasses for first class?
“I REFUSE TO GET ON THIS AIRPLANE!” Chloe shouted. “IF I AM FORCED TO I WILL NOT OBEY ANY OF YOUR RULES. I WILL NOT BUCKLE MY SEAT BELT. I WILL SING LOUDLY DURING THE SAFETY PRESENTATION. I WILL DISABLE THE SMOKE DETECTORS IN THE BATHROOM.”
“If you do not shut up,” Shaul hissed, “I will sedate you and take you in chains.” At least that’s what she thought he was saying. She didn’t understand the Hebrew words, except for “shut up” and “take you” but his gestures spoke volumes.
She continued screaming. Two of the armed guards went to talk with the flight attendant. Then they were ushered into the plane, presumably to talk to the captain. She saw passengers staring out the window, trying to get a view of whatever the commotion was. She had no idea if they could hear or see her or not. Now someone else was running toward them, from the direction of the terminal, waving his hands. She hoped it was not the vet with a hypodermic.
The man who ran up was wearing fatigues and had a rifle over his shoulder. He came straight to Shaul. “Mah koreh,” he demanded, what’s going on?
Shaul looked surprised, but answered at length, with expansive gestures.
“No, no, no,” the man said. “We do not do this.”
Was this for real? Was the untimely end to her sojourn here about to be averted by a deus ex machina in enemy’s clothing? It looked that way. The man was showing Shaul a sheet of paper, and Shaul was taking out his cellphone.
Rachel’s fax! Chloe thought. Avi had come through for her after all. He had called the lawyer and she had sent a fax showing that Chloe’s three-day hold was still in effect. She started to breathe a little easier.
Shaul didn’t reach whoever he was calling. He disconnected and tried another number. The stewardess kept waving at him, wanting to know what was going on. He made the wait signal with his hand. She pointed at her watch – the flight was very late already, come on, we have to get going. After ten minutes that felt to Chloe like ten hours, Shaul gave a bye bye wave, and the doors of the jet slowly slid shut. Not until the wheels started to move back did Chloe’s heart stop playing the William Tell Overture. She was suddenly exhausted. She could fall asleep right here on the tarmac. She supposed she would be going back to Hadera tonight. If so, it would be hours before she got to a bed.
Shaul was arguing with the soldier. Whatever the argument was about, Shaul lost. The olive-garbed man came over to where she sat and stretched out a hand to help her up.
“Come with me,” he said in a pleasant but commanding tone. “I have a few questions to ask you.”
“What kind of questions?” she asked, suddenly wary. She was in no mood to answer any questions.
“Don’t worry, they won’t be difficult questions. Just a formality,” he said.
“Fifteen minutes,” he said to Shaul over his shoulder as he led her away. They walked past the van in which Shaul had driven her here, past several other planes waiting for clearance to take off. The man did not keep his hand on her. He didn’t seem worried that she would run away, but indeed, where would she go?
“Who are you?” she asked him.
“I’m the Army.” Thanks for nothing.
“I can see that, but what are you doing here? I mean, the army doesn’t usually get involved in deportation cases, right?”
“This is a special case.”
Fear tugged at the edges of her brain. To whom was her case special? Wilensky? Gelenter? But why would either of them want to stop her from being put on the plane? Presumably, it was one of them who had arranged this eleventh hour flight in the first place.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
“Adam,” he answered.
He walked her all the way around the terminal, to the front of the line of cars dropping off passengers, and helped her into the front seat of a dark blue sedan. That seemed odd too; army guys usually came in jeeps. She figured it wouldn’t do any good to ask about the car, so she did as she was told. He drove fast, following the signs pointing to “Exit Airport”. While he drove, she memorized his face, for whatever good it might do her if there was something to complain about later. He looked to be about forty-five, stocky and muscular. Although it was pitch dark out, he wore shades. He was also wearing a crocheted kippa over his thinning hair. His most distinguishing feature was a nose that closely resembled a squashed potato.
“Where are we going?” she shouted over the radio and the noise of the engine.
“My office,” he shouted back.
“Is it far?”
“No, very near.”
Just before the exit to the terminal, he hooked a sharp right. Now they were on some kind of private access road. Adam opened a gate with a magnetic card and pulled to a stop in front of a long, low building made of olive-colored prefab slabs. It was surrounded by short brown grass, and behind it she could see a chain link fence sporting white signs with red hands, the danger sign, every few feet.
Adam was examining his keys, hunting for the right one. The metal door had three locks, a deadbolt, a regular door lock and a padlock. Whatever this building was, it couldn’t be used that much. Adam certainly didn’t use it much, because he wasn’t sure which keys to use. He tried one in the padlock, but it didn’t budge. He attacked the deadbolt next, and coaxed it open. It didn’t sound like it had been opened in a long time. He finally found the right keys, and the door swung open. Adam indicated that Chloe should precede him inside.
Her eyes could make out nothing at first. The building was one long room, nearly empty, with walls made of concrete. It looked like a warehouse of some kind. It had no windows, just a tiny slatted opening near the ceiling. Adam didn’t turn on any lights, if there were any to turn on. Instead, he walked halfway across the cement floor and came back dragging something beside him. He set two chairs down facing one another.
“Sit,” he said.
Not a gracious invitation, but she took it. The sooner she did, the sooner she would find out what this was all about, and the sooner she would get back to – well, where? Somewhere she wanted to be, which included Hadera at this point.
He took the gun off of his chest and sat down opposite her. He gave her a smile, which didn’t reach his watery eyes. “All right, Chloe,” he said in a tired voice. “Who has the document?”
She went cold all over. “What document?”
“Do not play games with me.” Icicles would not have melted in his mouth.
“How do you know about that? Who are you, anyway?”
“Do you need to ask?”
“It’s you!” she breathed. How could she have been so stupid? She had just been so relieved not to be on the plane. Adam, he had called himself. The generic Hebrew word for “man.” “But you’re in Italy,” she said.
“I was in Italy. Now I am here.”
“But how did you get here so fast?”
“Wonderful things, airplanes. Now where is the document?”
“I don’t know – there isn’t one.”
Wait, that wasn’t right. He needed to believe there was a document. He would have killed her already, except he wanted to know who had it. If she could keep him believing she knew, maybe he would leave her alive, but for how long? Not long enough for anyone to find her here. Not long enough to escape. If he left her alive in here and locked the door, she would starve to death unless he let her out. You couldn’t believe in mystery novel endings, where the heroes always found a way out of every iron trap. In real life, the odds were against you when you were up against someone like this, who had killed with impunity for years. She needed to distract him, give herself time to think.
“So what’s in the document?” she asked.
“That is none of your concern.”
“Maybe not, but what would it hurt you to satisfy my curiosity? You’re going to kill me anyway.”
He gaped at her. “You think I am going to kill you?”
“Aren’t you?”
“Chlooooeeeee, Chloooooeeee. How can you say this about me? I am not a killer.”
It was her turn to gape. The man was both a professional killer and an amateur. Why should he care what she thought? Then she understood the distinction he was making. He had killed Palestinians, probably he had killed an Uzbek prostitute, but these were not people. She was another story. As despicable as she was, as big a threat to his reputation, she was a Jew.
“Well, if you’re not planning to kill me, why did you bring me here?”
“I brought you here so we could talk undisturbed.”
He looped the gun over his shoulder once more and stood up. He crossed to her chair, and reached out a hand. She screamed. She wasn’t sure where the pain had come from, but her entire body rattled with it. She thought about what Avi had reported from his conversation with Dmitri. One of the men was a little kinky, but the other was called The Butcher.
He had returned to his seat and was contemplating her with faint amusement around his lips. He enjoyed hurting people, that was clear. That tiny encounter had been an espresso bean for his libido. He wasn’t going to get any more out of her. She would make him shoot her before she would be his play toy.
“Are you ready to tell me who has the document?” he asked placidly. Like he had all day, which presumably he did.
Who could she name? Not Fareed, not Malkah. Avi? Would he believe that? But if Avi was on his side, he wouldn’t care.
“Dmitri,” she said at last. He leaned toward her, as if he found what she said fascinating. She sat on her hands, to keep them from shaking.
“Dmitri who sold Nadya to us?” She nodded. “You lie. He told me he did not take it from her.” Wilensky was moving toward her again. She bolted for the door. A shot rang out. The bullet flew past her shoulder and smashed against the concrete wall. She whirled.
“You said you wouldn’t kill me.”
“Bullets can do a lot of things besides kill.”
She didn’t doubt it. What was she going to do? She couldn’t leave, and she couldn’t stay.
“I lied,” she said finally. “There’s no copy. At least not that I know of.”
“Why did you tell me there is a copy?”
Why indeed? It had seemed like a good move in a theoretical chess game.
“To see what you would do, to find out if you really killed her.”
“That was clever,” he said, lifting the gun and aiming it straight at her. Her knees were foam rubber. Her face was hot. She thought she was having a stroke.
“Khara!” echoed from outside. A stream of Arabic curses followed. Wilensky swung around. Chloe heard running. She took steps toward the door, then stopped. She was pretty sure she knew who was out there, but if she ran to them, even if she made it, he might kill them all.
Someone was shaking the door now. “It’s locked,” Avi said.
“Get back,” a woman’s voice responded. Chloe was between Wilensky and the door. She turned to face him. His gun was pointed directly at her, and at whoever was about to come through the door.
“We might as well let them in,” she said conversationally.
He hesitated. Before he could move one way or the other, a shot like thunder shattered the deadbolt and the door swung open wide. It took Chloe a minute to identify the settler woman in the peasant blouse standing there with the gun in her hand.
