Raful noted that and filed it away for future reference. He was feeling pretty good after a long if fitful sleep. He began to take mental notes. Everything interested him, from the distance between his seat and the curtains fore and aft to the facial expressions of the passengers nearest him. No detail was too small to escape his attention.
One member of the hijack team guarded the cabin from a vantage point beside the forward galley. He wore an open-neck shirt, his skin was greasy, he hadn’t shaved or slept in a long, long time. Raful liked him on sight.
“See that guy?” he murmured to Robbie with a sideways movement of the head.
Robbie nodded.
“He’s exhausted. Which means, yes, he’s dangerous, but it also means he can’t go on forever. There has to come a time when he sleeps.”
“There’s more than one of them.” Robbie spoke low, but there was no disguising his despair. “They won’t all sleep at the same time.”
“But they will all be tired at the same time, of that you may be sure.” Raful nodded encouragingly. “And then … then we shall see.”
His ulcer was paining him. Hard to keep up a pretense of jollity, but necessary. He understood that Leila had chosen to lie low and that her actions—or, rather, lack of them—had to be associated with the teenager sitting next to him. Everything that happened aboard this aircraft ultimately came back to her son.
So why did she not make a move?
Because she was waiting for a development on the outside. That had to be the explanation.
What development?
“Robbie.” Raful cupped his hand over the side of his mouth and spoke low. “Have the hijackers said what they want?”
“Something about prisoners. Iranians taken prisoner by Iraq. We’re not going to be released until they are.”
A real hijack! Not just an attempt to take back her son, but a genuine, politically motivated act of terrorism…. Raful wanted time to think about the implications, but for now all that mattered was that he
had
time. Leila wasn’t going anywhere, in other words; she’d be staying right here while negotiations for the release of prisoners got under way. In the Middle East, negotiations could go on forever….
What would Robbie do when the chips were down and Leila unveiled herself? How could he, Raful, cement the boy’s loyalty to the side of light?
Raful would just have to trust Robbie. No alternative.
Cautiously, very cautiously, so as not to distract the terrorist by the forward galley, Raful stretched out his hand to the elastic net on the back of the seat in front. That was where he had hidden the lighter, just before they landed, but for now he didn’t mind about that. He was reaching for a paper napkin he could see tucked away there; then, next to it and half obscured by a newspaper, he saw a cardboard tub decorated with the airline’s logo. Somebody’s cocktail nuts….
He cupped both napkin and tub in his hand before deftly scooping them into his lap, then down the side of the seat.
The hijacker continued to keep an eye on the cabin. If he’d seen Raful’s discreet series of movements he gave no sign of it. Raful deliberately turned his head away, as if to look out of the window at the gathering dusk, and for a full five minutes did nothing more.
The Arab with the gun detached himself from the wall and began to tread slowly down the cabin. Raful guessed his intention—to go through into economy, then cross over so as to return along the starboard aisle—and tensed. Not much time … as the hijacker passed out of his peripheral vision he felt inside his jacket for a pen.
Nothing. They’d stripped him of everything except the lighter, which they hadn’t found. Somewhere deep in the dark recesses of his mind lurked a monster—they’d taken everything
including his passport
—don’t think about that, fight the monster some other time; for now, just concentrate on what had to be done.
Find something to write with.
“Robbie,” he muttered. “D’you have a pen, pencil, anything?”
The boy glanced nervously over his left shoulder, to where the terrorist was already disappearing through the aisle curtain, before dipping into the flight bag between his feet. “Here.”
Raful snatched it from him and retrieved the paper napkin he’d concealed a few moments earlier. He rested it on the tub of nuts and wrote a dozen words. Then he thrust the paper at Robbie. “If ever you go back there"— he jerked his head back toward economy—"try to give this to the man in twenty-four H. I’ll make another copy for myself, later, in case they take me back. But mind:
no risks.”
Robbie gazed down at the paper, making no move to take it. “Who
are
you?” he breathed. “Why do you trust me?”
Raful was minded to say, Because there isn’t anybody else, my young friend. But before he could finish the first word, another voice cut across his.
“You. You talk to the boy, too much.”
Raful closed his hand into a fist, concealing the napkin. As he bent his head up and to the left, struggling for an innocent expression, he replayed the last few seconds through his memory. How had he and Robbie looked to the terrorist as he came, oh, so silently, through the partition that cut them off from the economy cabin? What,
exactly,
had they been saying? Were their hands close? Touching? What about their heads?
The Arab’s eyes were splotches of red and white, fringing concentric circles, the outer one thin, the inner hub matte black. Whatever it was that kept him going had taken its toll. “You,” he said. “Move.”
Raful hesitated. He could obey, or he could fight. If he fought, there would be death and destruction. But if he obeyed …
“Okay,” he said. “Okay, okay.”
He raised his hands, by now both clenched into fists, and shook them gently, as if to say, Look,
regardez,
no tricks…. He kept his eyes fixed on those of the Arab, mesmerized and mesmerizing, so that the man did not see him lower the fists as if to lever himself up from his seat, did not notice him opening the right fist or Robbie quickly shifting his left hand sideways to cover the paper.
“Okay,” Raful said lightly. He was on his feet now, with his open hands held up at shoulder height, no threat to anyone. “Okay, okay, okay. Where do you want me to sit?”
The Arab allowed the muzzle of his submachine gun to droop to the left. Raful edged into the aisle, still keeping his eyes on the Arab’s, and backed up the cabin until he was opposite an empty aisle seat in a center block of three.
“Here?”
The terrorist nodded. Raful sat. As he belted himself in he found himself repeating Robbie’s questions:
Who are you? Why do you trust me?
He was immediately behind the first class cabin now. Inches away from Stepmother. From target.
Leila did not remember their last encounter in New York, that much was obvious. Hardly surprising when you thought about it: she’d scarcely caught a glimpse of his face. But now she had his passport. A good shoe, made by a fine cobbler, but false. Halib wouldn’t take long to see through it.
Why do you trust me?
Good question, Robbie. But what you should have added was:
Me, of all people?
I
N
the summer of 1974 the easiest way for a
yahoud
like Sharett to enter Lebanon was to head north via Qiryat Shemona, on the right of the map, and then once across the border to aim west for the coast below Sidon. At Metulla, the frontier crossing, the
yahoud
was still that: a Jew; but by the time he reached Habbouch, on the western lee of the Chammis, he had already become fuzzy around the edges. His car—caked with dust, dented here and there, a trifle rusty beneath the bumpers—-bore German license plates, and he spoke a smattering of Egyptian Arabic to the few Metawilleh peasants he met. When he stopped for lunch, or overnight, he was keen to tell his story over a bottle or three of Musar red wine and a Dutch cheroot: how he’d lived most of his life in Europe or Chicago, done well, come “home” to see how things were, to decide whether he should bring his family across. He was amiable and he was generous; the fact that his hearers understood but one word in twenty did not matter. They remembered Sharett for precisely the things he was not.
Like everyone else who ever saw it, he fell in love with the country. Years later, when the IDF was using Merkava tanks to flatten Lebanon’s rolling hills and sand-castle forts, bombing it into compliance with their field maps, he would lay aside his copy of
Maariv,
take off his spectacles, and gaze into the middle distance. At those times he was remembering coarse
markouk
bread, hillsides painted with flax, bugloss and corn poppies, asters and cyclamen; gorges fringed with stately holm oaks, fields of barley, eggs fried with thyme
He was remembering apple jam.
He’d risen early and driven for a couple of hours with only a cup of scalding, bitter coffee to line his stomach. In the warm light of early morning he’d skimmed through tiny villages of whitewashed houses topped with orange tiles, the sea stretching away on his left as flat and calm as a Biro-blue millpond. He drove slowly, for him, with the remains of last night’s cheroot clamped between his teeth, and he sang softly, because he was happy. On his right he could already see Mount Sannin, its snowy beacon luring him on like the Israelites of old. He drove through groves of trees heavy with bananas, oranges, lemons, dates; he bounced over rough stone bridges that carried the road across a myriad of cold streams; he breathed the scents of clover and wild roses strong enough to challenge even the acrid taste of saliva-soaked tobacco.
When wheeled traffic began to outnumber donkey carts and the knives in his stomach had begun their vicious daily work, he pulled off the coast road and climbed inland until he came to a village, where he discovered a tiny café just opening its shutters with a yawn and a squeak of unoiled hinges.
He sat at a rickety table and, to the accompaniment of morning bells chiming high fluted notes behind him, he ate a breakfast he would remember all his life: bread and coffee, a plate of grapes, dates, apricots, and cherries. And apple jam.
The owner’s wife was a dark gypsy of a woman who tried to engage Raful first in French, then Greek, and finally, unwillingly, English. She stood with her wrists on her hips, staring at the sea far below the terrace, while a nonstop stream of observations flowed from her lips; and the most remarkable aspect of her, it seemed to him, was that she had no word of complaint for anyone.
She must have liked the way he laughed at her jokes, or perhaps she detected in him a kindred spirit of optimism, or maybe it was just his day. Whatever the reason, she suddenly disappeared inside and came out again a moment later carrying a stone jar capped with muslin and string. In her other hand she had a hunk of brown bread; this she dumped on his plate, among grape skins and cherry pits, and then she was spooning a pale, almost yellowy green substance from the jar onto the bread. It was thick, but not so thick that it wouldn’t flow down the sides of the bread onto his plate, and it contained tiny, crisp pieces of tart apple, some of them still wearing shreds of skin. Even before he tasted it, something told him that this was a moment never to be repeated or forgotten.
At his first bite the day fused: sunshine, temperate and kind; the sea; the beautiful gypsy with wrists on hips, still talking like the wisest professor who ever lived; warm bread, the sugary tartness of the jam: all these things came together inside Raful to make a memory.
Lebanon.
When at last he stood up, fumbling for money, he thought he had not tingled thus with happiness for a long, long time. Already, though, the moment was fading into history. He got into his car, started the engine. And as swiftly as it had flowered, the moment left him.
Like any successful Lebanese on a pilgrimage to Beirut he stayed at the huge twin-towered Phoenicia Hotel, with its long escalator and panoramic sea views. He checked in, freshened up, and by eleven-thirty he was ready.
He found the Queen Café in the Ras Beirut district, opposite the American University. While he waited for his coffee he read the papers, listening with half an ear to conversations at nearby tables: talk of nightclubs on Hamra Street, waterskiing beneath the Pigeon Rocks, politics, politics, politics, sex, money, politics. Also, something called “Jordanization.”
“What is Jordanization?” he asked innocently, when his contact came, punctual to the second.
“What people here want—the kind of armed showdown with the PLO that Hussein pulled off. No, thank you, I won’t take anything. Shall we go?”
Raful hadn’t met this man before, but reputation—
ai!
Ehud Chafets headed one of two Wrath of God teams that the Mossad had successfully infiltrated into Lebanon. He had directed the highly effective, much publicized neutralization of three Palestinian leaders here the spring before. He was thirty-two and almost bald, with a skimpy beard: hardly your typical sabra hardman to look at. In his open-necked shirt and thick trousers held up by a belt so old that the leather could only be described as crack-colored, he looked like a Beiruti bus driver on his day off. Which was exactly how he should look, Raful thought approvingly.
“Will it happen?” he mused, as they waited for a cab. “Will the Lebanese ever drive out the PLO?”
Chafets shrugged. “Given time. And a little help. Jordanization is very popular here.”
He took Raful to a modest 1950s three-story apartment building in the narrow rue Emile Edde, not far from the Commodore Hotel. As he paid off the cab Raful stood in the road, looking up at the façade while he matched Ehud’s apartment with the photograph he’d been shown before leaving Tel Aviv. Each window had its set of long-ago varnished pine shutters. Ehud’s were half open, and again he approved. A secretive man might keep his secrets, but he would be noted, whereas one with nothing to hide went unremarked.
There was no lift. Ehud led the way up the stairs. By the time they reached the top landing he already had his key in his hand—only one key, one lock, here was a man with nothing to hide, remember—and from the way he guided them silently into the apartment Raful knew that this routine, seemingly so artless, had been polished until it shone.
“It’s safe, my coming here?” he murmured, as Ehud went around, checking for signs of intrusion.
“Safe. I have lots of visitors. People expect it; they like things to go on in the same old way.”
He indicated that Raful should sit at a coffee table placed in the center of a living room skimpily furnished in nondescript style. On the table he put a large radio, which he tuned to an Arab music station. Then he toured the room, arranging things to his liking: windows three-quarters closed but shutters still open, doors firmly shut, electric fan on. Once satisfied, he went over to a metal desk set beside the largest window and unlocked it. From this he took a map of greater Beirut and a small cloth bag that rattled as he carried it back to the coffee table.
He sat close to Raful on a sofa, spreading out the map so that both men could see it, then opening the bag. It contained brass chessmen.
“Six,” he said tersely. “Excluding myself.” He placed two bishops close together on the map. “Here"—pointing to the bishops—"on the Kuwaiti embassy traffic circle … overlooking Shatila from the west. There’s an apartment block, owned by the Lebanese army. We can use it; no problem.”
Ehud removed the two kings from his bag and sited them on another intersection. “Avenue Jamal … with Shatila camp on the left.” He tapped the map. “This is the important one, Raful. On the west, Hassan; to the south, Khalde and the airport. Two-lane highway, dead straight, perfect if you’ve got a plane to catch. Ninety people out of every hundred heading for the airport take this road.”
“And the other ten?”
“Ah! The other ten we take care of … here.” Two knights, farther south. “This road by Burj al-Barajinah camp … and the one below it also.” Two rooks were added to the map: six chessmen in all. “But it would mean a long detour, and Feisal Hanif likes shortcuts, because he’s got more enemies than the state of Israel. That big intersection, that’s where the action’s going to be. I’m telling you.”
Raful studied the map for a few moments. “What’s the terrain like?”
“Near the airport, sand dune, scrub, some pine. The Palestine refugee camps, of course. You ever seen them?” Raful shook his head.
“They’re a mess. Concrete blocks, alleys, corrugated iron: paint your own picture. If my boys have to run for it, that’s where they’ll run.”
“Seriously?”
“A dog couldn’t track a skunk in there.” Raful was silent for a while. Then he said, “The Avenue Jamal intersection … that’s where you’ll take her?” “I’d bet half my pension.”
It was the “half that convinced Raful. “All right,” he said. “That’s where I want to be.”
Ehud swept his pieces from the map and folded it up. Something about the way he did it suggested to Raful that his silence should not be taken as acquiescence; there was more to say.
“They told me you wanted observer status,” Ehud said. “They should have told you I’d
earned
observer status.”
“It’s true.” Ehud stood up, shifted restlessly to and fro, now not looking at Raful, now subjecting him to a baleful stare. “Without your intelligence, we’d not have found her.”
Without Avshalom, God bless him, Raful was thinking, no one would. (Now that the ban on this operation had been overturned, Gazit was reinstated in Sharett’s mind as “Avshalom.”)
“Listen to me, Raful.” Ehud had come to stand very close. “I run my house here. Nobody tells me what to do, how to do it. I don’t have any … ‘observers’ on my teams.”
Raful looked Ehud in the eye. “I understand,” he said softly. “So you’d better find me a gun, hadn’t you?”
If he was being totally honest with himself he’d have admitted to doubts then. Not because he’d had second thoughts about Leila Hanif, but simply because he respected Ehud Chafets and didn’t want him compromised or harmed. Two days later, however, sitting in the front seat of an electric-blue Mercedes parked off the slip road south of the Avenue Jamal overpass, his doubts were all resolved. Perhaps it had to do with the 9mm Uzi he was cradling in his hands, for its warm wooden stock was a comfort to him. Ehud had offered him the choice between a 32- and a 40-round magazine, and he’d chosen the 40-round model without a second thought.
The two “bishops” were in the Lebanese army’s apartment block, overlooking Shatila from the west. To the south of the Avenue Jamal intersection, two “knights” watched from an alleyway leading to Burj al-Barajinah refugee camp, while below them a pair of “rooks” kept vigil by the last crossroads before the airport. They had everything covered: every possibility, every last square on the board.
Chafets and Sharett were the “kings.”
The radio bleeped. Ehud picked up the portable transceiver. “Yes?”
A babble of gobbledegook followed. Code. “They’re leaving,” Ehud said laconically. “Two cars. Black BMWs. Family’s in the front one.”
“How long before they get here?”
Ehud looked at his watch. Twelve forty-four. “Half an hour, maybe less. Lunchtime traffic.”
Raful stared through the windshield. They were parked on the shoulder, facing toward the airport. Ahead of him stretched the highway, its two lanes separated by a narrow concrete barrier and a line of shrubs, shimmering in the noonday heat. If he moved his head slightly left he could see pine woods rooted in tracts of red sand, with occasional white villas dotting the Chouf’s mauve and green slopes. On the right, Hay al-Sellum, a hodgepodge of slums blocking their view of the nearby sea. Traffic was thin to medium, moving fast. Everything covered, no problem.
The radio beeped again. More code. Ehud said, “Coming our way.” He wiped his nose with the back of his hand, not looking at Raful, not saying, See, I told you so. Raful smiled to himself and set his Uzi to automatic.
The cars they drove today had been supplied as one small part of a big murky deal with the Kata’ib, the Phalangists. Each team had a backup vehicle parked within fifty meters of its present position, so that wherever the hit took place there would be a getaway car within easy reach. They had worked endlessly on the permutations: if the bishops struck lucky, the kings would move
thus
while the knights traveled
so
to liaise with the rooks
there …
everything, every last tiny detail, covered: left, right, center, straight up.
False passports, covered. New license plates, covered. Change of clothing, check. Routes to the border with Israel, surveyed one hour before. Fall-back: Damascus road, red emergencies only, clear, open.
Twelve fifty-three. The stock of the Uzi felt wet to Raful’s touch and slightly sticky. He rubbed it with his hand; then, still not satisfied, with a paper tissue. Everything covered but unable to handle his gun,
clean it again.
Twelve fifty-five. The first prickle of doubt tingled along the base of Raful’s neck. They weren’t coming.
“Patience.”
Ehud had read his mind, then? Or was he saying “Patience” as a way of calming his own nerves, of reassuring himself that they were in fact coming, that nothing had been overlooked?