He went to Rafi, laid out the case, explained why he thought the worst was yet to come:
"Okay, Peretz is a fruitcake. But now I think his crazy forger theory is correct. My symposium idea was good, but not that good—it was a shot in the dark, not an airtight trap. So a certain 'friend,' whom Peretz refuses to name, a guy he trusts who stuck with him when times were tough, tips him off there's a killer using his signature and there's going to be an open discussion at the Rubin Academy about what this killer might be like. Naturally Peretz goes. But we don't notice him. He sits there and listens like a normal member of the audience. Then five days later someone in a dark blue van picks up Yael Safir at the Ben Gurion hitching stop, and just about the time she's being killed and dumped I'm meeting a guy named Ephraim Cohen, who just happens to have been a friend of my brother, and who works for one of the covert services, or so he says. Ephraim wants to pass along a tip about Peretz from an unnamed source whom he claims was helping us in that Mossad-owned video truck. So we go after Peretz, he's a logical suspect, and if he hadn't gone to Egypt we might still be trying to break him down. You see, Rafi—it's much too slick. Peretz is tipped off about the symposium, he goes, and then I'm tipped off that he was there."
"You think this guy, Cohen—?
"Yeah, I think he's part of it. Wanted me to think he was Mossad, but I checked him out and it turns out he's Shin Bet. Which means his story about passing on a 'tip' from the video technician was bullshit, something he made up to sucker me in."
"What about the ambush at the zoo? How did they find out that you were onto them?"
"Our inquiry about Hurwitz—that must have triggered the alarm. When they heard I was asking about their cop-who-didn't-exist, they realized I was getting close. Which means, far as I'm concerned, that they're wired in here too."
Rafi tensed up. "That's a pretty awful suggestion, David. Hard to go along with it unless you bring me proof."
"Oh, I'll be bringing you proof, you know that. For now it's just a theory."
"Awful...."
"Why resist it? You're always bitching about corruption. Now, faced with the possibility of a really supreme example of official rot, why do you want to turn away?"
"Look, dammit—!" Rafi was angry.
"You look! Everyone knows Shin Bet has murdered prisoners. Everyone knows about Mossad assassination squads. A superpatriot like Peretz recruits violent sociopaths to staff out his counter-terror squad. High embassy officials in Washington recruit American Jews to spy on their own government. So how come, when I mention the possibility this thing could reach in here, you suddenly lock up your mind? Why, Rafi? What's so damn sacred about the cops? We're the garbage men, remember. So maybe we stink a little too."
Rafi sat stiff in his chair. David was glad Sara Dorfman wasn't in the room. "Remember that girl I was going with last fall?"
"The American
shikse.
Yeah. I never liked her."
"She's an agent."
"They all are."
"She gets into the sack with people in the cabinet."
"What's that got to do—?"
"She tried to warn me off. Said she heard I was up to my ass in something big and that if I kept on the way I was going I could end up getting hurt. I'm telling you, Rafi, this thing feels big, feels like it's getting ready to explode. I'm telling you that, now, up front, and that I don't like being set up for a shoot, and I don't like being shot at, and that I'm following this wherever it goes. There've been murders, innocent people killed, and no matter what the reason turns out to be, it's not going to be anywhere good enough. Not for me."
BIG SUR.
TWO MONTHS BEFORE…
They'd just rolled away the scaffolding. The enlargers, a crew of Italians from San Francisco, were busy packing up their gear.
"She's begging now," Rokovsky said.
"So let her beg," Targov replied.
"It's so pathetic. I wish you'd relent. Maybe just this once."
Targov stood, his dogs crouching by his heels, surveying the big sculpture. His second model, the one one-third human scale, was dwarfed now by the full-sized piece.
He glanced at Rokovsky, so stern and gaunt. Pale and skeletal, he looked his part as
homme de confiance.
" I know just what she'll say if I let her in: 'So big, Sasha. I had no idea! But perhaps a little grand, don't you think?
Not pretentious. The Great Form-Giver could never be! But maybe just a trifle...hmmm. .. . fancy? Grandiose?' "
"Since you know what she's going to say, what difference does it make?"
"It brings me down, Tola. I'm feeling really good just now."
He moved slowly to the large window, trailed by the dogs, then turned back suddenly to confront the work.
"Big impact," he said. "Good shadows, especially in full light. Very strong, but California light, Pacific light—how much different will the light be there?"
"We don't know. Not yet. No way to calculate. A couple of days smoothing and it'll be ready for the foundry. By the way, I'm driving up to Palo Alto in the morning. Please make sure the car's gassed up. Better arrange for a truck too, and contact our friends at the Israeli Consulate. I want them to see the piece before it's cast."
He gazed again at the enormous overpowering thing he'd wrought. He'd never done anything like it, had had no notion such an image had been harbored in his brain. Part human, part abstract, it would rise, "The Righteous Martyr," a black bronze vision from a black basalt pedestal, his signature against the sky.
At midnight, a pounding on the door. The dogs leapt, then turned to him, their shaggy slobbering faces inquiring whether they should bark. For four months he'd been living in the studio, sleeping on his day bed, eating at his workbench, rarely venturing to the main house. No distractions, just work sixteen hours a day, his only recreation once-a-week fucking sessions with Maureen. Recently she'd taken to dressing up in black silk underwear, then prancing in time to Polish marches while he sat watching from her moldy couch, his cock a cylinder of steel.
It was Irina. He recognized her style: fierce pounding alternated with whimpers. He went to the door. "All right. I hear you. What do you want?"
"Can't sleep, Sasha. Why are you so cruel? I want to see it. Please...."
When it's finished—I told you."
"Oh, now. Please. Please...."
Christ! She's impossible!
He opened the door, she inserted her foot, and then, when he saw her face, he knew he'd been suckered once again.
"Not a word," he warned her.
"
A quick glance from here. Then out! Back to the house! I'm exhausted. I need my sleep."
She nodded to assure him she agreed and that she understood his artist's temperament. He opened the door all the way and then stepped back. She stared at the sculpture. He stared at her. "It's so big, Sasha. And so—"
He brought his finger to his lips. "Shut up!"
She clamped her mouth, then suddenly brought up her hand to shield her eyes. "Oh no!"
"What's the matter?"
She was frightened. "The face!"
"What about it?
What?"
"It's him!"
"Who?"
"Sergei, Sasha. Sergei. Just as he was then. But suffering, suffering so, the boot on his neck, his face ground down into the dust...."
Today Rokovsky was bringing the Israelis—he must greet, present, explain, persuade. He would pay for everything, the casting and the pedestal. But in return he would demand a major site.
Jerusalem.
He had never been there but for weeks he'd poured over photographs and maps. He had a vision of it: capital city of the world, central city, the world's heart. City of martyrs, temples, passions, crucifixions, dreams, redemptions, and now an enormous garden embellished with works of art. He had created "The Righteous Martyr" especially for this place. His journey there, accompanying the work, would be his chance to put the tortured past to rest.
While he groped for the phone Anna turned over and faced the other way.
"Yeah?" He glanced at his watch. It was a little past 2
A.M.
"Got him!"
"What?" As he blinked and tried to clear his brain, David realized he was speaking to Peretz. "Been looking for you. Where've you been?"
"Got him. One of my old boys. Questioning him all night. Don't think he's going to last."
David sat up. "What the hell are you talking about?"
"Guy who did the killings. So far he's confessed that much. Funny thing though—says he wasn't trying to pin them on me. Seems it was lack of imagination, old habits die hard. He used our old unit signature because he couldn't think up a new one on his own."
No, that's wrong...
"
…
took a lot to get that out of him, and that he was hired, the executioner. Thing is, Bar-Lev, much as he doesn't like the pain, and he doesn't . . ." Peretz must have turned his receiver to the room, because now David could hear some kind of whimpering in the background. "...still he'd rather suffer than tell me who's behind this and what it's all about."
"You're crazy!"
Anna turned and buried her face in her pillow. David cupped his hand over the mouthpiece, got out of bed, and carried the phone into the kitchen.
"Listen carefully, Peretz. You can't do this by yourself. If he dies on you, you'll be a murderer. Stop right now, tell me where you are, and we'll handle this the proper way."
A pause, and then a weary: "You don't understand—he was one of my boys." David shook his head: the old insanity. "I trained him and now he's let me down. I've got the right to waste him if I want."
"Tell me where you are.
There's stuff going on here that you don't know about. Who tipped you off about the Rubin seminar?"
"Never mind that shit. Check this out. Mei Naftoah. There's a restaurant there, at the end of the road."
"Yeah, I know it. Eat there all the time."
What a maniac!
"Listen
,
Peretz, you were set—"
"...down the slope, below the third house from the end. Smashed-in roof, but there're a couple rooms left intact. He says that's where he killed them. There ought to be some evidence. Says the victims were brought to him there, he cut them, then the people who brought them took their bodies away. Says he worked over the nun when she was still alive but the rest of them he killed right off. Oh, oh ...he's moaning again." David heard the moans. "Got to get back to work. I'll call you around seven, see how you made out."
"He's lying, Peretz. You
were
set up."
But the line was already dead.
A strange place, Mei Naftoah, especially at night. The west side of Jerusalem suddenly ends, there's a gas station etched in orange neon, then a large dense housing project, five bleak buildings on a ledge, hulking silhouettes against the sky. Below the ledge a steep incline, then a rocky slope crisscrossed with ancient terraces. On this slope there are remnants of an Arab village, a few old stone houses abandoned at the time of Independence. Beyond are the Judean hills.
An occasional olive tree, a cave, discarded broken-up tractor tires, a few burned-out rusting husks of cars. David found the place mesmerizing; he sensed a haunting desolation. The Iraqi-Jewish restaurant where he and Dov had lunched, where he'd first broached his theory of "hidden symmetry," was an oasis at the end of this narrow twisting dusty path.
A light mist filled the valley. From out in the hills the howls of jackals. He smelled wood smoke, perhaps from a Bedouin camp. The air was so still he could hear Liederman strike a match a hundred meters behind where they'd left him to stand guard on the road.
Dov was at his side. Uri had gone ahead to find the house. Shoshana trailed carrying their radio. Micha was on night duty, watching the house of Amit Nissim.
"David, I'm going down," Uri called to them. He'd said he'd heard these old houses were sometimes used by hikers seeking shelter and by narcotics dealers as places to stash supplies of dope. David saw the beam of Uri's flashlight play upon a narrow passage of old stone stairs. Third house from the end, Peretz had said. When he and Dov reached the third house they found both walls were open. They walked through, then followed Uri to the house below, the one with the smashed-in roof.
Charred beams hung above them, black bars cutting across the gray night sky.
"In here," Uri said. "Doesn't smell too good." Dov probed the ruin with his flashlight, fixed it on a doorway.
"He mentioned a couple rooms left intact," David said. Then he moved forward, afraid of what he was going to find, part of him wishing he wouldn't find it, hoping Peretz was wrong.
Immediately he heard the flies, hundreds, thousands, he thought. The buzzing stunned him, angry, like a roar; he wanted to shut it out, press his hands against his ears. The smell was bad too, sweet putrescence, a rot both luscious and corrupt. Uri and Dov played their flashlights upon the walls, then their beams converged in one of the corners. The flies were there, clustered, picking and licking at splash marks on the stones and an old decaying mattress half torn up and
stained.