Zvi studied him. "You're bluffing. She didn't say anything."
"Have it your way. But you know better. The women always squeal."
Another glare.
"It's true. They get lighter sentences, the courts are more disposed toward them. We point this out. Then, if they're smart, and most of them are, they do what they have to do. When the chips are down people always think about themselves."
"Bastard!"
"Don't be pissed at me, Zvi. I didn't do anything. I wasn't even looking for you. You trusted her, she squawked. Seems to me that's more your fault than mine." David shook his head again. "Georgie folded fast. Why shouldn't she? She knows Aaron doesn't give a damn about her, just uses her as something nice to fuck. Give Hannah credit. She cares for you but in the end she made the intelligent move. Now it's your turn. Are you bright enough to take it? I wonder if you are. I got odds from the other guys that you'll be the final hold-out, that, in the end, you'll be the one who burns...."
A half hour more of this kind of merciless talk and Zvi was trying desperately to hold back his tears.
"…maybe you
can
help us," David said. "You don't have to betray anyone. There's another abandoned house on the opposite slope. Bad stuff going on in there a couple of months ago. People coming and going, mostly late at night. Did you see anything? If you did, and you tell me about it ...well, maybe, we can work a deal."
A pause while Zvi calculated. He spoke tentatively at first. "We thought they were cops."
"Really?
Why?"
"I don't know. Aaron thought so. He said it was something about the way they moved."
"So?"
"So
we laid low a while. We watched them."
"And?"
"We decided they weren't cops."
"So then what did you do?"
"We thought they might be a rival group using the place occasionally to do a trade."
"Did you go over there?"
"Aaron did. Got spooked too. Wanted us to move. But then…well, we decided to stick around. And after that they didn't come back."
David watched him. "There's something you're not telling me, Zvi."
"He followed them."
"Who?"
"Aaron."
"How?"
"On his scooter."
"Where?"
"To a private house."
David tried not to let his excitement show. "Which house?"
Zvi shrugged. "You'll have to ask him. He didn't say."
T
he simplest cleanest deals are always best. When David put it to Aaron, he let him know there'd be no compromise: "So far no one knows we've picked you up. We haven't contacted the Narc Unit and if you work with us we won't. The four of you go free. We never met you, we don't know you and, frankly, we don't ever want to see you again. Naturally we keep the pistols. In return you show us where you followed the people from that ruin across the gorge. That's it. Take it or leave it, tough guy. You got one minute to make up your mind...."
55
Lover of Zion Street. One of the best buildings on perhaps the best street in residential Jerusalem. David knew it well; it was just a block from his father's old house on Disraeli. He'd passed it hundreds of times when he was growing up.
An elegant, subdivided, four-story building with two entrances and an attached garage. An ornate wrought iron wall facing the street with a perfectly trimmed privet hedge behind. A gate for pedestrians and a second bigger one for cars. A small garden built around a mature jacaranda whose spreading branches cut the moonlight that fell upon carefully manicured beds of flowers.
He turned to Aaron. "So what did you see?"
"One guy got out, opened the gate. Then the other drove in the van. The first locked up again."
"How long did you wait?"
"About a minute."
They didn't see you?"
"My scooter's very quiet."
"That's it? Nothing else?"
Aaron shook his head.
David looked at him, reached out, grasped hold of his hair, pulled him close, and stared into his eyes. "Don't ever pack a pistol again." He pushed him away. Then Dov pulled him out of the car and shoved him from behind.
"Leave Jerusalem," David called after him. "Tell the others. You're finished here. All of you. We see you again we feed you to the narcs."
He had dropped Dov off at Gillo, was back now in Abu Tor cruising En Rogel Street, searching for a place to park. He found one up the block, locked the car, then walked back slowly toward number sixteen. It was 4
A.M.
He was aware, at last, of his exhaustion. He was filthy from the stake-out, sweaty from half a night spent in humid interrogation rooms. He'd been up twenty-four hours straight, talking with Peretz, crawling around a deserted Arab village, breaking down a gang of drug dealers, and now, finding his thinking scattered and slow, he
longed for uninterrupted sleep.
He paused at the front door of his building trying to recall the combination. Three-three-five-something. He hesitated. The dogs ...he didn't hear the neighborhood dogs which always barked when he came home late.
A squeaking sound, like a car door being opened. He had a bad feeling as he turned back toward the street. The cars all looked familiar, cars of people in his building and of neighbors who lived on either side. Then, when he noticed the boxlike silhouette of the large dark van parked on the other side, saw that its side panel door was open, realized he'd driven past it and then passed it again on foot just seconds before, he cursed and dove for the bushes beside the stoop. A second later there erupted the sounds of war.
Burp!-burp!-burp! Burp!-burp!-burp!
Submachine-gun fire ripped across the front of number sixteen biting out little chips of stone. It ripped back again, lower this time, stitching the masonry just above his head. The dogs started to bark, all of them, at once. Chips fell on him as he drew his pistol and started firing back. Something hot touched his cheek. Wild barking. Another burst of fire. He saw sparks coming from the dark open back compartment of the van, then a figure crashing out headfirst onto the street. The panel door slammed shut. The engine started. The van peeled off toward the corner. It squealed as it turned left at the Ariel Hotel, then roared its way south along Hevron, fading finally until the only sound left was the desperate mad cacophony of the dogs.
Lights came on in the building next door. David heard windows being opened. When he glanced up at his own apartment, he saw the old lady who lived on the floor above leaning over her balcony staring down at him, worry and fascination on her face. It was a familiar expression; he'd seen it many times: fright and curiosity and also something else, that strange twist of the mouth that his father called "the guilty grimace of the survivor."
He pulled himself out of the shrubbery, went to the intercom, buzzed Anna, then touched his burning cheek. He licked his finger and tasted blood. A small piece of stone had cut his face.
"David! What happened?"
"An ambush. Don't worry, Anna. I'm fine. I really am. Please call Rafi for me. Ask him to come over and ask him to send a crew."
He walked slowly back into En Rogel Street toward the place where the van had been parked. He was looking for the figure he thought he'd seen crash out of the back of the van. In the shadow of another car he saw the form of a man lying face down on the pavement. He drew closer, observed large bloody tears in his shirt and that his hands were handcuffed behind his back. He studied him a while, then crouched and touched his neck. Stiff and cold. He turned him over. For a moment he didn't recognize him—features slack, face drained, the edge of anger gone, Peretz looked like any middle-aged Israeli male, eyes sad and woeful, who'd been dead for several hours.
Precisely at noon, all five permanent members of Pattern Crimes hit 55 Lover of Zion Street hard. Shoshana and Micha, on instructions from David, went straight for the garage. There they found a dark blue Chevrolet van. It was empty but the key was in the ignition. Shoshana started it, backed it up fast, but before she could get it out to the street, two men ran toward her, waving Shin Bet IDs. They blocked the driveway and, when Micha Benyamani ordered them to move, shoved him aside, then shut and padlocked the driveway gate.
It was a stand-off in the ground floor apartment too. When David burst in with Uri and Dov, they found two men and an attractive young woman in a minimally furnished office. One of the men, stocky and bearded, was speaking on the phone; the other, young and muscle-bound, was flirting with the woman who sat typing at one of the desks.
When the bearded man saw them he snapped some kind of alert to his caller, hung up, and faced David with a sneer.
"Out of bounds here, policeman. This is a Security Services squad."
"Over against the wall. All three of you—hands behind your heads. You're under arrest."
Nobody moved. The two men exchanged a look. The girl peered around nervously.
"We're Shin Bet, asshole," the bearded man said. "Get your people out of here."
"Who the fuck you calling asshole?" Uri asked.
"He tries anything, Uri, kick him in the balls."
"Your oaf kicks anyone I'm shooting off his foot." The younger man had drawn a pistol. The beard stepped forward and planted his feet apart.
"Your illustrious career has just ended, Bar-Lev. Nobody messes with us. Especially no stinking cops."
Uri continued toward him. The beard held his ground. "We stink, huh?"
"Take pictures," David ordered. Then he picked up the phone.
While he spoke to Rafi, and Dov brought out his camera, Uri turned suddenly on the younger man, flipped him onto his back, disarmed him, and cuffed his wrists. The girl screamed. The beard attacked Dov, trying to rip the camera from his hands. Uri jumped on him from behind. When the beard, too, was subdued and cuffed and the girl had obeyed their order, placing her hands behind her head, Dov took careful mug shots of the three of them, then went outside and took more portraits of the goons blockading the gate.
Ephraim Cohen arrived first. Rafi, who'd used a squad car with a siren, was only seconds behind. Their confrontation took place in the driveway. David, who now had the two Shin Bet men sitting back-to-back, listened from the door.
"She's not taking that van," Ephraim warned.
"She's taking it," Rafi said. "And my forensic guys are going over it."
Shoshana sat smiling in the driver's seat; she'd locked herself inside.
"Listen, Shahar," Cohen said, trying to strike a reasonable tone, "you don't bust in on us. If you think you've got good cause, go to a judge and get a warrant. Until then pull your people out."
"I don't need a warrant, not when my top unit chief is ambushed."
Cohen stared at Rafi with withering scorn. "My guys get ambushed all the time."
"We think it was a couple of your goons."
"You think!"
"What are you afraid of, Cohen?"
"You're on my turf, Shahar. Get off of it."
"You've got no 'turf.' "
"Oh no? We'll see."
They came inside together to use the phone after agreeing that their respective bosses would have to talk.
"Why the handcuffs?" Cohen asked.
Rafi nodded to David, who nodded to Uri, who unlocked the cuffs and set the two men loose. As soon as Uri stepped back the beard lunged for him. Uri kicked him in the shins. He howled. The girl screamed again.
"Control your creeps!" Rafi yelled. Ephraim Cohen herded the three of them out the door. Then, while Rafi phoned District Superintendent Latsky, Ephraim approached David with a smile.
"Last time we met I did you a favor."
"Yeah, you set up Peretz."
"That was a good tip, David."
"So why did you kill him? Is that what you do when one of your crummy operations falls apart?"
Rafi motioned David aside.
"Don't insult him. You shouldn't have done it like this. You should have checked with me."
"I would have, Rafi, but if we'd gone for a warrant they'd have heard about it and buried the van."
"
Cohen's calling Levin, a big-shot colonel. We may be in more trouble than you think."
"This is Jerusalem."
"So what? Can we bust IDF Intelligence? Can Shin Bet bust the Russian Compound? This is their territory, David. Busting in here puts us in the wrong."
"We've got pictures now."
"You're still going to need that van."
"If one of these guys was 'Hurwitz' and Amit Nissim identifies him…."
"They'll tear her apart."
"There's the clerk at the photo store."
"Not enough, David." Rafi shook his head. "With people like this, nowhere near enough."