City of Secrets (12 page)

“Take the old road,” Gideon said.

It would be harder on the car, plus they'd look suspicious, Brand wanted to protest, but slowed and eased the front wheels down over the lip of the pavement onto the rocky hardpan, the suspension juddering. The Romans had built the road, and no one had fixed it since. Ditches ran on both sides. He kept to the crown, deeply incised by the spring rains. Every so often the nose of the car dropped into a trough, pitching them forward. Gideon braced himself against the dash. In back Fein clutched the valise to his lap. Brand supposed that after the Lydda fiasco, Asher had packed the charges himself. Brand understood. You could trust others only so far.

He thought the target would be in Jericho, a local armory or provincial court, but they kept going, skirting the town limits, angling north along the border across the salt flats, following a road impassable any other season. Behind him Yellin coughed as if he'd swallowed something wrong. Victor thumped his back and Fein laughed.

“I'm all right,” Yellin said. “Stop.”

“Enough,” Gideon said.

There were no trains out here, no British installations, only the sluggish river on their right, the banks lined with thirsty willows and tamarisks. They weren't far from the Franciscan
chapel commemorating John's baptism of Jesus, always good for a few pictures. Dead south of them, on the main road, the Allenby Bridge was modern, guarded by a manned blockhouse, the span marking the gateway to Trans-Jordan. Here, where the river was a trickle, there was only an ancient stone arch used by goatherds whose loyalties were tribal. In the morning they drove their goats into Palestine, and in the evening drove them back again without visa.

“Slow down,” Gideon said, checking his watch, confirming Brand's guess.

The bridge might have had a troll living beneath it. Over the centuries, generations of masons had slapped mortar over the stones haphazardly, giving the walls the appearance of lumpy stucco. Brand clenched his jaw and was glad for the darkness. For this they risked their lives?

“Keep it running,” Gideon said, getting out.

The rest followed, leaving their doors open to the cool night air.

Brand dimmed his lights. The engine chugged, the low idle providing cover for anyone who might be sneaking up on him. It was just nerves. They were alone out here—no patrols, no bandits lurking in the shadows, nothing but hoofprints and dung, the sewer-like stink of the river. By electric torchlight, Fein set the valise on the ground and divvied up the charges. Gideon and Victor crossed to the east bank. Fein and Yellin ducked under the near side. For a moment Brand couldn't see any of them, and then Gideon and Victor came loping back over the bridge, their faces floating ghostly in the darkness. Fein and Yellin returned and took their places again, Fein resting the valise on his knees.

“Everything good?” Gideon asked.

“Everything's good,” Fein said.

“Okay,” Gideon told Brand, and he hit the lights and started off.

It was faster coming back. Now that he knew the road, he could push the car harder. A moth thumped the windshield, leaving a powdery smudge.

“We've got lots of time,” Gideon said, and Brand slowed.
We
. Had he passed the test? But he'd done nothing.

Against instinct, he held back, rocking along, anticipating the blast in his rearview mirror. The British would call curfew and throw up roadblocks. He'd have to drop everyone in the desert and take his chances. Maybe the test was just being there, one of them again. He didn't have to be a hero. He was a driver. He drove.

They went on across the salt plain, retracing their own tracks, sneaking past sleepy Jericho. Asher must have used a timer. As with the substation, Brand never heard the charges go off. Sooner than expected they reached the main road and turned for Jerusalem, cruising over the smooth asphalt, racing the moon. For miles the highway was empty, the first set of headlights a shock, as if they'd been caught—a semi headed for the potash works. Beside him, Gideon slipped his gun into his pocket.

They didn't go back to Yemin Moshe. Gideon had him drop him and Victor off in Sheikh Jarrah, an Arab neighborhood north of the city that Brand visited only to fill up on cheap gas. Fein and Yellin he let off in Rehavia, not far from the high school.

“Long live Eretz Israel,” they said.

“Long live Eretz Israel.”

Alone again, he switched on the radio, hoping to hear news from Jericho, and wasn't surprised there was nothing. Asher himself had taught him. A clock could be set for twelve hours.

When he pulled in the drive, Mrs. Ohanesian's lights were off. His flat was an oven, and he stayed up late, sitting at his window, sipping, going over his strange night—driving through the moonlit desert with Gideon to blow up a goat bridge. In the morning it had the feeling of a dream, until the Voice of Fighting Zion proclaimed a great victory. In a coordinated strike, fighters had destroyed a dozen bridges on the borders of their Arab neighbors, including the main rail link to Syria. Eleven members of the Stern Gang had given their lives. As with the train, Brand realized the importance of their mission only after the fact. Now he was proud, when, waiting for them to set the charges, he'd been chary, unsure why they were there, and again he reproached himself for being so cautious, as if he might change his nature.

That afternoon in Tel Aviv, the Irgun stormed a British officers' club, absconding with five hostages. The army called curfew and cordoned off the city.

Eva said she didn't know anything about the bridge job.

“That's good,” she said. “Everyone's being careful.”

“I guess,” Brand said. “I like to know what I'm doing.”

“It's nice that you get to choose. Not like the rest of us.”

“All I'm asking for is a little warning.”

“I don't think you're in a position to ask for anything.”

“Don't I know it.” Neither are you, he might have said, thanks to him.

He stayed the night, listening to her sleep, the combined heat of them making him sweat where he draped an arm over her. He'd become used to Katya visiting him here, in her rival's bed, looked forward to it like a favorite dream. Now when she didn't come, he had to conjure her from memory, a trick that grew harder and harder, contaminated as it was by his visions of Crow Forest, the naked dead piled like so many hog carcasses. He considered it a failure on his part that he could barely hear her voice anymore, as if he were purposely forgetting her.

In the morning the sheets smelled of perfume and he didn't want to leave. In her housecoat, Eva made him breakfast, teasing that she was going back to sleep. The Mandate radio said the terrorists had condemned the kidnapped men to death.

“Naturally,” Brand said.

“They have to know we're serious.”

“I think they know by now.”

“They hang our people for less.”

On that point he couldn't argue, and yet, likely because he'd been a prisoner, he refused to accept execution as a weapon. But that was war, wasn't it, a contest of executions? In this case he expected the threat was defensive. “I think we're trying to set up a trade.”

“They have to know we'll go through with it.”

“Of course.” Because even in their depleted cell, the will was there. If not Asher, then Gideon or Victor or whoever killed Lipschitz. Again, though he knew better, he had trouble
imagining a Jew without mercy. Softhearted Brand, the eternal greenhorn. Why did he think his people, of all God's tribes, were exempt?

While Tel Aviv was shut down, in Jerusalem traffic moved freely. Around the Old City the British stood watch, Airborne troops massed at checkpoints as if waiting for a signal. In the late afternoon it came, and they barricaded the gates with barbed wire and armored cars. News ricocheted through the queue. Another officer had been kidnapped, taken in broad daylight from the new city center, chloroformed and shoved in a taxi, a Panama hat stuck on his head. Immediately Brand thought of Pincus, an easy leap he later had to retract. The cab had been stolen, found abandoned in the Bukharan Quarter. The radio identified the victim as a Major H. P. Chadwick, married, the father of two. Before the evening call to prayer, the Irgun broadcast his death sentence.

With the Old City and the western suburbs cut off, Brand retreated to the Damascus Gate, picking up fares at the bus station, fitting their luggage in the trunk. The buses from Nablus and Ramallah and Jericho were running, but the British were stopping everything from the west. Arabs didn't tip, and once night had fallen, the neighborhoods north of the city were dangerous. After his dinner of falafel, he used the call box to check in with Greta. He had a pickup in Sheikh Jarrah, a Mr. Grossman.

“Yes,” Brand said. “I know him.”

It wasn't Fein, as he'd expected, but Victor, waiting on the cobbled drive of a gated villa.

“Get out of the car,” the Frenchman said.

“Why?” Brand asked, but there was no sense protesting.

“Turn around.”

Brand stood still as a man being fitted for a suit as Victor tied a blindfold over his eyes, then covered his head with a bag-like hood.

“Duck,” Victor said, palming Brand's skull, and folded him into the backseat.

Sightless, suffocating inside the musty hood, Brand braced himself as they rumbled down the drive and swung right. To confuse him, Victor turned into the side streets, executing a series of rights and lefts, making Brand grab the seat back. He wished he knew the area better, though soon enough they straightened out, cruising over a smooth road, speeding up, the engine laboring before Victor finally shifted to third. Brand counted the seconds as if he might re-create the directions later. The farther they went without slowing, the more convinced he was they were going north on the Nablus Road, into the desert. He was even more certain when they braked and pulled off onto the rocky shoulder. They sat like that for a minute, and then Brand heard a second engine approaching, and the telltale crunch of another car pulling in behind them, and people getting out.

The door beside Brand opened, letting in the night air. Someone took his elbow and pulled him out, bumping his head, instantly giving him a headache. He bent at the waist to keep his feet as they marched him to the other car. Even through the hood, the interior stank of clove oil, a common
deodorizer around the garage, and again he thought of Pincus. The driver said nothing, just drove. Behind them Brand could hear the Peugeot, its familiar purr a comfort.

They were taking him to see Asher, he figured, or maybe the Old Man himself, flushed from Tel Aviv by the crackdown. He understood the precautions but not why he alone had been summoned, unless it had something to do with Lipschitz. Had Eva pleaded his case, as Brand asked, or turned him in? Her loyalty was unswerving, sealed with blood, while Brand's was still unproven. This might be another test, or was that done with? They might never take the hood off, drive him into the desert and leave him there, naked, a bullet behind one ear, the Peugeot fated to be painted again, loaned to another Jossi. They'd want a public place, to send a message. But they could have done that any time. Why, the wise child in him asked, was this night different from all other nights?

They had to be almost to Ramallah. On and on they droned, making him doubt his instincts. When they veered onto another paved road without braking, he admitted he was lost and surrendered to the noise and the darkness.

Miles later, when they finally stopped, he kept quiet, hoping to identify the men's voices as they pulled him out, but no one spoke. This time he was careful of his head. They led him away like a prisoner, one at each elbow. He swore one was wearing perfume—or, no, cologne. Maybe Edouard or Thierry, their new driver.

“Step up,” Victor, on his right, said.

A door opened, emitting a whiff of onions cooking in oil
and the babbling of a radio. Inside, the house was hot, making him sweat. They crossed what he imagined was a long room—though it might have been two—and stopped. A door opened, and Victor took Brand's wrist and placed his hand on a banister.

“Step down,” he said, counting as they went. “. . . eleven, twelve.”

The basement was cooler, and humid, with a hint of mold. They turned left, paused for a door, crossed a room and paused again.

“Duck,” Victor said, and Brand did.

The door closed behind them, a metal latch falling to with a clank, recalling his grandmother's root cellar, though the floor here was wooden. Close by, a chair scraped the boards, bumping the back of his knees. Victor pressed on his shoulder, and once Brand had sat down, pulled off the hood. Out of reflex, Brand grabbed at the blindfold.

The light made him blink. A bare bulb hung above a cheap sheet-metal desk. Across from him sat Asher, except his hair was jet-black rather than gray, most strikingly his eyebrows. His cheeks, as in Brand's vision of his grandmother, were dirty, stained the brown of shoe polish, as if he were trying to pass for a Yemeni. Only as Brand's eyes grew used to the light did he see the coloring wasn't a disguise but from bruising, the skin turned the caramel of apples gone bad. Asher's face was swollen, his left eye shut, his forehead, nose and chin livid with purple scabs. His hands were splinted, bandaged into mitts.

“It looks worse than it is.” He even sounded different, his lips
barely moving, and Brand saw his jaw was wired shut. “Sorry about the extra security measures. Obviously we have a problem.”

“I understand.”

“Do you?” Asher studied him as if he were guarding a secret. Victor stood behind him, a silent bodyguard.

“I do,” Brand said. So it was about Lipschitz. About him.

Asher patted a mitt against the table and looked to the ceiling, as if chasing a stray thought. “Do you know a woman named Emilie de Rothschild?”

Brand feared the surprise on his face was a giveaway. “I don't know her, but I've heard of her.”