The Israel Bond Omnibus (17 page)

Now there was an earth-shaking roar as Loxfinger, with Saxon and Macaroon at his sides, walked onto the scene with the two burnoosed Arab potentates, the Israeli P.M. and his deputy, two members of the United Nation’s Commission on the Middle East, and Dorothy Kilgallen.

As the sun flashed brilliantly off their washboards and kazoos, the Canal Street Bordello Band rendered somewhat haphazardly along with 15-year-old singing star Bobby Ricky Danka (just as haphazardly) the national anthems of the many nations involved. But there was one person in the crowd who “dug” young Mr. Danka—M., disguised as a discotheque doll, her wrinkled limbs quite flagrant in the bikini she had chosen. Bond could see a wordless “yea, yea, yea!” on her lips.

A tall, distinguished man stepped to the microphone. “Good afternoon, friends of world peace. I am Ned (Good Driver) Reamer, your All-State Insurance spokesman, sponsors of this international telecast. In deference to the solemnity and significance of this occasion, my sponsor has instructed me to forego our usual commercial messages. They merely wish me to say that whether you’re from the state of Israel or the state of Egypt, you’re in good hands with All-State. Thank you.”

A muezzin and a cantor chanted prayers; the invocation was spoken by Oral Graham Vincent, renowned tent evangelist who had a brief and nearly catastrophic lapse of memory, calling for onlookers “to fill up that tambourine for the blessed Master.” Mme. Dominique Dardeaux, a French starlet, recited a work entitled “Peace in the Holy Land Can Be a Living Reality If Mankind Truly Desires It,” a one-word tone poem composed by a neo-existentialist rapist whose philosophy had gained favor in certain Kantian circles in Paris. (Bond himself was a devotee of Kant. He long had considered himself the biggest Kant man in Israel.)

The starlet concluded with a few halting, unrehearsed yet totally sincere words of her own about her latest picture for Joseph E. Levine,
Perversion—Pakistani Style
.

A murmur went through the throng as the Arab and Israeli representatives alternated short speeches, each a cool, diplomatically correct presentation. If there was no love—at least there was no hate.

Bond, nervously inhaling the forefinger he had lit, glanced about. Good! The three hundred young pioneers from K’far K’farfel were on the edge of the crowd, all clad in long black raincoats. They had been well rehearsed by Zvi, he knew, and would play their part upon his signal.

But where was Monroe? Aha! There he was near the podium in disguise. A hastily thrown together one, Bond realized, and all wrong for him. He was wearing trunks and a sweatshirt and bouncing a basketball. Bad cover, Bond mused; Goshen’s only five feet four, sure as hell doesn’t look like a cage star. Worse, he noted, the letters on the shirt read:

HARLEM GLOBETROTTERS.

But his thoughts were interrupted by a mighty din. Loxfinger was approaching the podium. Bond could imagine fingers tightening on triggers all over the Middle East, pilots smoking Turkish cigarettes ready to scramble into their jets, tank commanders inside their steel leviathans.

Loxfinger, in highly formal attire, was at the lectern, rustling his notes, as one of the U.N. aides was preparing to introduce him. He glanced at his Arab colleagues. They seemed to be in a heated discussion with an American athlete in red satin shorts, dribbling a ball as he spoke. Suddenly the Arabs looked at Loxfinger, shook their heads in violent disapproval, ran their forefingers across their throats in an unmistakable sign. They walked quickly to their limousine and drove off.

It was all too plain. The dogs! They were abandoning him for some reason. Untrustworthy Arab schweinhundts! Then he would take another tack, reveal to the crowd that he, Lazarus Loxfinger, had uncovered last-minute evidence of an Arab scheme to invade his homeland. That would touch off the powder keg just as well, he thought with grim pleasure. This time I shall call for a
Jewish
holy war. It will serve the same end ... the “final solution.”

Bond had also seen the Arab run-out. Goshen got to them! Good old Monroe! But Herr Doktor will try anything now to start a war, he reasoned. Got to alert the young pioneers. He ran toward the young men of the kibbutz.

“... who more than any other man is responsible for our being here today ... the Twentieth Century’s greatest man of peace, who should win the Nobel Prize because he is noble ... Dr. Lazarus Loxfinger!”

Smiling confidently as he acknowledged the acclaim, assured of his powers to mesmerize, to send people into battle with a willingness to die gladly, those incredible blue eyes afire, Loxfinger began: “My friends, I had hoped today to be the giver of peace. But just minutes ago I received information that ...”

HEIL HITLER!

Three hundred young men, who had shed their raincoats, stood before him. They wore brown uniforms, armbands with swastikas, arms outstretched in that rigid tribute he had adored in the good years. His godlike name was crackling from their throats. He was ...

HEIL HITLER!

... at Nuremberg now, a lone colossus walking down a wide aisle, fifty thousand pairs of eyes burning in adoration. He was ...

HEIL HITLER!

... dancing a jig on the corpse of defeated France. He was ...

HEIL HITLER!

His right hand shot up. “Yes, Heil Hitler! Heil me! I am Adolph Hitler, your Führer, resurrected! I am ...”

And pulled his hand down quickly, but too late. All had seen it. He was unmasked before the crowd, the television eyes of the world.

“My God!” cried Bill Link of the AP to Dick Levinson, NBC-TV. “It’s Adolph Hitler! That voice! He’s alive!” Velvel Fierverker of the
Tel-Aviv Trumpledor
nearly fell into the arms of Mo Pascucci, veteran reporter of the
Christian Science Monitor
. Regina Prior of
Women’s Wear Daily
shrieked: “Got to get to a phone!”

Loxfinger flashed a baleful glance at the young “Nazis”—then saw their leader, a cruel, darkly handsome man in a laborer’s coveralls. But that moustache, dangling from one side of his lip. And that scar! Bond! Israel Bond, the security man. He has been the cause of my downfall.

“Kill the sheeny swine, Macaroon, kill him!”

Saxon fired a machinegun burst into the midst of the young kibbutzniks, several falling wounded. “Die you Jew bastards! Die!” The crowd scattered in screaming panic.

One of the shots tore into Bond’s shoulder—the bad one. Another zinged, burning the bad hand. He froze, hardly caring about the pain. For Macaroon loomed above him, dark, menacing, that horrible killing right hand cocked. The mulatto pulled a board out of his sequined shirt, brought that hand down. It shattered.

When that calloused rhino-hard hand comes down on me it’s the end, Bond thought. But I’ll get in one damn lick. He hunched into Position 75, basic judo, swung a muscular leg and drove his toe into the giant’s stomach.

Macaroon’s face almost turned white. Confusion, bewilderment, pain crossed it, in that order.

Elated, Bond swung into Number 45, leaping superhumanly, chopping his hand down hard on the Muslim monster’s neck. Macaroon went down like a torpedoed freighter. He pulled up his bulk slowly, picked up another board, brought that awful hand down. It cracked—but barely.

Now it seemed to him there was a vicious hornet named Israel Bond, stinging him in a million places with kicks in the groin, chops to the neck, a two-finger poke into an eye. It spurted blood.

The half-blinded mulatto reeled. He picked up another board, chopped at it.
Thump!
It did not break.

But his hand did.

Hot tears flooded his brown cheeks.

And then Bond realized, with a wild laugh bubbling out of his throat, what was wrong. This big son of a bitch only knew how to break boards. He’d never learned how to use karate—on people! Probably thought no one would ever challenge him after once having been terrorized by his board smashing.

“I’ve got you now!” Bond roared, a demon unleashed. He slashed again and again at the tottering giant. There was bloody pulp on his hand.

“Inferior nigger
schwein
!” Loxfinger screamed. He brought up a Luger, blasted his failing strongman three times. Macaroon fell with a thunderous crash against the first row of the reviewing stand, cracking it completely. In death he had split his last board.

Poor bastard, Bond thought. But now a Luger slug smashed into his own body ... the bad shoulder again. He was alone, unarmed. Loxfinger and Saxon were lunging toward him, eyes hot with hatred.

Got to run. Where? Another slug nicked his hand—the bad one.

The tall, distinguished man appeared suddenly with his microphone. “You know, ladies and gentlemen of the world audience, when sudden disasters like this can strike, isn’t it wise to call your All-State ...”

A screaming Luger slug sent Ned Reamer to his final reward. Bond hoped the man’s policy would leave his widow in good hands.

But there was no time to worry about anyone but himself. The enraged Nazis were at his heels, their fusilade sending sand flying into his eyes.

“Oy Oy Seven! Over here! You should shake a leg!”

A voice near the shore! In Yiddish! Agent D.—Duddy the Dolphin! May heaven send him plankton with whipped cream, six times a day!

“On my back, hurry!” commanded the dolphin.

He leaped upon Duddy, who launched into a frantic dive deep into the Red Sea. Truly it was the Red Sea now, Bond’s claret staining every inch of it.

At last the doughty dolphin had to surface for air.
“Gevaldt!
What a mish-mash this day has turned out to be. But we’re clear of ’em.”

Zig-a-zig! Zig-a-zig!

Two bullets from a powerful Maquereaux, with silencer attachment. Bond glanced back. It was as he feared. The cabin cruiser manned by Saxon was bearing down on them, Der Führer’s hand clutching the smoking French automatic.

“Faster, Duddy, faster!” he implored. “Just three hundred yards more and we’re safe on the shore of Eretz Israel, old mammal!” He could see Israeli soldiers waiting for the cabin cruiser to get in range so they could blast it into perdition.

Zig-a-zig! Zig-a-zig!

One slashed through Bond’s right arm. He fell off the dolphin, choking on the salt water and his own blood. “Duddy! Duddy!”

A thickening circle of blood next to him. Duddy!

“The second one got me,” the dolphin grinned. But then, dolphins always grin. Bond knew his ally had suffered a mortal wound. The courageous Agent D. thrashed, murmured
“Zol zein mit glick,
Oy Oy Seven. I’m sorry ...” and went under.

I’m done for now, he knew. Shot up ... can’t swim. The boat will cut me in twain.

It was close enough now for him to see the hideous faces of the two Nazis, the arch criminal and his all too eager New World disciple. He could hear Der Führer’s high-pitched screams. “Die Israel! Die Israel!”

I understand now, he told himself, as he foundered in the warm water. I am Israel Bond, but to the psychotics bearing down on me I am Israel—period. If they get me they will experience an insane orgiastic release. Their sick eyes will show them the whole Jewish nation dying ... all two and one-half million going under.

He began to say the
Sh’ma Israel.

The cabin cruiser was just a few yards away. Bullets sang a dirge all around him. Israel’s greatest secret agent was on his way out.

Then—a sudden blinding flash!

Then—a roar, louder than anything he had ever heard!

The Red Sea opened!

His face fell into wet sand. His unbelieving eyes saw the sea rolled back on two sides, leaving a pathway to the shore of Israel. He pushed his pain-wracked, bullet-riddled frame. “Run!” The wet sandy path sucked at his feet, tripping him time and time again. Fifty yards now, forty, thirty, twenty, ten, five. Touchdown! He fell into the arms of two Israeli infantrymen.

Forced to abandon their cruiser when the parted waters left it beached in a trough, Loxfinger and Saxon were running an aimless pattern on the sandy strip, cursing, screaming, shooting without purpose, two stunned drunken beings going nowhere.

Then they saw the divided waters surging back!

Two gigantic waves, their white-foamed tips looking like the jaws of a mad dog, roared down on them.

Then ... then there was just the Red Sea ... eternal, peaceful, unconquerable as of old.