The Israel Bond Omnibus (49 page)
Read The Israel Bond Omnibus Online
Authors: Sol Weinstein
“No, because Holzknicht knows they don’t count for a tinker’s dam. You’ve got three and a half million Russian Jews who are in
drerd
[45]
and they can’t get out; you have a few more in the Arab countries isolated in medinas with no money, education or status; in the Far East you ain’t got enough to buy a booklet of Hadassah raffle tickets. It’s the Western Jews he’s after. These are the ones who support Israel, don’t you see? Remember, this thing is called ‘Operation
Alienation.
’ If the Jews of the West fail to buttress Israel in these crucial years when we should be growing we’ll be so weak we won’t be able to withstand attack... and all because some guy isn’t getting his bagels and lox on Sunday mornings any more.
“Dr. Holzknicht knows it’ll take years to rebuild the massive food structure TUSH’s Calgonite planters have leveled these past few days. And by that time so many ‘marginal’ Jews will have left the fold that it would never be the same again anyway. For all we know, the damage is already done.
“I made some spot checks in every big city concerned. There’s been a decline in these related activities already. The tourist bookings to Israel—down. UJA donations—down. Synagogue Sunday breakfast meetings—down.”
M. turned to Beame. “Here, your trenchcoat is done. I’ll shorten it later.” She looked at Z. “Do we just sit on our hands? Is there no way to counterattack this monstrous thing?”
“No, it’s bad for the circulation. Yes, there is one chance. If we could get hold of any one of TUSH’s big three, Auntie Sem-Heidt, Heinz Sem-Heidt or better still, Dr. Ernst Holzknicht, and make him confess this terrible scheme to the world, get the master plan, the list of all people paid for the bombings. With the proper exposure on TV, press and radio we could show the world what’s happened and, incidentally, make our fellow Jews so mad they’ll start going to daily services again and maybe buy some Israel Bonds, too. The question is: Who will shake these rats out of their nest and get the evidence?”
Operations Chief Lazar Beame answered him for all those present. He walked briskly to the bathroom, flung open the door and cried: “Israel Bond, come out and save Judaism!”
Bond slammed the door. “Now?”
“Yes, now!”
Bond emerged.
The grey eyes were cynical. “I thought I was just about all washed up with M 33 and 1/3.”
“It’s all changed.” Beame said tersely. “Now I’ll tell you all what the Arab said, from least important to most. One, Ziggy’s was to be bombed. I intercepted the guy with a 100-zis charge. He’s out of business for keeps.”
Good-o! Bond thought.
“Two, he didn’t know anything about the master plan; he’s too small to be trusted with that info.
“Three, he does know where TUSH is located. The Sem-Heidts are operating a gambling casino as a front.
“Four, it’s in the very place you’re heading, Oy Oy Seven. Sahd Sakistan. So this is your chance to wipe the slate clean.”
The slate? a peevish Bond thought.
“Go in there, Oy Oy Seven, smash that filthy cabal, get the documents, capture one of the big ones and make him talk, save the king from assassination, save Eretz Israel from disappearing into oblivion.”
“Hold on, Op Chief. You’re going too fast. I think I ought to make some notes.”
15 A Score In The Sky
It started its nerve-racking attack on his system the moment the Air India jet roared down the Lod airstrip... the old feeling.
Israel Bond, the most monumental task of his career awaiting him, lit a Raleigh and tried to stifle the libidinal monster inside clamoring for release by poring over the bulky report M., Z. and Beame had compiled for him.
“Sex Sexistan”—steady there, Oy Oy Seven; your eyes are playing tricks. Push this depravity from your mind. “
Sahd Sakistan
”— that’s better—”is a territory about the size of Assault-Lorraine.”
Alsace
-Lorraine, you pitiful, sex-haunted wretch!
It was then Miss Mookerjie, the olive-skinned, ebony-eyed hostess in the filmy red sari, a blue dot on her forehead, walked by his seat. “Can I be of service to you, Mr. Bond?” the sweet mouth spoke its polite singsong.
“I think not, Miss Mookerjie.” Somehow his long, tapering fingers were closing around her willowy calf. He forced himself to read on.
“It has been playing both sides of the Cold War fence with adroitness. To illustrate, the Sahd Sakistani flag depicts a red, white and blue eagle clutching a hammer and sickle, beneath which is the motto, IN GOD WE TRUST—IF THERE IS ONE. Its principal exports are oil and malaria.”
His hand was up to the butterscotch softness of the back of her knee, her breasts exuding Mumbai Madness Mist that rocked his libido into overdrive.
He could stand it no longer, slamming the report to the floor. “Miss Mookerjie! Follow me quickly or I can’t be responsible for my actions!” He clutched at his throat and stumbled into the alcove between first-class and tourist, where the stewardesses prepare food and drink. Once inside, he pulled the curtain shut and pointed to an I.D. bracelet on his right wrist. “Read... read....” and fell gasping against the sink. Miss Mookerjie looked at the inscription on the bracelet, then into the tormented grey eyes, and smiled. “Of course, sir.” Her nimble fingers flew to their appointed rounds and in five seconds her appointed rounds were revealed by the falling of the sari to her slender ankles.
With the unruffled efficiency of a trained servant of the air, she stripped Bond’s Levi Strauss one-piece skydiver Score-Suit from his lithe, hard body and allowed a bronzed, muscular arm to draw her head against his chest.
“My name is Israel, O solicitous daughter of the Ganges,” he said through cyanotic lips.
“Indira,” she breathed. “Indira.”
“Look, baby,” he snapped. “I know
where
. I’ve done this before.”
“No, Mr. Bond—Indira—it’s my
name.”
Now they knew each other’s names and that made it so real, so right, and his sensual lips, red once again, were sipping the bee nectar from hers. “Drink this.” His command was hoarse, his body charged with expectation, as his hand bore a vial of desire-igniting Gallo Wine to her lips, setting her afire, and they began a fantastic flight pattern to fulfillment 150 miles an hour faster than the jet was going, making a mid-air adjustment to correct any weightlessness, and they collapsed onto a carpet of something green and cool, spent and content.
“What’s this sticky green stuff, Taj Mahali dolly?” He prayed she would find favor with the sparklingly conceived internal rhyme.
“We are reposing upon the Royal gelatin which was to have been the dessert on this flight.”
Two jetstreams of Raleigh smoke misted the window. “We made it on Royal gelatin, eh?” His grey eyes twinkled with levity. “I guess this is what they mean by a Royal—” but he aborted the witticism in an uncommon fit of good taste. He would not cheapen the moment this magnificent jewel of the East had granted him. “That blue dot on your forehead, Indira; it’s gone.”
She tasted his Raleigh. “Yes, I am a member of on erotic Hindu caste and that blue dot always disappears after I make love. With any luck, it will come back soon,” she said, eyes a-twinkle.
Back in his seat he was disgusted with himself for employing the old I.D. bracelet gambit. He held it up to the light. “I am afflicted with a rare phenomenon known as
sat-air-iasis
and must have sexual contact lest I go into convulsions that could prove fatal to me and possibly result in misfortune to the aircraft.”
Bond pulled up the collar of his expensive yet tasteful Hill & Range tweed trenchcoat (“It’s what today’s teeners would call real ‘boss tweed,’” his midtown Manhattan tailor had assured him) and drew pleasure from the label’s claim: THIS GARMENT, IF PERFECT, WOULD BE AN IRREGULAR.
King Baldroi, his eyes two malicious darts, leaned across the aisle. “I saw that little bit of hanky panky with the hostess, Bondy bitch. Come now; tell me. What did you two do in there? Did she force you to commit natural acts?”
“Knock it off, LeFagel!” He regretted the phrase. The little bastard would sure as hell twist them into his own frame of reference.
To his surprise, LeFagel did not, flipping a sheet of scrawled-upon yellow paper into Bond’s lap.
Poetry.
“Tiger, tiger, burning bright,
“In the darkness of the night,
“You’ve made an incredibly stupid bungle,
“You’ve set fire to the whole damn jungle.”
Good-o! LeFagel’s showing a definite move away from the aridity of his homosexual orientation. Though I wish he wouldn’t pet Neon’s head quite so often. Well, I guess Rome wasn’t built in a day. Although Levittown
was
.
When the jet dipped over the Gulf of Aden he saw the name U.S.S.
Jew
on the side of the mighty aircraft carrier whose decks were laden with neat rows of Chickenhawk jet fighter-bombers. Sound psychology, Bond admitted. America already had one called
Wasp
; the new boat would make a lot of swell folks feel a genuine rapport with the Great Society. But what was a carrier doing anchored off Sahd Sakistan?
He found out as he stood in the customs shed watching the MBG lowered by crane to the sandy soil. “Mr. Bond?” An inspector nudged his elbow. “You are wanted in the inner office.”
Beckoning for Neon and LeFagel to follow, he walked through a passageway to a door, spitting upon it as his trained Double Oy eyes reported it was made from Cedars of Lebanon. When he felt the object dig into his back his mind clicked out Position 71—from the old manual he himself had authored for M 33 and 1/3 personnel, “Simultaneous Sex and Self-Defense”—and he fell to his knees with a slick, showy maneuver and whispered, “Don’t shoot; I beg you, don’t shoot.”
The laugh held a note of admiration. “Okay, Oy Oy Seven. I see your reflexes haven’t dulled one iota. On your feet.”
That twangy New England accent! So redolent of B & M Baked Beans in dark brown jars; raucous gulls swooping out of a stormy sky to carry off stray Portuguese children; the Splendid Splinter, Ted Williams, at Fenway Park, taking two, then spitting to right. By thunder, it was....
“Monroe Goshen! You old lobster lob! You Penabscot putz!” With delight he hugged the sawed-off man with the dour Puritanical visage whose slight frame was draped in a herring-scented Gloucester nor’easter trenchcoat... Monroe Goshen, operations chief of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Mid-East Section, who had spent with Bond in Eretz Israel those last spine-chilling hours of the Loxfinger caper.
[46]
Pouting at the physical manifestation of fellowship, LeFagel said, “Well, that about tells the story, you heartbreaking Hebrew! It’s the
’fay
fags who turn you on, right, Whitey? The
partzehs
on
schwartzehs
aren’t good enough for you.”
Bond pushed the querulous monarch away. “Look, your highness. This man’s an old fighting chum of mine. I suspect he’s here for the same reason I am, to keep your hide intact, so drop the green-eyed monster bit.”
Goshen introduced himself all around. “True, your highness. My men and I came here on a carrier, ostensibly as part of a goodwill tour, but we’ve definite orders from the Tall Texan to keep you on the throne. If Sahd Sakistan goes Commie, we could lose a billion barrels of oil a year. Let’s continue this discussion at my embassy. You’ll all be my guests for dinner. Don’t worry, Mr. Bond; CIA agent Brown will deliver that razzle-dazzle car of yours to the palace.”
When the customs inspector observed that Goshen’s black Simulac limousine with the United States seal on its plates was well on the way to Baghs-Groove, the capital city, he picked up a telephone and dialed an unlisted number. He spoke for a minute, then quaked as the iron voice issued instructions. “Ja, mein lieber Gerda.”
He walked to the spot where the Mercedes Ben Gurion had been deposited by the crew. “One moment, gentlemen. I must affix Mr. Bond’s temporary Sahd Sakistani sticker to his license plate,” which he did, with an exaggerated show of grunting diligence. As the left hand smoothed out the sticker, the right was touching the magnetized end of a metal cylinder to the underside of the Alcoa bumper.
