The Masada Complex (77 page)

The pilot on the left was short, his arms thick and white. But the other man was dark, with slicked-back black hair and mirrored sunglasses. “
You!
”

The man smiled.

Rabbi Josh turned. “This man is an Arab!”

Colonel Ness didn’t respond.

“He’s one of them!” Rabbi Josh sprang forward and snatched Silver’s gun from the young woman’s belt, aiming it at the cockpit. “He was at the mosque with Silver! He started the riot!”

There was a long silence.

Colonel Ness cleared his throat. “His name is Rafi. The professor knew him as Rajid. He’s on my team.”

“What team? Who are you people?”

“Do you really want to know?”

“Yes!” Rabbi Josh threaded his finger over the trigger.

Colonel Ness passed his hand through his white hair. “In 1982 Israeli intelligence learned that a bright PLO activist in Jordan was planning to cross the Dead Sea with his teenage son and take hostages on Mount Masada. Our people analyzed his profile. They decided he could be made into a double agent, but with a twist.”

Rabbi Josh glanced at the cockpit, but the two men didn’t move.

“When he acted, I was ordered to eliminate the son and capture Abu Faddah alive. But he foiled our aerial attack by rigging up a sheet as a roof. Clever man. So we landed, and I radioed central command for new orders. Our psychological profilers had told us he wouldn’t use violence, and we settled to wait. Unfortunately Masada recognized her brother from the air and, being unaware of the secret plan, didn’t take well to the waiting game. She managed to grab my loudspeaker, made threats, things got out of hand, and her brother fell off the cliff. She attacked alone, I had to shoot her in the knee to save the bastard, and he repaid me by throwing a grenade.” The colonel rested his hands on the stumps of his legs. “So much for psychological profiling.”

“And you let him escape?”

“We had him picked up later by Bedouins on our payroll. After he recovered, we arranged transport to Italy and he adopted a fictional identity of a Jewish history professor. He chose the name Flavian Silver—funny, isn’t it? Faddah means silver in Arabic. And all along he thought he was working for his PLO brothers to destroy Israel, while in fact he was working for us.”

Rabbi Josh felt dizzy. “I don’t understand.”

“We helped him develop academically, produce reports on Jewish life in Europe, write about Nazi treatment of the Jews, and so on. We arranged for him to teach in different places and kept him on ice. It’s been a long run.” The colonel motioned at the dark man in the cockpit. “Rafi was twenty-one when he became Abu Faddah’s handler.”

“Twenty,” the man said with a lopsided grin.

The colonel nodded. “It’s not easy to run an agent who’s certain he’s working for your enemy, but we did it. A great success.”

“You call this a success?” Rabbi Josh groaned. “You almost destroyed Israel!”

“It went a bit out of hand.” Colonel Ness looked at the metal ceiling for a moment in contemplation. “We let him do what he wanted, execute his plan to bribe Mahoney on behalf of a fictitious Jewish organization, and cause a scandal.”

“A scandal?” The rabbi’s voice shook. “Do you realize what you’ve done.”

“We did nothing. Abu Faddah has done it all—planning
and
execution. In fact, we were going to tip Masada at the right time, help her expose him as a Palestinian agent and shift the blame to the Arabs. I mean, even he didn’t know he was working for us. And the cash we gave him was traceable to the Palestinians. It was perfect. We let him run with it because we knew we could shut him down any time we wanted.”

“But why would you want this scandal?”

“We wanted American Jews to experience a painful lesson, that even in America the gentiles are capable of violent anti-Semitism. We hoped it would cause thousands to make
aliya
and help bolster a Jewish majority in Israel. Then, before things got really bad, we would tip off Masada, and she would expose Silver as a Palestinian agent, thereby redirecting the public’s anger at the Arabs while rejuvenating Israel’s victim status. It was a simple, a fail-safe operation.”

“Obviously it wasn’t!”

Colonel Ness nodded. “We got more than we bargained for. He was doing his own thing, coming up with more
phases
. But still, the end result is excellent. This whole affair will help Israel regain popularity. The world witnessed firsthand how the conniving Arabs attempted to destroy U.S.-Israel friendship, take over Israel, and exterminate us.”

“But it wasn’t the Arabs!”

“Their evil plan—”

“
Their
plan?” Rabbi Josh thought he would explode. “It’s your plan!”

“Oh, no.” The colonel made a dismissive gesture. “The whole plan, from the bribe to the extermination of the Jews in post-Israel Palestine, was hatched by Professor Silver, otherwise known as Abu Faddah. And it’s not even his original plan. Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the grand mufti of Jerusalem, went to Berlin in 1936 and met Hitler and Eichmann to plan for the Nazi occupation of Palestine. They were going to build a concentration camp near Nablus to exterminate the Jews of Palestine. Abu Faddah was inspired by those old Arab plans. Hate made him terribly creative.”

Rabbi Josh looked at the gun in his hand. “This can’t be happening. It can’t!”

“The mufti started a mosque in Hamburg,” Ness continued. “The same mosque where, sixty years later, eleven young Arabs prepared to fly planes into the World Trade Center.” The colonel’s finger drew a line in the air. “There is a thread connecting anti-Semitism, Fascism, Jihadism, and mass murder of innocent people. Our operation succeeded in exposing—”

“You call this a
success?
”

“Abu Faddah was sincere in his work—a brilliant professor, if you ask me. His ideas, his architectural designs and technical improvements, spiced up the whole picture. Tara will show all of it on TV. Hundreds of millions of viewers will see it.”

“They’ll see a fraud!”

“Why?” Colonel Ness seemed offended. “These were his ideas, and he executed his own plan, every part of it!”

“But you helped him, gave him the money to do it.”

“As far as he knew, it all came from Ramallah, courtesy of a senior Palestinian agent named Rajid.”

In the cockpit, the agent patted his own shoulder.

“But you facilitated it!”

“So? Banks lend money to people to buy cars. Are fatal car crashes the banks’ fault? Come on, Rabbi, use your Talmudic logic!”

Shaking his head, Rabbi Josh said, “None of this would have happened if not for you.”

“Don’t fool yourself. The Arabs would do it in a heartbeat. The Syrians, the Iranians, the imams in a thousand mosques, they all aspire to exterminate the Jewish people because they’re jealous of our success and progress. Look at your friend Levy Silver, previously known as Abu Faddah. He is the ultimate proof that our struggle is righteous. Have you ever heard of any other Holocaust scholar channeling his creative energy into designing
another
genocide? This will force the world to recognize the existential threat posed by Islamic fundamentalism to western civilization.”

“It’s immoral!” Rabbi Josh aimed the gun at Ness. “You tricked America—our friend!”

“Morality and politics are unrelated. You heard Tara.” The colonel motioned at the open door. “Suddenly everybody in Washington is scrambling to help Israel.”

“God will never condone such deceit!”

“How do you know what God will or will not condone?”

“I do!”

“Maybe
your
God will be upset, because your God is the Diaspora God, the meek God of exile and bent knees, the God of turning the other cheek.” Colonel Ness pounded his chest. “My God is the Israeli God, the God of standing tall, of self-respect, of sovereignty on our ancient land. My God is the God of fighting back! Of victory by all necessary means! Of never, never,
never
giving up!”

Rabbi Josh looked at the gun in his hand. “And Masada?”

Colonel Ness pursed his lips. “She was the perfect choice, an anticorruption crusader, an impeacher of two Arizona governors, winner of a Pulitzer Prize, and above all, a critic of Israel.”

“You destroyed her.”

Ness’s assistant whistled. “Can we go already?”

The colonel opened his arms. “We took every precaution to ensure her safety. It breaks my heart. But Israel prevailed. Our national survival is the only thing that really matters.”

“No!” Rabbi Josh aimed the gun. “The Almighty will not allow such manipulations, such blood spilling for no good reason.” He moved backward, toward the door. “Masada was right all along. It was you, toying with our lives. She was right, and she died thinking she was wrong. But I’m going to fix that. Masada deserves to have the truth come out!”

The young woman got up and approached Rabbi Josh. He aimed the gun at her. She closed the distance between them, snatched the gun, and tossed it to the colonel.

Ness pointed the gun at Rabbi Josh. “Sit down.”

“Why? You’ll kill me too?”

The colonel blew air through his lips. For the first time he looked angry. “This whole affair was supposed to resolve itself in Arizona without a drop of blood. But the senator blew his head off, Masada was deaf to our hints, and the professor pursued his own agenda—going blind scared him to death.”

“But you gave him this gun,” Rabbi Josh pointed, “to use on Masada this morning, to kill her!”

Colonel Ness glared at him. “I love Masada. You think I’d risk her life?”

“I think you’re a psychopath.”

“And I think we’ve had enough.” The colonel’s arm rose, aiming the silencer straight at Rabbi Josh’s chest. He pressed the trigger, and the gun coughed like a champagne bottle.

The rabbi clasped his chest, searching for the bullet hole.

Colonel Ness’s assistant laughed.

The colonel aimed the gun at her and pressed the trigger again.

She beat her chest and yelped.

Colonel Ness put the gun to his head and shot himself. “Dummies,” he said, “they’re all dummies.”

Rabbi Josh smoothed his shirt. “My Raul died by a real bullet, shot by a man working for your
twisted
agent. Was that part of your plan, to get a little boy killed?”

“Of course not. It was a tragic case of collateral damage.” The colonel’s eyes remained level with the rabbi’s. “I understand your pain. Your heart is broken. And it will remain broken. I know this, because I also lost a beautiful boy for Israel. And I’ll sacrifice ten more sons if Israel needs them.”

“You’re sacrificing much more: The truth!”

Colonel Ness pointed to the open door. “They won’t believe you, but you can try if it makes you feel righteous. Go ahead, betray your people. Help the enemies of Israel.”

Rabbi Josh looked at them—the young woman on the bench, the agent in the cockpit, the colonel in his wheelchair. “You,” he said, “are the enemies of Israel.”

He followed the road along the shore of the Dead Sea. The day’s heat was rising. He walked slowly, carrying his sneakers under his arm. The colonel’s helicopter took off behind him and headed south, out of earshot. Moments later, the medical helicopter ascended from the desert floor and flew north, leaving a wake of white dust. The rabbi closed his eyes, remembered her last smile, and whispered, “Shalom, Masada.”

He kept walking, the asphalt warm under his feet. He knew Colonel Ness was right.
They won’t believe you.

A lizard crossed the road in front of his toes, paused to look up at him, and disappeared under a rock. Ahead, the red roofs of Kibbutz Ben-Yair grew nearer.

Engine noise sounded from behind.

He stopped and turned.

A green tractor was gaining on him. It pulled a trailer piled with cardboard boxes marked:
Ben-Yair Tomatoes.
The driver was a young woman. She slowed down, coming to a full stop.

“
Boker tov!
”

“Good morning,” Rabbi Josh replied.

“I’m heading to the kibbutz.” She took off her cap, letting loose a cascade of dark, red-tinged hair. “Want a ride?”