Читать книгу In the Name of God - Stephen J. Gordon - Страница 5

1

I stood in the bathroom of the synagogue and stared at the tears silently running down my face. The weeping had come on suddenly. I had just washed my hands, looked in the mirror, and started to cry. Uncontrollably. There was no warning. There never was.

On the other side of the door and down the hall was a banquet, and I had a date waiting for me at our table. She was absolutely great: intelligent, attractive, fun.

I wasn’t ready. But this wasn’t the first time Alli and I had gone out, and I thought these paroxysms were all but gone. Sometimes, though, sometimes I could be driving down the street, I could be sitting in a restaurant, I could be thinking of a moment a thousand miles away and I would be overwhelmed by tears.

Applause filtered up the hallway and through the door. I washed and dried my face before anyone could come in, paused for a final look in the mirror, then headed out. The paneled hallway led to the main hall, where I found my seat at Alli’s table, which was blessedly along the right-hand wall. I sat down as invisibly as I could and looked around.

What was I doing here? As peaceful darkness covered the city of Baltimore, I was attending, of all places, the annual banquet of Beit Shalom Synagogue. The fact that I was in a synagogue — albeit the social hall — was laughable, because I was, to put it mildly, pissed off at God. But I didn’t want to go there; it took too much out of me. So the fact that I was at this banquet had more to do with Alli and the guest speaker, Eitan Lev, than anything else. Alli had heard of the banquet through a friend and thought the guest would interest me. She was right.

Eitan Lev was the latest candidate for Prime Minister of Israel. He was a former general, a war hero in Israel — a war criminal in the Arab countries — and the most popular Israeli politician in recent memory. He was an unstoppable general who placed the lives of his countrymen above all else. He was eloquent, plus had a political savvy that impressed Washington and London.

I looked at Alli on my left. She was bright as well as stunning, with beautiful shoulder-length dark-blonde hair and cerulean eyes. She was a graduate student at University of Maryland in physical therapy. Allison was fit and athletic; originally she had wanted to go into phys. ed., but her parents thought she’d be wasting her intellect. Physical Therapy, then, was a natural alternative, she had explained. It was okay with me. If it’s physical, it must be therapy.

“Look at all the security,” Alli said, looking around the room, interrupting my thoughts of her.

Indeed. The social hall was a modest-sized rectangle of a room with a mirrored wall behind the head table and elegant flowered green wallpaper on either side. The lighting from the chandeliers was subdued, yet I had spotted the security people the moment I had walked in. There were two small, but solid-looking men standing to either side of the head table, plus one standing below the raised dais. Then another man — this one taller and thinner — stood at the double doors to the kitchen, and a fifth, an older fellow, near the main entrance. They were all Shin Bet, Israeli security. I knew the type. These guys were not local law enforcement — there was a distinctive hard, youthful Middle-Eastern look about them. This last fellow, the older man at the main door, seemed more out of place. He was probably in his late thirties/early forties, while the others were in their early twenties. The younger men all had full heads of hair; his was thinning and his eyes had more than a few wrinkles at the corners. Additionally, he wore stylish small black wire-rimmed glasses, so he no longer had the perfect vision of younger agents. It also wasn’t lost on me that from where he stood he could see everything — and I bet he had seen plenty in his day. He was the boss.

“I’m glad I left my knife at home,” I muttered to myself.

“What?” Alli looked at me, eyes wide.

“Just kidding.”

Actually, I wasn’t. I always carried a folding knife. My current one was a three and a half inch Benchmade ATS 34, combo blade — half straight edge, half serrated. I knew there’d be security here with a metal detector as part of it, so bringing a knife would have been a bad move, to say the least.

I scanned the room again. In addition to the Shin Bet, there were also some Baltimore cops, but I knew they just didn’t have the same experience as the Israelis. Fact of life.

We had just finished our main course — stuffed capon in a decent orange sauce, some kind of funky potatoes and broccoli — when Mr. Lev began speaking. He had received a standing ovation as he approached the podium, and then, when the audience quieted down, he stood at the mic and thanked his hosts. The room was packed. In addition to the capacity crowd sitting at tables, there was a contingent of press with their omnipresent video cams, plus local, state, and national dignitaries.

Mr. Lev began talking about the situation in the Middle East...how fragile life is for everyone, the security needs, the monetary needs, and the importance of American moral support. The former general spoke eloquently. His English was quite good. Impressive actually.

My mind began to wander and I continued to look around the room. Except for Alli and one or two others — adult students of mine — I didn’t know anyone. I enjoyed the anonymity. For a moment or two, I watched the security guys watch the audience. Then I scanned the group myself. Nothing unusual struck me. I shifted my gaze to the waiters and waitresses. When Mr. Lev had started his address, the caterer’s crew mostly headed into the kitchen. A small group stayed out in the social hall, leaning against a back wall, to listen to his remarks. There were three men and two women. All were dressed in matching black dinner jackets and pants. They were mixed in age, from a woman in her forties with red hair to a young man in his late teens. The teenager had close-cut black hair and was watching the guest speaker with interest. Actually, they all were watching Mr. Lev with interest.

“Will you stop playing with your food,” the woman next to Alli said to her husband, breaking into my thoughts.

“Give me a break, Eileen, I’m not playing with my food. I’m rearranging it on my plate.”

Eileen was a petite woman in her early forties with long, straight brown hair. She had small oval glasses that John Lennon may have once considered, and was wearing a black dress that shimmered with gold thread across the shoulders. Her husband, who was a few years older, had salt and pepper hair and an intense stare.

“What, are you nervous or something?” the woman pressed.

“How would you like me to start a food fight right here? I’ve got the broccoli ready to go.” He stabbed a stalk of broccoli and held it up.

“Oh that’s great, Howard. Security will take us away. We’ll make all the papers.”

“Your obit will make the paper, Eileen, if you don’t leave me alone.”

I listened to the good natured marital sparring and had to smile. Almost immediately my happy feeling was replaced by a familiar ache in the center of my abdomen. I began to feel a slight tremor radiating out from my mid-section. If I didn’t get a handle on it, it would wash over me, turning me into a wreck faster than you could say “dishrag.”

I set up a breathing pattern to force relaxation.

The speaker was still going on...something about the importance of the territories to Israel’s defense. I barely heard what he was saying.

Howard and Eileen, the couple next to Alli, were holding hands now.

My throat began to tighten.

I wiped my forehead with my napkin. Alli smiled at me. I weakly smiled back. Did she see what was happening to me? I could walk out now; no one would mind, right? Would the Israeli guard at the main door stop me? I mean I had just come in. Hell, I’d stop me if I were in his place.

The guard had other things on his mind. His eyes were on a table on the other side of the room. I looked at the other security guys and then at the waiters leaning near the kitchen door.

This feeling, a weakness spreading throughout my body, would subside. I knew that. I just had to let it come and let it go.

After a moment I leaned over to Alli and asked her to pass the water.

She handed me a half-filled carafe that had condensation running down its side. I refilled my glass and took a few swallows. Another moment passed.

“...We will not leave any city undefended,” Mr. Lev said, pounding the lectern with his right fist.

Suddenly there was applause and then the entire roomful of guests jumped up, enthusiastically.

The speech was over, and I rose with Alli, likewise applauding. The emcee, a short, slightly rotund tuxedoed man in his forties, came to the mic.

“Thank you, General. And now dessert will be served.” I half smiled. A significant political speech was one thing, but dessert, now that was important.

I spied chocolate cake being hustled out of the kitchen by the waiters, and backed off the sarcasm. I never met a chocolate cake I didn’t like, and the way I felt, I needed to get something sweet into my system to help me refocus.

In moments, the cake was in front of me, and in a few moments more, I was licking the fork clean. “Not bad,” I commented to Alli. “Richer than I thought.” Why did I sound like an idiot?

My stomach was settling back down and I could feel myself relax.

Howard, the man near Alli, looked at me. “So, do ya think they’re gonna hit us up for money?”

I smiled. “I’ll give them your name.”

Howard laughed.

“Do you and Eileen argue here often?”

He laughed again. “Only on special occasions. Like if it’s Monday or something.”

I smiled.

As the evening wound down, and now that I was feeling better, I continued the audience-watching I had started earlier. It was a relatively young crowd. The attendees looked pretty mixed: some men dressed formally — doctors and lawyers I’d guess — but also some regular folk. I could only guess their professions, but frankly I didn’t want to.

The group began to sing Birkat Hamazon, Grace After Meals, and while they were doing that I looked at the waiters again. They were scurrying about, clearing the tables. The young waiter, the teenager who had been leaning against the back wall watching the guest speaker, caught my attention again. He was clearing a table over to my right. He was definitely young...perhaps 16 or 17. To me, he also looked foreign...not Middle Eastern, not Hispanic. I wasn’t sure. I couldn’t place him.

I watched him move about, collecting plates and filling a large oval tray balancing on his left arm. There was something else.

He was sweating. I looked at the other waiters. They were hustling too, but while they looked busy, they all seemed not to have worked up the same perspiration. The powerful air conditioner was keeping the hall fairly cool. A number of women, in fact, were wrapped in their husband’s suit jackets. This guy didn’t seem to feel the A/C at all.

Mr. Lev began to leave. Grace After Meals was finished and he came down off the dais, shaking hands. He paused for a moment to whisper something in the emcee’s ear, and then began to weave his way through the crowd. Lev’s Shin Bet minders took their positions. While the head man maintained his overview, the two men who were on either side of the head table moved right in front of him, staying very close. The man from the kitchen and the agent who had been standing below the dais moved to either side of him. I was surprised they didn’t have someone to the rear.

As Lev began to head in my direction — the exit was behind me to my left — I looked past him. The young waiter was probably twenty-five feet from the general and his attention was clearly not on his work. He looked from his tray of plates to Mr. Lev, then back to his plates. He’d let another moment pass and then he would watch the former general again.

And then I noticed it.

He was slowly moving toward him.

I looked at the Shin Bet guys. They weren’t watching him. They didn’t even see him. Two images filled my mind. Yitzchak Rabin moving through a crowd after a concert one Saturday night in Tel Aviv and a young man pumping three bullets into him. The other image was Bobby Kennedy lying on the floor of a hotel kitchen, a pool of blood beneath his head.

I found myself moving toward the young waiter. The almost debilitating feeling I had experienced earlier was gone. All I saw was the sweating young man. He came closer, slowly, fixed on the general. Lev was now, perhaps, ten feet from him. If the Israeli continued in the same direction, in a matter of seconds the two would intersect.

The waiter put down his tray.

The crowd was still applauding. Lev was shaking hands as he slowly moved toward the exit. The Israeli guards in front were trying to clear a path. Lev continued to smile and shake hands. “Thank you. Toda rabba. Thank you.”

The waiter’s left hand slowly moved inside his jacket. He was now five feet from the general. I could clearly make out the shine on his forehead and upper lip. His eyes didn’t waver from the guest of honor.

The guards were looking the wrong way.

I moved a heavy-set man to the side as I stepped forward. From behind me I heard him say, “Well excuse me.”

The Israeli was probably wearing Kevlar or something similar under his frilly shirt, but it wouldn’t matter. The bulletproof vest wasn’t covering his head.

The entourage passed right in front of the waiter, the bodyguards looking but not seeing. The boy’s left hand came out of his jacket holding a large caliber automatic. It looked like a Beretta. For a brief moment he pointed the gun at the ground as if it were too heavy for him. I took the final step toward him. As his hand came up I grabbed it and twisted it sharply, up and back. Even as I heard the sharp crack of wrist bones, I swept his left foot out from under him.

As he collapsed to the floor, I stepped back and shouted, “Gun!”