Juan Gómez-Jurado - Contract with God aka The Moses Expedition

A: Turn off your tape recorder, young lady. I want to think.

Q: Mr Kayn, thank you for continuing with the interview. Whenever you’re ready…

A: Isaac was everything to me. He was tall and slender, and very handsome. Look at his photo.

Q: He has a nice smile.

A: I think you would have liked him. In fact, he was quite similar to you. He would rather ask for forgiveness than for permission. He had the strength and energy of a nuclear reactor. And everything he achieved, he did by himself.

Q: With all due respect, it’s difficult to accept such a statement about a person who was born to inherit such a fortune.

A: What’s a father supposed to say? The Almighty said to the prophet David that he ‘would be His son forever’. After such a display of love, my words… but I can see you’re simply trying to provoke me.

Q: Forgive me.

A: Isaac had many faults, but taking the easy way out was not one of them. He never worried about going against my wishes. He went off to study at Oxford, a university to which I had not made a contribution.

Q: And that’s where he met Mr Russell, is that correct?

A: They were in a Macroeconomics class together, and after Jacob completed his studies, Isaac recommended him to me. In time, Jacob became my right hand.

Q: The position you would have wanted Isaac to have had.

A: And which he never would have accepted. When he was very young… [fighting back a sob]

Q: We’re continuing with the interview now.

A: Thank you. Forgive me for becoming emotional at that recollection. He was only a child, no more than eleven. One day he came home with a dog he had found in the street. I became very angry. I don’t like animals. Do you like dogs, my dear?

Q: A great deal.

A: Well, then you should have seen this one. It was an ugly mongrel, filthy, and it had only three legs. It looked as if it had been out on the streets for years. The only rational thing to do with such an animal would have been to take it to a veterinarian and end its misery. I said this to Isaac. He looked at me and replied: ‘You were picked up in the street too, Father. Do you think the rabbi should have ended your misery?’

Q: Ouch!

A: I felt an inner blow, both of fear and of pride. This child was my son! I gave him permission to keep the dog if he took responsibility for it. And he did. The creature lived another four years.

Q: I think I understand what you said before.

A: Even when he was a boy, my son knew that he didn’t want to live in my shadow. On his… last day he went to a job interview at Cantor Fitzgerald. He was on the hundred and fourth floor of the North Tower.

Q: Do you want to stop for a while?

A: Nichtgedeiget . I’m all right, dear. Isaac called me that Tuesday morning. I was watching what was happening on CNN. I hadn’t spoken to him all weekend so it never occurred to me that he might be there.

Q: Have some water, please.

A: I picked up the phone. He said, ‘Papa, I’m in the World Trade Center. There’s been an explosion. I’m very scared.’ I stood up. I was in shock. I think I screamed at him. I don’t remember what I said. He said to me, ‘I’ve been trying to call you for ten minutes. The network must be overloaded. Papa, I love you.’ I told him to stay calm, that I’d call the authorities. That we’d get him out of there. ‘We can’t go down the stairs, Papa. The floor below us has collapsed, and the fire’s coming up through the building. It’s very hot. I want to…’ And that was it. He was twenty-four years old. [A long pause .] I stared at the receiver, caressing it with my fingertips. I didn’t understand. The connection had been cut off. I think that was the moment my brain short-circuited. The rest of the day has been completely erased from my memory.

Q: You never found out anything more?

A: I wish it had been that way. The next day I opened the papers looking for news of survivors. Then I saw his photo. There he was, up in the air, free. He had jumped.

Q: Oh my God. I’m so sorry, Mr Kayn.

A: I’m not. The flames and the heat must have been unbearable. He found the strength to break the windows and choose his destiny. It might have been his destiny to die that day, but nobody was going to tell him how. He embraced his fate like a man. He died strong, flying, master of the ten seconds he was in the air. The plans that I had made for him all those years were over.

Q: My God, that’s terrible.

A: All of this would have been for him. All of it.

NEW YORK

Wednesday, 19 July 2006. 11:39 p.m.

‘Are you sure you don’t remember anything?’

‘I’m telling you. He made me turn around and then he punched in some numbers.’

‘We can’t go on like this. There are still about sixty per cent of the combinations to go through. You have to give me something. Anything.’

They were next to the lift doors. This panel was certainly more of a challenge than the last one. Unlike the panel operated by a palm print, this was a simple number pad like an ATM machine and it was virtually impossible to extract a short numerical sequence from any sizable memory. To open the lift doors, Albert had connected a long, thick cable to the entry panel, intending to crack the code using a basic but brutal method. In the broadest terms this consisted of having the computer try all possible combinations, from all zeroes to all nines, which could take quite some time.

‘We have three minutes to get into this lift. It’s going to take the computer at least another six to go through the sequence of twenty digits. That’s if it doesn’t crash in the meantime because I’ve shifted all the processor’s power into the deciphering program.’

The fan in the laptop was making an infernal racket, like a hundred bees trapped in a shoebox.

Orville tried to remember. He turned around, faced the wall and looked at his watch. No more than three seconds had gone by.

‘I’m going to limit it to ten digits,’ Albert said.

‘Are you sure?’ Orville said, turning back.

‘Absolutely. I don’t think we have any other option.’

‘How long will it take it?’

‘Four minutes,’ Albert said, scratching his chin nervously. ‘Let’s hope it’s not the last combination it tries, because I can hear them coming.’

At the other end of the hall someone was banging on the door.

AL MUDAWWARA DESERT, JORDAN

Thursday, July 20. 6:39 a.m.

For the first time since they had reached Claw Canyon eight days earlier, dawn found most of the members of the expedition asleep. Five of them, under six feet of sand and rocks, would never wake again.

Others were shuddering in the early-morning cold beneath a camouflage blanket. They looked at the place where the horizon was supposed to be and waited for the sun to burst into day, turning the cold air into the hell of what would become the hottest day of the Jordanian summer in over forty-five years. From time to time they gave a worried nod, and that in itself frightened them. For every soldier the night watch is the hardest; and for the one who has blood on his hands it’s the time when the ghosts of those he has killed might come to whisper in his ear.