Adam Palmer - The Moses Legacy

That evening, Gabrielle decided to sample the true Israeli experience of Independence Day, venturing out into the jam-packed streets and dragging Daniel in tow. Caught in the crush of thousands of happy Israelis, they edged their way along slowly amidst the throngs of mostly young people. Once in a while they emerged into free space, where the people – natives and immigrants – danced and sang to the strains of amplified live bands that filled the air with both modern and traditional songs about Israel. Songs of victory and songs of peace… an eclectic mixture of nationalism and optimism.

‘What’s with the plastic hammers?’ Gabrielle had to shout to be heard above the noise of the crowds. She had just been hit over the head for the umpteenth time by a plastic hammer wielded by a child of about four or five, who was seated atop his father’s shoulders. It was painless and the father of the child seemed to find it amusing too, even when he in turn was hit by a teenager’s plastic mallet in a well-timed counter-strike.

‘It’s an old-new tradition,’ Daniel replied cryptically.

‘Isn’t that a bit of an oxymoron?’

‘It goes back to a merchant who bought them for another celebration. He overestimated the demand and had a few thousand left over, so he sold them off cheaply for Independence Day. That was a few decades ago and it’s been an Israeli tradition ever since.’

‘I guess I’ll get used to it eventually,’ said Gabrielle as she succumbed to another couple of sneak attacks. Daniel didn’t seem to mind or even notice it when he was the target. But the children – and adolescents and adults – seemed to get a perverse pleasure in landing one on Gabrielle’s head, as if her height made her an especially distinguished target.

‘I’m glad we had a big lunch,’ said Gabrielle.

She had a point. Food rather than drink was normally the Israelis’ preferred method of celebration. But today there was no one available to serve food.

‘What the-’

Gabrielle had just been sprayed with foam by a teenage youth with a cheeky grin on his face. He was clearly being egged on by two of his friends who flanked him and laughed at his antics before moving on to a new target.

‘Is that also an Israeli tradition?’

‘A more recent one,’ said Daniel. ‘Albeit a rather annoying one. I think they imported it from Tel Aviv. I thought Jerusalemites had more class though.’

‘I guess when you live in a country that has so many wars, it’s nice to have one day a year when you can let your hair down.’

Daniel noticed for the first time in the last three weeks that Gabrielle was having a good time. In Egypt, even before the incident in the tomb, she had seemed uptight and tense. Now, for the first time in ages, she seemed to be full of the joie de vivre that he hadn’t seen in her since she was a teenager.

By two in the morning, fortified by a bottle of Arak that they had managed to obtain in their downtown adventures, Gabrielle had learnt the hora – Israel’s national dance – and half a dozen Israeli folk songs, or at least the chorus thereof. Her favourite, judging by her constant repetition of it, seemed to be ‘ Od loh Ahavti Dai’ – ‘I Haven’t Loved Enough’ – an up-tempo song in which the singer laments that they haven’t done enough in life, listing all their unachieved ambitions from finding water in the desert to writing their memoirs and building their dream house. But most importantly, not having loved enough.

Daniel realized she was drunk and decided to get her back to the hotel before she embarrassed herself. He had to half-prop, half-carry her to the bedroom as she flirted with everyone from the security man on the door to the night porter. Undressing her on the king-size bed was relatively easy, but he had to remind himself to keep his intentions honourable – or at least his actions.

But when he was undressed himself, she seemed to undergo a revival. ‘Come over and kiss me, Danny.’

‘You’re tired.’

‘No I’m not. I’m just drunk.’

‘Well I’m tired.’ He realized that he was drunk too, having consumed a fair amount of Arak himself. ‘Goodnight, Gaby.’

He lay down on top of the bed – it was too hot for the covers.

‘Now that you’ve called me Gaby, you’ve got to make love to me.’

‘Goodnight, Professor Gusack,’ he said, making his honourable intentions clear.

‘If you don’t make love to me, I’ll have to force you,’ she said. And without waiting for his reply, she rolled over on top of him and tried to hold him down with a schoolgirl pin.

It looks like we’re going to have that wrestling match after all, he thought, putting up a token show of resistance.

‘So we still haven’t got a fix on Goliath,’ said Sarit.

She and Dov were in the Mossad’s headquarters in Herzliya where Sarit had been debriefed over the events in Egypt and had spent the last week liaising with the Israeli embassy in Egypt to determine the fate of Goliath. They had monitored the press and sent operatives to engage nurses at local hospitals in casual conversations in an effort to extract information. But because of the recent cooling off of relations with Egypt, they had to keep a low profile.

‘We managed to trace him to a hospital in Cairo. But by the time we got there, he’d already discharged himself.’

‘It feels so silly calling him Goliath. Don’t we know his real name?’

‘Unfortunately not. Even Audrey Milne doesn’t know it. She thinks that the only person who does is Senator Morris and he’s keeping his cards close to his chest.’

‘You said they operate in cell structure, didn’t you?’

‘That’s right, like all good subversive organizations. Arthur Morris’s cell comprises Morris, Milne and Paul Tomlinson, aka “the professor”.’

‘Plus Goliath.’

‘Goliath is more Morris’s private asset, essentially his attack dog.’

‘But technically part of the cell.’

‘Yes, but if we didn’t know about them already, the only one he could implicate is Morris.’

‘And presumably the others also have their own assets whose identities they don’t give away.’

‘Exactly. Any member of a cell can have a private asset, known only to him. And an asset of one cell member can be the head of his own cell. If his recruiter wants something done, he may call on his asset and the asset in turn is able to call on other members of his cell who are unknown to the recruiter who owns the asset.’

‘So Senator Morris may be an asset of someone in another cell who can call on him to get the kind of results that he specializes in. Morris would either do what he’s asked to do or tell them that he can’t do it.’

‘Exactly. And by the same token, Goliath could have his own cell to help him implement the senator’s wishes. Although I suspect not.’

‘So is it possible that Carmichael was one of Professor Tomlinson’s assets?’

Dov gave this a moment’s thought. ‘It’s unlikely. If it were the case, then the professor wouldn’t have been so anxious to kill him.’

‘Why not? Maybe they saw him as trouble.’

‘Well, it was apparently Carmichael’s research that alerted them to the possibility of using the plague against us.’

‘But doesn’t that prove my point?’

‘Not really. You see, Carmichael didn’t set out to work against us. He just made them aware of the fact that the plague could be revived in certain circumstances. He was a senile old man whose occasional lapses into lucidity gave them a heads-up on a plausible strategy to advance their nefarious agenda.’

‘And it was those same lapses into lucidity that made him a threat to them. In short, he knew too much for his own good.’