Джанет Моррис - The 40-Minute War

“Beck! What’s the meaning of this! I’ve never been so insulted in all my life.” The short, plump, mole-faced genetic engineer blinked through trifocals so thick his eyes were distorted behind them.

Netanayhu, like a kid who’d gotten his hand out of the cookie jar just in time, had a self-satisfied, naughty look on his face.

“This…” Morse waddled over to Netanayhu, his finger shaking with rage as he pointed it at the Israeli, “this… bully , this officious Jewish mother, pulled me right out of my laboratory—or his henchmen did—and spirited me here without a word. Not an apology, not an ‘if you please.’ And those Hebrew scholars you’ve found me can’t possibly do without my—”

“Sit down, Doctor Morse. If the colonel wanted you here, it was for a good reason. Now, Dov, what’s the reason?”

“Security,” Netanayhu said as if it was perfectly obvious. “We’ve had a bomb threat—”

“A bomb threat,” Morse repeated, becoming livid. “Oh, that’s just wonderful! What about my co-workers? I’ve taught them everything I know. They’re irreplaceable. I swear I’ll never understand you Israelis, with your cavalier attitude toward human life, after all you’ve been—”

“I thought you just said they couldn’t wipe their behinds without you overseeing them?” said Netanayhu, who might take this kind of talk from Dickson, but never from a man like Morse. “Now, which is it—either they’re bumbling Hebrew scholars, or they’re irreplaceable co-workers—certainly not both?”

Even Morse knew that he’d screwed up. He appealed to Beck: “If the lab is blown up, we’re back to square one. What about your timetable?”

“Timetables, in Israel,” Beck said with more chill than he’d intended, “are subject to interruptions of this sort more frequently than any of us would wish.” Then he turned to Netanayhu: “What about it, Dov? Did you leave the rest of those scientists to sweat it out?”

“We evacuated everyone, how could we not? But this fat little goy of yours was judged to be top priority. And, as it happened, there was no bomb, none that we could find—or it was a dud.”

Again with that philosophical air which meant he was setting Beck up for something, Netanayhu reached out for a slice of pumpernickel and said, “But security is always a concern. Tell Doctor Morse this. He does not seem to understand that we are protecting his welfare. He is disobedient, he makes phone calls, he tried to use leverage to get information on his wife and children, he is acting not at all like a good team player. There is no possibility of protecting this operation if he insists on talking to all his colleagues as if he were still a civilian.”

“That true, Morse? Have you been socializing with your confreres? Making a nuisance of yourself at the legation? Using the goddamned phone?”

“Secretary Beck,” Morse miscalled him, puffed up like a cockerel, “I’ve never been treated like this. I didn’t expect to spend my time here in total isolation, be followed everywhere, have people in my apartment, in my car, looking over my shoulder at all times. I can’t work this way. It’s impossible.”

“Dov, got a notepad?” Beck’s spine was crawling; he remembered his blurred night of interrogation and when he tossed the notepad Netanayhu fished from his khaki pocket across the table to Morse, he could barely control the impulse to throw it in Morse’s face.

“Sit down in that chair, Doctor Morse. Good.” Beck flicked a glance at Netanayhu: “Dov, I’m truly sorry about this and I thank you for everything you’ve done.” Then he bore down on Morse: “Morse, you take that pad and this pen,” Beck took one from his suit’s inside pocket, “and you write down the names of everyone you’ve spoken to since I last saw you—on the street, in a public john, at the lab, the conference, the consulate, on the phone. I want to know what you said to whom, when and where, to the minute. Is that clear? Because you’re not leaving here until the colonel and I are satisfied that you haven’t jeopardized this entire mission beyond hope of salvage. Do you get my drift? If you can’t make that list, or if it doesn’t satisfy us, there’s no plane ride, no expedition to find your wife and kids, no money, no perks—nothing. You can fend for yourself from now on, just like a tailor from White Plains or a mechanic from Kansas City. Now, start writing.”

“In the other room, if you please,” Netanayhu said, the only sign that he’d felt Beck’s vehemence to be excessive or out of character.

Morse, as he got up, pen in shaking hand, gave it one last try: “You weren’t around, Beck, when I had to negotiate this with your nasty chief, that Dickson person. There’s no money—at least not the sort I’d hoped. And the other—”

“I don’t care , Morse,” said Beck with real surprise. “You’re in too deep and you’re a security risk. Now go dig yourself out of the hole you’ve dug, or I’ll personally see to it that you’re buried in it.”

As the little scientist stomped huffily away, Beck put his face in his hands and realized that his fingertips were so cold that they were numb. “God help us,” he told his palms, and he didn’t take them away until Netanayhu’s hand touched his.

“Beck,” said the colonel avuncularly, “do you want to tell me about your trip?”

“I can’t—Yeah, I’d like that. I’d like to tell somebody.”

And when he’d finished telling Netanayhu about his forced debriefing in Tel Aviv, Netanayhu was scowling as if Beck were his son and had been dishonorably discharged from the army for reasons not his fault.

“So what shall we do, Beck? How to protect you from your own—this is not an easy question. They obviously were not buying the cover story of the fact-finding trip, were not buying it in any way whatsoever.”

“Obviously. Maybe Morse is the leak. Maybe it’s Dickson—he’s been out sick since I got back. Maybe…” Beck spread his hands, saw that they still trembled, and put them in his lap.

“You were right to recruit Ashmead,” Netanayhu said firmly. “All of this only proves how right. Don’t worry about the bomb threat; it’s not unusual; just Palestinians, who hate technology and now have good reason beyond their previous reasons. Eat. Such food should not be wasted. And I think better on a full stomach.” He patted his.

So Beck ate, knowing that with Netanayhu briefed, to the extent that Beck could brief him, and Ashmead and his team out there somewhere doing what they did so well, he’d taken every precaution he could take to put Operation Tiebreaker on the road.

But like Ashmead’s people who, once they’d agreed to sign on, had snapped to with drill-team precision and let Beck brief them on specifics, everyone had to understand exactly what was expected of him and be willing to do precisely what he was told.

Even Chris Patrick, with whom he was having dinner, was going to have to realize that.

Spying for Beck on her fellow reporters that afternoon in the English-style bar across from the Overseas Press Club in the Old City was beginning to make Chris Patrick feel slimy.

The world was dying around her, and she was worried about ethical conduct, the repercussions of the disinformation she’d been spreading for no better reason than personal advantage, and whether the tiny.25 caliber Colt automatic she’d bought and now carried everywhere in her purse would really do the job, if she dared to try it.

She’d rather count on it than on the mercifully clear film badge she now wore next to her press pass or the clip-on Geiger counter attached to her belt, or any other placebo Beck had given her, including the once-over of her apartment by one of his people: Chris Patrick had watched her mother die of cancer; she had no intention of reliving the experience, or living it. But everybody said that was what was in store for all the “lucky” survivors—everybody in the press corps, everybody who favored places like this and got drunk earlier than they’d used to, grousing now about the chances of getting some real money—not paper or plastic—so they could get out of Israel and about the transAtlantic phone calls they couldn’t seem to make to their home offices like a bunch of shell-shocked refugees which, by and large, they were.