Chris Moriarty - Spin Control

Gavi looked up at him, doing his best to keep his eyes steady and level. “You expected me not to be?”

“Oh, I expected surprise. I just wasn’t sure if you’d be surprised by the news, or surprised that I knew about it.”

A child’s voice rang out somewhere in the sun beyond the windows, and both men instinctively looked toward it. The glass, Gavi noticed, was caked with yellow khamsin dust. He thought idly that you could probably make a decent map of Tel Aviv’s safe houses by just looking for unwashed windows and unswept doorsteps. He told himself that he was sick, sick to death of streaked windows and grimy walkup flats with garage sale furnishings. That all the other times he’d sat in identical rooms and thought identical thoughts had just been leading up to this time. And that this time it was well and truly over.

He knew better.

More to the point, Didi knew better.

“So why are you showing me this now? The file’s not exactly empty. You must have been holding this ace for a while now.”

“I wasn’t, actually. We had the file, yes, but I only figured out last week that he wasn’t Safik’s natural child. And I’m telling you now because I want you to have time to think about it in cold blood. Here. With me to talk to. I trust your second thoughts, and your third and fourth thoughts. It’s that first passionate impulse that terrifies me.”

“Joseph might recognize me too, Didi. Have you thought about that?”

“I doubt he will. If he remembers you at all, it’s as a young man not much older than he is now. And he doesn’t look that much like you. Only a little bit around the mouth, really. I didn’t see it myself at first.”

Gavi looked down at the photograph. He’d allowed himself to be distracted from it, and he realized this was a mistake as it was extremely unlikely that Didi would allow him to keep the photograph or ever see it again. His mind was doing a strange thing to him, filling his nose with the remembered scent of Joseph’s infant skin, goading him into an animal certainty that the young stranger in the photograph was his child.

Like the goats, he thought nonsensically, who knew their kids in the dark by smell alone. But it had never occurred to him that they might remember the smell for years or decades after he’d taken their kids to slaughter. What was the purpose of allowing their senses to torment them like that when it was too late to do anything or save anybody?

“Can I read his file?” he asked.

“Oh, Gavi.”

“Don’t ‘Oh, Gavi’ me. Why shouldn’t I read it?”

“Why should you?” Didi held the slim sheaf of papers up and shook it until the pages rattled like dead leaves. “You want to know what’s in here, Gavi? The life of another man’s son. Walid Safik’s son. Everything in this file says that Safik has pampered and adored and doted on the boy since the day he adopted him. Everything in here says that Yusuf Safik returns his father’s love. For God’s sake, Gavi, we’ve got phone records showing the kid calls home every night, and, let me tell you, I’m grateful if my daughters call me once a month! The boy’s Palestinian, Gavi. Just as Leila intended him to be. And his father is Walid Safik. You’re just a stranger who happens to look like him.”

“I know,” Gavi whispered.

And he did know.

He really did.

But that didn’t make it any easier to let go of the photograph.

Cohen materialized in a shimmer of security protocols. Or perhaps the shimmer was in the air, Arkady told himself, and not in Cohen. He still couldn’t get used to the instream version of Yad Vashem that Gavi had decided to hold this meeting in.

“How come it’s all different?” Arkady asked. “Where are Gavi’s goats? And…nothing’s falling down. They’d have to have an army of gardeners and groundskeepers to keep the place looking this way.”

“You don’t have to shout,” Osnat said. “Gardeners are expensive. And if you want them to work on the Line, they’re more than expensive. Eighty percent of Israelis may be infertile, but no one wants their neighbors to know they’re not in the lucky twenty percent. It’s all about keeping up appearances.”

“But it’s not real. ”

“What’s real? This is the Yad Vashem that millions of tourists all over UN space know and believe exists. The illusion beats the reality any day on the numbers.”

“What’s the news on Li?” Gavi asked Cohen when he had settled into phase with their own surroundings.

Cohen looked sick. “It’s the Americans.”

“Turner?”

“Turner.”

Gavi swallowed convulsively, as if the news were a dry pill that had gotten stuck in his throat. “Has he told you what he wants?”

“That’s the funny part.” Cohen sank onto a bench so smoothly that it took Arkady a moment to realize that Cohen had somehow changed the standard tour on the fly and now they were all standing still in one of the rambling compound’s many gardens.

“He wants Arkady. And he wants Gavi to bring him. He was very insistent on that point. He’s arranged a three-way swap with Yassin. I walk away with Li. Turner gets Arkasha. And Arkady goes back to Syndicate space with Korchow.”

“But what do the Palestinians get out of it?”

“I suspect a better question would be what does Yassin get out of it. Arkady’s defection seems to have dovetailed neatly with the power struggle between him and Safik.”

“So Turner wants us to help Yassin take Safik down,” Gavi said. “Nice to know we’re on the side of the angels. I assume you’ve talked to Didi about this?”

“Yes.” Cohen paused and glanced at Arkady. “Didi thinks there ought to be a way to play along with Turner but still come out the other side holding the bag with Arkasha in it. He also authorized me to tell Arkady that if we can pull this off, he’ll guarantee Arkasha full political asylum.”

“What about Arkady?” Osnat asked.

“Arkady has to go back or Didi won’t help us. Frankly Didi wasn’t even happy about leaving Arkasha on-planet in light of…well…the obvious.”

“Can I trust Didi to protect Arkasha?” Arkady asked Gavi.

“I don’t know,” Gavi said. He looked sick to his stomach. “But I can’t think of anyone you can trust more.”

“Okay, then. I’ll do it.”

“And just what is Didi actually offering in the way of help?” Gavi asked Cohen.

“The Office won’t get directly involved in the swap.” The AI’s voice was tight with apprehension. “But Didi will provide backup…or cleanup if things get messy. The story for public consumption will be that the Office got an anonymous tip about where Li was being held and organized a rescue. Ash is going to handle the operation so it doesn’t go through official channels.”

Another pause followed this news. Gavi sat down, bowed his head, crossed his arms over his chest, chewed on his lower lip. “I don’t know what to tell you,” he said finally, glancing up at Cohen. “On the one hand it stinks. On the other hand, Didi’s doing about as much as he can realistically do for you. Israeli policy’s ironclad. We don’t negotiate with terrorists. Interfaithers are terrorists and the Americans are Interfaithers. Ergo the Americans are terrorists. Ergo, we don’t negotiate with them. We don’t even have the channels of communication we’d need to figure out if Turner’s following his government’s orders or freelancing.”

“So what do we do?” Osnat asked.

“Agree to Turner’s terms,” Gavi said, “then figure out how to control the ground so no one gets shot before Ash shows up with the cavalry.”

“We’d need an army,” Osnat muttered gloomily.

Gavi looked up, solemn-eyed and bristling with nervous tension. “We have an army,” he said. He jerked his head toward the outer walls of the compound and the Green Line beyond the walls. “EMET.”