Hesh Kestin - The Siege of Tel Aviv

Until they fuck up. Then he moves quickly to replace them.

“Business and warfare are alike,” he likes to tell his military colleagues, for that—in typical Israeli fashion—is the way he sees them. “Small, smart, and devoted always defeats big, stupid, and indifferent.”

Now, unable to sleep, half-glasses perched on his nose as he peruses the emails he was unable to get to during the day, he dictates in a voice that is at once flat and declarative, like a man giving directions to a tourist in a rental car. From time to time, he glances at the wall to his left, opposite the bank of windows looking out at the Mediterranean, which is almost invisible on this moonless night.

“Marcantonio Feretti, Zamoni S.p. A., Milan. Dear Marco. While we have been considering restaurant chains for some time, organizing one in the US out of independent pizzerias strikes me as bold, which I like, potentially profitable, which my investors like, and strikingly perilous, which nobody can like. Yes, branding the neighborhood pizzeria could create a national, even international, chain out of a chaos of small businesses, but three problems must be overcome. One, how precisely to control quality in a business known for cutting corners; two, whether or not Americans or anyone else sees pizza as anything more than a commodity; and three, whether the current suppliers can easily be supplanted. As you know, I’m not above a fight, but I am concerned with whether a fight for control of such a business is worth the trouble. We’re still interested in the concept of rolling up independent businesses into a single entity, but I prefer to choose another battleground. With all good wishes, et cetera.”

Almost without missing a beat, Yigal goes on to the next.

“Yukio Nasaki, chairman, Doyo Heavy Industries, Tokyo. Esteemed Yuki-san. Thank you for your recent communication regarding a joint venture in the South American market. My colleagues and I see a great deal of merit in both economies of scale and cross marketing. However, Isracorp does not engage in joint ventures in the international business arena. May I suggest that either Doyo buy out Isracorp’s investment or that we buy out your own? Considering that the impetus here comes from your side, we at Isracorp would be honored to consider an offer for our facilities in the area. Should that not come to fruition, we would be pleased to make a counteroffer for your own. With all good wishes for future success, et cetera.

“Lawrence K. Stanton, Bloomington Corp., Bloomington Indiana. Make this a fax, the man doesn’t read emails. Larry, Isracorp is willing on condition as outlined. Let’s meet in Geneva next week and settle it. Yigal. Suzanne, find me a time slot for an hour that’s not dinner. The man likes to drink and the evening can go on forever.

“Next. Via email to Sir Charles Murray, chairman, Olnay’s Bank, London. Dear Bunny, I share your hopes but not your optimism. Any deal with the Saudis remains dependent on the political outcome. For all we really know, the current noise is merely—”

He looks up. Judy is standing at the door in a pajama top and heels. Lately his wife has taken up the bikini wax, which confuses Yigal because for twenty-two years he has been happy with the look God gave her. She does not seem to be the same woman.

“—the product of the hopeful imagination of yet another naïve American president. To quote Ronald Reagan, ‘Respect them but suspect them.’ Let’s wait and see.” He turns to his wife. “What?”

“My love, you must be the most cynical man in Israel. The whole country is celebrating.”

“A bunch of Arabs declare peace? Every time they talk peace, we have a war.”

“Wouldn’t it be better if Cobi didn’t have to be in uniform until he’s forty-eight? If you don’t?”

“I like being in uniform. Anyway, it’s just two more years.”

“Two more years of you disappearing and me never knowing if you’ll come back. And now it’s the same with Cobi.”

They are speaking English now. His wife has been an Israeli for more than two decades, but will never be at home in Hebrew. Partially it is his fault, he knows, because his English is solid and always at the ready when she pauses to reach for a word. Often they converse in two languages, he in Hebrew, she in English. And sometimes in a third language. His wife taught him Pig Latin. He took to it immediately, especially in bed.

“Judy, we’re not talking wishes. We’re talking facts. These people want to kill Jews. They’ve changed their minds? Good. But you know what the Romans said. Si vis pacem, para bellum . If you wish peace…”

“I know, I know: prepare for war. But it’s all over CNN. The Arabs are finally ready.” She steps into the room. “Esidesbay ichwhay, Iway amway ootay,” [1] “Besides which, I am too.” she says in Pig Latin, which she taught him early on when she was too shy to tell him what she wanted in English.

“Entay inutesmay. Ogay armway upway ethay edbay.” [2] “Ten minutes. Go warm up the bed.”

She moves closer and sits in his lap as she used to do before they were married. “Owhay eedsnay away edbay?” [3] “Who needs a bed?”

IN A FIVE-STORY HOTEL on a dark side street in the Imbaba quarter of Cairo, far from Egyptian military headquarters and the Israeli operatives who, it is thought, permeate every square meter of the capital, a light flashes briefly from a high window.

Inside, in the war room of Second Division, Special Operations Branch, Lieutenant Colonel Jamil Anwar slaps the face of the young adjutant pulling back the edge of the blackout curtain to peek at the street below.

“Pitiful lump!” the colonel hisses. “Blackout means blackout. Everywhere are Jewish spies.”

Though only a colonel, as head of field security for all ground forces of the Egyptian Army, Anwar is one of the most powerful men in Cairo. Modeled on the SS—indeed, founded in the 1950s by German veterans of that organization who had found shelter in the Middle East—the Field Security Office is one of unique prestige and privilege, with the power of immediate arrest and trial of all officers below the rank of major general, and even these may be arrested at any time and the charges against them forwarded to the Grand Military Council. The files of the Field Security Office hold dossiers on every serving officer, up to and including the commanding general.

Col. Anwar’s brief is brutally simple: Monitor the activities of all enemies of the state who are in contact with Egyptian enlisted men and officers, all of whom are considered targets of opportunity for the Israeli, American, British, French, German, Chinese, Saudi, and Libyan spies who operate with impunity across Egypt. These are said to work incessantly to listen in on military communications frequencies, photograph military installations, and—most damaging—bribe its underpaid and thus inherently untrustworthy personnel.

Like any good security chief, Col. Anwar often exaggerates the threat of foreign subversion in order to gain leverage for his organization and for himself, but he also knows that the threat, however exaggerated, is real. That is why he set up a war room here, where no one would think to look, and where a curious adjutant peering through a crack in a blackout curtain deserves the back of his hand. If Col. Anwar had his way, the man would be shot, but his adjutant comes from a good family. Besides, the colonel is obese, and the adjutant has been trained to help him into his car, an olive-green 1978 Cadillac Coupe de Ville, without drawing attention to the strenuousness of his efforts.

ON THE WESTERN RIDGE overlooking a shallow muddy stream, two months before the winter rains will transform the Jordan for a short while into a rushing river, Lieutenant Cobi Lev, at twenty-one already a three-year veteran of the IDF, stands atop a very nice facsimile of an Israeli-made Chariot tank—the IDF is not about to waste a real tank at this symbolic post—peering through an Israeli-made starlight scope at the nighttime landscape on the opposite bank. The SLS presents a ghostly picture, a kind of X-ray in green and white, but so precise Cobi can make out an owl diving at thirty miles per hour to snatch a field mouse.