Gordon Kent - The Spoils of War

Thinking of it, Alan wanted a cigarette, and he might have asked her for one, but Miriam said, “You and I are going, darling,” and he didn’t want to push the intimacy of her “darling” by sharing one of her cigarettes.

“So soon?”

She laughed and told him to be nice. “I’ll drive you back, start the paperwork, come back here. It’s my case now.”

“And you’ll inform me.”

“I will, of course I will—” She was leading the way toward the gate. Alan asked if Mosher would get into trouble and she said she supposed he would. “But nothing serious. I think he really didn’t know.”

“It isn’t much of a job.”

“He made a mess once; he’s only waiting here to get out.”

An SUV was slanted into one of the parking spaces by the gate, but he barely noted it. She pointed at her car and they started for it. They crossed the street, and he heard the SUV start up behind them but paid no attention, and then the big vehicle was beside them and the doors opened and three men poured out. He was grabbed by the arms before he could react; he shouted, but they were pulling him into the car. He saw her trying to get a hand into her bag, and a man punched her hard and sent her sprawling, and then Alan was on his back on the floor of the SUV and it was starting to move, the doors still open and his feet sticking out. Somebody kicked his legs and there was a lot of shouting and the doors slammed.

Rose Craik didn’t worry when her husband wasn’t at the hotel at two because she assumed the job had taken longer than he had expected. The possibility annoyed her, nonetheless; she wanted him to climb down from his work for a day, to try to forget the war that now seemed to consume him. She didn’t really want to see a movie; she wanted him to see a movie.

Or not forget the war, not merely the war in Afghanistan; rather, the altered military world into which he had been launched by September eleventh. He felt guilt, she knew, because US intelligence hadn’t anticipated the attack; he felt a deep, not very well defined anxiety about America itself. When he had said, “Scared people scare me,” she knew that he was trying to express that anxiety for her, perhaps for himself. Sometimes he seemed stunned by the attack’s intricacy and its success; other times he was puzzled by the reaction to it. “We’ve had terrorism against the US for twenty years. Everybody knew al-Qaida was out there. Why is everybody over-reacting?” And the job was grinding him down—literally; she had watched him get thinner over the months.

Bored now, frustrated, she telephoned home—Bahrain—where a Navy friend was keeping their kids; she said they were fine. She called her office; she was missed but they were getting along. She watched some Israeli television. At three o’clock, she allowed herself to worry.

At three-twenty, the telephone rang. Intense disappointment when it wasn’t Alan, then a catch of breath when she heard a woman with an accent who said she was with the police. Rose’s gut dropped. The woman said that they had to talk. She was in the lobby—could she come up? Rose was an attaché with all that meant about classified knowledge, being an American in a foreign place. Hotels, even in Israel, weren’t necessarily safe; a public place was better than a room. “I’ll come down.”

The woman was heavy-set, hard-eyed, maybe a little flamboyant in her loose hair and her bright scarf. She had a bruise on the left side of her face from eye to chin, the eye puffing and darkening. “Miriam Gurion, sergeant, Tel Aviv police.” She held up ID.

“Is it about—?”

The woman put a finger to her lips.

If anybody in the hotel lobby thought it was odd that a woman was holding up a badge and a card, nobody gave any sign. Rose took the card and studied it, handed it back with her own diplomatic passport. She glanced around the lobby, looking for the signs of a watcher, threat, anomaly. What was the woman afraid of?

Mrs Gurion—she said she was Mrs, not Ms—led her to a deep sofa in an alcove that allowed them to see the doors. When they sat, the sofa gave a kind of sigh, and mounds of pinky gray fabric swelled around them.

“I think your husband is okay, but the situation is not good.” Tears came to the woman’s eyes. “I am so ashamed. It is my fault—all my fault—” She gulped. “They took me prisoner!”

Rose’s heart raced but she leaned forward. “Is he all right?”

“I was with your husband. We were doing a job, maybe you know about it, a man who was dead—”

“Where is my husband?”

The woman shook her head. “They took him from the street. They give me this.” She waved fingers at her bruised face. “Four men in a big car.” She started to cry. “I don’t know where they took him. They put me in another car and we drove around and around. Then they put me out in Ayalon. The bastards!”

Rose shook her head. “I don’t understand—who would—Was it the Palestinians?”

“They wouldn’t dare. An American?” Her laughter was edged with contempt. “Who dares to snatch an American off the street in Israel? Gangsters? Not possible.” She took out a cigarette. “They might dare to take a policewoman, but not an American.” She eyed Rose. “He says you made him quit.”

“I don’t—oh, smoking. Go ahead.” She tried to be patient as the woman fiddled with a lighter, but she burst out, “How bad is it?” Her brain was turning over possibilities, actions: should she telephone the embassy? The Navy in Bahrain? Mike Dukas? It was confusing because the woman was the police, the first ones she would have called.

“It is Mossad; it has to be Mossad; nobody else dares. You know what I mean, Mossad?” She told Rose how she and Alan had spent the hours he had been away—how he had found her at the police station on Dizengoff Street; she had told him what she knew; she had taken him to a place where the body had been hidden. “Then, when we come out, they grab him. And knock me down and drive me around. I am not pleased.”

“How bad is it?”

The woman blew smoke. “These are some very stupid people, but how stupid they can be, I don’t know. My idea is that they can’t be stupid enough to do something large. But, when they find he is an American officer, they may be frightened.”

“Scared people do stupid things.”

“Just so.” The woman met her eyes. The look was open, curious, challenging. “You are brave?”

“I’m a naval officer, too.”

The eyes appraised her, made some judgment. “So.” She screwed the cigarette into an ashtray. “The formalities you can forget—reporting to the police, I mean. I did that. They told me to shut up. Now you must do whatever things will bring weight on them. Understand?”

“Pressure.”

“Yes, okay—pressure. I say it is Mossad.” She took out another cigarette. “It is Mossad. Press.”

“I can call my embassy—”

“If you call as a citizen, they will be days doing anything. I know. You have friends? You can—” she made a motion—“do you say ‘pull strings’?”

“Yes, that’s what we say. And yes, I can. Why won’t the police help?”

“When your husband and I had seen this body, this dead man, I called Homicide. They didn’t come. Why? Because some voice came from up high and said don’t.”

“But they attacked you. You’re police.”

“Exactly, and so my superiors are, mmm, confused. Not very daring people. They are angry because of this—” She flicked her fingers at her bruised face again. “But beyond a certain place, they have to ask themselves, ‘How far dare we go?’ The right thing is not always the right thing, understand?” She touched Rose’s hand. “I was afraid you would be one of those screamers, you know?”