Bashert Read online

  Then there was the night that Mitch was at the helm. By this point they all were pretty good at steering the yacht, which may have lulled Mitch into paying less attention than he should have. He should have been trying to match everything on the radar scope to the lights he could see around him, but he was thinking instead of Deb, who had kissed him at the end of her watch the way she had that time back at Antonelli’s Pizza—a teasing kiss that seemed to promise but never delivered. She had kissed him just before bounding down the stairs to Jef. Mitch never could figure her out. She was always so sweet to him, but it was Jef she was sleeping with.

  What did I do wrong, he thought then, just before a shape the size of a mountain appeared in the dark ahead. A horn that could wake the dead blasted across the rapidly closing gap. The radar alarm went off, and the servomotors tried to turn the wheel out of his hands. Without thinking, Mitch kicked the switch to kill the servos, spun the wheel all the way to starboard, shoved the port engine all the way to full, and threw the starboard screw into reverse. The yacht lurched and heeled sharply, then shook as he put the starboard engine ahead full again and spun the rudder back to neutral.

  No one can turn a three-hundred-foot yacht on a dime, but Mitch came close to it, with just enough of a turn and just enough extra forward speed to angle across the bow of the oncoming ship with mere meters to spare. A sailor on the bow could have spit and landed a gob on the stern of the Delft as it passed below. Mitch thoroughly expected Jef to come storming up to the bridge to chew him out, but Jef had a one-track mind when he was with Deb, and it would have taken more than a near collision at sea to derail him.

  The rest of the watch and the rest of the rush to reach Israel had gone without any more close calls, at least of the nautical kind.

  ~ ~ ~

  Migdal pulled his thoughts back to the present and the plane for Vienna. He looked around at the tourists and business travelers on their way to Austria and thought about his own dirty business there. He pressed his face to the window and strained to see below as the ships shrunk and the sea lightened.

  He hated to leave without first seeing Shira and Bini, but he did not want to risk tipping off anyone as to their whereabouts. As long as they were at Avi’s and he didn’t try to contact them directly, they should be all right. He hoped that Shira would not decide on her own to go back to the apartment. During the three days he had spent alone there, he had several times spotted men watching. He only hoped that Tariq’s people were not clever enough to be able to have monitored his Web surfing. He didn’t even want Lev to know what he was up to, but he also knew that if Lev wanted to track him, Lev would succeed. They had both been trained by the same man, and Lev had always had far better access to their common mentor.

  The plane banked and Migdal got a brief look back toward his adopted country, the coastline of Israel sparkling in the winter sun.

  28

  1963 — Mitchell’s first glimpse of Israel had been little more than a red slash on the horizon: the sandstone cliffs of Ga’ash Beach painted scarlet in the last light of the setting sun. Behind him, he could no longer see the Delft. He throttled back and reached for his binoculars. Despite the calm seas, he found it hard to compensate for the gentle roll of the LCVP. Finally he got the knack of it and brought the beach into focus. Beautiful, he thought, too bad Deb isn’t here to see this. She’ll get her chance soon enough, though.

  He closed the throttle and drifted as the sky darkened. The instructions had been very explicit. The Delft was to keep her distance, to stay far offshore and not draw attention. The material was to be brought ashore in the LCVP at a secluded beach near the twin kibbutzim of Ga’ash and Shefayim.

  He continued to drift as he waited for the signal. Through the binoculars he watched the brightening moonlight slowly turn the sand at the base of the cliffs to a band of silver. On shore, a tiny light flashed twice, then twice again. Mitch swung the bow around and headed at half throttle toward the spot where he had seen the flash. His heart started to pound. They were waiting. Mossad. This was it, what they had crossed the world for, what, without knowing it, Wasserman had died for.

  With almost no wind, it was easy guiding the boat in. As he approached a gap in the rocks on the shore, he cut back to dead slow until he felt the bottom scrape. He gunned the engine briefly to slide smartly up onto the beach before shutting down. He pulled the release and the winch rattled and whirred noisily as the bow lowered and slammed onto the sand.

  Mitchell climbed down and walked out onto the soil of Israel.

  Looking up and down the shore, he saw no one. He was alone on a secluded beach, with nothing but the soft sound of the waves and the crunch of his own feet on the sand. Then suddenly he was surrounded. Four men, two on either side, seemed to come from nowhere. Then he spotted two more abseiling down the cliffs. All were dressed in the same black turtlenecks and black trousers.

  “Welcome to Israel, Mr. Rossing,” said one of the men on his left. Mitchell turned toward the voice, which continued. “I am Novikov, Avram Novikov. Tsvi tells me you have a package for us. Where are the others?”

  “They’re back in the yacht. We thought it prudent to leave someone on board.”

  Novikov sucked in a breath. “But we told you explicitly that all of you were to come ashore together. All of you.” In the darkness it was difficult to read his face, but a note of distress had definitely entered his voice. The man behind him leaned forward and whispered a few words into his ear. Novikov shook his head. “Lo,” he said, “Lo!”

  “That means no, doesn’t it?” said Mitchell. “No to what?”

  “It matters not. What’s done is done. You should have all done what you were told.”

  Mitchell tried to control his voice, to seem at ease. “So, everything is fine, right? Well,” he said, starting to pace back and forth in the sand, slowly edging toward the open bow of the LCVP. “Let’s get this thing settled so I can get back to the yacht, and you can get on with your nuclear ambitions.” He reached casually back into the shadows of the open hull. His fingers closed on the Verey pistol stashed there. Suddenly a hand grabbed his wrist and twisted his arm up behind his back. The flare gun clattered to the deck.

  “Not a good idea,” the man holding his arm said. “And no use anyway.”

  Novikov walked over to them and put his face mere inches from Mitchell’s. “Forget about them. They should have come. Forget them.” Over his shoulder he said a few words in Hebrew to the others, who started unloading the fuel rods from the LCVP.

  “What about the money?” Mitchell asked.

  “Ah, yes, the money. Give him the money, Ari.” Two small duffle bags were casually dropped onto the wet sand in front of Mitchell. “It’s there. It’s yours. All yours. Israel’s little note of appreciation for your contribution so far.”

  Mitchell didn’t like the sound of that and said so.

  “Well, perhaps someday you will even join us, Mitchell Rossing. You even remind me a bit of my own son. You’re smart, resourceful, and capable, just the sort we would want in Mossad. It would not make sense to speak of recruiting you now, not under these circumstances. You’re too young, for one thing. But time will fix that. You lack training. And judgment. But a few years in the IDF, the army, will take care of that. In the meantime, we’ll take care of you. We’ll find you a place to stay and something to do.”

  “You seem to assume that I am staying in Israel. What if I don’t want to?”

  “We do not assume, and we did not ask you what you wanted. We are used to getting what we want.”

  “What about the others?”

  As if in answer, a bright spark of light flashed far out on the water, quickly followed by two more. The Israeli’s seemed as surprised as he was, and started talking rapidly among themselves.

  “What the …” Mitchell stared out over the sea, watching as the light flickered and dimmed. He waited, his heart pounding, as long seconds passed before a muffled drum roll swept over them. “What ha
ppened? What did you do?” he shouted, although he had already guessed what had happened.

  Novikov looked down at the sand. When he raised his head again, he said nothing. One of the others, it was hard to tell who, spoke first. “We told you to come together. We told you. This was not exactly as we planned, but now there is nothing to be done.”

  “They’re gone, aren’t they?” Mitchell said, feeling stupid and angry. “You killed them, just like that. And you expect me to stay in this fucked up country?”

  Novikov and his companion looked at each other but said nothing.

  “What if I refuse?”

  They laughed. “It is not like you have a lot of options. You have no passport, and you are here illegally. There is no yacht to go back to; your little rowboat will be gone as well in a few minutes, once we finish unloading; and there is no one else around on this beach to hear or see anything that happens. Where are you, Mr. Rossing? Where exactly? Does anyone know where you are, anyone except us, your new Israeli friends? Who else will ever know anything? No, you are gone. And, now you are here. As I said before, welcome to Israel, Mr. Rossing. With time, I think you will find much to love here.”

  Once more, one of his men whispered something to Novikov. He responded in Hebrew. “Yes, yes, Mr. Rossing. Now we are beginning to wonder whether you are very clever or very stupid. But, what’s done is done.” He gestured and a man picked up the two bags, hefted them, and set one back down. He walked away with the other before Mitchell could protest. Novikov reached for the remaining bag and shoved it at Mitchell before he and the others walked away.

  Mitchell looked out over the Mediterranean and thought about Debbie, who would never make aliyah, and Jef, who would not design computer circuits, and Theo Wasserman, who would not win the Fields Medal. He stood in silence on the shore of his new homeland, tears streaming down his cheeks.

  No choice, he remembered Deborah saying, is also a choice. It seemed to fit, although as yet he had no idea just what it meant.

  29

  2003 — Migdal had slept through most of the flight from Israel to Vienna. At the airport, he had rented a car and driven back east towards Hungary, through the gently rolling wine country of Burgenland, and to a crumbling warehouse at the border that had served many purposes but now was just an address, an isolated place to which to invite people. Two hours passed, and there was still no sign of his contacts. It had taken days to convince them, and now the trip to Austria was beginning to look like a complete waste of time.

  “Mitchell. Mitchell Rossing.”

  Migdal reached for his gun and turned toward the voice speaking English with an American accent, coming from somewhere in the shadows. “Who is it? Who’s there? Not Mustafa?”

  “What? You don’t recognize my voice? Has it changed that much? I would know yours anywhere. Don’t you recognize an old friend from college? Have you forgotten all the debates in your apartment, our arguments as we crossed the ocean together?”

  Migdal turned left and right, trying to pinpoint the voice amidst the echoes. “Jef? It can’t be. Is that really you? I thought … I thought you were dead.”

  “Well, you thought wrong.” Jef stepped out of the shadows, a semiautomatic in one hand, a length of pipe in the other. In the harsh overhead light, his face looked pocked and gnarled, splotched with patches of red and purple as though a circus clown had been interrupted before finishing his makeup.

  Migdal backed away.

  “You? Afraid? It is so unlike you, Mitch. You of the quietly confident smile. But what are you afraid of? Of me? I’m alone. I told the others I could finish this, one way or another. Besides, I owe you my life. Don’t you know that? Or maybe you don’t know. Maybe you don’t know what happened that night, that night off the coast of Israel, that night of unexpected betrayal. So, I will tell you.

  “I was standing at the stern when the first of the three explosions went off amidships, just below the wheelhouse where Deb was standing watch. I was thrown overboard, my femur shattered as I was slammed against the railing. In the water, I was disoriented but felt no pain at first. The wind was knocked out of me by the explosion and the impact with the water, and I struggled slowly to the surface with my leg dragging uselessly behind me and my lungs screaming for air. I got my face above water just as the next charges exploded. The blast seared the skin from my face and knocked me back underwater. Above, the sea became an inferno of burning oil and debris. With my lungs bursting, my face in searing pain, and my leg sending electric shocks through me each time I tried to kick, I still somehow managed to swim underwater far enough to clear the edge of the fire.

  “To this day, I do not know how I survived those first minutes. Even from a distance, the waves of heat from the fire burned my face, and the saltwater, though cool, only increased the pain. I was delirious but somehow managed to drag myself onto a section of paneling from one of the staterooms. There I drifted for hours.

  “I would have soon died were it not for the Lebanese fishing boat that, drawn by the fire, arrived and took me aboard. Even then I wanted to die. The pain was not merely unbearable, it was beyond description. They had only aspirin, which was useless, and some greasy unguent that one of the old sailors concocted. But worse than the physical pain was knowing that Deborah was gone. I wanted to be dead, too. But you kept me alive, Mitch. It was not until I thought of you that I could think of any reason for living. I hated you for betraying us, and I turned the hate into a drive that would keep me alive, that would enable me to endure the pain of healing and the shock of seeing myself in the mirror. Hate would help me learn Arabic, would make it possible to avenge myself on Israel, that land that had betrayed its own, its daughter, that had burned alive the only woman I would ever love.”

  “I didn’t know,” Migdal said. “Really, I didn’t. Mossad planned it all along, but I had no idea. They wanted to wipe out the tracks. You and Deb were supposed to be on the beach, with me. Their plan had been only to scuttle the ship, not blow it apart, but the vapor in those huge, near-empty fuel tanks exploded. And you can’t imagine the guilt I felt all these years. I always blamed myself, but I didn’t know.”

  “You expect me to believe that? Who was it who argued that somebody should stay behind with the ship? Who said he could handle the drop alone? Who? And I see that nothing changes. Here you are, with none of your friends. You still think you can do it all alone, and you still cannot be trusted.”

  “Jef, when we first reached the coast of Israel, we all agreed. It was the most prudent thing, safer. I really didn’t know.”

  “No, I don’t buy it, Mitchell Rossing, not for one minute, which is why I have followed you all these years. Zurich. Ulm. Sheffield. Wherever you went, I was there, which is why you are alive today and so many of your colleagues are not. I taught myself to think like you. You didn’t see me or feel me, but we have been attached at the hip for decades. I have been Israel’s public enemy number one and no one knew, least of all you. I had so many faces, though never my own. Not until now.

  “All I had to do was think like a traitor, like the traitor you are, and I could be waiting around the corner when the papers were exchanged, standing in the alley when the assassin made his move. You were the lucky one who made it home because I let you. You were never anywhere near as smart as you thought you were, never half as smart as Debbie. You lived until now because I wanted you to. And now I want something else from you.

  “You know, your wife reminds me somewhat of Deborah. Not quite as beautiful, not nearly as smart, but small and filled with creative energy. And your son, he is beautiful, too, though he is marred by those little scars on his hand. What a pity it would be if I had to send Sabir to give him more scars. Perhaps his face this time?”

  “I don’t think you will be sending Sabir. Mossad arranged a little accident for him, as they will for you soon enough.” Migdal took a step forward. “Besides, your business is with me, not them. I’m here. They’re not.”

  “Yes, I kn
ow. But where are they? I seem to have lost touch with your sweet family. But they’ll turn up. Your Shira has too much curiosity and not enough caution. After all, she married you, didn’t she? She allowed herself to be drawn in by that enigmatic smile of yours, just as we did, Deb and I, so many years earlier.

  “As for accidents, I have more than enough practice eluding you and your inept friends at the so-called Institute.”

  Migdal took another step. Jef fired, clipping him in the shoulder. Migdal’s gun clattered to the concrete and he fell to his knees. As he reached toward the gun, Jef swung the pipe in a low arc, striking Migdal just above the knee. He crumpled to the floor and almost blacked out.

  “A taste, just a taste for you, Mitchell. Ah, but now you look so uncomfortable there, with your leg under you at such an odd angle. Here, let’s fix that.” He kicked violently, sending waves of fire through Migdal’s leg. “There, a little something extra to keep the memory fresh for you, like it has been for me all these years. And next time don’t jerk us around. We have no more patience for wild chases. So, go now, but remember, we want delivery, not an empty warehouse.” He turned and walked away, his limp slight but noticeable.

  Migdal realized he had badly misjudged his opposition. There would not be an easy way to end it now. He would have to fall back on his research, his guesses, on his long days holed up alone in the apartment looking for a way to rewrite the words of Fate.

  He slowed his breathing and waited, but there was no sound other than the distant barking of dogs. The silence was broken by his cell phone ringing.

  “Yes?”

  “Hashim here. I…”

  “We have nothing to say or do, Hashim. It is over.”

  “I know. Still, we are brothers, children of Abraham, and you have done me no ill. I feel terrible about what has happened. I wanted to warn you about Tariq. He would have me killed if he finds out, but I must tell you his plans. He knows about the rendezvous. He …”