The Consulate Conspiracy, Page 4

  “I need a contact man for the buffer,” he said.

  “A contact man for the what?” Had I misheard? The sound of the word annoyed me every time it came up.

  “For the buffer,” he said. “You know damn well what that is.”

  And if I did, what of it? I thought to myself. “No,” I replied aloud. “Please tell me.”

  “When you have an asset who has to avoid making direct contact with our people, we have to have an intermediary with him.”

  “‘Avoid’?”

  “It’s not exactly an agent. It’s a source we have to conceal and protect. If you worked in security, didn’t they tell you about that?”

  “So you want me to be a buffer?” I ignored the question.

  “No, I want you to be the contact person for the buffer within the consulate.” There was silence between us, filled by the music from the radio. I recognized Tchaikovsky’s First Symphony. Classy and dramatic.

  “The buffer will contact you and ask to transfer material or a message from Freddy.”

  “Freddy?” God, I think, what children’s games.

  “Yes, it’s just a code name. He may need some help from time to time too.”

  “And why me? There’s Noni, the vice consul; there are others. Does Noni know about all this? I don’t want this responsibility.”

  “We trust you.” Giora said it with compelling directness, which almost won me over.

  “What’s going on?” I demanded in a choked voice. “Who is this source? What does he bring us? What is keeping me from being left holding the bag?”

  Giora’s smile widened. “I’ll be watching over you.”

  For a moment, against my will, we looked into each other’s eyes and I knew that Giora was someone I could trust implicitly.

  “But what’s the story?”

  “It’s best if I don’t tell you that. At least not right now.”

  I look behind him. He had what you’d expect on his bookcase: the blue book of government procedures; the Ministry of Foreign Affairs regulations in orange; a glossary of military terms published by the Ministry of Defense; and a whole series of Tom Clancy books in Hebrew and English. There was also a surprisingly large framed photo of a young woman smiling, apparently his wife from Neot Afeka. Maybe Giora was trustworthy, but I still didn’t want any part of the matter.

  “Can’t you find someone else?” I asked quietly.

  “Look, Mickey,” he replied, and I wondered how he knew my nickname. “We know your file by heart.” That “we” alone was enough to chill me. He started listing off my attributes, “Highly intelligent, independent, insubordinate, born leader, eschews responsibility. You’re quite the paradox, Mickey.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I trust you one hundred percent, that’s what it means.” Giora’s youthful demeanor could no longer mislead me. “I can also tell you that in many cases, it’s not healthy to involve all the players in every small detail. That could be… counterproductive.”

  “I understand what you’re saying, but I’m not convinced,” I said as I stood up. “I think you’ve got the wrong man. I’m only in the States to get my degree and make a lot of money. Anything else is just a distraction. It’s not for me — no way, no how.”

  Giora’s eyes stiffened. The wide-eyed child had disappeared. “You know, the IDF can call you up for reserve duty even here. I’m sure you know that.” He was squeezing me, but he may not have had a choice.

  “How did you phrase it?” I tried to repeat it slowly and clearly. “Independent and insubordinate? That’s me. I’m an information officer. For me, that’s enough. I don’t need any more than that. Try to find someone else.”

  “You’ve been in Houston for almost a year now. You may have arrived with your Markovsky Pencils protektzia, but we don’t have to keep you on at the consulate.” He himself doesn’t believe this crap, I thought.

  “So fire me. Goodbye.”

  I was already at the door.

  7.

  Not only was I unable to make it to Barnes & Noble, but worse than that, I had to sit in the consulate for two more hours, studying all sorts of operational files and technical manuals, with gripping titles like: Principles of Electronic Warfare and Introduction to Ground-to-Ground and Ground-to-Air Missiles.

  Finally, I was allowed to leave, but Ofra caught me on the way out of the consulate, “Hey, you had to review your security clearance anyway. Now you can get something for your troubles.”

  I was tired of arguing. We had agreed that I would not be a buffer or a contact for the buffer; instead I was merely “reviewing the latest information,” as Giora described the briefing I was forced to undergo.

  The only relief came from Ofra. At ten o’clock that night she called the San Carlos Hotel, where I was staying, asking if the accommodations were satisfactory. Naturally, I said that I wasn’t sure my room was safe enough, and she had better come and make sure. She giggled with anticipation and excitement that I could recognize even on the phone.

  “I think it’s all right,” she said a half-hour later, after she had finished scanning the room and looking at herself in the mirror.

  “More than all right.” I agreed. “It’s almost perfect now.” I pulled her close from behind. She sighed, and I could feel her shuddering. She turned to me and embraced me with a blend of joy, longing and passion, extending her hand to find what’s between my legs. “I want to play with it.”

  “It’s all yours,” I said with the little air that I had left in my lungs. I leaned on the corner of the table as she knelt, unzipping my Dockers, beginning to take care of my good friend. I held her hair as her head moved and emitted strange sighs. I had nothing to worry about, I thought.

  The first time, she rode me in bed, a cowgirl for the Texas boy, so she could dictate the pace. Then she sighed for a moment and spent half-an-hour watching TV, lying beside me as she massaged my recovering friend.

  “What, are you tired already?” She was full of team spirit and ready to retake the field.

  “A little bit.”

  “You know, he is cute.” She was trying to be my cheerleader.

  “I call him Jacob,” I said.

  “Hi, Jack.” She was trying to talk to it. “Like Jacob our forefather, in the Bible?”

  “No, just Jacob, my friend.”

  “Well, he is my friend too. Such a friendly fellow,” she said, watching it raise its head with renewed curiosity. In the dim lighting of the room at San Carlos, she looked sweet and ageless.

  “You’re really good at this,” I said. She did not need my encouragement, but I don’t know a woman who does not like compliments.

  “You ain’t so bad yourself.” Quite a lady.

  A little later, our exertions almost snapped the tiny desk in two, then we recovered in the bathtub. I strained a muscle in my back there, but I had no intention of complaining.

  “Should I stay the night?” she asked, starting to remove some hair pins.

  “Then, I wouldn’t be able to sleep,” I said. “And I really need my sleep.”

  “What a shame,” she said wistfully, but she took no offense as she started to do up her hair again. “But maybe it’s better this way. My son ought to find me at home when he gets up in the morning.” She had a motherly look now.

  “Stay in touch,” I said, really meaning it. She’s a fine lady.

  “Yeah, I don’t think so. If you want me, you know where to find me. But you’re too independent. A loner.”

  “Did you get that from my file too?”

  “It’s in the file, but I would’ve known it anyway. You’re fine, despite being a Markovsky, you know? You’re okay, but not for a serious relationship.” She was already at the door.

  She blew me a little kiss and left quite satisfied. I sighed with relief.

/>   8.

  Markovsky Pencils had been a part of my story since long before I was born.

  When the teacher in second grade at Dubnov Elementary took attendance and reached my name, she hummed with appreciation, or perhaps understanding.

  There were five of us at home, but my father, Zvika Markovsky, hardly ever stayed for more than a few hours, a few days at most. He was occupied with various business ventures and attempts to escape my mother’s displeasure.

  My brother Dubi, my mother’s favorite, often rescued me from her wrath. Dubi, seven years older than me, had real talent. From the age of thirteen, he brought flowers to Mom every Friday. He could talk to her about her friends, and the Association of Lodz Jews in Israel, of which she was a member to honor her father’s memory. Most importantly, he would wash the dishes and clean the kitchen after every meal in an exemplary way — indeed, everything my father would never do. That changed only when he joined the Air Force for his military service and was accepted into the pilots’ course. When he was finally discharged as a captain, he easily took over the family business.

  My sister, five years younger than me, was another story. I was the only one who was really close to her. I was a surrogate parent for her, but soon enough she found other substitutes.

  We all belonged definitively to the Tel Aviv branch of the family, which remained in the first Hebrew city after the great split at the founder’s shop on Nahalat Binyamin Street. My father’s brothers in Ramat Gan and in Afeka did very well, running the family stationery stores, as well as the pencil factory in the industrial zone of Bnei Brak. My father got the founder’s Nahalat Binyamin store, but under his management it faltered and almost collapsed.

  I’d visit the shop whenever possible, and sit down for a cup of tea with Danoch, who was my grandfather’s assistant and came with the shop, just like the furniture. He was a moderate, thoughtful man. There was hardly any foot traffic from customers, but then again there was no up-to-date merchandise for them to buy anyway. I think we must have kept the store as a tax write-off, but why bother? Our family was losing money hand over fist even without that money pit.

  You see, my father was always pursuing all kinds of financial ventures. Image was everything, so much so that he consulted with three different public-relations firms about changing the image of Markovsky Pencils. He enjoyed his discussions with the creative teams, but nothing came of it.

  My father was tall and looked like an American senator, and he could spend weeks discussing marketing and advertising. He became animated in such settings; deep inside there was a talented speaker, a politician who could fix the world, if only it would give him the chance.

  The creative teams let him speak his mind, but nothing changed the public perception of Markovsky Pencils. In the meantime, he was persuaded to finance two sophisticated, socially-conscious films by a promising young director whom they recommended. These movies were a total commercial failure as well. This left him to stand hapless before my mother’s rebuke and try to avoid her petrifying glare.

  Then came the idea of flying — like father, like son, right? I was very excited for my father. I thought that flying would give him the freedom he needed. But in his first solo flight, at the age of fifty-five, he dived to the ground in his Cessna, just a few hundred feet after take-off. Thus he escaped my mother’s chastisement, but he also left me and my sister, the people closest to him on earth, rendering us heartbroken. At the time, we felt that we’d be lost without him.

  Dubi, however, overcame the tragedy relatively easily. Shortly after Dad’s death, he signed a peace treaty with the other branches of the Markovsky family. Together, they reunited the family business, expanding it and rebranding it as Markovsky Information Systems — which then became a leader in its field. My mother followed these developments with some suspicion, but she had full confidence in Dubi.

  My sister began her army service soon after this. Initially, from time to time, she would come home on leave with some new officer boyfriend. In the second year, she almost never came home. She got a reputation of being a bit wild during the latter half of her service; but after being discharged from the army, she calmed down and became involved in a bunch of liberal and left-wing human rights’ organizations.

  As for me, I never let Mom into my room, and she hardly spoke to me. At the age of nine, I began to assemble model airplanes, a response to her compulsive need to keep our home clean and orderly, as well as a way to silently identify with my father’s struggle for independence. “These model airplanes are a curse,” I heard her say on the phone to her longtime friend, Pnina, and I think she even cried. But I was absorbed in assembling the models, completely detached from the crises of our home life. As I sat in my room, all the storms and battles would pass by, without ever reaching me.

  When it was time for high school, I went to a military preparatory academy — with the full encouragement of Dubi (who was already a deputy squadron commander) and the silent approval of my father, overcoming Mom’s loud and vigorous resistance. I re-upped for an additional three years of service, and was honorably discharged after serving as a deputy battalion commander in the glorious Golani infantry brigade. For two years, I worked as an air marshal, then another year as a security guard, while I got my degree in economics. I became used to getting around on my own.

  In the last years of her life, my mother built a quiet family life for herself with Marcel, who had been her secret lover way back, even when Dad was still alive. Marcel was docile, quiet, and obedient, just like she always wanted. They shuffled along in the dimness of that Dubnov apartment, succumbing to the new fear she had developed of open spaces and of people. Despite the agoraphobia, it was asphyxia that killed them. They had one of those imitation wood-burning furnaces, running on gas, which apparently was not venting properly; Mom and Marcel died without smelling a thing.

  At that time, Dubi was already a respectable CEO, though he still wore his shiny black leather clothing and drove a terrifying Harley-Davidson motorcycle. He offered to make me a partner in business, even though Mom had left all she had to him alone.

  I thanked him politely and left for Houston.

  “Ofra is right, I’m comfortable alone,” I thought to myself during the lousy connection flight that the regional administrative director (RAD), Hinenzon, had arranged for me. In order to save the Israeli taxpayer two hundred dollars, he was flying me five extra hours through Cincinnati and St. Louis. All this rigmarole meant I didn’t get back to Houston until close to ten o’clock at night. On the way back from IAH, I stopped by the Cadillac, my happy place, for a drink or two.

  Then, finally, after midnight, I was back, sitting down calmly, opening a new kit I had received, mail order from California: the Liberator bomber, J-model. I had just finished painting the I-model, successfully carved on my own, and was ready now to get cracking on this new J-model from California. It was made of mahogany, a fine model, for professionals only.

  The Second World War was America’s finest moment in the skies, and the Liberator was the embodiment of it: the triumph of the human spirit, Americans and Canadians joining the British in order to eradicate the Nazi beast. The last romantic war in history, characterized by determination and sacrifice.

  In Houston, we had an important branch of the national Liberator Club, people who appreciated nostalgia and old-time values. They tried to restore and maintain the last B-24 Liberators, even to fly them on occasion, for airshows and nostalgic sorties. However, all my attempts to join the club had failed so far. You needed recommendations from existing members, and I didn’t have enough. Like the old pieces that remained, so were the members of the club: rare and unique.

  The briefing at the Consulate comes back to me. The section on “Future Scenarios” dealt with different degrees of nuclear annihilation. Warheads of total annihilation — I had to wonder, could you have semi-total annihilation? Quarter annihilation? Tota
l annihilation and a half?

  I wasn’t sure why they felt compelled to show us all these things. Wasn’t the Cold War over? I was confident it had to have something to do with Israeli-American cooperation, only they couldn’t tell us how or why — just the what of arsenals of mass destruction.

  9.

  For four days, poor Jay’s body lay freezing in the morgue of St. Luke’s Medical Center, until his entire family could arrive. In Israel, we bury our dead as soon as possible, so it seemed like a long time to me.

  I spent that time trying to figure out what kind of warhead he meant. Clearly, he had been trying to tell me something. Noni had asked me to issue a general report, which I did. But the warhead business I reported only to Giora, the RSD.

  The New York protocol dictated a special procedure for that, which worked smoothly. It started with a phone call to Ofra, in which I had to mention the codeword “pink.” The recommendation was to talk about the weather, the landscape.

  “So, is winter over yet?” I began.

  “Oh yes,” she assured me.

  “So the trees of the Palisades are blooming?”

  “And how!”

  “And the pink blossoms are opening up?”

  “Now, what flower are you talking about?” I could picture her smiling flirtatiously on the other side of the line. We chatted for another two minutes and then I hung up.

  Ten minutes later, I called the payphone near the consulate, at the corner of Forty-second Street and Second Avenue, which we called “pink.” I reported to Giora Jay’s last words.

  “I understand. Thank you,” said Giora. The conversation lasted less than a minute.

  Jay’s funeral took place at the cemetery on the eastern border of Sam Houston Park, with a magnificent view of trees and red hills, the vast expanse all the way to the Gulf. A pleasant and agreeable place for eternal rest.