Reprisal (12 page)

The Russian sat down and the others slapped his back and said things to him in Russian, obviously pleased with his performance.

Aaron Gottlieb stretched wearily to his feet. As he did so, a figure outside the south window of the kibbutz community hall
caught his eye. It was Nabel. Looking a year older, unshaven, his gut hanging out over his belt, the scar a livid white across
his tanned cheek. Nabel saw him look out and nodded to him.

The kibbutzniks knew Nabel and no one came up to ask him what he wanted, waiting outside the hall. Everyone knew he had served
his country from the days with Menachim Begin against the British to more recent times with Ariel Sharon against the Arabs
in Gaza. They also knew that he came for Aaron Gottlieb maybe once or twice a year and that Aaron went with him and would
be gone often for weeks on end, to come back quiet and touchy, wanting to lose himself in hard work at the kibbutz. No, no
one said anything or wanted to know anything
about Nabel, and were happy when neither their sons nor daughters wanted to know either.

There were times when Nabel’s unannounced appearance at the kibbutz had caused Aaron’s heart to sink, and other times when
his arrival was a clear trumpet note in his dusty, workaday existence. Today Nabel was all trumpet.

Aaron’s resentment at the Russians had ebbed completely in the time it took him to get to his feet. “I think we should listen
closely to these objections and decide on them. We all know that we raise alligators for their hides as we might raise sheep
for their hides. It’s true that at Givat Haim they raise Arabian horses which only rich people can buy. Why do they do this?
Because they have the special conditions and skills to supply a special need which rewards them with a better income and allows
the young people on the kibbutz to use their education from agricultural colleges. Some of the old people do not like to see
the young with things they never had and do not now understand. We raise alligators because we have free water from Lake Kinneret
and young people who want to learn new things. You know what a friend at Haon told me? One ostrich egg makes thirty omelets.
But we are here to talk about” —he wiggled his ass and snapped his teeth in imitation of the Russian—“alligators in Zion.
Before we had alligators, we depended mostly on turkeys—and they came from America, too, along with alligators, and I never
heard anybody claim there was something non-Zionist about turkeys. I have to leave now and, as you know, I’ll abide by any
vote you take. I’m willing to go back to milking cows and feeding turkeys,
if that’s what you want. But ask yourself one question before you vote: Which is the outside world more likely to be willing
to buy from us, alligator hides or more Israeli cheese and frozen kosher turkey meat?”

“Egypt?” Aaron said to Nabel.

“Egypt,” Nabel confirmed.

“Why me?”

“You’re the best available on short notice,” Nabel informed him.

“You could find someone better if you had a little more time?”

Nabel twitched his mouth to one side, which was his gesture toward a smile.

They walked over the dusty ground toward one of the big ponds.

Nabel gazed at the alligators sunning themselves shoulder to shoulder along the bank, with the tips of their tails stretched
back into the water. He said, “I remember when you people used to tend sheep in the hills like Arabs.”

“Those were the good old days,” Aaron observed. “Before my time.”

Nabel looked once more at the alligators and shook his head in disgust. “What’s wrong with ordinary farming?”

Aaron said with an edge to his voice, “Let’s talk about something you
do
know about. What’s in Egypt?”

“This one will be easy. Bloodless. A CIA agent with their embassy in Cairo has an American there with false ID who said to
someone he was CIA. He’s looking for an Egyptian nuclear physicist who’s presently making an A-bomb for the meshugannah who
seized power there. You should know that we’ve briefed the Americans on what is going on. The CIA and the Department of Defense
agree with us. Their State Department doesn’t. What the Agency man in Cairo wants to know is, who’s this Yank working for?
State? Defense? Some game the CIA is playing on its own agents? The Agency’s men are stretched thin these days in Egypt, and
besides, they want a non-American to approach him.”

“A Lebanese banker?”

“The Egyptians believed you were that every other time we sent you in,” Nabel said.

“You believe this story the Americans handed you?”

“I think so. Pritchett is the one I talked with and you can see him if you need to.” When Aaron Gottlieb shook his head, Nabel
went on. “I agree. No unnecessary contact. But Pritchett will be there at the American Embassy if you need backup. I don’t
have to remind you the Egyptians have closed down our embassy and I’m not going to put you in touch with any Mossad people
in place there. I think Pritchett’s only covering his ass—as the Americans say—by finding out who this operative is. And we’re
helping him because it’s to our advantage when the Americans listen to their own intelligence agency on Egypt. Find out who
he works for in Washington. Help him if you can. Nothing more.”

“When do I go?”

Nabel pointed at his car and glanced at his watch. “Hurry. Get your things. We’re late.”

Dr. Mustafa Bakkush started nervously at the sound of steel-tipped boots on the stone floor behind him.
A private he had seen before in the Citadel came to a halt with a final rasp of his boots. The soldier nodded to Dr. Bakkush
with disrespectful familiarity. “He wants to see you.”

The soldier did not have to say who it was that wanted to see him. Mustafa asked, “Is something wrong?”

“They don’t tell me.”

“All right,” Mustafa said. “Wait a few minutes and I’ll be with you.”

The private grinned. “I pick up a lot of people to come to President Hasan, and that includes cabinet ministers and generals,
and they all drop everything and come at a run. You’re the first who’s ever had something more important to do than answer
the president’s summons without delay.”

Mustafa stiffened in anger at this soldier’s leering informality. “Leave now, if you must. You may inform the president that
I had to complete an essential task before coming.”

The private was awed. No one had ever dared say such a thing before. “I’ll wait, sir.”

“Then wait outside. You’re distracting me.”

“Yes, sir.”

Ten minutes later, they left Bakkush’s office in the Citadel and walked down a staircase instead of along the series of corridors
that led to Hasan’s quarters. Mustafa was surprised that the president was not already at the Citadel. He asked no questions,
merely followed the soldier down the staircase which he knew led to a courtyard where Jeeps were parked. He guessed they were
on their way to the presidential palace. This would be his first time there, and he wasn’t looking forward to it. They climbed
in a Jeep,
and the driver wove through the Cairo traffic at a speed that suggested he was trying to make up for lost time. They were
stopped at two checkpoints on the way into the palace and then had to pass sentries and metal detectors in the entranceway.
Mustafa was searched twice, each time courteously. His driver was left behind in the palace lobby and Mustafa was led by three
soldiers past many doorways, then up a staircase, then told to follow a long corridor alone and go through a door at its end.
Before he reached the door at the end of the corridor, he heard shouts and laughs coming from behind it. The sound of laughter
came as a relief to Mustafa, although it occurred to him that this indeed might be some truly diabolical scene. Certainly
something was happening on the other side of that door. What had it to do with him? He tapped timidly on the heavy wood, realizing
as he did so that they would be unable to hear him. He looked back and saw that his three-man military escort was still standing
there watching him. One of the soldiers stabbed his finger forward several times, meaning for Mustafa to go through the door.
He put his hand on the brass handle, turned it and pushed the door inward.

Mustafa Bakkush had never before seen any woman entirely naked, except his wife. And he had never seen her dancing without
any clothes. To now see five naked women—beautiful women with large breasts that bounced as they moved, with narrow waists,
swelling hips over smooth-skinned thighs, little black triangles at the base of their bellies, and inviting eyes heavily outlined—five
naked women who all gave him alluring looks and gyrated their full, voluptuous
bodies at his own thin delicate frame, made him wonder whether to cover his eyes or run back through the doorway. He did neither.
He stood unmoving as a lizard trying to escape the eye of a hawk and he watched them as they came closer to him.

“Come in! Come in!” Ahmed Hasan boomed. His tall, spare body was naked also, and he sat on a big cushion next to a large hookah
pipe.

Mustafa stepped forward. The five dancing women parted to let him through and then formed a circle to cavort obscenely around
him. Mustafa felt dizzy and he could not feel the floor under his feet—though this might have been caused by the extra thick
pile of the carpeting as much as his mental state.

“This is the famous scientist, Dr. Bakkush,” Ahmed announced. “He has returned to us after being abroad. I think he may have
picked up some corrupt Western customs. I feel sure he has a taste for Scotch. Someone get him a glass of whiskey.”

Mustafa did not drink alcohol, even when he had been at social gatherings in Cambridge. He saw one of the president’s bodyguards—this
one fully dressed in combat fatigues, bush hat and jungle boots with submachine gun strapped over his shoulder—approach him
with a bottle and a tumbler. Even Mustafa knew that whiskey wasn’t sloshed into a big tumbler like beer, but he watched impassively
as the youth emptied a third of the bottle into the glass. He put the tumbler to his mouth and tried to keep his face from
puckering up at the smell and taste of the foul, burning liquid. The attention of Ahmed Hasan had already wandered elsewhere,
perhaps out of disappointment at Mustafa’s seeming lack of outrage or
protest against what he was being subjected to. Mustafa had little doubt that Ahmed would get around to him again in good
time.

Apart from the five dancing women, who to Mustafa’s relief were now over on the other side of the huge room, everyone else
present seemed to be Ahmed’s bodyguards, including the two playing guitars. Three remained dressed and combat-ready; one of
these had given him the whiskey. The rest were in various states of disarray, both mental and physical. Six of the bodyguards
were women and they, like the men, were half disrobed or fully naked. Aside from himself and Ahmed, Mustafa decided that no
one in the room was beyond his or her early twenties, and two of the female bodyguards looked to be fifteen or sixteen. Most
were smoking marijuana and drinking from beer bottles. Unable to bear the reek of the straight whiskey in the tumbler, Mustafa
put it on a side table. He loosened the knot in his necktie—then tightened it again immediately in case his action might be
misinterpreted as a gesture that he too wanted to shuck his clothes. That would be going too far! In spite of the close atmosphere
in the room, he intended to keep his jacket on. He even buttoned one button to show his determination.

He stood by himself, close to one wall, trying to make himself as inconspicuous as possible. None of them paid him any more
attention. He gathered from the relaxed atmosphere that he had arrived shortly after some climactic stage in this orgy and
that everyone was presently resting. Except, of course, the five crazy dancing girls, who were probably hired for the occasion.
Mustafa considered that Ahmed had
summoned him as some kind of butt for their jokes. He was pleased that, so far, he had not satisfied their expectations.

To Mustafa’s alarm, one of the women bodyguards broke away from a group and cruised past him, giving him the eye. She was
dressed only in a camouflage shirt, unbuttoned down the front, and held a joint in her right hand and a beer bottle in her
left. Her long black hair tumbled to her shoulders, her sensuous mouth smiled at him and the brown tips of her titties peeped
through the open army shirt front. After she had passed him once, she came by again. She was less than half his age and everything
his strict upbringing had taught him to despise—yet he could see how a man other than himself might be attracted to her. She
had soft feline movements and, yes, Mustafa had to admit, she had certain things about her which could appeal to him were
he not a happily married man who disapproved of women like this. Mustafa was not able to keep his eyes off her, and he saw
the knowing smile on her face as she came up to him. When she offered him her joint and he shook his head, she dropped it
in the neck of the beer bottle and put that next to his whiskey glass on the side table. Then she placed her left hand on
his right wrist.

When Mustafa tried to stop her taking off his necktie, she put pressure on his wrist which almost immobilized him. Then she
relaxed her crippling grip. He moved in protest again when she unbuttoned his shirt, and he felt her fingers tighten on his
wrist until he changed his mind. She peeled his shirt and jacket off him and pressed her bare breasts and
belly against him, her thighs against his, then tried to insert the tip of her tongue between his lips. Mustafa was virtuous
and would not allow her to invade the privacy of his mouth, but in spite of his strong will, he could not prevent his erection
from forming. She felt it against her and gave him a triumphant smile as she reached between them with one hand and unzipped
his fly.

Mustafa felt his belt being unbuckled and then his pants drop around his ankles. He tried to push her away from him with his
left hand—and she used his own force against him to flip him on his back on the floor. She ripped down his jockey shorts,
bobbed her mouth a few times over the head of his distended member. Then, still holding him almost immobile by her stranglehold
on the nerves in his right wrist, she mounted him, slid his member deep inside her and rode him with powerful thrusts of her
hips.