The Jerusalem Inception (44 page)

“I’m approaching the Old City. What a view!”

Lemmy lifted the corner of the tarp and peeked through the side window.

Sanani swerved, almost hitting a donkey cart. “Keep your head down.”

They reached the intersection with Jericho Road, and Lemmy caught sight of Herod’s Gate—wide and tall and more impressive than he had imagined. He lowered his head as Sanani turned left, passing a crowded outdoor market along the ancient walls.

A few moments passed. The Jeep hit more bumps and potholes.

Lemmy peeked again. On the left was a hillside dotted with olive trees and gravestones.

“The Mount of Olives,” Sanani said with wonder in his voice. “And down there, Absalom’s tomb!”

With the Old City walls so close, Lemmy wished they could stop and go over to touch the ancient stones. Instead, he got back under the tarp.

A few minutes later, Sanani hit the brakes. “Jordanian roadblock.”

“Don’t stop.”

“Have to. It’s an intersection. Left to Jericho, right back up the hill to Bethlehem Road.”

“Slow down, wave, smile, and turn right.”

The Jeep was barely moving. Lemmy heard Sanani roll down his window. Someone yelled in Arabic, and the Jeep stopped. More Arabic, and a series of bangs along the vehicle, as if someone was tapping it with a truncheon. He heard the trunk lid open up.

E
lie stood at the edge of the parking lot near the IDF Jerusalem command, the binoculars pressed to his eyes, aimed at Bethlehem Road as it rose from the east toward Government House. He had expected the boys to appear ten minutes ago, and with every passing moment his worries grew. Had they been stopped by the Jordanians? An experienced agent would know to be chatty, joke around, and charm his way out of a tight spot. But a young soldier might convey nervousness, inciting suspicion.

Behind him, two IDF mechanics were busy with General Bull’s car. They had already removed the two tires Elie had punctured with quick jabs from his
shoykhet
blade. Now one mechanic was lying under the Jeep, pretending to spot an oil leak while the Indian driver stood beside his disabled vehicle, chatting with Tappuzi’s pretty secretary.

Elie returned his eyes to the binoculars. The distant road across the gulch was still empty. Had he erred in using Abraham’s son for this operation? Had he tried to catch too many birds with one stone, committing the cardinal sin of impatience? Had he caused a failure, or worse, the boy’s immediate execution? That would be an unfortunate setback, Elie thought, considering the next clandestine job he had in mind for Jerusalem Gerster.

T
he trunk lid was open, and a voice said something in Arabic. Lemmy didn’t move. He heard Sanani get out of the car and yell in Indian-accented English, “No search! United Nations!”

Lemmy felt the tarp being pulled. He grabbed it from underneath, holding for dear life.

The Jordanian switched to English. “
Vod yo hab ear?
”

“What I have here?” Sanani laughed. “I have Umm Kooltoom, Allah bless her soul!” He started imitating the famous singer, her Arabic lyrics somehow accented to sound the way an English-speaking Indian would be singing. It was an impressive performance, and the Jordanian soldiers started clapping. The trunk lid closed, and he came around to the driver’s door, still singing. As they moved off, he yelled, “
Ahlan Wa’Sahalan, ya habibi!
”

Lemmy said, “You’re a madman.”

“I think I wet my pants,” Sanani said.

E
lie let the air out of his lungs in a long whistle. His binoculars followed the white Jeep Wagoneer over the crest of the hill toward Government House. The gate opened, and the Jeep drove through without stopping, circled the courtyard, and turned around, coming to a stop at the far corner of the main building. The rear of the Jeep faced away from the courtyard and the gate, but Elie could see Sanani coming around. The trunk lid rose, and Lemmy slipped out with the duffel bag and the backpack and disappeared in the doorway that led to the rear stairway.

Shifting his focus to the roof, Elie waited. Moments later Lemmy appeared, carrying the load quickly across the roof to the shed. He pushed the door—it was not locked, which was a fact they had not been able to ascertain before—and entered the shed.

Sanani waited five minutes and drove the Jeep back to the gate. The sentries opened it, and the vehicle passed through and turned east. No one seemed concerned about the quick turnaround.

Elie walked by Bull’s real Jeep. He caught the eye of one of the IDF mechanics and nodded once. In fifteen minutes, the repairs would be completed, the UN general would be driven back to Government House, and the nail-biting wait would begin.

Chapter 43

O
n June 5, at 7:00 a.m., Elie was in Brigadier General Tappuzi’s command center in West Jerusalem, drinking black coffee and smoking another cigarette. Almost two days had passed since Sanani had returned from Government House, through the three sets of border checkpoints, to the safe house well before General Bull’s Jeep was ready to leave. He was a smart kid from a poor family of Yemenite immigrants, and Elie had been impressed by his tale of distracting the Jordanians at a roadblock. But the launch of
Mokked
had been delayed due to clouds over Egypt, and by now Lemmy must be hungry and thirsty. How long could he survive cooped up in that dark rooftop shed?

“It’s a go!” Tappuzi ran into the office, waving a telegram. “It’s a go!”

Elie took the sheet of thin paper. It was a printout of a secret order, issued moments earlier by Air Force Chief, General Motti Hod, to the 230 pilots about to take off:

Mokked is the word. The Spirit of Israel’s ancient braves soars with you today, from Joshua Bin-Nun, to King David, and the Maccabee warriors. Fly, ascend over the enemy, destroy him, and spread his remains over the desert dunes, so that our nation can live safely on our ancestral land for eternity.

Elie headed to the door. “I’ll give the signal.”

“Hurry!”

Across the parking lot, at the edge, Elie inspected Government House through his binoculars. It was a clear morning, and he saw nothing out of the ordinary at the UN headquarters. He focused on the rooftop storage shed under the fluttering UN flag. The door was slightly ajar, just enough for Lemmy to peek through. Elie put down the binoculars and removed the cap from the flare. Gripping it with two hands, he slammed the bottom of the cylinder on a rock.

The yellow flare shot up into the sky, trailing a white wake. It drew a wide arc and began a slow descent.

Elie focused his binoculars on the shed. A moment passed. He assumed Lemmy was gathering the bag of explosives and straightening his blue cap.

Another minute passed.
7:04 a.m.

The jets would be taking off from every Israeli air field in eleven minutes. What was Lemmy doing?

T
he flare was like a lever, releasing all of Lemmy’s pent-up stress.
Action!
But as he bent down to lift the duffel bag, he realized that a different type of pressure had built up inside him during the three hours he’d stood at the door to watch for the signal. He had visited the restroom on the top floor during the night to relieve himself and shave. But now, the UN staff were arriving at their offices, and he could not risk a chance encounter with an inquisitive UN officer.

Have to go!

Lemmy faced the wall and unzipped his pants. His mind began counting, just like during a nighttime navigation drill.
Twenty-one. Twenty-two. Twenty-three.

At twenty-eight, he was done. He grabbed the duffel bag and ran out. The sun blinded him after the darkness of the shed. He stopped, covering his eyes.

No time!

He sprinted to the stairwell at the east end of the roof and paused at the top landing to listen. All quiet. The smell of fried eggs rose from the ground-floor kitchen, which Lemmy wished he had time to visit, having sustained himself on dry bread and water for two days.

One floor down, he heard a commotion in the hallway. “Look at that flare,” someone said. “What’s that supposed to be?”

Lemmy froze. If the UN observers realized the flare was a signal for military action, the whole front could go up in flames, sabotaging Israel’s preemptive strike.

“It’s nothing,” another voice answered in heavily accented English. “Some Jews playing around.”

Breathing in relief, he resumed his descent.

At the bottom, he used a door on the east side of the building, out of view for anyone in the courtyard. He peeked around the corner of the building. Across the courtyard, two gate sentries sat on white plastic chairs and smoked. He adjusted his blue cap, shouldered the duffel bag, and started across the open area.

A moderate incline toward Antenna Hill formed the east grounds of the UN compound. He looked up and saw the enormous radar reflector rotate atop the concrete station like a giant sail, curved in with a good wind. He kept a calm pace, resisting the urge to run. Anyone walking in the courtyard, sitting at an office window, or guarding the gate, could see him carry the duffel bag toward the radar station. He imagined eyes following him, and his back felt as if ants were crawling all over it.

Across the open area, he approached Antenna Hill without anyone disturbing the sounds of normal activity at the UN headquarters, with which he had grown familiar.

The radar station was half-sunken in the ground. A tall wall of sandbags surrounded it, and the entrance formed a narrow zigzag, barely wide enough for one person. As Lemmy reached it, already panting from the hike, a gray-haired man in UN uniform appeared in the passage. “Good morning,” he said, his
g
and
r
throaty.

Lemmy swallowed hard and saluted. “Good morning,” he said, struggling to say it with the same accent. But he had not spoken to anyone in two days, and his words came out hoarsely. He forced himself to smile and repeated, “A
very
good morning, sir!”

The UN officer paused, blocking the narrow entrance, and measured Lemmy up and down.

Still smiling, Lemmy prepared to drop the duffel bag and reach behind his back to draw the Mauser.

The officer said, “X. Y. Z.”

Lemmy hesitated. What did it mean? He began to lower the duffel bag. There was no time—the whole IDF air force depended on him!

“X. Y. Z,” the officer repeated.

“W
eiss!” Tappuzi called from across the parking lot. He stood at the entrance to the IDF command center, tapping on his wristwatch. “Noo?”

Elie shrugged. It was 7:13 a.m. More than two hundred heavily armed fighter jets waited in multiple airstrips across Israel. Any delay meant missing the window of time when all the Egyptian pilots were eating breakfast while ground crews fueled their planes after the early morning sorties. He had seen Abraham’s son emerge from the rooftop shed on Government House two minutes behind schedule and disappear in the south stairwell. The rest of his route to Antenna Hill was not visible from where Elie stood, more than three miles away, but the partial view of the courtyard showed no unusual activity, the UN observers going about their business in customary leisure. Had he been stopped inside the building? Had he been exposed?

General Rabin had said he would go forward with the strike even if Elie’s operation failed to disable the UN radar. But that meant a UN alarm, communicated to the Egyptians, who would have enough time to scramble their planes into the air and hone their anti-aircraft batteries. In other words, it meant the lives of countless Israeli pilots, the failure of
Mokked
, and possibly the loss of the war before it had even started.

“Weiss! Talk to me!” Tappuzi sounded desperate. The UN radar, once connected to the Jordanian anti-aircraft guns, meant a free range for their cannons and tanks. Such an artillery barrage would result in wholesale slaughter in West Jerusalem, whose defense was Tappuzi’s responsibility.

Elie kept his eyes glued to the binoculars. He could see the radar reflector rotate in defiant laziness. He spat the cigarette and said out loud, “Come on, Jerusalem Gerster!
Blow it!
”

T
he UN officer repeated: “X. Y. Z.” He was wearing an array of brass symbols on his shoulders and an assortment of war decorations on his chest. A chrome nametag said:
O. Bull

Lemmy was desperate. Were the letters some kind of a UN code? What was the appropriate response? He reached behind his back, digging under the khaki shirt for the Mauser. To stall for a few more seconds, he said, “A. B. C.”

“
Ya! Ya!”
The officer laughed, pointing at Lemmy’s crotch. “X. Y. Z. Examine. Your. Zipper.”

“Oh!” His face burning, Lemmy zipped his fly, saluted, and grabbed the duffel bag. He entered the narrow passage through the wall of sandbags and heard the officer chuckle while walking away.