The Abattoir

While he groped for the phone Anna turned over and faced the other way.

"Yeah?" He glanced at his watch. It was a little past 2 A.M.

"Got him!"

"What?" As he blinked and tried to clear his brain, David realized he was speaking to Peretz. "Been looking for you. Where've you been?"

"Got him. One of my old boys. Questioning him all night. Don't think he's going to last."

David sat up. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"Guy who did the killings. So far he's confessed that much. Funny thing though—says he wasn't trying to pin them on me. Seems it was lack of imagination, old habits die hard. He used our old unit signature because he couldn't think up a new one on his own."

No, that's wrong...

"…took a lot to get that out of him, and that he was hired, the executioner. Thing is, Bar-Lev, much as he doesn't like the pain, and he doesn't . . ." Peretz must have turned his receiver to the room, because now David could hear some kind of whimpering in the background. "...still he'd rather suffer than tell me who's behind this and what it's all about."

"You're crazy!"

Anna turned and buried her face in her pillow. David cupped his hand over the mouthpiece, got out of bed, and carried the phone into the kitchen.

"Listen carefully, Peretz. You can't do this by yourself. If he dies on you, you'll be a murderer. Stop right now, tell me where you are, and we'll handle this the proper way."

A pause, and then a weary: "You don't understand—he was one of my boys." David shook his head: the old insanity. "I trained him and now he's let me down. I've got the right to waste him if I want."

"Tell me where you are. There's stuff going on here that you don't know about. Who tipped you off about the Rubin seminar?"

"Never mind that shit. Check this out. Mei Naftoah. There's a restaurant there, at the end of the road."

"Yeah, I know it. Eat there all the time." What a maniac! "Listen, Peretz, you were set—"

"...down the slope, below the third house from the end. Smashed-in roof, but there're a couple rooms left intact. He says that's where he killed them. There ought to be some evidence. Says the victims were brought to him there, he cut them, then the people who brought them took their bodies away. Says he worked over the nun when she was still alive but the rest of them he killed right off. Oh, oh ...he's moaning again." David heard the moans. "Got to get back to work. I'll call you around seven, see how you made out."

"He's lying, Peretz. You were set up."

But the line was already dead.

A strange place, Mei Naftoah, especially at night. The west side of Jerusalem suddenly ends, there's a gas station etched in orange neon, then a large dense housing project, five bleak buildings on a ledge, hulking silhouettes against the sky. Below the ledge a steep incline, then a rocky slope crisscrossed with ancient terraces. On this slope there are remnants of an Arab village, a few old stone houses abandoned at the time of Independence. Beyond are the Judean hills.

An occasional olive tree, a cave, discarded broken-up tractor tires, a few burned-out rusting husks of cars. David found the place mesmerizing; he sensed a haunting desolation. The Iraqi-Jewish restaurant where he and Dov had lunched, where he'd first broached his theory of "hidden symmetry," was an oasis at the end of this narrow twisting dusty path.

A light mist filled the valley. From out in the hills the howls of jackals. He smelled wood smoke, perhaps from a Bedouin camp. The air was so still he could hear Liederman strike a match a hundred meters behind where they'd left him to stand guard on the road.

Dov was at his side. Uri had gone ahead to find the house. Shoshana trailed carrying their radio. Micha was on night duty, watching the house of Amit Nissim.

"David, I'm going down," Uri called to them. He'd said he'd heard these old houses were sometimes used by hikers seeking shelter and by narcotics dealers as places to stash supplies of dope. David saw the beam of Uri's flashlight play upon a narrow passage of old stone stairs. Third house from the end, Peretz had said. When he and Dov reached the third house they found both walls were open. They walked through, then followed Uri to the house below, the one with the smashed-in roof.

Charred beams hung above them, black bars cutting across the gray night sky.

"In here," Uri said. "Doesn't smell too good." Dov probed the ruin with his flashlight, fixed it on a doorway.

"He mentioned a couple rooms left intact," David said. Then he moved forward, afraid of what he was going to find, part of him wishing he wouldn't find it, hoping Peretz was wrong.

Immediately he heard the flies, hundreds, thousands, he thought. The buzzing stunned him, angry, like a roar; he wanted to shut it out, press his hands against his ears. The smell was bad too, sweet putrescence, a rot both luscious and corrupt. Uri and Dov played their flashlights upon the walls, then their beams converged in one of the corners. The flies were there, clustered, picking and licking at splash marks on the stones and an old decaying mattress half torn up and stained.

"David!" It was Shoshana calling from the outer room. "Don't come in," he warned her.

"See the clothing," Dov whispered. Some soiled garments were piled haphazardly near the corner. Dov swung his flashlight back to the mattress. Something metallic gleamed. "Could be a knife." He moved closer, lifted one edge of the mattress with his foot. The blade of a commando knife was caught in Uri's beam. "He did the cutting here," Dov said.

Uri fled the room. David could hear him retching outside, then being comforted by Shoshana. Sickened by the noise and smell, David struggled to suppress his rage. Susan Mills had died here; these walls had echoed with her screams. She and Schneiderman and Ora Goshen, Halil Ghemaiem and Yael Safir had been forced into this room, pushed down into this corner, slashed, bled, then stripped and laid out on this horrible mattress to be marked. This was the killing room, the scene of suffering, where pain had been endured and flesh had been rent and blood had flowed—blood which, now congealed, was food for flies.

He sent the others home, except for Liederman who asked to stay up on the road to man the barricade. Now he waited outside, sitting silent on a low stone wall while the forensic specialists went about their work. Every so often one of them would come out, pull off his surgical mask, breathe deeply, and stare at the hills. Then after several minutes he would grimace and return to the gruesome task.

Just before dawn the unit chief appeared, a lanky middle-aged American-born immigrant known around the Russian Compound as "Tex." He squatted down and lit a cigarette. David had known this gentle man since he'd joined the police; now for the first time he found him unnerved.

"We found the clothes of four of them. We don't know what the Arab boy wore. Blood's mingled but we'll sort it out. Tissue cells all over the place so, unfortunately, we can't spray and kill the flies. We'll work on the knife at the lab. Probably do that myself. It may take us all day to get this place cleaned up."

Tex stubbed out his cigarette, then shook his head. Moisture filled his eyes. "Worst crime scene I've seen in twenty-five years. You find caring at a murder site sometimes, David—even when a man rips up his wife. But there was no caring here. Nothing here but butchery." He shook his head again and looked away.

Peretz called a little after seven. This time he spoke rapidly.

"I'll make this fast, Bar-Lev. I'm on only for a minute so don't bother to try a trace."

Rebecca had already alerted the police operators; on the old-fashioned Jerusalem telephone system a trace took four minutes at least.

"Okay, it was the place. Victims' clothes were there."

"So he was telling the truth...." Something almost lethargic now in Peretz's tone.

"Can I have him?"

"Won't do you any good. He's been terminated. The interrogation was harsh."

Terminated!

"…signed him, too. Seemed appropriate. He was nothing but an animal. Claimed to the end he didn't know who hired him. If he knew I think he would have squawked." A pause. "I'll have to hide him now. If they find him dead they'll know we've gotten close. The closer we come the more dangerous we are to them and the more vigorously they'll retaliate. You and I need each other now...."

David's fury suddenly broke loose. "Hell we do! No alliances! You're the animal, cocksucker. And I'm going to nail you—"

Click!

"He's off," Rebecca said.

David spun around his chair and faced the wall.

Rafi's large sad eyes sparkled with incredulity. "He spent the night torturing the guy? You don't know who he is?"

"Don't even know what city they were in. Somewhere on the northern coast."

Rafi leaned back. "David, this is getting out of hand."

"You're telling me. I've felt helpless for a week."

"Sooner or later Peretz has got to show."

"He doesn't 'got' to do anything, Rafi. He's a law unto himself. He knows how to live off rough terrain. He can bury himself in wilderness. Way beyond fruitcake now. He's a sadistic murderer. I told you that before."

"Yes," Rafi nodded, "so you did." He reached beneath his glasses and rubbed his eyes. "So, okay, now that you know where the killing was done, what are you doing about it?"

"Canvassing for witnesses. Look, Rafi, the time's come. I want to confront Ephraim Cohen."

Rafi shook his head. "I'm not going into an inter-service thing, not until you come up with something hard. Go in on a bluff and we're certain to lose the case. Shin Bet takes over and we're out of it for good. We'll be lucky to read about it ten years from now when some former cabinet minister sneaks it into his memoirs. There'll be a Knesset investigation and a whitewash, so even then we still won't know what it was about...."

At least, he thought, walking out of Rafi's office, Rafi now acknowledged that the case might have roots in some rogue bureau of the government.

At noon, returning home for a shave and a change of clothes, he paused just outside his door. He could hear Anna and Yosef talking inside. Yosef 's voice was patient but Anna's sounded petulant.

"I'm very concerned," Yosef said. "And I don't understand. It's not all that difficult."

"It's difficult for me," she said.

"Why don't you try that part again."

She played several bars on her cello, then Yosef stopped her.

"What's the matter now?"

"You're playing notes, not music."

"Damn, damn, damn...."

"Listen, Anna—why don't we quit for the day? This tension isn't doing us any good." He paused. "Perhaps it's not my place, but still I must ask you: Is there some trouble you're having now in your personal life? With David maybe? Or someone else?"

Distressed at the silence that followed, David withdrew down the stairs. It was best to leave them alone to work it out, he thought. He wouldn't shave today.

It was Moshe Liederman who pointed the way to the young vagabond threesome who lived in the broken deserted house across the gorge from the abattoir. No road led down there. It was a mile and a half by twisting path from the gas station on the heights. Like the killing house it was a ruin but most of its rooms were roofed. No outward sign of habitation; illegal to live there anyway. But Liederman was thorough, for the first time in his police career he was working a case with cops who cared, so he checked out every building in Mei Naftoah and at three that afternoon found the bedrolls and water bottles and remnants of a fire.

He radioed this news to David, who brought along the rest of the team. When David sniffed the embers he recognized the fire he'd smelled the night before.

The contents of the bedrolls indicated two males and a female. David called for Shoshana, then sent Micha to replace her as guard and back-up on the road. The five of them split into two teams—David and Shoshana; Liederman, Uri, and Dov—then took refuge in broken outbuildings on either side and waited patiently for the night.

One of the males turned up first, but to David's surprise not from Jerusalem. He appeared suddenly from the west, wrapped in an Arab cloak, an apparition out of the stark and desolate hills.

"An Arab?"

David watched him. "Israeli," he whispered. "Maybe a little stoned."

As this first figure reached the ruin, a second young man and a girl, also cloaked, appeared.

Shoshana blinked. "Someone giving a party out there? Where the hell are they coming from?"

They waited two more hours until the house was silent. The three had built another little fire, and again the smoke hung in the air and the jackals howled. Fortunately no dogs lurked about to give them away as David and Shoshana crawled closer in. David wanted to surprise the three but didn't know whether they stood watches or slept in separate rooms, and, most important, whether, if they were cornered, they would make a stand and fight.

At a quarter past twelve, Uri, Dov, and Liederman were forty meters away, approaching from the other side. David had been through many busts but each time he felt the same tension and fear —tension waiting for the best moment to strike, fear of not striking quickly enough so that the instinct to resist could be vanquished even before it was aroused.

He gave the signal and a moment later the five of them were galloping across the stony fields. David could feel hormones of urgency rushing through his blood.

The young people did not fight and that was fortunate. When David yanked the first boy from his sleeping bag, Dov found a 9 mm. Browning automatic, clip filled and bullet breached, beneath the rolled-up cloak he'd been using as a pillow. The boy glared. His hair was cut short, he wore a Hebrew University T-shirt and gym shorts with a faded stripe. When they yanked his wrists behind his back there was a moment when his pale eyes showed pain. He squeezed them shut as he was cuffed; when he opened them again they showed injured pride.

"The naked couple sprawled together on the bedrolls in the second room gazed up at them perplexed. The boy was dark and bearded, the girl beautiful—fine features, fine pert breasts, magnificent flowing golden hair. When the boy reached toward his clothes Uri squatted beside him and leveled his pistol at his head. Their weapons, another Browning and a small Beretta, lay beneath their jeans.

David yelled for Shoshana. She ran in, took the girl away, and a moment later, when David turned on his radio, Micha announced he'd intercepted a second girl carrying groceries walking down the path. From the time the five of them had entered the house until the four were captured only twenty-five seconds had elapsed.

Shoshana came back, pushing the blond. She was still nude. She didn't try to cover up but planted herself arrogantly with her legs apart.

"She won't dress," Shoshana said.

"Not even underwear?"

When David smiled the girl spat at his feet.

"Angry child," David said. "Okay, go naked if you like. We're going to take you in anyway. You'll be smart at least to wear some shoes." He signaled Shoshana to take her away, then turned back to the bearded boy. "You want to go naked too?"

The boy was shaking. 'Who betrayed us?"

"Who sold you the pistols?"

The boy turned to the window. His girl friend was dressing angrily. When he saw the second girl, the one who'd been carrying the groceries, his mouth trembled and his eyes turned wet.

"Georgie, wasn't it? She's the traitor. It was her. Wasn't it?"

"Better get dressed," David said.

Separate the suspects, put them into tiny harshly lit interrogation rooms, then begin the questioning. Use every little piece you can wrench from one to intimidate the others, make them think their friends have talked. Play on their fears. Tire them out. Suggest betrayal is in the air. Create an atmosphere of insecurity so that their old camaraderie will lapse and they'll begin to think that the only people they can trust are their new friends, the interrogators, who, though they have a job to do, will try and help them beat the rap.

Soon a story emerged. Georgie, the girl with the groceries, was an American. Slave of the other three, she was full of the resentment every slave must feel. She ran errands, brought in food and water, was mad for the boy who slept downstairs. They had never trusted her; now they thought she was their betrayer. So go ahead, Georgie: What have you got to lose? Betray.

They were drug dealers, she said, intermediaries. They bought from smugglers, who brought the stuff in from Lebanon, then sold it to street dealers they met out in the hills. No, there weren't any narcotics in the house—they stashed everything in caves. Actually she didn't know all that much; she'd only met them a week before.

David ran their names through the police computer. Information was rapidly returned. The lovers were kibbutzniks: Zvi had served with the paratroopers and had studied biology; Hannah was a triage nurse who'd dropped out of medical school the year before. Aaron, the boy Georgie was in love with, the tough one with the crew-cut who slept with the loaded gun, was the only son of Brazilian immigrants. He had studied mathematics at Giv'at Ram, had served in a tank recon unit, and had fought and been wounded in Lebanon.

Disillusioned youths, David thought. But he sensed something in Zvi—a connection in his head between women and betrayal. Work on that, he decided. Of the three in the house Zvi was the one who would bargain. Hannah was stubborn, in the midst of some kind of irresolvable rebellion, and Aaron was just too tough.

"That Hannah," he began, "quite a girl. Refusing to dress. Spitting fire." David laughed. "Funny what a couple of hours of stressful interrogation will do. Now she and Shoshana are gabbing away."

Zvi glared at him.

"We're not narcs, you know. Personally I don't give a shit about drugs. A person wants to abuse his body, that's his choice. He wants to be an asshole, let him. He wants to OD—good riddance. Does Israel need more self-destructive creeps? I don't think so. Do you?"

He walked behind the boy, placed his hands on his shoulders. "It's okay, son. Georgie didn't lead us to you. Matter of fact we backed into your little operation by mistake." He circled Zvi again, then sat down, looked hard at him, and shook his head. "We were after something else, but we found you." He shrugged. "Now we can't just let you go. Especially not after Hannah spilled."

Zvi studied him. "You're bluffing. She didn't say anything."

"Have it your way. But you know better. The women always squeal."

Another glare.

"It's true. They get lighter sentences, the courts are more disposed toward them. We point this out. Then, if they're smart, and most of them are, they do what they have to do. When the chips are down people always think about themselves."

"Bastard!"

"Don't be pissed at me, Zvi. I didn't do anything. I wasn't even looking for you. You trusted her, she squawked. Seems to me that's more your fault than mine." David shook his head again. "Georgie folded fast. Why shouldn't she? She knows Aaron doesn't give a damn about her, just uses her as something nice to fuck. Give Hannah credit. She cares for you but in the end she made the intelligent move. Now it's your turn. Are you bright enough to take it? I wonder if you are. I got odds from the other guys that you'll be the final hold-out, that, in the end, you'll be the one who burns...."

A half hour more of this kind of merciless talk and Zvi was trying desperately to hold back his tears.

"…maybe you can help us," David said. "You don't have to betray anyone. There's another abandoned house on the opposite slope. Bad stuff going on in there a couple of months ago. People coming and going, mostly late at night. Did you see anything? If you did, and you tell me about it ...well, maybe, we can work a deal."

A pause while Zvi calculated. He spoke tentatively at first. "We thought they were cops."

"Really? Why?"

"I don't know. Aaron thought so. He said it was something about the way they moved."

"So?"

"So we laid low a while. We watched them."

"And?"

"We decided they weren't cops."

"So then what did you do?"

"We thought they might be a rival group using the place occasionally to do a trade."

"Did you go over there?"

"Aaron did. Got spooked too. Wanted us to move. But then…well, we decided to stick around. And after that they didn't come back."

David watched him. "There's something you're not telling me, Zvi."

"He followed them."

"Who?"

"Aaron."

"How?"

"On his scooter."

"Where?"

"To a private house."

David tried not to let his excitement show. "Which house?"

Zvi shrugged. "You'll have to ask him. He didn't say."

The simplest cleanest deals are always best. When David put it to Aaron, he let him know there'd be no compromise: "So far no one knows we've picked you up. We haven't contacted the Narc Unit and if you work with us we won't. The four of you go free. We never met you, we don't know you and, frankly, we don't ever want to see you again. Naturally we keep the pistols. In return you show us where you followed the people from that ruin across the gorge. That's it. Take it or leave it, tough guy. You got one minute to make up your mind...."

55 Lover of Zion Street. One of the best buildings on perhaps the best street in residential Jerusalem. David knew it well; it was just a block from his father's old house on Disraeli. He'd passed it hundreds of times when he was growing up.

An elegant, subdivided, four-story building with two entrances and an attached garage. An ornate wrought iron wall facing the street with a perfectly trimmed privet hedge behind. A gate for pedestrians and a second bigger one for cars. A small garden built around a mature jacaranda whose spreading branches cut the moonlight that fell upon carefully manicured beds of flowers.

He turned to Aaron. "So what did you see?"

"One guy got out, opened the gate. Then the other drove in the van. The first locked up again."

"How long did you wait?"

"About a minute."

They didn't see you?"

"My scooter's very quiet."

"That's it? Nothing else?"

Aaron shook his head.

David looked at him, reached out, grasped hold of his hair, pulled him close, and stared into his eyes. "Don't ever pack a pistol again." He pushed him away. Then Dov pulled him out of the car and shoved him from behind.

"Leave Jerusalem," David called after him. "Tell the others. You're finished here. All of you. We see you again we feed you to the narcs."

He had dropped Dov off at Gillo, was back now in Abu Tor cruising En Rogel Street, searching for a place to park. He found one up the block, locked the car, then walked back slowly toward number sixteen. It was 4 A.M.

He was aware, at last, of his exhaustion. He was filthy from the stake-out, sweaty from half a night spent in humid interrogation rooms. He'd been up twenty-four hours straight, talking with Peretz, crawling around a deserted Arab village, breaking down a gang of drug dealers, and now, finding his thinking scattered and slow, he longed for uninterrupted sleep.

He paused at the front door of his building trying to recall the combination. Three-three-five-something. He hesitated. The dogs ...he didn't hear the neighborhood dogs which always barked when he came home late.

A squeaking sound, like a car door being opened. He had a bad feeling as he turned back toward the street. The cars all looked familiar, cars of people in his building and of neighbors who lived on either side. Then, when he noticed the boxlike silhouette of the large dark van parked on the other side, saw that its side panel door was open, realized he'd driven past it and then passed it again on foot just seconds before, he cursed and dove for the bushes beside the stoop. A second later there erupted the sounds of war.

Burp!-burp!-burp! Burp!-burp!-burp! Submachine-gun fire ripped across the front of number sixteen biting out little chips of stone. It ripped back again, lower this time, stitching the masonry just above his head. The dogs started to bark, all of them, at once. Chips fell on him as he drew his pistol and started firing back. Something hot touched his cheek. Wild barking. Another burst of fire. He saw sparks coming from the dark open back compartment of the van, then a figure crashing out headfirst onto the street. The panel door slammed shut. The engine started. The van peeled off toward the corner. It squealed as it turned left at the Ariel Hotel, then roared its way south along Hevron, fading finally until the only sound left was the desperate mad cacophony of the dogs.

Lights came on in the building next door. David heard windows being opened. When he glanced up at his own apartment, he saw the old lady who lived on the floor above leaning over her balcony staring down at him, worry and fascination on her face. It was a familiar expression; he'd seen it many times: fright and curiosity and also something else, that strange twist of the mouth that his father called "the guilty grimace of the survivor."

He pulled himself out of the shrubbery, went to the intercom, buzzed Anna, then touched his burning cheek. He licked his finger and tasted blood. A small piece of stone had cut his face.

"David! What happened?"

"An ambush. Don't worry, Anna. I'm fine. I really am. Please call Rafi for me. Ask him to come over and ask him to send a crew."

He walked slowly back into En Rogel Street toward the place where the van had been parked. He was looking for the figure he thought he'd seen crash out of the back of the van. In the shadow of another car he saw the form of a man lying face down on the pavement. He drew closer, observed large bloody tears in his shirt and that his hands were handcuffed behind his back. He studied him a while, then crouched and touched his neck. Stiff and cold. He turned him over. For a moment he didn't recognize him—features slack, face drained, the edge of anger gone, Peretz looked like any middle-aged Israeli male, eyes sad and woeful, who'd been dead for several hours.

Precisely at noon, all five permanent members of Pattern Crimes hit 55 Lover of Zion Street hard. Shoshana and Micha, on instructions from David, went straight for the garage. There they found a dark blue Chevrolet van. It was empty but the key was in the ignition. Shoshana started it, backed it up fast, but before she could get it out to the street, two men ran toward her, waving Shin Bet IDs. They blocked the driveway and, when Micha Benyamani ordered them to move, shoved him aside, then shut and padlocked the driveway gate.

It was a stand-off in the ground floor apartment too. When David burst in with Uri and Dov, they found two men and an attractive young woman in a minimally furnished office. One of the men, stocky and bearded, was speaking on the phone; the other, young and muscle-bound, was flirting with the woman who sat typing at one of the desks.

When the bearded man saw them he snapped some kind of alert to his caller, hung up, and faced David with a sneer.

"Out of bounds here, policeman. This is a Security Services squad."

"Over against the wall. All three of you—hands behind your heads. You're under arrest."

Nobody moved. The two men exchanged a look. The girl peered around nervously.

"We're Shin Bet, asshole," the bearded man said. "Get your people out of here."

"Who the fuck you calling asshole?" Uri asked.

"He tries anything, Uri, kick him in the balls."

"Your oaf kicks anyone I'm shooting off his foot." The younger man had drawn a pistol. The beard stepped forward and planted his feet apart.

"Your illustrious career has just ended, Bar-Lev. Nobody messes with us. Especially no stinking cops."

Uri continued toward him. The beard held his ground. "We stink, huh?"

"Take pictures," David ordered. Then he picked up the phone.

While he spoke to Rafi, and Dov brought out his camera, Uri turned suddenly on the younger man, flipped him onto his back, disarmed him, and cuffed his wrists. The girl screamed. The beard attacked Dov, trying to rip the camera from his hands. Uri jumped on him from behind. When the beard, too, was subdued and cuffed and the girl had obeyed their order, placing her hands behind her head, Dov took careful mug shots of the three of them, then went outside and took more portraits of the goons blockading the gate.

Ephraim Cohen arrived first. Rafi, who'd used a squad car with a siren, was only seconds behind. Their confrontation took place in the driveway. David, who now had the two Shin Bet men sitting back-to-back, listened from the door.

"She's not taking that van," Ephraim warned.

"She's taking it," Rafi said. "And my forensic guys are going over it."

Shoshana sat smiling in the driver's seat; she'd locked herself inside.

"Listen, Shahar," Cohen said, trying to strike a reasonable tone, "you don't bust in on us. If you think you've got good cause, go to a judge and get a warrant. Until then pull your people out."

"I don't need a warrant, not when my top unit chief is ambushed."

Cohen stared at Rafi with withering scorn. "My guys get ambushed all the time."

"We think it was a couple of your goons."

"You think!"

"What are you afraid of, Cohen?"

"You're on my turf, Shahar. Get off of it."

"You've got no 'turf.' "

"Oh no? We'll see."

They came inside together to use the phone after agreeing that their respective bosses would have to talk.

"Why the handcuffs?" Cohen asked.

Rafi nodded to David, who nodded to Uri, who unlocked the cuffs and set the two men loose. As soon as Uri stepped back the beard lunged for him. Uri kicked him in the shins. He howled. The girl screamed again.

"Control your creeps!" Rafi yelled. Ephraim Cohen herded the three of them out the door. Then, while Rafi phoned District Superintendent Latsky, Ephraim approached David with a smile.

"Last time we met I did you a favor."

"Yeah, you set up Peretz."

"That was a good tip, David."

"So why did you kill him? Is that what you do when one of your crummy operations falls apart?"

Rafi motioned David aside.

"Don't insult him. You shouldn't have done it like this. You should have checked with me."

"I would have, Rafi, but if we'd gone for a warrant they'd have heard about it and buried the van."

"Cohen's calling Levin, a big-shot colonel. We may be in more trouble than you think."

"This is Jerusalem."

"So what? Can we bust IDF Intelligence? Can Shin Bet bust the Russian Compound? This is their territory, David. Busting in here puts us in the wrong."

"We've got pictures now."

"You're still going to need that van."

"If one of these guys was 'Hurwitz' and Amit Nissim identifies him…."

"They'll tear her apart."

"There's the clerk at the photo store."

"Not enough, David." Rafi shook his head. "With people like this, nowhere near enough."

Superintendent Nathan Latsky huddled with Rafi, while the four Shin Bet men glowered and Ephraim Cohen looked impatiently at his watch. Latsky was an old chain-smoking Pelmach type who'd turned frosty in middle age. Now, near to retirement, he disliked conflict. David knew he barely tolerated Rafi, whose open-door policy and undisciplined unit chiefs offended his sense of order.

When Colonel Levin arrived, he and Latsky sauntered into the garden. David couldn't hear what they were saying but it looked very cozy—an elaborate pas de deux with lots of friendly smiles, deferential noddings, and polite discussion of inter-service protocols, neither man trying to intimidate the other, each positioning himself for the inevitable Israeli compromise.

Latsky came back to talk with Rafi, while Levin conferred with Ephraim Cohen. After a few minutes the superintendent motioned David over.

"Levin says you've blown this headquarters." Latsky lit a cigarette. "He says he's moving his unit out."

"What about the van?"

"What about it? You're sure as hell not going to get it now."

"I need it. There's evidence in there," David said.

"David's been shot at twice," Rafi explained.

Latsky nodded. "You tried to snatch it from them and you failed. Now they're not giving it up. Levin's talking principle."

"So it's an impasse. Now what do we do?"

"In a situation like this I go to the Police Minister and he goes to the Director of Shin Bet."

"Then what?"

Latsky exhaled nervously. "They take it to the Cabinet."

"By that time the van's cleaned up."

The superintendent shrugged. "So what do you want to do? Fight it out with them with guns? You took on these people, Bar-Lev. You should have known better. Now we're in a mess."

"It's a vicious circle," David said. "I couldn't get evidence without moving on them first."

"Sounds to me like you didn't have a legitimate case." The superintendent squinted at him. "Oh yeah. Another thing. No pictures. They want your film back too."

The Police Ministry was in a government building in Sheikh Jarrah, a floor above the larger Ministry of Housing. A decent enough office but nothing grand. The minister, presently attentive to police affairs, hoped shortly to move on to better things.

David only knew him by reputation. He was Algerian-born, a slick, smooth-talking fifty-year-old former trial lawyer with perfectly parted silver-gray hair and beautifully manicured nails. He'd gotten the police as part of a package deal called "Opening to the East," whereby certain presentable younger Sephardic politicians received a limited number of minor ministries in return for joining the coalition of religious and right-wing parties that formed the present government.

The minister sat behind a large wooden desk staring out the window. During David's presentation he had fondled an aluminum ruler, pivoting it occasionally to catch the light. Now, waiting for his decision, David sat nervously in a chair in the center of the room. Rafi Shahar and Superintendent Latsky reclined on a leather couch against the wall. The aromas from Rafi's pipe and Latsky's cigarettes merged and filled the room.

"Anything else?" the minister asked. He rotated his chair and then he smiled. David shook his head. "You won't mind if I ask some questions?" The minister had won fame for his cross-examinations at a number of spectacular political trials.

"Last night you didn't see anybody in the van?" David nodded. "And you can't positively identify the van as being the one you found in the Lover of Zion Street garage?" David nodded again. "These dope dealers you let go—what made you think they were reliable?"

"Their story made sense."

The minister leaned forward. "But you weren't sure?"

"Of course not. How could I be?" He wondered what the minister was driving at.

"This Major Peretz—how do you know he actually found the so-called executioner?"

"He told me where to find the house and also that Susan Mills had been tortured before she'd been killed. That's something only people in my unit knew."

"He could have discovered those things the same way he found out about the double cuts. You don't have a body so you can't say for certain whether this 'executioner' is dead, or, for that matter, whether there ever existed such a man?"

"There's no certainty about anything in this case," David said. "It's the accumulation of many small details."

The minister snapped down his ruler. "You want me to go to the Cabinet. I'm asking questions I anticipate will be asked of me. If I can destroy your story, then your adversaries will destroy it. In which case we'll lose. In which case there's hardly any point in taking it to the Cabinet in the first place. Don't you agree?"

David nodded and sat back.

"Okay, did you check with anyone before you released the drug dealers?"

"No."

"Have you the authority to make that kind of deal?"

"Within limits."

The minister turned to Rafi. "Did he exceed his limits?"

"No."

The minister smiled. "That's the first positive link in this extremely peculiar chain of events." He looked at David. "You say this man, Ephraim Cohen, was a friend of your brother. Can you think of any reason why he would want to mislead you about Major Peretz?"

"He was manipulating me. He wanted to throw me off the scent."

As part of a conspiracy?" David nodded. "But Peretz never told you the name of the 'old friend,' the one he said suggested he attend the Rubin Academy symposium?"

"No."

"So you don't know if he made that up?"

"No."

"You can't be sure anything Peretz told you was true?"

"No."

"And your reconstruction of the accident is based solely on the uncorroborated testimony of a minor child and the hearsay ravings of the discredited, possibly psychotic, and now dead Major Peretz—isn't that correct?"

"Yes."

"So let me ask you, captain: What is this crime that you think is going to be committed? Who are these conspirators? What evidence have you got that Security Services personnel attacked you at the zoo and in front of your house? The answers—correct me if I'm wrong—are: 'don't know'; don't know'; and 'none.' Right?"

David nodded. "Those would have to be my answers."

The minister sat back and arched his ruler between his hands. "Tell me, honestly, if you were me, would you go to the Cabinet with this kind of speculation?"

David shrugged. "I'm a cop, not a judge. Everything I do is speculative."

The minister bent the end of his ruler, then released it so it sprung at David like a tiny catapult. When their eyes met again David saw a narrow gaze of sympathy; the sharp prosecutorial look was gone.

"Let me make this clear. I understand your actions this morning. On a personal level I'm sympathetic. But if I go into the Cabinet with this I'll end up having to resign. So I'm sorry.... By the way, I understand you refused Colonel Levin's request to turn over some rolls of film."

David nodded.

"Okay, you and Shahar wait outside. Latsky—stay. There're a few loose ends to discuss...."

"Oh no! I don't believe it," Anna said. "Oh, David—how awful you must feel."

It was late in the afternoon. They were in the apartment. David, exhausted, was lying on the couch. Anna, perched next to him on her cellist's stool, looked closely into his eyes.

"They were kind about it."

"What did Rafi say?"

"That it was the minister's decision, that it was irrevocable, and he was sorry but there was nothing he could do. I told him Iunderstood. It was my fault. I went in without checking because I knew he'd tell me to wait. My miscalculation. I was sure if I got hold of that van it would lead straight to Cohen and Shin Bet, and I'd have enough to make someone talk. Maybe Cohen counted on that. Maybe the two ambushes were a way to push me into moving too fast so I'd screw up my case."

"Why do you blame yourself?"

"The minister said I was obsessed."

"He's right."

"Sure. And what else should a policeman be? The obsession, Anna, is based on an old Jewish principle: Human life is sacred. You don't allow people to take other people's lives and then not pay for their crimes."

She took his hand. "This is one of the things I love most about you—that you are obsessed, that you don't give up."

"It's what Judith liked least."

She smiled. "She and I are different. Now what are you going to do?"

"I'm still unit chief. I haven't been demoted. We still have our inventory of pattern crimes."

"And the murders?"

"Rafi'll turn them over to his homicide team, they won't get anywhere, there won't be any more killings, and eventually the case will be allowed to fade. Unsolved." He closed his eyes. "Rafi wants me to go on vacation. I told him no, that if I go now people will think I've had a breakdown." He paused. "I took a vacation a couple of years ago. Got a passport, went to Paris, then down to Bordeaux, the city my mother left for Palestine. I felt run-down, bad about my divorce, and I thought Bordeaux would be a good place to visit. Mother had described it to me many times, I'd studied maps and photographs and thought I'd recognize buildings, parks, and squares. But it didn't work out. People were haughty and I missed the Mediterranean sun. My second day there I was sitting in a café, sipping a glass of wine, when suddenly I knew I had to leave. I spent a couple of days in Barcelona, then cut my vacation short. When I turned up at the office a week early everyone stared at me like I was mad."

She was gazing at him. "I don't know, David. There's something odd about the way you're taking all of this." She slipped off her stool, settled herself on the floor, pressed her head against his side. "I don't believe you're as resigned as you pretend. Tell me really how you feel?"

"Angry and humiliated. Furious." He paused. "As if I just had my face slapped very hard. But a funny thing, Anna: When Gideon and I were kids our mother sometimes slapped us. But she didn't do it very often, not to me, because she found out that with me it didn't work. Gideon would always respond to it. He could be counted on to behave, adapt himself to the model she set for him. But I was different. Being slapped only made me mad. And when I got mad I told myself: 'Cool down and bide your time.' " He looked at her. "So, you see, this case isn't finished yet." He smiled then as he paraphrased the minister: "There're just a few too many loose ends."

Late that night he called Dov at home.

"We shot three rolls, right?"

"Yeah. Three."

"Hold onto one of them, the one that's got shots of all four guys and the girl. Tomorrow take it in for processing to a commercial photo shop. While you're there, buy a new roll, same type, and stick it in your camera. When you turn in the stuff to Latsky's sergeant, make sure he gives you a receipt so all three rolls are accounted for."

"Sounds good."

David paused. "Guess everyone's pretty depressed."

"Shoshana says she's going to quit. She won't. I had the same idea but I got over it. What gets me is the timing. What happened? The investigation seemed like it was at that point, you know—just ready to take off."

"Oh, a lot of things happened, Dov. I was stupid. I should have ordered Shoshana to run over those goons—anything to hold on to the van. Amit too. I mishandled her. Sticking some photos on some dolls wasn't enough. Should have done it like a line-up with a lot more dolls with pictures on them of people unrelated to the case. Then, if she'd picked out the same dolls, the ones that were related, we'd have had something that might have stuck."

"You think Levin's involved?"

"Doubt it."

"David, what the fuck is going on?"

For a few moments he didn't speak. For the entire evening ideas had been swirling in his brain. "I think originally all they wanted to do was to get hold of Susan Mills's film. But she was a feisty nun, she wouldn't hand it over, so they put pressure on her, and once they did that they had to kill her—if they'd let her go she'd have come straight to us. Once they killed her they were in real trouble. There were other witnesses. So they decided to silence them. One crime led to another. The thing escalated. They killed Yael Safir. We started coming after them. They had to protect themselves. Finally the cover-up became a devouring monster, maybe bigger than whatever it was they were originally trying to protect."

"Yeah, I see, but that still doesn't explain what was so important about the accident. I just can't believe we're really done with this."

"You are."

"But not you?"

David did not respond. "For a while now," he said, "like the good cops that we are, we're going to be doing just what we're told."

Mr. Nissim was not pleased to find him at his door.

"You promised us you'd only interview her once."

His wife nodded. "You can't see her now. She's gone to sleep. She's been very nervous since that afternoon."

David apologized. He and Uri had worked gently. They'd done their best to turn the questioning into a game. All he wanted now was to show Amit a few photographs.

"She won't be able to help you," Mrs. Nissim said. But when David lowered his eyes and asked again she reluctantly agreed.

When he came into Amit's bedroom and leaned over her bed to say hello, she reached up and gave him a big wet kiss. Then, when he sat down beside her, she reached for her policewoman doll and rocked it proudly while they talked.

David told her he'd brought along some pictures and all she had to do was look at them and tell him if she recognized any of the men.

He spread the pictures out on her bed. She looked carefully at each photo and was clearly disappointed that she couldn't recognize a face. When he brought out the IdentiKit sketch of the "nephew" who'd picked up Susan Mill's film, she shook her head again.

David thanked her, kissed her good night, and was across the room and at the door when she called out.

"I saw him on TV."

"Who?" He turned.

"Oh, one of the men," she said.

David walked back, crouched down. "The policeman?" She shook her head. "The man who hurt his leg?"

She grinned up at him. "No."

"Oh," he said, "then it must have been one of the two who helped him walk away."

Amit beamed. "Uh huh."

David sat beside her again. "Why didn't you tell me this before?"

"You didn't ask me."

"You're right." He smiled. "So, what did he look like, this man you saw?"

"Oh, he had a beard," she said. Her eyes enlarged. "He looked real scary too."

Mrs. Nissim came into the room. "I thought you'd be finished by now."

"Amit's just telling me about something she saw on TV."

"Tales. Nonsense. Ever since you questioned her she's been pointing at people on the screen. Look! The child's blinking again. It's time for you to go. And I'd appreciate it very much, captain, if this time you'd keep your promise and not bother us again."

There was something overtly irritable in Anna now—a sense he had that she was more than anxious, was truly distraught. Sometimes he would gaze at her and, before she'd notice and recompose her features, would catch a glimpse of pain.

What was bothering her? Whenever he asked she brushed his question aside. One time she told him it was her music—that she had felt she was struggling toward a breakthrough but instead now found herself against a wall.

"Tell me about it," he asked.

She touched her forehead. "It's difficult," she said. And then, after a pause, in a whisper filled with pain: "I want so much to be a major performer, David. Not just a fine cellist but a major one." She looked down then, as if ashamed of sounding grandiose. "Not just major either, David. Even better than major. Maybe ..." She paused again; she could hardly bring herself to say the word. She whispered: "Maybe even the best."

The next few days were quiet. Members of the unit sat around sluggishly going through old dossiers. There were the unsolved pattern cases of the burglarized grocery stores, the kidnapped pedigreed dogs, and the "gentle rapist" who hadn't attacked in months.

Rebecca Marcus carefully took down all the pictures, maps, and documents relating to the case that were tacked up on the squad room walls. When she asked David where to store them, he instructed her to pack them up for him in a box.

Moshe Liederman asked to see him. He'd spoken with an officer in personnel and learned that with his accumulated vacation time he could begin his retirement at once. With the murder investigation shut down he saw no reason to wait. He had some papers for David to sign.

"No bother," David said. He signed Liederman's papers and thanked him for his help.

"It's me who should thank you," Liederman said. "I want you to know this—I've been a cop for more than thirty years but until I worked with you I never had any self-respect. I'm not talking about the cruel jokes—'Why do cops always work in pairs?' `Because one can read and the other can write.' That kind of stuff never bothered me. What bothered me, I think, was that I never really believed in the concept of a Jewish cop. When I put on the uniform and looked at myself in the mirror I felt I was looking at a clown."

"Maybe you just needed to work in civilian clothes, Moshe. The uniform's not for everyone. You'll be working on your archive now. I'm sorry I haven't had a chance to see it yet."

"Someday you will. Meantime, if you ever need help, unofficially, on the outside, please remember me. I'm not like you, I don't have intuition. And I'm not as smart as Dov or as fast as Shoshana or as ingenious as Micha or as tough as Uri. But after thirty years there're a few things I know how to do. I'm good at following people and I like to look under every stone."

He called in Shoshana. "When you go by Amit's school this afternoon ask her about the man she saw."

"Huh?"

"On TV. The scary looking man with the beard. She'll know who you mean."

Shoshana stared at him.

"You were going to stop by and see her, weren't you?"

"Well sure, David. Of course." Shoshana smiled. "I take it, then, we're still...."

He looked at his watch. "Friday afternoon. They probably let the kids out early...."

When he glanced up she was gone.

The Friday morning Jerusalem Post: He didn't get to his copy until four o'clock. He read it slowly; he'd been so busy the past week he'd lost track of the stream of news.

A taxi drivers' strike looming in Tel Aviv. The plummeting shekel. Gyrations on the Stock Exchange. A suicide car-bomb attack at the Lebanese frontier. Rabbi Katzer, visiting New York, raving against the Diaspora. A settler's demonstration—the Bloc of the Faithful accusing the government of welshing on a deal.

In the magazine supplement there was an article about five self-proclaimed "Messiahs" presently wandering the streets of Old Jerusalem. David moved on to a profile of a Peace Now activist who posed the eternal Israeli Question: "What Is to Be Done?" He was impressed until he reached the second paragraph where the man said he was fed up and moving to England for a year. He crumpled the paper, was about to throw it away, when a caption caught his eye.

A picture of a handsome man with flowing white hair; underneath it a name he remembered from his talk with Stephanie Porter. David spread the paper out and began to read a lengthy interview in which Aleksandr Targov, presently residing at the city's artists' guesthouse, Mishkenot Sha'ananim, spoke of the sculpture he had created especially for Jerusalem and which now he'd come to donate and install.