Legends

She nodded gloomily; the closer she got to Israel, the less sure she was about tracking down her sister’s runaway husband. What if she caught up with him? What then?

As a matter of simple tradecraft, they had come to Israel using different routes: She had taken a flight to London and gone by train to Paris and then flown on to Athens to catch the 2 A.M. flight to Tel Aviv: He had flown New York-Rome and spent several hours getting lost in crowds around the Colosseum before boarding a train to Venice and an overnight car ferry to Patras, where he caught a bus to Athens airport and then the plane to Israel. Martin, queuing behind Stella, had winked at the woman behind the counter and asked for a seat next to the good looking girl who had just checked in.

“Do you know her?” the woman had asked.

“No, but I’d like to,” he’d replied.

The woman had laughed. “You guys never give up, do you?”

Landing at Ben-Gurion Airport in a light drizzle, the plane taxied to the holding area and the captain, speaking in English over the intercom, ordered the passengers to remain seated for security reasons. Two lean young men, their shirttails hanging loose to hide the handguns tucked into their belts, strolled down the aisle, checking identity photos in passports against faces. One of the young men, wearing opaque sunglasses, reached Martin’s row.

“Passports,” he snapped.

Stella produced hers from the side pocket of the hand bag under the seat. Martin pulled his from the breast pocket inside his vest and handed both of them to the security agent. He riffled through the pages with his thumb. Returning to the page with Martin’s photograph, he looked over the top of the passport at Martin. “Are you traveling together?”

They both said “No” at the same time.

The young man pocketed the two passports. “Come with me,” he ordered. He stepped aside so that Martin could retrieve his valise from the overhead rack. Then he shepherded Stella and Martin down the aisle ahead of him. The other passengers gaped at the man and woman being hustled from the plane, trying to figure out whether they were celebrities or terrorists.

An olive-green Suzuki with a thick plastic partition between the front and rear seats was waiting on the damp tarmac at the bottom of the portable stairs and Martin and Stella were motioned into the backseat. Martin could hear the locks in the back doors click shut as he settled down for what turned out to be a short ride. Stella started to say something but he cut her off with a twitch of his finger, indicating that the automobile could be bugged. Seeing her nervousness, he offered her a smile of encouragement.

The first shadows of first light were starting to graze the tarmac and fields to the east of the airport as the car made its way to a distant hangar on the far side of the main runway and parked next to a metal staircase that led to a green door high in the hangar. The locks on the back doors of the Suzuki clicked open and the driver pointed with his chin toward the staircase.

“I suppose they mean for us to go up there,” Stella ventured.

“Uh-huh,” Martin agreed.

Favoring his game leg, he led the way up the long flight of steps. At the top he tugged open the heavy gunmetal door and, holding it for Stella, followed her into an immense loft with a remarkably low ceiling. Sitting at desks scattered around the loft were twenty or so people working at computer terminals; despite the “Positively No Admittance” sign on the outside of the door, none of them looked up when the two visitors appeared. Female soldiers in khaki shirts and khaki miniskirts steered carts through the room, picking up and distributing computer disks. A man with a gray crew cut appeared from behind a heavy curtain that served to partition off a corner of the loft. He was dressed in a suit and tie (rare for an Israeli) and wore a government-issue smile on his very tanned face.

“Look what the cat dragged in. If it isn’t Dante Pippin in the flesh.”

“Didn’t know that Shabak mandarins got up before the sun,” Martin ventured.

The smile vanished from the Israeli’s face. “Shabak mandarins never sleep, Dante. That’s something you used to know.” He glanced at Stella, who was peeling away the rubber bands on the braid dangling down her spine so that her hair, damp from the light rain, would dry without curling. “Step out of character,” the Shabak mandarin said to Martin, all the while taking in his companion’s thin figure in tailored trousers and running shoes, “be a gentleman and introduce us.”

“His name used to be Asher,” Martin informed Stella. “Chances are he’s recycled himself by now. When our paths crossed he was a gumshoe for the Shabak, which is short for Sherut ha-Bitachon ha-K’lali. Is my pronunciation in the ball park, Asher? The Shabak is the nearest thing Israel has to an FBI.” Martin grinned at the Israeli. “I haven’t the foggiest idea who she is.”

The Israeli spread his hands wide. “I didn’t come down with the first snowfall, Dante.”