Legends

“I am driving at history, Mr. Odum. In 1985 the Saudi oil minister, who happened to be a big wheel in the OPEC oil cartel, announced to the world that Saudi Arabia would no longer limit production to support oil prices. You want to sit there and tell me the Americans had nothing to do with this? Eight months later oil prices had plummeted seventy percent. Oil and gas exports is what kept the Soviet Union afloat for years, even for decades. The fall in oil prices started the economy downhill. Gorbachev tried to save what could be saved with his half-baked reforms, but the ship sank under his feet. When things quieted down, Russia’s borders had shrunk to where they were in 1613. It is people like me and my brother who started poking through the debris and picking up the pieces. If things are better today for the masses it is because money has been trickling down. Ha! It is an economic fact that in order for wealth to trickle down, you need to have rich people at the top to do the trickling.”

“If I’m reading you correctly, you are a born-again capitalist.”

“I am a born-again opportunist. I did not go to school like Samat—I learned what I learned in the gutter. I understand capitalism contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction. Do not smile, Mr. Odum. The villain was your Genry Ford. By inventing the assembly line and mass producing his cars, he lowered the price to where the assembly-line workers became consumers of their own products. And with buy-now, pay-later schemes and plastic credit cards, people were able to spend money before they accumulated it. Instant gratification killed the Protestant work ethic, which glorified work and encouraged saving. Remember you heard it here first, Mr. Odum: America is on a slippery slope. It will not be far behind the Soviet Union in crashing.”

“What will be left?”

“We will be left. The Oligarkhs.”

One of Akim’s bodyguards came around the side of the house to the veranda. He caught Akim’s eye and tapped a fingernail against the crystal on his Rolex. Akim swung his short legs off the deck chair and stood up. “I am meeting a member of the knesset for supper in Peta Tikva,” he said. “Let us stop circling each other like wrestlers, Mr. Odum. Wears out shoe leather.” Waving to the women playing mahjongg, he shouted something in Armenian. Then, gesturing for Martin to accompany him, he started toward the enormous SUV parked in the driveway, exhaust streaming from its silver tail pipe. “How much they paying you to find Samat?” he demanded.

“I’m sorry?”

Akim stopped in his tracks and eyed Martin. Once again his face turned menacing without so much as his moving a muscle. “Are you thick in the skull or what?” he said, his voice a low, lazy growl. “Do I have to spell this out? Okay, I am asking what the wife’s sister’s father, who is a dead man, offered you to find my nephew Samat. I am saying that whatever he offered is nothing alongside what I will put on the table if you can lead me to him. What would you think of one million American dollars in cash? Or the equivalent in Swiss francs or German marks.”

“I don’t get it.”

Akim groaned in exasperation. “You do not need to get it,” he insisted. He started toward the car again. “A hundred and thirty million U.S. dollars have disappeared from six of my holding companies around the world that Samat controlled. That mouse of a wife in Kiryat Arba is not the only one wants a divorce. Me, too, I want one. I want to divorce my nephew. I want him to become my ex-nephew. So do we have an arrangement, Mr. Odum? You have my phone number. If you get your hands on Samat before I get my hands on him, pick up the phone and give me a call and you will become a rich man. Then you will be the one to trickle down to the proletariat so they can buy more of Mr. Genry Ford’s automobiles.”

Stella and Martin hefted their valises onto the table and opened the locks. One of the female soldiers, wearing white surgical gloves, started to rummage through the contents. The other female soldier, her eyes black with mascara, began asking questions and ticking off items on a clipboard when she heard the answers. Had anyone given them a parcel to take out of Israel? Who had packed their valises? Had the valises been left alone after they were packed? What was the purpose of their trip to Israel? Had they been to any Arab towns or villages or the Arab sections of Jerusalem? How had they come to the airport? Had the valises been in sight all the time after they got out of the taxi?

Finally the young woman looked up. “You are traveling together?”

“Yes,” Martin replied.

“Excuse me for being personal but you do not have the same family name.”

“We’re just friends,” Stella told her.

“Excuse me again but how long have you known each other?”

“Something like two weeks now,” Martin said.

“And you decided to come to Israel together after knowing each other only two weeks?”

Stella bristled. “Is it written that people have to be lovers in order to travel together?”