Saving Sophie: A Novel (27 page)

“Zone A?”

Kayla nodded. “Correct. Zone A. Self-governed by the PA.”

They walked to a small diner on a side street. Standing on the sidewalk, Kayla pointed to a white tower. “That’s the Mosque of Omar, which sits at one end of Manger Square. Before modern times, Muslims and Christians would share the responsibility of bringing oil to light the lamps of the square.” She peered in the window of the restaurant. “If you wouldn’t mind, right now there’s someone I need to see. Could you wait just a bit? Better yet, why don’t you go on in and order some falafel. It’s great here.”

“I’ll just hang out here.”

Kayla entered the restaurant and a few minutes later emerged with a small man with a neatly trimmed black beard. He nodded to Liam.

“Liam, this is Kadin, a friend of mine. I need a few minutes with Kadin, if that’s okay.”

Kayla and Kadin walked to the corner, crossed the street, and disappeared into a small, gray building. Liam leaned on a parking meter and took in the scene. Bethlehem might be small, but the square was crowded. People watching was enjoyable. Many were obviously tourists in Western attire. Others were covered in traditional Arab dress.

A boy in shorts and woven sandals tugged at Liam’s sleeve and offered to sell him a plastic manger scene. “Baby Jesus. Only twenty dollars,” the boy said with a wide smile.

“Twenty dollars?”

“Okay. Five dollars.”

Liam dug into his pocket and pulled out a ten.

“I take that too,” the boy said, and Liam made the purchase.

Fifteen minutes later, Kayla returned alone. “Sorry for the delay.” She pointed at the souvenir. “I see you’ve already improved Bethlehem’s balance sheet.”

“Cute kid. I couldn’t resist.”

The restaurant was small—fifteen tables tightly organized. Liam and Kayla sat at a table for two beside a brick wall. A busy waiter in a white apron put down paper place mats with graphics of the square, a basket of hot pitas, and a bowl of hummus. He set out cardboard menus and olive oil. Although Liam could not understand any of the multiple conversations, the milieu was a tasty slice of West Bank.

“Am I supposed to know why you met with Kadin?”

Kayla shook her head. “Just a friend I needed to talk to.”

Liam looked around the restaurant and smiled.

“What do you find humorous?”

“A thought occurred to me,” Liam said. “That this is Portillo’s of the West Bank, minus the Italian beef.”

“I’d hoped you would make that observation. Look around. What do you see?”

He shrugged. “Just ordinary folks having lunch at a local diner. What am I supposed to see?”

“Just what you said—ordinary folks. People who have jobs and businesses and go home to their kids at night. These people aren’t terrorists, they’re not dangerous. They just want to live their lives in peace. The man I met with, Kadin, is a sweet man with a beautiful family. He’s a man that works for peace and longs for peace in this troubled land. People like Kadin deserve peace just the same as the ordinary folks on the other side of the separation wall. He deserves self-determination. Autonomy. Peaceful relations. He deserves a Palestinian state. But al-Zahani, the Sons of Canaan, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and all the other extremists will do anything they can to prevent that from occurring.”

“Why do you say that? Don’t they also espouse the Palestinian cause?”

“No. Peaceful solution leading to two states is the Palestinian cause. Israel is already a state; Palestine wants to be one. And it won’t get there if terrorists run their government. Guaranteed, secured borders, negotiated between responsible parties, is the only way the conflict can be resolved. It will never be resolved by terror.”

“And you think the Sons of Canaan are planning an attack to thwart peace talks?”

“I’m not sure the present talks are significant to them, but it’s clear the Islamist extremists don’t want any talks to result in a two-state solution if one of the states is Israel. They are anti-solution. They foster hate. And to that end, they’ve been enormously successful. They’ve stoked the fires of racism on both sides of the fence. From an early age, the young Palestinians are carefully taught to believe Israeli Jews are their natural enemies.

“On the Israeli side, bombs, rockets, tunnels, kidnapping, and fiery rhetoric have demonized the Palestinians. Israelis are against a two-state solution because they fear extremists will infiltrate and control a Palestinian state. During the fifty-day war with Gaza, forty-five hundred rockets were launched and aimed at Israeli cities. Air raid sirens sounded many times each day. People lived in shelters. Children were traumatized. Israelis who were formerly liberal and sympathetic to the Palestinians became hardened right-wingers.

“Ben Gurion International Airport is less than ten miles from the West Bank. In the last skirmish, the FAA and the EU halted air traffic when a Hamas rocket landed in a field two miles away. What if Hamas, Hezbollah, or some other Islamist extremist group took over a fragile West Bank government? They’ve already threatened Ben Gurion many times over. What do you think the FAA would do if there were a hostile Palestinian state within easy striking distance of the airport?

“The sad fact is this—both sides are victims to the terrorists. As President Peres said, ‘The Arabs are not Israel’s enemy. The terrorists are the enemies of both of us.’ And the consequence is further polarization of the two peoples, which, of course, serves the terrorists’s goals.”

“I understand,” Liam said, constructing a large falafel sandwich on fresh-baked pita, with lettuce, tomatoes, onions, and tahini.

“Golda Meir once said, ‘I fear the war with the Arabs will go on for years because of the indifference with which their leaders send their people off to die.’ She also said, ‘Peace will come when the Arabs love their children more than they hate us.’” Kayla gestured at the people eating their lunch. “These everyday folks, they don’t want to die, they want quality of life. We have to counter the teaching of intolerance. It’ll mean peace for both sides.”

“Kayla, this falafel is calling my name. What do you say we stop talking and eat for a while?”

“Can I tell you something funny?”

“Now that would be a welcome change.”

“Golda also said, ‘Let me tell you the one thing I have against Moses. He took us forty years into the desert in order to bring us to the one place in the Middle East that has no oil!’”

Liam, with his mouth full of food, suppressed a chuckle, took his napkin, and wiped his face. “By the way, I think this is the best falafel I ever had.”

“There’s a restaurant in Jerusalem that serves falafel just as fresh and just as tasty. The falafel tastes the same on both sides of the wall. There’s really no difference.”

“Lord Almighty, Kayla, I get it. You’re beating on a dead horse.”

She smiled proudly.

*   *   *

R
ESUMING THEIR DRIVE TO
Hebron, just south of Bethlehem, Liam pointed to a hillside town. “What’s up there?”

“That depends who you ask. Palestinians would say it’s an illegal settlement. It’s a town west of the Green line where Israeli citizens live. That one is Neve Daniel, formerly a farm belonging to the Cohen family going back almost a hundred years. There are one hundred and twenty or so Israeli towns that are located in the West Bank, with almost half a million Israeli citizens. Many live in large cities that have grown up over the past forty-five years, with schools, parks, hospitals, factories, and thriving businesses, many of which employ thousands of Palestinian workers.”

“How did these people end up there? Why were Israeli cities built in the West Bank?”

“Towns expanded naturally. Families grow. Businesses form. Housing in Israel is expensive, especially in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, so families move to areas where they can afford to buy—into new construction, subdivisions built on previously unoccupied and unused land. So now, in the disputed territories, there are five hundred thousand or more Israelis. The PA calls them ‘settlers’ or ‘occupiers.’ They want them all to leave. What would you do with those towns and cities?”

“Why would you have to do anything? Why can’t they remain in a newly created State of Palestine? Arabs live in Israel, don’t they?”

“They do, but numerous polls have shown that Israelis, even Arab Israelis, don’t want to live in the proposed State of Palestine. And the Palestinian leadership doesn’t want them there. Mahmoud Abbas said, ‘In a final resolution, we would not see the presence of a single Israeli civilian or soldier on our land.’ Palestinians don’t want to live in Israel and vice versa.

“This afternoon we’ll arrive in Kiryat Arba. Dead center of the West Bank. A town of seventy-five hundred Israelis. Beautiful homes, shops, businesses. Intelligent use of the land. Almost fifty years of natural growth. Jews have been in Kiryat Arba for over thirty-seven hundred years. It’s a settlement as old as the Bible. Are you going to tell those people to pack up and leave—they don’t have a right to live there anymore?”

“So, what’s the Kayla solution?”

“You’re giving me too much credit. I’m not a Nobel Prize–winning statesman, and that’s what it will take. But as long as radical terrorists and jihadists are able to influence the Palestinian populace, a peaceful, shared border is out of the question. We need for the Palestinians to renounce violence as a political tool. Men like Kadin are working for that, at great risk to himself and his family. I don’t doubt for a minute that the world would get behind Palestine if it denounced extremism.”

“Devon Avenue, that’s what you need,” Liam said matter-of-factly.

“Devon Avenue?”

“Starting at McCormick Boulevard, driving east on Devon, you’ll pass an Orthodox Jewish community, then an Arab community, then a Croatian cultural center. Further east it’s Pakistani. Further east it’s Indian. Then Korean. All within three miles. A mélange of food stores, restaurants, clothing shops, bakeries. Just about the most interesting street in Chicago. And all the folks live right in the neighborhood and most attend neighborhood public schools. That’s what you need out here. Devon Avenue.”

Kayla nodded and smiled. “Maybe so. Do you have terrorists on Devon Avenue?”

“Point taken.”

Kiryat Arba, the town on the hill, was quiet when they arrived, though Liam felt an eerie sense of tension in the air. Kayla parked the car in front of a three-story building, similar to many of the other structures lining the streets of Kiryat Arba: cream-colored Jerusalem stone, boxlike window openings cut into the façade, many covered with iron gratings. The city looked bright, new, and clean, but nervous. No children were playing unguarded on the streets.

The Agency apartment was efficiently furnished with functional pieces. Three bedrooms surrounded a sitting area with leather couches and black, cube end tables. Wooden stools were tucked under the kitchenette bar.

“There are two wireless connections here,” Kayla said, handing Liam a note card. “You may use this one; the password is on the card. It’s secure. I’ll take the back bedroom.”

F
ORTY
-F
OUR

“I
CONTACTED THE WILSON
broad this afternoon.”

The cell phone connection was patchy, but the caller’s tough street dialect was clear enough.

“You saw her? Did you go into her house?”

“No, sir. I talked to her on the phone. She wouldn’t open the door for me.”

“And? Did she tell you where her brother was?”

“Nah.”

“What did you say to her?”

“Just like you told me. I said I had a package addressed to John Sommers. It was an oil painting made from a photograph of Mr. and Mrs. Sommers and their kid. I told her that Mrs. Sommers had ordered it over a year ago from our Chicago office, but she never picked it up and we were trying to find Mr. Sommers to deliver it. We were told that she was the sister. Could she give me his address so I could deliver it? It’s all prepaid. Very beautiful.”

“Exactly. What did Wilson say?”

“She said she hadn’t talked to her brother in years. As far as she knew, he lived in Chicago. I told her we went there but it didn’t look like anybody was still living there, and then I talked to the neighbor who gave us her address. So could she give me a forwarding address for her brother so I could send it there? Then she told me she had no idea, don’t bother her no more.”

Silence. Then: “She’s not telling the truth.”

“We can make her talk. She’s got kids. She’ll give up Sommers if I start to talk about her kids. Want me to make the call?”

Silence. Then: “Not yet, Yuri. Maybe later. Right now I have another idea.”

*   *   *

I
N A SHOTGUN BUNGALOW
on Chicago’s northwest side, a young man sat in front of a wall of electronic equipment. His tussled hair was omnidirectional, over his ears and badly in need of a scissors. A plaid shirt was buttoned to the neck, and his wide leather belt gathered the waist of his rumpled khakis.

Behind him, in designer casual-wear, a man stood looking over the young man’s shoulder at the computer screen. “Well, Marvin, is it something you can do or not?”

The young man nodded. “Should be,” he answered, though everything he said was qualified with a cautionary negative. “Unless he uses a sophisticated scrambler.”

“He’s not sophisticated; he’s just a paper pusher. I need to know where this man is when he goes online, when he leaves a message. Can you pinpoint his location?”

Marvin tilted back in his chair and shrugged boastfully. “It depends on how you define
pinpoint
. When he e-mails you, I can get his IP address. If he uses an Internet café, some public source, I can probably give you the location.” Marvin smiled smugly. “I have my ways of getting it from the ISP. Of course, if the man has installed a few security features that I sell … most people don’t know about them.” He shrugged. “He’d have to hire somebody like me.”

“Well, let’s assume he hasn’t hired someone like you, Marvin. How can you get this done? How can you tell us where he is when he posts?”

“It would be best if I were online at the time. When do think that will be?”