The Israel Bond Omnibus (21 page)

“‘If, if, if, if’...” an impatient Svetlova waved his hand as though to wipe away each item on Rabbi Chair’s bill of particulars. “I fear, Rabbi Chair, that you have been victimized by a pack of vile falsehoods emanating from the Jewish press of the West, the selfsame bunch of greedy usurers who pour their ill-gotten shekels into the swollen coffers of the artificial Zionist state. Jews of the Soviet Union are content, fulfilled. They are tolerated almost everywhere. They are even to be found in the highest strata of our lower echelons. But we are wasting our time with this fruitless dialogue. One thing is sure—‘Operation Matzohball’ is blown. I shall see that this wretched house of yours is smoldering on a garbage dump in ten minutes.”

“One question, sir,” said Rabbi Chair. “Let us go back to your initial belief of my identity as someone other than myself. What is the mystery all about?”

“I may as well tell you, Rabbi, since it will not be helpful to you in any event. Rotten Roger, our enterprising caller, stated that you were the legendary Hebrew superhero who electrified the world with his derring-do in that overglamorized business a year ago. You, of course, recall the affair of the infamous Lazarus Loxfinger.”
[8]

His eyes widening, the rabbi laughed. “You thought that I, sir, was...”

“Israel Bond,” Svetlova cut in. “Or Oy Oy Seven, as he is known to your secret service. It was reported he had died of wounds incurred during the climax of the affair in the Red Sea. We naturally tended to doubt such reports. Yet, you are plainly not he. Perhaps he did, indeed, go to that reeking Jewish heaven of yours and is presently strumming the songs of David upon his golden lyre. Enough exposition, Rabbi Chair. I shall now proceed to crumble Israel’s paltry scheme to bits as one crumbles matzoh in one’s hand. Too bad; it was a most interesting house. Before I order it razed, why not show me around? A Cook’s tour, as our capitalistic friends would call it.”

“It would be my pleasure,” said Rabbi Chair with a grave smile. “And since it is a Cook’s tour, let me make a small pun of my own. A Cook’s tour is best begun in the kitchen.” And he held the front door open with the studied politeness of an Intourist guide.

“Droll, Rabbi. The kitchen, of course.” Svetlova moved quickly about the kitchen, sniffing here and there, breaking off pieces of matzoh from walls, chairs, the table and nibbling them. On one end of the table was a covered dish. He lifted the checkered cloth. “Ah, what is this?”

“Plastic representations of the ethnic foods to be found on a typical Jewish table. See, here is a bottle of Tab. This is lox, the smoked salmon... here is cream cheese... and here,” his finger indicated a round varnished object with a hole in its center, “a bagel. Oh please, sir, do not remove it from its base. It is anchored to the dish by a wire, as are all these representations. We did not want visitors to disrupt the display.”

“What does it matter now?” asked Svetlova. If it would upset the rabbi to rip the bagel from its moorings, he would do just that. He gave the bagel a violent yank.

A bell rang, shattering the stillness of the deserted street outside the Institute of Architecture.

If one had tried to trace the source of the ringing, one would have been frustrated, indeed, for on this street there were no public telephones or fire-alarm boxes. It was coming from a most unlikely place, the handle of a mop in the hands of one of a pair of shabbily attired women street cleaners, the type to be seen all over Moscow.

“It’s the bagel,” said the mop wielder in a rich baritone voice.

“Then it’s got to be trouble. The bagel only goes off when the wire is severed,” answered the other woman in an even deeper bass.

“Let’s get the hell in there!” cried the first crone. “It’s blown. He’s in trouble.”

“Hold it! The two gentlemen trying to look so casual near the side entrance... KGB boys, if I ever saw any. I can smell ’em a mile away.”

The possessor of the acute olfactory sense was, of course, no woman at all, but Israeli agent Zvi Gates, he of the piercing eyes and the artificial ear.
[9]
Zvi Gates, 113 in the branch, licensed to wound. Street cleaner Number Two was young, personable Itzhok Ben Franklin, 276, licensed to drive.

Hampered somewhat by their unfamiliar, cumbersome garb, they had slowly moved about the street cleaning the same spots time after time, always keeping the Institute in view. Never had the street, nor the five sleeping drunks they had scrubbed a dozen times, gleamed so. Itzhok had proposed using a liquid cleaner of no mean repute, but Zvi, the older hand, vetoed it. “It’s all right for the small jobs, but if you want to do a big job—like a street—you have to dilute it in water and it loses its power. Nah, we’ll use something made to be
mixed
in water. Spic & Span.”

They began a measured shuffle toward the two Russian goons, Federenko and Norelco, who leaned against the loading platform, puffing strong Gorki Cigarettes with one-inch gork tips.

“Dobri noch,
gentlemen sirs,” said Zvi, bowing obsequiously as a cleaning woman would before her superiors. “My, they are two very handsome gentlemen sirs, are they not, Sonyushkah?”

“Da,
to be sure,” croaked Itzhok, eyes twinkling with allure.

“Be gone, you stinking old carrion!” Federenko commanded. Russian women! Clods they were, clods! Give me a tawny, uninhibited
fräulein
any time, thought Federenko, who had performed many missions in West Berlin. In his mind he revisited Liselotte Gerhardt who had used her passionate teeth to bite her address and phone number into his neck.

“Oh,
nyet
, Nikolai. Not sending them away,” pleaded the hassocklike protege of Colonel Svetlova. “They very beautiful women. I not see women so beautiful like these back on farm.” Norelco, a simple-minded field hand, was bursting to experiment with the strange stirrings that of late had been disturbing his young body. So far his only experience along those lines had been a disappointing five minutes in a fetid barn with a bored cow. A prostitute at that.

“Let them stay if it pleases you,
muzhik,”
[10]
shrugged Federenko, shivering as his fingertips tenderly caressed his neck and “56-B Krupp Strasse, 8765” in reminiscence.

“We clean spot right here, eh, Sonyushkah?” said Zvi. Itzhok nodded and they set about mixing a powder into the battered pail of milky water. “Better use strong powder; plenty dirty pavement here,” admonished Itzhok. Zvi poured the powder into the pail, humming “Moscow Nights,” but at the same time he let slip from under his petticoat a small green cube, crying “Pinch nose!” The mixture fizzled for a second; then burst into a green gaseous ball. The two women, forefingers and thumbs squeezing their noses, held their breaths. Norelco fell forward, his head striking the side of the platform, blood spurted from a pulsating fountain of a wound. “A trap!” Federenko screamed. Coughing, choking, he barreled past the two women into the Institute.

“This piece of matzoh,” said Svetlova. “I wrenched it from a bedroom closet door. It’s different from the others.” He and his rabbinical host, the tour at an end, stood in front of the house watching the floodlights flash rays off its silvery skin.

“Matzoh is matzoh,” the rabbi said mildly. “I can’t imagine there being any difference at all.”

“Thicker. Yes, definitely thicker. But why?” He began to knead the fragment in his hand. Crumbs snowed upon his boot tips. And then something else fell to the floor—a shiny black sort of ribboned material. He picked it up, held it to the light. “Microfilm!”

“Ah, yes,” said Rabbi Chair. “That, I suspect, would be one of the microfilms of the holy prayer books, reduced in such a way that a few rolls contain the entire liturgy.”

And suddenly Colonel Svetlova realized that the stoop-shouldered savant had straightened up. He shoved the rabbi back with a flailing left hand, dug into his holster for the Walther PPK Reuther with the right, extricating it with the lightning draw that had earned him a reputation in the KGB as “the fastest gun in the East.”

This time it was not fast enough.

Even as Svetlova shoved him back, Rabbi Chair’s right hand made a mercurial maneuver of its own, whipping the yarmulkeh from his head and sailing it at his Soviet guest with the power of an Outback aborigine hurling a boomerang.

Five sounds fought simultaneously for dominance in the Institute of Architecture.

—The frightening, whirring sound of Rabbi Chair’s yarmulkeh jetting toward its goal, a short exciting marriage.

—Qang! The marriage: steel-lined yarmulkeh to its eager waiting lover, the steel plate in the head of Colonel Sergei Svetlova.

—
Strike! Strike!
The characteristic sound of the Walther PPK Reuther blazing in the misdirected right hand of the falling KGB bigwig.

—“It’s a trap! Tra... !” The gas-blasted, nearly unconscious Nikolai Federenko stumbled onto the scene, a crippled deer with its foreleg shot away.

—His tortured “aaa-eee-iii-ooo-uuu” scream gargling in his throat, torn open by Svetlova’s two slugs.

Then, to the rabbi, the sweetest sound he’d ever heard. The sound of silence.

Two men lay on the floor of the Institute of Architecture in slowly widening pools of blood, faces contorted in the attitudes of sudden violent death.

Israel Bond, alias Rabbi Morris Chair, dazedly wiped the coursing streamlets trickling from his brow into his eyes. Sweat, thank God, and nothing more. His Type-A blood had not been shed this time.

He pulled out a crumpled pack of Raleighs from a vest pocket, stuck one into his lips and scratched an Ohio bluetipped match on the door of the house. He let the smoke curl in sensuous spirals out of his mouth, nose, and ears. Footsteps clickclacked behind him, Zvi and Itzhok chugging in still in their old-maidish costumes. The heavy lisle panties had fallen around Zvi’s ankles.

“Clean it up,
boochereem
,”
[11]
said Oy Oy Seven, his famed scar livid on either his left or right cheek, now that his long tapering fingers had stripped away the rubberoid hands and mask that had transformed him into a sexagenarian.

Zvi spoke. “Oy Oy Seven, sorry this one”—he kicked the sole of Federenko’s shoe—“got away. Gas got the other, but this guy had a little extra staying power. And our KGB luminary in the tunic... what got him, Bond?”

Zvi, of course, was hurling a challenge at his idol, Oy Oy Seven, whose ability to inject scintillating humor into even the most perilous circumstances was well-known to all his acquaintances. And basically ignored. Except by the jocular Zvi, who loved a hearty joke and always stood like a tittering maiden in the presence of a movie star, awaiting Oy Oy Seven’s next gem.

Bond knew this too well.
Gottenu!
he thought; I’m exhausted, enervated. My kingdom for a good Robert Orben jokebook right now. But there’s none handy. This’ll have to be
my
rib-tickler.

He smiled weakly; threw his Saturday punch. (Bond’s commitment to Judaism was an integral part of his make-up.)

“What got Colonel Sergei Svetlova, dear Zvi? He made one fatal mistake. He used his head.”

Zvi purpled, a soft wheeze escalated into a howling hurricane of laughter. Slapping his knee, he lost his balance and fell against the point of Federenko’s shoe, bloodying his nose. “Used his head! Oh,
mommeleh
, what a mind! Dig, Itzhok? He used his
head!
”

Itzhok said politely, “Oh.”

“Okay,” grinned a satisfied Bond. “Fun and games over. Get this house dismantled and into the truck. Your contacts are meeting you at the Reese-Schapiro Bridge at midnight. Get cracking!”

As the two younger Israelis loaded the matzoh segments onto the rickety old E. B. White truck, he gave them a brief perceptive rundown on his minutes of torment at the hands of Colonel Svetlova.

Bond glanced down at his fallen foe again, the gash of a mouth congealed into a frozen Z, glazed eyes like bloodshot marbles caught in a ghastly white light.
“Russkoyeh sveenyah, vui!
”
[12]
Then he looked at the tunic, snapped his fingers.

“Boochereem
, they’ll be searching high and low for Rabbi Morris Chair for sure. They know—” He cut himself short; he would not bring up the matter of the traitor at this crucial moment in the plot—“uh, I have a feeling they might be looking for the rabbi when the colonel doesn’t check back in. But here’s my passport out of this Godforsaken people’s paradise. His uniform.”