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  “No,” she said, and by chance they found a pay station.

  “Do you remember the color? The section?”

  “Orange I think. Green. I don’t know.”

  “Brilliant,” he said.

  They split up to look for the car in the oxygenless site. Dael continued in minus two, and Lirit went down to minus four. In minus four there was even less oxygen, and judging by the suffocating atmosphere Lirit guessed that the car was on this level. And indeed she found it, got in and switched on the ignition, and drove up to minus two, where her brother was sitting on some step, after giving up his search.

  “Come on,” she called to him and opened the window of the seat to her right. “I found it.”

  Dael got up, threw his gun and bag onto the back seat, and sat down next to her.

  “Yallah, let’s get out of here,” he said.

  5

  IRAD GRUBER SWITCHED ON THE TELEVISION SET OPPOSITE his bed. He had no idea what time it was, neither here nor in Israel. On the screen two men maligned one another refereed by the host. Probably a repeat broadcast. A televised debate between two presidential candidates. The incumbent Republican, his face flushed and his expression resolute, and the Democrat, his skin gray, his face long, his look beaten. Gruber tried to take sides in order to give himself an interest in the debate that had nothing to do with him, just as he sometimes did when watching a football game on TV. But he lacked sufficient data on the American scene, and after a few minutes he was sick of their talk and began to flip channels.

  Couldn’t be better! All in the Family—his favorite series of all time! And what’s more, an episode he couldn’t remember seeing when it first came out. Gruber smiled to himself when the familiar characters appeared on the screen, chuckled from time to time, and once even laughed out loud.

  His laughter woke Bahat McPhee, who was sleeping in the next room. The laughter was uninhibited, carefree, not at all that of someone whose scientific world had come crashing down around him. She felt a little envious of the Israeli man who was capable of forgetting how grave his situation was.

  She glanced at her watch. In another hour or two a pale light would dawn outside. Bahat detested the pale dawn light, a detestation dating from the period of her parents’ yoga studio in the green suburb of Ramat Aviv. She thought that normal people should be sleeping when the sun began to rise because it had nothing to do with them. Sunrise! Sunset, maybe. It expressed a lot of feeling. But all this excitement over a pale, boring sunrise got on her nerves, with all due respect.

  In the end she gave up and switched on the TV in her room and listened with interest to the debate, with her eyes closed because she had missed the live broadcast. She was divided in her mind over the elections. One of the candidates was good for Israel and not so great for the Americans, and about the other they said that the USA was his top priority and that he thought America should look inwardly. Despite all the years that had passed since she last set foot on the land of Israel, Bahat was unable to choose sides in light of such divided data.

  BAHAT HAD LEFT Israel at the end of the seventies, and since then she had only returned for the funerals of her mother and father respectively, and had not even stayed till the end of the week of mourning. She was one of those Israelis who are reluctant to stay in Israel because of fear, especially since the nineties, and it was just about then she also fell under the spell of Rod Serling, something that had a big influence on the bedrock of her reality.

  From the beginning of the third millennium, Israel already seemed to her as frightening as Iraq. Afula and Falluja, Karkur and Kirkuk, what was the difference, she would sometimes sit and muse in the morning, with her sixth coffee and cigarette.

  Since acquiring the title of Reform rabbi was conditional on spending at least one full year in Israel, she decided, on the advice of and with the consent of the most respected female rabbi in the congregation of Albany, that she, Bahat McPhee, would instead make a great, pure gesture, one that called for charity and sacrifice, toward the state of Israel, and the Albany rabbi would exempt her from the obligation of staying there for a year.

  Sacrifice and charity for the sake of Israel would stand to her credit long after she became a Reform rabbi too, and Bahat liked the idea of having an advantage over all the others; it was pathological with her, the desire to open a gap, but she had been this way since she was a child.

  Bahat McPhee gave a lot of thought to the move she would make. Carefully she calculated what she would lose and what she would gain. In the period of enthusiasm preceding Gruber’s arrival she became addicted to caffeine, and smoked like a Frenchwoman. And due to her smoking, her social problems grew more acute. Even before this nobody could have called her a popular personality in the Jewish community of Ithaca, or in the scientific community of Ithaca, or in the general population of Ithaca either. She had no status and/or charisma to attract people to her. She was regarded as a brilliant scientist who should be left alone in order to achieve the maximum.

  Recently there were those in the congregation of Tikkun v’Or who suspected her of seeking a loophole to avoid spending a year in Israel. She had social problems even with the most open-minded people in Hebrew Union College, New York, New York, mainly because of her smoking, but perhaps also because of rumors and envy.

  WITH ALL DUE RESPECT to his liberal views, the candidate contending for the presidency seemed to McPhee a really gray character. His skin was gray and he radiated grayness. Perhaps in the end she would vote for the flushed incumbent, who people said was better for Israel.

  A black-and-white series from the fifties with Lucille Ball began and Bahat changed channels, while Gruber, in his room, went on watching Archie Bunker. He didn’t understand everything; there were some words in English he couldn’t get into his head even after their meaning was explained to him a hundred times. “The English is my wife’s,” he would sometimes say at scientific conferences when beginning the lectures in embarrassing English, which did not embarrass him. The man was so on fire with his own brilliance that he wasn’t ashamed of his English.

  Bahat wrapped herself in a robe and knocked on his door, she had had it up to here with the volume of these arrogant Israelis who couldn’t see anyone else even when they were right under their noses.

  Gruber opened the door in his dark blue tracksuit. (When she was alive his wife had classed him as a disappointment, in spite of all his brilliance, and would say to herself, you’ll always walk alone, Mandy Greenholtz-Gruber, Mandy G-G, for short.)

  “What the fuck are you doing to me!” Bahat upbraided him, “This isn’t the corner of Motzkin and Shenkin or whatever you call your streets there. I don’t like being woken up at this ungodly hour!”

  “Sorry, “muttered the Israeli.” I have ya-efet.”

  “You have what?”

  “Jet lag,” he made haste to translate the latest innovation of the Hebrew Language Academy.

  “Good, and now please keep quiet.”

  “I’m very sorry,” said the guest, “I went too far, I’m very eccentric, my wife says I’m very eccentric too.”

  “I’m not your wife, but I really need you to be quiet. We have a hard day ahead of us. I have to pass on a ton of secret information to you. I don’t feel comfortable about it, I’m afraid that the place is bugged, and that my Hispanic is an FBI plant. Once they even opened a file on Lucille Ball, can you believe it? I have to sleep well and not make any mistakes. I’m an American citizen.”

  “So what are you saying?” asked Irad, horrified at the possibility that the important information for which he had come all this way would be denied him because of an attack of patriotism.

  But she appeared to have returned to her original plans, for she said, “I’m saying that we have to walk a very fine line here and not make a false step in any direction. The key word is balance.”

  “It’s a serious business, I agree,” said Irad.

  “Then I’ll say goodnight,” said McPhee and turne
d to go back to her room. Gruber took a mental photograph of her receding back and the long, thick braid dangling down it. He asked himself if she worked out, and berated himself for not doing so personally.

  He tried to go to sleep, but soon gave up and went quietly downstairs. There was a television set on the ground floor too, huge and flat as their own in Telba-North. He muted the sound and switched it on to All the President’s Men. Luckily he had already seen the movie more than once on cable.

  He looked for the light switch in the kitchen and turned on all kinds of lights outside the house, at the bottom of the yard, in the garage, the garbage room, in the garden, apparently to call attention to its beauty, and quickly switched them off again. Judging by this McPhee’s sense of proportion, she was liable to accuse him of setting off a fireworks display.

  He had never come across a woman with such a short fuse, a fact which he attributed to her genius. There was always a price to pay for genius. In his case, for example, the eccentricity, the egoism, the need for instant gratification. At the cocktail party on the terrace in Jaffa that Mandy had organized after he had received the Israel Prize, he had gotten into conversation with one of the guests, a neurologist if he wasn’t mistaken, about the price of genius. The guy, it transpired, had written an article on the subject years ago and had it published in the newspaper Davar, now defunct. According to him, the sensitivity of men of genius made it inevitable that their nervous systems would suffer harm. Gruber was embarrassed. Was the man trying to tell him that his nervous system was damaged? “That’s the package,” said his interlocutor with total confidence, and Gruber beat a hasty retreat before he could present him with the living proof of his thesis.

  AT LAST HE FOUND the kitchen light switch and was immediately exposed to a long line of certificates of graduation and distinction hanging on the wall, in botany, zoology, Judaism . . . okay, he had certificates at home too, albeit not hanging on the wall. He looked for her regular coffee and hoped she had regular milk as well, and not that half-and-half.

  The coffee machine made a bit of noise and he prayed that Bahat was sound asleep again. In the fridge there was only half-and-half, and Gruber poured the stuff into his coffee, which it turned too white so that he contemplated the result with profound reservations.

  He sat down on the sofa opposite the mute television and sipped his coffee. Suddenly he had a good feeling. Maybe because the coffee was good and stimulating. What did he lack? This fullness of being spread through him and he felt, as sometimes happened, that being should be appreciated as such, without all the bullshit of achieving. All in all, what did he have to complain about? He was healthy in body and mind, sitting in the exclusive north of the United States, in the home of an ex-Israeli, drinking coffee, feeling comfortable, even relaxed. Tomorrow, so she said, in other words today, she would pass on to him what she knew about the spider net, and in the meantime until that hour arrived, he would spend the time at his ease. Like now, watching a movie he had already seen and was therefore familiar to him. Those actors were already old. He had seen Dustin Hoffman in a recent movie. But what did Hoffman’s age have to do with him?

  He stared at the bustling news room of the Washington Post, when suddenly on the wall to the right of the television set he noticed a framed official photograph of Richard Nixon himself.

  Two puzzling questions occurred to him. Firstly, what did Professor Bahat McPhee have to do with Richard Nixon? And secondly, wasn’t it strange that he should discover this photograph just when they were showing All the President’s Men on television?

  He rose to his feet and went over to the portrait. An old photograph. The president was smiling, so it had apparently been taken before the exposure of the Watergate bugging.

  As for the first question he speculated that perhaps he was witness to a pure and simple love of Israel. It was Nixon’s airlift during the Yom Kippur War that had saved the state. Did McPhee gain inspiration from the disgraced president and say to herself, if he stood up for Israel why shouldn’t I bypass Cornell University, Ithaca City Hall, the Pentagon, and the French health authorities to give the Israelis a bit of a push?

  Was she fully aware of the risk she was taking in handing over the vital information about the webs? For a moment he was afraid that the FBI was really watching her and that both of them were going to be thrown into prison for a long time, and made to feel guilty for the massive damage to the relations between Israel and the United States.

  Who would be crazy enough to take the risk of damaging Israel’s relations with the USA, especially after Nixon’s airlift?

  Gruber broke out in a sweat. Not only had he not thought his plans through to the end, he hadn’t thought at all when he applied for approval for his flight to the US after the occurrence of Titanic three.

  He decided that if they were caught he would pin all the blame on her, he would say that the subterfuge was all on her initiative, while he himself believed that the financial backers and the Americans were in on the collaboration. He didn’t have the least idea that she was acting behind the back of the Pentagon, which in his opinion was unforgivable in such sensitive times.

  He was deterred by the situation in which he found himself, and all he wanted was to be back in Israel with the information he needed and to forget everything that had gone before. Shimon Peres himself had told him personally, at some dinner, that spies took the risk of being forgotten in jail, and even worse, every novice spy knew that he had to be prepared for the total denial of the state in the event of his being caught. Peres had stressed that it was the most treacherous profession in the world. And indeed, what if the state were to deny out of hand that he had come to America at its behest and then accuse him of coming here on his own private business, for his personal profit? They might even say that he planned to convert his wife’s pajama factory, Nighty-Night, and manufacture T-suits for export to China!

  A deep sense of uneasiness in the face of something a lot bigger than he was took hold of him. The coffee was tasteless, and in any case he had already finished it. His mood changed completely. He felt really uncomfortable. What if they put him in a cell with someone from al-Qaeda?

  A taxi stopped outside McPhee’s house and let off a passenger. This was already too much for the Israeli scientist. He was convinced that an FBI agent had arrived, or an officer from some secret police force, which had been set up to deal with all kinds of eventualities after 9/11 and received an additional impetus after the bombings in Madrid and London. He reminded himself to deny everything out of hand. He would say that he had no idea McPhee was working behind the back of American interests, on the contrary! But at the thought of the diplomatic imbroglio, perhaps even the political earthquake to come, the scientist succumbed to an acute attack of vertigo.

  Due to the vertigo, and also to the terror he felt both before and during the vertigo, in other words the terror of the vertigo itself, Gruber failed to notice that the man at the door had a large white parrot on his shoulder, something which immediately negated the possibility of his being an agent of the FBI. He also failed to notice the fact that the man had a distinctly Israeli appearance and a medium-sized suitcase on wheels.

  The man rang the doorbell and Gruber went to open it. How great was his surprise when the man opened the door himself, with his own key.

  Now the two of them stood facing each other, and Gruber didn’t know what language to speak.

  The uninvited guest was not surprised to see Gruber, and said in Hebrew:

  “Shalom, are you Dr. Gruber from Israel?”

  Gruber nodded.

  “I’m Professor Raffi Propheta, Berkeley University Hebrew studies, how do you do? Allow me to add that I am also a good friend and well-wisher of Bahat McPhee.”

  6

  THE TIME WAS 4:30 A.M. ACCORDING TO THE KITCHEN clock. No mentality, even the Levantine, approved of ringing somebody’s doorbell at this hour unless something had happened. Professor Propheta opened and shut kitchen cupboards a
s if the place belonged to him, all with the parrot on his shoulder. Gruber watched him.

  “You want chai?” he asked Gruber.

  “No, thank you,” he said, “I already had coffee.”

  “You want another cup?”

  “No, thank you.”

  He looked like a bitter and perhaps aggressive man, but not dangerous. His bearing was stooped, almost feeble, and the contribution of his spine to his posture wasn’t clear.

  “Don’t you drink chai over there in Israel?” he asked.

  “My wife does,” said Gruber and began to smell the aroma of the ginger, familiar from home.

  “Your wife is very wise,” said Propheta.

  He didn’t like the look of this Propheta. He didn’t look good for his age, or not for his age either.

  He was half bald, short, running to fat of the flabby kind. And on his bearded face, with the dusty looking mustache, was a sulky expression. He filled Gruber with a sense of defeat.

  In order to recover, Gruber could have scolded him for his intrusion at this ungodly hour, and thus externalized his aversion to the man, but there was something pitiful about Propheta, and Gruber really did feel pity for him, especially when he saw that his hands trembled slightly—before, when he was peeling the ginger, and also now, as he poured the milk into the chai.

  When he turned to face Gruber, with the hot drink in his hand and the parrot that didn’t budge from his shoulder, he complained that he couldn’t find the cardamom among Bahat’s spices, either she didn’t have any or she had run out, and Gruber noticed that the anger on his face was out of proportion to the offense, that the man presumably wore a permanent expression of anger and accusation. Although he had thought at first that the intruder was simply worn out after the journey from Berkeley to San Francisco, and from San Francisco to New York, and from New York to Ithaca, he now realized that the Hebrew teacher from Berkeley was a man full of rage.