The Jerusalem Inception

Chapter 27





“As of this moment, you will forget your mommy and daddy and your coochie-moochie girlfriend!” The officer, stout with a freckled face, paced down the three-deep line of fresh recruits, holding up his machine gun in the air. “Your Uzi is your new mother, father, and girlfriend!”

“Yes, sir!” Lemmy yelled in chorus with the others.

“Hug your Uzi every morning, kiss it every evening, and sleep with it every night!”

“Yes, sir!”

“Now, get around the building! Thirty seconds!”

“Yes, sir!” The company of about sixty soldiers broke into a sprint, raising dust and spinning pebbles. Lemmy held the Uzi to his chest and ran as fast as he could. Beside him, a dark-skinned recruit tripped over a rock. Lemmy stopped and helped him up, and they chased after the others around the building, rejoining the line in attention.

“You!” The officer pointed at Lemmy. “Did you have a nice stroll? Did you enjoy the view? Shall I call a taxi for you next time?”

Lemmy yelled, “Yes, sir!”

Everyone burst out laughing. Even the officer laughed, suddenly appearing almost as young as the recruits. “Thirty seconds! Go!”

This time, Lemmy was the first to return. When the rest arrived and lined up, the officer clapped slowly. “A bunch of old ladies. Do you want to play bingo now?”

“Yes, sir!”

He grinned. “My name is Captain Zigelnick. But you can call me God.”

“Yes, sir!”

“Drop and give me twenty pushups. Now!”

Lemmy kneeled carefully and strapped on the Uzi so that it rested against his back while he dropped forward on his hands. He heard the officer berating the soldiers who had put their machine guns on the ground.

By the tenth pushup, he was surrounded by grunts and groans. Lemmy gritted his teeth, ignored the burning in his muscles, and counted in his mind. At twenty, he stood up.

Zigelnick pointed at him. “Give me another twenty!”

After more running and pushups, they marched into a rectangular building with bathrooms and showers at one end, an office at the other, and rows of metal-framed beds with foam mattresses in between. Lemmy picked a bed next to the soldier he had helped—Sanani, who spoke Hebrew with the crisp accent of a Yemenite Jew, which also explained his dark complexion.

It rained outside as they lined up. Captain Zigelnick led them down a rocky crevice. Soon, their new boots were caked in mud, and the rain soaked their uniforms. Some of the trainees cursed under their breath, but to Lemmy the wet uniform felt better than any dry black coat. They started up a new hill. Sanani raced him to the top. When the rest of the company gathered, they lined up three-deep and someone started singing, “Jerusalem of Gold, and of bronze, and of light…”

It was a popular song by poet Naomi Shemer, infused with Jewish longing for the Old City, as if the threatened war with the Arabs was not about Israel’s very survival, but about recovering the ancient Israelite capital.

Others joined. “The enchanted city, which sits alone, a wall across her heart.”

Captain Zigelnick joined the singing. “And no one travels to the Dead Sea, by way of Jericho.”

Their voices rose louder, echoing from the surrounding, barren hills. “Jerusalem, which is made of gold.”

Lemmy stood shoulder to shoulder with his fellow paratroopers-in-the-making, a chorus of devotion to the Old City he had watched from across the border every Friday of his young life, listening to his father’s prayers. He thought of the narrow alleys and the smell of fish from his mother’s hands. And the sound of Benjamin’s laughter.

“Read our history, and you’ll know the future!” Elie watched the two agents push aside their cups of coffee and gaze at the open book. This page of Samuel II told of a hot day in Jerusalem, when King David had enjoyed the cool evening breeze on the roof of his royal palace. He noticed a beautiful woman bathing in a pool of rainwater on a nearby roof and sent a courtier to summon her to his royal bed. When she became pregnant, the king assigned her husband to the front line, where he died in battle. The widow married the king and gave birth to an heir. ‘And God disapproved of the evil which King David had committed.’

The younger agent, Dor, looked up with a grin. “Naughty boy, the king of Israel.”

“Like he had a choice? Bathsheba was irresistible.” Yosh was an older man, whom Elie had recruited over a decade earlier.

Elie closed the book. “Great men are all alike—three thousand years ago, and yesterday. You know the rumors about Moshe Dayan. I want facts about his affairs: Who he’s seduced, where, when, and what happened to their husbands—names, ranks, and service records, especially if they died.”

“It’s not going to be easy,” Dor said. “Dayan is a popular man and a member of the Knesset. We’ll have to sniff around his former military staff, his driver, his neighbors, his friends—”

“I don’t like it.” Yosh pushed Samuel II aside. “I didn’t sign up with your department to assist inept politicians in a lascivious blackmail operation to keep Dayan out of the defense ministry.”

“Who said anything about the defense ministry?”

“Oh, come on!”

“And you signed up with me because you were kicked out of Shin Bet for equally lascivious activities.” Elie paused to let his rebuke sink in. “Now go and do your job!”