Farid takes another look around at the absurdity of the room in which they sit, as much to point it out to his host as to see for himself. “It can’t be that bad.”
“Just in time,” Joshua says, waving over Farid’s shoulder. “Sander rescuing me from the ugly truth.”
The butler returns, carrying a tray with coffees, and toast, and a pastry basket to rival Café Einstein’s. A ruddy-cheeked boy follows with a second tray, balancing a pair of champagne glasses with their soft-boiled eggs sitting inside, and a spray of bean sprouts with the most delicate follicle-like carrot shavings woven in among them, so that they look like a pair of narrow, fluted fishbowls.
When the food is served, Joshua, looking upset, first reaches into his glass and then, without apology, into Farid’s. He pulls out the fancy bit of greenery and the microscopic strips of carrot and drops it all on Sander’s tray.
“Tell that horrible little troll in the kitchen that I’ll knock him off the box he stands on to cook if he doesn’t stop making art out of my food.”
The boat moves at a good clip with Joshua sitting stiffly by the tiller and Farid close by—not even daring to put a hand in his pocket lest Joshua sink them in an instant.
When all seems stable, Farid asks, “What do you want to see?”
“Besides water?”
“From the water?” Farid says. “We can go to Cecilienhof. That’s always interesting.” Joshua puts on his hapless expression, which Farid is already very familiar with, having had to walk his student through every step of every action from the instant they got on board. “It’s where the Potsdam Conference took place after World War Two,” Farid says. Then, in response to Joshua’s unchanged expression, “You don’t know it?”
“I don’t know it.”
“What about Glienicke Bridge?”
“Did Napoleon cross it? Does it connect Europe and Asia?”
Farid shakes his head and gives Joshua very simple coordinates, leaving him at the helm. Sometimes he corrects Joshua’s steering with a word, and occasionally he reaches over and takes the tiller, turning them where they need to go.
When they reach the bridge, they lower the sails and drop anchor.
“So what is it?” Joshua says.
“This is where they exchanged the American pilot Powers for the KGB’s Rudolf Abel. It was a very important moment in the Cold War. An instance of capitulation between two bitter enemies.”
Joshua stays silent.
“You really haven’t heard of it?” Farid says. “Never?”
“Did they trade anyone from Manitoba? Test me on something Canadian. Show me the bridge where Wayne Gretzky and Celine Dion crossed arm in arm and we’ll see how I do.”
2014, Limbo
There’s not a soul about but for his soldiers. With the dark, and the silence, and a picture-perfect village, absent its villagers, it feels to the General as if he’s moving through a dream.
As for the soulless, the bodies of those who fought back lie dead at their doors. A corpse is splayed before him as the General steps down from his jeep. The face already covered in a layer of dust from the transports kicking up clouds racing in.
It’s from this place that the terrorists came, the pair who crossed the border into Israel for the prize of murdering a Jewish family in their sleep. Now the General has followed them into Jordanian territory, to extract a sort of debit on their purse.
The world had tried to head this moment off. There had been telegrams and calls and ambassadorial visits from every government that thought they had Israel’s ear. The Hashemite Kingdom itself, host to these killers, was even ready to acknowledge the terribleness of such an act.
Satisfactory retributive justice was promised from the highest levels. Glubb Pasha, the legendary leader of the feared Jordanian Legion, had personally offered to track down the attackers on home turf.
The Legion must have figured it was better to turn over their own to Israel than have the General come sniffing around off leash.
Unfortunately, the Jordanian offer did not appease. Ben-Gurion had a different sense of what was right. And so they called the General.
Always, it is to him that they turn.
His blood was already at a rolling boil as he was briefed by Ben-Gurion and Dayan and the defense minister, Lavon.
The pair of infiltrators had made their way ten kilometers into Israel. They’d sneaked into the Jewish village of Yehud, and one of the killers had pulled the pin and tossed a grenade into the house of a sleeping woman, and her sleeping children, cutting them to ribbons while they lay in their beds.
Of the woman’s three children, it was the oldest boy who survived to tell the tale.
The General’s first question was personal, not practical.
Where was the father? he’d wanted to know. Where was the one who should have been there, safeguarding his family?
Lavon passed a file to the General and said, “The woman’s husband—the children’s father—was off defending the country. He was doing his reserve duty at the time of the attack.”
How this exacerbated everything for the General. A father sent off to protect the children of Israel, returning to find the country had failed to protect his own.
A sloppy army, a ragtag bunch. The General has decided to clean it up, to make things nice. It is a good Russian sabra that his mother has raised.
He has formed a secret unit and trained its men. He takes a detachment of two dozen of his commandos and then borrows an even hundred from the infantry to join them on the raid. On their approach to Qibya, they fire off the mortars and light up the night.
While the shells are dropping and his troops are circling, the villagers flee Qibya through the eastern edge of town. The General has left this exit open. Let them run away so that, when the General is done, they may—like that father—return to see what he has wrought.
The General stands in the silent heart of the village, where he points at a solid stone house and says to his radioman, “This is where we set up command.”
A team races through the structure, before letting the General enter alone, a lantern in one hand, a pistol hanging from the other.
The front room is set with two elaborate divans. Through a curtained archway, he finds a kitchen, and in that kitchen is a brass finjan, its spout curving downward like a bird’s sickled beak.
It sits atop a gas burner, lit with the tiniest blue flame, as if the knob, turned off in haste, had not made its full revolution. Someone had failed to extinguish what the General, holstering his pistol, puts out with a twist.
So sure is the General of his control of the village, he takes his time stepping back through the curtain at the sound of what turns out to be a pair of his borrowed soldiers making their way into the house.
“We have mined all the roads coming in,” they tell him.
“Good, good,” the General says. “And the charges?”
“They are being laid.”
The General sets down his lantern and pulls the leather cover off the face of his watch. He is already unhappy with the time.