A behemoth of a flat screen is mounted on the wall playing kids’ shows at a setting that the mapmaker finds to be distractingly loud. There are toys on the floor, but no children to be seen.
A man introduced as “my idiot son,” who is probably thirty or thirty-five, leans against the wall opposite the TV, smoking a cigarette and staring at the mapmaker, suspect and cold.
When his host finally settles in across the table, he tells that big, strong, suspect-of-the-mapmaker-looking son to go fan those coals.
To the mapmaker, he says, “It’s an honor to have you in my home. I thank you for your service to our nation.”
Modest, the mapmaker replies that the honor is his and then says, “They say you are the best.”
“At what? At grilling? If so, that’s demonstrably true.”
“It’s tunneling that I mean,” the mapmaker says, as frank as can be. “At engineering the routes, and smuggling things through them, they say you are without equal.”
The man leans forward and points a threatening, fat finger. “You wouldn’t happen to be a stool pigeon, who’s going to get me killed by an Israeli drone if I accept the compliment?”
“Would those who put us in touch have sent me, if so?”
The man considers his guest and, after some contemplation, says, “In my heyday, I did it all. Things you wouldn’t believe.”
“Yes,” the mapmaker says, “so they say.”
“What did you hear, if you know already?”
“They credit you with getting anything needed in, and anyone who needed, out. They say you brought enough cement for a skyscraper, enough steel for a bridge—or for a thousand thousand missiles to fight those who oppress us. They say you brought food for the hungry, and medicines for the sickly.”
“Not just the food,” the man says. “The beasts the food comes from. I’ve brought goats and chickens, and more cows than I can count.”
“That must be something to see, underground.”
From the doorway, the son, who has reappeared, says, “It’s not the craziest by far.”
“What’s the craziest, by far, then?” the mapmaker asks, ingratiating himself.
Idiot or no, the father looks to his son, before deciding whether to talk. Then he says, “A rich customer wanted a classic car. A Mercedes 300SL, with the gull-wing doors,” and, as if by reflex, both father’s and son’s arms float up, to illustrate. “But it’s too wide for the widest tunnel. There’s no way to get it through. I try and figure for weeks, how to dig wider, and keep it from caving. Then it hits me. A show I saw once, about the Empire State Building, in New York. To make publicity for the Ford Motor Company, they wanted to put a Mustang on the roof as a stunt. But how to get it a hundred stories high? You can’t drive it up the stairs.”
“Okay,” the mapmaker says.
“What they did is, they cut it into pieces, and brought it in the elevators, and reassembled it on top. And I thought, what’s the difference, straight up or straight across? If it will fit through the tunnel in pieces, why not?” He sits back then and crosses his arms on his chest, as if to be admired. “We got it through with centimeters to spare.”
“I bet you got rich off it too.”
The man coughs a cough that sounds to be a mix of pneumonia and laughter.
“I barely broke even. But, like the Ford people, one cannot put a price on good publicity. Even black marketeers need to spread the word.”
“Well, it worked. I’ve brought my very special request to you.”
“And I’d have loved to hear it, but the Egyptians have destroyed everything. We’d just finished a new route too. It had automated tracks, little flatbeds running off of motorcycle engines, zipping along.”
“I’m sorry for your loss,” the mapmaker says, as if there’d been a death in the family.
“Yes. Like all Gaza’s tunnel millionaires, I’ve been forcibly retired.”
“We’ve only just met,” the mapmaker says, “but you don’t seem the type to give up and just sit around.”
His host taps at his temple, squinting an eye. “I’m busy here, working on the next wave. Whether it’s another five years or ten before they ease up, I’ll be ready when there’s opportunity below. I’m designing a micro-tunnel, using PVC pipe. Invisible to sonar, unbombable. And the trick? We pressurize it. You know? We make it pneumatic and shoot capsules back and forth. Small stuff. Money. Pharmaceuticals. We’ll whip things back and forth, faster than running to the store.”
“Ingenious.”
“Not my invention. I’ve been following the Mexicans, online. They do amazing things beneath the United States borders. My job is not to innovate, it is to evolve.”
The mapmaker clears his throat. “If it’s evolution you’re after, I’ve come to ask for something never done before.”
“If only I could help,” he says, offering a compassionate frown. His jowls make an impressive drop.
“Is it all right if I choose not to believe you?” the mapmaker says.
“Believe what you want. Everyone does these days.” He shrugs. “Tell me, though, if I were still in business, what might you want me to move?”
“A woman,” the mapmaker says.
“That’s why you come to me, full of drama? You want to get some cousin into Egypt. Why didn’t you say? If she isn’t on the lists, if her record is clean, we still do some medical tourism.”
“Bribery and forgery aren’t technically smuggling,” the son says. “For us, medical tourism, it’s kind of a sideline.”
The father turns to his son, his mood changing in a flash. “How are you still here? What color are my coals?”
The son disappears into the kitchen and then outside with a tray of meat. When the door closes behind him, the mapmaker says, “The woman, she’s not my relative. And I said I needed help smuggling, but it’s not out that I’m after.”
“Either direction, it’s the same issue. The routes are shut. The tunnels flooded and caved in.”
“That I know,” the mapmaker says. “But it’s from Israel that I mean. It’s those tunnels that I’m after.”
The mapmaker’s host turns bright red. He jumps up, grabbing the remote, and shuts off the TV. His son pokes his head in and he bellows at him, telling him to keep by the grill and keep that door closed.
Turning back to the mapmaker, he says, full of fury, “What are you talking about? No such tunnels exist.”
“I want to bring a woman in. A Jew. From Israel.”
“A death sentence! For you, for her, and for me, probably just for discussing it.”
“I told her the same,” the mapmaker says, fully agreeing. “Which is why I don’t want to bring her all the way in. I just want to meet her, underneath.”
“What do you mean—meet her underneath?”
“For a date. In whatever passage you can arrange.”
“This is all about a date? You want to fuck someone in a tunnel?”
“Careful,” the mapmaker says. “But, yes, it is a date. Think of it like a rental. I want to rent out a tunnel to Israel for an evening.”
The man goes over to a side table and hunts around in a drawer. He comes up with a pack of cigarettes, the matches tucked in it. He lights one for himself and manically puffs away.