False Flag Read online

  “And then, upon arriving at the camps, came the Vernichtungslager, the selection. Men from women, old from young, healthy from infirm. Bullets were not to be wasted, you understand, if it could be avoided. Instead, we were starved to death, worked to death. A man from Mauthausen told me of a favorite method there. Men, women, and children were led barefoot in the morning to a quarry. At the bottom of the steps, guards loaded rocks onto their shoulders and made the prisoners carry them to the top. Raining blows upon their bowed backs the entire way. Then the prisoners came back down, accepted a still heavier load, and climbed again, beneath an even thicker storm of blows, accompanied now by strikes from a bludgeon. By nighttime, bodies were strewn all along the staircase. And not a bullet had been ‘wasted.’”

  Yoni blinking back tears; his great-grandfather leaning forward, speaking ever more intently, but softly so Mother would not hear.

  “But sometimes, out in the field, ‘liquidation’ did require the expenditure of valuable ammunition. There was a time in the Ukraine. In the grand scheme, a relatively minor mass execution, but one that was reported at Nuremberg and so became a matter of record. And did it bring a hush of horror over the courtroom? It did, my boy. It did. A sworn affidavit given by an engineer of a branch office of a German construction firm. On October the fifth of 1942, he witnessed the murder of five thousand Jews.

  “Men and women, children of all ages. Ordered to undress by an SS man who carried a riding crop. Forced to sort their clothes by shoes, top clothing, and underclothing. Herr Graebe, the engineer who gave the report in Nuremberg, said that there were great piles of clothing, thousands of pairs of shoes. Then the men and women and children moved, naked, to line up by a mound of earth. There was no crying, said Herr Graebe; no pleading for mercy, no weeping or wailing. But were there tears standing in eyes? There were, my boy. There were. He described one family: a silver-haired grandmother cooing to a year-old girl, making the baby laugh with delight, as the young father stood with his ten-year-old son, holding the boy’s hand, talking to him in a low voice, pointing at the sky, seeming to explain something to him.

  “Then the SS man with the whip began counting off groups of twenty, who moved around the mound to the edge of a pit. Another SS man sat there, feet dangling over the edge, cigarette dangling from his mouth, holding a tommy gun. And the pit was filled with bodies, nude and covered in blood and excrement, men and women and children and babies, some still alive, writhing, twitching. And the newest batch was ordered to climb in among the sea of previous victims.

  “Nineteen forty-two. They had not yet perfected their techniques with their cursed German efficiency. Not yet realized that the pesticide Zyklon-B could, in extreme doses, liquidate six thousand Jews per day without ‘wasting’ a single bullet. In Auschwitz, we had four great gas chambers. Two doctors—doctors!” Here Elter-Zayde had paused, turning his eyes beseechingly heavenward. “… two doctors on duty at the gates would separate incoming prisoners. Anyone deemed incapable of heavy work was earmarked for what they were told was delousing. Of course, that included the children of tender years, too young for hard labor. Women would sense something—the stench from the crematoriums could not be entirely concealed—and try to hide the children beneath their clothes. But they were always found out. Those selected were marched away from the others, over well-kept lawns and pretty beds of flowers, all to the accompaniment of sweet and soothing music, an orchestra of pretty young German girls playing merry selections from Viennese and Parisian operettas—nothing heavy or foreboding like Beethoven. Then they were locked inside hermetically sealed chambers. If they had not realized from the nauseating stench on the air that something was amiss, surely they did now, seeing that these so-called delousing showers had no drains, and that they were packed in like sardines. But, of course, it was too late. Men, women, and children. Men, women, and children.

  “Mushroom-shaped lids in the ceiling were lifted. Amethyst-blue crystals of hydrogen cyanide, Zyklon-B, rained down. Those in charge knew when everyone was dead, because the screaming stopped. Still, they routinely waited another half hour, to be certain, before opening the doors and hosing off the shit and the blood, for Jews in extremis would not only befoul themselves but would pile against the door, clawing at each other in their desperation to escape. Only then, after half an hour of silence, would the Nazis twist out the gold from the mouths of the dead.

  “And did the world know? Of course it knew. Something like this is not concealable. Six million men, women, and children. Of course the world knew. And it turned a blind eye.

  “So! Your mother wants to spare you these tales, my boy. She is a tender sort. And your brothers and sisters: soft. But you, my boy, are hard. I see that in you, Yoni. And I urge you most vehemently: never forget. Those who forget history must live through it again. Nobody looks out for Jews except Jews. We must never again let down our guard. Even now, looking around, one sees an ill wind blowing.”

  That had been fifteen years ago. Now Elter-Zayde was dead. And the ill wind had picked up.

  Yoni had not forgotten.

  You, my boy, are hard.

  His head rocked gently with the motion of the train. Never again.

  Princeton, NJ

  “And so, despite the multitude of cavalry, despite the vast advances in ballistic warfare during the six centuries since Agincourt—and the battlefield at Waterloo was doubtless, thanks to heavy black-powder artillery, a tremendously noisy and smoky affair—the crucial element, the crisis of the battle, remained the clash of infantry versus infantry.” As Dalia spoke, her eye wandered across the front rows of the amphitheater. “Even in today’s era of remote-control warfare, infantry remains the single most crucial element of any army. Air power can effectively degrade an enemy but cannot, alone, destroy one. A bomber or drone cannot hit a small contingent of soldiers under cover without a friendly land force offering guidance. And terrain, once seized, cannot be held without infantry to hold it.”

  Students bowed over laptops, typing notes, checking Instagrams, playing solitaire. One girl wore bright red ribbons in her hair. A boy with hooded eyes looked still drunk from the night before.

  “As you bend to this weekend’s essay, picture in your minds the rich, harrowing tapestry of wounds suffered at Waterloo. Injuries from grapeshot and musket and blade and lance. Heads and limbs taken off by cannonball. Envision a battlefield covered with moaning, feverish casualties. Dying horses whimpering among the men. Shock, sepsis, peritonitis, dehydration, loss of blood. Men missing hands, arms, jaws. Legs, feet, ears, tongues. Germs festering. Imagine the sounds, the smells. And then recall Wellington’s statement after he had finally, at long last, vanquished Napoleon Bonaparte, the scourge of Europe: ‘Next to a battle lost, the greatest misery is a battle gained.’ And give me thirty-five hundred words, if you would be so kind, striving to make sense of that sentiment.”

  She gathered her materials, slipped out a side door before the inevitable grade-grubbers could swamp the podium, and began walking briskly across campus. The afternoon was overcast, fitting her mood. Her worst self was coming to the fore, trying to rub her students’ noses in something ugly. Few to none of these privileged children would ever serve. Of course, a refusenik such as herself should be gratified by that. Less grist for the military-industrial mill. Still …

  When the silver Altima pulled up and a rear door opened, she felt surprise—the original ground rules had made clear that she was never to be seen with the Israelis anywhere near campus. Then she felt hope: they must have discovered something she could give Horowitz, something that could not wait.

  David Feigenbaum sat behind the wheel. Gavril Meir slouched in back. Dalia slipped onto the creaky brown vinyl upholstery and closed the door quickly behind her as the car pulled back into traffic.

  Meir handed her a digital notebook. A scanned Mossad dossier: a black-and-white picture of a pretty girl staring boldly back at her ph
otographer. Jana Dahan. The photograph was six years old, dating from the girl’s enlistment. She would now be in her midtwenties—about Zvi’s age, Dalia could not help thinking.

  Jana Dahan had scored high on her bagrut. She had trained at Batar Zikim and spent ten months at a checkpoint in Haifa. Then she had become the target of an al-Aqsa bomb. Her wounds, pictured in another photograph, had been serious but not fatal. Upon release from the hospital, she had transferred to intelligence. From there, out of the IDF and into the Mossad.

  Someone with initials YY had made notes on the Mossad file. Jana’s father had died of heart disease almost two decades ago. The mother had never remarried and still lived in Ramat Denya. There were no siblings. Jana had spent her childhood summers with an aunt in Manhattan. This last fact had qualified her for a classified program called Di Yerushe—apparently, an undercover operation featuring an American arm. In a third and final photograph, the girl’s expression was darkly amused, crackling with acumen and self-awareness.

  Meir took the notebook, worked it, and handed it back. A fringe website now. An article datelined yesterday: “Promoting Israeli Democracy by Exposing Secrets of the National Security State.” The author opened with a brief attack on Israel’s mainstream press for not daring to write a similar piece. Then she or he described a funeral of mysterious provenance and major significance, which nevertheless went unreported around the world. Naomi Orenstein, sixty-one years of age, the Mossad director’s wife of four decades, had died two days ago in a single-vehicle crash on the road between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Alone in the car, she had lost control for unknown reasons, hit the guard rail, and perished instantly—or so the official story went.

  Dalia remembered the amateurish recording: muffled clattering, muted wind. “Shookran, Naomi.”

  “Vilde chaya,” she murmured to herself. Wild animals.

  They turned a corner. Meir lit a Noblesse and cracked open a window. “This was our ally within the Institute.” His lack of affect struck Dalia as exaggerated, compensatory. “We’ll have no further help from the inside.”

  Even as Dalia struggled to process the words, he was taking back the notebook and handing her something else. The gun was small but surprisingly heavy. A revolver: wooden grip, nickel finish, four-inch barrel. She could picture John Wayne holding this gun.

  She hefted it, getting the feel. Once, long ago, a fellow professor had tried to embarrass her in front of an all-male department by inviting her to a shooting range. He had thought that because of her gender and her sarvanim deferment, she would demur. Of course, she had no better option than to agree—and then had found the experience startlingly pleasurable: the Uzi liquid in her hand, light and easy to handle, with very little recoil; the sense of power coursing up from her heels, filling her entire body.

  Meir reached over, thumbed the lever, and swung out the cylinder. “Five rounds, and one beneath the firing pin.” He closed the cylinder. “Just remember, safety first. Have you ever fired a gun?”

  “Once.”

  “Then you know it’s not as easy as it might seem. But you can handle it if need be.”

  She smiled wryly. “Playing with guns. What could go wrong?”

  But after a moment, she slipped the weapon into her purse. After another moment, she gestured that she wanted a cigarette for herself. Fourteen years had passed since she last smoked. Her throat burned on the first drag. She coughed on the second. On the third, she cracked her window, pitched out the cigarette, and watched it roll sparking into a frost-caked gutter.

  They turned another corner. “You’re it,” said Feigenbaum from the driver’s seat. “Our last best chance.”

  Meir nodded gravely. “Dalia: we’re counting on you.”

  In her mind’s eye, Zvi turned to look back as he climbed the hill to the gate of the base. He had been counting on her, too.

  Gallery Place Station,

  Washington, DC

  Currents of Friday evening shoppers circulated: spending money at Urban Outfitters and Aveda Spa and AT&T Mobility, consuming calories at Thai Chili and Sushi-Go-Round and Häagen-Dazs.

  Jana hung back, letting herself briefly lose her targets before reacquiring them. Thanks to a remotely installed keystroke logging program, she knew that Lydia’s mother would be picking them up at eight sharp. That left her twenty-five minutes. Plenty of time. Didn’t want to spook them. It had to seem breezy.

  The two teenaged girls drifted toward the ice cream parlor. Lydia Thompson was coltish and long-legged. Her friend was chubby, with bright metal braces. Jana fell into line just behind them. “If I ever had a boyfriend who did that,” Lydia was saying, “I would so totally bust him.”

  “I would so totally get Brett to beat him up,” said the chubby one. “Brett’s, like, really protective of me.”

  “Boyfriends,” Jana said. She smiled. “They’re like dogs. They can’t even help it.”

  An initial reluctance to engage, hardwired into any young woman’s brain. “Totally,” Lydia said then.

  “When my boyfriend cheated on me,” Jana said, “I hooked up with one of his friends. Just to get him back.”

  “Oh, my God,” said the chubby one.

  “Once,” said Lydia, “my boyfriend was hanging out with one of my best friends? And I felt sorry for her, because she didn’t even know what kind of game he was playing? But I didn’t say anything, because I wanted to, like, take my time and really get back at him. Which I totally did: I hooked up with his brother.”

  The line moved forward. Lydia ordered Pralines and Cream, and her friend got Rocky Road. Jana considered her options, settling on Cookie Dough Dynamo.

  They took their ice cream to a bench. Jana told a story about the time she caught a boyfriend spying on her, reading her texts. So she had written messages implying that she was going to get him a PlayStation for his birthday. Then his birthday came, but of course, no PlayStation. And he couldn’t say anything or he would be totally busted. But the look on his face …

  Lydia laughed. Clearly, she was the leader between the two girls—the Miriam, if you liked. One time, Lydia said, she and a friend had been walking around Veterans Plaza when a guy came up and offered to buy them drinks. This had been, like, two years ago. She was twelve years old, but the guy had treated them as if they were grown-ups. He said he was a casting director for a film company and was always looking for pretty young girls, and had Lydia, like, done any modeling? And she had totally realized he was a con man. Her friend had wanted to go with him, but Lydia put her foot down and said no way.

  They shared tastes of their ice cream, and Jana wandered out front with them. Within sight of Chinatown’s Friendship Archway, a Toyota 4Runner idled. “That’s our ride,” Lydia said. “It was nice meeting you.”

  Jana peered through the smoked side window of the Toyota. Christina Thompson sitting behind the wheel. The dark hair that had puddled so fetchingly on the hotel pillow was now pinned up above that smooth, elegant neck. The woman’s gaze brushed Jana’s face. For an instant, she gave no sign of recognition. Then it clicked, as clearly as a rifle bolt sliding home, and she did an almost comical double take.

  The girls were piling into the 4Runner.

  “Hey, Mom!”

  “Hi, Mrs. Thompson!”

  The eyes remained on Jana’s face. “Hi,” Jana said evenly through the open door.

  Christina’s mouth hung open. Jana winked. “Nice to meet you guys,” she called to the girls.

  She turned and walked away just as the car door closed.

  * * *

  In the Columbia Heights apartment, she texted the number and waited.

  Nine o’clock. Nine-thirty. She sat at the kitchen table, sipping cold tea. A cockroach skittered across the linoleum floor and disappeared under the exposed radiator.

  Evidently, the woman had not received the message. At a quarter of ten, Jana
had just decided to force the issue, when the phone rang. The caller ID read Thompson, Christina.

  “Christina,” she answered.

  A brief pause. “Who is this?”

  “You don’t remember me?”

  Another pause—longer, heavier.

  “I have video,” Jana said. “From the hotel. Do you want me to send it to you? Or maybe I can just show you next time we run into each other—at church, I think. Grace Episcopal, yes? With your family?”

  “What do you want?” the woman asked.

  “Listen closely, Christina, because I’m only going to say it once.”

  Trenton, NJ

  They moved carefully through the late-night hush, picking their way over scattered toys in the hallway.

  Still not quite the lead-lined subterranean room in Langley, Dalia reflected as she stepped into the study, but getting closer. A bulletin board on casters had been rolled out before the wall of diplomas. The desk was mostly cleared, making room for a large flat-screen monitor. Shades had been drawn over the windows, blocking out the moonlit suburban street, and the Buddha on his high shelf had been turned away, as if to spare him an offensive sight.

  Following behind her in the hallway, McConnell stepped on a toy, which chirped brightly, “Hi, I’m Emmy, and my favorite food is bananas! I love you.” With a peevish look, he closed the door.

  Horowitz paid no attention. He turned around the bulletin board to reveal a three-tiered pyramid of thumbtacked placards connected by strands of black yarn.