CHAPTER SEVEN
Israel
During the years after he met Persephone, as Isaac was watching her from afar, he became more and more familiar with the Australian culture and way of life. It was natural therefore that when he had the opportunity to meet Australians, he would embrace the occasion, not only learning more about Persephone’s adopted country but also in some way feeling closer to her each time. Since the State of Israel was formed in 1948, millions of young Jews from all over the world have come to live in Israel, following their cultural heritage and as an important tenet of Zionism. This is called making Aliyah and many of these people were arriving from Australia as well as the major immigration wave from the USA and post-war Europe.
Inevitably, Isaac met several young Australian women. Their independence of spirit as well as their exotic looks drew Isaac under their spell and he enjoyed a number of short lived and pleasurable relationships with these women, who found Isaac to be equally exotic and quite unlike the boys they had left behind in Australia. This fun-filled existence came to an abrupt end though, when Isaac met Annabelle.
He first saw her coming out of Ulpan Etzion in Jerusalem where she was surrounded by a crowd of other students who were hanging on every word of this lithe carefree blonde as she was clearly poking fun at them all, laughing and tossing her hair in the afternoon breeze. Isaac was smitten, and followed the group to a nearby café where they all sat down and practiced the latest in conversational Hebrew that they had been learning that day. Isaac took a seat at a nearby table and lost himself in the soft tones of Annabelle’s attempts at Hebrew mixed up with her raucous laughter as she completely lost her way in this new and difficult language.
“Bloody hell!” she exclaimed in a raw accent that pierced the air, “how are we supposed to get the hang of this bloody stuff in three months? They must think we all learnt this at our mothers’ knees!”
There was general nodding and words of support and approval. She carried on in the same vein and at ever increasing volume, “Some of us are here because we bloody well want to get away from the crap at home where, surprise surprise, our families didn’t want us to come here and deliberately kept all this stuff and language from us all our bloody lives!”
She sat down, exhausted and suddenly realising that everyone at the café was looking at her, some of whom with severe disapproval at the disgraceful behaviour of this young woman, who clearly didn’t appreciate that she was not at home here and a bit more decorum was expected of young women in Jerusalem, regardless of their background. Isaac seized his opportunity to intervene before one of the matrons sipping tea at a nearby table delivered a severe censure to this lively young woman.
“Hi, my name’s Isaac, I reckon you’ve got a real point, but Madame DesFarges over there is about to run you through with her knitting needles and I would hate to see you impaled on them, especially on such a lovely afternoon. How about we go for a stroll to the next café down the road and I will buy you a coffee and you can tell me all about it? I promise I won’t be shocked.”
Annabelle was a bit taken aback at the offer from this complete stranger, but what the hell, she thought, these sabras are always direct. Nice eyes too. She grabbed her bag full of heavy textbooks and, waving goodbye to her fellow students, left the café with Isaac.
Over coffee that afternoon and the many days and nights that followed, Isaac learned that Annabelle was from Sydney where she was the only daughter of a large family who were very wealthy and not at all devout third generation Australian Jews. Over time, she let him know that they had amassed their wealth through a number of businesses, most of which were linked to organised crime and her seven brothers were firmly ensconced in this way of life, running gambling parlours and brothels as well as dodgy construction businesses and lately drug distribution. She had rebelled against this way of life and after enduring relentless pressure from her father to join the family business as soon as she finished her law degree, she had decided that the only way to escape was to make Aliyah.
Isaac introduced Annabelle to his family, who just about adopted her, teaching her how to live in this new society without crushing her independent spirit. Isaac wondered, not for the first time, what he had done to deserve such an amazing mother as he watched her gently show Annabelle that life in Eretz Israel can be a wonderful and fulfilling experience, and that the constraints imposed by adherence to the faith were not only reasonable, but easily adopted by her new ‘daughter’. After a few months, as soon as Isaac could see that his growing love of Annabelle was being returned in full, he asked her to marry him. Annabelle joyfully agreed, and they were married in the tiny synagogue that had joined his parents together many years before in a ceremony that filled the building with over a hundred friends and family celebrating the union.
Annabelle very quickly became pregnant and eleven months after the wedding produced a healthy baby girl whom they named Sarah. The new family settled into their new life, living in a small apartment near to Isaac’s work at Hatzav back in the Negev. Annabelle decided that she didn’t want to be just a housewife and as soon as she could, she enrolled in a postgraduate course at BGU to gain the qualifications she needed to practise law in Israel.
Isaac and Annabelle were both working hard to build a life with their new family when the unthinkable happened. As Annabelle was enjoying an interesting lecture on human rights law as it applied to the Occupied Territories one of the other students blew herself up, taking out fifteen other students, both Arab and Israeli and turning the lecture theatre into a dusty and bloody arena, strewn with bodies.
By the time that Isaac arrived at the scene, Annabelle was confirmed to be among the dead. Isaac raged at the policemen, who were all too familiar with his grief and they allowed him to cradle the broken body of his wife as she lay on the floor, surrounded by the other victims of this dreadful act. That night Isaac lay in bed cuddling his tiny daughter, unable to sleep as he tried to contemplate life without Annabelle.
He was full of rage and was looking for someone to take it out on, so at seven o’clock the next morning, he went to the police station to see the person in charge of the investigation. The senior officer took him into his office and surveying the still bloody and dusty shell of a man in front of him, told him sadly that there was nothing he could tell Isaac about the bombing as Shin Bet had taken over the investigation and they weren’t talking. Isaac slowly nodded, taking it all in, and silently left the police station and walked the short distance home. There he showered and changed and made a vow to avenge her death, regardless of anything the Shin Bet people did to the perpetrators when they found them.
Later that day, his mother and father arrived and while his mother tearfully hugged him and then cooked enough food for a month, his father helped with arrangements for Annabelle’s funeral, which would take place later that day. Isaac had recovered enough to call Australia and tell Annabelle’s father about what had happened. He was met with a stony silence on the phone when he broke the news. After a while Isaac hung up, unable to do or say anything more. None of her family made it to Israel for the funeral.
The funeral was held under the clear blue desert skies that belied the grief and anger felt not only by Isaac but also by all his friends and colleagues who attended. After a week, Isaac parents returned home to Jerusalem, taking Sarah with them as Isaac now could not look at her, let alone look after her. Isaac promised to visit and take Sarah back with him once he had made arrangements. As the events of the next few days unfolded and altered the course of his life, it was to be many years before he next saw his daughter.
The day following the funeral, Isaac went into his office and started calling his contacts in Shin Bet to see what he could find out. There he was met with a wall of silence. Even people who had been close personal friends for years were not willing to talk to Isaac. Frustrated, he returned home to ponder his next course of action. Outside the door of his apartment stood an unfamiliar middle
-aged man.
“Who are you?” a startled Isaac asked, “what are you doing here?”
In a strong Australian accent, the man answered, “Mate, I’m Joe Frimann, Annabelle’s father. I presume you’re Isaac.” He gestured to the door, signalling that Isaac should let them both in. Once inside, Joe removed his jacket and sat down on the couch.
“Perhaps you could let me know what happened to my daughter and why she’s dead and you’re standing here in front of me.” His quiet calm tone was menacing in the extreme.
Isaac was struck dumb. After the phone call two days prior, this was the last thing he had expected. He had thought that her family had written her off, but clearly this was not the case.
“Come on lad, speak up, I want to know whose head I have got to cut off and whose family I have to chop into tiny pieces so that nobody thinks that they can get away with killing the daughter of Joe Frimann.”
Isaac told Joe everything he knew, including how Shin Bet weren’t talking. Joe was silent for the whole time it took Isaac to bring him up to speed, and when Isaac had finished talking, Joe stood up and walked to the window.
“You’re probably wondering what I’m doing here. I don’t know what my daughter told you about me, but rest assured, regardless of any disagreement she and I may have had about her choices, she was still my daughter and I will make sure that whoever arranged this bombing is taking their final breath on this earth before I go back to Sydney.” He paused, looking hard at Isaac, “Do you clearly understand? I will do this with or without your help and this is your chance to let me know if you are with me.”
Isaac didn’t even pause, “Joe, I know you don’t know me, but rest assured, should you get in the way as I avenge my wife’s death, then I will not stop until you suffer the same fate.”
There was a long pause as both men sized each other up. Eventually Joe gave a short laugh, stepped across the room and gave Isaac a hug.
“I should have known she wouldn’t have married a wimp! Let’s agree that we both want the same thing.”
Joe had already spoken to a friend in Tel Aviv and when he mentioned his friend’s name, Isaac realised quite how deeply Joe was into organised crime and where this was going to take him. He didn’t care, however, as avenging Annabelle’s death was the only thing that mattered. All thoughts of his fatherly responsibilities were gone in his desire for revenge for the death of his beloved wife. Together they formulated a plan to uncover the secret that Shin Bet was hiding.
Within a couple of days, Joe had some inside information from his criminal partners’ contacts inside the security service.
The news was devastating to Isaac. It was clear from the information that the target of the bombing had been the lecturer, who had apparently been operating in Africa as a Mossad asset and upon whose return it had become clear that he was no longer espousing Zionist views and was now seen as a serious liability. Shin Bet had engaged the services of a ‘freelance’ organisation to take him out, and somewhere along the line, the idiots had decided that a bombing was the most effective method. The woman who had blown herself up was supposed to have planted the bomb and left, but it had triggered early, killing Annabelle and the other students. Miraculously, the lecturer had survived, although he was minus an eye and an arm. The people who had let out the contract were quite embarrassed and currently concentrating on how to finish off the lecturer without raising suspicion.
Isaac was horrified. He had spent his adult life in the service of the State of Israel and in return, this very State had killed his wife. At that moment, he made a vow that after he had avenged Annabelle, he would leave and never return.
“Do you know who gave the order?”
Joe nodded. “I also know who is heading the operation to finish off the lecturer and when their next meeting is with the top bloke. Wanna be there? It’s now seriously off the books, so they are meeting outside the office. I have someone waiting downstairs to take us there now.”
Isaac was almost out of the door before Joe called, “Wait! You do realise you can’t come back here – I have an aircraft waiting at the airport to take us out of Israel as soon as we kill the pricks, so you had better take anything you want now.”
Isaac looked around the small apartment. There were photos of Annabelle and Sarah, knick-knacks she had bought to make the home attractive and many other things that he could have taken. None of them were Annabelle though, and he knew he didn’t need physical items to remind him of her. Her spirit was burned into his heart and he would never forget her. He grabbed his passport and walked out, not looking back.
Outside the apartment block was a black armoured Mercedes saloon. Inside a swarthy man handed Joe and Isaac each an Uzi and they both instinctively checked the magazine. Joe then outlined the plan, which involved meeting their targets in the hotel car park and killing them as soon as they saw them. That was pretty much it, and although it seemed to lack the precision of a military operation, as it turned out, the targets were confident enough of their security that the man who had given the original order to kill the lecturer actually got out of the car to meet the operations team leader. They both paid for this arrogance with their lives. Isaac emptying his entire magazine into the senior man as Joe took out the other. The swarthy man from Joe’s car neatly dispatched the bodyguard/driver and all three men piled back into the Mercedes, which laid rubber as it exited the car park.
As they sat, breathing heavily, their hearing slowly returned.
“Did you recognise either of them?” Joe asked Isaac
“Of course I did. Who doesn’t know the face of David Mendelsson? Who’d have thought that the head of Shin Bet would get his hands dirty like this? Didn’t know the other bloke though.”
“Well, son” a smiling Joe put his arm around Isaac’s shoulder. “I guess we’ll have to find a job in the family business for you, they probably won’t welcome you back at Hatzav now. I’m sure we can find a use for your skills.”
It was not until Isaac landed in Sydney that he remembered Sarah. It was too late now to try to bring her with him - he would have to rely on his mother keeping her safe and hidden from the authorities in Israel. He had no illusions about their willingness to use her as a lever to get to him. Maybe later he could organise for her to come to his new country once things died down.