Then she started coming apart.
Petra’s hollow eyes stared at the floor—that was painted white also—too wide and horrified for tears at first, contemplating the nightmare that her life had become. It could not be real, part of her said with confidence that bordered on madness. All she’d believed in, all she’d worked for—gone! Günther, gone. The twins, gone. The cause, gone. Her life, gone.
The Bundeskriminalamt detectives interrogated her only for amusement. She knew that much. They had never seriously probed her for information, but there was a reason for that. She had nothing worthwhile to give them. They’d shown her copies of the files from Stasi headquarters. Nearly everything her erstwhile fraternal socialist brothers had had on her—far more than she had expected—was now in West German hands. Names, addresses, phone numbers, records dating back more than twenty years, things about herself that she’d forgotten, things about Günther that she’d never known. All in the hands of the BKA.
It was all over. All lost.
Petra gagged and started weeping. Even Erika and Ursel, her twins, the product of her own body, the physical evidence of her faith in the future, of her love for Günther. Taking their first steps in the apartment of strangers. Calling some stranger Mutti, mommy. The wife of a BKA captain—they’d told her that much. Petra wept for half an hour, not making noise, knowing that there had to be a microphone in the cell, this cursed white box that denied her sleep.
Everything lost.
Life—here? The first and only time she’d been in the exercise yard with other prisoners, they’d had to pull two of them off of her. She could remember their screams as the guards had taken her for medical treatment—whore, murderess, animal. ... To live here for forty years or more, alone, always alone, waiting to go mad, waiting for her body to weaken and decay. For her life meant life. Of that she was certain. There would be no pity for her. The detective had made that clear. No pity at all. No friends. Lost and forgotten ... except for the hate.
She made her decision calmly. In the manner of prisoners all over the world, she’d found a way of getting a piece of metal with an edge on it. It was, in fact, a segment of razor blade from the instrument with which she was allowed to shave her legs once a month. She removed it from its place of hiding, then pulled the sheet—also white—from the mattress. It was like any other, about ten centimeters thick, covered with heavy striped fabric. Its trim was a loop of fabric in which was inserted a ropelike stiffener, with the mattress fabric sewn tight around it to give the edge strength. With the razor edge she began detaching the trim from the mattress. It took three hours and not a small amount of blood, for the razor segment was small, and it cut her fingers many times, but finally she had two full meters of improvised rope. She turned one end of the rope into a noose. The free end of the rope she tied over the light fixture over the door. She had to stand on her chair to do that, but she’d have to stand on the chair in any case. It took three attempts to get the knot right. She didn’t want too much length on the rope.
When she was satisfied with that, she proceeded without pause. Petra Hassler-Bock removed her dress and her bra. Next she knelt on the chair with her back to the door, getting its position and hers just right, placed the noose around her neck, and drew it tight. Then she drew up her legs, using her bra to secure them between her back and the door. She didn’t want to flinch from this. She had to show her courage, her devotion. Without stopping for a prayer or lament, her hands pushed the chair away. Her body fell perhaps five centimeters before the improvised rope stopped her fall and drew tight. Her body rebelled against her will at this point. Her drawn-up legs fought against the bra holding them between the backs of her thighs and the metal door, but in fighting the restraint, they merely pushed Petra fractionally away from the door, and that increased the strangulation on her upper neck.
She was surprised by the pain. The noose fractured her larynx before sliding over it to a point under her jaw. Her eyes opened wide, staring at the white bricks of the far wall. That’s when the panic hit her. Ideology has its limits. She couldn’t die, didn’t want to die, didn’t want to—
Her fingers raced to her throat. It was a mistake. They fought to get under the mattress trim, but it was too thin, cutting so deeply into the soft flesh of her neck that she couldn’t get a single finger under it. Still she fought, knowing that she had mere seconds before the blood loss to her brain ... it was getting vague now, her vision was beginning to suffer. She couldn’t see the lines of mortar between the even German-made brickwork on the far wall. Her hands kept trying, cutting into the surface blood vessels of her throat, drawing blood that only made the noose slick, able to sink in tighter, cutting off circulation through the carotid arteries even more. Her mouth opened wide and she tried to scream, no, she didn’t want to die, didn’t—needed help. Couldn’t anyone hear her? Could no one help her? Too late, just two seconds, maybe only one, maybe not even that, the last remaining shred of consciousness told her that if she could just loosen the bra holding her legs, she could have stood and ...
The detective watched the TV picture, saw her hands flutter toward the bra, searching limply for the clasp before they fell away, and twitched for a few more seconds, then stopped. So close, he thought. So very close to saving herself. It was a pity. She’d been a pretty girl, but she’d chosen to murder and torture, and she’d also chosen to die, and if she’d changed her mind at the end—didn’t they all? Well, not quite all—that was merely renewed proof that the brutal ones were cowards after all, nicht wahr?
Aber natürlich.
“This television is broken,” he said, switching it off. “Better get a new one to keep an eye on Prisoner Hassler-Bock.”
“That will take about an hour,” the guard supervisor said.
“That’s fast enough.” The detective removed the cassette from the same tape recorder he’d used to show the touching family scene. It went into his briefcase with the other. He locked the case and stood. There was no smile on his face, but there was a look of satisfaction. It wasn’t his fault that the Bundestag and Bundesrat were unable to pass a simple and effective death-penalty statute. That was because of the Nazis, of course. Damned barbarians. But even barbarians were not total fools. They hadn’t ripped up the autobahns after the war, had they? Of course not. So just because the Nazis had executed people—well, some of them had even been ordinary murderers whom any civilized government of the era would have executed. And if anyone merited death, Petra Hassler-Bock did. Murder by torture. Death by hanging. That, the detective figured, was fair enough. The Wilhelm Manstein murder case had been his from the start. He’d been there when the man’s genitals had arrived by mail. He’d watched the pathologists examine the body, had attended the funeral, and he remembered the sleepless nights when he’d been unable to wash the horrid spectacles from his mind. Perhaps now he would. Justice had been slow, but it had come. With luck those two cute little girls would grow into proper citizens, and no one would ever know who and what their birth mother had once been.
The detective walked out of the prison toward his car. He didn’t want to be near the prison when her body was discovered. Case closed.
“Hey, man.”
“Marvin. I hear that you did well with weapons,” Ghosn said to his friend.
“No big deal, man. I’ve been shooting since I was a kid. That’s how you get dinner where I come from.”
“You outshot our best instructor,” the engineer pointed out.
“Your targets are a hell of a lot bigger than a rabbit, and they don’t move. Hell, I used to hit jacks on the move with my .22. If you have to shoot what you eat, you learn right quick to hit what you aim at, boy. How’d you do with that bomb thing?” Marvin Russell asked.
“A lot of work for very little return,” Ghosn replied. “Maybe you can make a radio from all that electrical stuff,” the American suggested.
“Perhaps something useful.”
10
LAST STANDS
> Flying west is always easier than flying east. The human body adjusts more easily to a longer day than a shorter one, and the combination of good food and good wine makes it all the easier. Air Force One had a sizable conference room that could be used for all manner of functions. In this case it was a dinner for senior administration officials and selected members of the press pool. The food, as usual, was superb. Air Force One may be the only aircraft in the world which serves something other than TV dinners. Its stewards shop daily for fresh foods which are most often prepared at six hundred knots at eight miles altitude, and more than one of the cooks had left military service to become executive chef at a country club or posh restaurant. Having cooked for the President of the United States of America looks good on any chefs resume.
The wine in this case was from New York, a particularly good blush Chablis that the President was known to like, when he wasn’t drinking beer. The converted 747 had three full cases stowed below. Two white-coated sergeants kept all the glasses filled as the courses came in and out. The atmosphere was relaxed, and the conversations all off the record, on deep background, and be careful or you’ll never eat in here again.
“So, Mr. President,” The New York Times asked. “How quickly do you think this will be implemented?”
“It is starting even as we speak. The Swiss Army representatives are already in Jerusalem to look things over. Secretary Bunker is meeting with the Israeli government to facilitate the arrival of American forces into the region. We expect to have things actually moving inside of two weeks.”
“And the people who’ll have to vacate their homes?” The Chicago Tribune continued the question.
“They will be seriously inconvenienced, but with our help the new homes will be constructed very rapidly. The Israelis have asked for and will get credits with which to purchase prefabricated housing made in America. We’re also paying to set up a factory of that type for them to continue on their own. Many thousands of people will be relocated. That will be somewhat painful, but we’re going to make it just as easy as we can.”
“At the same time,” Liz Elliot put in, “let’s not forget that quality of life is more than having a roof over your head. Peace has a price, but it also has benefits. Those people will know real security for the first time in their lives.”
“Excuse me, Mr. President,” the Tribune reporter said with a raised glass. “That was not meant as criticism. I think we all agree that this treaty is a godsend.” Heads nodded all around the table. “The way it is implemented is an important story, however, and our readers want to know about it.”
“The relocations will be the hardest part,” Fowler responded calmly. “We must salute the Israeli government for agreeing to it, and we must do the best we can to make the process just as painless as is humanly possible.”
“And what American units will be sent over to defend Israel?” another reporter asked.
“Glad you asked,” Fowler said. He was. The previous questioner had overlooked the most obvious potential obstacle to treaty-implementation-would the Israeli Knesset ratify the agreements? “As you may have heard, we’re reestablishing a new Army unit, the 10th United States Cavalry Regiment. It’s being formed at Fort Stewart, Georgia, and at my direction ships of the National Defense Reserve Fleet are being mobilized right now to get them over to Israel just as quickly as we can. The 10th Cavalry is a famous unit with a distinguished history. It was one of the Black units that the Westerns have almost totally ignored. As luck would have it”—luck had nothing to do with it—“the first commander will be an African-American, Colonel Marion Diggs, a distinguished soldier, West Point grad and all that. That’s the land force. The air component will be a complete wing of F-16 fighter-bombers, plus a detachment of AWACS aircraft, and the usual support personnel. Finally, the Israelis are giving us home-porting at Haifa, and we’ll almost always have a carrier battle-group and a Marine Expeditionary Unit in the Eastern Med to back up everything else.”
“But with the draw-down—”
“Dennis Bunker came up with the idea on the 10th Cavalry, and frankly I wish I could say that it’s one of mine. As for the rest, well, we’ll try to fit it in somehow or other with the rest of the defense budget.”
“Is it really necessary, Mr. President? I mean, with all the budget battles, particularly on the matter of defense, do we really have to—”
“Of course we do.” The National Security Advisor cut the reporter off at his ugly knees. You asshole, Elliot’s expression said. “Israel has serious and very real security considerations, and our commitment to preserving Israeli security is the sine qua non of this agreement.”
“Christ, Marty,” another reporter muttered.
“We’ll compensate for the additional expense in other areas,” the President said. “I know I’m returning to one more round of ideologically based wrangling over how we pay for the cost of government, but I think we have demonstrated here that government’s costs do pay off. If we have to nudge taxes up a little to preserve world peace, then the American people will understand and support it,” Fowler concluded matter-of-factly.
Every reporter took note of that. The President was going to propose yet another tax increase. There had already been Peace Dividend-I and -II. This would be the first Peace Tax, one of them thought with a wry smile. That would sail through Congress along with everything else. The smile had another cause as well. She noted the look in the President’s eyes when he gazed over at his National Security Advisor. She’d wondered about that. She’d tried to get Liz Elliot at home twice, right before the trip to Rome, and both times all she’d gotten on her private line was the answering machine. She could have followed up on that. She could have staked out Elliot’s town house off Kalorama Road and made a record of how often Elliot was sleeping at home and how often she was not. But. But that was none of her business, was it? No, it wasn’t. The President was a single man, a widower, and his personal life had no public import so long as he was discreet about it, and so long as it didn’t interfere with his conduct of official business. The reporter figured she was the only one who’d noticed. What the hell, she thought, if the President and his National Security Advisor were that close, maybe it was a good thing. Look how well the Vatican Treaty had gone....
Brigadier General Abraham Ben Jakob read over the treaty text in the privacy of his office. He was not a man who often had difficulty in defining his thoughts. That was a luxury accorded him by paranoia, he knew. For all of his adult life—a life that had started at age sixteen in his case, the first time he’d carried arms for his country—the world had been an exceedingly simple place to understand: there were Israelis and there were others. Most of the others were enemies or potential enemies. A very few of the others were associates or perhaps friends, but friendship for Israel was mostly a unilateral business. Avi had run five operations in America, “against” the Americans. “Against” was a relative term, of course. He’d never intended harm to come to America, he’d merely wanted to know some things the American government knew, or to obtain something the American government had and Israel needed. The information would never be used against America, of course, nor would the military hardware, but the Americans, understandably, didn’t like having their secrets taken away. That did not trouble General Ben Jakob in any way. His mission in life was to protect the State of Israel, not to be pleasant to people. The Americans understood that. The Americans occasionally shared intelligence information with the Mossad. Most often this was done on a very informal basis. And on rare occasions, the Mossad gave information to the Americans. It was all very civilized—in fact, it was not at all unlike two competing businesses who shared both adversaries and markets, and sometimes cooperated but never quite trusted each other.
That relationship would now change. It had to. America was now committing its own troops to Israeli defense. That made America partly responsible for the defense of Israel—and reciprocally made Israel responsible for the safety of the
Americans (something the American media had not yet noted). That was the Mossad’s department. Intelligence-sharing would have to become a much wider street than it had been. Avi didn’t like that. Despite the euphoria of the moment, America was not a country with which to entrust secrets, particularly those obtained after much effort and often blood by intelligence officers in his employ. Soon the Americans would be sending a senior intelligence representative to work out the details. They’d send Ryan, of course. Avi started making notes. He needed to get as much information as he could on Ryan so that he could cut as favorable a deal with the Americans as possible.
Ryan ... was it true that he’d gotten this whole thing started? There was a question, Ben Jakob thought. The American government had denied it, but Ryan was not a favorite of President Fowler or his National Security Bitch, Elizabeth Elliot. The information on her was quite clear. While Professor of Political Science at Bennington, she’d had PLO representatives in to lecture on their view of the Middle East—in the name of fairness and balance! It could have been worse. She wasn’t Vanessa Redgrave, dancing with an AK-47 held over her head, Avi told himself, but her “objectivity” had stretched to the point of listening politely to the representatives of the people who’d attacked Israeli children at Ma’alot, and Israeli athletes at Munich. Like most members of the American government, she had forgotten what principle was. But Ryan wasn’t one of those....
The Treaty was his work. His sources were right. Fowler and Elliot would never have come up with an idea like this. Using religion as the key would never have occurred to them.