“I’m pretty sure I know someone who does.”
It hadn’t taken much convincing to get Rabbi Neershum involved. The Reb was rumored to have connections to both Mossad and the Israeli mafia, and while he wasn’t a violent man he’d never shied from a good fight. He was also known to quote Rabbi Meir Kahane, the founder of the radical Jewish Defense League who was assassinated in a Manhattan hotel room in 1990 by persons unknown.
“Every Jew a twenty-two,” the Reb had said more than once.
A staunch proponent of the Second Amendment, the Reb had always supported a well-armed citizenry, which he believed was the only way to keep another Castro or Stalin or Hitler or Chavez from rising in America.
“The one thing that stops an evil government from seizing total power,” he once told Jack, “is fear of millions of armed citizens. The Brits learned that lesson a couple hundred years ago.”
Yet despite this tough talk, the Reb was genuinely a kind and friendly man. He acted as a missionary to fallen Jews he met in the streets of San Francisco, trying to bring them back to God. He’d saved many a drugged-out soul over the years, and they loved him for throwing them a spiritual life preserver when they were drowning.
In some ways, Jack was in need of a life preserver himself. And once he told his story, the Reb was all too happy to help.
“Try to look more serious,” the man behind the camera told him. “When was the last time you saw someone smile in a passport photo?”
Jack put on his best poker face. Hadn’t even realized he was smiling. He certainly didn’t feel much like it, standing there stiffly in his new suit with a black fedora perched atop his head. It didn’t help that the Reb had supplied him with a fake beard made by a wigmaker so that Jack could blend in with the rest of the Lubavitchers. The beard was surprisingly realistic, using human hair woven into a special netting, but the glue they’d used to secure it with was itching his skin like crazy.
He thought of Bob Copeland and the man’s love of cloak and dagger. Jack did not share that love.
The flash went off, Jack certain he looked appropriately dazed, then the man behind the camera-a Russian Jew named Falkovsky-popped out the data card and crossed the small room to a computer station.
“Your timing is good,” he told them. “Two years from now, who knows if I’m still in business?”
“Why is that?” the Reb asked.
Falkovsky, who worked out of a camera store, was an old-school documents forger who found the advent of computer technology a godsend. What had once taken him hours of precise work using special inks and printing presses could now be handled by a standard PC in about a third of the time.
“Biometrics,” he said. “The government is pushing for biometric passports and working on a slow roll-out to establish a database over the next couple years. There’s no final decision on whether they’ll implement, but some intelligence experts are worried that if they do, it’ll compromise their ability to operate. And I don’t need to tell you what it will do to me.”
Jack had heard about this. The “e-passport,” as it was called, used smart card technology to store standardized biometric information, including facial, fingerprint, and iris recognition. And intelligence agencies had a right to be worried. If these types of passports were adopted universally, they’d not only be virtually impossible to forge, but any leaks of biometric data could potentially put an agent traveling under a false identity in danger of being discovered by the enemy. All the phony beards in the world wouldn’t disguise them.
Fortunately, this wasn’t a concern for Jack right now. Jacob Samuel Heshowitz would be traveling with what, to the naked eye, looked like a standard-issue Israeli passport, properly distressed and carrying several travel stamps.
His cover story was simple. Heshowitz was a Borough Park Lubavitcher who had moved to Tel Aviv a year ago and sought citizenship under the Law of Return. A frequent traveler, he applied for and received an Israeli passport shortly after his arrival in the country.
The Reb had assured Jack that the passport would be flawless. Falkovsky-whom he’d met through one of his Mossad contacts-was very good at what he did.
The Russian pushed the camera’s data chip into a slot on his computer, then sat down.
“Give me about two hours,” he said, and waved them away.
Several hours later, after dinner had been served and the dishes cleared away, Jack and the Reb sat at Cousin Ohad’s dining table, admiring Falkovsky’s handiwork, Jack happy to be rid of the beard for the time being.
“What did I tell you?” Neershum said. “The man’s an artist.”
“He should be, for the price I paid. You sure you don’t have any qualms about all of this?”
The Reb gave him the look he always gave when Jack asked stupid questions. “Do you?”
“Not really, no.”
“Good. We’re at war, my friend. It may not feel that way sometimes and that in itself can be a problem, but it’s real, and real people die as a consequence-something you know better than most.”
“I can’t argue with that,” Jack said.
“This man you seek, I can assure you he has no qualms about breaking laws to further his goals. He’d just as soon see people like you and me buried under a pile of rubble.” The Reb absently stroked his beard. “No matter what a man’s ideology or religion may be, when he’s faced by a fanatic with a knife in his hand he should cut him down. No amount of reasoning will dissuade the true believer.”
“There are people who would disagree.”
The Reb leaned forward in his chair now, his gaze intense. “Then they deserve to die. They look at terrorists and genocide as abstract notions, lessons in history that fall on their ears like some ancient melody that no longer has any relevance. They comfort themselves with trivial entertainments, but how do you think they’d feel if that knife was pressed to their throats?”
“Ready to fight back.”
“Yes, then. Then, when it’s too late.” The Reb paused, leaned back again. “So I think God will forgive us for breaking a few rules for the greater good.”
He got to his feet, grabbed his glass from the table and drained the last of his potato vodka from the Ukraine. Clean. No hangover.
He let loose a satisfied sigh as he set the glass down again. “To bed,” he told Jack. “Tomorrow is a big day and you need rest. I only wish I were going with you.”
Jack finished his own glass. “You still can.”
The Reb shook his head. “This is a one-man job. I’d only be in your way.”
“I doubt that,” Jack said, getting to his feet. “But I understand. Are you heading back to San Francisco tomorrow?”
“Ohad has invited me to stay a while. I think I’ll stick around, enjoy the family.” He smiled. “Thank you for the holiday, my friend.”
Jack nodded and shook his hand. “Good night, Rabbi.”
“Lailah tov.”
Jack traveled with a group of ten, all Lubavitchers who were flying to Bristol, U.K., for a week-long sojourn-friends of the Reb who were happy to have Jacob Heshowitz’s company, no questions asked.
Despite knowing that he blended in, Jack felt conspicuous. The fake beard didn’t help, especially since it was itching twice as much as the day before. He caught a glimpse of his reflection as he moved with the others past a phalanx of armed guards to the airport terminal doors, and what he saw made him feel naked, like a high-school kid in the halls without pants.
He half expected one of the guards to pull him away and interrogate him, but they merely glared. That was the first line of security: to look intimidating and see who started to perspire. Jack couldn’t afford to; the spirit gum holding his beard would come loose. Fortunately, to them, Jack was part of a group of men no different from a thousand other such groups that would pass through these doors in the coming weeks. They dismissed him as harmless.