"This set-up cost me one hell of a bundle of favors." Rafi had borrowed the special equipment and personnel through a friend in the Mossad, the Israeli Foreign Intelligence Service. "I always feel humiliated by these informal arrangements, David. Wheeling and dealing for decent stuff. The intelligence guys get the goodies while we get surplus radios and crappy cars. The politicians say they want professional police, but they won't vote the money to back us up."
Rafi's oft-repeated gripe. He claimed he hated protektzia, the system of influence in high places, the old-buddy-in-my-reserve-unit way of doing business. But even more than that, he seemed to hate the present era, the way the government careened from crisis to crisis-corruption scandals, cabinet meetings that ended in insults, physical shoving on the floor of the Knesset, lawlessness, tribalism, violence, pervasive cheating, rage, and greed.
Dr. Bar-Lev was speaking now. Listening to him David was amazed. His father had rudely interrupted Shimon Sanders, and now was putting on an astonishing performance, provoking and arousing the entire audience:
"This killer thinks he's maybe The Messiah but we know he's the most despicable kind of Jew. The self-loathing kind, the Jew trying to kill in others that which he hates within himself. Pervert. Sadist. Secret homosexual, terrified of women, furious with men. A coward but he can't admit it. On the symbolic level, when he cuts his victims, he affirms to us his impotence…"
Rafi nudged David. "Your dad's terrific."
Blow up frames from the videotapes, turn them into photographs, mount them in rows on the PC Unit bulletin board. One hundred seventy Israeli males attended the symposium. All of them were suspect. The first job was to give them names.
Some of the more agitated people were followed home. Meantime, David showed the tapes to cops in other units. Whom did they recognize? Whom did they know? More names. Run them through the computers, check out military records, identify professions, discover which men were qualified to drive. Marital status. Police and medical records. Identify, collect data, analyze, and set priorities. Likelies, possibles, unlikelies, impossibles. Refine the lists, then start to winnow, eliminating from the top.
Three days into this new phase of the investigation, David received an unexpected call. A man named Ephraim Cohen, a friend, from youth movement days, of Gideon Bar-Lev.
"I remember you, of course," David said, though he wasn't positive he did.
"Saw you on TV in connection with the nastiness. Have something interesting you'd maybe like to hear."
"Please. I'll listen to anything."
"Well, this isn't something I can talk about on the phone." Why's he being so careful? "Want to meet? I'll come to you." No response. "What's the problem?"
"David, I'm with another service. This would just be something I'd pass on in a strictly informal sort of way."
They arranged to meet at seven that evening at The Garden, a dairy restaurant near the YMCA on King David Street. David arrived first, found a quiet table on the terrace, ordered tea, and settled down to wait. He was forced to endure a lecture then, given by an American tourist, holding forth to his wife and bedazzled tablemates. The man was loud, his voice carried across the terrace, and he was very sure of himself, an instant expert. Listening to him explain the parameters of the current political situation, David was amazed at how every single "fact" he recounted was wildly distorted or else completely false.
After ten minutes a well-dressed, well-groomed man appeared. David, guessing his age at thirty-one or two, recognized the fine edge of arrogance he associated with officers in the Mossad.
After a few seconds this stranger caught David's eye, smiled, strode over, extended his hand. "Hello. Nice to see you. I'm Ephraim Cohen."
"Yes," David said, "I do remember you." And he did. Ephraim had been one of those beautiful boys Gideon always used to choose as friends: Nordic, blond, with carved cheeks, and sensitive eyes and lips.
"It's been a long time. I wrote your parents when Gideon died. How's your father?"
"Retired. He's become a Kabbalist."
"Oh?" Cohen raised an eyebrow as if to say, "That sounds a little batty, but who am I to judge?" David studied him, decided he didn't like him: Cohen was too good-looking and much too cautious. David glanced at his watch. "Well, here we are. You were going to pass something on."
"You understand this is strictly unofficial."
"Yes, yes." Why do they always have to say that a hundred times?
"Well…" Cohen hesitated. Watching him work himself up to speak, David was happy he had not chosen the intelligence service instead of the police. "Seems one of our technicians, guy who worked your little job a few nights back, his name's not important-seems he recognized someone in that audience. Someone he served with once." Cohen cleared his throat. "Someone, he says, who used to like to cut."
"Liked to cut?"
Yeah, that's what he says. He didn't mention anything to you about it at the time, because, after all, he works for us. But some of us talked it over this morning and we thought we ought to pass the information on. Maybe nothing to it. Maybe you know it already. But this case is very disturbing to everyone, and we thought the least we could do is try and help."
How very good of you, you slimy bastards. " So, who did he see who 'used to like to cut'?"
"Guy named Peretz."
"That's a pretty common name."
"This Peretz was a professional military officer, a major. Major Chaim Peretz. That ought to give you a start."
David nodded. "Would your guy be willing to come in and point him out on the tapes?"
"Afraid not. Policy is to stay out of police affairs."
"What about unofficially, as a private citizen performing a civic duty?"
"Well, we rather feel he's done that already. Don't you, David? After all, here I am passing on the name."
Rafi may have loathed the old buddy system, but it was a lot quicker than working one's way through the IDF bureaucracy. That evening David started making calls. By ten the following morning he found what he was looking for: a friend, Yehuda Merom, now a colonel, whom he'd served with in Sinai during the '67 war.
"Oh, sure, David, I know Chaim Peretz. Even had a feeling one day I'd get a call like this."
"Why's that?"
"We'd better meet. Unofficially, of course."
"Of course."
"A drink after work?"
"This is pretty urgent."
"Okay. Let's have coffee. You know the Pie House? Meet you there in fifteen minutes."
On his way out the door David told Dov to drop what he was doing and find Peretz. "Used to be a major. I want to know what he looks like and where he lives. Try doing it the easy way: Start with the phone book. If that doesn't work, then use the computer."
It was a perfect Jerusalem spring day-deep blue sky, the smell of blooming shrubs and trees. Even the traffic on Jaffa Road was bearable. The old buses spewed out fumes but not enough to spoil the pure dry April air.
Yehuda embraced him, then they clapped each other's shoulders and punched lightly at each other's girths.
"David, we're middle-aged."
"Listen, we're still alive."
"So you're a big-shot detective now. Saw you on TV." David shrugged. "Seen any of the guys?"
"A few. Shai. Yig'al. I saw Zvi Shapira at the airport about a month ago. Making a fortune in computerized imaging. He was on his way to Japan."
They spoke briefly of old comrades, and then of how they'd cheered that first morning when they'd seen the planes return. David remembered: the terrible heat, the blisters on his face, the dust and the wind, then the roar of the fighters just above their heads and how they'd jumped up and down upon the burning sand: all the Arab air forces destroyed on the ground. The great conquest had begun. Heroic days.