"It's not the same now, is it? Remember how we all adored Arik? Then Lebanon. I was there. It stunk. Bastard! We didn't know it then. '67! That's when everything started going wrong."
"Tell me about Peretz."
"In connection with the murders, right?"
David nodded. "His name came up."
"I'm not surprised." Yehuda looked uneasy. David didn't say anything, just waited for him to talk.
"…a perfect commander for reprisal assaults, which I suppose is why he got the job. It was a covert unit. Strictly volunteer. But there was a level of brutality even the toughest types couldn't take. So then Peretz came up with this idea, a way to staff it out. Fill it out with criminals, guys in trouble, violent guys. They had these guys in stockades, and they didn't know what to do with them. 'Let me have them,' he said. 'It's a filthy job so give me filthy guys.' "
"So what exactly was this filthy job?"
"Counter-terror. They do bad things to us, we go do even worse to them."
"Crossing frontiers?"
"Nothing new about that. We've been doing it for years." Yehuda looked away. "Of course this was different. Real nasty stuff. The justification was that it was aimed at the hard-core terrorists, the ones who sneak in, kill kids, and shoot up schools."
"What are you saying?"
"I'm not saying anything, David. The unit was small, covert, and when it was disbanded all the records were destroyed. You won't find anyone now who'll admit it ever existed. No one wants to own up to having signed off on the damn thing because of the way it got out of hand."
"I heard something about Peretz, that he 'liked to cut.'"
Yehuda nodded.
"They cut people?"
"That wasn't the purpose. The purpose was to strike back hard."
"So what's all this about cutting?"
"Stories. Tales. You couldn't prove any of them. It was all hearsay kind of stuff."
"What kind of hearsay?"
Yehuda looked away again. "The way it started out, the unit was supposed to leave some kind of mark. That way people would know we had a reprisal squad and that the squad always got its man. So let's say they did a termination, they'd leave these cuts on the guy, their signature. But then, later, with this violent criminal element involved, it got out of control." He tightened his lips, squirmed in his seat, then looked David directly in the eye. "There were, at least we heard, some mutilations, things like that. You know, ears, eviscerations-though I find that hard to believe. Women and children too, somebody said. Tell you the truth, David, I don't really want to talk about this. It makes me want to puke."
"So what happened?"
"The unit got disbanded."
"What about Peretz?"
"The army quietly let him go."
"Just like that?"
"Actually, they found a desk job for him. But he didn't like it, so when he complained they suggested he resign."
"No investigation? No inquiry?"
"The stories couldn't be verified. The witnesses were criminals. As for Peretz, he was an outstanding officer who took on a dirty job and did it well. Relentless, maybe merciless, but at first no one was too concerned. They wanted results and he gave them results. Later, when they got to know him better, there developed this feeling that he might be getting off on it, which is when they began to have second thoughts. I think that's what really bothered them. Not that Peretz did these things. We're at war. Counter-terror's not supposed to be a Boy Scout jamboree. But if the commander was actually enjoying his work, as opposed, you understand, to treating it as a dirty job… I mean, if it'd been you or me, David, we'd have tried to get out of it, or have griped until they pulled us out, or, failing that, done it half-ass. But Peretz didn't do it that way. He liked it and after a while everyone could see he did. So in the end that was the real reason they closed him down."
Yehuda sat back. Then he gave David a bitter little smile. "I could get into a lot of trouble if it ever came out I told you this."
"Forget about that. It won't. But I've got a couple of questions. You say the unit records were destroyed. Does this mean I can't get a list of the men?"
"No list. The unit didn't exist. It didn't even have an official name. Whenever anyone mentioned it he'd just say 'Peretz and the boys.' Peretz recruited for himself, so he might remember. Didn't occur to me till now, but he might have some kind of informal list of his own."
"Second question: What exactly was the 'signature'?"
"I don't know exactly but I have a vague recollection of hearing it discussed one time. I think the original idea was to convey the notion of double trouble, two-for-one. You know, like in Hosea: 'They have sewn the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.' I remember something about sets of cuts-double cuts, something like that."
They found Peretz very quickly on the videotapes, and when they did they all wondered why they hadn't spotted him before.
"He's so still, David." Shoshana shuddered.
"Guy doesn't move, doesn't react."
They rewound the master audience tape and ran it again. The striking thing about Peretz was his total lack of affect. In a sea of highly disturbed people he was a noticeable island of calm.
"As if nothing anyone said touched him at all. How did we miss him?" Micha asked.
"We were looking for the wrong thing," David said.
"But still we got him! We got him!" They were excited: David's long-shot scheme of the false symposium had worked.
"Not so fast," he warned them. "He's a suspect. Now we watch him. No pressure. He mustn't know we're there. Full-press covert surveillance around-the-clock, which means constantly changing shifts. Not three guys wearing Ray-bans parked in a white car across the street."
He put Dov in charge of organizing the surveillance, gave Micha the job of digging into Peretz's past. But Micha was put out when David assigned him Moshe Liederman.
"He's a burn-out. He isn't any good. All he talks about is his retirement."
"Try and use him anyway," David said. "He told me in thirty years he's never worked a case that wasn't shit. I'd like it if, when he retires, he could tell people he worked one hell of a case one time."
That night, the Seder night of Passover, he called Avraham. "Do you know a Jacob Gutman?" No reply. "I know you do, Father. Please tell me who he is."
A long pause, then finally a response: "Jacob Gutman is a man who has been wronged."
Driving home the second evening of the holiday, passing Herod's Gate, David glanced up at the Rockefeller Museum and smiled. He remembered the day he had spotted Anna here, the day that had changed his life.
It was the previous November, just three weeks after he'd broken off his affair with the journalist Stephanie Porter. He'd bought himself a ticket to a recital at the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer. An exciting new Soviet-emigre cellist was being featured along with her Israeli accompanist. There'd been an article about them in the Jerusalem Post, an interview with Anna Benitskaya and also her photograph. Perhaps it was the inviting look in her eyes or the expression on her face. Something intrigued him. When he discovered he had a free evening he decided to go and hear her play.
The recital moved him. He loved chamber music, and when she played the third Beethoven sonata he found himself entranced. He couldn't take his eyes off her. She was a beautiful young woman but it was more than beauty that he saw. Vulnerability, something open and yet mysterious, a haunting quality too, an impression of depth that belied her youth. She had worn a gray silk dress, a pearl necklace, and tiny pearl earrings which glowed like soft little lights beside her head. She played with passion and her forehead gleamed. When the concert was over he left the church wondering wistfully where she was staying and whether it would be possible to meet her and if he did what she would be like.