30/4/93

The Golan Heist

When Labor won the elections, he started to spout paranoid, delusionary leftist views. Now we think he's sabotaging the   peace talks.

    Her forefinger reached out for the "4," the first digit of the phone number that would change the course of history. The fingertip curled back slowly, apprehensively. Her heart pounded, she swallowed hard. She hung up the phone and bit her lip. Girded by a meltdown double shot of Remy Martin, she felt all resistance ebb and picked up the phone again. 484333.
    "Hello," she said.
    "Hello," he said.
    "Is that the Snake Eyes Detective Agency?"
    "No, Tipat Halav," he answered.
    "Sorry," she said, sweating, "wrong number." She tried again: 448333. It rang seven times before someone finally answered.
    "Talk."
    "Snake Eyes?"
    "Yeah, so what?"
    "Meet me for coffee at 7 at the Drunken Monkey. I'll be wearing red."
    "No. Make it tea at 6 at the Jowl and Nostril. And don't wear red, I'm color blind. You got a name, buttercup?"
    "Just call me Ed." And she hung up.
    At five minutes to seven she sashayed in, wearing the reddest dress she had. Her neckline and hemline met in the middle, clasped together by a diamond brooch. He gawked sexistly. If looks could kill, he was now dead. "Ed?" She didn't answer; didn't have to. He plunged his stale cigar-butt into the dregs of his suds and coughed phlegmatically.
    He rose out of his chair just as she took her seat, for a moment looking like they were on a seesaw.
    "The name's Delaney. Formally, Dick J. Delaney. Let's get past the niceties. I charge a purple Agnon a day plus expenses. Your name is not really Ed, you're a Capricorn, you don't trust men and you don't trust yourself. So. What's your grief, doll?"
    She sniffled into her satin hankie. "It's my husband. I'm a Zionist. He's left me for another country."
    Delaney threw her a mocking glance. "And you want the crumb back?"
    "Hell, no, I want the car keys back." She gulped; he noticed.
    "Out with it, honeycomb. Why are you here?"
    She steeled herself and looked him hard in the eyes. "Elvis is alive," she said mysteriously.
    "Uh-huh." He was getting a little annoyed with her games. "And the pope is Polish. So what?"
    She ignored the dig and continued. "Elvis is alive, he's a settler on the Golan. A Shas agent. They steal for him. He funded the fix that kept Maccabi Tel Aviv out of first place. That's why Rabin had to deport those Palestinians, a bad decision that brought down the price of pork bellies on the Tokyo Exchange, and now Zubin Mehta won't convert. That really pissed off Prince Charles, who now thinks he should have married a nice traditional Jewish girl from Golders Green, and naturally the whole world is blaming Israel. Delaney, do you follow?"
    "Frankly, no."
    "Well, that's why my husband left me. He's suffering from rampant Israphobia."
    "What?"
    "You know, the petrified conviction that every contrived rumor anywhere on Earth is a subversive, fantastic Israeli plot to overthrow civilization. And the problem is, I'm the exact opposite, a clinical Isramaniac. If it's true that opposites attract, then we're the perfect couple."
    "What's Isramania?"
    "The petrified conviction that every word written anywhere on Earth is a subversive, fantastic antisemitic plot to throw the Jews into the sea. Hell, we can't even agree on what cola to drink."
    The private eye tucked his face deep into the shadow of his oversized fedora, from which he could safely size her up. He resented her for having it all, for being brainy while the world was such a lonely place.
    She looked into his eyes with tantalizing forlornness. "We want him protected. Quietly."
    " 'We?' "
    She gasped and looked at him icily. She was sunk. She dropped her hankie, and her pretensions. "All right. My real name is not Ed. It's Agent Alef. I work for the Taxman."
    "Look, pussywillow, I don't see how I can take the job: they are presently investigating me, how can I go snooping for them?"
    "Dickie-boy, do yourself a favor. Forget everything I've said except one thing: save the shnook. The rest is crapola."
    He scraped his gaze off her bosom and leveled it at her baby-blues. "Then Elvis is not alive? And the pork bellies? And the Palestinians?"
    "Just find my husband, do it for me - for us."
    "Well, just who the heck is employing me here, first-person singular or first-person plural?"
    "Shut up, Delaney, and get this straight: Everybody wants my husband. There's a hush-hush hunt on for him. You see, while the Likud was in power, my husband was, as they say, a Government Official. Our marriage was a dream. Then, when Labor won the elections, he started to spout paranoid, delusionary leftist views, and sometime between Tu Bishvat and Land Day he first announced that we should give back Gaza. That's when I was sure he'd gone loony-tunes. But that was only the start. Now we think he's sabotaging the peace talks."
    "Oh, God, no, not that!"
    "Yes, Delaney. The peace talks. It seems he's infiltrated the Israeli team. I'm afraid, Dick. I suspect he's planning to give back all the territories in exchange for ..." She choked on a sob.
    "For what?"
    "The deportees."
    The deportees, Delaney mulled. Israel's hostages in reverse, our ultimate trump card. He reeled from the revelation.
    Instead of obstinately clinging to the territories and chucking out the terrorists, now we were looking to dump the territories and welcome back the terrorists.
    Instead of land-for-peace, it was now territories-for-terrorists.
    Delaney drew a deep breath and leaned in on this goddess glistening in the soft moonlight. This was the case he'd staked a career on.
    "So this guy's gonna have to pay with his life; is that why the Treasury is so interested? To get their cut?"
    "You are a cad, Delaney, and a naive one at that. This is Israel, and nothing is as it seems. Let me explain. Territories are taxable. My husband doesn't realize it, but if he sells us down the Jordan River, we won't exactly be without a paddle. The beneficiaries will have to pay us so much in taxes on the assets that they'll be sitting under their fig trees in the Gaza Stripped and the Golan Heist and the West Bankrupt. And that's where the deportees come in, or perhaps where they don't, because they won't be able to afford the new reverse-travel tax we're planning."
    Over Delaney's head, a light bulb blinked on. "But why shut down the territories for so long? If there's no work, there's no money."
    "Aha! It's a new concept we're working on: taxable non-income."
    "And this noble husband of yours has gone so far Left he's looped right around. And his enemies want me to protect him from his friends. It's mad!"
    "It's Israel."
    "It's civil war."
    "No, it's peace. Peace is a business, Delaney. Germany and Japan, they buckled at the knees and their enemies promptly taught them a lesson by building them up into superpowers. And that, Delaney, is the master plan of the Jewish State. That's how we see our future."
    Delaney was aghast. "How horrible. Those poor penniless Palestinians, with nothing, nothing, nothing but their own land. Sorry, my little black rose, I won't do it."
    She smiled coolly. "Allow me to address your principles directly," she said, withdrawing a fat wad hidden where even his wildest dreams were forbidden. "Here's 10,000 cash, US bucks. Whether you like it or not, you are hired. Do the deed, and you get 10 more of the same. Under the table."
    Delaney put two and two together, added 18 percent VAT, took off 40 percent at source and thought, what the hell, I'll take the job.
    They sure do work in mysterious ways over there in Taxland, he thought, as he pocketed the moola, tucked in his Derringer and stepped outside into the rainy dusk.