IN THE APARTMENT ABOVE THE SEAFOOD RESTAURANT ON THE Jaffa shore, the katza, leaner and hungrier and crabbier than usual, haunted the communications alcove, hovering over the barefoot contessa as she pecked away with two fingers on the computer keyboard, deciphering the coded reports pouring in from Aza. Some two dozen Israeli technicians, armed with small black boxes crystal-tuned to a single ultra high frequency, were systematically crisscrossing the Strip in unmarked cars driven by Palestinian Authority detectives. At precisely eighteen minutes to and eighteen minutes past the hour, they listened—after which the reports began to filter in. Mobile units 17 through 20 in Khan Yunis, Aza’s second largest city, reported in first: no joy. Mobile units 21 through 24 in Rafa came through next: no joy. Mobile units 1 through 10 in Aza City: no joy. Mobile units 11 through 15 on the coast road: no joy.
“What’s that?” Elihu demanded as the barefoot contessa typed out the random five-letter groups coming in from mobile unit 16. The deciphered message appeared on the screen: “C-o-n-t-a-c-t o-b-t-a-i-n-e-d” it read, “c-o-o-r-d-i-n-a-t-e-s a-l-e-f d-a-l-e-t.” The message broke off.
Elihu, his nerves raw, snapped, “What’s going on?”
“How would I know?” the barefoot contessa asked defensively.
Gnawing on the stem of his unlit pipe, Elihu prowled back and forth behind her as she filed away at a hang nail. The screen lit up again with random five-letter groups beamed down to the antennas on the Jaffa roof, via an American communications satellite, from mobile unit 16. A moment later, as the barefoot contessa copied the random groups of letters onto the software program, the plain language text appeared below.
“F-a-l-s-e c-o-n-t-a-c-t d-u-e v-e-h-i-c-l-e p-a-s-s-i-n-g P-a-l-is-t-i-n-e A-u-t-h-o-r-i-t-y r-a-d-i-o t-o-w-e-r n-o j-o-y r-e-p-e-a-t n-o j-o-y.”
The katza was on the phone moments later. “You’ve heard about the Rabbi’s secretary?” he asked Baruch over the scrambled line.
“I caught it on CNN. They said something about an anonymous phone call to the Palestinian police leading to the discovery of the body. Hang on—the autopsy report is coming through.” Baruch came back on the line. “The murder has Abu Bakr’s signature—the cause of death was a .22-caliber bullet fired directly into the base of the skull.”
“The mobile units reported in eighteen minutes before the hour. No joy. Not a peep. Something has gone very wrong.”
“Sweeney’s not in Aza,” Baruch said flatly.
The katza wasn’t ready to let go yet. “The person who phoned Sweeney instructed him to come to Aza. Then we found his car parked at the entrance to Aza.”
“I played our tape of the conversation on Sweeney’s cell phone again. The Arab who phoned told him to take the Beit Shemesh-Kiryat Gat road down to Aza. I could kick myself for not seeing it before. What did they care how he went to Aza as long as he got there?”
“You think they flagged him down somewhere along the way and whisked him off in another direction, and then drove his car down to Erez for us to find.”
“It’s possible.” Baruch corrected himself with a bitter laugh. “It’s probable.”
The katza let this sink in. “If you’re right, if Sweeney’s not in Aza, that means the Rabbi’s not in Aza.”
“Abu Bakr’s been planting clues with Aza written all over them since the kidnapping,” Baruch said. “The Aza bank calendar we discovered on the wall, the kidnapper dressed in a short sleeved shirt, the Mercedes with the dead mechabel in the back, the cassette mailed from an Aza post office—everything pointed to Aza. Then Sweeney is invited to Aza—they took it for granted we’d be tapping his phones—and conveniently parks his car at the Erez crossing where we can find it. Now Efrayim’s body turns up on a garbage dump outside Aza City.”
“If they could smuggle the Mercedes with the mechabel back into Aza after the kidnapping, I suppose they could smuggle Efrayim—alive and drugged, or dead and stuffed into a sack—into Aza.”
“All roads were meant to lead to Aza,” Baruch plunged on. The more he talked, the more he became convinced he was right. “Which meant we’d jump to the logical conclusion that the Rabbi wasn’t in Aza. Then we’d smile our superior smiles and assume we were supposed to jump to this conclusion, and decide he was in Aza after all. But Abu Bakr was always one jump ahead of us.”
“If the Rabbi isn’t in Aza, it would explain the no-joy from the mobile units. My God, the Rabbi could be anywhere in Judea or Samaria,” Baruch reminded himself. “Where do we start? Nablus? Hebron? Jenin? Tulkarm? Or one of the four hundred and sixty Palestinian villages between them? We don’t have enough mobile units to check out an area that size.”
“There’s still Yussuf Abu Saleh,” Baruch reminded Elihu from his Jerusalem office.
“I hate Sa’adat’s guts,” the katsa growled from Jaffa. “It makes me sick to my stomach to think he’s on our side. But let’s hope he gets Abu Saleh to talk. It may be our last shot at finding Apfulbaum before the Feast of the Breaking of the Fast.”