5

IN THE MAIN SALON of a fifty-two-foot Hatteras yacht moored at the end of a long pier in the Tel Aviv marina, Misha Shulman wears what is in effect his professional uniform of too-tight black silk shirt, long sleeves in the Israeli style rolled up over arms rippling with muscle, his trousers shot through with silver thread, his shoes pointy-toed and Italian, around his neck a gold chain so heavy gravity keeps it from shifting as he moves. In Shulman’s hand is a gold-plated CZ .40-caliber semiautomatic pistol whose extended double-stack custom magazine holds twenty-two rounds. This weapon he does not hold to the head of the man tied to the chair in the center of the yacht’s salon so much as he gesticulates with it as though it is a laser pointer and he a teacher in a class of idiots, each articulation yet another threat.

The man tied to the chair is Alon Peri, at forty-five the same age as his captor, sweat pouring down his face like wind-driven rain so that in the harshly air-conditioned cabin he feels it turn almost to ice. Peri is a manufacturer of sophisticated technology, mostly under contract to the Defense Ministry. In size, his factory is tiny compared to the behemoths that make up Israel’s arms sector, but he specializes in delicate yet stable fuses and remote triggering devices without which the giants of the industry could not survive. Lately he has developed a line of near-microscopic firing mechanisms for the newest generation of Israeli drones, which permits a reduction in weight, doubling their effective range.

While a dozen of Misha’s fellow hoods come and go in the salon, where a smaller group of four is intent on watching a television musical on the high-definition screen, Misha engages Peri in a long, if one-sided, negotiation.

“Mr. Shulman,” Peri says, sweating, “I have a board of directors. I just can’t say yes or no. It’s a corporation.”

“Board, shmord—you sell, I buy. It’s business.”

“Can I be frank?”

“We’re friends,” Misha offers. “Certainly, we could be.”

Peri continues to sweat, the runoff burning his eyes. “Your name can’t be anywhere near the deal. Not even a whisper.”

“Whispering I can’t prevent. It’s a small country. Everybody knows everything about everybody. You want to know my shoe size? Ask a taxi driver. When the prime minister gets her period, it’s a national day of mourning.”

“Mr. Shulman, your name just cannot be in it.”

Misha turns to his colleagues, who, as if drawn by invisible strings, turn to him from the television. “Balls the man has. I give him that. Brains, it’s an open question.”

Eight eyes return to the flatscreen. In many variations, they have seen this before, both on the screen and on the yacht.

“Look, Alon—can I call you Alon?”

“Sure,” says the man tied to the chair. “My friends call me Alon.”

“I don’t come to you like a leech, to draw blood. But as a partner.” Misha smiles wide enough to reveal a gold mine in the rear of his mouth—the lowliest Russian dentist knows more about precious metals than any ten jewelers at Tiffany. “Alon, I want to make you money. I want to make us both money. There’s nothing wrong with that. Nothing illegal.”

The man tied to the chair tries another tack. “Arms have a way of announcing themselves, Mr. Shulman. Every time I want to sell to, let’s say, a gray party, the government refers my request to committee. I’m not even sure there is such a committee. At bottom, it’s Washington that decides. The Americans don’t want to see our technology in the wrong hands.”

“Hands they don’t control.”

“Exactly.”

“What you’re saying is, me they can’t control.”

“Exactly exactly.”

“True enough. In Russia, they sent me to the gulag for seven years, and still they couldn’t control Misha Shulman. From Siberia, I ran everything.”

“If I deal with you, someone they’ve been trying to throw in jail for years, they’ll shut me down.”

Misha shakes his big head slowly. The heavy gold chain around his neck barely moves. “Whatever happened to capitalism?” he asks.