INTRIGUE
This powerful short-short by my eminent co-editor has a great deal going for it, and all in only 2,100 words: political intrigue in a foreign setting, strong characterization, a deceptively straightforward style, and a stunning shocker in the last line. As everyone who reads crime fiction already knows, Joe Gores won back-to-back Edgars (an unprecedented feat) in 1970 for Best First Novel, A Time of Predators, and for Best Short Story, “Goodbye, Pops.” His most recent novel is Hammett, published last year, which was extremely well received and which might be labeled a “biographical suspense novel”—a whole new genre?—since it features none other than Dashiell Hammett as the protagonist. - B.P.
You must understand that I am a Nationalist. If I have been an unwitting political agent of the reactionaries who govern this poor land in collusion with the Colonialists, I have not been a traitor. Not to my country, nor to The Band, nor to the cause of national freedom. Yes, even now I say this.
If I am so dedicated to national freedom, you might ask, then how...
Politics.
You probably consider us heroes, or spies, or terrorists—depending upon your own political sympathies—but I was none of these things when I joined The Band. I was a shopkeeper’s assistant and a…what? Not a political activist. Say, rather, one who sought to reduce to a personal level the frightening modem technology the Colonialists have brought to our backward desert land in their ninety years of domination. To this bridge, to that supply dump, to those sentries.
Do you understand so far?
Then understand my bitter disappointment when I first heard Number One speak. I had expected a great, bearded fellow whose very words would be missiles hurled into the teeth of the enemy. Instead, I found a slight, brown-haired man of about thirty, telling us that clandestine guerrillas had to be prepared for hatred and persecution, had to beware of all men…
I was on my feet, for my temper matches my hair.
“Why is it we who should beware?” I cried. “Why shouldn’t the Colonialists beware? Why do I hear nothing of liberating our country from their exploitation? Why—”
“I’ve come to bring the sword to this land, Sicarius.” His intelligence reports even then were good; he knew my name. “But what will we accomplish if every man’s hand is turned against us? Let us first be guileless as pigeons, as wise as snakes…”
Admit it. You too would have joined. And would have expected missions of tactical destruction under the direction of our CO, Captain Peters, and his Exec Officer, Lieutenant Jimmy Zeb. Each of us had his assigned task—mine was stores, since I’d been a shopkeeper before joining The Band. I also was entrusted with whatever money we liberated from the populace, but there was precious little of that. Because for three long, dreary years our task was subversion: fashioning key elements of the populace into a passive espionage and intelligence network, to forestall the authorities’ counterinsurgency mobilization once the time had come to strike. But it was so long in coming! Everywhere across our land we found men impatient to throw off the shackles of Colonialism—yet never was the order given to attack.
I had come for wine, I was given water.
But then, last weekend, we entered the Capital openly, as it was preparing for one of the few National Holidays which hasn’t been suppressed, and its normal hundred-thousand was nearly doubled by out-of-towners. Yes, the ideal revolutionary situation, with Nationalist sentiment inflamed and the streets crowded with tourists, government workers, and merchants idled by the holiday.
Ideal. And still we did nothing. Cowered in the Safe House.
On Wednesday, night before last, I said to hell with team discipline and took to the narrow, twisting streets of the Old Quarter. I rubbed shoulders with enlisted men from the garrison whose job it was to apprehend such as me. I watched the thieves and pickpockets at work, joked with the whores trying to tempt passers-by with hired sex.
It was in a nameless dive near Fountain Gate that I saw the girl again, as slender as a palm tree, her skirt showing flashes of rounded thighs like precious jewels as she moved. She confirmed my suspicion that she’d been following me by deserting her pair of Colonial troopers for my table.
“Don’t tell me it’s Sicarius!” she exclaimed loudly.
That’s when I recognized her. Ruth…something. She’d lived next door when we’d been kids, a skinny, gawky, awkward girl then. Now, as she slipped into a chair at my table, her breasts pressed out against the cloth of her bodice like clusters of ripe grapes.
“The Ruth I once knew would spit in the teeth of such foreign dogs.”
“Spoken like a true terrorist,” she said contemptuously.
“Why don’t you denounce me to your friends? I’m sure I would be worth a few silver staters to you.”
She gave a peal of laughter and slapped my arm as if I had told her a dirty joke. “Do you really believe that rebels are the only patriots?” she demanded in a low voice. “What of us who gather intelligence for the Nationalist leaders in LEGCO?”
“Nationalist leaders such as who?”
“Harim,” she said promptly. She added, “Laugh.”
We laughed together, I slapped a hand upon the table as if in glee. Harim! That shook me. Harim once had been President of the Legislative Council. He’d been ousted years before in a supposed power struggle; but now it was his son-in-law, the current President, who faced the assassins’ daggers. And Harim, subject to the “supervision” of the Governor-General and the Colonial Office, still seemed to dictate national policy.
“Doesn’t Harim learn enough of the foreigners’ plans as be licks their boots?” I demanded coldly.
“You are a fool.” She gave a gay, bright laugh. ‘‘He has been negotiating with the Colonial Office for Home Rule for months. That’s why he sent me to seek you out.”
“Harim wants to see me?” I asked stupidly.
‘‘He fears Number One might upset the negotiations.” Her hand was like heated metal against my bare arm. “Please. Talk with him.”
Talking does not make one a traitor to his Cause, does it? While his companions, except for clandestine sorties after dark in groups of three or four, cower in a Safe House? It was I, Sicarius, who dared step upon the shadow of the enemy.
At a certain dark entryway in the Lower City, Ruth’s knock opened a door beyond which ill-lit passageways led to a room dazzling in the richness of its appointments.
I turned to Ruth, but she was gone. Then through a doorway in the far wall came a white-haired, eagle-beaked man, his face showing its admixture of Greek blood. He was Harim. He noted my reaction.
“You know me, Sicarius?” His voice was deep and powerful.
“I have seen Your Excellency on the way to LEGCO meetings.”
All right, I admit it: he overawed me. But you must understand that to the swarthy races of the Syrian littoral, civil and religious authority are not separable. One has an inbred feeling of personal respect for such as Harim.
“Tell me, Sicarius, just as a hypothetical case: how long do you think autonomy would last if Number One were to succeed in overthrowing Colonial rule?”
“Last? Why, I… He… We would be free…”
His lip curled. “Free for what? Intrigues? Revolts? Assassinations?” He shook his magnificent eagle’s head. “Within a few weeks the national struggle would be dissipated in factionalism. Then the Governor-General, who may be weak but is no fool, would send in the Colonialist troops…”
“What has any of this to do with me?”
He was suddenly furious. “You dare ask, when your mangy band of rebels has a cache of arms northeast of the city?”
“But…” I stopped. Of course! I should have seen it in Number One’s nightly absences with Captain Peters and the two Zeb boys. I said lamely, “We operate on a need-to-know basis…”
“Doubtless, doubtless.” The subject seemed to have lost his interest. “But the fact is that you people play with fire while I lay the groundwork for a new treaty with the Colonial Office.”
“You trust a scrap of paper with foreign dogs?” I sneered.
“The Governor-General knows that local stability looks good on his record. And he knows that I speak for the people, Sicarius.” He slammed an open palm on his desk. “That’s why your scruffy little band of radicals is dangerous right now! Any other time, we’d give your precious Number One enough rope—”
“If you truly speak for the people, why do you fear us?”
“Because the Governor-General could claim that any attempted revolt, no matter how abortive, had been planned by the Nationalists in LEGCO…” His eagle eyes glared. “Number One. Could you undertake to arrange a meeting between us? I could tell him—”
“He wouldn’t come to any meeting with you.”
“As I feared.” Harim was on his feet, pacing in agitation. “And yet, Sicarius, we both know that I am the only one he would believe. There must be a face-to-face meeting…”
Well, where did my duty lie? With The Band, which did nothing? Or with Harim, who was negotiating the first Home Rule treaty for our Nation in ninety years? Number One would believe in it, too, if he once were convinced such a treaty could work…
What would you have done?
The Band met last night at the Safe House in Old Town, for the traditional Holiday feast of roast lamb seasoned with bay leaf, thyme, marjoram, and basil. I was nervous, because the others would not understand what I had to do. So when I slopped horseradish sauce across Number One’s hand as we dipped our meat into the common dish, I stood up hurriedly and wiped my mouth on my sleeve. If I remained there any longer my own tenseness would betray me.
“Where the devil are you off to?” demanded Captain Peters, his heavy features stupid with wine and meat.
“I forgot the traditional offering to the beggars.” I did not add, of course, that the oversight had been deliberate, a means of getting me out of the room and down the stairs.
Peters looked over to Number One, who was deep in conversation with young Johnny Zeb. “Sir?”
Number One looked up, saw me on my feet with the offering money in my hand, and nodded. “Yes, of course. What you’re doing, Sicarius, do it quickly.”
Which sent me scurrying through the streets, once I had made sure no one was following me, to the Security Police barracks in New Town. What if they left before I returned with the police? Which is exactly what happened. We found the cenacle where The Band had dined deserted.
“I will find them,” I told the police, with an assurance I didn’t feel. I should have been more confident; The Band was indeed assembled in the park-like area northeast of the Capital where Harim believed our arms were cached. I pointed out Number One while keeping back to avoid a knife between the ribs. I needn’t have worried. The Band, except for Captain Peters, melted away into the trees in the face of danger. He made a half-hearted lunge for me, but was easily restrained. Number One wasn’t even armed.
After they took him off to meet Harim, I returned to my room, but it wasn’t until six this morning that I dropped into an exhausted sleep.
I woke with a blinding headache at noon, dressed quickly, and went to Harim’s residence as he had directed. He was with his son-inlaw, a lean, sly-faced man with darting eyes.
“Ah, Sicarius. Here. Now, we’re very busy…”
I stared at what was in my hand. “What’s this?”
“I have never believed in patriotism as its own reward.”
Then he told me of the secret tribunal which, last night, was waiting to condemn Number One to death for sedition. At dawn, as I had slept, the man I had unwittingly betrayed had been rushed through the deserted streets to the Governor-General’s office for the sentence to be confirmed.
“Number One is dead now, or soon will be,” said Harim.
Staring into his eagle eyes, I knew there had never been a treaty. There had been only his fear of Number One’s growing popularity. He had used me to betray innocent blood. I could hear my own blood singing in my ears.
I must have spoken, for Harim exclaimed, “Then the devil take you, man. Do what you want with it.”
I hurled it on the polished floor at their feet. For an hour I wandered the streets, dazed, unseeing. Finally I returned to my room, and here I have remained, bound in the ever-tightening circle of my own thoughts.
What was…oh. Thunder. Three p. m. and clouding up for rain over the Hill of Gareb north of the city. That’s fitting, really. Because in a moment I will go downstairs, and with that frayed old halter I saw in the stable will perform my final act of destruction. There’s rope enough for that.
Here I am, about to die by my own hand, and I find myself compulsively wondering not about eternity, but about Harim—whom some men call Annas. What will he and his son-in-law Caiaphus do with the thirty pieces of silver they gave me for the life of the man called, by many, Jesus of Nazareth?
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The use of such British Empire terms as LEGCO (Legislative Council) for Sanhedrin, President for High Priest, and Governor-General for Procurator, was suggested by this passage from historian Henri Daniel-Rops’ Daily Life in the Time of Christ:
The high priest retained an authority that was…more than merely spiritual… His appointment was, in fact, subject to the politician masters of the country, (but)…a call by this spiritual leader could perfectly well begin an uprising, or calm it. The…(Romans) therefore preferred to be on good terms with this high personage…
A few of the many other clues pointing to “Number One” as Christ: He is thirty when Sicarius (of which Iscariot is a corruption) joins the band; he is executed three years later. Israel bad been a Roman satellite for ninety years, Jerusalem was 100,000 in population, Gethsemane lay northeast of the city, and Golgotha was on the Hill of Gareb. The stater was the standard Jewish silver coin of the day. Ananius, or Annas (a corruption of the Hebrew Harim) was deposed as high priest in A.D. 14, but remained in control through his son Elezear and then his son-in-law Caiaphus. Like most Jews (including the Apostles until the Resurrection), he believed Christ planned an armed revolt against Rome. The supper of herbed lamb, during which Christ and Judas dipped in the hot sauce together, is the traditional Passover feast. Legend says Judas was red-headed, Matthew says he hanged himself with a halter. Lines from Genesis (XVl:12), Psalms (VII:8- 9), Matthew (X:16-17, 36 and XXVIl:3- 9), and John (XIIl:27) are closely paraphrased or flatly quoted in the story.