Abuse of Power - Michael Savage [69]
“The one thing that stops an evil government from seizing total power,” he once told Jack, “is fear of millions of armed citizens. The Brits learned that lesson a couple hundred years ago.”
Yet despite this tough talk, the Reb was genuinely a kind and friendly man. He acted as a missionary to fallen Jews he met in the streets of San Francisco, trying to bring them back to God. He’d saved many a drugged-out soul over the years, and they loved him for throwing them a spiritual life preserver when they were drowning.
In some ways, Jack was in need of a life preserver himself. And once he told his story, the Reb was all too happy to help.
* * *
“Try to look more serious,” the man behind the camera told him. “When was the last time you saw someone smile in a passport photo?”
Jack put on his best poker face. Hadn’t even realized he was smiling. He certainly didn’t feel much like it, standing there stiffly in his new suit with a black fedora perched atop his head. It didn’t help that the Reb had supplied him with a fake beard made by a wigmaker so that Jack could blend in with the rest of the Lubavitchers. The beard was surprisingly realistic, using human hair woven into a special netting, but the glue they’d used to secure it with was itching his skin like crazy.
He thought of Bob Copeland and the man’s love of cloak and dagger. Jack did not share that love.
The flash went off, Jack certain he looked appropriately dazed, then the man behind the camera—a Russian Jew named Falkovsky—popped out the data card and crossed the small room to a computer station.
“Your timing is good,” he told them. “Two years from now, who knows if I’m still in business?”
“Why is that?” the Reb asked.
Falkovsky, who worked out of a camera store, was an old-school documents forger who found the advent of computer technology a godsend. What had once taken him hours of precise work using special inks and printing presses could now be handled by a standard PC in about a third of the time.
“Biometrics,” he said. “The government is pushing for biometric passports and working on a slow roll-out to establish a database over the next couple years. There’s no final decision on whether they’ll implement, but some intelligence experts are worried that if they do, it’ll compromise their ability to operate. And I don’t need to tell you what it will do to me.”
Jack had heard about this. The “e-passport,” as it was called, used smart card technology to store standardized biometric information, including facial, fingerprint, and iris recognition. And intelligence agencies had a right to be worried. If these types of passports were adopted universally, they’d not only be virtually impossible to forge, but any leaks of biometric data could potentially put an agent traveling under a false identity in danger of being discovered by the enemy. All the phony beards in the world wouldn’t disguise them.
Fortunately, this wasn’t a concern for Jack right now. Jacob Samuel Heshowitz would be traveling with what, to the naked eye, looked like a standard-issue Israeli passport, properly distressed and carrying several travel stamps.
His cover story was simple. Heshowitz was a Borough Park Lubavitcher who had moved to Tel Aviv a year ago and sought citizenship under the Law of Return. A frequent traveler, he applied for and received an Israeli passport shortly after his arrival in the country.
The Reb had assured Jack that the passport would be flawless. Falkovsky—whom he’d met through one of his Mossad contacts—was very good at what he did.
The Russian pushed the camera’s data chip into a slot on his computer, then sat down.
“Give me about two hours,” he said, and waved them away.
* * *
Several hours later, after dinner had been served and the dishes cleared away, Jack and the Reb sat at Cousin Ohad’s dining table, admiring Falkovsky’s handiwork, Jack happy to be rid of the beard for the time being.
“What did