Abuse of Power - Michael Savage [70]
“He should be, for the price I paid. You sure you don’t have any qualms about all of this?”
The Reb gave him the look he always gave when Jack asked stupid questions. “Do you?”
“Not really, no.”
“Good. We’re at war, my friend. It may not feel that way sometimes and that in itself can be a problem, but it’s real, and real people die as a consequence—something you know better than most.”
“I can’t argue with that,” Jack said.
“This man you seek, I can assure you he has no qualms about breaking laws to further his goals. He’d just as soon see people like you and me buried under a pile of rubble.” The Reb absently stroked his beard. “No matter what a man’s ideology or religion may be, when he’s faced by a fanatic with a knife in his hand he should cut him down. No amount of reasoning will dissuade the true believer.”
“There are people who would disagree.”
The Reb leaned forward in his chair now, his gaze intense. “Then they deserve to die. They look at terrorists and genocide as abstract notions, lessons in history that fall on their ears like some ancient melody that no longer has any relevance. They comfort themselves with trivial entertainments, but how do you think they’d feel if that knife was pressed to their throats?”
“Ready to fight back.”
“Yes, then. Then, when it’s too late.” The Reb paused, leaned back again. “So I think God will forgive us for breaking a few rules for the greater good.”
He got to his feet, grabbed his glass from the table and drained the last of his potato vodka from the Ukraine. Clean. No hangover.
He let loose a satisfied sigh as he set the glass down again. “To bed,” he told Jack. “Tomorrow is a big day and you need rest. I only wish I were going with you.”
Jack finished his own glass. “You still can.”
The Reb shook his head. “This is a one-man job. I’d only be in your way.”
“I doubt that,” Jack said, getting to his feet. “But I understand. Are you heading back to San Francisco tomorrow?”
“Ohad has invited me to stay a while. I think I’ll stick around, enjoy the family.” He smiled. “Thank you for the holiday, my friend.”
Jack nodded and shook his hand. “Good night, Rabbi.”
“Lailah tov.”
* * *
Jack traveled with a group of ten, all Lubavitchers who were flying to Bristol, U.K., for a week-long sojourn—friends of the Reb who were happy to have Jacob Heshowitz’s company, no questions asked.
Despite knowing that he blended in, Jack felt conspicuous. The fake beard didn’t help, especially since it was itching twice as much as the day before. He caught a glimpse of his reflection as he moved with the others past a phalanx of armed guards to the airport terminal doors, and what he saw made him feel naked, like a high-school kid in the halls without pants.
He half expected one of the guards to pull him away and interrogate him, but they merely glared. That was the first line of security: to look intimidating and see who started to perspire. Jack couldn’t afford to; the spirit gum holding his beard would come loose. Fortunately, to them, Jack was part of a group of men no different from a thousand other such groups that would pass through these doors in the coming weeks. They dismissed him as harmless.
The group’s flight wasn’t scheduled to depart for three hours. Jack had been warned that airport security measures at Ben Gurion International were quite different than they were in the U.S., and he and the Reb had spent much of the previous night going over how Jack should act and what he should say.
As they moved into the check-in line, Jack was approached by a pleasant-looking woman in uniform. The Israelis called this second line of security, somewhat jokingly, “the Fisher of Men.” The surly-faced guards made you uneasy. This was the one who reeled you in.
She spoke Hebrew. “Passport and ticket, please.”
Jack’s facility with the language was limited to a few brief phrases he’d learned from his mother and grandfather, and a couple the Reb had taught him last night. But he’d been assured that Tel Aviv was a melting pot, that most