“What, are you nervous or something?” the woman pressed.
“How would you like me to start a food fight right here? I’ve got the broccoli ready to go.” He stabbed a stalk of broccoli and held it up.
“Oh that’s great, Howard. Security will take us away. We’ll make all the papers.”
“Your obit will make the paper, Eileen, if you don’t leave me alone.”
I listened to the good natured marital sparring and had to smile. Almost immediately my happy feeling was replaced by a familiar ache in the center of my abdomen. I began to feel a slight tremor radiating out from my mid-section. If I didn’t get a handle on it, it would wash over me, turning me into a wreck faster than you could say “dishrag.”
I set up a breathing pattern to force relaxation.
The speaker was still going on...something about the importance of the territories to Israel’s defense. I barely heard what he was saying.
Howard and Eileen, the couple next to Alli, were holding hands now.
My throat began to tighten.
I wiped my forehead with my napkin. Alli smiled at me. I weakly smiled back. Did she see what was happening to me? I could walk out now; no one would mind, right? Would the Israeli guard at the main door stop me? I mean I had just come in. Hell, I’d stop me if I were in his place.
The guard had other things on his mind. His eyes were on a table on the other side of the room. I looked at the other security guys and then at the waiters leaning near the kitchen door.
This feeling, a weakness spreading throughout my body, would subside. I knew that. I just had to let it come and let it go.
After a moment I leaned over to Alli and asked her to pass the water.
She handed me a half-filled carafe that had condensation running down its side. I refilled my glass and took a few swallows. Another moment passed.
“...We will not leave any city undefended,” Mr. Lev said, pounding the lectern with his right fist.
Suddenly there was applause and then the entire roomful of guests jumped up, enthusiastically.
The speech was over, and I rose with Alli, likewise applauding. The emcee, a short, slightly rotund tuxedoed man in his forties, came to the mic.
“Thank you, General. And now dessert will be served.” I half smiled. A significant political speech was one thing, but dessert, now that was important.
I spied chocolate cake being hustled out of the kitchen by the waiters, and backed off the sarcasm. I never met a chocolate cake I didn’t like, and the way I felt, I needed to get something sweet into my system to help me refocus.
In moments, the cake was in front of me, and in a few moments more, I was licking the fork clean. “Not bad,” I commented to Alli. “Richer than I thought.” Why did I sound like an idiot?
My stomach was settling back down and I could feel myself relax.
Howard, the man near Alli, looked at me. “So, do ya think they’re gonna hit us up for money?”
I smiled. “I’ll give them your name.”
Howard laughed.
“Do you and Eileen argue here often?”
He laughed again. “Only on special occasions. Like if it’s Monday or something.”
I smiled.
As the evening wound down, and now that I was feeling better, I continued the audience-watching I had started earlier. It was a relatively young crowd. The attendees looked pretty mixed: some men dressed formally — doctors and lawyers I’d guess — but also some regular folk. I could only guess their professions, but frankly I didn’t want to.
The group began to sing Birkat Hamazon, Grace After Meals, and while they were doing that I looked at the waiters again. They were scurrying about, clearing the tables. The young waiter, the teenager who had been leaning against the back wall watching the guest speaker, caught my attention again. He was clearing a table over to my right. He was definitely young...perhaps 16 or 17. To me, he also looked foreign...not Middle Eastern, not Hispanic. I wasn’t sure. I couldn’t place him.
I watched him move about, collecting plates and filling a large oval tray balancing on his left arm. There was something else.
He was sweating. I looked at the other waiters. They were hustling too, but while they looked busy, they all seemed not to have worked up the same perspiration. The powerful air conditioner was keeping the hall fairly cool. A number of women, in fact, were wrapped in their husband’s suit jackets. This guy didn’t seem to feel the A/C at all.
Mr. Lev began to leave. Grace After Meals was finished and he came down off the dais, shaking hands. He paused for a moment to whisper something in the emcee’s ear, and then began to weave his way through the crowd. Lev’s Shin Bet minders took their positions. While the head man maintained his overview, the two men who were on either side of the head table moved right in front of him, staying very close. The man from the kitchen and the agent who had been standing below the dais moved to either side of him. I was surprised they didn’t have someone to the rear.
As Lev began to head in my direction — the exit was behind me to my left — I looked past him. The young waiter was probably twenty-five feet from the general and his attention was clearly not on his work. He looked from his tray of plates to Mr. Lev, then back to his plates. He’d let another moment pass and then he would watch the former general again.
And then I noticed it.
He was slowly moving toward him.
I looked at the Shin Bet guys. They weren’t watching him. They didn’t even see him. Two images filled my mind. Yitzchak Rabin moving through a crowd after a concert one Saturday night in Tel Aviv and a young man pumping three bullets into him. The other image was Bobby Kennedy lying on the floor of a hotel kitchen, a pool of blood beneath his head.
I found myself moving toward the young waiter. The almost debilitating feeling I had experienced earlier was gone. All I saw was the sweating young man. He came closer, slowly, fixed on the general. Lev was now, perhaps, ten feet from him. If the Israeli continued in the same direction, in a matter of seconds the two would intersect.
The waiter put down his tray.
The crowd was still applauding. Lev was shaking hands as he slowly moved toward the exit. The Israeli guards in front were trying to clear a path. Lev continued to smile and shake hands. “Thank you. Toda rabba. Thank you.”
The waiter’s left hand slowly moved inside his jacket. He was now five feet from the general. I could clearly make out the shine on his forehead and upper lip. His eyes didn’t waver from the guest of honor.
The guards were looking the wrong way.
I moved a heavy-set man to the side as I stepped forward. From behind me I heard him say, “Well excuse me.”
The Israeli was probably wearing Kevlar or something similar under his frilly shirt, but it wouldn’t matter. The bulletproof vest wasn’t covering his head.
The entourage passed right in front of the waiter, the bodyguards looking but not seeing. The boy’s left hand came out of his jacket holding a large caliber automatic. It looked like a Beretta. For a brief moment he pointed the gun at the ground as if it were too heavy for him. I took the final step toward him. As his hand came up I grabbed it and twisted it sharply, up and back. Even as I heard the sharp crack of wrist bones, I swept his left foot out from under him.
As he collapsed to the floor, I stepped back and shouted, “Gun!”
2
For a very