The Last Testament

CHAPTER FOUR

J ERUSALEM , S ATURDAY , 11.10 PM

After-dark meetings were part of the tradition of this office. Ben-Gurion had done it in the fifties, debating and deciding till the early hours; Golda, too, always worked late at night, most famously when the Egyptians launched their surprise attack on Yom Kippur in 1973: legend has it the old lady barely slept for days. Somehow this room, with its single high-backed chair, reserved for the Prime Minister, lent itself to such encounters. It was small and intimate, with two couches forming an L-shape on which advisers or aides could sit around and talk for hours. The desk was functional, built for use rather than to impress. Rabin used to sit here alone deep into the night, with his own ink-pen, letters to the parents of soldiers-which, being Israel, meant every mother and father in the land.

Rabin was long gone now, taking the ashtrays that accompanied his chain-smoking habit with him. The current incumbent preferred, when stressed, to nibble on sunflower seeds, a habit which made him the peer of bus drivers and stallholders across the country. He gestured now to the man from Shin Bet, Israeli’s internal security service, to begin speaking.

‘Prime Minister, the dead man was Shimon Guttman. We all know who we’re talking about: the writer and activist, aged seventy-one. The first reports suggesting he was armed have now been discounted. Our investigators found no sign that he carried any weapon. Examination of the body showed he was killed by a bullet to the brain.’

The PM grimaced, then cracked one more seed shell between his front teeth.

‘As you know, he was found clasping a handwritten note, addressed to yourself. Intelligence say it will take some days to piece it together, the words were obscured by the blood-’

The Prime Minister waved him quiet. The head of Shin Bet put away the paper he had been consulting. The Deputy Prime Minster stared at his shoes; the Foreign and Defence Ministers stared at the PM, trying to gauge his reaction: none wanted to be the first to speak.

Amir Tal, special adviser to the PM and the youngest man in the room, decided to fill the quiet. ‘Of course, this has immediate political implications. First, we will come under fire-’

The Prime Minister raised an eyebrow.

‘Sorry. We will be criticized for making a bad mistake, killing an innocent man. That kind of flak could come our way anytime. But, second, if we are about to sign a peace deal, this will make things much harder. The right were already boiling; now they’re claiming their first martyr. They insist it is not a coincidence: Guttman was one of our loudest critics. And not just ours. He said the same thing during Oslo and again during Camp David: “Anyone who talks peace with the Arabs is a criminal who should be on trial for treason.” Arutz Sheva was on the air an hour ago saying “So now we know the government’s plan; they want to silence dissent with gunfire”.’

‘Could they be right?’ It was the Foreign Minister, addressing Tal, avoiding the boss’s eye.

‘Excuse me?’

‘I don’t mean that we deliberately killed him. But that it was not a coincidence. Could it be deliberate in the other direction, the opposite of what Arutz Sheva are saying?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘I mean, was this a set-up? Guttman knew how things worked. You can’t just rush towards the Prime Minister, shouting and screaming, and then reach into your jacket. He was a smart guy. He’d have known that.’

‘Are you saying-’

‘Yeah. I’m wondering if Guttman wanted to get shot. If he was deliberately luring us in, daring us to kill a famous opponent of the government.’

‘This is crazy.’

‘Is it? This is a guy who his whole life has gone in for the grand spectacular gesture, the great protest. And now, finally, it’s the big one: we’re about to make peace with the Arabs, to give away holy Judea and sacred Samaria. To prevent such a calamity, a fanatic like Guttman would have to come up with the biggest possible gesture. One that might actually mobilize the right.’

‘He would sacrifice his own life?’

‘He would.’ The Prime Minister had uttered his first two words since the meeting began. Until now, he had sat back, listening to the debate. That was his style. First, hear the arguments among the competing members of his court. Then, pepper them with questions. So how should we respond? What are our options? The cabinet had braced itself for just such an interrogation. But instead the Prime Minister had just leaned forward, saying nothing, cracking open yet another salty seed shell. Until those words: ‘He would.’

After a long pause, as if completing a thought that had been unspooling in his own head, he added, ‘I know this man. Inside out.’

The Chief of Staff, dressed in pressed olive green trousers and beige shirt, with a beret under his epaulette-the uniform of the soldier whose battlefield was politics-broke the silence that followed with what felt to him like a related question. He asked what everyone in the room-along with everyone who had heard the eye-witness accounts on TV-had wanted to know from the beginning. ‘How come he called you Kobi?’

‘Ah,’ said the Prime Minister.

‘I thought he hated your guts. Yet here he’s talking to you like you’re old chums.’

‘Rav Aluf, you of all people should know the answer to that question.’ The PM sat back, though he still preferred to look into middle distance rather than at any of his colleagues. ‘Kobi was the man I was a long, long time ago.’ The Defence Minister shuffled awkwardly in his seat, shooting a glance at the General. ‘It was what my friends called me. In the army. We were a good unit, one of the best. In ’67 we took a hill, just us: thirty-odd men. And you know who was the bravest, much braver than me, despite what Amir here tells the newspapers? A young scholar from the Hebrew University by the name of Shimon Guttman.’