Confluence. Stephen J. Gordon

      

      CONFLUENCE

      A GIDON ARONSON THRILLER

      Stephen J. Gordon

      CONFLUENCE

      A GIDON ARONSON THRILLER

      Stephen J. Gordon

      Apprentice House

      Loyola University Maryland

      Baltimore, Maryland

      Copyright © 2013 by Stephen J. Gordon

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission from the publisher (except by reviewers who may quote brief passages).

      First Edition

      Printed in the United States of America

      ISBN: 978-1-934074-86-2

      This is a work of fiction. Characters, places, names, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously to facilitate the story.

      Cover design by Andrew J. Peters

      Author photograph by Sophie Brooks

      Published by Apprentice House

       Apprentice House Loyola University Maryland 4501 N. Charles Street Baltimore, MD 21210 410.617.5265 • 410.617.2198 (fax) www.ApprenticeHouse.com [email protected]

      To Becky, your love and support make everything possible;

      to AJ and Esty, Michal and Avrohom, Jeff, Alana, and Sophie,

      your unwavering enthusiasm always helps me stay the course.

      Prologue

      The next man he had to kill was 70 years old, in good health (not that it mattered), and didn’t know this was coming. The killing had been decided about three months ago, and it had taken him that long to track him down. Didn’t matter. It had been decided, and that was that.

      The target was a hundred feet away, hastily working behind a closed glass door to get his clothing shop ready for the Memorial Day weekend opening.

      It was ten o’clock on a Wednesday night and his store was the only one in the strip with any activity. The mini haberdashery was located midway along Bay Street in Watch Hill, Rhode Island, basically a one street resort village near the Connecticut-Rhode Island border. Shops and condos straddled both sides of the narrow street. In one area were these quaint, tourist centered shops and eateries, and in another area was the protected harbor and yacht club. For now, though, it was a ghost town…even emptier than what you’d expect from the off-season. The owners of most of the shops would typically drift down from Boston or up from New York on weekends to get ready. But not Mr. Meyers. The season was too important to leave it for only weekend set-ups.

      Across the street, the driver in a rented burgundy Infiniti took out his 9mm Beretta and verified there was a round in the chamber. This was going to be easier than he anticipated. His advance team had said it would be straightforward. They were right.

      Six hours ago he had arrived on a British Air flight from London into Providence’s T.F. Green Airport. Four hours ago he pulled out of the Hertz Rental facility adjacent to the airport. Three hours ago a man at a rest stop off of Route 1 near Westerly handed him a large padded envelope that contained the Beretta.

      The man in the Infiniti stepped out of the car, covering his gun in the folds of his lightweight, all weather coat, and crossed the dark street. There was a slight breeze, and he could smell the salty sea air blowing in off the water. The light in Meyers’ shop drew him like a beacon. As he approached the glass door, he could see Meyers taking T-shirts out of boxes and stacking them in wooden cubbies along a side wall.

      The man glanced to his right and left to triple check that the street was empty, and then with the knuckles of his gloved hand knocked on the glass door.

      Meyers looked up. The septuagenarian still had a full head of gray hair, though it was long and unkempt, like a crazy Russian composer’s. He approached the front door.

      “We’re not open yet,” he called. “Not for another two weeks.”

      The man outside shook his head and just said, “What?”

      Meyers moved closer. “I said,” he raised his voice, “we’re not open–”

      The driver raised his gun and shot the store owner in the head through the glass door. He then shot him twice more. The glass shattered and lay in varying sized pieces at the killer’s feet, but hadn’t touched him.

      The man in the all weather coat walked back to his rental car and got in. He could now cross Meyers off his list. Next stop, Baltimore.

      1

      I found myself sitting in the back row of an empty Northwest Baltimore synagogue, trying not to think of anything…not my daily routine, not what I had been doing twenty minutes earlier, not what I had planned for the rest of the day. I particularly did not want to think about the past.

      In the front of the modest sanctuary, maybe seventy feet away and the focal point of the entire room, was the ark. It was a rich, polished, wooden cabinet set against the wall, with a dark blue curtain covering its doors. A spotlight illuminated gold Hebrew lettering embroidered on the fabric cover. The wording, translated as “Know before whom you stand” stared at me across the empty room.

      Terrific. Not the sentiment I was hoping for. “Know before whom you stand.” I closed my eyes for a moment. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. I wasn’t looking for an admonition. I was seeking understanding.

      Sometimes after you’ve killed someone – even if it’s justified and righteous – a malaise settles over you like a tangible presence. It weighs you down, draining you of energy and spirit. I have a friend, who spent four years with Israel’s Mossad. Today, several years later, he still has recurring dreams about the clandestine work he had done. He saved many lives by killing the right people – bad, truly evil men who planned and carried out bus and restaurant bombings, kidnappings, and murder sprees along beachfront communities – but he couldn’t sleep without nightmares.

      What was it that George Orwell said? Something like, “People sleep peacefully in their beds at night because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”

      But there is a cost. Orwell didn’t mention that.

      It was late in the afternoon on a Friday, but not so late that services were imminent. For now, I had the place to myself. I had not been in a sanctuary such as this one for maybe two years. But recently… recently, I had been considering coming here. Now, this visit had nothing to do with services or with prayer or sermons or people. That’s not what drew me. I simply wanted to be somewhere holy.

      So I sat there, alone, with a small, crocheted kippah on my head. It was a kippah I had been carrying around just in case I found myself in such a place. More than a few years ago, my soon-to-be fiancée, Tamar, had given it to me. At the time, I was still in my Israeli Army uniform, and we had been walking through Jerusalem’s Jewish Quarter on a cool, spring day. We were heading down a stone staircase that led to the Western Wall Plaza when we had passed a dark complexioned man of about forty, standing to the side. He had laid out three or four stacks of crocheted kippot on the waist high wall next to the staircase. I didn’t think the yarmulkes were any different than any of the ones on sale in malls or on Ben Yehudah Street, but Tamar spotted a particular azure one. She bought it – not because I typically wear one – but because the tones, she said, matched the color of my eyes.

      I smiled to myself, letting the images of another time and place dissolve. As I was seated in the rear of the shul, the entire room was open before me. It was completely silent. There were rows of turquoise-cushioned