29/8/97

Private I

For just a split second, detective Delaney thought the future of the Middle East was on his shoulders.

Act One of a one-act play: A dingy makolet on Aristobulus Street, midtown Jerusalem. A dingy customer enters. He is Dick J. Delaney, down-and-out sleuth whose only claim to fame is his occasional appearance in But Seriously. He hasn't had a case since two years ago, when he discovered who had it in for Yasser Arafat (everybody did). The 200 shekels he earned from that case has just about run out. Income Tax took most of it.

Delaney: The usual, and step on it.

Moishe the Makolet Man (sighs): Gin and a pack of smokes. You got cash? (Laughs derisively) Or maybe I should charge it to the government.

Delaney: Wise guy, eh? So happens I'm expecting a new case any day.

Moishe: Yeah, and I'm expecting Prince Charles to come in and ask for a kilo of horseradish. Oh, by the way, some lady was here, asking for you. I told her you were dead.

Delaney: Why'd you tell her that?

Moishe: I thought you were.

Delaney: Did she buy anything?

Moishe: A bagel. Plain.

Delaney: That's all I need to know.

(The gumshoe hotfoots it outta there and heads for Ashdod, where he finds her, sitting by the dock, eating her bagel. He flips up his collar, tilts down his fedora and flexes a jaw muscle, for effect. )

Mysterious Woman: Beat it, putz.

Delaney: Correction -- beat it, Delaney.

Mysterious Woman: Damn. And I sent flowers.

(Delaney gives her the once-over. He'd seen her before, in a comic book. Red stiletto heels. Luscious lips. Heaving bosom. Silken legs disappearing into a skirt shorter than the law permitted. Half-eaten bagel. Just the kinda dame he liked working for.)

Delaney: Lemme guess. Somebody stole your diamond-studded cell phone. No, wait: your husband's seeing one of those grapefruit-ad ladies and you want incriminating pics of him trying to peel her. Or you want me to find out who shot Kennedy.

Mysterious Woman: Aw, get an imagination. I'm into serious stuff, Delaney. The future of this country. The very foundations of Israel -- and I mean literally.

Delaney: The building contractors?

Mysterious Woman: Deeper, Delaney. I'm talking halfway to China, so to speak. This country's in the gutter all the way down to where it joins up with the ocean floor.

Delaney: Uh-huh. Got a light? (He lights up a Lucky) Got a name? Or do we have to call you Mysterious Woman all the way to the end of the page?

Mysterious Woman: You can call me ... Agent Atlantis. Incidentally, you might like to know, smoking is bad for you. I have evidence.

Delaney: Hmm. Atlantis ... Weren't you once the Page Three pinup in Spy Weekly?

Atlantis: Doubt it. Been undercover for years. Lying low. Waiting for the big one. And this, Delaney, is big.

Delaney: So tell me already.

Atlantis: You read the papers?

Delaney: Just the cigarette ads. Yeah, of course I --

Atlantis: Then you know what's going on.

Delaney: Sure. Betar's in first place. The Dodgers are second. So?

Atlantis: ... And the Syrians are madder'n hell.

Delaney: They bet on Hapoel?

Atlantis: Shift your eyes off my legs for a minute and think, Delaney. The prime minister takes a vacation, remember?

Delaney: That would be Bibi.

Atlantis: So you do read the papers!

Delaney: But that's not news, it's olds. Months ago.

Atlantis: "Today is when the past meets the future." I'd like to get that in the next edition of ג€˜Bartlett's.ג€™

Delaney: I'll give him a call for you. We were old war buddies, you know.

Atlantis: Which war?

Delaney: War of Attrition.

Atlantis: Considering this conversation, I'm not surprised. Now pay attention, it gets complicated: the pee-em suddenly disappears in the middle of a domestic crisis, and reappears on a ski slope. Where? Switzerland. Question: What foreign country has been in the news lately? That's right, ace: Switzerland. Another question: what foreign country is a close second? Not coincidentally, the very next one alphabetically: Syria -- which also happens to covet the very hilltop that not uncoincidentally happens to have the only ski slope in Israel.

Delaney: Aha!

Atlantis: Zip it. What you understand so far, an average Ashdod fisherman knows. Hey you!

Fisherman: Me?

Atlantis: Tell me what you know. Everything.

Fisherman: Well, there's this ski slope up there on the Golan, and the Syrians --

Atlantis: That'll do. Go, run, the sardines are biting. (The Fisherman races off)

Delaney: Did you notice? That fisherman looks like David Levy but with an overbite.

Atlantis: I must say, Delaney, you're very observant.

Delaney: Traditional, actually. Look dollface, could you get to the point? My mommy always told me never to talk about my religious beliefs with a chesty woman on a wharf. Yalla, cut to the quick.

Atlantis: Ever wonder what that means?

Delaney: Huh?

Atlantis: "Cut to the quick."

Delaney: It's from Olde English, originally, "Cute toe thee quicke." Get on with it, would you?! (Mutters under his breath) Women!

Atlantis: So Bibi goes to Switzerland, on vacation, skiing, he falls down, big news back here. Assad's no fool. If Israel needs the Golan so desperately, Bibi could be falling down every winter weekend, if he wants. But Bibi's no fool either, he knows what Assad's thinking, so he falls on purpose in Switzerland to make him think Israel doesn't need the Golan, but it's a ruse, to keep Assad's attention off the sea.

Delaney: A ruse? The sea? What are you talking about?

Atlantis: Settlements. Privatization. Peace.

Delaney (his eyes narrow, like when a telephone bill is too high, or when a red-heeled, luscious-lipped, mammaried blonde is chattering nonsense at him): I see. (Though, of course, he doesn't)

Atlantis: And that's where you come in. I -- we -- uh, the government ... the peace process: it all depends on a private i.

Delaney: You mean private eye.

Atlantis: No. A private i.

Delaney: i .... correct me if I'm wrong, but ... wait a minute -- Good God, it can't be; d'you mean to say: no, it's impossible, they wouldn't....

Atlantis (nodding): You hit the hammer on the head, bucko. (Delaney is so unsettled he lets the malapropism go)

Delaney: Follow me on this: "i" is the abbreviation for "island." Private island. The government. Peace, Syria, Switzerland, the Golan, Betar, there's a common thread there somewhere, dammit, that's it, they've all been in the newspapers!

Atlantis: Good, Dicky-boy, very good.

Delaney: It all leads to a second ruse: the government's obsessive talk of ... of private-i-zation! Ariel Sharon's pet project, right? And that's why he allowed himself to be squeezed out of Finance -- the third ruse -- because the real money's gonna be dumped into the briny blue! If Assad realizes this he'll go ballistic, and I mean literally. So Bibi keeps feeding Assad's Golan obsession, keeping him both high and dry, while maintaining his commitment to a Greater Israel, but westward, hoodwinking absolutely everyone. So we build an island out there and give it over to the settlers to establish a second Jewish state. Hah! Brilliant!

Atlantis (realizing she's falling in love with Delaney): Or, call the island "Palestine" and solve the Palestinian Problem. Oh, Delaney, it's so romantic...

Delaney: Romantic, my butt: it's Zionism, pure and simple. New Age Zionism. Think big, babe. Settling the land is passe; establishing new ones is the way to go. You think it ends there, with just one island?

Atlantis (gasping): You don't mean...

Delaney: Yup. In a hundred years, the Mediterranean will be brimming with little Jewish countries, each with a population of like-minded Jews, each with a vote in the UN. And a thousand years from now? Archipelago Judaea, stretching from this wharf clear across to Cape Cod. In a thousand years Syria will still be sputtering about the Golan and their "historic rights," the Palestinians will be raking dust in the desert crowing about their "historic rights," while the Jews will have conquered the ocean. And that, my little petunia, is Bibi's master plan.

Atlantis: He's a genius!

Delaney: The fourth ruse.

(They embrace, as the sea gently laps at their naked toes. They are perfectly aware that Delaney was wrong: a thousand years from now, this shore, and all the land left to the Palestinians, and also Syria, and all their historic rights, will be under water displaced by Jewish island settlement.)