The Black Widow

She cleaned her hands with disinfectant and then leaned in to the mirror for a closer look at her face. She hated her nose and thought that her mouth, while sensuous, was slightly too large for her face. Her eyes, she had decided, were her most alluring asset, wide, dark, intelligent, beguiling, with a trace of treachery and perhaps some hidden reservoir of pain. After ten years of practicing medicine, she no longer considered herself beautiful, but she knew empirically that men found her attractive. As yet, she had stumbled upon no example of the species worth marrying. Her love life had consisted of a string of monogamous but ultimately unhappy relationships — in France, where she had lived until the age of twenty-six, and in Israel, where she had moved with her parents after they concluded that Marseilles was no longer a place for Jews. Her parents lived in Netanya, in an apartment overlooking the Mediterranean. Their assimilation into Israeli society was glancing at best. They watched French television, read French newspapers, shopped in French markets, passed their afternoons in French cafés, and spoke Hebrew only when necessary. Natalie’s Hebrew, while fast and fluent, betrayed her Marseilles childhood. So, too, did her Arabic, which was flawless. In the markets of the Old City, she sometimes heard things that made her hair stand on end.

Leaving the staff room, she noticed two other doctors rushing into the trauma center. The emergency room was just down the hall. Only two of the bays were occupied. Dr. Ayelet Malkin, the shift supervisor, sat in the corral in the center of the room, glaring at the screen of a desktop computer.

“Just in time,” she said without looking up.

“What’s going on?”

“A Palestinian from East Jerusalem just stabbed two Haredim on Sultan Suleiman Street. One of them probably isn’t going to make it. The other one is in bad shape, too.”

“Another day, another attack.”

“It gets worse, I’m afraid. A passerby jumped on the Arab and tried to disarm him. When the police arrived, they saw two men fighting over a knife, so they shot them both.”

“How bad?”

“The hero got the worst of it. He’s going into trauma.”

“And the terrorist?”

“One shot, through and through. He’s all yours.”

Natalie hurried into the corridor in time to see the first patient being wheeled into the trauma center. He was wearing the dark suit, knee-length socks, and white shirt of an ultra-Orthodox Haredi Jew. The jacket was shredded and the white shirt was soaked with blood. His reddish-blond payess dangled from the edge of the gurney; his face was ashen. Natalie glimpsed him only briefly, a second or two, but her instincts told her that the man did not have long to live.

The next to arrive was a secular Israeli man, thirty-five or so, an oxygen mask over his face, a bullet in his chest, conscious, breathing, but just barely. He was followed a moment later by the second stabbing victim, a Haredi boy of fourteen or fifteen, with blood pouring from multiple wounds. Then, finally, came the cause of all the mayhem and bloodshed: the Palestinian from East Jerusalem who had awakened that morning and decided to kill two people because they were Israeli and Jewish. He was in his early twenties, Natalie reckoned, no more than twenty-five. He had a single bullet wound on the left side of his chest, between the base of the neck and the shoulder, and several cuts and abrasions to his face. Perhaps the hero had landed a blow or two while trying to disarm him. Or perhaps, thought Natalie, the police had given him a thrashing while taking him into custody. Four Israeli police officers, radios crackling, surrounded the gurney to which the Palestinian was handcuffed and strapped. There were also several men in plain clothes. Natalie suspected they were from Shabak, Israel’s internal security service.

One of the Shabak officers approached Natalie and introduced himself as Yoav. His hair was shorn close to the scalp; wraparound sunglasses concealed his eyes. He seemed disappointed that the patient was still among the living.

“We’ll need to stay while you work on him. He’s dangerous.”

“I can handle him.”

“Not this one. He wants to die.”

The ambulance attendants wheeled the young Palestinian down the corridor to the emergency room and with the help of the police officers moved him from the blood-soaked gurney to a clean treatment bed. The wounded man struggled briefly while the police officers secured his hands and feet to the aluminum railings with plastic flex cuffs. At Natalie’s request, the officers withdrew from the bay. The Shabak man insisted on remaining behind.

“You’re making him nervous,” Natalie objected. “I need him to be calm so I can properly clean out that wound.”

“Why should he be calm while the other three are fighting for their lives?”

“None of that matters in here, not now. I’ll call you if I need you.”

The Shabak man took a seat outside the bay. Natalie drew the curtain and, alone with the terrorist, examined the wound.