Friday, October 27, 1995
Lemmy reached the bank before seven a.m. and dialed a telephone number he had obtained from the international operator for Kibbutz Gesher in the north of Israel. A cheerful woman answered, “ Boker tov! ”
“And to you,” he said in Hebrew, using his mother tongue for the first time in many years. “I am sorry to bother you. My wife and I are on a holiday in Switzerland.”
“ Good for you. How can I help?”
“ We’re trying to find an old friend who once worked at Kibbutz Gesher as a volunteer, and we’re hoping you still have his contact information.”
“We’ve had many foreign volunteers. When was he here?”
“Maybe five or six years ago. His name is Christopher Ditmahr.”
“Oh, that name I do remember. Tall, skinny, always a happy smile?”
“ That’s him!”
“ How devious they can be.” She sighed. “He’s not someone you want to be friends with.”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me. How did you meet him, anyway?”
Lemmy was ready for the question. “We were on a road trip, passed by your kibbutz, and he was hitchhiking. We gave him a ride to Tel Aviv. I think it was in eighty-nine or ninety, middle of the summer. We had a wonderful chat along the way, stopped for dinner in Haifa, and so on. He told us how much he loved Israel even though he wasn’t Jewish. And he said something about going to work in a Swiss bank. That’s why we thought of touching base with him now, since we’re visiting his country.” Waiting for her reply, he wondered if she believed his story.
“I don’t think you want to touch base with this guy.”
“Why not?”
“We kicked him out.”
“For what reason?”
“We found out he was a skinhead. A Nazi aficionado.”
“Christopher? That’s impossible!”
“He fooled us also. But one of the girls saw it.”
“ It? ”
“He has a tattoo-black swastika and the letters SS.”
“Are you sure?”
“I saw it with my own eyes,” the woman said. “As kibbutz secretary, I had to.”
“ And?”
“ It was right there.”
“Where?”
She chuckled. “When you see him, pull down his pants. You won’t miss it.”
*
Gideon thought of his father’s photograph, hanging on the living room wall at home. It was a face filled with youth and hope. Would Joshua Zahav have wanted his son to serve Israel the same way as he had served? To risk death in a distant, cold land?
At the phone booth on the street corner Gideon asked the operator to dial collect to Paris. Dr. Geloux was in his office. He agreed to ship the cash-filled briefcase to the address Gideon gave him in Tel Aviv. He didn’t ask any questions.
When Gideon put down the receiver, he found several men blocking his way.
The Shin Bet officer, who had introduced himself at the airport as Agent Cohen, pulled a sheet of paper from the breast pocket. “By authority promulgated by the emergency regulations, a decree has been issued to hold you in administrative detention for up to ninety days.”
*
When Christopher arrived at his desk, Lemmy was still contemplating what to do with the shocking information from Kibbutz Gesher. Was his assistant a Nazi mole? It had been fifty years since Germany lost the war, but Nazi organizations continued to flourish in Germany, Austria, Belgium, and some of the Balkan countries. But here in Switzerland? He had always thought of skinheads as a bunch of frustrated racist youths trying to attract attention with shaven scalps and swastika tattoos. Their wrath was directed mostly toward poor immigrants and ethnic minorities, expressed with petty violence and street demonstrations. But obviously they were much more ominous. Was Christopher employed by such a group? Were they after the Koenig fortune?
He pressed the intercom. “Good morning, Christopher. Please come in.”
His assistant entered the office and sat down.
“ Have you thought about Herr Hoffgeitz’s inactive accounts?”
“ What else?” Christopher smiled. “It can’t be anything illegal. I mean, Herr Hoffgeitz would never engage in criminal activity. It could risk the bank’s future.”
And you, Christopher? Are you engaged in criminal activity? Are you a risk to the bank’s future? Lemmy suppressed the hostility that rose inside him. “Perhaps Herr Hoffgeitz knows facts that would protect the bank in case of exposure. But he’s unconscious in the ICU, his recovery in doubt, and I don’t trust Gunter.”
“ He’s very secretive. I don’t think he has a life outside the bank.”
“ Gunter is merely an employee. If there’s trouble, they would look to the executive in charge for answers. That’s me, and I’m concerned. Very concerned.” In fact, Lemmy wasn’t concerned at all. There was no risk of government interference in the bank’s affairs, and according to Elie, the Nazi general had been dead since 1945. “What do you think they’re hiding?”
“Maybe,” Christopher said, “it’s about Recommendation 833?”
Lemmy considered the idea. In 1978, the Council of Europe had adopted what became known as Recommendation 833, which required European countries to share banking information when clients were suspected of international money laundering and tax evasion. Switzerland was not a member of the European Community, and Swiss bankers enjoyed a surge in business.
“ It doesn’t make sense,” Lemmy said. “This money isn’t moving-no withdrawals, no deposits. Why? Tax evaders and criminals use their accounts. We know this from our own clients. Why is this account inactive? Maybe it’s related to Clause 47b?”
“What’s that?” Christopher shifted uncomfortably. He hated being caught unprepared.
“When Hitler came to power, Switzerland added Clause 47b to the 1934 Banking Act. It was aimed at reinforcing secrecy of bank accounts against the competition of bankers from Liechtenstein, in order to attract deposits from German Jews, who at that time thought the new Nazi government was only after their money.”
“Wasn’t there a big case about it?”
“Good memory.” Lemmy gave Christopher an appreciative nod. The Interhandel case involved proceeds from a post-war sale of General Aniline and Film Corporation by the German cartel I.G. Farben, which employed slave labor during the war. The scandal had exposed the Swiss banks as Nazi profiteers.
“At least we’re not like Banque Leclerc.”
“No,” Lemmy chuckled, “we’re not. Our president is dying naturally.” In 1978, the Swiss Banking Commission had shut down Geneva-based Banque Leclerc after the suicide of its CEO and the discovery of another executive floating in Lake Geneva. The investigation had revealed a deficiency of close to 400 million Swiss francs related to a shady resort project.
“I would have thought it’s Jewish money from the war,” Christopher said. “But the Banking Association has recently sent another survey.”
“Only twenty-six banks responded to the questionnaires about dormant accounts.”
“Didn’t they find a lot of money?”
“Peanuts. In September they informed the World Jewish Organization that they had found eight hundred and ninety-three pre-war accounts with a total value of thirty-four point one million U.S. dollars and that they would continue to search. I assure you the Hoffgeitz Bank reported no such accounts.”
“But Herr Hoffgeitz would not lie to the association, would he?”
“ Not blatantly.” Lemmy recalled watching his father-in-law rephrasing his response to the commission to fit the idea that the account was not completely inactive because of a single attempted withdrawal in 1967. But this wasn’t something Christopher should know. “I need you to think creatively. Find a path around Gunter’s secrecy. We must find out what he’s hiding and take control of whatever it is before it becomes a problem for the bank.”
*
The El Al flight from Tel Aviv to Zurich was only half-full, and Tanya managed to sleep for most of the time. She travelled alone, her hair covered with a headscarf, her face behind oversized sunglasses. Passport control was quick at this early hour, and she had no luggage.
She bought a cup of coffee and wandered up and down the terminal, trying to shake off a feeling that she was being watched. The people around her seemed like the typical purposeful travelers, and she could trace no tail. It must have been her own unease, travelling without escort for the first time since she had taken command of Mossad’s European operations a few years earlier.
Tanya found a bank of pay phones. She had committed to memory the telephone number for the Hoffgeitz Bank. There was little to go on-the name of the bank executive who had signed the wire transfer to Senlis, which ultimately resulted in Elie’s successful elimination of Abu Yusuf and the Saudi prince. But she had a hunch that Elie must have planted a mole inside the bank. There was only one way to find out.
*
The phone rang and Lemmy picked it up. “Wilhelm Horch here.”
“ I have a message for you.” It was a woman, speaking German with a Bavarian accent. “From Elie Weiss.”
“Excuse me?” Lemmy watched Christopher get up and leave the office.
“I have a message from Elie Weiss.”
“You have the wrong number.” He heard a click and noticed Christopher’s line light up. Turning to his computer, Lemmy hit the keys for the video surveillance system.
“Aren’t you Herr Horch of the Hoffgeitz Bank in Zurich?”
Lemmy selected the camera in Christopher’s office. On the computer screen, his assistant was holding the receiver to his ear, listening. Lemmy hung up.
On the screen, Christopher put down the receiver.
Two minutes later, the phone rang again. The delay told him that she was probably dialing the general number of the bank and following the automatic directory instructions to reach his line.
He pressed the speaker button. “Yes?”
Behind the wall, Christopher picked up his receiver and listened.
“Don’t hang up.” She had a calm voice, almost familiar.
“ You have the wrong person.”
“Elie Weiss is incapacitated. You must talk to me now. Or would you prefer that I show up in your office?”
“We open at nine a.m., if you’d like to come in.” There was something in her voice that interfered with his clear thinking. But with Christopher on the line, there was no time to hesitate. “Good-bye.” He hung up, went to the door, and opened it.
Christopher’s hand was still on the receiver. He looked up, blushing.
“ Please go downstairs,” Lemmy said, “and ask the account managers to search their client lists for the last name Weiss. Someone called me, and I thought it was a wrong number, but now I realize it could be a client of one of the others-”
“ I can look it up on my computer. Other than Herr Hoffgeitz’s accounts, we have all the account owners’ names in the database.”
“ I already looked,” Lemmy lied. “Perhaps the account is registered to a corporation. The account managers would recognize a name if it’s the trustee or the executive related to the account, even if the name on the account is different.”
The phone started ringing. Christopher reached to answer it.
“ I’ll take it in my office. You go downstairs and ask around.” He waited, watching Christopher leave. Back at his desk, Lemmy answered.
“ Don’t play games with me, Herr Horch.”
“Lindenhof Park,” he said. “It’s at the top end of Oetenbachgasse. Five thirty this evening.”
“That’s better,” she said, and the line went dead.
Lemmy turned to the window. The sky was gray and bleak. He forced himself to think clearly. Elie’s agent, Grant Guerra, had called yesterday with a message that could only come from Elie: Launch CFS! But the woman who had just called could not be speaking for Elie, who would never allow the use of his real name on a phone line. But how did she know Elie’s name and that he was incapacitated? And if she wasn’t part of SOD, who was she? Not an agent for any European law enforcement agency, that was certain, or she would have arrived at the bank for an official meeting, escorted by a Swiss detective, speaking politely and expecting no answers. And an official would not agree to meet at a public park on a drizzly evening.
Was she an agent for Mossad? No. There was no trace of a Hebrew accent in her speech, which he identified as purely native German from Bavaria. And Mossad wouldn’t dare harass a senior Swiss banker in such a direct manner for fear of causing a diplomatic skirmish with Switzerland, which was highly protective of its banks. A Palestinians agent? Unlikely. Judging by her speech and haughty, clipped style of interaction, she was German through and through.
Could she belong to the same Nazi organization as Christopher? Perhaps Elie had crossed swords with them, so to speak, or had even eliminated one of their Nazi elders years ago, causing them to follow him, trace him, and discover his connection to Lemmy. Had they planted Christopher at the Hoffgeitz Bank because of Elie? Was this German woman operating as Christopher’s Nazi handler? That would explain how she knew that Elie was incapacitated: Christopher had told her after eavesdropping on the call from Grant Guerra!
But did it really matter how she knew about Elie or his connection to Lemmy? She endangered his cover as Wilhelm Horch, a successful, respectable banker. Therefore she endangered his life!
Paula and Klaus Junior looked back from the photograph on his desk.
What should he do?
That wasn’t the correct question, which was: What would Elie do?
After almost three decades of working for Elie, Lemmy knew the answer, especially now, as they were finally nearing control of the Koenig fortune, about to launch the most ambitious secret program in the history of the Jewish nation-an end to centuries of anti-Semitic genocide. The order from Elie had been consistent with the mission. Launch CFS! But this German woman was an enemy. There was no doubt what Elie would do in this situation. Eliminate her!
Lemmy looked around his office-the wood furnishings, the Persian rugs, the soft leather chairs, the original paintings on the walls, and the family photographs on his desk. This was his world. The woman posed an existential risk. He must respond in kind. And then it would be Christopher’s turn-force him to divulge his true identity and who he worked for, and then make him pay the ultimate price of betrayal. Perhaps that’s what Elie had meant when ordering Launch CFS! Did Elie know that these modern-day Nazis were on his tail? Did he expect Lemmy’s first action in the Counter Final Solution campaign to be the elimination of Christopher and his cohorts?
Kneeling by the small safe, Lemmy turned the knob left and right until it clicked. He took out the box with the Mauser.
*
The vast plaza in front of the Wailing Wall was mostly in the shade now, as the sun descended behind the rooftops. A late-afternoon breeze picked up. Rabbi Abraham Gerster rocked back and forth in the rear of the group of Neturay Karta men.
Benjamin led the prayers, reading each sentence aloud, pausing for the men to recite the words. “ And we shall continue to mourn, ” Benjamin chanted, “ we shall dwell in sorrow, until God forgives His sheep, until He rebuilds His house on the mountain of His glory, on the ruins of Solomon’s Temple. ”
Repeating the words, Rabbi Gerster looked up at the tall wall of massive stones. Even after so many years, it was hard to believe they could stand so close to the focus of centuries-old Jewish longing. As the leader of Neturay Karta, he had started this weekly prayer tradition back in 1948, after the War of Independence had left Jerusalem divided, with the Old City in Jordanian hands. Every Friday afternoon, he had led the men to a hill by the border, where they had prayed in view of Temple Mount. In 1967, the Six Day War drove the Jordanians back across the Jordan River, and Rabbi Gerster had turned the Friday afternoon prayer of longing into a Friday afternoon prayer of gratitude at the Wailing Wall. And when Benjamin had taken over as the sect’s leader, he had put his own stamp on this tradition, modifying it yet again into a prayer for the rebuilding of the temple.
But for Rabbi Gerster, this special time of the week-the hours before the commencement of the Sabbath-was a time of reflection about a past that had grown more painful with time. He thought of those early Fridays on the hill by the border, when Lemmy was a toddler, light as a feather, happy in his father’s strong arms atop the huge boulder, with the Jordanian-occupied Old City spread before them, the ancient walls and the Tower of David in reddish-brown, glowing in the twilight. The prayers had been mournful back then, but the days had been happy, Lemmy a blonde boy who loved his daddy with complete, unblemished adoration.
“ Rabbi?” Benjamin took his arm. The prayer was over, time to walk back to Meah Shearim and receive the Sabbath. “Are you feeling all right?”
“ Thank God, yes.” He smiled at Benjamin. “And you?”
They followed the group up the ramp, away from the Wailing Wall.
“ I’m worried,” Benjamin said.
“ Why?”
He helped Rabbi Gerster up a set of stairs. “Perhaps we can take you to a doctor?”
“ There’s nothing wrong with me, other than the fact that I’m getting old.”
They reached the top of the stairs and followed the road that circled the Old City along the walls. A group of tourists surrounded their guide, who gestured at the firing slats in the ancient battlements, his Spanish rapid and melodic. A few of the tourists stared at the ultra-Orthodox group as if it were part of Jerusalem’s quaint attractions.
“ I’m worried, because you disappear for hours at a time, and Sorkeh complains that the food she brings for you is left untouched.” Years ago, the rabbi had given his apartment to Benjamin and moved into an alcove off the foyer of the synagogue, which did not have a kitchen.
“ Tell me something,” Rabbi Gerster said. “As my heir, my successor in leading Neturay Karta, can you point to the primary lesson I have taught you, to the fundamental idea, the consistent thread of light in the chaos of faith?”
“ That’s an odd question.”
“ What is the single most important thing that I expect you to perpetuate as Neturay Karta’s leader?”
“ The value of shalom?”
“ Go on.”
“ To maintain peace among our people,” Benjamin said, “even when we see blasphemy, even when we see the secular Israelis breach the most sacred teachings of God-drive cars on the Sabbath or dig up sacred graves in search of archeological evidence of a past that we already know existed as written in the Torah. We pray, we show them an example of a life of virtue, and we protest loudly. But we don’t raise a hand against a fellow Jew, albeit a sinner.”
The curve in the road took them around a corner. To the west, only the top edge of the sun still glistened above the skyline.
Rabbi Gerster stopped and made Benjamin face him. “You are a good student. A good Jew. And a good rabbi. Now, do you trust me?”
Benjamin nodded.
“ Then stop worrying. My efforts continue to be dedicated to this task of keeping Jews from hurting each other. That’s all you need to know.”
They turned into Shivtay Israel Street. Down by the gate of Meah Shearim, a woman stood by a car, waiting. Rabbi Gerster recognized Itah Orr. He would have stumbled, if not for Benjamin grabbing his elbow. She wore pants and a sweatshirt, and her hair was not covered.
The men murmured, “ Shanda! Shanda! ” One of them picked up a soda can from the gutter and raised it threateningly.
*
Taking a train from the airport to Zurich’s main rail station, Tanya walked the streets, thinking of her next steps. After meeting Herr Horch, she would continue on to Paris tonight, where her team was engaged in tracking every piece of information related to the recent spate of Palestinian violence. Unlike the French police, Mossad wasn’t interested in catching the perpetrators but in discouraging those who aspired to step into the shoes of Al-Mazir and Abu Yusef. Prime Minister Rabin had issued clear orders to prevent further terrorist attacks, which were turning a disillusioned Israeli public against the peace process.
The tip from the Mossad informant in the French police was intriguing, and she was eager to learn what Herr Horch really knew about Elie Weiss. It had been a stroke of luck that the bank manager in Senlis recognized the news photos of Abu Yusef’s corpse and connected it to the large wire transfer signed by Herr Horch of the Hoffgeitz Bank of Zurich. She had also learned that Armande Hoffgeitz was recovering from a heart attack while Herr Horch ran the bank in his absence. She remembered Armande, who had been Klaus von Koenig’s best friend. The last time they met, at the Swiss-German border crossing, Armande Hoffgeitz was a chubby thirty-four-year-old banker, lounging in the rear of his Rolls-Royce, congratulating himself for getting richer from a war that had destroyed most other people. It was odd to think of him as an old man with a bad heart. Should she visit him in the hospital? She chuckled. Seeing her would surely give him another heart attack.
But this was no time for nostalgia. Tanya was alarmed by the involvement of the Hoffgeitz Bank. This was a development she had to pursue herself. To her team she had reasoned that Herr Horch was more likely to open up to a woman than to a whole group of Mossad agents. Their time was better spent in Paris, tracking down the festering opposition to Arafat and the Oslo process. But the real reason she was doing it alone was the risk of exposure. No one at Mossad knew of her teenage relationship with the Nazi general or of the fortune he had left with Armande Hoffgeitz. There was little risk that Herr Horch would somehow make that connection, but even a small risk was too much for her to take. How could she justify to the chief of Mossad keeping such a secret throughout her decades-long career with the Israeli secret service? But even more crucial was her fear for Bira. It was one thing to grow up without a father, his absence justified with a fictional story of a brief relationship and a death in the war. But to be identified as the daughter of Himmler’s deputy, Oberstgruppenfuhrer Klaus von Koenig, a top Nazi whose hands were covered with the blood of millions of Jews? The ramifications of such disclosure were too horrific to consider. It would ruin Bira completely.
Tanya had taken a gamble by mentioning Elie Weiss on the phone, but the Swiss banker’s rudeness in repeatedly hanging up revealed that he recognized Elie’s name. And his suggestion to meet with her away from the bank was another indication that he knew the clandestine nature of Elie’s business. He was clever to suggest a public park in a quiet neighborhood-a safe location for a rendezvous with a woman he didn’t want to be seen with. Tanya would have preferred a cafe on a side street near Bahnhofstrasse, where she would be warm and dry. In general, it was safer to meet an informer in a public place, where the presence of strangers reduced the danger of outright violence.
It was unusual for her to wander around a European city without her escorts. But the vice president of an old Zurich bank did not pose a security risk. He was probably a younger version of Armande Hoffgeitz-overweight, bespectacled, and morally pragmatic. The only attack he was likely to engage in was a panic attack, and she had already planned the conversation to put him at ease. She had no intention of causing him or the bank any trouble-as long as they cooperated fully.
Her goals were simple. She had to assert the rights of the State of Israel in stepping into the shoes of Elie Weiss as a client of the Hoffgeitz Bank. She carried basic credentials-a power-of-attorney with Elie’s forged signature and a letter from a physician at Hadassah Hospital confirming Elie’s incapacitating emphysema. He might have used a false identity in his relationship with the bank, but Herr Horch’s reaction proved he knew who Elie Weiss was. She assumed that Elie had also kept a safety deposit box with the bank. Finding a complete list of SOD agents would cut short an exhaustive investigation. And there was the issue of Klaus von Koenig and his fortune. Had Elie taken it over? Had he already spent much of it? Today she would have the answers. She expected Herr Horch to resist at first, but she would make him understand that he had to work with her rather than wait for a sick man in Jerusalem who wasn’t coming back.
The rain intensified, and Tanya took shelter near a jewelry store. A tray of wrist watches and chained timepieces filled a whole window display. Inside, a jeweler in a three-piece suit noticed her through the window and smiled. There was something in his posture and blue eyes that reminded her of Abraham Gerster, and Tanya found herself searching his fingers for a wedding ring.
Don’t be silly!
She turned and walked into the rain, following the directions she had memorized to Lindenhof Park.
*
“ Stop it!” Benjamin hurried over and took the empty Coke can from the man’s hand. But Itah Orr had already drawn a canister from a belt holster and pointed it at them. “You want some pepper spray? Do you?”
The men lowered the brims of their black hats and entered the gate. But Rabbi Gerster approached Itah, holding his hands up in feigned surrender.
“Bastards!” She holstered her pepper spray. “They’re lucky I have bigger problems right now.”
“Rabbi?” Benjamin lingered at the gate. “Sabbath is about to start.”
“Sabbath will wait another moment,” Rabbi Gerster said. “Itah Orr, please meet Rabbi Benjamin Mashash, the leader of Neturay Karta and a man of peace, like me.”
The reporter extended her hand, then pulled it back. “Sorry. I forgot women are too dirty to touch.”
“It’s not about cleanliness,” Benjamin said, “but about preventing unnecessary temptation for men, whose self-control is poorer than women’s.”
“Thanks for the double compliment,” Itah said. “I can see why you’ve been anointed.”
“Go ahead.” Rabbi Gerster patted Benjamin’s shoulder. “I’ll be a few minutes.”
Benjamin obeyed, glancing over his shoulder as he walked away.
The rabbi gestured at her outfit. “Thanks for complicating my life.”
“You took the words out of my mouth.” Itah looked up and down the street. “They’re after me. And they’ll be after you if they find out we talked.”
“Who’s after you? The boys from ILOT?”
“Worse.” She led him across the street and into a doorway of an apartment building. “I managed to give them the slip, but they’ll find me again, I know it.”
“Tell me everything.”
“My friend works for the Commissioner of Banks at the Ministry of the Treasury. She has access to the database of every bank. I went to her office and we ran searches for Yoni Adiel. There were several people with that name, and we had to weed out the wrong ones by age, occupation, and so on. We eventually found the right one. He’s paying tuition at Bar Ilan University out of his account, so we knew it’s him. But we got screwed because it’s a tripping account.”
“ What’s that?”
“ Like a trip wire. If someone steps on it-electronically speaking-an alarm goes off, and nasty people come after you.”
“ You’re exaggerating the Israeli government’s efficiency.” Rabbi Gerster chuckled. “Maybe someone would call your friend to ask why she looked at the account, but there’s no way they’ll mobilize a surveillance team for something so benign.”
“ Obviously it’s not benign.”
A car engine sounded outside, and they peeked to see a white sedan with darkened windows cruise down Shivtay Israel Street, which was otherwise quiet in the minutes preceding the commencement of the Sabbath.
“ Damn!” Itah pushed him back inside, where the darkness made them invisible to the people in the car. “They found me!”
“ Impossible,” Rabbi Gerster said. “How would anyone know you’re here?”
“ They must have put a tracer on my car. It’s parked around the block.” Itah stuck her head outside. “They’re gone for now, but I can’t go back to my car.” She handed him a stack of papers held together with a rubber band. “That law student, Yoni Adiel, has an account at the Bank Hapoalim branch in Herzlia, which is where his parents live. Top three pages, here.” She flipped through the stack. “His account gets a monthly transfer of funds from an account at Bank Leumi, which belongs to Freckles. Here.” She showed him a sheet with numbers. “And Freckles’ account gets frequent cash deposits, as well as a regular monthly paycheck from a multi-signature account.”
Rabbi Gerster went through the stack, finding a page with tiny print that showed a copy of the signature requirements on an account. There were three sample scribbles. The account owner was listed as a series of numbers and letters. “What does it mean?”
“ It’s a government account. You remember the embezzlement scandal last year at the Ministry of Defense, with the fake acquisitions of light weapons?”
“ So?”
“ The Knesset passed legislation requiring each government agency to set up expenditure approval panels.”
“ Of three officials each.”
“ Correct. Freckles has been getting regular paychecks from a government account for the past ten years. And the fact that the agency’s name doesn’t appear on the account means that it’s one of the secret services. Conclusion: Freckles has been a government agent for nine years!”
“ Shin Bet?”
“ Probably. Now look at this.” She turned a few more pages. “Copies of checks Freckles gave to Rina Printing Ltd. It’s a small shop in the Talpiot industrial area. Looks like nothing, but I sifted through the trash in the back and found leftover copies of some ugly right-wing propaganda.”
“ For example?”
“ The poster that shows Prime Minister Rabin in Heinrich Himmler’s SS uniform. Another shows him in a checkered kafiya. And a bunch of stickers: Rabin = Rodef! Government of Traitors! Rabin is a Terrorist! Do you understand?”
“ There are several possible explanations. But I guess we have to assume that Freckles is an agent-provocateur. The Shin Bet gives him money to operate the fundamentalist ILOT group, print provocative anti-Rabin posters and stickers, and hand out money to activists such as Yoni Adiel. They’re probably gearing up for the Likud rally on Saturday night.”
“ And look at this.” She showed him a page listing deposits into Freckles’ account. “He’s enjoying not only the government’s generosity, but some serious cash deposits.”
“ What’s the FF next to each deposit?”
“ French francs,” Itah said. “Someone besides the Shin Bet is giving him tens of thousands in cash every couple of months, which he uses for the same right-wing provocations.”
“ It’s probably the old sponsor that Yoni’s girlfriend told me about. That’s how Freckles explains the money to Yoni and the other ILOT members without telling them he’s also in the pay of Shin Bet.” Rabbi Gerster didn’t say more, but he was certain now that the money was coming from Elie Weiss. The two knew each other-the stocky young man leading the demonstration by the prime minister’s residence was Freckles, who had given Elie the thumbs up. Rabbi Gerster wondered if the dark-skinned youth with the sign 1936 Berlin = 1995 Oslo had been Yoni Adiel. And what was Elie up to with these young men anyway?
“ This is explosive,” Itah said. “The government finances right-wing militant activities, which taints the whole political right wing as anti-government fanatics!”
“ It’s not the first time a government used an agent-provocateur to delegitimize the opposition.”
“ But does the sponsor from Paris know that Freckles is also a government agent?”
“ In other words, you think Freckles is a double agent?”
“ Yes, but Yoni Adiel and the others have no idea that Freckles is anything but a fellow right winger.” Itah showed him another paper. “And I found out how they met. This is an earlier statement from Yoni Adiel’s account, and this is from Freckles’ account, about the same time. My friend managed to pull out past history in both accounts. It’s from a period before online banking and the advent of personal computers, so the government didn’t bother to hide the agency’s name. It appears that the two had worked together for another agency before going to the university, drawing regular paychecks. Look at these entries.”
Holding the pages side-by-side against the dim light from the doorway, Rabbi Gerster saw entries that fell on the first or second day of each month for two years. The notations said: Sherut Bitachon Klali, Hebrew for General Security Service, otherwise known as Shin Bet. Smaller letters in parentheses read: YLI. “What’s this acronym?”
“ I also wondered, so I looked it up.” She took a deep breath. “YLI stands for Yechida Le’Avtachat Ishim.”
“ The VIP Protection Unit?”
“ Correct. Freckles and Yoni Adiel had worked for Shin Bet together, guarding VIPs for two years. Imagine the operational knowledge they accumulated, the familiarity with security procedures, even the lingo.”
The VIP Protection Unit! Rabbi Gerster felt a sensation he had not experienced since hiding with Elie in the attic of the butcher shop while the Nazis slaughtered their families. It took him a moment to recognize the sensation, which resembled a flush of cold water through his veins: Fear.
*
Lemmy left the bank early, wrapped in his coat and a soft hat with a narrow brim. He had fitted the silencer to the Mauser, which he carried under the coat against his right hip. From Bahnhofstrasse he veered left into the Rennweg, then to Fortunagasse, a narrow, uphill alley lined with one-story, well-preserved medieval houses-a sharp contrast from the stately splendor of Bahnhofstrasse. The rubber soles of his shoes paced silently on the wet cobblestones.
At the top of the hill, a low stone embankment surrounded Lindenhof Park. Light rain curtained off the views. He passed among trees whose thin, bare branches simulated spider webs, spread wide to trap the unwary. Farther in, he zigzagged between black-and-white checkered squares and hip-high chess pieces, which waited in pre-game rows for springtime. Before marrying Paula, he had lived in an apartment building on the opposite hillside, which offered fair weather views of Lindenhof Park and its chess boards. Years later, he had brought Klaus Junior here to play a long and cheerful game on one of the giant boards.
But today the views were masked by rain and fog, which turned the park into a trap with a single entrance and limited opportunities for anyone seeking to hide. If the German woman attempted to bring reinforcement, Lemmy was confident he could pick them off as easily as ducks in a pond.
The ground under his feet was hard and bare, no grass or flowers. The fallen leaves had been cleared away, the lines of rake teeth drawn finely in the earth. He approached the edge, where a water fountain was topped by an armored statue. Far below, the Limmat River snaked between the hills of Zurich. Should he push the woman over the low wall at the edge instead of shooting her? The police would be less suspicious of foul play. But what if she didn’t die? No. A bullet to the head would provide finality. The Mauser was tried and proven, a reliable tool that made him confident of the outcome, almost like a good-luck charm he had inherited-in fact, had stolen-from his father.
The wind picked up, the drops prickling his face like icicles. He slipped his hands into the coat pockets. His right hand touched the Mauser. His breath turned white from the cold.
He scanned the park. No one was around. A squat building was all that was left from the ancient Roman citadel. He imagined the steel-clad sentinels scanning the horizon, their alarm upon detecting invaders advancing from the distant, snowy peaks.
The gas lamps came on, shedding circles of yellow light on the ground. Lemmy sat on the low wall and looked down the cliff. He was not prone to height anxiety, but it occurred to him that his whole life was now teetering at the edge of an abyss.
A set of spotlights around the fountain illuminated the statue, and he realized it was a woman in black armor, a steel sword tied to her belt, a flag held up in her iron hand. A brass plaque told of Zurich’s brave women, who had saved their city from the Hapsburg Army in 1292 by stripping the armor from their dead husbands and marching to Lindenhof. From across the Limmat, the enemy mistook the women for a reinforcement army and retreated. Lemmy saw in the steel face of the armored woman a determined expression, unafraid of the enemy gathered across the river. He heard marching, and it took him a moment to realize it was the real-life sound of a pair of advancing boots.
The woman’s pace was fast and decisive. She was small, enshrouded in a long, buttoned coat, a dark scarf tied around her head. Her face was covered with large sunglasses despite the weather.
His fingers clenched the Mauser. Was she the caller, here to meet with him?
She passed in and out of the circles of light, approaching him in a manner that removed any doubt. She was not a casual visitor to the park. She was the target.
He tilted the weapon under his coat, the silencer aimed at the advancing figure. He scanned the park, seeing no one else. She was alone.
The rain intensified, drowning all other sounds, blurring his vision. The lower half of her face, under the sunglasses, stood out in its whiteness. He would start with a stomach shot-fatal, but not immediately-and after questioning her, complete the job with a bullet to the head. If she implicated Christopher, it would shorten the time Lemmy would need to interrogate his traitorous assistant.
His forefinger rested on the trigger.
The distance between them narrowed quickly.
He took a deep breath and stepped away from the water fountain, out of the pool of light.
The target kept walking.
He lowered the tip of the silencer, aligning it with her midriff.
Her pace slowed. Did she notice his hand in the pocket, the bulging coat over the pointed gun?
His finger began to press the trigger.
She made a quick move that brought her purse from the side to the front. He couldn’t see her hand. Was she reaching for a gun?
The target entered the range of a gas lamp.
The Mauser in his hand adjusted slightly to account for the narrowing distance, lined up with her stomach. Lemmy exhaled, relaxing his muscles while his finger applied growing pressure on the trigger. At this point it became harder to press, a tiny steel bump to signal that the hammer was about to be released to knock on the pin, which would tap the base of the bullet. The exploding charge would shoot a cap of brass at high speed into her flesh. A stomach wound with this caliber would give her ten minutes of life, enough to reveal the information he needed.
The target stopped. “Herr Horch, I presume?”
Again, the same as on the phone, her voice unsettled him, like noticing a face on the street, reminiscent of someone he knew, like the target in Paris, who had Benjamin’s smile.
Concentrate!
Lemmy’s finger applied delicate force, avoiding an abrupt pull that would shift the perfect aim at her chest-
“ The weather has turned against us, hasn’t it?” She resumed walking toward him.
Her voice-closer, louder, clearer-hit him with shocking familiarity. It drew his gaze upward to the target’s face, his hand instinctively following the sudden movement of his eyes, shifting the Mauser sharply just as his finger completed its travel backward. The hammer sprang, the Mauser jerked against his hip, the lapel of his coat blew sideways, and the muted pop of the shot tapped on his ears.
The woman collapsed. Her sunglasses fell off, her face suddenly visible, and Lemmy heard his own voice speak in wonder. “Tanya?”
*
Rabbi Gerster led Itah Orr up the stairs to Benjamin’s apartment. When Sorkeh opened the door, he said, “A guest shouldn’t bring a guest, but this friend needs a safe place to stay until after the Sabbath.”
“Of course,” Sorkeh said. “Come in, please, welcome. We love having guests for the Sabbath.”
The little ones, clinging to her skirt, looked up with big eyes. Even they could tell that the woman in immodest clothes and exposed hair did not belong in Neturay Karta, that something out of the ordinary was going on even though the adults were pretending otherwise.
“ Thank you.” Entering the foyer, Itah’s gaze rested on the single photo on the wall. She approached it, squinting at the small letters. “Your son?”
“ Yes,” he said, “that’s my Jerusalem.”
“ A handsome soldier.”
“ That’s nothing,” Sorkeh said. “He was much more handsome in real life. And a brilliant Talmudic scholar. But God had different plans for him. How mysterious His ways are.” She caressed her little daughter’s head.
“ Lemmy is with God now,” Rabbi Gerster said. “Forever young.”
Itah gave him a questioning look.
“ I must hurry to the synagogue for evening prayers,” he said. “You’ll be fine here.”
The two women, surrounded by the young children, went into the dining room to prepare the table for the Friday night dinner.
Heading back downstairs, Rabbi Gerster thought how good a wife Sorkeh was for Benjamin, as she would have been a good wife to Lemmy. If not for Tanya’s irresistible allure, which had drawn Lemmy away, this apartment would have passed to Lemmy, who would have filled it with his own children. How would it feel to have grandchildren, Rabbi Gerster wondered. Wonderful? Joyous? Normal? But it wasn’t meant to be, and time had taken the edge off the pain and anger. He no longer blamed Tanya. She had taken Lemmy as a substitute because she couldn’t have the man she truly loved, and when he did change his mind, it was too late. What if he had agreed immediately to leave his wife and son and this sect of misguided zealots for Tanya? What if he had dropped everything on the day of her reappearance in October 1966 and joined Tanya, the woman he truly loved?
What if?
A hypothetical world of dreams. In reality, by his foolish decision he had doomed his wife and son-practically sent Temimah and Lemmy to their death.
*
The bullet tore off her headscarf and knocked her down, but it didn’t kill her, Tanya knew, because she could still see Herr Horch. He approached her and stooped over, staring down. His next shot would be at point blank to ensure her demise. She managed to speak. “No need…for violence.”
He knelt next to her and pressed a handkerchief to the side of her head. “Sit up,” he said. “It’ll reduce the bleeding.”
She held his arm and sat up slowly, unsure of his intentions. Her decision to come here alone had clearly been a fatal miscalculation. But why would a respectable Swiss banker resort to shooting? It made no sense!
“ It’s just a scrape,” he said. “You’re very lucky. I never miss.”
“ Don’t do…anything foolish.” She closed her eyes to stop the world from spinning. “My colleagues…will come after you. They’re big…on revenge.”
“ I know.”
“ Why did you…shoot me?”
“You don’t recognize me, Tanya?”
He knew her name?
She opened her eyes and examined the man’s face in the yellow light of the park lamp. He had a pleasant, handsome face, short, blonde hair with a few strands of gray, and blue eyes that radiated intelligence. She touched his face, her fingers feeling his wet forehead, the creases by his eyes, the strong jaw, the soft lips.
“ You haven’t changed much,” he said.
“ No!” She withdrew her hand from his face and tried to crawl away. “ No! ”
He smiled, and her remaining doubts went away. It was him!
She was cold. The world was dark and wet around her, not white like the hospital. But she had the same out-of-body feeling. “Am I dead?”
“That’s right. We both died and went to Zurich.” He put his arms around her and pressed her shivering body against his. “Or heaven. Who the hell knows anymore?”
Tanya was paralyzed. Her hands fell beside her body, her face buried in his coat.
He held her. “It’s okay. It’s really me. Your little Lemmy.”
She began to cry.
*
When Rabbi Gerster entered the synagogue, the men were reciting the Song of Songs, a long poem that King Solomon had written three millennia earlier. “ How beautiful you are, my betrothed, how beautiful, your eyes like doves.”
On Friday evenings, the betrothed was the Sabbath, Solomon’s verses recited to welcome the holy day. “ Like a rose among the weeds, my beloved among the women. ”
He found Benjamin by a bookcase along the side wall, perusing a heavy volume. “I brought Itah to your apartment. She needs a place to hide. It’s my fault. I asked her to look into things that were better left undisturbed. Now some people are upset with her.”
Behind them, the men continued reciting. “ Your curls, a thick herd of goats, skipping down the slopes of the Gilead, your teeth, like scrubbed sheep, perfectly aligned, without a blemish. ”
“With my family?” Benjamin closed the book. “Is it safe?”
“For now,” Rabbi Gerster said, “it is safe.”
*
Lemmy helped Tanya to a park bench by the water fountain. The rain had stopped, and she gazed at him through a curtain of tears. “I don’t understand.”
“ It’s simple. I work for Elie.”
“ But why?”
His eyes wandered away. “Why not?”
“You were a kid. Your whole life was ahead of you.”
“I’ve been living my life, a great life, in fact. My mission has given me a meaningful existence-”
“ To work for Elie Weiss is meaningful? ”
He felt her trembling under his arm. “I was eighteen, and he offered me a chance to dedicate my life to our national survival, to fight for something I believed in.”
“Do you still believe it?”
“I do. Elie’s plan is the only way to end anti-Semitism once and for all. Eradicate Jew-hating with true finality.”
Tanya saw the conviction in his eyes, still young and idealistic, the eyes she remembered from so many years ago. Young Lemmy, the boy from Neturay Karta, the avid reader, with his endless questions, with so much passion. “But how?”
“You remember the UN radar at Government House in East Jerusalem?”
“ In sixty-seven? Of course. That radar would have detected our planes as they took off, and the UN would have alerted the Arabs, cost us the element of surprise, probably the whole war.”
Lemmy smiled. “I detonated the installation right under the UN chief’s nose. But they later captured me and handed me over to the Jordanians for execution. Elie saved me, shipped me to Europe, and arranged a substitute corpse to be found on the Golan Heights with my ID tags but otherwise too mutilated for identification. Do you remember the aftermath of the Six Day War? Euphoria and a huge mess. No one knew what was going on.”
“ But what really happened?”
“ I assumed the life of a German boy whose parents died in a fire. Wilhelm Horch had died too, but Elie had the records altered as if Wilhelm had survived. My German was pretty good already, having grown up speaking Yiddish. Elie had an old lawyer in Munich become my guardian and send me to Lyceum Alpin St. Nicholas, a boarding school in the Alps.”
“ It’s not a coincidence that Elie sent you there. Armande Hoffgeitz and Klaus von Koenig studied there together, became friends.”
“ It’s a great school, fancy old buildings, great facilities, and wonderful teachers. I was supposed to be sixteen, so I stayed there for three years, made friends, and during school holidays Elie trained me.”
“While we mourned you.”
“You rejected me, remember? Told me I was too young for you. Sent me to live with Bira and her friends.”
“ For your own good, yes, but-”
“ But what? I was eighteen, alone in the world. Eighteen! ”
Tanya sighed. “I remember how old you were. And even if you were older, you would have been no match for Elie Weiss. He’s too clever, even for me.”
“He taught me how to blend in, how to court the right girl, how to plan ahead. It has worked like a clock. I married and joined the Hoffgeitz Bank under the tutelage of my father-in-law.”
“What did you say?”
“Armande Hoffgeitz is Paula’s father.”
“Oh, no!”
“ And we have a son. Klaus Junior.”
“ Klaus?” A look of horror took over Tanya’s face. “This is a nightmare.”
“ My work is very important. I’ve developed clients in the Middle East, oil-rich sheiks and so on. They give money to terrorist groups, I trace it, report to Elie, and-”
“ I know how it works. But that’s a red herring. Elie didn’t recruit you to spy on Arab sheiks. Or to assassinate them. He recruited you with the single purpose of gaining control of the bank.”
“ Eventually.” Lemmy shrugged. “Family relations are the only way to power in a Swiss private bank.”
“ So Elie told you to marry a Swiss sausage to get to the cheese.”
“ Initially it was a calculated move. But I didn’t have to pretend for long. Paula is wonderful. I’ve grown to love her very much.”
Tanya closed her eyes. “Jerusalem Gerster loves Armande Hoffgeitz’s daughter. This is absolutely insane.”
“Jealous?”
“You haven’t lost your sense of humor.” She searched his eyes for a long moment. “How could you do this?”
“What? Marry Paula?”
“Marrying for duty is in your genes. Your father made the same mistake.”
“ Say again?”
Tanya made a dismissive gesture. “How could you leave Israel, leave your life, your language, your friends? How could you turn into somebody else?”
Lemmy thought for a moment. “Elie saved my life. He offered me a great mission that will change the future of our people. And anyway, there was no one to stay for.”
“No one?” Tanya looked at him incredulously. “Your father!”
“Rabbi Abraham Gerster? The saint who excommunicated me, made me into a pariah, drove my mother to suicide?” Lemmy sneered. “My father was a fanatical jerk, and he hated me.”
“Don’t say that.” Tanya’s voice broke. “Abraham loved you. He still does-”
“Oh please! He didn’t even bother to attend my funeral!”
“That’s what Elie told you?”
“Yes.”
“Elie lied to you.” Tanya rose from the bench. “Your father cried at your funeral. At least what we thought was your funeral.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I was there with Bira and your paratrooper buddies. And your father fell on your grave, broken up. And he’s been crying on your grave ever since, for twenty-eight years.” She paused, her hand pressed to her chest. “And I’ve been crying there too.” Her voice choked and her eyes became wet again. “I planted a few-”
“Shhh, it’s okay.” Lemmy hugged her. The rain had stopped, the clouds began to disperse, and patches of blue appeared in the darkening sky.
“You didn’t die, but you did lose your life.” Tanya blew her nose into a handkerchief. “It’s my fault. All of it. Everything that happened to you and Abraham and your poor mother, all my fault. I’m a stupid, stupid woman!”
“You’re making no sense. How could it be your fault?”
“ It goes way back, long before you were born. If you knew the real Elie Weiss, you wouldn’t follow him. He was raised to be a shoykhet, to slaughter livestock in the same village in Germany where your father grew up as the rabbi’s son. The two of them watched the SS murder their families. They spent three years in the forests, coming out only to kill Germans and steal food.”
“ And you?”
“ For me the war had started on a train ride to Dachau, where a handsome Nazi general plucked me out of the line before the gas chambers. It’s a long story, but Klaus von Koenig loved me as truly as it was possible under those circumstances. He was Himmler’s chief of finance-”
“Chief of looting.”
“Yes, he also handled the valuables they stripped from the Jews. He deposited most of the gems and jewelry with Armande Hoffgeitz, his high-school buddy.”
“But how did you connect with Elie and my father?”
“On the first night of 1945, my seventeenth birthday, I was in the car with Klaus, returning from the Swiss border. He was driving down a narrow, twisty Alpine road. They ambushed us. Your father shot Klaus.” She pointed at the Mauser, which Lemmy still held in his hand. “But I had the only proof of the deposits-a ledger that Armande Hoffgeitz had signed. Klaus had given it to me for safekeeping.” Tanya looked away at the Limmat River and the hills beyond. “That night, in the snowy Alps, while Klaus’s body was still warm, I fell in love with your father-a different love, more like a tornado that swirled both of us into its epicenter. We spent three months together. But one day Elie returned alone and told me that Abraham was dead, that a group of Germans had sprayed your father with bullets until Abraham looked like a red sieve.”
“ And you believed him?”
“ You’ve seen Elie work with his blade, so you know why I didn’t question him. That night, when he fell asleep, I ran. And ran. I gave birth to Bira a few months later in a refugee camp-”
“ Does she know?”
“ What?”
“ That her father was a Nazi general?”
Tanya smiled as if the question was a joke. “She didn’t need a father. All the other Mossad agents missed their kids, so Bira was everyone’s darling. You see, I joined the Mossad so that Elie wouldn’t find me.”
“ But he did?”
“ More than twenty years later. In sixty-six I was decorated for a successful operation, and he saw my name on a list at the prime minister’s office. It was bound to happen. Bira was already grown, serving in the IDF, and I was no longer afraid of Elie. Big mistake, as it turned out.”
Lemmy removed the handkerchief from the wound, which had stopped bleeding, and wiped the rain and tears from her cheeks. He noticed another bruise on her head, a week or two old, but didn’t ask her about it.
“ Abraham had somehow survived the Germans’ bullets. Apparently, to explain my disappearance, Elie had told Abraham that I was dead-do you see a pattern here? And my purported death so devastated your father that Elie was able to convince him to dedicate his life to serving Israel secretly. Abraham had been groomed to be a rabbi, so he infiltrated the most fundamentalist ultra-Orthodox sect in Israel, where anti-Zionist ideology was the seed of future civil war among Jews. He joined Neturay Karta in nineteen forty-six and married your mother. Having a son named after the divided city of Jerusalem added to his mystic aura, and with his charisma and brilliant mind, Abraham Gerster ascended to the leadership of the sect.”
“ I don’t believe it,” Lemmy said. “My father was sincere in his fanatical faith. What you’re saying is impossible. My father was a mole?”
“ That’s exactly what he was. Still is. Elie had recruited many other moles. That’s his expertise. Look at you!”
“No.” Lemmy stood up. “It can’t be. My father was a real tzadik. Elie told me that my father banished me, sat shivah in mourning for me, because I rejected Talmud-”
“Elie told you? Elie lied to you! And to me! He broke our deal!”
“What deal?”
“In sixty-seven, I gave him Klaus’s bank ledger in exchange for him ordering your father to let you leave Neturay Karta and become a normal Israeli.” She bent over, as if about to be sick. “I made a deal with the devil. And I got my just reward. Hell! ”
He helped her sit up. “I don’t understand.”
Tanya sighed. “When Elie found me, he told me Abraham was alive in Jerusalem. I came to your apartment-”
“ I remember that Sabbath.”
“ Yes. It was on a Sabbath. I begged him to leave Neturay Karta, to shave his beard and payos, and return to me. It was nineteen sixty-seven, and we were still young, not even forty. We could still have a life together. But he refused. Your father was committed to his mission, feared that without him the sect would engage in fundamentalist violence. And he felt a duty to your mother and to you. I was devastated. And angry. So I-”
“Seduced his son?”
“It wasn’t a rational process,” Tanya said. “You looked exactly the way Abraham had looked back in nineteen forty-five. For me it was like going back in time, a chance to reunite with a young Abraham through you. I convinced myself I was doing you a favor, saving you from the ultra-Orthodox prison he had confined you to. And I succeeded! You saw the outside world and embraced it, and Elie got Klaus’s ledger and instructed Abraham to let you leave the sect.”
“ Let me leave? He banished me in the synagogue, in front of the whole sect! They almost lynched me!”
“ Your father had no choice but to publicly excommunicate you. It was necessary for his credibility in the sect. And you did fine, joining the army, becoming a healthy, happy Israeli paratrooper. I was so proud of you. But then-”
“I died heroically?”
“But then Elie played the same old trick!” She took his hands. “All those years, you were alive. I can’t believe it. How could you do this?”
“ What choice did I have? Under my circumstances, Elie’s offer was enticing.”
“ You’re right.” Tanya’s voice broke. “It’s my fault. I caused this to happen.”
“Don’t blame yourself for my decision to serve-”
“You were a pawn!” Tanya stood, her voice suddenly filled with anger. “The three of us-Abraham, me, and Elie-we each had our own designs on you, young Jerusalem Gerster. We each had our own selfish agenda, cloaked in good intentions, to guard little Lemmy against the other two.”
“ But I made my own decision to read the books you gave me, to pursue you, to make love to you, to leave Neturay Karta-all were my choices! Mine alone!”
“ Please, don’t yell.” She saw his anger and understood it. How could he accept that his life had been manipulated by three Holocaust survivors locked in a twisted triangle of love, hate, and misguided patriotism? How could he admit that he had paid so dearly for the sins of others?
“I chose to join Elie, and I don’t regret it.”
“ It wasn’t an informed choice. You were a naive adolescent. We played with your life. Your father intended to shelter you from reality, keep you in the sect, groom you to Talmudic stardom, but his selfish agenda was to install you as leader so he could become free from a life of lies. And me? I wanted to protect you from Neturay Karta’s fanatical ideology, to set you free, to save you from a future of ignorance and enslavement to the tyranny of religious oppression, but my selfish agenda was to lure you into my orbit, to possess you because I couldn’t have your father. And Elie’s stated goal was to give you an opportunity to serve the nation heroically in a role that required a German-looking, bright youth to be planted as a mole in Switzerland, to chase the biggest Nazi loot, which in turn would be used for his grand scheme of Counter Final Solution. But Elie could have recruited someone else. His selfish motivation was to punish Abraham and me for loving each other, to separate us forever by guilt and grief, and he succeeded. I should have warned you about Elie. I can see it now so clearly, how he manipulated all of us!”
“I don’t think you understand how incredible Elie’s plan is. I’ve dedicated my life to its success, and we are very close to launching it.”
“Nonsense. Elie is finished.”
“Don’t underestimate him again.”
“That devil! He’s a fanatic, dedicated to revenge, not to healing and building. Do you really believe anti-Semitism could be eradicated through mass murder?”
“Who’s talking about mass murder? Our network of agents will conduct surgical assassinations of individuals-not only active terrorists and their sponsors, but anyone who perpetuates anti-Jew hatred, who instigates hostility toward Israel, who is like a cancerous tumor that would metastasize and spread unless excised with a slash of our scalpel. Imagine how history would have turned out if Hitler was eliminated in nineteen thirty-three? Or if Pope Urban II was dispatched to meet his savior before he called up the first crusade? Or if Ferdinand and Isabella died before they expelled the Jews from Spain? Or if the Roman emperor-”
“So you’ll kill politicians and clergy. How about academics? Writers? Filmmakers? Cartoonists?”
“Their venom could be as deadly as an explosive belt. Eliminating them will save many Jewish lives. It’s justifiable self-defense.”
“Arbitrary execution without judicial process? That’s murder!”
“We’ll set up our own secret judicial process. Elie is right. The goal justifies all means. The very fate of the Jewish people is at stake.” Lemmy shrugged. “Our personal feelings and sacrifices are irrelevant.”
Tanya dropped his hands as if they had become too hot. “Then you too are a fanatic!”
*
“ Excuse me.” Elie Weiss removed the plastic oxygen mask from his face. “What day is it?” He knew the answer, but the young guard seemed gullible enough to play the role Elie had planned for him.
“It’s Friday.” He pointed at the window, where the sun was setting. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”
“Friday?” Elie looked at the glowing view. “Then Sabbath will begin soon.”
The guard nodded. Outside the door, the nurses were chattering at their station, and patients’ relatives paced up and down the corridor. Elie had his own ICU room. A closed-circuit camera was monitored outside his door by two guards in three shifts of eight hours. Elie had engaged them in casual conversations, building rapport. They were not Shin Bet agents but students, who worked part-time in security after having finished their mandatory IDF service in combat units. They didn’t know who he was, and their instructions were to keep him in isolation. He was not allowed to use the phone, and only medical personnel entered his room.
“The holy Sabbath.” He pressed a button, and the bed rose to a sitting position. “My last Sabbath.”
The guard’s blushing discomfort was exactly what Elie expected.
“ A person can feel the end. Do you know?”
The guard looked away. “Well, I’ll be outside.”
“Is there a synagogue here?” He knew the answer. Hadassah Hospital had a chapel on the lobby level, where a rabbi led services three times a day. “I want to pray before I die.”
“We’re not supposed to-”
“You can see.” Elie tried to smile. “I can’t run away.”
The guard stuck his head out the door and exchanged a few words with his partner. They helped Elie out of bed and into a wheelchair. A short elevator ride took them down to the lobby, where they followed a sign to the synagogue.
It was a windowless room with a modest wooden ark. About fifteen men, most of them in hospital gowns, rocked over prayer books. The rabbi was a youngish man with a short beard and glasses. He read each portion of the evening service in a thin, pleading voice.
Once Elie’s wheelchair was secured at the back of the room, one of the guards fetched a yarmulke and put it on Elie’s head. The other gave him a prayer book. They went to the door and stood just outside, engaged in a hushed conversation.
When the service reached a quiet part, with each man murmuring the prayers, Elie caught the rabbi’s eye. He came over and shook Elie’s hand. “May God bless you with a full and complete recovery.”
“I’m dying,” Elie said, leaning forward, his lips close by the rabbi’s ear. “I must get my own rabbi’s blessing, but they’re not letting me call him.”
The rabbi glanced at the two guards. “I’m sorry, but this is not something I can help-”
“Rabbi Abraham Gerster of Neturay Karta. Have you heard of him?”
The rabbi’s eyes widened. “Who hasn’t?”
“Tomorrow night,” Elie said, his voice masked by the praying men around them, “after the Sabbath, go there and give him this note.” He pressed a piece of paper into the rabbi’s hand. “God will reward you for helping a dying Jew.”
*
The bench they were sitting on faced the low wall. As Lemmy stood up, his eye caught a movement among the trees by the giant chess board. “How many people did you bring?”
“ None.”
“ The Israeli Mossad sends a woman alone on a mission?”
“ I expected a business meeting with a nervous banker,” Tanya said, “not a shootout.” She started to turn around.
“ Don’t look.” He pretended to tie his shoe. “Perhaps your superiors sent a backup team?”
“ I run all Mossad activities in Europe.”
He was impressed. “Could your subordinates have followed to watch your back?”
“ Not without my knowledge.”
“There’s a man in a beige coat over there.”
“Maybe he’s a local getting some fresh air?”
“In this weather? Crouching behind a tree? I don’t think so.” Lemmy took her arm. “Are you armed?”
“No. I flew commercial from Tel Aviv this morning.” She leaned against him as they strolled toward the chess boards and the only exit. “How many bullets do you have left?”
“ Enough for another tragic mistake. Could it be a Shin Bet team?”
“ No way. Only Mossad is allowed to operate outside Israel, and I’d know if another team was here.”
“ Elie operates outside Israel.”
“ SOD is independent. It’s not a government agency. And Elie knows better than to interfere with Mossad.” Tanya bent down, pretending to fix her boot. “Could be a remnant of Abu Yusef’s group. Perhaps they followed you.”
“ Impossible.”
“ Didn’t I manage to find you? The Arabs are no less sophisticated these days, and the money transfer to Senlis came from your bank with your signature.”
They kept strolling. A chess board now separated them from the hiding man. The Mauser was ready in Lemmy’s hand. “Get down!”
Tanya dropped, and Lemmy broke into a sprint. His first bullet hit the tree trunk, and the target leaped a short distance, hiding behind another tree, yelling something. Lemmy shot again, the pop of the silencer followed by the knock of his bullet on the side of the trunk and the splash of bark pieces. The target yelled again, still behind the same tree, coattail fluttering in the wind.
Lemmy closed in.
His next shot must have grazed the target, who lost his nerve and ran. Lemmy stopped, aimed carefully at the next gap between the trees, estimated the time to catch the target as he passed, and released the shot.
The target screamed and fell.
Holding the Mauser steady, Lemmy advanced, aiming at the head.
“ Al tirah, ” the target yelled in Hebrew. “Don’t shoot!”
Lemmy kept the Mauser aimed, finger on the trigger. “Are you Israeli?”
“ Yes!” The man was short and bald and wore eyeglasses. “ Ai yai yai! I’m wounded!”
“ What Torah chapter did you read for your Bar Mitzvah?”
“ Ahhh! My leg!”
“ Answer me if you want to live.”
“ I don’t remember! The story of the golden calf!”
“ What happened to Korach and his men?”
“ Shit! You’re meshugah! ” He moaned and curled on the ground, blood pooling under his leg. “They died, okay?”
“ How?”
“ The ground swallowed them! It should swallow you too!”
Lemmy reached under the man’s coat, exposing a shoulder holster. He pulled out the gun, a standard Beretta, and tossed it far into the trees. “Why didn’t you shoot back?”
Tanya reached them. “Identify yourself!”
The man shifted to look at her, causing his shattered leg to twist. “ Ahhh! ”
“ He speaks Hebrew,” Lemmy said. “Seems like your Mossad colleagues don’t trust you.”
“ Plenty of Arabs speak Hebrew,” she said. “Who do you work for? Abu Yusef?”
He groaned in pain.
“ Okay,” Lemmy said. “I’ll shoot his other leg.”
“ No! My name’s Tuvia Berr. Help me!”
Surveying the area, Lemmy said, “I don’t see anyone else.”
“ He must be one of Abu Yusef’s-learned Hebrew in a refugee camp.”
“ Right.” Aiming the Mauser at the man’s face, Lemmy said, “Say hello to Allah.”
“ No!”
“ Tell us who you are,” Tanya said, “and we’ll get you medical help.”
Rising halfway to a sitting position, the man uttered hoarsely, “Shin Bet.”
“ Impossible.” Tanya patted the man’s pockets, finding nothing. “You’re lying.”
“ If you’re Shin Bet,” Lemmy said, “then tell us who to call for help.”
The man recited a phone number.
“ A Paris number?” Lemmy committed the digits to memory. “We’ll try it, but if you’re lying-”
“ Make the call!” The man fell back, panting. “Ask for Number One.”
Lemmy removed the man’s belt and tied a makeshift tourniquet around the leg wound. He buttoned up the coat to keep the man warm. “By the way, which one of us were you following?”
The man pointed at Tanya.
They left him and hurried down the cobblestone street.
“ He’s lying,” she said. “Shin Bet is limited to domestic security.”
“ Maybe they consider you a security risk?”
“ Domestic security. It means within Israel’s borders, which doesn’t include Zurich, Switzerland.”
“ Not yet. And who’s Number One?”
“ Can’t be the chief of Mossad. He’s in Turkey. We spoke last night. This is a crucial time for Israel. We need support in each country for the Oslo Accords. We’re enlisting various secret services to help us prevent attacks on Jewish targets. A couple of extravagant terrorist attacks could sway the Israeli public against Rabin and his peace policies.”
“ Could this Number One be the chief of Shin Bet?”
“ In Europe? No way. And to put a tail on me? Only the prime minister has the authority to order an investigation of someone at my rank, and then only Mossad’s own internal affairs division could do it, not Shin Bet.”
“ Maybe Rabin made an exception?”
“ Send Shin Bet agents outside Israel? They’d be operating outside their immunity from criminal prosecution, outside their chain of command, and outside the law. It could be a cause for dismissal, possibly criminal indictment. That’s the whole point of separating the secret services!”
“ We’ll soon find out.” At a pay phone on the corner of Bahnhofstrasse, Lemmy inserted a phone card into the slot, punched in the number, and held the receiver near his ear so that Tanya could listen in.
“ Hello?” It was a male voice.
“ Tuvia Berr,” Lemmy said, trying his best to imitate the injured man, “calling for Number One.”
“ This is Number One. Did you lose her?”
“ The opposite.”
“ She’s with you?”
“ Aha.”
There was brief silence on the other line. “Take her to your hotel room. Use all means to extract everything she knows about Weiss. And keep her locked up until I personally give you new orders. Understood?”
“ Okay.” Lemmy hung up. “Recognize the voice?”
She nodded, her lips pressed together until they bleached.
“ Chief of the Shin Bet?”
Another nod.
Lemmy glanced surreptitiously in both directions, detecting no irregular activity on the busy street. He called the police, informed the dispatcher about a wounded man in Lindenhof Park, and hung up before they asked any questions.
“ They’ve gone rogue!” Tanya grabbed the receiver and punched in a series of numbers. “I must alert my team in Paris.” She waited, but no one answered.
*
The prayers concluded with the singing of Adon Olam, praising the Master of the Universe for His creation, His oneness, and His mercy. Rabbi Abraham Gerster kept his eyes on the prayer book while the men of Neturay Karta departed the synagogue. When they were all gone, Benjamin came over and greeted him, “Sabbath Shalom, Rabbi.”
“Sabbath Shalom, Benjamin. Why don’t you send your boys ahead, so the two of us can talk?”
Benjamin complied, and Rabbi Gerster held his arm as they walked into the chilly night. The alleys were empty, lit by the glow from the windows of the apartments overhead, where families were gathering for the Friday night meal. Muffled voices came through, singing, “Shalom aleichem, malachey ha’sharet. Welcome, angels of peace, angels of heaven.”
“You want to ask me about the woman journalist,” Rabbi Gerster said, “but you hold back. A leader must not be timid.”
“It’s my respect, not timidity.”
“Is there a difference?” Rabbi Gerster chuckled. “You know what Ecclesiastes said about the cycle of life, yes? Everything has a beginning and an end.”
“He also said that there is a time for war and a time for peace.”
“True. And a time to plant and a time to root out the planted.” He squeezed Benjamin’s arm. “All the sages interpret Ecclesiastes as a serious philosopher, but I sometimes think he was writing comedy.”
“Comedy?”
“You could read his pontification as joking about how our scriptures-everyone’s scriptures, in fact-can be read to support contradictory agendas, how the righteous can find divine authority in the scriptures for anything one wants to preach-love and hate, forgiveness and revenge, peace and war. You can find words in the Torah or Talmud, in the Koran or the New Testament, to proclaim God’s divine support of your agenda, whatever it is-and I say this from experience.”
They reached the entrance to the apartment building where Benjamin lived. He leaned against the stone wall, as if feeling weak. “But Talmud is the absolute truth, right?”
“Absolute truth is in the eye of the beholder.” Rabbi Gerster pointed upstairs. “Itah Orr is helping me investigate the truth.”
“ Here?”
“ No. Outside of Neturay Karta. This community is now your responsibility. Should something happen-”
“To you?”
“To me. To others. Events might take unexpected turns. Our community includes some of the most feverish minds. In times of political upheaval, emotions tend to spike up. A few of our people might erroneously breach our tradition of insular Talmud studying and devout prayer. They might advocate political subversion and impious violence. As leader of Neturay Karta, you must face those hotheads decisively. You must smother each fire before it spreads.”
“ But you will help me, yes?”
“ I know your strengths.” He patted Benjamin’s bearded cheek. “And I know your weaknesses. But this is a time for strength only. God is testing our community, while the secular society around us tears itself apart over the Oslo Accords. Israel is in the midst of political crisis of the worst kind.”
“ That’s no surprise,” Benjamin said. “Zionism has always been a rebellion against God, so how could it succeed?”
“ There’s time for gleefulness, and there’s time for a clear mind. Do not heed your heart, even when it feels broken.”
“ By your absence?”
“ Or by what people might say about me.”
Benjamin’s face was white against the darkness. “I don’t understand!”
“ All I’m saying is that, as a leader, your duty is to keep our men’s noses in their books of Talmud and out of the news, no matter what happens to me.”
*
Down in the bowels of Zurich’s central railway station, they stood on the platform while the train to Amsterdam hissed with pressurized air. Tanya held on to him. “I don’t want to lose you again. What if they come after you?”
“ You’re the one being hunted.” Lemmy glanced at his watch. “There is a reason to this madness. Could it be the fortune hidden in my bank?”
“ But no one knows about it except Elie, Abraham, me, and you.”
“ Maybe the Shin Bet is running a high-stake operation in Israel, and Elie somehow figured out what they’re up to? Or the other way around-Shin Bet has stumbled on a rogue SOD operation?”
“ But Elie is locked up. Why would Shin Bet engage in something so outrageous as going after me?”
“ They probably suspect that, when you apprehended him in Paris, Elie told you what’s going on. And we must assume they’re not just speculating. Something triggered their extreme reaction. Try to remember. Did he say anything?”
“ Not a word. But even if that’s what they’re worried about, I mean, for the Shin Bet to break the law by going to Europe, putting a tail on me and disabling my team-”
“ To isolate you, they had to break your chain of command.”
“ They could go to jail for this!”
“ What if they already broke the law? What if it’s a big enough operation that, relatively speaking, this infraction is negligible, especially if they’re afraid you’ll expose their operation?”
“ Pure speculations.” Tanya gestured in dismissal. “For me to go to the media, it would have to be a revolution, a coup d’etat.”
The flow of passengers dwindled, and the conductors started slamming doors.
“This is wrong. I shouldn’t run away.” She straightened her coat. “I should call headquarters in Jerusalem, find out-”
“Didn’t you hear what Number One said? Use all means to extract what she knows. That’s not a vague aphorism.”
“ It’s crazy. I’m too senior to toy with like that.”
“ Don’t call anyone. We first have to find out why Shin Bet has thrown caution to the wind.”
“ I won’t hide from my own government.”
“ Please, do it for me. For old times’ sake.”
Tanya sighed.
“ When you reach Amsterdam, take a room at the American Hotel, near Leidseplein. I’ll arrive tomorrow, and we’ll plan our next move.”
“I could call Rabin directly. We go back a long way.”
“Don’t fool yourself. Nobody is safe. Not even the prime minister.”
She hugged him, and he put his arms around her narrow waist. He felt dizzy. Tanya! Almost unchanged but for a few wrinkles around the eyes and strands of silver in her hair. He had locked away the memory of her face a lifetime ago, banned it from his mind, yet here she was, green eyes glistening over high cheekbones, thinly drawn lips that curved into a worried smile.
A whistle blew.
He saw a man run through the doors leading to the platform. “Get on the train!”
A conductor reached to shut the last door, waiting as Tanya mounted the three steps.
“ Halt! ” The man ran along the train.
“ I’ll call you,” Lemmy said. “What name will you be using?”
“Frau Koenig,” she said.
The conductor noticed the advancing man and held the door while the train began to move.
“It’s her husband,” Lemmy said to the conductor. “He’s very angry! Go! Quick!”
The conductor grinned and slammed the door.
The man tried to open another door, jogging beside the moving train toward Lemmy, who extended his leg and tripped him.
“ Ah! ”
“ Oops!” Lemmy caught the falling man, and with a subtle, rapid jolt to the back of the head turned him unconscious. “So sorry.”
Laying him carefully on the concrete floor, Lemmy glanced up and down the tracks, now deserted. He pulled the man’s wallet and found a driver’s license with a Zurich address and a business card of an office supply firm. The soft hands, genuine Tissot gold watch, and extended belly made it unlikely he was an Israeli agent. Or was he? Lemmy could take no chances. Tanya’s life was on the line. Maybe even his own.
A moment later two railway employees showed up. He told them the man had tripped while chasing the departing train, and they called for help.
*
Christopher lived in a condo not far from the bank. Lemmy entered behind a cheerful group of young men and women on their way to a party. He carried a gift-wrapped box of Schmerling’s chocolate. On the fourth floor, he rang Christopher’s doorbell.
“Who is it?” His assistant’s voice was muffled.
“Your boss.”
“Herr Horch?” Three locks turned before Christopher opened the door. He was still in his work suit, but the tie was loose, the shoes unlaced, and the beer bottle half-empty.
“ That’s for you.” Lemmy gave him the box of chocolate, forcing him to balance it in his left hand. “I apologize for surprising you like this, but as we approach a change of guard at the bank, I wanted to show my appreciation for your efforts.”
“ Thank you.”
“ And I also wanted to see how you live.” Lemmy smiled. “After all, as my assistant on the top floor, you’ll have access to a great deal of wealth. We don’t want another strange Gunter, right?”
Christopher put down the box of chocolate on a small table by the door. “Yes, I understand.”
“ So? Are you going to invite me in?”
“ Oh. I’m sorry. Please.”
“ Unless you have company,” Lemmy said. “I don’t want to intrude.”
Christopher shut the door and showed him into a living room. “I’m between girlfriends right now.”
“ Good.” Lemmy drew his Mauser and aimed it at Christopher’s chest. He removed the beer bottle from his hand and took a gulp. “Nice and cold.”
The expression on Christopher’s face barely changed. He obviously had strong nerves and good training. “Is this a real pistol?”
Lemmy sat on an armchair. “Toy guns have a red plastic tip at the end of the muzzle. And no silencer. But you already know that.”
“ Herr Horch, is this some kind of a test?”
“ A test?”
“ To see if I’m prepared for a bank robbery?”
“ You’re good,” Lemmy said. “You’re stalling for time, trying to figure out what I’m after and how you can retrieve your own weapon and reach parity here. Correct?”
“Weapon?” Christopher laughed. “You can’t be serious. This is a joke, right?”
In response, Lemmy shifted his aim and pressed the trigger. The bullet hit the TV behind Christopher, blasting the screen.
“God!” Christopher jumped sideways. t="0What’s wrong with you?”
“ Pull down your pants.”
“ What? ”
“Show it to me!”
Christopher hesitated.
Lemmy lowered the tip of the silencer until it pointed at Christopher’s crotch.
“ Don’t shoot!” Christopher unbuckled his belt and lowered his pants and underwear. Along his circumcised penis was a tattoo of a black swastika and the letters SS.
“Regards from Kibbutz Gesher.” Lemmy aimed the Mauser with both hands. “Tell me the truth or I will shoot it off.”
His face red, his smile gone, Christopher pulled up his pants. Without asking permission, he sat down on the carpet. “My father did it. He was much older than my mother, served as an SS officer during the war. He was angry that she had allowed the doctor to circumcise me-there was an infection around my penis, and the doctor said it would help. Dad took me to an SS reunion in Munich when I was five or six. They got me drunk and had me tattooed.”
“How touching,” Lemmy said. “Father-son bonding. Only that I don’t believe you. Tell me who you work for, unless you want to die tonight.”
“I work for Elie Weiss,” Christopher said. “Who else?”
“Don’t lie!”
“I’m not lying. I didn’t know his real identity when he first showed up, after my dad was killed in a ski accident.”
Lemmy’s curiosity was piqued. Paula’s young brother had also died in a ski accident. “What kind of an accident?”
“ When I was fourteen, we went on vacation to Unterstmatt in the Black Forest. My father didn’t return to the lodge after dark. A rescue team found him in a crevasse off the slopes. The pathologist said that a sharp icicle penetrated his throat and punctured his brain. It had melted long before he was discovered, but the stab wound fit a long icicle. A freak accident, really.”
The freakish part was that the exact same thing had happened to Klaus V.K. Hoffgeitz a few years earlier in Chamonix, a great distance from Unterstmatt!
“ Go on,” Lemmy said, struggling to control his voice.
“ My father owned a factory, making chemicals for pest control and agriculture. After he died, the accountants told my mother that the business was bankrupt. We had nothing. Then a miracle happened. A little man with black eyes and a long nose visited us.”
“ Elie?”
“ He introduced himself as Untersturmfuhrer Rupert Danzig, an underling of my father from the good old days of the SS. He offered secret help from a charity fund run by a group of veterans. The money started coming, enough to support my mother and send me to Lyceum Alpin St. Nicholas.”
“ Elie is a master in long-term planning.”
“ And in the summers I attended paramilitary youth camps to learn shooting and field work.”
“ Same with me,” Lemmy said, “fifteen years ahead of you.”
“ When I graduated, Herr Danzig encouraged me to go to Israel for a summer. He said I must learn from the Jewish people about building a new life from nothing, a new nation from the ashes, putting all energies into constructive work, and so on. But I had a little thing with one of the girls in the kibbutz, she saw my tattoo, and all hell broke loose.”
“ They kicked you out.”
“ Right. Herr Danzig picked me up, and we drove to Jerusalem. We sat on a bench near the Wailing Wall, and he told me the truth. His real name was Elie Weiss, a Jew, a Holocaust survivor. He invited me to work for SOD, to prevent another Holocaust. I had nothing waiting for me in Europe. My mother had died the previous summer, and I didn’t know any of my relatives, who had disliked my father and kept away from us. Also, the opportunity to serve the Jewish people was a chance to make up for what my father and his generation of Germans had done.”
“ You decided to work for a man who had lied to you and your mother?”
“ When I learned his real identity, I realized that Elie must have extorted money from my father and others like him, threatening them with exposure. But I don’t blame him. I’ve done my research. My father served at Treblinka. He killed countless innocent people. The SS motto was Loyal, Valiant, Obedient. It should have been Loot, Victimize, Obliterate.” Christopher’s voice rose in anger. “My father was a mass murderer. A monster!”
Lemmy secured the safety on the Mauser and holstered it under his coat.
“ You believe me now?”
“ It fits. Elie helped you get an MBA, intern in New York, and time your application to the Hoffgeitz Bank just when he told me to hire an assistant. But why?”
“ To watch your back. There’s a lot riding on you. Elie said that you are the key to the future safety and security of the Jewish people.”
“ That’s all?” Lemmy stood up and buttoned his coat. “I’m just a middle-aged banker trying to survive the most confusing set of circumstances.
Christopher laughed.
“ Anything else you want to share with me?”
“ I’m the keeper of all SOD files-Elie’s personal records, list of active and sleeper agents, files of former Nazis who pay Elie regularly to stay alive, and charts of tentative targets for Counter Final Solution. It’s all kept on the bank’s computer, encrypted, of course.”
“ What’s the password?”
“ JERUSALEM 1967.”
“ I should have guessed.” Lemmy gestured downward. “That’s some tattoo. Dating must be complicated.”
“ It’s not so bad.” Christopher grinned. “I tell them I’m too shy to fool around with the lights on.”
“ Do they buy it?”
“ Oh, yes. Girls find shyness very endearing.”
*
Saturday, October 28, 1995
“ I’ll be gone for a few days.” Lemmy pulled away from Paula. “When I come back, I’ll tell you everything, and you’ll decide if you want me to stay.”
“ Very funny.”
“ I’m serious.” He got out from under the covers and sat at the edge of the bed. “There are things I’ve kept from you.”
“ I know.”
“ Do you?”
Paula caressed his hand. “You spoke a foreign language in your sleep last night. It scared me to death. I thought there was a stranger in the room.”
Despite the ominous implications, Lemmy burst out laughing, and Paula followed suit. When they calmed down, she threw a pillow at him.
He caught it. “Are you still scared?”
“ Of you?”
“ Yes.”
“ Are you nuts? I know how much you love me.” She lifted her pinky. “I got you wrapped around this one like a slinky.”
He leaned over and kissed her lips. “But there are secrets-”
Paula pressed her lips to his, silencing him, and they stayed locked in a passionate kiss until they both ran out of breath. “Wow!” She sighed. “That was nice.”
He played with her hair. “There are parts of my work of which you might not approve.”
“ There’s nothing you could tell me that would change how I feel about you. My father raised me not to ask questions. You think I don’t know how Swiss banks serve dictators, drug dealers, and plain vanilla tax evaders from every country on earth? Those are the clients you must serve, because if you didn’t, someone else would-here in Zurich or in Lichtenstein, Vaduz, or the Antilles. I don’t need to know your professional secrets in order to trust you.”
He put his hand under the sheets and caressed her flat belly. “We’ll start working again when I’m back.”
“ Whether we need to or not.”
“ Really?”
Paula crossed her fingers. “My period is late. I’ll give it another few days before doing a test.”
“ Wouldn’t that be a treat?” Lemmy caressed her cheek. “I’ll call you when I can.”
“ I’ll be in the hospital every day. The doctors say my dad is showing signs of recovery. He’s off the ventilator.”
“ Good. Call Christopher if there’s any news. He’ll know how to reach me.”
Klaus Junior was still asleep when Lemmy kissed him good-bye. He drove the Porsche to the airport and parked it underground. KLM flight 312 to Amsterdam took off at 9:52 a.m., and ten minutes later the pretty attendant brought a breakfast tray and the International Herald Tribune.
Lemmy browsed the headlines. The first page contained the usual mosaic of news pieces from Wall Street and the financial markets in London, Hong Kong, and Tokyo. The second page was filled with photographs of toppled buildings in Beijing after an earthquake that killed hundreds of people. The third page contained summaries of international news, beginning with a report of the Philippine supreme court’s decision to dismiss a challenge to Imelda Marcos’s electoral victory. Another piece told of a brewing conflict in the Israeli parliament over the Rabin government’s ban on construction in Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu, whose poll numbers had recently surpassed Rabin’s, declared: “The Labor government has betrayed Zionism and must be toppled.”
The pilot announced the beginning of their descent. Lemmy watched through the window at the picturesque view of Rotterdam’s harbor. From twenty-five thousand feet, Europe’s largest harbor was a manicured line of fingernail docks on a blue canvas. As the plane descended, the groomed Dutch landscape grew larger, with its tiny canals, grazing cows, and robust green fields. A wide circle over the coastline brought the plane to Schiphol Airport. The weather was nicer than in Zurich-clear blue skies and a bright wintery sun.
The train took him to Amsterdam’s central station, and from there he used the tram. He favored the Hotel de L’Europe on the River Amstel, where bankers and corporate executives walked the hallways in their tailored suits, consummating multimillion-dollar deals. But this time, Herr Wilhelm Horch of the Hoffgeitz Bank was not arriving to negotiate a major currency swap or to solicit a large deposit. There would be no dinners with wealthy clients, no rubbing elbows with colleagues. This time he was playing a different game altogether, a game he could not afford to lose.
“Herr Horch!” The front desk manager rushed to greet him. “Wonderful to have you with us again!”
“Good to be back,” Lemmy said, forcing a smile.
*
The floor-to-ceiling windows of the high-rise apartment filled with the blue Mediterranean. Gideon watched the Tel Aviv beach, alive with bathers, joggers, and windsurfers. Behind him, the maternal housekeeper moved around the place stealthily with her broom and duster.
Agent Cohen showed up with two plastic bags. He took out pita breads stuffed with falafels, humus, and Israeli salad, topped with tahini sauce. He beckoned Gideon to the table. “How do you like this place?”
“ I didn’t know Shin Bet could afford such accommodations for its prisoners.”
“ We like our guests to be comfortable.”
They ate while Arik Einstein sang on the radio, “How did you leave me, friend?”
“Here,” Agent Cohen handed him a bunch of napkins.
“Thanks.” Gideon wiped his lips and chin. “This is yummy!”
“Tastes like home, ah?”
“ It does.”
“ My wife made it. She’s from Yemen-they make the best humus. I told her it’s for a friend who’s been out of Israel for too long.”
“ It’s delicious. Give her my compliments.”
“ I will.” The Shin Bet officer put the last piece of pita bread in his mouth. He pushed the glass of orange juice across the table. “I squeezed it myself. Drink before the vitamins evaporate.”
Gideon sipped the cold juice. “Good.”
“Thought you’d appreciate it.” Agent Cohen sat back and patted his belly. “I hear you want to join Mossad?”
“Who told you?”
“ Mossad is a bunch of snobs. You’re lucky they turned you down-you’d be away all the time, snooping around Europe, paying informants for worthless info.” Cohen bunched up the food wrappings on the table. “Shin Bet is a different story. You could have fun right here in Tel Aviv.”
“ How do you know of my interest in Mossad? Have you eavesdropped on Tanya Galinski?”
“We do whatever it takes to keep VIPs safe.”
“ Including the arrest of agents of other secret services?”
“ SOD is a one-man show, and the curtain just came down on its last performance. However, we could use your skills and experience.”
“I’m flattered.”
“ So?”
“ Why don’t you tell me what’s going on? Put everything on the table. I won’t tell anyone, okay?”
“I’m not worried about that.” Agent Cohen leaned forward, his elbows on the table. “Here’s what we know: Your former boss, Elie Weiss, has active assets in the extreme right wing, some kind of an agent-provocateur operation that has attracted a group of followers. They see themselves as Torah warriors under the acronym ILOT. We’ve had our eye on this SOD operation for a while.”
“ How?”
Cohen shrugged. “A few of them used to serve in our VIP Protection Unit. We’ve kept an eye on them. In fact, the ringleader still works for us-incognito, of course.”
“ How convenient.”
“ At first we liked this ILOT business. The roots of SOD, back in the sixties, were in planting moles in ultra-Orthodox communities, such as Neturay Karta, to watch for signs of brewing militancy against the secular Israeli society. In fact, we copied the methods Weiss had developed for the Shin Bet’s own Jewish Department. But he wasn’t supposed to continue operating in this area. We figured that he was so obsessed with the risk of Jewish civil war that he was keeping his eye on it, basically doing our job for us and paying for it from his secret stash.”
“ So what spooked you?”
“ A couple of weeks ago, Elie Weiss met with Prime Minister Rabin.”
“ You guys eavesdrop on the prime minister also?”
“ We’re his bodyguards. We have video and sound surveillance on him at all times. Our operational assumption is that every meeting could turn into an assassination attempt. Anyone is a potential attacker. Anyone! ”
“ Including his wife?”
“ Especially his wife.”
They laughed, the tension released temporarily.
“ Is Rabin aware of your exemplary diligence?”
“ He’s a big picture kind of a guy. He doesn’t tell us how to protect him, and we don’t tell him how to run the country.” Agent Cohen smirked. “Anyway, Elie made a proposal to the prime minister.”
“ Tit for tat?”
“ An exchange of favors. Big favors. We felt it was inappropriate and took steps to investigate. Do you know what I’m talking about?”
“No idea. I’ve been in Paris, chasing Arab terrorists.”
“You don’t know anything about Elie’s grand plans? His political schemes?”
“No idea.” It was the truth, but Gideon could tell that his interrogator didn’t believe him. “You don’t really know Elie Weiss, do you?”
“Only the myths,” Agent Cohen said. “And our surveillance in the past few weeks.”
That was shocking news. Had Shin Bet watched them in Paris? “Do you realize how dangerous he is?”
“Weiss? He is a pathetic old man. An archeological joke.”
“A joke?” Gideon picked a crumb from the table and held it up as if there was something interesting about it. “Even now, as sick as he is, Elie Weiss could kill you before you had enough time to wipe the smirk off your face.”
“Not anymore.” Reaching under his jacket, Agent Cohen pulled out Elie’s blade in its leather sheath.
“Without the blade he would only make your death more painful. You’re better off giving it back to him.”
The expression on Agent Cohen’s face went from smug to wary. But the tone of his voice remained businesslike. “Have you trained with any of the local SOD agents? Have you met any of them?”
“I only knew Bathsheba. And I’d like to attend her funeral, by the way.”
“Sorry. She was buried last night in Jerusalem.” He raised a hand to stop Gideon’s protests. “She received a soldier’s burial. Family members attended, a representative from the defense ministry gave a moving eulogy, and six Shin Bet agents lowered the coffin. A very respectable ceremony, I assure you.”
Gideon got up and went to the window. “A tragic ending to a tragic life.”
“Elie mentioned to Rabin something about money. He claimed to have unlimited funds. Do you know anything about it?”
“Elie is a good liar.”
“True,” Agent Cohen said. “Have you been to Zurich with him?”
“Why Zurich?”
“He’s got some business there, we’re not sure what. Do you know?”
It was a trick question, Gideon realized. They must have followed him when he had made the call to the Hoffgeitz Bank. “I think he maintains an account there. It’s standard procedure. Switzerland is a good place to keep money. Didn’t Rabin’s wife once maintain an illegal account there?”
“That was in New York.”
“ Oh.”
“ Which bank did Elie use?”
Now he was sure Agent Cohen knew the answer. So he told him. “The Hoffgeitz Bank. I’ve never been there, but Elie mentioned the name.”
“Interesting. We’ll follow up on it.”
“ In Switzerland? Aren’t you limited to domestic investigations?”
“ What do you want us to do? Refer it to Mossad?” Cohen laughed as if the idea was ridiculous.
“ That’s exactly what the law requires, doesn’t it?”
“ The law doesn’t exactly permit the activities SOD has recently engaged in-shooting people on French roads, making people swallow explosives in seedy hotels, and so on. You could be prosecuted as a murderer, you know?”
“ I know an unsubtle threat when it hits me in the face.”
“ That’s right. And if you insist on an answer, it’s simple. The VIP Protection Unit is tasked with pursuing any and all potential threats to the prime minister’s safety. We may conduct our investigational operations anywhere.”
“ Including overseas?”
“ Including outer space, if needed.” Agent Cohen gathered the napkins and empty plastic cups into the bag and walked to the door. “Which is the reason my offer still stands. If you cooperate fully with our investigation, we’ll sign you up as a Shin Bet agent.”
“ Right now?”
“ As soon as our current operation is concluded successfully.”
*
Rabbi Abraham Gerster had not given a sermon in Meah Shearim in over a decade. His extended retreat to the rear benches had elevated him to a tzadik, a man of mysterious righteousness, revered by everyone in the sect. Therefore, when he rose from his seat after the reading of the Torah and approached the dais, the men of Neturay Karta stood up in awe, and even the women in the upstairs mezzanine became completely silent.
“Good Sabbath!” He motioned for them to sit down.
The crowd murmured while sitting down.
“Some of you remember the days of the abortion debate, three decades ago, when the Zionist Knesset was preparing a law that was an anathema to us and to other God-fearing Jews.” Rabbi Gerster smiled at Cantor Toiterlich, Sorkeh’s father, who nodded knowingly in the front row. “And even the young among you know that we chose peace, shalom, rather than add internecine bloodshed to that of the unborn.”
A wave of hushed exchanges went through the synagogue. For most of them, it was ancient history, yet the 1967 ruling had left its mark on every aspect of their insular, inward-looking life since then.
“Today the Promised Land is again torn by a political conflict over life and death. The so-called Oslo process promulgates a transfer of sacred parts of Israel to Arab control in exchange for their promise not to kill Jews anymore. The faithful must wonder: Are we allowed to give away God’s land? Is there validity to the Arabs’ promise to refrain from further terror and mayhem? And what of the deadly peril to Jews living in towns and villages in Judea, Samaria, and the Gaza Strip? Are they slated to live under Arab rule or be expelled from their homes?”
He let the silence linger, but no one broke it.
“ Since the first Oslo Accord two years ago, Palestinian terror has taken more than one hundred and fifty Jewish lives. But the current Zionist leaders still believe that, in the long run, peace will bring security to our people. What else can the faithless Zionists believe in but brittle papers and human promises?”
The question lingered in the silent synagogue.
Rabbi Gerster glanced up at the women’s mezzanine, where Itah sat with Sorkeh. “A schism threatens to tear apart our nation. A grave danger faces us, the Chosen People, who have returned to this sliver of land on the Mediterranean Sea, as God had promised to Abraham the Patriarch, To you and your seed I give this land. Our secular brothers and sisters are also Abraham’s seed.”
Many of the men followed his gaze upward at the women’s section. Word had swept through the sect within an hour of Friday’s encounter at the gate about the secular, immodestly dressed woman, who was granted shelter at the home of Rabbi Benjamin Mashash. And now she was attending Sabbath services among the families of Neturay Karta, while Rabbi Gerster was breaking his long silence.
“ Handing over parts of the sacred land of Israel and risking lives of Jews are crimes under God’s laws.” He opened a tall book of Talmud that Benjamin had prepared for him on the lectern. “In the tractate of Sanhedrin, page forty-eight, Talmud discusses the murder trial of Yoav, King David’s former military commander, who had killed Avner in revenge for Avner’s killing of Yoav’s brother, Asael. But Avner claimed that he had killed Asael because Asael had been pursuing him. In other words, Avner argued that Asael was a Rodef, a pursuer trying to kill him. According to Talmud, during Yoav’s trial, King Solomon agreed that, if Avner had been justified in killing Asael in self-defense as a Rodef, a pursuer with the intent to kill, then he was in the right, and Yoav, who killed him in misguided revenge, was guilty of murder.”
One of the men raised his hand. “But Yoav argued that Avner deserved to die because Avner could have disabled Asael by stabbing him, as the book of Samuel says, in the fifth rib, rather than kill him. The killing of a Rodef is allowed only if he cannot be disabled, only if his pursuit cannot be stopped with a strike that’s less than deadly force.”
“ Exactly!” Rabbi Gerster closed the book. “I have heard that some rabbis now argue that Prime Minister Rabin is like a Rodef because his peace policies have led to terror and will cause even more loss of Jewish lives and handover of sacred land.”
“ That’s right!” A young scholar in the back rose halfway from his seat. “He’s a Rodef, and so are his heretical colleagues in the Zionist government!”
A few others voiced their support.
Rabbi Benjamin Mashash glanced up from his seat by the Ark of the Torah, but Rabbi Gerster shook his head. It was better to let hotheads blow out steam. Once they calmed down, they would listen to reasoned arguments.
Cantor Toiterlich raised his hand, which caused the younger men to quiet down. Not only was he one of the sect’s elders, but as the cantor he was the person who led the prayers and represented every member of Neturay Karta in pleading for health and prosperity before the Master of the Universe. “An argument could be made,” the cantor said, his baritone filling the hall, “that a person could only be considered a Rodef if he is in hot pursuit to kill another Jew, a physical chase with weapon at the ready. Therefore the Rodef concept doesn’t apply to a political leader signing peace agreements with the goal of ending war, even if his well-intentioned actions could have indirect fatal ramifications.”
“ But what about the Moser concept?” It was the same young scholar in the back. “Just like Rodef, we have a duty to kill a Jew who is about to telltale or hand over another Jew to the Gentiles. There’s no hot pursuit here, but still the same rule applies, right?”
“ That’s an excellent point,” Rabbi Gerster said. “Can anyone offer a counter-argument?”
Jerusalem Mashash, Benjamin’s eldest son, raised his hand. “ Soff ma’asse be’makhshava tekhilah. Judge a deed by its motivation.”
“ Indeed!” Rabbi Gerster clapped. “Jerusalem, my boy, please explain what you meant.”
“ A person cannot be found guilty of a crime, or a sin, without having the intent to do wrong.” The youth turned red, having found himself speaking in front of the whole sect in the middle of Rabbi Gerster’s surprise sermon. But his eloquence wasn’t hindered by his embarrassment. “In order for a Jew to be considered a Rodef or a Moser , we must prove his intent to cause deadly harm. Only with evidence of malicious intent can we judge him to be a criminal who deserved to be killed.”
“ Thank you, Jerusalem.” Rabbi Gerster tugged at his beard. “You just reminded me of what the sage Hanina said: I’ve learned a lot from my friends, even more from my teachers, but most of all I’ve learned from my students. ” He glanced at Benjamin, whose eyes glistened with fatherly pride. “Our learned youngster is correct. How could Rabin, or any political leader, be guilty of a crime when his intentions are to prevent more terror, to bring peace, and to save lives? From a Talmudic standpoint, a Jew is innocent if his intentions are pure, albeit tragically misguided.”
Rabbi Gerster looked around the hall, filled with the bearded faces and the affectionate eyes of the men with whom he had spent half a century. “What is in a man’s heart? What is on his mind? What is the primary motivation that guides him? Those are the questions we must ask in order to fairly judge another Jew.” He paused, his eyes connecting with a few of the older men. “And I hope,” he concluded, “that when the day comes for you to judge me, you shall apply this fair measure.”
The men gasped, for the idea of judging the tzadik, the most righteous man in Neturay Karta, seemed implausible in the extreme.
“ My life here, my achievements and my failures, should be taken as a whole. I implore you to find me innocent, for I have lived among you most of my days on this earth, working for this God-fearing community with love as my impetus and kindness as my inspiration.”
The tone of finality, almost of a eulogy, did not escape the Talmudic scholars of Neturay Karta. They stared at him, up on the dais, and waited for an explanation.
But Rabbi Gerster only smiled. “And with that,” he said, “I wish you Good Sabbath!”
The men stood up as he descended from the dais and returned to his seat. Cantor Toiterlich approached the lectern and commenced the last portion of the Sabbath prayer. Gradually the men joined in chanting the Hebrew words. Moments later, when Rabbi Gerster glanced up from his prayer book, he found Jerusalem Mashash staring at him from among the swaying men. The rabbi winked at Benjamin’s son, whose face broke into a bright smile.
*
According to a brass plaque at the entrance, the Metz amp; Co. department store had operated on the same corner since 1740. Lemmy took the stairs up to the restaurant on the top floor. He sat by the window, which had a panoramic view of the southeast section of Amsterdam. Looking down, he saw the wide Kaizersgracht, its banks lined with houseboats of different sizes and ages, all meticulously painted, with garden chairs and potted flowers on the decks. A glass-covered motorboat, loaded with off-season tourists, cut through the oily water, passing under the arched bridge. On the street along the canal, a tram rattled on its steel rails, ringing its bell, while pedestrians and bicycle riders scattered out of the way. This was an ideal spot for tomorrow’s meeting with Tanya.
The store was already decorated for the holiday season. Shoppers chatted in their throaty Dutch, eyeing the goods. Lemmy’s mind went back to Paula and Klaus Junior. He had placed them in danger by the very nature of his work. The Shin Bet’s aggressiveness in hunting down Tanya boded poorly for anyone associated with Elie Weiss. Was Shin Bet making a play for SOD’s agents and resources? Was it about the Koenig account? And how long would it take for the capable Israeli agents to figure out that Wilhelm Horch was Elie’s prime asset? How could he protect his identity-or his family? And then there was Tanya’s story about his father. Had Rabbi Gerster been a mole within the ultra-Orthodox, working for Elie Weiss? Had his own decision to join SOD and serve Elie been based on lies? Had he wrongly hated his father all these years? It was hard to believe, but Tanya wasn’t a liar. Or was she?
All the answers rested with Elie Weiss in Jerusalem.
Lemmy finished his coffee and left a generous tip. Downstairs, he used a pay phone by the glass doors to call the American Hotel and leave a message for Frau Koenig to expect his call tonight at nine p.m. He hung up and punched in another number.
A familiar voice answered, “Doctor Mullenhuis Data Recovery.”
“Oh, yes. I’d like to recover a crashed ego.”
“Ego was too big?” Carl laughed. “You must be Swiss!”
“Why? You think we’re self-important?”
“It’s a fact. You Swiss are a bunch of pompous asses.” The crunching of computer keys indicated Carl was securing the line from eavesdropping. He had obtained a doctorate in computer engineering five years after graduating with Lemmy from Lyceum Alpin St. Nicholas. But his career with IBM Europe ended abruptly after a competitor mysteriously obtained the code to revolutionary data storage software that Carl was working on at about the same time that Lemmy helped him buy a restored 1938 Horch 853 Phaeton, the only motorcar of its kind to survive WWII, for a huge sum in cash. Going independent, Carl had specialized in facilitating the acquisition of data in sophisticated yet unsavory methods, such as the surveillance system he had installed for Lemmy at the Hoffgeitz Bank.
“ Okay,” Carl said. “Safe to talk now. How’s the system working? You have a problem?”
“The system is great. It helped me save my father-in-law the other day.”
“ The rule of unintended consequences. You want to install one at home too? Watch the little wife with the gardener?”
“ You’re sick. Listen, I’m in Amsterdam and need a favor.”
“Shoot.”
“In person. Meet me at the Begijnhof, inside the yard.”
“What happened to the lobby at Hotel de L’Europe?”
“The Begijnhof, five thirty, okay?”
“I might be late. Have to finish up a project.”
“ A cheating husband?”
“ Venture capital outfit. They’re having a cocktail party tonight for all their competitors, with lots of booze and babes. They want every word recorded with full video, pick up all the secrets.”
“You should be ashamed of yourself.”
“ Look who’s talking!”
*
Tanya left the hotel briefly for a visit to a pharmacy. Back in her room, she spent an hour in the bathroom, cleaning the scratch left by Lemmy’s bullet yesterday as well as the bruises from the attack at the synagogue. She thought of Andre Silverman and his son, the funerals she was unable to attend. And she wondered how Juliette could go on living without her precious Laurent.
The rest of the morning she spent scouting the newspapers for news of Israel-any political or other event that would explain why the domestic security agency had gone overseas in violation of its very charter. It was obvious that Israel was approaching a political crisis over Rabin’s push to implement the Oslo Accords. Two major rallies were gearing up. The right-wing Likud planned a rally in Jerusalem tonight, and the Labor-led left wing was to hold a peace rally in Tel Aviv’s central square next Saturday night. But political crisis wasn’t unusual in Israel, even with such extreme accusations and counter-accusations. She still remembered the weeks leading to the 1967 Six Day War, the erosion of public confidence in the face of huge Arab armies supported by the Soviets, the digging of mass graves all over Israel in preparation for countless civilian casualties, and the bitter political acrimony around Levi Eshkol’s government. Israel’s fearful citizens had expected a crushing defeat at the hands of the Egyptians, Syrians, and Jordanians armies, reinforced by armored brigades from Lebanon, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait. Everyone feared a complete and fatal devastation of the young Jewish state.
But instead, Israel ended up celebrating an incredible victory, tripling its size, and cementing its right to exist in the Middle East. Still, that victory had planted the seeds of today’s conflict over Israel’s continued presence in the territories it had captured, a division that split Israelis along ideological lines. But a political crisis, severe as it was, could not explain the Shin Bet’s criminal violation of clandestine boundaries.
She again tried calling the bookstore next to Andre Silverman’s art gallery on Avenue Junot, where a member of her team always attended the phones, but got no response. A call to the gallery itself was answered by a woman whom Juliette had hired after the disaster. She informed Tanya that the bookstore had been closed since yesterday afternoon, when the staff left in the company of officious-looking people in two vans.
Out of options, Tanya decided to call Mossad headquarters in Tel Aviv. She had not checked in since yesterday, and for someone of her seniority, this should have caused alarm. By now they must be gearing up for a massive search, possibly worried about abduction.
“Research Department,” a man answered. “How may I help you?”
“This is Tanya Galinski. Patch me through to the chief.”
“Hold on.”
The line was silent for a moment, then switched to music. Tanya listened to Israeli singer Boaz Sharabi serenade an old flame, promising to bring moonstones and sea treasures if she still loved him.
“ Come on,” she said, “what’s taking so long-”
The music stopped, replaced by a dial tone.
She stared at the receiver in bewilderment. She punched the numbers again. The line was busy. But that was impossible! Mossad maintained multiple lines for incoming calls!
Tanya tried again.
Busy.
Was Shin Ben listening in on Mossad lines? Cutting off unwanted calls? Could they block this particular call? Or trace it back to Amsterdam?
The very idea seemed preposterous. Shin Bet wouldn’t dare interfere with Mossad communications. This would cause open war between the agencies. On the other hand, perhaps its fear of Mossad was the reason Shin Bet was determined to isolate her, prevent her from telling her colleagues in Tel Aviv what was going on in Europe.
Tanya put down the receiver, more shocked than angry.
The message light was blinking. She called the front desk and learned that Herr Horch would be calling again at nine tonight.
*
Lemmy walked the streets of Amsterdam for hours. Unlike other European capitals, its charm was unassuming, with arched bridges over murky water and absurdly-narrow houses along the canals. He repeatedly stepped aside to avoid bundled-up riders pedaling their way on bicycles. He thought about Tanya. Last night’s events seemed unreal. Their encounter could have ended terribly. Instead it had turned into a reunion he had never expected. But the things she had told him also seemed unreal. His father-a mole? Elie Weiss-his father’s handler? His own transformation from a young Neturay Karta Talmudic scholar to an IDF soldier-a deal between Elie and Tanya? And now he was risking everything in reliance on what she had said. But Tanya Galinski was no longer the woman he had made love to as a teenager. She was now a top Mossad official. Would she risk her position, maybe her life, for Lemmy Gerster, a boy she had long assumed to be dead?
A disturbing idea came to him. What if the man he had shot at the park was actually Tanya’s agent. What if they staged the call to Paris to set him up? What if “Number One” was merely a playact for the purpose of deceiving him? What if Tanya wasn’t in danger at all, wasn’t anyone’s target? What if he was the target? What if this whole thing had been staged to make him betray
Elie’s clandestine infrastructure and secret money sources so that Mossad could take over SOD?
It all came down to one question: Could Tanya be trusted?
He followed the Amstel River as it merged into the Singer Canal. Farther down, the row of houses seemed impenetrable until he came to an arched passageway. It led into a courtyard tiled in a colorful mosaic of the Holy Virgin. Each of the connected dwellings had a small garden, and Lemmy paused and took in the scent of freshly cut grass. A modest Catholic chapel on the left faced a stone-built English church on the right. He glanced at his watch. Carl was late.
Toward the corner he found a wall of icons. In the center, baby Jesus was cradled by Virgin Mary, while a burning candle cast golden light upon them. Below Jesus, a hand had written: In de salvaeder. Other icons had been carved into the stone wall by the loving hands of Beguine women over the centuries, biblical scenes whose colors had dulled from rain and wind. At the bottom was a drawing of an altar atop an arid hill, a young boy tied up, a bearded Abraham holding a long blade, ready to slay his son while a guardian angel stayed his hand.
“You believe in angels?” Carl threw his big arms around Lemmy.
“I need all the help I can get.” He returned Carl’s embrace, pounding his friend’s back. “I’m up against very capable people.”
“ Government or private?”
“ Government.”
“ Ah, bureaucrats!” Carl spat on the ground. “Incompetent fools, all of them.”
“ These are Israelis.”
“ Oops. They are the exception.”
Lemmy laughed.
“ How in the world have you antagonized the Israelis? I thought you Swiss vanillas are supposed to remain neutral.”
“ It’s a long story. Can you get me a valid Dutch passport and a couple of credit cards with the same name?”
“ Are you running away from them?”
“ On the contrary. I’m going into the lions’ den.”
“ To Israel?”
“ Yes. My cover will be the car restoration. I hear there’s a good selection of old Citroen models for parts.”
“ I’m sure they have plenty of Deux Chevaux wrecks, but your old Presidential will only take SM and DS parts. I’ll run a search for you.”
“ Thanks.” He handed Carl an envelope. “Snapshots for the passport. I’ll meet you in front of Metz amp; Co. tomorrow at noon.”
“I’ll do my best. Anything else?”
“A friend of mine will be staying with you while I’m away. She’s in danger.”
“Is she pretty?”
“She’s incredibly beautiful, considering she’ll turn sixty-eight on January first.”
They hugged, and Carl left. A few minutes later Lemmy headed back to his hotel. He walked quickly through the dark mist that descended on Amsterdam, his hands in his pockets, his head bowed against the cold.
From his room he called Christopher in Zurich and asked him to go to the bank the next morning and wait for his call.
*
Sabbath was over when three stars could be seen in the darkening sky. After the evening prayers and a light dinner, Rabbi Gerster and Itah Orr left Benjamin’s apartment. Itah wore a long dress and covered her hair with a scarf. They walked to the center of Jerusalem. Along the way, she used a pay phone to call her neighbor and ask him to feed her cat and clean its litter box every other day until she returned. “I hope you’re not allergic to cats,” she said as they resumed walking.
“ I don’t know. There are no pets in Neturay Karta.” He hesitated. “I take it you’re not married?”
“ Three times widowed. First husband killed by Egyptian artillery on the Suez Canal, left me with a baby girl. Second saw his son born-thank God for small favors!-before he was hit by a Katyusha rocket near the Lebanese border. I actually have the casing and a bunch of fragments from the rocket. I put them together like a puzzle showing the Russian manufacturer’s name, ink-stamps from Iranian and Syrian customs, and a Sharpie note from Hezbollah: Jews are monkeys and dogs. ”
“ Didn’t Mohammed say that?”
Itah shrugged. “Even a great man can sometimes say foolish things. Didn’t Moses tell God to go find someone else?”
“ What happened to the third?”
“ Johnny? He was Canadian-came to Israel too old to serve in the army so I thought we would be safe, grow old together, all that. Super guy. Helped me raise the kids like they were his own-though now they’re both in Toronto, studying art on Grandma’s dollar.”
“ And Johnny?”
“ Run over while crossing the street. Can you believe it?” She chuckled to dispel the morbidity of her marital record. “The fourth would have to be suicidal.”
“ I disagree,” he said, and left it at that.
On Jaffa Street, a line of police barricades blocked vehicle traffic, allowing thousands of pedestrians to march down the wide road toward the Zion Square. A building overlooking the vast square had been decorated with flags of the Likud party. A huge banner read: Peace only with security! Many held placards with photos of victims from recent terror attacks as well as skeletons of blown-up buses. A chorus of a few hundred people adapted the tune of a romantic Zionist folksong to crude lyrics: “Yes, Rabin is a homo…yes, Rabin is an SOB…’cause Rabin is a dog…and a murderer!”
The offensive crooning repeated again and again, with more voices joining. Rabbi Gerster felt Itah grip his arm. He turned to see an elderly man in a suit, who held a sign with a photo of a young woman and the words: I survived Auschwitz, but my daughter didn’t survive Oslo!
The long balcony across the front of the building was filled with political leaders of the right, led by Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu. The banner under the line of Likud leaders read: The Murderer Arafat Deserves Capital Punishment!
Underneath, the plaza was dense with people, many of whom now chanted, “Death to Rabin! Death to Rabin! Death to Rabin!”
Arik Sharon started talking into a loudspeaker, barely overcoming the chanting crowd. “The murderer Arafat was brought into our midst by the collaborators. It’s a government that forgets everything, forgets the victims of the war criminal Arafat!”
“Look!” Itah pointed at a stout young man wearing a white skullcap. “That’s Freckles!”
Rabbi Gerster recognized him as the leader of the small demonstration in front of the prime minister’s house. He was holding a placard with a life-size photo of SS leader Himmler in dress uniform, only the face was substituted with Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s face. Next to Freckles stood a few other young men with colorful placards on sticks, showing Rabin dressed as an Arab with a checkered kafiya, Rabin with a hangman’s noose around his neck, Rabin shaking hands with Arafat under the headline: Partners in Terror.
“Freckles is very creative,” Itah spoke into Rabbi Gerster’s ear as the noise around them was deafening. “But the money fuels everything. We need to find the old man in Paris!”
Rabbi Gerster nodded.
The crowd switched to another chant: “With blood…and fire…Rabin will expire!”
Next came Netanyahu, who managed to say, “Good evening,” before the crowd roared, “Bibi! Bibi! Bibi!”
Rabbi Gerster saw other signs rise above the crowd’s heads:
Government of Death!
Labor Party is Good for Arabs!
Government of Traitors!
Your Day is Coming!
Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu declared: “Arafat is a serial killer whose rightful place is among war criminals. A wicked murderer who is now supported by the current Israeli government, which blindly enables him to implement the first phase in his plan to destroy the Jewish state!”
As the two of them advanced through the dense multitude toward Ben Yehuda Street, Netanyahu’s voice faded, while the eerie serenade continued, “Yes, Rabin is a homo…yes, Rabin is an SOB…”
*
At nine p.m. Lemmy called the American Hotel and asked for Frau Koenig. He wondered if Tanya knew she was hiding in the same hotel where another beautiful spy had stayed, though he hoped Tanya’s fate would be better than Mata Hari’s.
She picked up after the third ring.
“It’s your dead lover,” he said, “calling from the great beyond.”
“ Not funny. Are you in Amsterdam?”
“ Yes. How’s your head?”
“ Achy and confused. Can you come over?”
“ I’ll meet you at noon tomorrow in front of the Metz amp; Co. department store. You’ll be staying with a friend of mine until I come back.”
“ Back? From where?”
“ I’m going to Jerusalem. Elie holds the key to everything. I have to talk to him.”
“ They won’t let you see him.”
“ You underestimate me.”
“ And you underestimate Shin Bet.” She was silent for a moment. “What about the bank?”
“ Swiss banks move slowly. I can handle most things by phone through my assistant.”
“ Especially inactive accounts.”
“ Exactly.” Lemmy thought about the Mauser, which he’d left in Zurich, the writing engraved along the barrel. “Koenig was an Oberstgruppenfuhrer in the SS, right?”
“ Correct.”
“ That was the second-highest rank in the SS.”
She hesitated. “He was an accountant by training, a genius really, when it came to budget allocations, financial administration, things like that.”
“Things like calculating how many humans could fit in a cattle-train car? Budgeting for bulk-purchased Zyklon-B gas canisters? Valuating human hair as an industrial commodity?”
There was a long silence. “I didn’t know about these things. I adored him.”
“And he adored you back.” An idea occurred to Lemmy. He sat on the hotel bed, pressing the receiver to his ear. “Enough to entrust the ledger to you.”
“Klaus knew that my heart belonged to him.” Then, as if an explanation was required, she added, “I was very young, barely fourteen, when he took me in.”
“A fourteen-year-old girl.” Lemmy paused. “Your birthday falls on New Year’s, doesn’t it?”
“I don’t celebrate it anymore, but yes, I was born on January first, nineteen twenty-eight.”
“I remember celebrating with you on the first day of sixty-seven. You bought a kosher cake so I could eat it.”
“ You were struggling to balance your faith with…what we had.”
“ It’s odd how certain things get stuck in your mind forever.”
“ Please come over. We have so much to discuss.”
“ It’s not safe,” he said before temptation took over. “I’ll see you tomorrow at noon in front of Metz amp; Co. There’s a green phone booth across the street. Wait for me there.” He was about to hang up, but the question just popped to his lips. “What’s Bira doing these days?”
“My troublemaking daughter?” Tanya’s voice softened. “She’s an archeology professor at Hebrew University, digging up sacred grounds, pissing off the ultra-Orthodox, including Rabbi Abraham Gerster, unfortunately.”
“ A small world. Is she married? Has kids?”
“Yes. Her oldest is in the army already. Yuval. A wonderful boy, so smart and kind and idealistic. Just like Lemmy was…I mean…just like you were…back then.”
“ And now.”
“ But all these years.” Her voice cracked. “If you only knew…how much grief.”
“ I’m sorry,” he said. “Good night, Tanya.”
*
Benjamin was waiting when Rabbi Gerster and Itah Orr returned to Meah Shearim. He had brewed fresh tea and set up cups on the dining table. “The chaplain from Hadassah Hospital brought a note for you.” He held it so they could read it together.
Abraham, I’m in the ICU at Hadassah, 4 ^ th floor, last room on right. Come ASAP. Long live Jerusalem! E.W.
Itah asked, “Who is E.W.?”
Rabbi Gerster sat down. He picked up the note and read it again, his hand trembling. “E.W. stands for Entirely Wicked.”
“ Wicked?”
“ He’s the devil himself.”
“ God shall safeguard his sheep, ” Benjamin recited, “ from evil spirits and deadly debacles that frequent this earth. ” t› Amen,” Rabbi Gerster said. “Did the chaplain say anything else?”
Benjamin offered Itah a jar of sugar cubes. “He said there were two young men guarding the patient, who appears weak, emaciated, and out of breath, yet in full command of his senses.”
“ That’s an apt description.” Rabbi Gerster stood, gulping the rest of his tea. “Benjamin, kindly call a taxi for us.”
“ At this hour?”
“ Yes. Right now.”
“ But it’s the middle of the night!”
“ There’s not a moment to spare.”
“ Then I’ll go with you. They know me well at Hadassah Hospital.” It was true. Every time a man, woman, or child from Neturay Karta was hospitalized, Rabbi Benjamin Mashash was praying at their bedside or helping feed them or comforting the distraught family members.
“ I appreciate it,” Rabbi Gerster said, “but you must stay here with your sleeping wife and precious children. Itah will join me.”
“ But-”
“ Rest assured,” Rabbi Gerster smiled, “that nothing inappropriate will happen.”
Benjamin blushed. “I didn’t mean to imply such a thing.”
“ Hey,” Itah said, “why not?”
*
The taxi brought them to the military cemetery on Mount Herzl. Rabbi Gerster gave the driver a five hundred-shekel bill and asked him to wait. The guards were off-duty for the night. He used a flashlight to find a service shed and took two shovels.
Itah followed him through rows of headstones. “I thought we were going to Hadassah.”
“ The answer lies here,” he said. After so many years of weekly visits, he could find his way around the cemetery with his eyes closed.
“ Where are we going?”
“ To pay a final visit.” He pointed the beam at the headstone. “Here we are.”
Private Jerusalem (“Lemmy”) Gerster
Killed in Battle, June 7, 1967
In the Defense of Israel
God Will Avenge His Blood
When he inserted the edge of the shovel under the corner, Itah gasped. “What are you doing?”
“ You saw the note.” Rabbi Gerster used the long handle as a lever, lifting the stone.
“ No!” She kneeled and held the stone down, preventing him from toppling it. “It was just a form of salute. Long live Jerusalem! Like a patriotic cheer or something.”
“ The man who wrote the note knows where to stab his victims for best results. I will be in pain until I find out the truth with my own eyes.”
“ E.W.?”
“ Elie Weiss. He spends most of his time in Paris.”
“ You think he’s the one giving money to Freckles?”
“ I’m afraid so. And now he’s trying to lure me to the hospital to facilitate his escape.”
“ By hinting that your son is alive?” Itah picked up the other shovel. “It’s so transparent. Cruel!”
“ But irresistible, right?”
“ Surely you don’t believe him, do you?”
“ A bereaved father would grasp at any straw of hope.”
“ But you know the truth, right? Your son is long dead. No one can bring him back to life.”
“ If anyone can, it’s Elie Weiss.” Rabbi Gerster grunted as he lifted the headstone and rolled it over, exposing the dirt underneath. “That devil has a history of playing with life and death.” He pushed the shovel hard into the soil.
“ You can’t actually believe this, can you?” But still, she joined him, and they dug until the top of the coffin was exposed. He got into the grave, stood wide so his shoes were off the coffin, and bent down to grab the cover.
“ This is so wrong.” Itah aimed the flashlight into the hole. “God will punish us.”
“ God is an illusion, remember?” Rabbi Gerster tried to pull up the side of the cover. “And so are ghosts, in case you’re worried about the neighbors.”
The coffin creaked, and the beam of the flashlight trembled with Itah’s hand. “The body of your son is only bones now. How could you tell if it’s really him?”
“ Can’t open it!” He straightened up, rubbing his hands. “Talmud forbids steel nails, only wooden nails are allowed in coffins. After all these years, it’s bonded together.”
“ A chance to reconsider,” Itah said with a tremulous chuckle.
He climbed out of the grave, turned, and jumped back in, landing hard on top of the coffin, which broke under his weight.
“ Oh, shit!” Itah dropped the flashlight into the hole.
“ Calm down. It’s only bones.” Rabbi Gerster pushed aside the shattered wood planks of the cover and reached in for the flashlight among the pieces of white cotton shroud. He shone the flashlight up and down the coffin interior, located the skull, and pulled it out.
The cranium emerged from the coffin with a length of the spine and a single shoulder, attached to an arm and a skeletal hand.
“ Here,” he said, “hold it.”
“ No, thanks. I’ll hold the flashlight.”
“ At the time, they didn’t let me see the body.” Rabbi Gerster was breathing hard as he peeled strips of shroud from the skull. “They told me Lemmy had been hit point-blank by a grenade, that he was unrecognizable. I should have insisted.”
The last piece of shroud came off the skull. He shook off the dust, and the bones rattled.
“ Ouch!” Itah stepped back. “How can you mess with your son’s remains?”
“ I don’t believe in life after death. I need to know if these bones belonged to Lemmy.”
“ But how?”
He turned the skull around. The grinning jaws, hollowed nose, and empty eye sockets faced them in eerie whiteness. “Point the light at the jaws.”
Itah complied.
“ Ah!” Rabbi Gerster probed the gaping mouth, toward the rear. “This guy has all his teeth!”
“ So?”
“ My Lemmy was missing this one.” He tapped a tooth with a fingernail, producing knocking sounds.
“ How can you be so sure? It’s been decades!”
“ I held his hand while the dentist pulled it-upper jaw, second molar from the back. Lemmy cracked it on an olive pit just before his Bar Mitzvah. You should have seen that boy. He didn’t make a sound while that two-left-handed dentist labored with his pliers.” Rabbi Gerster tossed the bones back into the grave. “This poor bastard is not my son.”
“ What now?”
“ Now?” He began to shovel the dirt back into the grave. “Now we’ll go back to Meah Shearim for a good night’s sleep.”
“ And then?”
He leaned on the shovel. “In the morning, we’re going to see an old friend and squeeze him until all the lies drain out of him.”
*
Sunday, October 29, 1995
Lemmy had not expected Metz amp; Co. to be so busy on a Sunday morning, but shoppers kept coming in. Two female models dressed as tulips stood just inside the automatic glass doors, bowing their heads, adorned with red and yellow petals, and waving their green arms.
A security camera was mounted at the corner under the ceiling. It was aimed at the glass doors, but Lemmy estimated that the lens wasn’t wide enough to capture him. At any event, with his fedora and winter coat, there was little risk of identification, even if someone bothered to examine the video footage.
Attached to the wall was a pay phone, which Lemmy could use while enjoying a clear view of the opposite street corner, where a green phone booth stood close to the arched bridge. Tanya had not arrived yet. He picked up the receiver and asked the operator to place a collect call to Zurich.
Christopher was at his desk. “Herr Horch?”
“Sorry to drag you to the bank on Sunday morning.” Lemmy sheltered the receiver. “Regarding the inactive account, I want to try a few things.”
“We first need an account number. Only then will the computer let me try a password.” The sound of fingers hitting the keyboard came through the receiver. “I’m ready.”
“Try this date: January one, nineteen twenty eight.”
“ One. One. Nine. Two. Eight.” The keystrokes were quick. “No good.”
“Try the opposite order: Eight. Two. Nine. One. One.”
Rapid keystrokes. “Yes! It’s asking me for a password!”
Lemmy breathed deeply. Tanya’s birthday did the trick. Would her name finish the job? He glanced over the two tulips, toward the green phone booth on the other side of the street, by the arched bridge. “Try this: T-A-N-Y-A.”
Again the keys clicked. “No good,” Christopher said.
Lemmy bit his lips. A group of teenagers walked in, chatting happily. When they passed, his eyes caught sight of the petite figure across the street, her head held up, her hair flowing free now, casting a silky shadow over her shoulders.
“Try the reverse order: A-Y-N-A-T.”
The rattling of the keyboard was followed by Christopher’s cheer. “I’m in!”
“ Tell me!”
“ The account owner is Klaus von Koenig. First name is spelled like your son’s name.”
Lemmy wiped the sweat from his face. “What else do you see?”
“The entry page. It’s asking for Gunter’s personal pass code.”
“That’s required if you wanted to conduct transactions in the account. There should be an icon for View Only. It’ll let you see the history of the account, such as deposits, withdrawals, and balance.”
“ I’m clicking on View Only.”
The keys rattled again. Then there was silence.
“Christopher? Are you there?”
A long whistle came through. “Jesus Christ Almighty!”
Lemmy turned to the wall, the receiver pressed to his ear.
Christopher’s voice trembled as he read from the screen. “Client Name: Klaus von Koenig. Authorized Officers: Armande Hoffgeitz, Gunter Schnell.”
“Go on.”
“ List of deposits. The last one was received on January 1, 1945. That’s fifty years ago!”
“ The amounts?”
“ Deposits are in goods. Primarily diamonds, rubies, pearls, and other gems. And expensive wrist watches. The goods were sold over the first two decades. Now it’s all in financial assets, mainly stocks of large American corporations. There has never been a withdrawal.”
“ What’s the current balance?”
“ It’s in U.S. dollars.” Christopher cleared his throat. “Twenty-two billion, eight-hundred and forty-seven million dollars.”
*
Rabbi Gerster waited for Itah in his alcove off the synagogue foyer. She had slept in Benjamin’s apartment and arrived after morning prayers were over. She pointed at the narrow cot. “Did you have the best sleep in three decades?”
He laughed. “I couldn’t sleep at all. And you?”
“ Like a baby. And Sorkeh forced me to eat the biggest breakfast of my life.” Itah burped. “Excuse me!”
“ I wrote a letter to my son.”
“ Can I see it?”
“ I’ve already hidden it in a place that only he would think of.” Rabbi Gerster didn’t mention the risk, of which they were both aware, that Shin Bet agents would arrest and interrogate them. It was safer for her not to know. “Are you ready?”
“ Yes.” She raised the plastic shopping bag in her hand. “Sorkeh lent me shoes, a headscarf, and a dress.”
“ You told her we might not be able to bring it back?”
Itah nodded. “What about the butcher shop?”
“ They slaughtered a cow yesterday, so we got everything we need right here.” Rabbi Gerster pointed to the icebox by the door. “It’s a bit heavy.”
They picked it up by the handles, one on each side, and carried it together. On Shivtay Israel Street they flagged down a taxi.
A half-hour later, they arrived at Hadassah Hospital. Itah left him at the entrance. She returned a few minutes later, dressed in a white coat, her hands in latex gloves, pushing a wheeled gurney.
They loaded the icebox on top of the gurney and rolled it through the lobby to the elevator. Up on the fourth floor, Itah lingered in the elevator with the gurney while Rabbi Gerster walked down the hall, past the nurses’ station, the waiting area, and several ICU rooms. Next to the last door on the right, two young men in civilian clothes sat at a desk covered with books and papers, likely catching up on school work while making hourly wages. One of them glanced up, saw him, and nudged the other one, who whispered a comment that caused them both to snicker. Secular Israelis loved to poke fun at black hats for their odd garb and dangling side locks.
Rabbi Gerster didn’t mind, especially today, considering what these two guys were about to experience. “Is the patient back from the operation?” He pointed at the closed door.
One guard lounged back in his chair, ready for fun. “What’re you saying, Hassid? ”
Ignoring the mocking tone, the rabbi smiled. “I was coming to pray with him after the operation.”
“ What operation?” The guard smirked. “A nose job?”
“ Heaven, no!” Rabbi Gerster struggled not to laugh. “They had to remove most of his intestines-the AIDS is eating him up from within.”
The mention of that dreaded contagious disease drained the blood from the guard’s face. “Nobody told us he has that! ”
Rabbi Gerster glanced over his shoulder. Itah was halfway down the hallway, approaching fast. “The poor yid. And he’s not even forty.”
“ Oh!” The guard was relieved. “Our guy is an old fart.”
“ He sure is,” the other one said.
Itah’s gurney was rattling on the floor, closing in.
“ I’m sorry,” Rabbi Gerster said, pulling out a piece of paper. “Must be another room. You should have seen our patient. Not only his intestines. Also tumors from here.” He gestured at his neck. “Big chunks. And here too.” He tapped his buttocks. “His whole rectum had to be carved out. Riddled with AIDS. Practically rotting away.”
“ Yuk!” The two guards grimaced.
“ Ah! Here’s his nurse!” Rabbi Gerster half-turned toward Itah. “Where is he?”
“ What’s left of him,” Itah said, “is in recovery.” She patted the icebox. “And all this is going to the incinerator-lumps and lumps, chopped off, and all the blood he has lost, full of AIDS. Highly contagious!” She arrived fast, and at the last minute pretended to trip on something, yelped, and swiveled the gurney around, causing the icebox to tip over. Its contents emptied onto the guards’ desk in a torrent of red blood, cascading fleshy chunks, and slithering intestines. The momentum sent much of the gory mess across their desk, over their books and papers, and onto their chests and into their laps.
*
“ Almost twenty-three billion dollars.” Lemmy took a deep breath. “One big account, inactive for fifty years. That’s why Herr Hoffgeitz and Gunter have been so anxious.”
“ It’s incredible,” Christopher said. “What now?”
“ Sign out of the account and wait for further instructions from me. I’m going to Jerusalem to speak with E.W.” He hung up and turned to watch Tanya. She looked up and down the street, searching for him. Was it a coincidence that she reappeared in his life just as he was gaining access to the fortune left by her Nazi lover in a dormant account for five decades? The account was larger than the annual budget of some countries. Twenty-three billion dollars! Was this just a twist of fate or was she lying to him?
Tanya stood by the arched bridge, observing the traffic of pedestrians and cyclists. Her composure didn’t lend itself to coincidences. There was only one logical explanation for her sudden appearance in Zurich. She wanted Koenig’s blood money. She had admitted to a long feud with Elie, and this was the final round-she had locked Elie up in Jerusalem and headed to Zurich to grab hold of the Nazi fortune! And if she had lied to Lemmy about the reason for coming to Zurich, she must have lied about the rest. The man hiding behind the chess board and the whole story about Shin Bet had been a show, put up for Lemmy’s benefit, to confuse him, trick him into trusting her as they escaped together so that he would hand over Koenig’s account to her.
Lemmy picked up the receiver and dialed. A tram rattled by, its bell tolling to ward off cyclists and pedestrians, hiding her from him. When the tram cars reached the next street corner, he saw Tanya step into the green phone booth and pick up the receiver.
“It’s me,” Lemmy said.
“ You’re late.”
“ I was on the phone with my assistant in Zurich. We managed to penetrate the most secret account at the Hoffgeitz Bank.” Sweat dripped down his forehead, but he had to keep on his fedora, especially with the security camera so close. “It belonged to Klaus von Koenig.”
“After all these years. Klaus was very good at his job, but he was also a romantic.” Her tone was endearing, almost longing. “There must be an incredible amount of money in the account by now, after so many years of appreciation.”
“You’d think.” Lemmy stepped as close to the glass doors as the cord permitted and surveyed the street in both directions. If he was right about Tanya, there would be a whole Mossad team waiting to pounce on him.
“What do you mean?”
“ Life’s full of surprises.” Sure enough, at the top of the arched bridge, a young woman in a knitted cap leaned on her bicycle by the railing, sipping from a coffee mug. Near her stood an older man, who wore sunglasses despite the cloudy day, pretending to watch the ducks in the canal. “I was also expecting a large balance.”
“And?”
“It’s disappointing.” In the opposite direction, where the street leveled out, lined with small shops, Lemmy saw another couple, also pretending to ignore each other, both smoking as they examined window displays. “Seems like my father-in-law made some foolish investments in the seventies, then lost a great deal on Black Monday in eighty-seven.”
“ There must be a lot left though, right?”
“ Less than a thousand dollars,” Lemmy lied, watching Tanya for her reaction. “The account’s practically empty.”
*
The two guards screamed and sprang from their chairs. One of them doubled over and vomited. The other tried to shake off a length of intestine that had hooked on his belt. He moaned as if he’d lost the ability to speak coherently.
“Oh, my God!” Itah shoved the gurney against the wall and pointed at the staircase at the end of the hallway. “Run! Second floor! Biohazard showers!”
The two of them stumbled toward the double doors.
“Strip down and scrub everything!” Itah ran ahead of them and opened both doors. “Quick! Before the virus gets in your system!”
They were cursing as they ran down the stairs. Itah let the doors close. She grinned and motioned at Rabbi Gerster to get into the room while she dealt with the nurses, who were rushing over. “Don’t worry,” he heard her yell, “just a little accident.”
Inside the room, Elie was already out of the bed. He removed the oxygen line from his nose and took off his hospital gown.
Rabbi Gerster emptied the plastic bag on the bed. “Put those on.” He gestured at the long-sleeve dress, a woman’s headscarf, shoes, and sunglasses.
Elie dressed and sat in a wheelchair, panting hard.
Itah distracted the nurses while the rabbi wheeled Elie out of the room and down the hallway. With all the commotion going on, no one paid attention to the little old woman in the wheelchair and the white-bearded man.
Downstairs, a line of taxis waited at the circular driveway outside the hospital’s lobby. By the time Elie was settled in the back seat and the wheelchair was secure in the trunk, Itah showed up.
“Take us to the YMCA,” Rabbi Gerster told the driver. “Near Agron Street.”
As the driver began to ease away from the pavement, a white sedan raced down the access road and came to a screeching halt perpendicular to the pavement, blocking the taxi. Its doors flew open, and four men jumped out.
*
“ It’s impossible!” Tanya’s voice was sharp, angry. “There’s no way! How could he lose everything?”
“Armande likes to spend,” Lemmy speculated. He noticed the man on the bridge speak to the woman while keeping his face toward the canal, his lips barely moving.
“ It wasn’t his money to spend.”
“ With Koenig gone, why shouldn’t he?”
Tanya stood inside the phone booth, her hand pressed against her forehead. “I don’t believe it. Israel needs this money.”
“ I’m sorry if you’re disappointed.”
“ That’s an understatement!” With the constant noise of people and bicycles around her, Tanya must have missed the sarcastic tone of his voice. “Did he move funds to another account? There must be a record!”
Lemmy was tired of lying to her. Tanya’s reaction had already confirmed his suspicions. It was obvious she had come for the money. “Is your team ready to grab me?”
“ What team?”
“ Take me to a safe house? Drug me up for the interrogation?”
Her face was white through the phone booth glass. “What are you talking about?”
“It’s all about the money, isn’t it? You and Elie, the same-plotting, manipulating, using other people like pawns.”
“No!” Across the street, through the pedestrians and cyclists, he saw Tanya pound her chest with a clenched hand. “It’s not about the money!”
“I don’t believe you.”
“ Lemmy, I beg you-”
“ You set me up, didn’t you?” He glanced up and down the street. Both couples were watching Tanya, barely pretending any longer. “There’s no Shin Bet, no big secrets, no conspiracy. You came for the Koenig account.” His voice rose to a shout. “ Didn’t you? ”
The two tulips stopped greeting shoppers and turned.
“That’s not true.” Tanya looked around. “Where are you?”
“Where I can see you and your team.”
“I don’t have a team! I’m alone here!” Tanya noticed him across the street and through the glass doors. She dropped the receiver and ran out of the phone booth.
Lemmy’s mind registered the rings of a coming tram while his eyes were locked with Tanya’s eyes, wide and glistening. He dropped the receiver and held up his hand. “Stop!” But he was inside the store, and the glass doors silenced his warning.
Up on the bridge, the young woman tossed her coffee cup into the canal, mounted her bicycle, and pedaled down toward Tanya.
Emerging through the sliding glass doors, Lemmy saw the tram rushing at them from the right. Now holding both hands up, showing his palms to Tanya, he yelled again, “Stop!”
The woman on the bicycle gained speed, racing at Tanya from the left, while the tram arrived from the right, and they collided, the handlebar ramming hard at Tanya’s left kidney, jolting her forward into the coming tram, which screeched and groaned, attempting to stop.
*
When the sedan blocked their way, Elie’s hand went to his side, groping for the blade that wasn’t there. All he had with him was the heavy copy of the Bible. He recognized the man who emerged from the front passenger seat. Agent Cohen yelled something at his subordinates, and the four of them sprinted across the pavement and into the hospital.
Elie let the air out of his lungs. It was time to instruct the driver to go, but he didn’t trust his voice to sound like an elderly female.
The cabby cursed, maneuvered around the white sedan, and drove off.
“Maybe they had a medical emergency,” Rabbi Gerster suggested. “One must assume good intentions.”
“They seemed healthy to me,” the woman said.
Elie recognized her. She was a TV reporter. Why was she here?
They travelled in silence. At the YMCA, Itah directed the driver to the parking lot. “My car is right there.” She pointed. “The red Mitsubishi.”
“Do you have enough gas to get to Haifa,” Rabbi Gerster asked, “or do we need to fill up?”
“I have plenty,” she answered, playing along. “Are you happy to go home, Mom?”
Elie nodded.
They got out of the taxi. Rabbi Gerster unloaded the wheelchair from the trunk while Itah paid the driver. They pretended to engage in discussion until the taxi was gone. Elie walked slowly toward the Mitsubishi.
“ Where are you going?” She pointed at the King David Hotel across the street. “I arranged a room for us.”
Realizing it was only a diversion, in case the cabby was later questioned, Elie nodded and sat in the wheelchair. “Let’s go.”
Itah looked at him closely. “Now I recognize you! You’re the creep who came to my apartment to scare me off the story about Rabbi Gerster and his dead son.”
“ You have a long memory,” Elie said.
“ And you had a long knife!” She shoved his wheelchair toward the busy road. “I was hoping to catch you one day, throw you under a bus or something!”
“ Calm down,” Rabbi Gerster said. “You’re getting a much better story now.”
“ You bet!” She stopped the wheelchair abruptly at the curb’s edge as a bus rumbled by.
*
The tram stopped with an ear-piercing screech of metal brakes clamping on steel rails. Tanya lay on the cobblestones. Lemmy ran to her. A circle of spectators formed around them.
The right side of her body was covered with blood. Her arm was broken, and her leg pointed at an impossible angle. But her face was clear, and her thick hair spread around like a soft cushion.
“ I’m sorry.” He touched her cheek. “I thought they were your team.”
Her lips parted and she tried to speak. He bent over her, his ear near her dry lips.
“Abraham.” She struggled to push air through her vocal cords. “Abraham.”
“I’m not Abraham. It’s me, Lemmy.”
Tanya’s eyes had no confusion in them. He realized she had recognized him, that she was trying to tell him something else. “Abraham,” she repeated.
“You want me to go to my father?” He kissed her forehead. “I will. I promise.”
Peace settled into her eyes.
Medics shoved him aside and began working on her. He stood back and searched the faces of the spectators, trying to find the agents he had seen before. Rage swept over him. He thought he saw one of them in the back of the crowd and pushed through.
Powerful hands grabbed Lemmy from behind. It was Carl. “They’re long gone,” he said and practically carried Lemmy through the crowd and down a set of narrow stairs.
“ There was another couple-”
“ The smokers?” Carl pushed him along the stone dock. “They split. I watched the whole thing.”
A speedboat was tied under the bridge. Carl untied the rope and hit the throttle. The boat’s tail sank and its bow rose as it took off, raising waves that rocked the houseboats along the canal. Lemmy held on, his face turned into the cool wind.
After racing through a maze of narrow canals for fifteen minutes, Carl cut the engine, and the boat drifted to the wooden dock. “I found a Citroen for you in Israel. It’s a DS, but most parts would fit your SM. It’s been sitting outside a mechanic’s shop in a small town near Jerusalem. The owner said you can stop by anytime. I wrote down the address and directions.” He handed Lemmy an envelope. “There’s also a passport, driver’s license, American Express and Visa cards.”
Glancing inside the envelope, Lemmy saw the name on the passport. “Baruch Spinoza?”
“ You’re going to Israel, aren’t you? It’s the first Jewish name that came to me.”
“ Are you out of your mind?”
“ Wasn’t he a brilliant philosopher? I thought you’d be flattered.”
“ He was excommunicated by the Jews of Amsterdam. Carrying his name would make me stand out like a pig in a kosher butcher shop.”
Carl laughed. “But nobody would suspect your papers are forgery. I mean, who in his right mind would choose Spinoza as an assumed name?”
There was nothing he could do right now but plow ahead. “Can you check where they took Tanya and protect her in the hospital?”
“ Fight it out with those Israelis?” Carl chuckled. “Her only defense would be anonymity. I’ll play around with the computer records, make her disappear, so to speak.”
“ I leave it to you,” Lemmy said. “Take care of Tanya for me.”
“ What if she dies?”
“ Call the Israeli embassy and tell them. They’ll take care of her remains.”
They hugged for a long moment, and Lemmy climbed out. He stood on the bank of the canal and watched Carl’s boat speed away. Again, he was alone.
*
“ Long live Jerusalem?” Rabbi Gerster held up the note Elie had sent from Hadassah Hospital. “Where does he live?”
“ I meant it metaphorically.” Elie reclined in the large hotel bed, resting his head on the pile of pillows. “Kind of a salute to your son’s memory.”
“ A bit peculiar,” Itah said.
“ I knew that Jerusalem’s heroic sacrifice on the battlefield would prod you to act.” Elie rubbed his hands. “I’m glad you understand. Surely you didn’t think I would falsely imply that Lemmy really is alive. I mean, that would be too far-fetched.”
They had checked into a suite at the King David Hotel and helped Elie into bed to ease his shortness of breath. He was still wearing the dress Benjamin’s wife had lent them but had taken off the headscarf and glasses. As Itah had proposed, they didn’t tell Elie about their visit to the cemetery the previous night or about their investigation of Freckles and Yoni Adiel. Her theory was that Elie’s lies might reveal more about his agenda than anything he would tell them if he knew how much they had discovered already.
“ No hard feelings,” Elie said. “I hope.”
“ Even now,” the rabbi said, “after so many years, any mention of his name hurts.”
“Your son’s death was a tragic loss,” Elie said. “Such a promising young man. And what’s most upsetting, I’m sure, is how unnecessary it was. Basically, if not for Tanya’s seduction, he would never have left Neturay Karta. If not for that woman’s irresistible allure, he would be alive today. That must make you very angry with her. It makes me angry with her!”
“Let my son rest in peace, would you?” Rabbi Gerster was barely able to conceal his rage. It was hard to believe he had once fought the Nazis with Elie Weiss, had served as his mole among the ultra-Orthodox, had followed his commands and trusted his idealism. By now it had become all too clear that this diminutive man was a colossal liar. “I got you out of Hadassah,” he said. “Now tell me what’s going on. Everything!”
“Of course.” Elie smirked. He obviously thought that his manipulation had worked, that he was now in control. “Did you attend the Likud rally last night?”
“We did.”
“I would have liked to have been there, see the action firsthand.” Elie used the remote to turn on the TV. “They didn’t let me watch the news.”
On the screen, talking heads criticized Likud leaders Sharon and Netanyahu for tolerating the multitudes of placards showing Prime Minister Rabin in Nazi uniform and in PLO headdress, as well as the crowd’s vicious chants, especially those calling for his death. But at the end of the program, as if in an afterthought, the moderator mentioned that opinion polls conducted on the morning after the rally show Netanyahu leading Rabin by nine points among likely voters.
“Everything’s falling into place,” Elie said quietly, almost in a whisper. “All according to plan.” But before Rabbi Gerster could ask him anything else, his head slumped, and he began to snore.
*
Part Five
The Duplicity
Monday, October 30, 1995
The Mediterranean glittered with whitecaps as the plane began its descent toward Tel Aviv. Over the years, in moments of weakness, Lemmy had imagined visiting Israel. He knew he could never return as Jerusalem Gerster. That boy had died, and Wilhelm Horch had taken his place. He had a wife, a son, and possibly a baby on the way. And his position in Zurich was about to become even more powerful when he permanently assumed Herr Hoffgeitz’s job. He had once considered taking Paula and Klaus Junior on a sightseeing vacation to Israel, but Elie had forbidden it, reasoning that someone might recognize Lemmy and blow his cover.
The coast appeared in the window, a strip of golden sand between the breaking waves and the towering hotels. Beyond the beach, Tel Aviv was an urban sprawl, stretching as far as he could see.
The KLM plane turned in a wide sweep over the southern outskirts of the metropolis and touched down with a healthy bump on a runway bordered by plowed fields.
The immigration control agent took one look at Lemmy’s Dutch passport and laughed. “Baruch Spinoza!” She spoke loudly enough for her colleagues at the other counters to hear. “It’s an honor to welcome you to the Jewish homeland!”
Lemmy voicelessly cursed Carl. “Thank you. Happy to be here.”
“I’ve studied Ethics at the university. Clever how you questioned God’s existence without actually expressing blasphemy.”
“Appreciate the compliment. The late philosopher is my great-great-great-great-uncle. And I don’t think he questioned God’s existence, but rather suggested that God and nature could be the same, philosophically speaking.”
“As I said, clever.” She smiled. “And the purpose of your visit to Israel?”
“Shopping.” He chuckled at the sight of her raised eyebrows. “Car parts. I restore classics as a hobby, always looking for missing pieces-doors, windows, handles, mirrors, a hood, this and that.”
“Good luck.” She handed him the passport. “There’s a street bearing your name in Tel Aviv. Check it out, take a photo, lay a wreath, you know?”
“I’ll do all three.” He passed through to the luggage area, still smiling. That was the sabra spirit he remembered-direct and irreverent!
*
Itah went downstairs to thank the PR director, a close friend who had arranged for the suite the previous day. She returned with pastries, coffee, and clothes for Elie.
They sat on the balcony, the three of them facing the view of the Old City rather than each other.
Elie pointed. “The border used to run right under this hotel.”
“ Let me guess,” Itah said. “You two worked together?”
“ At the time,” Rabbi Gerster said, “there was a concern that the ultra-Orthodox would rebel against the secular government. I worked with SOD to keep the extremists in check.” He put down his coffee cup. “I used to take the men of Neturay Karta to pray within sight of Temple Mount every Friday afternoon. Over there. You see that huge boulder?”
“ I was doing my mandatory service in the air force,” Itah said. “I worked the wireless communications at Ramat David Air Force Base. All our planes took off that June morning, heading to Egypt. I still can’t believe they managed to reach all those enemy airfields undetected. The base commander told me that Mossad knocked down the only radar capable of early detection-that huge thing the Americans installed at the UN command over there.” She gestured at the south of the city. “At Government House.”
“ It wasn’t Mossad,” Elie said. “My SOD did it. It’s old history, but today’s political situation is very similar. Back then, with the Arabs gearing up to destroy Israel, Prime Minister Levi Eshkol was losing the public’s trust. Now, the Oslo Accords are failing to deliver peace and security, with terror attacks intensifying rather than declining, and Prime Minister Rabin is losing popularity. History repeats itself.”
Suddenly everything connected in Rabbi Gerster’s mind: Elie’s financial support of the right-wing fringe ILOT as the opposition’s firebrand, the insidious mingling of the extremists’ virulent rhetoric into Likud rallies to paint the whole right as violent and lawless, the recruiting of former members of Shin Bet’s VIP Protection Unit, and the grafting of Nazi and PLO garb onto Rabin’s image to imply that he deserved to die. “Are you going to try it again? Are you?”
Itah looked from one to the other. “Try what?”
Elie lit a cigarette. “What is real wisdom but to succeed where one failed before?”
“ Wisdom is to avoid repeating mistakes!” Rabbi Gerster sat back, shocked. “You’re insane!”
“ What’s going on?” Itah asked.
“Back in sixty-seven, he tried to prop up Levi Eshkol with a fake assassination attempt.”
“ Not fake,” Elie said. “A failed assassination attempt. Intentionally staged to fail.”
“ Now I’m confused,” she said.
“ Let me explain,” Elie said. “There’s a whole field of political science that supports this proposition-popularity through victimhood. For it to work, a politician must be the target of a real attacker with sincere murderous intentions, the weapons must be real and deadly, and the politician must be in the line of fire, in deadly peril. That’s why President Ford gained nothing from two half-hearted attempts on his life in California while few today remember how unpopular and ridiculed Ronald Reagan had been before he survived Hinckley’s nearly fatal gunshot. My plan in sixty-seven had been visionary, perfect, a real attack that was going to fail only because Eshkol was on the roof, briefing reporters, when the grenades were to explode near his ground-floor kitchen. The assassination attempt was supposed to be real in every respect, and it would have restored the prime minister’s popularity.”
“ How?”
“ Good luck is a political aphrodisiac,” Elie said. “Voters love a plucky leader who laughs in the face of danger, who is steady in opposing the extremists, and who unites the nation after depraved assassins tried to divide it. The political situation today is perfect for such an operation. And that’s how Rabin will win the next elections.”
“ It’s madness!” Rabbi Gerster stood and grabbed the railing. “The Eshkol assassination failed because I discovered your scheme and stopped it! And by God, I will stop you again!”
“ It’s too late,” Elie said. “The wheels are already in motion. Unstoppable.”
*
Lemmy rented a zippy Fiat with a manual transmission. The wide, well-marked road out of Ben Gurion Airport wound through manicured flower beds and trim shrubs, which looked more like Switzerland than the dusty Israel he remembered. The buildings were large and modern, the cars new and abundant, and the road signs multi-lingual in Hebrew, Arabic, and English.
He glanced at the directions Carl had given him to the town of Bet Shemesh and turned onto the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem highway, heading east. The radio played edgy music, a mix of American pop and Middle Eastern crooning. He searched the stations for something more to his taste and happened upon the Voice of Israel, which announced the ten o’clock news.
Obeying the speed limit of ninety kilometers per hour earned him honks from the Israeli drivers, who tailgated him before passing. Some gave him angry glares, and others cut back in within inches of his front bumper. A couple of them actually hit their brakes as soon as they returned to his lane, forcing him to do the same. It was funny for a while, but eventually, as he approached the imposing monastery at Latrun, he decided that speeding was safer than driving legally. He swung into the fast lane and increased his speed to 130 kilometers per hour, which made all the difference.
The news started with politics, quoting Prime Minister Rabin: “The Oslo Accords are the only path to peace and security for Israel and its neighbors!” Opposition leader Bibi Netanyahu was quoted next: “The current government has placed our national security in the hands of Palestinian murderers!” Next came economic news, mixing impressive achievements by several exporters with pessimistic forecasts for the industrial and farming sectors should Palestinian terror attacks grow even more frequent and deadly.
Crime news came last: “A government spokesman announced this morning the exposure of a suspected ring of identity thieves. The group allegedly hacked into computers at the Central Bank and stole personal banking data, which was then used for illegal purposes. The suspects include a well-known ultra-Orthodox rabbi in Neturay Karta and a TV reporter.”
Lemmy swerved across the left lane and came to a stop on the shoulder. A well-known ultra-Orthodox rabbi in Neturay Karta! No one in the insular sect, which banned television, computers, and all forms of entertainment, would have the means or inclination to engage in financial fraud, let along hack into computers at the Central Bank. And who beside his father could be described as a well-known rabbi in Neturay Karta?
The news ended, followed by a promotional jingle for vacations in Eilat. Lemmy turned off the radio. What was the meaning of this? Tanya had told him that his father, the great Rabbi Abraham Gerster, had been Elie’s mole in Neturay Karta. Was Rabbi Gerster now in the crosshairs of Shin Bet, another casualty of SOD’s collapse? Was Shin Bet busy arresting Elie’s agents on trumped-up charges? And how long would it take for Shin Bet to pounce on Wilhelm Horch in Zurich? Or to track down the Dutch tourist Baruch Spinoza, who had ventured into Israel with neither contacts nor allies for support?
He looked over his shoulder at the moving traffic. No one stopped behind him or ahead of him. He rolled down the window and looked up at the sky, searching for a plane, a helicopter, or perhaps the Israelis’ favorite-a drone.
Nothing but a blue sky and an endless chain of cars buzzing by his window. Were they waiting for him at Hadassah? Was Elie Weiss the bait in a Shin Bet trap?
The next exit off the highway took him to Bet Shemesh. The mechanic’s shop sat on the main road. An elderly man wearing a greasy coverall and a colorful yarmulke had his hands deep in the engine well of a tiny Alfa Romeo.
“ Shalom,” Lemmy said. “I’m here to see the Citroen.”
The man beckoned.
Behind the shop, twenty or so cars rested in various grades of disrepair. The DS was propped on blocks, but its space age, aerodynamic shape still connoted speed and sophistication. It was white, which would make painting any pirated skin sections easier. It was also rusty in all the suspect spots and was missing the rear seat. But otherwise Lemmy’s meticulous inspection revealed it to be complete inside and out-a treasure trove of usable little parts that would otherwise cost a fortune to fabricate from scratch for the SM Presidential, which shared many of its components with the standard-body DS sedan.
The mechanic was back inside with the Alfa.
Lemmy found a sink and a bar of soap. Over the sound of the running water, he asked, “How much do you want for it?”
After a long silence, the mechanic said, “It was once owned by a lawyer in Haifa. He’s now a minister in the government.”
“ That’s quite a pedigree. I’ll treat it well…except for taking off a bunch of parts.”
That drew a chuckle.
“ I can give you two thousand dollars. That’s my only offer.” Lemmy pulled a bundle of bills from his pocket. “I’ll have it picked up in a couple of weeks.”
The mechanic put on reading glasses and fumbled through a drawer. He produced a creased envelope with a title, which he and Lemmy signed.
He examined the signature. “Baruch Spinoza?”
“ Guilty as charged,” Lemmy said.
The mechanic gave him the title and took the money. “Wait a minute.” He went into an adjoining space, which seemed like a combined kitchen-storage-hangout room, and reemerged with a small volume. “Sign this as well,” he said, holding it forth.
Lemmy looked at the cover. It was a Hebrew translation of Spinoza’s 1662 work: On the Improvement of the Understanding.
*
Elie tossed his cigarette over the balcony railing. “The problem with you, Abraham, is that your emotions drive your decisions. We’re not theorizing over Talmudic esoteric quandaries here. We’re dealing with reality. Don’t you remember what we saw with our own young eyes? Don’t you remember what happens to Jews who let misguided righteousness determine their fate?”
“ I remember,” Rabbi Gerster said. “They died like sheep in the slaughterhouse.”
“You two might as well speak Chinese.” Itah stood. “You better explain what’s going on, or I’m going straight to the police. What’s this talk of an assassination?”
“Calm down,” Elie said. “Nobody is going to die.” He lit another cigarette and puffed a few times. “It’s very simple. The first stage of my plan required that I nurture a right-wing militia.”
“The ILOT group,” Itah said. “I’ve covered their activities for Channel One. Is Freckles your agent?”
“You know Freckles?” Elie looked at her with renewed appreciation.
“He’s getting regular cash deposits in French francs. From you?”
For a moment, Elie considered whether she should be eliminated. But a TV reporter could be useful to his operation. “Some of the ILOT boys are familiar with the VIP protection procedures. When opportunity comes, one will strike at Rabin.”
“When?”
Elie shrugged. “They’ve shadowed the prime minister to major events, waiting for a lapse in security. The bullet will have low velocity, and Rabin will wear a bulletproof vest. A broken rib would be the worst he could suffer.”
“ That’s your plan?” Itah gave him a doubtful look. “You’re counting on a coincidence? You think Rabin’s bodyguards will step aside for your assassin?”
“ They’re only human. The protective ring opens occasionally, even for a brief moment.”
“ And if this unlikely chance presents itself, how do you know the bullets won’t kill Rabin?”
“ Our rabbi here can explain why,” Elie said.
“ A religious man,” Rabbi Gerster said, “especially one with a legalistic mindset, would follow Talmud to the letter. He will shoot at the fifth rib.”
“ The fifth rib?” Itah seemed bewildered. “Why not the fourth rib? Or the sixth?”
“ Talmud is very specific about this. It’s the prescribed method to stop a Rodef who is in deadly pursuit of another Jew, to disable the pursuer by striking him in the fifth rib. It’s discussed in the tractate of Sanhedrin.”
“ Correct,” Elie said. “Rabin will walk away from the shooting almost unscathed, but the Israeli public will have witnessed an honest-to-God assassination attempt. The political ramifications will be spectacular. The whole right wing will be swept off the map of legitimate politics and into the trashcan of fringe irrelevancy. Rabin’s aura as an invincible warrior will be bolstered, making him undefeatable. He will win an absolute majority in the Knesset and use that mandate to push through the rest of his peace agenda.”
“ And owe you everything?” Rabbi Gerster tugged at his side locks thoughtfully. “What’s your reward?”
“ Everything I do is for our people,” Elie said, looking at Itah, whose loyalty he wanted to win. “My work will not only end Arab terrorism, but will also prevent another Holocaust, another Exile, or another Inquisition. I’m determined to end the long chapter of suffering in Jewish history, to inoculate us against national disasters that have repeatedly stricken us.”
“ A lofty goal,” Rabbi Gerster said. “You’re still pursuing that phantom solution.”
“ The two of us are the same,” Elie said while resting his hand on Rabbi Gerster’s arm. “Since the day we hid in an attic and watched the Nazis slaughter our families, we have dedicated our lives to the eternal survival of our people, to the defeat of the next Final Solution, devised by another Fuhrer, another Pope, or another Grand Ayatollah.”
Rabbi Gerster remained quiet, which pleased Elie, who feared his long-estranged mole would rise up in opposition at this critical time.
“ I’ve developed a comprehensive strategy,” Elie continued. “ Counter Final Solution. In short, we will reorganize the existing secret services-Mossad, Shin Bet, and my SOD-into a single worldwide force capable of performing all operational elements at top level. It will gather information, infiltrate government agencies, and worm its way into ideological organizations and academic institutions in order to identify, track down, and eliminate every enemy of the Jewish people at the outset of their hostile activity. The concept aims at preventing attacks on Jews or Israeli interests worldwide, thwarting all on-going anti-Semitic activities, and suffocating all anti-Jewish intellectual enterprises. Ultimately we will achieve a total and complete immunization of the Gentile world, a cure for all of its anti-Semitic tendencies. In other words, our Counter Final Solution will exterminate the anti-Semitic virus in its totality.”
“ By exterminating every human carrier?” Itah Orr shook her head. “Madness!”
Elie considered whether to say more. Recruiting a news reporter was like cultivating a pet wolf. She could become a formidable ally, but she could also turn on him and destroy everything. By sharing his plans, he had committed to playing for her support, which would be a major coup. But failing to recruit her would necessitate silencing her before she could blow the whistle. He asked, “Don’t you believe in self-defense?”
“ I do. But-”
“ You think we should agree to again go into exile? Into the gas showers? Turn the other cheek for the convenience of our mortal enemies?”
“ Of course not. But I also don’t believe in killing indiscriminately.”
“ So you believe in self-defense as long as we’re discriminate in our actions?”
“ That’s right.”
“ Me too,” Elie said. “Join us, help us operate discriminately.”
“ Me?” Itah seemed intrigued rather than outraged. “I’ve been a TV reporter my whole adult life. What could I possibly do for you?”
“ A lot of good. My plans include a media department, designated to deal with the global news and communications organizations vis-a-vis their anti-Semitic and anti-Israel agenda. You possess the skills to successfully run that department.”
“ I’m not into killing people.”
“ You can be the voice of reason. A leader of the alternative to physical elimination, which is a last resort anyhow. There are tremendous advantages in converting foes into friends, if possible.”
“ The term Counter Final Solution implies mass extermination. It suggests killing, not kissing and making up.”
“ If we can make supporters out of powerful enemies, what could be better?”
“ Okay.” Her dismissive hostility was gone, replaced by journalistic curiosity. “Is that part of your plan or something you just came up with to woo me?”
“ Can you blame me for trying to turn you into a partner in the most exciting Jewish enterprise in our history?”
“ Rather than exterminate me?”
“ That’s not an option,” Elie lied. “We need an expert like you, capable of assessing the virility of mass communication personalities in various countries. You’ll serve as director of the global media department. You’ll apply the Counter Final Solution doctrine to journalists, authors, and entertainers. If the killing of an anti-Semitic demagogue could be avoided by converting him into a pro-Israel voice, then we gain twice!”
“ That’s a pipe dream.” Itah’s forehead creased, and she glanced at Abraham, who said nothing. She fixed her shoulder-length silver hair behind her ears. “No one has ever tried something like that.”
“ But you see the potential, yes?”
She nodded and shrugged simultaneously.
“ Then help us change history!”
“ To achieve this on a global basis would be prohibitively expensive. You’ll need a huge staff of analysts ready to digest mountains of data, translators versed in every language, powerful computers connected to every media outlet, and agents on the ground in every country who are familiar with local culture and academic activities.”
“ Go on.”
“ And you’ll need to buy off insiders, enlist them as pens-for-hire.”
“ Kind of intellectual moles?”
“ Yes, major talents, capable of redirecting the political, religious, and emotional tone of newsmakers and scholars from anti-Israel to pro-Israel, from anti-Jewish to pro-Jewish, from warmongering to reconciliation. It’s an enormous undertaking.”
“ But it’s possible.” Elie looked up at Itah, who stood up in excitement.
“ In theory, anything is possible!” She laughed. “But in reality-”
“ We’ll need someone with extensive media expertise?”
“ Of course.”
“ With creativity and vision?”
“ Naturally.”
“ With guts and big balls. Someone like you?”
“ Yeah, right!” Itah dropped into the chair. “It’s a pipe dream.”
“ Why?”
“ Because it would cost more money than God has!”
“ How much?”
“ I don’t know.” She was smart enough to know he was teasing her, but she couldn’t resist the challenge. “A billion dollars, okay?”
“ Is that your best estimate?”
“ No, it’s my wild guess.”
“ But you believe that you could do the job if this kind of money was available?”
“ Oh, sure. If you give me a billion dollars, I’ll build a media department for your Counter Final Solution that will change the tone of every news outlet. Israel would be more popular than Mother Theresa, okay?”
“ Funny how things work out,” Elie said. “A billion dollars is the exact budget I’ve allocated for the media department in my five-year plan.” He extended his bony hand to Itah. “Partners?”
After a brief hesitation, Itah shook his hand. “You really have that kind of money?”
“ A lot more,” Elie said. “Welcome aboard.”
Rabbi Gerster clapped his hands. “You’re still the master,” he said to Elie. “I’m impressed.”
*
Lemmy stopped at a sporting goods store on the outskirts of Jerusalem and bought three baseball caps, three windbreakers, and three pairs of sunglasses, all in different colors. He followed road signs to Hadassah Hospital, which occupied a vast mountainside compound southwest of Jerusalem. Parking the Fiat in an overflow lot across the main road, he put on a yellow windbreaker, a matching cap, and sunglasses. He carried a blue set in a plastic bag.
The information desk was handling a long line. Eventually his turn came.
“ I’m looking for a relative,” Lemmy said. “She was admitted a couple of days ago, but we only got word this morning-”
“Last name?”
“Weiss.”
The woman punched a few keys and looked at her computer screen. “Her first name?”
“Esther.” Lemmy lowered his sunglasses and leaned forward to get a good view of the screen. “Esther Weiss.”
She ran her finger down the list. “Don’t have her. Did you check the Hadassah campus at Mount Scopus?”
“Not yet.” Lemmy saw the name on the screen: Weiss, Elie – Room 417. “Thanks.”
“Next!”
Lemmy headed toward the exit, circled the vast lobby, and found the gift shop. He selected a large bouquet and a get-well card, which he addressed to Auntie Esther.
*
“ Billions of dollars?” Rabbi Gerster returned Elie’s cold gaze without showing his anger. This was a dangerous moment, and the next step would determine whether he would ever see Lemmy again. “Have you finally put your hands on the Koenig fortune?”
Elie raised a finger to his lips, but Itah Orr didn’t miss it. “Who’s Koenig? What fortune?”
“Tanya gave you the ledger, but not an account number or a password.” The rabbi kept his voice even. “There’s no way you could reach that money without a mole inside the Hoffgeitz Bank.”
Rising from the chair, Elie said, “Let’s go inside. It’s too chilly for me.”
The rabbi blocked his way. “Answer me!”
“Yes,” Elie said. “I have people inside. So what?”
“You needed a young, bright, adaptable agent-someone similar to what I had been when you convinced me to infiltrate Neturay Karta, unknown, unattached, totally dedicated, and capable of climbing to the top, becoming a leader, and reaching through the wall of secrecy to grab Koenig’s funds.”
“ You know me too well.”
“ Such a mole had to look Aryan, speak German, and possess a flexible, sharp mind.”
“ Possibly,” said Elie.
“ Your candidate had to forgo his past life, forget his family and friends, and focus his whole life and future on this mission.”
“ In other words, an impossible criteria.”
“ Except for my son, who was a perfect fit.”
“Theoretically, yes.” Elie tried to squeeze by toward the glass door.
“It makes perfect sense. My Jerusalem spoke fluent German, had the looks and brains, and was alone in the world. A perfect recruit for such a long-term assignment in Switzerland.”
“He was too dead for the job.”
Itah groaned in shock at Elie’s cruel response, but Rabbi Gerster didn’t flinch. “What if he didn’t die on the Golan Heights? What if he survived? It wouldn’t be an unprecedented situation, considering your track record. Hadn’t Tanya spent twenty years thinking I was dead? Hadn’t I spent twenty years thinking she was dead?”
“ I understand your pain,” Elie said. “You excommunicated Lemmy, turned your only son into a pariah, and expected him to come back begging for your forgiveness. But instead he joined the army and found happiness among the paratroopers. Yes, his happiness was short-lived, and it’s a tragedy. But don’t try to relieve your guilt by pinning it on me.”
With one hand, Rabbi Gerster grabbed the front of Elie’s shirt and lifted him over the railing. The only thing that Elie’s flailing hands could clench was the rabbi’s white beard, but with a swipe of his free arm he knocked Elie’s hands away.
“Stop it!” Itah stepped forward. “Killing him won’t bring your son back.”
“That’s right,” Elie said, glancing down over his shoulder, where a rocky garden rested eleven stories below.
“The body in the grave is not my son.”
“It’s true,” Itah said. “We dug it up.”
“Is Lemmy your mole at the Hoffgeitz Bank?” The rabbi tilted Elie farther back. “Answer!”
Elie closed his eyes. His limbs slumped as if he gave up-or fainted.
“Put him down,” Itah said. “He knows you’re not a killer.”
*
Carrying the flowers in front of him, Lemmy stepped off the elevator on the fourth floor of the hospital. Three hallways led in different directions. A brass plaque credited donors who had helped construct each hospital wing. A directory pointed to rooms 400-420. The double doors were marked Intensive Care Unit.
Beyond the doors he found a strange calm, as if the severity of the patients’ conditions merited hushed voices and light steps. He glanced into the rooms while heading down the hallway. The buzzing of ventilators was constant, the sick lying immobile, connected to tubes and machinery. He kept his head turned sideways while his eyes surveyed the hallway from behind his dark sunglasses. Room 417 was near the end. A desk and two vacant chairs sat by the closed door.
He passed by the nurses’ station, drawing no attention. The absence of guards was both a relief and a concern-either they were accompanying Elie for a test on another floor or they had moved him elsewhere. The last possibility, that he had died, was out of consideration. That would truly be a dead end.
A quick glance over his shoulder, and Lemmy slipped into Room 417, closing the door.
The bed was made. The side table was clear. No shoes, clothes, or personal effects. He opened the cabinets and found only medical supplies. Had Elie been moved to another room without changing the record in the computer? Was it an intended diversion? Turning back toward the door, Lemmy noticed a security camera bolted to the ceiling. A tiny red light indicated it was operating.
Three knocks came in quick succession, and the door flew open.
*
The satisfaction Elie had felt by turning the TV reporter into a potential member of his team was tainted by doubts. If she and Abraham had dug up Lemmy’s grave, what else had they dug up? She was a professional investigator, and Abraham, despite decades of relative seclusion from the modern world, had clearly maintained both his incredible intellect and powerful physique. These two made for a dangerous pair. How much did they know?
Abraham pulled him back over the railing and lowered him into a chair. Elie kept his eyes closed and listened, hoping they would assume he was out and speak carelessly.
“He’s so skinny and pale,” Itah said. “Is he okay?”
“The shortness of breath is chronic emphysema.” Abraham felt Elie’s wrist. “But his heart is pumping well.”
“Isn’t he heartless?”
They laughed, and Elie heard them enter the suite. He needed to plan ahead. Abraham had guessed correctly that Lemmy was in Zurich rather than in the grave, but the time for their father-son reunion had not yet arrived, and maybe never would. They were more useful separately. As to the reporter, she seemed enamored with the rabbi and his mysterious life. They had worked well as a team, executing a clever rescue operation at Hadassah and choosing a perfect place to hide him. Elie knew that without their help he would be exposed to recapture by the Shin Bet. But he could not trust Abraham any longer. It was time to find another safe place to hide for the next few days.
All this trouble was temporary. Rabin’s reluctance to make a deal in advance was nothing but the naivete of a dignified career-soldier, who had not completely internalized the rigors of real politics. But after the assassination attempt, once Rabin saw how effective Elie’s strategy worked, he would pull back Shin Bet and honor the deal. What choice would Rabin have while running for a certain victory over the discredited Likud? He would have to appoint Elie as intelligence czar-or risk a “leak” to the media of the true conspiratorial circumstances of the failed assassination, which would destroy Rabin’s credibility.
Elie heard the TV blaring. He peeked inside and saw neither of them in the living room. The bedroom door was closed, and faint voices came through. Elie reached into Itah’s purse, which rested on the table by the door. His fingers touched a few bills, which he pocketed, together with the suite’s cardkey.
Downstairs he found a phone in the lobby and asked the operator for an outside line. Freckles answered immediately.
“It’s me,” Elie said.
“ Hey! How’s it going?”
“ I need a safe house for a few days.”
“ Super! Not a problem!” The feigned exuberance must have been for the benefit of the people present in the room with Freckles. “It’s a pleasure!”
“ Pick me up at six tonight. The King David Hotel. I’ll be in the restaurant.”
“You got it!”
“Make sure you’re not being followed.”
“We’re cool,” Freckles said. “God bless!”
*
The door opened, and a nurse faced Lemmy. She was tall and broad, her white uniform ill-fitting, and her smile too wide to be sincere. “May I help you?”
“ Oh, yes.” He took a step toward the door. “I’m a bit confused.”
She didn’t move aside to let him out, but her smile remained fixed. “Are you looking for someone?”
“ My aunt, Esther Weiss.” He lifted the bouquet. “I was told she’s in room three hundred and seventeen.” He tilted his head at the empty bed. “It’s not too late, I hope?”
“ No, she’s fine.” Instead of stepping aside, the nurse entered the room and kicked the door shut with her heel. “Esther was taken downstairs for x-rays.” She reached into her coat pocket.
He shoved the flowers in her face and used a chopping strike to disable her right arm. She raised a foot to kick him, which he dodged, taking advantage of her temporary imbalance to knock her other leg from under her, swing her around, and land a punch into her left kidney. She managed to elbow him hard in the chest, but a second fist to the kidney removed what was left of her fighting spirit. He pulled her coat off her shoulders, leaving the sleeves on, and used the loose ends to tie her hands behind her back. She was lying face-down on the floor, right under the video camera. He knew time was short before her colleagues showed up.
A sucking sound told him she had managed to fill her lungs for a scream. He silenced her with a knuckle-jolt to the side of the head.
The nurse was out cold. But not for long.
As he exited the room, a man was jogging down the hallway. Lemmy pretended not to notice and walked in the opposite direction, where another set of double doors was marked with a red exit sign.
He made it down one bank of stairs when the man yelled, “Stop or I shoot!”
Lemmy raised his hands and turned slowly.
The employee card that hung from the man’s neck meant that he was part of the hospital security team, not a trained secret agent. His protruding belly confirmed it. And what he did next proved him an amateur. “Come back up here!” He stomped his shoe on the landing. “One step at a time! And keep your hands in the air!”
“ What’s the problem?” Lemmy took the stairs one by one, getting closer. “I don’t understand. Is it illegal to take the stairs?”
“ Come on!” The gun was pointing up at the ceiling now, the finger straight forward, not threaded in the trigger slot. “Now, over there!” He turned his head to the doors. “Walk through!”
That brief interval, when the security man faced the doors, was enough for Lemmy to deliver a hard chop to the back of his head. He collapsed, and Lemmy caught him before he rolled down the stairs. The gun was a small-caliber Beretta, and he pocketed it together with a spare magazine he found clipped to the man’s belt.
A few slaps on the face, and the security guard came to.
“ Where’s the patient from four-seventeen?”
He shook his head.
Lemmy grabbed his hand and bent it backwards. “I’ll break it in five, four, three-”
“ In Haifa! They’re in Haifa!”
“ They?”
“ The rabbi and the woman. They took the patient.”
“ How do you know?”
“ The taxi driver is a regular here. He told Shin Bet. They’ll catch them-”
“ He drove them to Haifa?” Lemmy applied more pressure.
“ No! Please!” The man’s eyes turned to the door, praying for someone to show up.
“ Answer!”
“ To the YMCA in Jerusalem. They had a car there. They mentioned driving to Haifa-”
Holding the gun by the barrel, Lemmy knocked him unconscious.
On the way downstairs, he switched the yellow windbreaker and cap for the blue set. The ground-floor exit let him out on the side of the building. Pedestrians and car traffic seemed normal, and no one paid any attention to him. Across a large lawn was an outdoor cafeteria. He selected a seat that was partially hidden by the thick trunk of a eucalyptus tree yet provided a clear view of the main hospital entrance.
Moments later, a white Subaru with tinted windows and a few antennas stopped at the curb. The unconvincing nurse from room 417 emerged from the lobby, no longer smiling. She got in the rear seat. The security guard showed up soon after, pressing a pack of ice to the side of his head. He went around to the driver’s side and leaned over the window, which was partially open. After a short conversation, the Subaru departed.
Lemmy waited twenty minutes before walking over to his Fiat. He took the road toward Jerusalem.
*
They argued in hushed voices over what to do about Elie Weiss. Rabbi Gerster wanted to threaten Elie with exposure of his secret dealings, but Itah objected. In her investigative experience, subjects volunteered much more information out of vanity and for shock effect than under duress. And the more urgent task was to stop the staged assassination plan. “It’s political fraud on a grand scale!”
“ What about my son?”
“ Finding him must wait,” Itah argued. “We should focus on the Rabin deal first.”
“ I have a feeling the two are connected.”
“ Perhaps. But the Shin Bet has also been paying Freckles. I can’t wait to see Elie’s face when we tell him that Freckles plays both sides.”
“ Maybe he already knows. With double agents you’re never quite certain which side they really work for. It’s possible that Freckles’ first loyalty is to Elie. He could be taking Shin Bet’s money and feeding them lies from Elie.”
“ You think Elie has outsmarted the Shin Bet.”
“ We’ll soon find out.” Rabbi Gerster took a deep breath. Deferring to Itah was difficult after spending the past fifty years in Neturay Karta, where women were relegated to household duties and obeyed their learned husbands on all substantive decisions.
“ He’s been out there too long,” Itah said. “Let’s check on him.”
They found the balcony deserted. So was the bathroom.
“ He’ll be back.” Rabbi Gerster picked up the phone and asked for the international operator, who gave him the number for the Hoffgeitz Bank in Zurich. When a receptionist answered, he spoke German. “ Entschuldigen sie bitte. This is Herman von Klausovich from Bonn, general director of inter-governmental financial cooperation of the Federal Republic.”
“ Yes?”
“ I met one of your top executives at a conference in Vienna a couple of years ago, but I cannot remember his name. In his forties, very handsome-Aryan, if you get my gist, ja? ”
“ That would be our vice president, Herr Wilhelm Horch.”
“ Yes, that sounds right. Is he available?”
“ Unfortunately Herr Horch is away on a business trip. If you leave your number, I’ll have him call you.”
“ I’ll try again. Auf Wiedersehen. ” He hung up and turned to Itah. “Wilhelm Horch. That’s my son’s name.”
“ Wilhelm?”
“ I bet his wife calls him Lemmy.”
*
Traffic was heavy on Herzl Road, which led into Jerusalem through dense residential neighborhoods, none of which had existed when Lemmy had last lived in the city. On his right, a restaurant on the ground floor of an apartment building spilled tables and chairs onto the sidewalk, most of them occupied by families. He remembered one of his father’s sermons, given on the last Yom Kippur Lemmy had spent at home. Why was it, his father had asked, that every time the ancient kings of Israel had made peace with their enemies, the Bible went on to describe the elaborate feast that followed? The answer, according to Rabbi Gerster, was that feeding the body calmed the mind, including its fighting spirit. On Yom Kippur, on the other hand, fasting was designed to create a sense of urgency, intensifying reflection over one’s sins and prompting repentance. The memory made Lemmy realize how hungry he was. As the light changed and traffic began to flow, he noticed a parking spot and veered right.
He chose a table that allowed him an open view while a wall protected his back.
A short, dark-haired woman began shuttling plates, not bothering to take an order. The pita bread was warm and slightly singed. The pickles were salty and crisp. And the humus was garnished with olive oil, chickpeas, and toasted pine nuts. Lemmy swiped a healthy load with a folded slice of pita bread and bit into it. The rich taste literally made him sigh with pleasure.
She rushed over. “Everything okay?”
Lemmy’s mouth was full. He gave her a thumbs up.
She beamed and disappeared into the kitchen.
Lamb skewers came next, with couscous and chopped salad. He concluded with mint tea and baklava. While paying the bill, he asked her for directions to the YMCA.
*
Elie sat in a nearby park for a couple of hours. He enjoyed the unseasonal sun and watched a group of kids chase a ball. On his way back to the hotel, he paused occasionally to catch his breath and furtively search for suspicious persons lurking about. There was nothing but the usual bustle of Jerusalem on a busy afternoon.
When he returned to the suite, Rabbi Gerster and Itah Orr were watching a TV talk show, which pitted two Knesset members against each other. The raised voices and red faces were no surprise, but even the moderator seemed riled up when he asked the Likud MK: “Why is Netanyahu pouring oil on the fanatics’ fire? Does he also wish to see Yitzhak Rabin burned at the stake?”
“Your plan is working,” Rabbi Gerster said, pressing the remote control to lower the volume. “You must be proud.”
“Indeed.”
“I’m sorry for losing my temper.”
“And I’m sorry for speaking harshly.” Elie patted his shoulder. “Anger and grief go hand in hand, as we both know from our days of fighting the Nazis. Losing your son must be a never-healing wound. I wish I could ease your pain, my dear friend.”
Abraham nodded, but the look on his face was too cryptic for Elie’s comfort. Did he know more than he was saying? Had he and Itah really dug up Lemmy’s grave? And even if they had, how could Abraham tell if the remains belonged to his son? Elie was about to ask him, but Itah grabbed the remote and increased the volume.
The TV screen showed two photos side-by-side, with a subtitle: Rabbi Abraham Gerster amp; TV Reporter Itah Orr.
“The two suspects evaded police yesterday,” the news anchor said, “when investigators sought them in connection with unauthorized hacking into financial databases and the theft of confidential bank records. The investigation revealed a criminal conspiracy with non-profit religious organizations, including Talmudic yeshiva institutions in Israel and New York, which have allegedly been utilized for money laundering.” The two photos were replaced by a video showing several police cars at the entrance to the Meah Shearim neighborhood, and officers carrying boxes of evidence down the road from the Neturay Karta synagogue. A group of bearded men in black hats and coats held a prayer on the pavement nearby, swaying devoutly.
“Channel One,” the anchor said, “announced it was suspending Itah Orr until the investigation is concluded. Anyone with information on the suspects’ whereabouts should contact the police.”
Itah switched off the TV. “I don’t believe this!”
“They’re clever,” Elie said. “You were identified on the security system at Hadassah, but they don’t want to mention that scene, so they made up a criminal investigation. All you need to do is stay out of sight or change your appearance. Once my operation reaches its successful conclusion, Rabin will pull back Shin Bet, and we’ll be home free.”
“What if Shin Bet stops your operation?”
“They’re groping in the dark,” Elie said. “They know I’m up to something, but they don’t know what. They’re clueless.”
“You’re an optimist,” Itah said, exchanging a glance with Rabbi Gerster. “Anyway, I can use Sorkeh’s headscarf.”
“Yes,” Elie said, “but what about the famous leader of Neturay Karta?”
Rabbi Gerster stood up. “It appears that my rabbinical career is over.”
Elie watched from the bathroom door. The scissors in Itah’s hands were small but relentless. She snipped off the payos and worked through the bushy, gray beard that had masked Abraham Gerster’s face for fifty years. The medicine cabinet was well stocked with shaving cream and disposable blades. She shaved him carefully.
Removing his black skullcap, Itah watered her hands and combed his hair backward. “My my,” she said, standing back to examine her handiwork, “you’re drop dead handsome!”
Elie felt a stab of envy. It had been the same with Tanya Galinski in 1945. Despite the deep snow and the warm corpse of her Nazi lover, Tanya had stared at Abraham Gerster the same way-enamored, enchanted. It was incredible to watch him now, at age sixty-nine, impact a woman the same way. Elie cleared his throat. “Shall we go downstairs for dinner?” He had decided not to warn them that Freckles would be arriving to pick him up. Their reaction would reveal how much they knew about the chubby agent-provocateur.
“I’m starving.” Itah adjusted Sorkeh’s headscarf over her hair.
“ Why don’t we order room service?” Rabbi Gerster absently rubbed his smooth cheeks.
“ Don’t worry,” Elie said. “The restaurant here is too expensive for Shin Bet agents.”
*
Traffic inched uphill while pedestrians threaded their way among the moving vehicles. Lemmy turned into the YMCA parking lot and found a spot for the Fiat. This was the last known stop in Elie’s escape, and the mention of going to Haifa could have been a diversion for the benefit of the taxi driver’s ears.
He stepped out of the Fiat, looked around, and immediately saw the solution.
Across the street, he strolled into the circular driveway at the King David Hotel and balked at the sight of two Subaru sedans with the familiar roof antennas. He kept moving along the circular driveway until he was back on the street, this time walking downhill. Was this the next trap? But how did the Shin Bet know he would be coming to the King David Hotel? Had they made the same assumption as he and were now searching the hotel?
A limousine passed by with small flags fluttering from the corners of its hood. It occurred to him that the King David Hotel was the preferred place for visiting foreign dignitaries. Shin Bet, or another government agency that used similar Subaru sedans, was probably at the hotel for reasons that had nothing to do with Elie Weiss, SOD, or the man travelling under the name of Baruch Spinoza. He almost laughed in relief. The world wasn’t revolving around this single crisis! He turned back toward the hotel.
*
Rabbi Gerster felt naked without his black coat and hat, without the long beard and dangling payos. For decades, throughout his adult life, whenever he entered a public place, people recognized him, bowed their heads in respect, and made way for him. But as he entered the La Regence Grill, the only glances he attracted came from two middle-aged women, who smiled at him, and from a single man in a pink jacket, who looked up from his soup and winked. It took Rabbi Gerster a moment to comprehend that his new appearance was attracting a different type of attention, the type drawn by a handsome, mature man who radiated confidence and authority.
Elie ordered a cup of chicken soup. Itah and Rabbi Gerster ordered steak dinners.
Before the food arrived, a stout young man joined their table. His face was infested with the dotted pigmentation that had earned him his nickname. He was dressed inadequately in worn sandals, khaki shorts, and a white T-shirt that bore a quote from the prophet Isaiah: Your detractors and destroyers shall emerge from within you. The knitted skullcap sat askew on his head, jauntily contrasting with the nervous twitch of his mouth. At first glance, he seemed like a beggar who had slipped through the lobby to hit on gullible tourists before the maitre d’ threw him out.
Elie looked up from his soup. “You’re early.”
“ Am I?” Freckles glanced over his shoulder.
“Three minutes,” Elie said. “How uncharacteristic of you.”
“ Trying to get better at my job, you know?” He laughed nervously. “Ready to go?”
“ Hungry, Freckles?” Itah nudged the basket of fresh rolls toward him.
He creased his eyes. “Do I know you?”
Itah pulled off the headscarf.
“ Oh, God!” He stood, then sat back down, looked left and right. “No cameras, right?”
Itah laughed. “Not today. Hush hush. Like spies. You ever heard of Kim Philby?”
Freckles looked at Rabbi Gerster, and his eyes widened. “God, have mercy!”
“ Amen.” Rabbi Gerster’s hand instinctively reached to touch his beard, which was gone. He realized that Elie had tricked them by summoning his agent to take him somewhere else. “How’s business going for you? Money coming in steadily?”
“ What’s going on here?” Freckles got up again, glanced at the door. “I don’t like this!”
“ Sit down.” Elie said it quietly, but the tone was icy. “You all know each other?”
“ Freckles has been a great source,” Itah said. “I’ve earned many kudos for my reports on ILOT. But lately I’ve come to doubt him a bit.”
Elie’s little black eyes focused on her. “Why?”
“ Hold on.” Rabbi Gerster noticed that Freckles kept looking toward the entrance to the restaurant. “I think we should-”
“ I had a little peek,” Itah said, “at his bank account. Regular deposits of French francs in cash, but also a monthly paycheck from Shin Bet, plus medical and pension. Did you know about that?”
“ It’s a trap,” Rabbi Gerster said, rising.
Elie didn’t answer Itah’s question, but his hand landed on the rabbi’s toothed steak knife, rose unhurriedly, and stuck the knife’s point under Freckles’ chin, penetrating the skin, and pulled him closer. “Is that true? Do you work for Shin Bet?”
Freckles couldn’t nod, and opening his mouth was also impossible. Only his lips moved when he squeaked, “I can…explain.”
Rabbi Gerster grabbed Itah’s arm. “We’re leaving!”
Several of the patrons suddenly rose, including the man in the pink jacket, and surrounded their table.
“ Step back,” Elie said, “or I’ll puncture his brain.”
A man in a blue jacket jogged across the restaurant to the table, his hand held up. “Good drill, fellows. Excellent practice!”
“ Agent Cohen.” Rising slowly, Elie kept Freckles’ chin impaled on the steak knife. “Call off your men and have a car ready for us outside.”
“ Let him go.” The Shin Bet officer spoke too quietly for the other patrons to hear. “We can discuss our differences elsewhere.”
“ I think not.” Elie headed for the door with Freckles.
Rabbi Gerster was determined not to allow Jewish blood to be spilled. “We’re outnumbered. Let’s live to fight another day.”
“ Follow me,” Elie said, leading Freckles with the knife.
The rabbi saw Itah raise her eyebrows in a manner of someone accepting defeat. They had made a mistake not telling Elie about the Shin Bet salary Freckles was earning, and Elie had kept from them the fact that he had summoned Freckles to the hotel. Now the game was over.
Rabbi Gerster could have pulled down Elie’s hand to release the hapless Freckles, but the young man’s double-crossing irritated the rabbi enough to make him choose a less-pleasant method. He swung his arm and hit Freckles on the forehead with the back of his hand. The agent’s head flew backward, his face turned to the ceiling, and his chin tore off from Elie’s knife. The strike’s momentum caused him to fall backward, where he stayed sprawled on the carpet, too shocked to move.
Removing the knife from Elie’s hand, the rabbi flipped it in the air and offered it to Agent Cohen with the handle first.
“ Thank you.” Agent Cohen clapped. “Great show!”
The other Shin Bet agents joined the clapping.
“ It’s only a drill,” Agent Cohen said to the shocked patrons as his agents steered the group to the door. “Thanks for your patience. Enjoy your dinner!”
The clapping proved contagious, and the thirty or so patrons joined in, visibly relieved.
*
Wearing a burgundy windbreaker and a baseball hat, his overnight bag hanging from his shoulder, Lemmy approached the entrance to the King David Hotel. He had to go without the sunglasses, which would have raised suspicion at this hour. The two Subaru sedans were still there, and several idle men in civilian clothes stood along the driveway. He felt like a criminal entering a well-policed compound.
The tall doors were propped open to allow fresh evening air into the lobby. As he stepped closer, a large group was coming out, a tight circle surrounding an inner core of-he assumed-dignitaries that merited VIP protection. He stepped aside as the group emerged. Behind him, car engines came to life.
In the center of the group, one man was taller than the others, his thick mane of gray hair brushed back from a handsome face. He sensed Lemmy’s gaze, glanced, and stopped in his tracks, causing the whole group to come to an awkward halt, bumping into each other.
It took a moment for Lemmy to recognize the blue, wise eyes.
Father!
Lemmy was stunned, not only by seeing his father for the first time in almost three decades, but by the loss of his rabbinical manifestations. Yet years of honing his self-control in a life of clandestine survival kept Lemmy from expressing any emotions while his mind absorbed all the details within his field of vision: Elie, much shorter than the rest, looked frail. A woman, about fifty, wore a headscarf and an anxious expression. The men with the guns were alert, professional, focused on their three prisoners.
Lemmy reached into his pocket to draw the Beretta he had taken from the security man at Hadassah, but his father gave a quick shake of the head, turned in the other direction, and bellowed in the familiar baritone that Lemmy remembered so well: “Benjamin! Benjamin!”
Everyone turned in that direction. The agent in charge-blue jacket, thin lips, and rusty hair-recovered quickly and ordered them into the cars. A moment later they drove off.
“What a bunch of showoff girls,” one of the bellmen said. “These guys think the world should stop for them.”
“Come on,” his colleague said, “they have to be ready if someone attacks a bigwig.” He noticed Lemmy standing there. “Welcome to the King David Hotel.” He reached for his shoulder bag.
“I’m fine,” Lemmy said. But he wasn’t. His hands shook and his knees threatened to buckle. His father’s eyes had been surprised, but not shocked, as if he had expected to see his dead son show up alive. And his coolheaded diversion had prevented disaster. But had his father yelled “Benjamin!” only as a diversion, or also as a directive to go to Benjamin in Neturay Karta?
He entered the lobby and bumped into a chubby young man in sandals and shorts, who picked up his blue skullcap, which had fallen to the marble floor, and pressed it to his head. His freckled, sweaty face turned up to Lemmy for a second, and he sprinted to the exit, pausing to check that the circular driveway was vacant before running out into the night.
*
“ What was that about?” Itah’s lips were warm on Rabbi Gerster’s ear. “Did you see Benjamin near the hotel? On the street?”
He shook his head.
“Then why did you yell his name?”
The rabbi smiled.
Agent Cohen, who sat next to the driver up front, glanced over his shoulder. “No more tricks, guys. We could be less polite, if you get my drift.”
“Same here,” Elie said. He was sitting by the window, looking out.
The Shin Bet officer sneered. “And I was told you’re a dangerous man. Ha! ” He faced forward and switched on the radio, filling the car with fast-paced Hebrew music.
Itah squeezed Rabbi Gerster’s knee.
He leaned closer and whispered in her ear. “When we were leaving the hotel lobby, did you see the guy with the baseball hat?”
She nodded.
“That was Lemmy.”
Itah jerked backward as if he had hit her. She mouthed, No!
Rabbi Gerster nodded and whispered, “My son!” And before he knew what was happening to him, his face crumbled, and hard, painful sobs burst from his chest. Itah put her arms around him, and he cried, rocking back and forth, consumed by joy and relief and by a terrible fear that this encounter, this brief, wordless eye-contact with Lemmy, would turn out to be the end, rather than a new beginning.
*
Tuesday, October 31, 1995
Lemmy checked out of the King David Hotel in the morning. He left the rented Fiat at the YMCA and walked through the streets of Jerusalem, which bore little resemblance to the divided city of his childhood.
He crossed the point where the border had once cut an arbitrary north-south line and saw none of the bullet-scarred, half-ruined buildings that had abutted the no-man’s land. Through the Jaffa Gate, which had been in Jordanian territory the last time he saw it, Lemmy entered the Arab Quarter of the Old City. He followed the market alleys, finding himself in the revived Jewish Quarter, home not only to Talmudic yeshivas and bearded scholars, but to artists’ studios and galleries. Stone-built residences had been restored to original antiquity with meticulous details. Fenced-off archeological digs reached down through layers of sediment, unearthing physical remnants all the way back to King David’s empire. Looking down into one of the deep holes, Lemmy could see the layers of Jewish life, each era settled atop the previous era, century after century, accumulated on this mountaintop citadel.
Reaching the vast plaza in front of the Wailing Wall, he found a marble bench all the way to the side. Religious and secular Jews, foreign tourists, and men in uniform stood at the wall shoulder to shoulder. The giant cubical stones piled up to immense height. The physical enormity and the weight of history gave the Wailing Wall an intangible spiritual aura. Lemmy thought of that early morning on June 5, 1967, when he had driven by this place, an eighteen-year-old IDF paratrooper, disguised in UN uniform, deep inside Jordanian East Jerusalem, tasked with blowing up the UN radar on Antenna Hill moments before every Israeli fighter jet took off for synchronized bombing raids against all of Egypt’s airfields.
Only now, as he sat here in view of the Wailing Wall, in the center of Israel’s modern capital, Lemmy realized that his own life’s meaning really came down to that sunny morning twenty-eight years ago, which had changed Jewish history and saved his people from a second Holocaust at the hands of the Arab armies that were prepared to destroy tiny Israel with the best Soviet weaponry. The realization put things in perspective for Lemmy. Yes, he must expose the reason behind Shin Bet’s illegal activities in Europe and protect Paula and Klaus Junior from the consequences of his secret life. But the current challenges were not beyond reach, considering what he had managed to achieve by age eighteen and the clandestine skills he had developed since then.
A notepad and a jar of pencils drew his attention. He tore off a piece of paper and scribbled: For Tanya’s recovery. He didn’t even know whether she was still alive, but he folded the note and stuck it in a crack between two stones. The wall was cooler than he expected, and he rested his forehead against it, closing his eyes. He thought of Tanya lying on the cobblestones in Amsterdam, looking up at him with eyes that were surprisingly peaceful. And he remembered her looking up at him almost three decades earlier, her black hair spread on a white pillow in the old house by the Jordanian border, her eyes not peaceful but burning with passion.
A man tapped Lemmy on the shoulder, startling him. “Are you Jewish?”
“ Excuse me?”
He gestured at a group of black hats nearby. “We only have nine. We need one more to complete the minyan quorum for prayer.”
“ Oh.”
“ So? Are you Jewish?”
After a brief hesitation, Lemmy nodded. “Yes. I am a Jew.” He accepted the prayer book and joined them in reciting the Hebrew words.
*
The previous night, the Shin Bet agents had brought the three of them to a top-floor apartment in Tel Aviv with enough bedrooms for everyone. It was quiet and peaceful, but Rabbi Gerster’s mind was stormy and he couldn’t sleep. He kept seeing Lemmy’s face-a grown man, yet so familiar. Had he understood that he must seek Benjamin in the old neighborhood? Would Benjamin keep his cool and know what to do?
At dawn Rabbi Gerster tiptoed to the front door and tried the handle. It was locked. A female voice came from a hidden speaker. “Can I help you?”
“Looking for the bathroom,” he said.
“That would be the little room with a toilet bowl. Down the hallway.”
Later in the morning, they congregated in the kitchen. A young man with dark, curly hair and brooding eyes joined them.
“ Gideon?” Elie glared at him. “Why are you here?”
“ Same reason you’re here.”
Agent Cohen entered the kitchen, all smiles. “Here are your administrative detention papers.” He tossed the documents in front of Elie, Itah, and Rabbi Gerster. The forms appeared genuine, with Ministry of Defense stamps and signatures at the bottom, authorizing Shin Bet to hold them without further proceedings and without a lawyer for up to ninety days.
The grandmotherly housekeeper cooked eggs to each person’s liking, which they ate with slices of grainy bread and bowls of Israeli salad.
“ Almost as good as the King David Hotel,” Agent Cohen said as he poured olive oil on his salad.
“ You’re playing with fire,” Elie said. A nurse had come in earlier and fitted him with a portable oxygen tank. A transparent plastic tube was held under his nose with a rubber strip that circled his head. “What has Freckles told you?”
“ Question is, what has he told you? ” Agent Cohen laughed and bit into a chunk of bread.
Rabbi Gerster wiped his lips and sat back in the chair. He had a hunch that the mutual antipathy between Elie and Shin Bet somehow involved Lemmy, but how? He sighed. Despite the bright light from the floor-to-ceiling windows and the endless span of the glistening blue Mediterranean, he was in the dark.
*
The synagogue was full of Neturay Karta men engaged in afternoon prayers. Lemmy’s blue baseball hat and windbreaker stood out among the homogeneous black coats and hats. His clean-shaven face felt bare among the uniformly bearded men.
He sat in the rear and hoped that they would take him for another curious tourist who had wandered into the Meah Shearim neighborhood for its narrow alleys, old stone houses, and quaint inhabitants.
When the prayers ended, the men went back to studying. They swayed over open books of Talmud, arguing with each other, puffing on cigarettes. He felt a swell of longing, drawn to join them, even for a few minutes of reliving his youth. Their immersion in the study of Talmud was unlike any other scholarly endeavor-reciting, discussing, pondering, and debating every word and every subtlety in the sages’ conflicting positions on every subject imaginable. Like their ancestors over countless generations, the men of Neturay Karta dedicated their lives to the study of Talmud as the ultimate way to glorify the Creator. At eighteen, Lemmy had broken away from the long chain of tradition. Until now, he had never doubted that decision.
But here, as the old synagogue enveloped him in the smells and sounds of his boyhood, with the palpable warmth and sense of purpose, with the joy of intellectual fencing in the worship of Adonai, the one God who had chosen us to receive His word, Lemmy was struck by an overwhelming sense of loss, as if all the years of his adult life had been wasted away from his true destiny- from his true self!
With great mental effort, Lemmy shunned those nostalgic misgivings and focused his mind on the task at hand. One of these men was Benjamin-not the young and cheerful youth he remembered, but an older Benjamin, a man of forty-six with dark eyes and a laughter that was likely less explosive, yet still contagious.
Lemmy got up and paced along the book-lined side wall in order to better see their faces. Some of the men resembled what he imagined Benjamin would look like, but up close, none of them turned out to be his childhood friend and study-companion. Lemmy walked down the other side, examining more bearded faces, none of them Benjamin’s.
Disappointment descended on him. Why had Father yelled Benjamin’s name? Had Benjamin left Neturay Karta? Perhaps one of these men knew where Benjamin Mashash lived now?
Before he could ask, someone pounded on the lectern three times. Lemmy realized the lecture of the day was about to begin. He returned to the bench in the rear.
Rabbi Gerster’s daily lectures had been the main event of each day of study, exposing novel, complex interpretations that none of the men had managed to reach independently. Superior intellect had long been the engine of rabbinical leadership, perhaps because Jews had lived in exile for two thousand years, lacking a political structure in which ambition alone could float a meritless man up to leadership. For Orthodox Jews, Talmudic scholarship had always been the sole criteria for prominence. And in the Neturay Karta of Lemmy’s youth, his father, Rabbi Abraham Gerster, had reigned supreme with his incisive mind and powers of persuasion.
One of the men stepped up onto the dais and stood by the lectern, his eyes on the open book in front of him. “Two men grip a prayer shawl. Each one claims full ownership.” His voice was soft and pleasant, intoning the words. He swayed back and forth, playing with his spiraling payos. “Talmud says that each one must take an oath that he owns at least half of the prayer shawl and shall accordingly receive one-half.”
Lemmy raised his hand. “You call this justice?”
Many of the men turned their heads to see who spoke.
“One of them must be lying,” he continued. “To split the prayer shawl between them means that the honest owner loses half. Is that fair?”
A man in a front bench responded, “These are not the original owners. They found the shawl in the street.”
“Even then,” Lemmy said, “the dispute is factual, not legal. One of them was the first to find it, and he’s deprived of half of his new property while the other one walks away with plunder.”
The man at the podium caressed his salt-and-pepper beard. “Plunder is not the issue here. These two are honest disputants. Each one believes he was the first to notice and grab the prayer shawl. Now-”
“So Talmud avoids the real issue,” Lemmy said.
A murmur swept through the rows of men.
“ What if one is lying? The honest one loses half to a thief.”
Another man said, “Rabbi Sumchus and Rabbi Yossi discuss a similar scenario, with a banker who took deposits from two men. One deposited two hundred shekels, and the other only one hundred. When they came to collect, both claimed to have deposited the larger amount, and the banker couldn’t remember. Rabbi Sumchus rules that each takes one hundred shekels, and the disputed one hundred remains until one of them admits that he had lied or until the Messiah comes and decides. But Rabbi Yossi says that neither should get anything so that the liar would lose his first one hundred shekels. Otherwise, there’s no deterrence to lying.”
“Okay,” Lemmy said, “both Rabbi Yossi and Rabbi Sumchus agree that the disputed one hundred shekels should be held, not split, correct?” He swayed in the manner of a Talmudic scholar. “So why are we cutting the prayer shawl in half?”
“No one’s cutting it,” yelled another man from the opposite end of synagogue, “we split the value, not the thing itself!”
The rabbi on the dais closed his book and descended the three steps. He walked down the middle aisle toward the stranger in the back.
Lemmy stood up.
The rabbi stopped abruptly a few rows away and blinked, shook his head, opened his mouth to speak, but couldn’t utter a word.
“ Shalom, Benjamin.”
“ Oy! ” Rabbi Benjamin Mashash pressed his hands to his chest as if experiencing a sharp stab of pain. “ Oy! Oy! Oy! ”
*
Rabbi Gerster was determined to find out what was really going on. He would not grope in the dark while his son, who had just come back from the dead, could unwittingly get entangled in a scheme to assassinate-or to pretend to assassinate-the prime minister! Squeezing Elie Weiss for information was pointless, even risky, with Elie’s proclivity for sudden violence. But Agent Cohen seemed cocky enough to be susceptible to goading. Perhaps he would say something revealing.
“ I was wondering,” Rabbi Gerster said, holding up the detention order, “how many renewals you could obtain before the law requires you to release us or bring us before a judge?”
“I won’t need renewals.” Agent Cohen broke off another chunk of bread and smeared it with butter. “This whole thing will be over next week.”
“ Sounds good to me,” Gideon said. “I’m going back to graduate school.”
“ You want us to believe that?” Agent Cohen laughed.
“ I’m going back to Channel One,” Itah Orr said with sudden venom, “and you’ll watch me on TV telling the nation about you!”
“ I don’t think so,” Agent Cohen said. “You’ll be busy with criminal defense lawyers, trying to stay out of jail, fighting off computer hacking charges. Your friend at the treasury ministry has been very cooperative.” Before she could respond, he turned to Rabbi Gerster. “And you? Will you go to Switzerland?”
The rabbi played with his fork, taking a moment to organize his thoughts. He had a feeling that the Shin Bet agent was fishing for information, that he didn’t know the real situation. “Why Switzerland?”
“ We know you called Zurich from the King David Hotel yesterday. Do you keep money at the Hoffgeitz Bank? Or is it SOD deposits?”
The rabbi exchanged a glance with Elie. Agent Cohen was assuming that the Zurich connection was merely about financial convenience and secrecy. His error must be reinforced. “God’s work doesn’t come free,” he said.
The Shin Bet officer sipped from his orange juice. “Tanya Galinski was also in Zurich a couple of days ago.”
“ That’s impossible!” The harshness in Elie’s voice made everyone turn to him. “You’re lying!”
Agent Cohen pulled a photo from his pocket and placed it on the table. It had been taken in the rain from a distance too great for detailed clarity. A man and a woman were sitting on a park bench under a bare tree. Her hair was loose, and he was pressing a handkerchief to the side of her head. Her petite size and pale face resembled Tanya, though it was hard to tell, especially as Rabbi Gerster had not seen her in many years. The man, however, he recognized from last night’s encounter at the entrance to the King David Hotel: Lemmy!
“ Shin Bet agents following Tanya Galinski?” Elie took a few shallow breaths. “It’s illegal for you to spy on Mossad, and it’s twice illegal to do it abroad!”
“ Don’t get technical with me.” Agent Cohen beckoned the housekeeper to remove the dishes. “Who’s this man Tanya met? Is he a bank employee?”
“ She has many men,” Elie said.
Rabbi Gerster was delighted. This photo confirmed that Lemmy was living in Zurich and working at the Hoffgeitz Bank. Also, it was obvious that Elie recognized Lemmy. And best of all, Shin Bet had not yet figured out who he was.
Agent Cohen turned to Gideon. “Do you know him?”
The young SOD agent shook his head. “Never been to Zurich.”
Rabbi Gerster said, “Why don’t you ask Tanya?”
Agent Cohen shrugged. “She’s gone incommunicado at the moment.” He pocketed the photo. “We have people in Zurich trying to identify the man she met. But it would be easier if you just told us.”
Elie Weiss smirked. “Easier for whom?”
“ Easier for him,” Agent Cohen said. “My men are very upset. He’ll suffer less if he turns himself in.”
“ Upset?” Rabbi Gerster struggled to keep his voice disinterested. “Why are they upset with this Swiss guy?”
“ He shot one of our agents. When we find him, we’ll make sure he also limps for the rest of his life-if he lives.”
*
“ Master of the Universe,” Benjamin cried. “Blessed be His name for keeping us alive to celebrate this day!”
They held each other for a long time.
“ Master of the Universe,” Benjamin kept saying, “Master of the Universe!”
They wiped their eyes and stepped out to the foyer. Behind them, the men in the synagogue returned to studying Talmud, as wasting time was considered the worst of all sins.
They sat down, and Lemmy told Benjamin that the corpse of a Jordanian soldier had been buried in Mount Herzl under his name while he assumed a new identity and served Israel abroad. He gave no more details. It was safer for Benjamin not to know.
Benjamin told Lemmy about his life as Rabbi Gerster’s heir, about his wife, Sorkeh Toiterlich, who had once been engaged to Lemmy, and his children, whom he listed by name and age, starting with his eldest, Jerusalem, born ten years after Lemmy’s departure. Benjamin’s wise eyes became moist again. Up close, Lemmy could see the wrinkles from age and responsibility, the paleness from the indoor life of a scholar.
“ It worked out for the better,” Lemmy said. “You’re worthy of my father’s place.”
“Oh, no.” Benjamin shivered. “Who could possibly replace Rabbi Abraham Gerster? We try to follow the path he has charted for us, that’s all.”
“He’s not an easy man to please. I know from experience.”
“That’s true!” Benjamin laughed, his white teeth and squinting eyes instantly transforming him back to the youth Lemmy remembered.
Lemmy laughed too. “Crazy, isn’t it?”
“ It’s wonderful! To see you alive…thank God for miracles!” Benjamin’s face became serious again. “But your father is gone now. It’s a terrible scandal. We’re so worried about him.”
“ I saw him yesterday. He was arrested. We couldn’t talk, but he communicated to me that I should come to you.”
“To me? But I don’t know anything.”
“ Perhaps he left papers or letters?”
“ Government investigators came here and took all his belongings. Come, I’ll show you.”
A small alcove off the foyer held a cot, a desk, and Rabbi Gerster’s chair. The bookcase was empty. The desk drawers were pulled out and turned over.
“They took everything, even his books.”
Lemmy sat in the chair and gripped the carved lion heads at the ends of the armrests. “He committed no crimes. It’s a diversion from what’s really going on. That’s what I’m trying to find out. Did he tell you anything?”
Benjamin shook his head. “A woman was here, the TV journalist that’s also being accused. And the rabbi received a note from a patient at Hadassah hospital.”
“What did it say?”
“Asked him to come to Hadassah. And it said: Long live Jerusalem! Now I understand what it meant!” Benjamin took a deep breath. “Did he recognize you last night?”
Lemmy nodded.
“ He must be so happy! Every week he visited your grave. Your death continued to torment him. So when the note came, he rushed out with the woman in the middle of the night. He didn’t tell me where they went, but there was mud all over their shoes the next morning, and he was happier than ever.”
“Then he must have left me a note somewhere. Where could it be?”
Benjamin waved at the walls. “They took everything.”
A memory came to Lemmy. On his last day here, back in 1967, his father carried The Zohar, the book of Kabbalah mysticism, which only the most righteous rabbis dared to study. “Go back into the synagogue and have the men search all the bookcases for my father’s copy of The Zohar. It’s bound in brown leather.”
“I know how it looks.” The hesitation confirmed Lemmy’s assumption that The Zohar was the perfect hiding place for a note. Even an accomplished scholar like Rabbi Benjamin Mashash was wary of it. “Your father wouldn’t leave it in the synagogue, where others could happen upon it.”
“Please,” Lemmy said. “Trust me.”
Benjamin left, and a moment later his voice boomed from the dais inside the synagogue. Lemmy could hear the benches creak and the floorboards groan as the men fanned out to the walls of the synagogue to search the long shelves that carried thousands of books.
*
They were sitting in the living room on black leather sofas around a chrome-and-glass coffee table. Rabbi Gerster said to Itah, “Start moaning. I need background noise so they can’t hear what I’m saying.”
Itah complied, uttering a low moan toward the ceiling.
Rabbi Gerster leaned close to Elie. “I demand that you come clean with me!”
Itah kept going, interrupted only by a brief intake of air.
Elie gave him a cold, dark glare. “Tell her to shut up.”
“The man in the photo with Tanya is my son. If you don’t cooperate, Shin Bet will find and kill him!”
“ Quiet, please,” Elie addressed Itah directly. “This game could end badly.”
Rabbi Gerster put his much bigger hand on Elie’s. “If you don’t level with me, I’ll tell Agent Cohen everything I know-about Tanya, about you, and about the fortune left by Klaus von Koenig.”
“You know nothing.”
Itah raised her hand to quiet them and stopped moaning. She took a sip of water, gargled it, and resumed moaning. Meanwhile the housekeeper went to the phone and began punching numbers. Gideon leaped from the sofa and took away the receiver, hanging up. The woman shrugged and returned to the dishes in the sink.
“I won’t sit idly,” Rabbi Gerster said, “and let my son die again. Tell me the truth!”
Elie scratched his scalp. “The truth? You seem to know the truth already. Jerusalem Gerster died in sixty-seven, and a German teenager came to life in his stead. My Swiss agent might be living inside your son’s physical body, but he’s someone else. For him, you don’t exist.”
“ That’s a lie!”
“ Can you blame him? When Jerusalem rebelled against the ultra-Orthodox lifestyle, you declared him dead and sat shivah for him-made your own son homeless and hopeless. And that was even before he became a soldier, before the war. You lost him forever when you excommunicated him.”
“ That’s between me and Lemmy. You had no right to lure him into your spider web.”
“ Why? You had tossed him into the garbage, and I dug him out and made use of him. Why is it your business?” Elie’s colorless lips curled, exposing teeth yellowed from smoking.
“ Wilhelm Horch. That’s his name, correct?”
The grin disappeared from Elie’s face.
Itah ran out of breath, and the room quieted down. Instantly Gideon raised his head and howled, which made Itah burst out laughing and caused the housekeeper to smile for the first time.
Elie, however, was not smiling. He pointed at Rabbi Gerster’s chest. “If you utter that name again, you’ll cause Lemmy’s death.”
It seemed that Elie didn’t know Lemmy was already in Jerusalem. “But Agent Cohen said they’ll catch him-”
“ Bravado. Kids playing spies.” Elie sneered. “You have no reason to fear Shin Bet.”
“ I fear you! ”
“ For good reason.” Elie raised two fingers, held together. “I have a backup agent, right next to him inside that bank. You disobey me one more time, and I’ll have your son’s throat slit. We understand each other, yes?”
Before Rabbi Gerster could respond, two Shin Bet agents burst into the apartment, guns at the ready. One of them was the nurse, a large, muscular woman, who aimed at Gideon. “Quiet!”
He stopped howling.
“ What’s going on here?”
“ We’re having a contest,” Itah said, “a coyote-imitation contest. Would you like to try out?”
*
“ We found it!” Benjamin rushed into the small room with the leather-bound book. “You were right. Rabbi Gerster hid it in plain view on the top shelf.”
Lemmy opened The Zohar and browsed through the pages, which were yellow from old age. On page 67 he found a sheet of paper, folded in half, attached with a strip of tape. He peeled it off.
Jerusalem, October 29, 1995
My dear Lemmy,
Until a few hours ago, I had only grief, guilt, and regret to occupy my mind. Now I have hope-to hug you, to kiss you, and to beg for your forgiveness.
Much needs to be explained face-to-face, but just in case fate is again unkind to us, please know that I had deceived you and your mother. I don’t believe in God, and so I’m not a true rabbi. why had I done that?
I have witnessed the Holocaust firsthand. No God stopped the Nazis, and no God will prevent future disasters and deaths. It’s up to us to reduce Jewish suffering, each with the skills we possess. My skills are rabbinical by upbringing, and so I’ve dedicated my life to this job.
And what is this job?
As you have studied, civil wars and brotherly hatred typified the repeat demises of Jewish sovereignty in Israel. I came to live among the ultra-Orthodox as a mole, assigned to keep the extremists in check, lest they bring down this current iteration of the Jewish state, as they had destroyed all its predecessors since the empire of King David.
In the course of my duties, I caused you and my saintly wife much suffering. I condemned you to the loneliest agony-that of a son who hates his own father-because your innocent eyes saw in me only the cruelty of a devout fanatic. Was that the reason for your cruelty in rebuffing the pleading letters that your mother sent to you in the army?
But now I know how Elie had manipulated our lives to serve his fanatical ends. He caused me to become a deceiver, a hypocrite, a husband and father who cheated his family out of the love and loyalty which they deserved. And he made you repeat my errors in your own life. How ironic!
But Elie’s malice does not diminish my responsibility. It’s too late for either of us to obtain your mother’s forgiveness, yet I hope you can find it in your heart to understand, and perhaps accept, that my choices were motivated by selfless idealism, foolish as it might be.
Now to the present. I am convinced that you will return to seek answers soon, as Elie’s current scheme stinks more ominously than anything he tried before. This morning we’ll try to pluck him out of the hospital and question him.
Stuffed into the binding of this book you will find a complete summary of my investigation, assisted by Itah Orr. The agent nicknamed ‘Freckles’ is the key. Seek him, and you’ll find what Elie is up to, how to stop him, and how to free yourself from his web.
And for this-your freedom-I’m willing to lose my life. I’ll do anything to bring you home, to give you a second chance to live a normal life.
I love you, my son, more than anything in this world or the next. I love you more than I love life itself, more than the sun and the air that I breathe.
Your father, Abraham Gerster
Lemmy held the letter before him, too choked up to do anything but look at his father’s handwriting. He wiped his eyes and read the letter again, more slowly, from the beginning. One sentence especially made no sense: Was that the reason for your cruelty in rebuffing the pleading letters that your mother sent to you in the army? Lemmy could not understand. What letters? He had received no letters from his mother during his IDF service!
“ Jerusalem?” Benjamin touched his arm. “Are you okay?”
Lemmy tore off the book’s binding and found a densely scribbled, three-page note that described everything Rabbi Gerster and Itah had uncovered about ILOT, Freckles, and Yoni Adiel. A copy of the table of contents of the ILOT Member Manual was also hidden there, together with bank statements showing the money that passed through the young men’s accounts and old paychecks from the VIP Protection Unit.
A youth, about eighteen, came in and whispered in Benjamin’s ear.
“My son tells me there are strangers in the neighborhood. They might be looking for you.”
“Then I must leave.” Lemmy folded everything and put it in his pocket. There was no point in breaking Benjamin’s heart with Rabbi Gerster’s blasphemous confession. “I don’t want to put you in danger.”
“Nonsense. You’re not going anywhere.” Benjamin took off his black coat and hat. “These should fit you.”
Lemmy put them on.
“ Now,” Benjamin clapped his hands, “let’s go home and have something to eat!”
*
Wednesday, November 1, 1995
Lemmy woke up in a room he knew well. Sunlight came in through the window. Hushed voices filtered through the closed door. He lowered his feet to the floor. The bed screeched under him. His old bookshelves lined the wall, heavy with tall volumes of Talmud. He stuck his hand behind them, but there was nothing hidden there. He rubbed his face, chuckling at the memory of Benjamin’s stunned expression at the sight of the novel he had pulled from behind the Talmud volume. They had been teenagers, budding Talmudic scholars in Neturay Karta, a sect dedicated to God’s worship, where secular novels, like all forms of alien entertainment, were strictly banned. But Lemmy’s secret relationship with Tanya, and the books she had lent him, had penetrated the walls of isolation, planted doubts in his mind, and eventually led to his blasphemous rebellion and his excommunication. He touched the first volume of Talmud- Baba Metziah -and wondered how things would have turned out if there had been no place to hide Tanya’s novels in his room.
He washed and joined Benjamin’s family for breakfast. His parents’ old dining room had remained unchanged, the long table that left little room to get around, the portraits of famed rabbis that looked down from the walls. Like Rabbi Abraham Gerster before him, Benjamin sat at the head of the table, slurping tea from a tall glass. But unlike the old days, the other chairs were taken by children. They looked up at Lemmy, their chatter abruptly halted.
“Did we wake you up?” Benjamin stood, beckoning to a vacant chair.
“It’s time.” Lemmy smiled at the children. “Good morning, kids. My name is Baruch.”
“ Hi Baruch,” they chorused as their mother appeared from the kitchen with a fresh cup of tea and toast with butter.
Last night, when Benjamin had brought him home, Sorkeh accepted his resurrection with surprising equanimity. “ Baruch ha’ba, ” she had said, which meant Blessed be the newcomer. “I never felt that you were dead. Now I know why.”
The name Baruch stuck to him, and they agreed that Lemmy’s return from the dead would remain a secret, not to be discussed with anyone.
The children resumed their busy chattering, the older ones getting ready for school. They breathed new life into his parents’ old apartment.
After the meal, as he took his plate back to the kitchen, Lemmy thought of his late mother, bending over this very sink, cleaning a fish with a serrated knife. For a moment, he could smell the carp, hear his mother’s scraping knife, and see the shining scales on the countertop.
After the children had left, Sorkeh brought him a black hat that had a fake beard and side locks attached to it. “Our kids have a treasure trove of costumes for Purim.”
He put it on and looked at the mirror. That’s how he would have looked had he stayed at Neturay Karta.
Benjamin summoned a few of his men, and they boarded a van. Driving through the narrow streets of Meah Shearim, Lemmy looked around, absorbing the changes and the things that had remained the same. He was surprised at the abundance of graffiti on the walls:
Meir Kahane lives! Death to the Arabs!
Stop obscene advertising! Boycott Coca Cola!
Digging up Jewish graves is sacrilege!
He who violates the Sabbath should be stoned to death!
God’s land is not for sale! Peace comes from God!
Zionism is blasphemy – we must wait for the blessed Messiah!
They stopped to buy the morning papers, and Lemmy looked through the news pages. A brief report described the accusations against his father and Itah Orr, who were being interrogated at an undisclosed location. But there was no mention of Tanya Galinski or even a reference to an accident in Amsterdam involving an Israeli woman. It was the third day already, and nothing! He searched through the list of funeral announcements, relieved to find nothing there either. Tanya had run into the street because of his false accusations, and now she was lying in a foreign hospital surrounded by strangers. There was only one thing he could do to help Tanya right now, and it was worth the risk. “Let’s get it done,” he said to Benjamin, who nodded and spoke quietly to the driver.
*
“ Enough with the games!” Agent Cohen stormed into the apartment. He slammed four photographs on the kitchen table in front of Elie Weiss. “Look!”
“You again?” Elie put down his knife and fork.
Itah said, “Here goes another good breakfast.”
“If you don’t give me answers, there won’t be any more breakfasts-good or bad!”
Rabbi Gerster looked closely. The first photo was the one they had seen yesterday of Lemmy and Tanya in a Zurich park. The second photo showed him wearing a fedora, kneeling by Tanya, who was lying on a cobblestone street across rail tracks. The third photo was in a hospital room, Lemmy wearing a baseball hat. The fourth photo was grainy, likely enlarged from a wide-angle video lens. It showed Lemmy at the entrance to the King David Hotel, also wearing a baseball hat, but in a different color.
“A handsome fellow,” Elie said. “Is he a hat salesman?”
“Don’t!” Agent Cohen poked Elie’s chest. “Tell me where to find him, because if I have to track him down myself-and I will!-then I’m going to shoot him in the head!”
Elie looked down at the poking finger. “Be careful where you stick it.”
“I’m warning you! He’ll be trapped and killed like a stray dog!”
“It’s not good to be obsessed with revenge. All because he shot your guy in the leg?”
“And knocked out a nurse at Hadassah!”
“ You should be grateful that your agents survived those encounters.” Elie tapped the Amsterdam photo. “And how is Mossad’s Europe chief doing?”
The mention of Tanya’s official title caused Agent Cohen to exhale and drop into a chair. “We’re not sure. She was picked up by an ambulance in pretty bad shape but doesn’t appear on any patient list.”
Elie chuckled. “It’s not so easy to operate in Europe, is it?”
“ We’re learning.”
“ Let me speak to your Number One. I’ll advise him to recall all his Shin Bet boys, send you back to chasing Arab stone-throwers in the refugee camps.”
“She looks terrible.” Gideon spoke for the first time. “Didn’t you follow her to the hospital?”
“It’s more complicated than that,” Agent Cohen said. “There are sixteen hospitals nearby, a lot more within driving distance of Amsterdam. The Dutch emergency services and hospitals are connected to a central computer system, which is having some problems right now.”
“That’s odd,” Gideon said. “What are they doing about patients’ records, medical histories, prescriptions, operation schedules? People could die.”
“No, no.” Agent Cohen steered sugar into a tiny cup of coffee. “The problem is limited to records of hospital admissions. It also disabled the search module for patients’ names, replacing it with numbers. Everything else is working fine, but for us it’s a really bad coincidence-”
“It’s not a coincidence,” Elie said. “It’s a taste of what’s to come if you don’t pull back and stop interfering in things that are way over your head.”
Agent Gideon waved in dismissal.
“ A surgical hacker,” Itah said. “Impressive.”
“ That’s good news,” Rabbi Gerster said. “Someone’s protecting Tanya.”
“No one is protecting her,” Agent Cohen said. “This computer problem will be fixed soon. We’ll find her and we’ll find him! ” He pointed to the photos from Amsterdam, Hadassah, and the King David Hotel. “Based on the time each of these photos were taken, we know he entered Israel during a twelve-hour window-too brief for a boat ride, so he must have come by air through Ben Gurion Airport. We’re scanning all video surveillance tapes. Once we have his name, it’s over. We’ll hunt him down.”
*
Benjamin led the group of men through the paved campus paths. The Hebrew University at Mount Scopus covered the hillside with squat buildings constructed between wars in conflicting architectural styles. Students in flannel shirts and military-style winter coats glanced curiously at the ultra-Orthodox men.
The archeology department occupied a three-story structure that faced the descending desert hills to the east. The office on the top floor was marked: Professor Bira Galinski – Department Chair.
In the small reception area, a young woman looked up.
“Good morning,” Benjamin said. “I’m Rabbi Mashash from Neturay Karta.”
“I know who you are. I heard your speech at our dig in Tel Gamla.”
Benjamin smiled. “Did you like it?”
“It was better than throwing rocks.”
“But you still won’t leave our ancestors’ bones in peace for the coming of the Messiah?”
“ I don’t think the Messiah wants to come while the bones of live Jews are broken with rocks.”
“Excuse me,” Lemmy said, “but can we see Professor Galinski?”
“She’s not here.”
“Where is she?”
“At home. Something happened to her mother. She got the news last night.”
Lemmy was surprised. Other than he, only Shin Bet knew about Tanya’s injury. Why would they tell Bira about it?
On their way back to the van, Lemmy asked, “Do you know where Bira lives?”
Benjamin smiled. “Last month, the Supreme Court rejected our petition against the digging of an ancient graveyard on the French Hill, north of Jerusalem. Our people were very upset, and there was talk of violence. Rabbi Gerster and I met with Professor Galinski at her home. No one knew about it. At Neturay Karta, she’s considered an instrument of the devil.”
“The devil?” Lemmy laughed. “She’s just an archeologist.”
“She’s the leading archeologist in Israel.”
“I see. How did the meeting go?”
Benjamin sighed. “It started well, she explaining how Israelis crave archeological evidence of our past national life here, and he explaining that Orthodox Jews believe that graves were resting places until the Messiah comes and resurrects the righteous. But soon their voices rose, she accused him of trying to enforce primitive religious rules at the expense of modern science, and Rabbi Gerster called her Bar-Giyorah.”
“Bar Giyorah?”
“The uncompromising nationalist leader in the great revolt against Rome, which ended in the destruction of the Second Temple.”
“I remember.” Lemmy imagined his father with Tanya’s daughter or, more strangely, with the daughter of SS Oberstgruppenfuhrer Klaus von Koenig, confronting each other over an unbridgeable ideological gap.
The van followed Martin Buber Road, down the ridge connecting Mount Scopus with the Mount of Olives, past the Russian church spires of St. Mary Magdalene on the left, along the Valley of Kidron, where Lemmy noticed the hewn stone hand of Absalom’s Tomb, King David’s beloved, rebellious son.
*
Rabbi Gerster imagined Lemmy running, out of breath, a group of armed Shin Bet agents hot on his heels. There was silence around the breakfast table, and Agent Cohen repeated his threat: “We’ll hunt him down like a dog!”
“A bunch of foxes,” Elie said, “chasing after a dog.”
“That’s right!”
“Be careful. Sometimes the hunter becomes the hunted.”
“Who’s going to stop us? You?” The Shin Bet agent unbuttoned his jacket, reached inside, and pulled out Elie’s sheathed blade. “Won’t you need this?”
“In my time, Shin Bet was very selective.” Elie flexed his yellow-stained fingers as if preparing for a delicate piece of manual undertaking. “No Sephardic boys were let loose running sensitive operations.”
“Come on,” Itah said, “that’s below the belt.”
Agent Cohen laughed, but his face was bitter. “Intelligence czar, ah? Exterminator of enemies?” He slammed the sheathed blade on the table. “You’re a nobody, Weiss! Nobody! ”
With a sense of pending doom, Rabbi Gerster said, “It’s not worth it, Elie.”
“ You’re a has-been,” Agent Cohen kept going, “a nursing home candidate, a useless piece of broken machinery!”
Elie removed the oxygen tube from his nose and let it drop to the floor by the tank. “Sometimes a little pinky can bring down a mighty lion.”
“Now you’re a poet too?” Agent Cohen leaned over the table, his face up close against Elie’s. “Everybody tells me to be careful with Elie Weiss. A dangerous man, they say.” He poked Elie in the chest. “All I see is a pathetic old man. A sclerotic mummy. A joke! ”
Rabbi Gerster suddenly realized that this was the culmination of Elie’s calculated provocations, carefully staged in rising succession to build up Agent Cohen’s rage and recklessness like a musical composition building up to a climactic crescendo. And there was nothing anyone could do to save the foolish agent.
“Again with the poking?” Elie looked down at the finger. “Is this some kind of a Moroccan custom? Iraqi? Egyptian? Where did your parents come from?”
“You have a problem with it?” Agent Cohen poked him harder. “Do you?”
With calmness that distracted from the speed of his movements, Elie’s right hand clenched Agent Cohen’s forefinger and twisted it sideways, producing the crunchy sound of a breaking bone.
“ Ahhhh! ”
Still holding the broken finger with his right hand, Elie’s left hand rose to Agent Cohen’s red face and threaded a pinky under his upper eyelid.
“ Don’t move,” Elie said, “or you’ll lose the eye.”
Agent Cohen’s cry was interrupted by a burst of vomit from his mouth.
Elie moved out of the way, let go of the broken finger, and collected his blade. He maneuvered around the end of the table, his pinky remaining inside Agent Cohen’s eye socket. “That’s a good fellow.” From behind, he made the Shin Bet officer sit down. “Will you cooperate or do you want to look like Moshe Dayan?”
Agent Cohen bit down on his lower lip and moaned in pain.
“ Take his gun,” Elie ordered Rabbi Gerster. “His comrades will be here soon.”
*
The boy who opened Bira’s door wasn’t crying, but his effort to fight back tears was endearing. He looked at their black coats and hats and started to close the door.
Benjamin blocked the door. “May we speak with your mother please?”
“She’s not available now.”
“ It’s important.”
The boy disappeared.
Lemmy and Benjamin entered the foyer and closed the door, shutting out the sun. The rest of the men waited in the van.
Bira showed up a moment later. “Rabbi Mashash? What are you doing here?”
“ We need to talk. It will only take a few minutes.”
She led them through a narrow hallway, a kitchen, and out the back door to a patio bordered by climbing vines. They sat on white plastic chairs around a coffee table.
Lemmy remembered her as a twenty-year-old in an olive uniform, shouldering an Uzi machine gun. She had aged well, keeping an athletic build and lush hair, but her face was sun-beaten and her blue-gray eyes examined him with discomforting coldness. He asked, “Have you received any news from your mother?”
“You know my mother?”
“We know she’s missing.”
“ That’s what I heard.” Bira’s shoulders slumped. “Her boss called me yesterday.”
“ The chief of Mossad?”
She nodded. “I could tell he’s worried. She’s not a field agent. Why in the world would she be out there interacting with hostile-”
“ It was a business meeting,” Lemmy said. “She didn’t expect any danger.”
“ And who told you that? God?”
He laughed.
Bira glared at him. “What the hell is going on?”
“ I’m also wondering.” Lemmy removed the hat with the attached beard and payos.
Bira wasn’t amused. “What’s this? Dressing up for Purim already?”
“We met once.”
“ I don’t think so.”
“ It was way back, when your mother lived near the border and you were in the army.”
She shook her head.
“ I carried your duffle bag. It was bloody heavy.”
“That boy died in the Six Day War.”
“ We argued. You dismissed faith, saying that Zionism is all about history, about proving who was here first, like establishing a legal ownership record. I countered that belief in the historical truth of biblical stories was a form of faith, which meant you were religious too.”
She leaned closer to look at him. “That’s impossible!”
“ We said good-bye at the gate to Meah Shearim. I watched you go, and you waved at me from the corner.”
She turned to Benjamin. “Is this some kind of a sick joke? My mother has grieved for Jerusalem Gerster for twenty-eight years, poured enough tears to refill the Dead Sea. I’m not going to accept this man-”
“ It’s me,” Lemmy said. “It’s really me.”
Bira looked at him at length in the manner of a scientist examining a specimen that couldn’t possibly exist. Then, without any warning, she leaned forward and slapped Lemmy across the face with such force that he fell off the chair and onto the floor.
*
Rabbi Gerster pocketed Agent Cohen’s gun and pushed over the table, creating a barrier between them and the door. He crouched with Itah behind the tabletop and whispered. “Get away when nobody’s watching. Find my son. Warn him!”
She nodded and pecked him on the cheek.
Gideon stepped over to the kitchen and stood with the housekeeper, who watched the whole thing with an open mouth. Elie positioned himself behind Agent Cohen, his pinky hooked inside the eye socket, his blade drawn, the sharpened edge resting nonchalantly on the trembling man’s shoulder.
The door flew open and the two Shin Bet agents rushed in, guns ready.
“ This feels like a deja vu,” Elie said. He was panting from the exertion, but no one mistook his thin voice for weakness. “Put down your weapons and slide them over, or Agent Cohen here will be shopping for an eye patch or a prosthetic arm. Or both.”
The nurse hesitated while the other agent glanced at her. She aimed at Elie. “You know the drill-we’re trained to kill hostage takers, not negotiate.”
“ You’re trained to kill Arab hostage takers,” Elie corrected her. “Not a Jew who’s old enough to be your grandpa, who’s been abused physically and mentally by this bully.” He pressed a bit on the blade, which broke though the shirt and penetrated the shoulder slightly.
Agent Cohen groaned.
“ Don’t shoot,” Rabbi Gerster said from behind the upturned tabletop. “We’re all Jews here!”
*
Benjamin jumped up and stood between them. “No violence! Please!”
“ Get out of my house!” Bira stood with her fists clenched, ready to hit Lemmy again. “ Out! ”
The boy who had opened the door for them came running, followed by a younger girl, who rushed to her mother’s side. Their presence instantly soothed Bira’s anger. Her hands fell by her side. “Everything is fine,” she said. “Go back to your room.”
The two kids looked at her and at the two men, unsure what to do. The boy pointed at Lemmy. “Where’s your beard?”
Lemmy got up from the floor and showed him the hat and attached facial hair. “You want to try it?”
The boy put it on. His sister laughed, and they ran off.
“ Just like my son,” Lemmy said. “Klaus is ten, almost eleven. We’re trying for a girl-”
“ I don’t want to know.” Bira’s anger flared again. “Son of a bitch! I could kill you for what you did to her-”
“ Please,” Benjamin said, “calm down.”
“ She’s right,” Lemmy said. “I deserve it.”
“ You deserve worse,” Bira said. “Broke her heart, that’s what you did. She blamed herself for your death-can you imagine living with this kind of guilt?”
“ I never imagined how much pain my faked death would cause Tanya. She was my first love. Her rejection seemed like the end of the world to me. I was too resentful and too young. The last thing I considered was that she would grieve or feel guilty.”
Bira sat down, still sulking. “All the grave-grooming and tears and self-deprivation. I can go on and on about the price my mother has continuously extracted from herself over that boy’s death.”
“I know. She told me.”
“ What? She knows you’re alive?”
“ Fate brought us together. We met, but she was being followed. She was hurt badly.”
“Oh, no!” Bira sucked air, covering her mouth.
“Here.” He handed her a note. “Call this number in Amsterdam. Ask for Carl. He knows me as a Swiss banker named Wilhelm Horch-Lemmy for short. Meet him there, and he’ll take you to Tanya. But trust no one else. Your mother’s life depends on it.”
“What about your father?” Bira’s eyes were no longer hostile. “The news reports are shocking.”
Lemmy took out his father’s notes, the bank statements and the ILOT Member Manual.
Bira read through everything while they watched her in silence.
“ The strategy is working,” she said. “There are a few of these fanatical groups. The fringe right is now setting the tone for the whole right wing, including Likud. But if the public learns that Shin Bet pays for these incitements, there’s going to be a huge backlash. It will destroy Rabin politically, because no one will believe it was done without his knowledge.”
“It appears that Shin Bet has let Elie plot the whole thing, pay for it from SOD budget, and then they shut him down at the last moment. They probably think that your mom was working with Elie Weiss.”
Bira stood. “I can’t worry about Israel now. I must take care of my mother.” She left to prepare for her trip to Amsterdam. Lemmy picked a red grape and popped it into his mouth. He offered one to Benjamin, who recited a blessing and ate it.
“Amen,” Lemmy said.
“I’m concerned.” Benjamin pulled another grape off the vines. “What if those Shin Bet characters try to silence you?”
“I’m sure they’re already trying.”
*
“ Okay.” The nurse raised her gun, aiming at the ceiling. “But I won’t surrender my weapon to you.”
“ Then give it to me,” Gideon said. “I’m neutral.”
Elie gave him a cold glance, but Gideon’s offer was a clever face-saving way out. They put their guns on the counter, and Gideon collected them.
“ Go over there,” Elie said, pointing at the sofa against the opposite wall.
They obeyed.
He beckoned the housekeeper. “Bring the phone to the good nurse.”
“ Who do you want me to call?” The nurse’s face was crimson, either from anger or shame. “The Red Cross?”
Rabbi Gerster stood up and pulled over a chair. He helped Elie sit down slowly, but the change of angle caused his pinky to shift, and Agent Cohen cried in pain.
“ Call your Number One,” Elie said.
The nurse opened her mouth to argue, but Agent Cohen yelled, “Do it!”
The call went though several secured connections before a man’s voice sounded on the speakerphone. “Yes?”
“ We have a problem,” the nurse said.
“ We have an opportunity,” Elie said.
“ Weiss? Is that you?”
“ How’s Paris treating you?”
“ What’s going on there?”
“ Let’s just say that…the tables have turned. Literally.”
“ Explain!”
“ He’s got Cohen,” the nurse said from the sofa.
Number One was silent for a moment. “What do you want?”
“ How’s the wife and kids?”
“ Skip the pleasantries, okay?”
“ I’m upset,” Elie said. “You had me arrested-twice. You detained my people. You invaded my territory and prospected for my financial resources. It feels like a hostile takeover.”
“ And who started it?”
“ Ah. My meeting with Rabin?”
“ That’s right! You made a move on us!”
“ Not exactly.”
“ Intelligence czar? Is that the mother of all takeovers or what?”
“ I see your point.”
“ What did you think? You left us no choice!”
“ If I may,” Rabbi Gerster said, “this turf war is ripe for an armistice, so I propose-”
“ Excusez-moi,” Number One said, the speakerphone communicating his irritation, “but who the hell is this?”
“ Rabbi Abraham Gerster of Neturay Karta.”
“ Holy shit! You work for SOD?”
“ For the Jewish people,” Rabbi Gerster said. “What about a ceasefire? Let’s go back to the old detente. Elie calls off the deal with Rabin. SOD and Shin Bet return to peaceful co-existence. And we all live happily ever after.”
“ Too late,” Number One said. “We already took over Freckles and shut down the staged assassination plot.”
“ Did you?” Elie’s dark eyes focused on the bare wall across the room. “That boy, Yoni Adiel, is a free agent, real fanatic kind of a guy.”
“ We’re watching him. He’s in the bag. ILOT is history.”
“ Impressive,” Elie said.
“ Your deal with Rabin is off, Weiss-if there ever was a deal, which is in question.”
“ I accept my defeat,” Elie said. “That’s life. You lose some, you win some.”
“ Good,” Rabbi Gerster said. “Let’s all go home now.”
“ Not so fast,” Number One said. “We’ve shut down your ILOT scheme, got you locked up, and are closing in on your financial sources in Zurich. Why should we give up a perfect set of cards?”
“ What about your agents here?”
Number One chuckled. “You won’t take another Jew’s life.”
“ But I’ll take another Jew’s marriage.” Elie slipped his pinky out of Agent Cohen’s eye socket, making him cry out and cover his eye.
The line from Paris was quiet.
Elie wiped his pinky on a napkin. “How is Madame de Chevallier?”
Again, no answer.
“ I hear she’s satisfied with your new implant.”
“ Weiss! ”
“ But she complains that it makes you cocky.”
Everyone burst out laughing, even the housekeeper in the kitchen.
“ I guess the free rent balances it out for her.”
“ I’m warning you,” Number One shouted, “shut up!”
“Don’t take it personally, but I believe in wearing a belt and suspenders. To defend SOD’s independence in any confrontation with our sister agencies, I’ve formed solid political bonds and collected sordid personal secrets about every one of my opponents. Push me any farther, and there’s going to be a frightful surge in business for divorce lawyers, not to mention the media frenzy.”
Number One’s voice was deep with hate. “You wouldn’t dare!”
“ That’s enough,” Rabbi Gerster interjected. “Do we have an agreement?”
“ I can’t let you go,” Number One said. “The peace rally on Saturday night is crucial for Rabin’s government. We’ve detained hundreds of troublemakers and shut down provocative schemes, including yours. I won’t risk setting you free to pursue your crazy plots again.”
“ Take me back to Hadassah,” Elie said. “They were going to fix my lungs. I’m operating on reserves.”
“ Fine, as long as you remain in isolation. No outside contacts until after the rally.”
“ Agreed,” Rabbi Gerster said in Elie’s stead. “I’ll stay with him at Hadassah.”
“ And I’m staying here,” Gideon said from the kitchen. “The views are breathtaking.”
“ Excuse me,” the nurse said, “but where’s Itah Orr?”
There was a long silence as everyone looked around.
“ She’s not my agent,” Elie said. “Feel free to send your dogs after her.”
“ Wait.” Agent Cohen was pale as the wall. “What about the Zurich shooter?”
“ There’s new information,” the nurse said. “He arrived on a KLM flight yesterday. We traced his entry record. He is travelling under the name Baruch Spinoza.”
Rabbi Gerster barely managed to suppress a smile-Lemmy had assumed the name of another young Jew who, over a century earlier, had been excommunicated by his congregation.
“ Only a matter of time,” the nurse said. “His name will pop up somewhere, and we’ll take him down.”
The comment made Rabbi Gerster cringe. The powerful Shin Bet was chasing after his son with the intent to kill! He cleared his throat and asked, “Doesn’t the stand-down agreement extend to all SOD agents?”
But the phone line had already gone dead.
*
Itah Orr changed taxis three times before reaching the central bus station in southern Tel Aviv. The evening rush was peaking, thousands of office workers and day laborers heading home. She lingered at shop windows, but no one was following her.
At a secondhand clothing store, she exchanged her outfit for a long-sleeved dress that reached down to her shoes and a dark-gray headdress, which she tied in the ultra-Orthodox style, hiding all her hair. She bought basic toiletries at a pharmacy, as well as a note pad, sunglasses, and a fresh can of pepper spray to replace the one confiscated by Shin Bet.
She paid cash for a room at a seedy motel. Against the background noise of hookers and their eager customers, she sat at a rickety desk and wrote down the events of the last few days.
*