The Ambassador

by Yehuda Avner

  Chapter 30

  Anna cut across the Monbijou gardens on her way home from her last call out of the day. She felt exhaustion and accomplishment, the two main emotions she always experienced as a pediatrician in Berlin. Tonight it had been a six-year-old who lived with her penniless parents on a street behind the Hackescher Market. The girl had a pitted white strawberry tongue and red cheeks, an itchy rash across her back and a sore throat. Scarlet fever. Penicillin was the latest treatment, but Anna had none. She gave the girl an antitoxin preparation and left her to rest.

  The park was quiet and dark. Berliners were home, awaiting another British night raid. The sky was empty for now and Anna’s quick footsteps the only sound in the hush. Beyond the lawns, the rears of the embassy and the Countess’s house were black masses against the cobalt sky.

  But Anna wasn’t alone. The perverse Nazi regime trailed her even as she let out the tension of her long work day. She passed a sign that read: Jews and Dogs Prohibited. She imagined many Nazis might consider that an insult to their canine friends. It was two days since Jews had received the order to sew onto their clothing a yellow Star of David bearing the word Jude. Dogs wore no badge. Neither did she, or the diplomats accredited to the Israeli Embassy. Not yet.

  The thin light of a crescent moon lit the yellow benches marked For Jews Only, as though a Jewish backside spread infection in the same way that Streptococcus pyogenes carried scarlet fever. She pictured herself crossing the park in Copley Square to the Boston public library and the sense of threat lifted. For sure no one would ever make Nazis out of the Boston Irish. Her family was only three generations distant from Central Europe, but she felt intensely American. Jewish, too, because after all she was observing the persecution of a people with whom she was kin. But the destruction of democracy and freedom in Germany left her with a deeper appreciation for her native country. As an American, she realized that politics needn’t be the focus of her life. She could put it aside and focus on the role she was able to play in improving the lives of her patients. It was the world’s microbial pestilences, not the political ones, that were her concern. She would leave the Nazis to Dan and Shmulik.

  Another set of footsteps approached on a path perpendicular to hers, from the direction of the river. Probably a police patrol, Anna thought. She felt for the American passport she kept in her bag, in case she was asked to show her papers, and experienced a moment of guilt. Why didn’t she carry her Israeli diplomatic passport? Because, of course, the US document didn’t show that she was Jewish. It often elicited a cheerful remark from policemen about some cousin in Cleveland. An Israeli passport, she imagined, would have an entirely different effect.

  The footsteps came closer. Anna saw that it wasn’t a uniformed police officer. It was a heavy figure in a long coat, wearing a fedora low over the face. Even those who carried American passports knew that this was a Gestapo agent. She lowered her head and walked faster.

  At the junction of the two paths, the Gestapo officer fell in beside her. She glanced at him and felt relief.

  “Good evening, Herr Draxler,” she said.

  Draxler lifted his hat. “Your diagnosis for the little girl, Frau Doktor?”

  Dan’s Gestapo escort was evidently keeping track of Anna, too. “It’s scarlet fever. If I had penicillin, I would be sure of a recovery. But most likely in ten days or so she will be free of the disease and she will be safe.”

  “Safe? Did you give her a medicine that makes her no longer a Jew?” Draxler’s teeth gleamed in the moonlight. There seemed to be no malice in his joke. Anna thought perhaps she heard even a touch of regret.

  “You ought to ask a rabbi, Herr Draxler. I’m unaware of any such treatment.”

  “I believe one has been found.” Draxler looked toward the Spree. Anna watched him curiously. “Though it’s not to be wished upon anyone.”

  They turned onto Monbijoustrasse. The Gestapo Mercedes sat outside the embassy, a curl of smoke rising from the open window. The watchers were hard at work on their cigarettes.

  “You are a good doctor and a good woman,” Draxler said. “You saved my Traudl. On Kristallnacht. I haven’t forgotten that.”

  “I hope she’s well.”

  “She’s a good little girl and I’m…” Draxler hesitated. “I love her very much.”

  The humanity of Draxler’s statement disturbed Anna. She felt repelled by her own lack of empathy for the man. He was a father, after all.

  “I will always be grateful to you for treating my girl,” he said. “More than grateful, in fact.”

  Uneasy, Anna detected an emotion in his voice that she didn’t wish to name. Draxler moved his hand as though to reach for her, then pulled it back. “My…my concern for you dictates that I must advise you to leave Germany.”

  Anna stopped at the foot of the embassy steps. She wanted to be away from him and his need, but she had to know what he meant. She looked along the empty street. “I don’t understand.”

  “It is best that you leave Germany before you understand. Once you understand what I mean, it may be too late for you.”

  “Herr Draxler, I have my patients. My work with them is important. My husband’s work here is even more vital.”

  “Is your life not important to you?”

  “My life is threatened? Are you threatening me?”

  “Not me.” He hesitated and glanced at his men in the Mercedes. He lowered his voice. “Arvid Polkes is gone.”

  “Gone where?”

  “To the cellars under the Gestapo headquarters.”

  She gasped and brought her hand to her mouth.

  “Damn it, it’s dangerous for you to keep people like that in the embassy,” Draxler said. “You should tell your husband to kick out Polkes’s wife. Yes, I know she’s hiding in there.”

  “I can’t ask Dan to do such a thing—she’s my cousin.”

  “Is she, indeed.” Draxler paused, as though calculating the significance of this knowledge. Anna wondered if it had been a mistake to tell him.

  “Soon,” Draxler said, “Arvid Polkes and everyone like him will be going east.”

  “Why east? To fight against the Russians?”

  Draxler raised his hands and let them fall to his sides. “In the east, the Jews are being…removed.”

  “To where?”

  Draxler brushed his palms against each other as though wiping away crumbs. “To nowhere.”

  Anna clasped both her hands over her face and shook her head. “Arvid. No, it can’t be.”

  “I’m informing you of this because I want you to understand that, eventually, it may happen to you.”

  “But I’m the wife of a diplomat. I’m American.”

  He spoke slowly, as if he were explaining an adult concept to a small child, thinking at once of the clearest way to express himself and also of the innocence his words sullied. “You are a Jew. You told me yourself, there’s no medical cure for that. And in the German Reich, it’s the worst disease to carry. Believe me, if only you knew how truly I wish that I could—”

  The door of the Countess’s mansion slammed shut. Dan came down the steps. He saw Anna and Draxler on the sidewalk and paused a moment, before marching toward them. He took Anna’s arm. She saw that he sensed her agitation.

  “Good evening, Draxler,” he said.

  Without a word, the Gestapo man turned and climbed into the back of the Mercedes. A small point of orange light flared as he took a cigarette from one of his men and inhaled.

  “What was that about?” Dan said.

  Anna shook her head. Polkes, it was too terrible. What would she tell Bertha? She opened her mouth to speak, but Dan didn’t notice.

  “Well, I’ve had a hell of an interesting night,” he said. “How about you?”

  Anna shivered.

  “You’re cold. Let’s go inside, darling.” Dan guided her toward the steps. “How is the little Frankel girl? Will your patient live?” He smiled.

  Anna’s mouth was dry. She c
leared her throat and croaked, “She’ll live.” She heard no conviction in her voice. She’ll live. But for how long? She thought Dan might detect her doubt, but he was ringing the night bell.

  “Danny, Arvid is gone,” she said.

  Now Dan paid attention. “Where?”

  “To the Gestapo cells. They arrested him when he went to Eichmann.”

  “I’ll take care of it in the morning.”

  “Draxler said soon Arvid would be sent east. And everyone like him. What does that mean?”

  “I’ll handle it, sweetheart.”

  Richter opened the door for them. As Anna passed him, his machine pistol caught the moonlight.

  Chapter 31

  In the morning, Richter was gone. So was Yardeni. Dan went down to the basement and found Devorah at her code books. She laid her hand over the note she was transcribing when the ambassador came to her.

  “Where are the boys?” Dan said. “Where’s Shmulik?”

  The Mossad chief’s wife shrugged and stared at him, waiting for him to leave so she could get on with her work. Dan grinned bitterly. The woman didn’t even bother giving him an insolent brush-off anymore. He glanced down at the desk. She pulled the paper away and brought her elbow across to cover it too.

  “Devorah, I’m on your side, you know.”

  “Then you ought to stop bothering me and realize that Shmulik’s doing exactly what you ought to be doing, instead of sucking up to the SS.”

  Evidently it wasn’t only his secrets that Shmulik shared with his wife. She knew just how her husband felt about the ambassador. Dan took a long breath. He turned toward the stairs and his foot caught painfully on a sledgehammer that had been leaning against the wall. It dropped to the floor.

  “What’s that doing there?” he said.

  “Escape tool,” Devorah said. “You made the mistake of putting your Mossad team in a basement with a wall adjoining that of a German’s cellar. Shmulik decided to turn it to our advantage. If the Nazis ever try to barricade us into the embassy, we’ll break through into the Countess’s home and get out that way.”

  Dan left the basement. Shmulik’s constant anticipation of disaster vexed him.

  He waited at his window with his morning coffee, watching the street. He had to go to Eichmann with a new set of papers soon. Meanwhile, his associate, the Mossad bureau chief, was out with his men, no doubt scouting locations for the assassination of Adolf Hitler. Dan was accustomed to fear. What Jew wouldn’t be, when he kept such close contact with Nazi officials? Routine was only a screen for extreme danger, like the procedures a zookeeper might have for cleaning out the tiger cage. But, underlying his trepidation, Dan detected something more sinister, perhaps even more threatening. It was fear of Shmulik, and of Devorah, and of all his own people. When he returned to Israel, what might they accuse him of? Collaboration with the Nazis? Jews worldwide had lambasted Ben-Gurion as a collaborator for fixing the transfer deal. Dan was here, in Berlin, in daily contact with the SS and Gestapo. He signed documents that held the stamp of the Nazi government. They could be filed away for use against him later. Ben-Gurion would protect him, but what if a different prime minister came to power, one who felt no debt to Dan? What would he say then, when people demanded of him why he hadn’t helped Shmulik kill the monster?

  His reasons seemed thin to him now, more like excuses. He took a sip of coffee and the cup trembled in his hand. He put it down. It wasn’t real coffee anyway. He spat the mix of wheat bran, molasses, and starch back into the cup and vowed to get something more drinkable, no matter the cost. No more substitutes. Maybe that was what he was, too—a counterfeit of the strong New Jew of Israel. He had a country now, but here he was nevertheless, fawning before the European oppressor as generations of Jews had done, scrabbling to fend off the pogrom that everyone else knew was inevitable.

  Gottfried knocked at the door. He carried a stack of papers to Dan’s desk. “These are for Eichmann too,” he said.

  “Thank you, Wili.”

  Dan packed the papers into his briefcase. They seemed heavier than usual. He shrugged on his overcoat and went out onto the steps. The morning was cold and misty. It reminded him of walks to school with his father when he was a small boy, before they went to Palestine. He remembered discussions of history and Talmud and law, and word games that had made him laugh. Despite his nostalgia he found it hard to believe that he had ever been carefree in Berlin.

  He passed the indolent Gestapo detail loitering outside the embassy and headed toward the bridge over the Spree for the walk to Eichmann’s office on Kurfürstenstrasse. It was an almost daily trip now, so the Gestapo didn’t even bother to track him. Certainly the guards had given up all pretense at protection.

  Dan crossed the first section of the bridge onto the island where the city’s great museums stood. As he approached the great dome of the Kaiser Friedrich Museum, he saw three men gathered, hands thrust into the pockets of their overcoats. They kept their bodies very still, but it was clear to Dan from the subtle tipping of their heads that they were marking out points on the road and the sidewalk.

  As Dan came closer, he saw that he knew the men. Shmulik and his two Mossad underlings. He recognized the aura of conspiracy and knew why they were there.

  “So you’re going to kill him here?” Dan whispered. “Right in the middle of Berlin?”

  “Respectfully, Your Excellency, Mister Ambassador, shut your big mouth,” Shmulik replied.

  “Hitler’s coming to listen to Gottfried play at the Countess’s home next week and you’re going to kill him en route?” Dan caught Shmulik’s arm. “They’ll connect the assassination to the embassy. Don’t you see that? Our first secretary performs. Hitler dies on the way. How will that look? They’ll arrest all of us. They’ll shut down our emigration operation.”

  “Dan, thank heavens I’ve caught you.” Gottfried hurried onto the bridge, breathless, waving another stack of emigration forms. “I forgot to give you these. Can you add them to the papers for Eichmann?”

  Gottfried seemed frail, resting against the railing of the bridge to catch his breath. And Shmulik intended to use this naïve musician as bait for his hit on Hitler. Dan couldn’t let it happen. More importantly, he refused to allow Shmulik to put his entire emigration program in danger. “You’re not to play for Hitler, Wili. That’s an order. Do you understand me?”

  Gottfried’s features darkened. “I don’t understand, Dan. I must do this.”

  “You work for me. I’m your ambassador. I’m instructing you, in the presence of these men, not to perform for the German Führer at the home of Countess von Bredow. Do I make myself clear?”

  “But I need to make the Nazis understand what Germany loses by expelling its Jews. To see that we are part of their culture too.”

  “If you do not follow my orders, I shall have you sent back to Israel. Immediately. Do you understand?”

  Shock and anger replaced Gottfried’s confusion. “My place is here, Dan. Please. You cannot take me away from—from the people I love.”

  A sting of bile cut across the back of Dan’s throat and he knew it was his body rebelling against him, disgusted by the fear he was instilling in Gottfried with his threat. He had to make this man do his bidding, but he hated himself for it. Poor Gottfried wanted only to be in Berlin, with the Countess—perhaps even to build a relationship with Brückner, the son who had rejected him. But here was his boss, his friend, menacing him with the prospect that he might take it all away. The voices of the souls who would be destroyed or whom he might save clamored around Dan and hardened him. “Your duty is to the state of Israel, and I am the one who decides how you must carry it out. Clear?”

  Gottfried leaned harder on the railing, as though he might collapse into the gray waters of the Spree. He murmured, “You are clear, Dan. I understand.”

  Shmulik tipped his head at Yardeni. The young man took Gottfried’s arm and spoke gently, “Come on, Wili. Let me help you back to the embassy.” He took
the musician, shuffling, back along Monbijoustrasse. Richter gave Dan a disapproving look and followed them.

  “Gottfried works for Ben-Gurion.” Shmulik came close to Dan and growled at him. “Ben-Gurion wants Hitler dead. But you don’t. Why not?”

  Dan stuffed Gottfried’s papers into his briefcase. “You know I’m utterly loyal to Ben-Gurion. But I have to stop this, Shmulik. In the name of God, we have to get as many Jews out of this country as we can. Look at all these applications for emigration. Every one of them means a life saved, a new life in Israel. I’ll talk to the Old Man again, but in the meantime I won’t allow Gottfried to participate in your plan. You too should call a halt to what you’re doing or I’ll—”

  “You’ll what? Rat us out to your pal Eichmann?”

  “My God, you can’t think I’d do that?”

  “You have your mission and I have mine. I won’t let anything stop me from completing it. Perhaps you’re prepared to do unthinkable things to get your job done too.”

  “To betray you to the Nazis? Shmulik, get a grip on yourself.” But it was Dan who felt shaken by doubt. The Mossad man was right—Ben-Gurion had ordered Hitler’s death, so why didn’t Dan want it done? It was because he knew, better than anyone, better than Shmulik and the Old Man, that he could still save people from the Nazis. He just needed a little more time. Every day that he could put off the big confrontation, every hour that he could maintain his working relationship with the Nazis, lives were preserved, families reunited. Why couldn’t they see it as he did? For the first time he found himself determined to oppose the Old Man. He had to buy himself a few more days.

  Shmulik started away from Dan, back to the embassy. “If this thing goes wrong, we’ll know who to blame.”

  Dan cast his eyes down to the cobblestones. He walked toward Eichmann’s office.

  Chapter 32

  Up the marble staircase at Kurfürstenstrasse, Eichmann greeted Dan at the door of his office. “Baruch haba, adoni hashagrir,” he said. Welcome, Mister Ambassador. Dan’s contact with the Sturmbannführer was substantial enough for him to know that when Eichmann dropped a Hebrew phrase into conversation it was a sign of extreme good humor—except when it reflected insecurity and the need to show off his superior knowledge of Jewish culture. This instance was clearly a sign of the former. Eichmann’s face shone like a teen in the afterglow of his first sexual experience. The approval of his commander, Heydrich, seemed to linger deep within him after the successful concert at Countess von Bredow’s home. He clapped his hands and ushered Dan inside the rooms where the Jewish Brethren Club used to dole out charity to the community.