by Philip Kerr
The bank manager was an Englishman named Quinton. His arms were too short for his jacket and his fair hair was so fine it was hardly there at all. He had a snub nose that was surrounded by freckles and a smile like a young bulldog. Meeting him I couldn’t help but picture Quinton’s father, paying close attention to his son’s German teacher. I suspected he would have been a good one because young Mr. Quinton spoke excellent German, with many enthusiastic inflections, as if he had been reciting Goethe’s “The Destruction of Magdeburg.”
Quinton took me into his office. There was a cricket bat on the wall and several photographs of cricket teams. A fan turned slowly on the ceiling. It was hot. Outside the office window was a fine view of the Mohammedan Cemetery and, beyond, the Mediterranean Sea. The clock on the nearby tower struck the hour, and the muezzin at the mosque on the other side of Howard Street called the faithful to prayer. I was a long way from Berlin.
He opened the envelopes with which I had been entrusted with a paper knife shaped like a little scimitar. “Is it true that Jews in Germany are not allowed to play Beethoven or Mozart?” he asked.
“They are forbidden to play music by those composers at Jewish cultural events,” I said. “But don’t ask me to justify it, Mr. Quinton. I can’t. If you ask me, the whole country has gone insane.”
“You should try living here,” he said. “Here, Jew and Arab are at each other’s throats. With us in the middle. It’s an impossible situation. The Jews hate the British for not allowing more of them to come and live in Palestine. And the Arabs hate us for allowing any Jews here at all. Right now, it’s lucky for us they hate each other more than they hate us. But one day this whole country is going to blow up in our faces, and we’ll leave and it’ll be worse than ever before. You mark my words, Herr Gunther.”
While he had been speaking, he’d been reading the letters and sorting out various sheets of paper, some of them blank but for a signature. And now he explained what he was doing:
“These are letters of accreditation,” he said. “And signature samples for some new bank accounts. One of these accounts is to be a joint account for you and Dr. Six. Is that right?”
I frowned, hardly liking the idea of sharing anything with the head of the SD’s Jewish Department. “I don’t know,” I said.
“Well, it’s from this account that you are to take the money to buy the lease on a property here in Jaffa,” he explained. “As well as your own fee and expenses. The balance will be payable to Dr. Six on presentation of a passbook that I will give to you to give to him. And his passport. Please make sure he understands that. The bank insists on the passbook holder identifying himself with a passport, if money is to be handed over. Clear?”
I nodded.
“May I see your own passport, Herr Gunther?”
I handed it over.
“The best person to help you find commercial property in Jaffa is Solomon Rabinowicz,” he said, glancing over my passport and writing down the number. “He’s a Polish Jew, but he’s quite the most resourceful fellow I think I’ve met in this infuriating country. He has an office in Montefiore Street. In Tel Aviv. That’s about half a mile from here. I’ll give you his address. Always assuming that your client won’t want premises in the Arab quarter. That would be asking for trouble.”
He handed back my passport and nodded at Mr. Begelmann’s trunk. “I take it those are your client’s valuables?” he said. “The ones he wishes to store in our vault, pending his arrival in this country.”
I nodded again.
“One of these letters contains an inventory of the property contained in that trunk,” he said. “Do you wish to check the inventory before handing it over?”
“No,” I said.
Quinton came around the desk and collected the trunk. “Christ, it’s heavy,” he said. “If you would wait here, I’ll have your own passbook prepared. May I offer you some tea? Or some lemonade, perhaps?”
“Tea,” I said. “Tea would be nice.”
My business at the bank concluded, I walked on to the hotel and found Hagen and Eichmann had already gone out. So, I had a cool bath, went to Tel Aviv, met Mr. Rabinowicz, and instructed him to find a suitable property for Paul Begelmann.
I did not see the two SD men until breakfast the next morning when, slightly the worse for wear, they came down to look for some black coffee. They had made a night of it at a club in the old town. “Too much arak,” whispered Eichmann. “It’s the local drink. A sort of aniseed-flavored grape spirit. Avoid it if you can.”
I smiled and lit a cigarette but waved the smoke away when it seemed to nauseate him. “Did you get hold of Reichert?” I asked.
“Yes. As a matter of fact he was with us last night. But not Polkes. So he’s liable to turn up here looking for us. Would you mind seeing him, just for five or ten minutes and explaining the situation?”
“What is the situation?”
“Our plans are changing by the minute, I’m afraid. We may not be coming back here after all. For one thing, Reichert seems to think we won’t have any better luck getting a visa in Cairo than we’ve had here.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. I was not sorry at all.
“Tell him we’ve gone to Cairo,” said Eichmann. “And that we’ll be staying at the National Hotel. Tell him to come and meet us there.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I really don’t want to get involved in any of this.”
“You’re a German,” he said. “You’re involved whether you like it or not.”
“Yes, but you’re the Nazi, not me.”
Eichmann looked shocked. “How can you be working for the SD and not be a Nazi?” he asked.
“It’s a funny old world,” I said. “But don’t tell anyone.”
“Look, please see him,” said Eichmann. “If only for courtesy’s sake. I could leave a letter for him, but it would look so much better if you told him in person.”
“Who is this Fievel Polkes, anyway?” I asked.
“A Palestinian Jew who works for the Haganah.”
“And who are they?”
Eichmann smiled wearily. He was pale and sweating profusely. I almost felt sorry for him. “You really don’t know very much about this country, do you?”
“I know enough to get a thirty-day visa,” I said, pointedly.
“Haganah is a Jewish militia group and intelligence service.”
“You mean, they’re a terrorist organization.”
“If you like,” agreed Eichmann.
“All right,” I said. “I’ll see him. For courtesy’s sake. But I’ll need to know everything. I’m not meeting any of these murdering bastards with only half the story.”
Eichmann hesitated. I knew he didn’t trust me. But either he was too hung over to care, or he now realized he had no choice but to level with me.
“The Haganah want us to supply them with guns to use against the British here in Palestine,” he said. “If the SD continues to promote Jewish emigration from Germany, they’re also proposing to supply us with information on British troop and naval movements in the eastern Mediterranean.”
“The Jews helping their own persecutors?” I laughed. “But that’s preposterous.” Eichmann wasn’t laughing. “Isn’t it?”
“On the contrary,” said Eichmann. “The SD has already financed several Zionist training camps in Germany. Places where young Jews can learn the agricultural skills they will need to farm this land. Palestinian land. A National Socialist-financed Haganah is just one possible extension of that same policy. And that’s one of the reasons I came here. To get the measure of the people in command of Haganah, the Irgun, and other Jewish militia groups. Look, I know it’s hard to believe, but they dislike the British even more than they seem to dislike us.”
“And where does Haj Amin fit into these plans?” I asked. “He’s an Arab, isn’t he?”
“Haj Amin is the other side of the coin,” said Eichmann. “In case our pro-Zionist policy doesn’t work out
. We had planned to meet the Arab High Committee and some of its members—principally, Haj Amin—here, in Palestine. But it seems that the British have ordered the dissolution of the committee and the arrest of its members. Apparently the assistant district commissioner of Galilee was murdered in Nazareth a few days ago. Haj Amin is now in hiding, in Jerusalem’s old city, but he’s going to try to slip out and meet us in Cairo. So, as you can see, there’s just Polkes to worry about here in Jaffa.”
“Remind me never to play cards with you, Eichmann,” I said. “Or, if I do, to make sure you take off your coat and roll up your sleeves.”
“Just tell Fievel Polkes to come to Cairo. He’ll understand. But don’t, for Christ’s sake, mention the Grand Mufti.”
“The Grand Mufti?”
“Haj Amin,” said Eichmann. “He’s the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. He’s the highest official of religious law in Palestine. The British appointed him in 1921. Which makes him the most powerful Arab in the country. He’s also a rabid anti-Semite who makes the Führer seem like a Jew lover. Haj Amin has declared jihad on the Jews. Which is why the Haganah and the Irgun would like to see him dead. And which is why it’s best Fievel Polkes doesn’t know we’re planning to see him. He’ll suspect it’s happening, of course. But that’s his problem.”
“I just hope it doesn’t become mine,” I said.
The day after Eichmann and Hagen left on the boat for Alexandria, Fievel Polkes turned up at the Jerusalem Hotel looking for them. Polkes was a chain-smoking Polish Jew in his mid-thirties. He wore a crumpled, tropical-weight suit and a straw hat. He needed a shave, but not as badly as the chain-smoking Russian Jew accompanying him. He was in his mid-forties, with a couple of boulders for shoulders and a weathered sort of face like something carved on a flying buttress. His name was Eliahu Golomb. Their jackets were buttoned, although it was, as usual, a baking-hot day. When a man keeps his jacket buttoned on a hot day, it usually means one thing. After I had explained the situation, Golomb swore in Russian, and in an effort to smooth things over—these men were terrorists, after all—I pointed at the bar and offered to buy them a drink.
“All right,” said Polkes, who spoke good German. “But not in here. Let’s go somewhere else. I have a car outside.”
I almost said no. It was one thing to drink with them in the hotel bar. It seemed quite another thing to go somewhere in a car with men whose buttoned-up jackets told me they were armed, and probably dangerous. Seeing my hesitation, Polkes added, “You’ll be safe enough, my friend. It’s the British we’re fighting, not the Germans.”
We went outside and climbed inside a two-tone Riley saloon. Golomb drove slowly away from the hotel, like a man who didn’t want to attract attention to himself. We went north and east, through a German colony of smart white villas known as Little Valhalla, and then left across the railway line, onto Hashachar Herzl. Left again onto Lilien Blum, and then we stopped at a bar next to a cinema. We were, said Polkes, in the center of the garden suburb of Tel Aviv. The air smelled of orange blossoms and the sea. Everything looked neater and cleaner than Jaffa. More European, anyway. And I remarked upon it.
“Naturally you feel at home here,” said Polkes. “Only Jews live here. If it was up to the Arabs, this whole country would be little better than a pissing place.”
We went into a glass-fronted café with Hebrew words painted on the window. It was called Kapulski’s. The radio was playing what I would have described as Jewish music. A dwarfish woman was mopping the checkered floor. On the wall was a picture of a wild-haired old man wearing an open-necked shirt who looked like Einstein, but without the soup-straining mustache. I had no idea who he was. Beside this picture was one of a man who looked like Marx. I recognized this man as Theodor Herzl only because Eichmann had a picture of him in what he called his Jew file. The barman’s eyes followed us as we passed through a beaded curtain and into a sweaty back room that was full of beer crates and chairs stacked on top of tables. Polkes took down three chairs and placed them on the floor. Meanwhile, Golomb helped himself to three beers from a crate, prized the tops off with his thumbs, and set them down on the table.
“That’s a neat trick,” I observed.
“You should see him open a tin of peaches,” said Polkes.
It was hot. I took off my jacket and rolled up my sleeves. Both Jews kept their lightweight jackets buttoned. I nodded at their bulky armpits. “It’s okay,” I told Polkes. “I’ve seen a gun before. I won’t get nightmares if I see yours.”
Polkes translated into Hebrew and, smiling, Golomb nodded. His teeth were big and yellow, as if he usually ate grass for dinner. Then he took off his jacket. So did Polkes. Each of them was carrying a British Webley, as big as a dog’s hind leg. We all lit cigarettes, tasted our warm beers, and looked one another over. I paid more attention to Golomb since he seemed to be the one in charge. Eventually, Polkes said:
“Eliahu Golomb is on the Command Council of Haganah. He’s in favor of your government’s radical Jewish policy, since it is the belief of Haganah that this will only increase the strength of the Jewish population in Palestine. In time, this can only mean that Jews will outnumber Arabs, after which the country will be ours for the taking.”
I always hated warm beer. I hate drinking it from a bottle. I get mad when I have to drink it from a bottle. I’d rather not drink it at all.
“Let’s get something clear,” I said. “It’s not my government. I hate the Nazis, and if you had any sense, you would, too. They’re a bunch of goddamn liars and you can’t believe a word they say. You believe in your cause. That’s fine. But there’s very little in Germany that’s worth believing in. Except perhaps that a beer should always be served cold and with a decent head on it.”
Polkes translated all that I had said and when he finished, Golomb shouted something in Hebrew. But I hadn’t finished my diatribe.
“You want to know what they believe in? The Nazis? People like Eichmann and Hagen? They believe that Germany is a thing worth cheating for. Worth lying for. And you’re a pair of goddamn fools if you think any different. Even now those two Nazi clowns are preparing to meet your friend, the Grand Mufti, in Cairo. They’ll make a deal with him. And then the next day they’ll make a deal with you. And then they’ll go back to Germany and wait to see which one Hitler will go for.”
The barman arrived carrying three cold beers in glasses and put them on the table. Polkes smiled. “I think Eliahu likes you,” he said. “He wants to know what you’re doing in Palestine. With Eichmann and Hagen.”
I told them that I was a private detective and about Paul Begelmann. “And just so you know there’s nothing noble about it,” I added, “I’m being paid quite handsomely for my trouble.”
“You don’t strike me as a man who’s entirely motivated by money,” said Golomb, through Polkes.
“I can’t afford to have principles,” I said. “Not in Germany. People with principles end up at Dachau concentration camp. I’ve been to Dachau. I didn’t like it.”
“You’ve been to Dachau?” said Polkes.
“Last year. A flying visit, you might say.”
“Were there many Jews there?”
“About a third of the prisoners were Jewish,” I said. “The rest were communists, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, a few Germans with principles.”
“And which were you?”
“I was a man doing a job,” I said. “Like I told you, I’m a private detective. And sometimes it takes me way out of my depth. It can happen very easily in Germany right now. I forget that myself sometimes.”
“Maybe you would like to work for us?” said Golomb. “It would be useful to know the minds of these two men we were supposed to meet. Especially useful to know what they agree to with Haj Amin.”
I laughed. It seemed that everyone these days wanted me to spy on someone else. The Gestapo wanted me to spy on the SD. And now Haganah wanted me to spy on them. There were times when I thought I’d joined the wrong profession.
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“We could pay you,” said Golomb. “Money’s not something we’re short of. Fievel Polkes here is our man in Berlin. From time to time you two could meet up, and exchange information.”
“I wouldn’t be worth anything to you,” I said. “Not in Germany. Like I said, I’m just a private detective trying to make a living.”
“Then help us here in Palestine,” said Golomb. He had a deep gravelly voice that was entirely in keeping with the amount of hair on his body. He looked like a house-trained bear. “We’ll drive you to Jerusalem from where you and Fievel can catch a train to Suez, and then to Alexandria. We’ll pay you whatever you want. Help us, Herr Gunther. Help us to make something of this country. Everyone hates the Jews, and rightly so. We know no order or discipline. We’ve looked after ourselves for too long. Our only hope of salvation lies in a general immigration to Palestine. Europe is finished for the Jew, Herr Gunther.”
Polkes finished the translation and shrugged. “Eliahu is quite an extreme Zionist,” he added. “But his is not an uncommon opinion among members of the Haganah. I myself don’t accept what he says about Jews deserving hatred. But he’s right about our needing your help. How much do you want? Sterling? Marks? Gold sovereigns, perhaps.”
I shook my head. “I won’t help you for money,” I said. “Everyone offers me money.”
“But you are going to help us,” said Polkes. “Aren’t you?”
“Yes, I’ll help you.”
“Why?”
“Because I’ve been to Dachau, gentlemen. I can’t think of a better reason to help you than that. If you’d seen it you would understand. That’s why I’m going to help you.”
Cairo was the diamond stud on the handle of the fan of the Nile delta. That was what my Baedeker said, anyway. To me it looked like something much less precious—more like the teat under a cow’s belly that fed a representative of every tribe in Africa, of which continent it was the largest city. “City” seemed too small a word for Cairo, however. It seemed something much more than mere metropolis. It was like an island—a historical, religious, and cultural heartland, a city that was the model for every city that had come after it, and also its opposite. Cairo fascinated and alarmed me at the same time.