He looks around the courtroom and from his wild eyes it’s evident that he is reliving the torment of those four months. ‘After a few days I thought I was going insane. I kept talking but no-one was listening. Before my eyes I could see twelve thousand men, women and children being thrown into the gas chambers of Auschwitz every day, and I was powerless to make these people understand. I shouted, I begged, I wept, I was distraught. I went on a hunger strike for two weeks. In the end, I insisted to be allowed to return to Hungary so I could die with the rest of the Jews.’
‘What was the reaction of the British officers when you said that the lives of almost a million Jews were at stake?’ Amos asks.
‘I’ll never forget their words as long as I live,’ Gábor replies. ‘Lord Moyne, one of the interrogators, said, “What do you expect me to do with a million Jews? Where can I put them?”’
There’s a shocked gasp from the courtroom. Gábor turns to the judge, and his body is as taut as a bow just before the arrow is fired. ‘That was the worst time of my entire life. The fate of a million Jewish men, women and children depended on me, and I let them down. You know what a nightmare is? It’s not a bad dream. It’s a living hell from which you know you will never escape.’
No-one in the courtroom makes a sound, the tension is palpable, and every eye is fixed on him. Men clear their throats and women shake their heads. The journalists are scribbling furiously, their eyes shining with excitement. They know that they are about to report on the most sensational story of the entire trial.
To maximise the effect of Gábor’s words, Amos Alon pauses before asking. ‘And what was the result of your detention?’
Gábor’s voice is almost inaudible. ‘My mission collapsed. The remaining Jews of Hungary were doomed. And the British refused to allow me to return to Hungary so I couldn’t find out what happened to my wife.’
Amos Alon drops his voice so everyone has to strain to hear his next question. ‘And what did happen to your wife?’
This time Gábor allows his hostile gaze to linger over Miklós before answering. ‘Eventually I found out that she was included on Miklós Nagy’s list and ended up in Switzerland.’
Miklós is poking the prosecutor’s arm. His hands are shaking. In an urgent whisper he says, ‘You must stop this. It has nothing to do with Fleischmann and the libel suit,’ but when the prosecutor objects to this line of questioning, the judge overrules him. He seems riveted by the unfolding personal drama of the couple who were separated as a result of Gábor’s mission.
‘I don’t understand how a woman who was Eichmann’s hostage managed to get away from under his nose,’ Amos Alon is saying.
Miklós is holding his breath. He suspects that Alon already knows the answer.
‘Miklós Nagy obtained false documents for her. She wasn’t on the list as Ilonka Weisz but as…’
At this point the prosecutor shouts. ‘Your honour! This is irrelevant and immaterial. It has no bearing on this criminal libel suit. I request that the defence attorney desist from wasting time on trivial issues for the titillation of the court.’
This time the judge sustains his objection and Miklós breathes out. He knows that some of the cynical older reporters, always alert for what is being left unsaid, have been watching him closely during this exchange, and probably sensed a tantalising whiff of scandal floating over the courtroom.
Amos Alon shrugs and turns back to Gábor. ‘As a result of your experience, would you say that the Allies and the leaders of the Jewish Agency turned their backs on the doomed Jews of Hungary?’
Miklós is staring at Alon in disgust. The defence lawyer’s machinations have widened the scope of this case from a libel trial into a political witch-hunt against the current government and its leaders past and present. He has managed to forge a spurious link between an incident that took place in Hungary in 1944 and the government of Israel ten years later, and he was destroying Miklós’s reputation in the process.
‘Your honour!’ the prosecutor objects. ‘Mr Alon is putting words in the witness’s mouth!’
‘No further questions,’ Alon says quickly. He knows he doesn’t need to say another word.
The prosecutor steps towards the witness box. ‘Mr Weisz, did you believe that Eichmann’s offer was genuine? That he really would release one million Jews if the British, Americans, and the Jewish Agency donated ten thousand trucks? Or that the Allies would provide those trucks knowing that the Nazis were losing the war, and that they would use them against them?’
Gábor coughs again and shifts in his chair as he considers his answer.
‘I was bewildered by his offer, but when you are on death row, and at the last moment someone offers you a reprieve in return for a favour, wouldn’t you jump at it, no matter how outrageous the request was? I didn’t know what Eichmann had in mind, whether he was playing a cat and mouse game or not, but what did we have to lose? I knew I had to find a way to stall the murder machine he was operating.’
This isn’t what the prosecutor is hoping to hear, so he rephrases the question.
‘Since you didn’t believe Eichmann, why would you imagine that the Allied leaders, or the leaders of the Jewish Agency, would believe him and provide the trucks, knowing that this would give the Germans an advantage in prosecuting the war?’
Now Amos Alon leaps up. ‘Your honour should disallow that question. It asks for speculation about something the witness can’t possibly know.’
Once more, the judge upholds his objection. Defeated again, the prosecutor concludes his examination of his witness with one final question. ‘What happened after the British released you?’
Gábor speaks slowly and thoughtfully. ‘I was forced to travel to Palestine, which as you know was still under British control. They didn’t let me return to Hungary because it was occupied by the Germans.’
Suddenly his voice rings out over the courtroom. ‘That’s when I realised I’d been caught in a trap from the moment I arrived in Istanbul. Everyone knew it, the Allied leaders as well as the representatives of the Jewish Agency, and I had been too naive to suspect what was going on. They sold me out to the British. That betrayal will haunt me to my dying day.’
His words hang in the air like malevolent spirits and the courtroom erupts. In the ensuing uproar, it takes several bangs of the judge’s gavel and threats to clear the court before order is restored, the atmosphere heavy with disturbing speculations. The judge breaks the silence by banging his gavel to adjourn for lunch.
Miklós is shaking his head at his friend’s sensational outburst and as he watches him shuffle from the witness box, he wonders if this paranoid interpretation of events is a symptom of his depressed state or the result of brainwashing by Alon. But when he remembers Gábor’s appearance and the hostile look he cast in his direction, and thinks of his flagrant affair with Ilonka, it strikes him that he is probably partly to blame for Gábor’s depression.
The courtroom empties slowly and people file out, more subdued than usual. Not just the duplicity of international diplomacy but ingratitude and betrayal have been on display this morning. Human nature has been on trial and it has been found wanting.
Miklós feels wrung out by his friend’s distress. He can see now that no-one had a chance of succeeding in that situation, and no-one could have fought harder than Gábor to convince the Allied representatives of the importance of the mission. Their ears and hearts were blocked by the exigencies of their own interests, not by humanitarian concerns.
He realises his own arrogance in assuming that a more skilful negotiator like himself could have succeeded. In 1944 Gábor was a pawn in the hands of the Germans and the Allies. He wonders if Gábor has realised that now he has been used again, this time as an axe to chop down the government of Israel.
Seeing him has reignited feelings he has tried for years to suppress: the terror of his confrontations with Eichmann, the ecstasy of his trysts with Ilonka, and the guilt and grief that gnaw at him in the dark hour
s of the night when he can’t sleep. He betrayed his friend by his affair with Ilonka, and later, through no fault of his own, he betrayed Ilonka too.
But perhaps it was his fault. For the first time since the trial began, he puts aside his bitterness and sense of injustice and turns his attention inwards. He sees himself reflected in the cracked and pitted mirror of his ego, not as a heroic activist but an arrogant and egotistical lover of women, women whose love he probably didn’t deserve.
He is relieved that Judit had had to hurry from the court to a meeting with a musical director about her forthcoming concert before the morning session was over, and doesn’t know how close the defence attorney came to publicly exposing his relationship with Ilonka. He thinks about the impact of the trial on Judit, and how devotedly she has supported him and tried to shield him from the vitriol of his opponents. She knew of his affair in Budapest and said nothing, she has stood by his side throughout this Gehenna, but how would she react if his affair was publicly exposed in the press?
He comforts himself with the thought that Gábor won’t reveal the affair and, with all the sensational revelations made in court that morning, it wasn’t likely that the reporters would follow up something so nebulous. He makes himself a promise that when all this is over, he will make it up to Judit.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Jerusalem, April 1954
Miklós stays in the prosecutor’s room during the lunch recess to avoid the reporters loitering around the court building in the hope of buttonholing him for a controversial quote. He picks up a newspaper and on the third page he sees a profile of Amos Alon. It depicts the lawyer in glowing terms as a typical sabra, the new breed of Jew, fearless, brave and uncompromising, a David fighting the power of the sinister government. Even as a child, the reporter writes, Alon was sensitive to the corrupt machinations of the government. He describes an incident when Alon, as a feisty ten year old, was about to hurl a rock at a government building out of a feeling of injustice, but his mother knocked it from his hand just in time.
Miklós pushes the paper away, infuriated by the journalist’s fawning and by the implicit comparison between the stereotypical European Jews, who were so often insultingly portrayed as servile, passive sheep, and the image of the Israeli Jew who never surrendered. He knows that Alon is holding a rock once again, but this time it’s a much bigger rock, and it doesn’t look as if anyone will manage to knock it from his hand.
‘Why does Judge Lazar give Amos Alon so much latitude?’ he asks the prosecutor. He takes a sip of black coffee that one of the court attendants has brought in, pulls a face, and pushes the waxed cup away. ‘I can’t understand why he allows Alon’s irrelevant questions and upholds most of his objections, but overrules most of yours.’
Noah Elman looks up from his papers and shrugs. ‘Who can understand judges? They all have a bee in their bonnet about something, if you ask me. Take a reasonable, competent solicitor and promote him to the bench, and suddenly he can see a halo around his head and thinks he’s one of the archangels.’
He pushes his chair back and steeples his fingers as he looks up at the ceiling.
‘Unfortunately for you, he and Alon share one crucial motive. They both hate the government.’
‘Why’s that?’
The prosecutor leans back, and from his expression Miklós can see that he is looking forward to sharing some gossip. ‘In Alon’s case, it’s about the Altalena. You might remember this was in the early days of Israel’s independence, and soldiers of the new provisional government shelled it, killing his brother. As for Judge Lazar, his resentment is more recent, but just as bitter. He was furious when he was passed over when they were appointing judges to the Supreme Court. He was sure he had it in the bag on account of his seniority, but they appointed his deputy instead. He hasn’t made a secret of his disappointment. Or should I say dis-appointment.’
Miklós doesn’t smile at the pun and struggles to refrain from voicing his own resentment that the judge and defence counsel sharing a common bias was bad enough, but having an incompetent prosecutor on his side was even more disastrous.
Back in the courtroom for the afternoon session, Miklós looks at the judge with new interest as Amos Alon announces his next witness.
‘I’d like to call Zoltán Klein to the stand.’
Zolly Klein! Miklós is astonished. Most people regarded spies as ruthless people without moral fibre, but this one was a particularly duplicitous agent who probably acted for Germany, Hungary, Turkey and God knew who else, and was mistrusted by everyone. What could this disreputable spy possibly contribute to this case, and who would take him seriously?
While he waits for Klein to step into the witness box, Miklós recalls that, for some reason he had never understood, Eichmann had ordered Klein to accompany Gábor to Istanbul. He suspected that Klein’s role was to spy on Gábor and report back about the progress of his negotiations. That was sheer speculation at the time, but his friend’s evidence in court indicated that espionage must have played a major role in his arrest, most likely thanks to Klein. Either way, Klein wasn’t likely to reveal his secrets.
Unlike Gábor, Klein looks sharp and confident. The years haven’t ravaged him and neither, apparently, have his double dealings. In fact he looks less shifty than before, and he no longer dresses to blend into the background as he once did.
For his court appearance he wears expensive-looking beige slacks with turn-ups, and a crisp poplin shirt under a tweed jacket with leather buttons and large lapels, the kind that English tailors were renowned for. It’s clear that Zolly Klein’s shady deals have paid off.
Amos Alon begins his questioning. ‘Can you tell us, what was your occupation in Hungary in 1944?’
Miklós is wondering how honestly Klein will answer when, with a self-satisfied smile, he says, ‘I was an inter-government agent. I liaised between various agencies, ministries and organisations, and facilitated the exchange of important information.’
‘And which agencies and governments made use of these special talents of yours?’
Klein is still smiling and shows no annoyance at the lawyer’s sarcastic tone. ‘Anyone who was smart enough to recognise my expertise.’
‘So would it be correct to describe you as a gun for hire?’
Klein’s thin lips twist into a condescending smile. ‘You can describe me any way you like.’
The judge leans forward. ‘Mr Klein, please stop equivocating. And Mr Alon, how much of the court’s time do you propose to devote to this exchange? You don’t appear to be making much progress.’
‘Your honour, establishing the witness’s credentials is crucial to this case,’ Amos Alon replies. He turns to Klein. ‘Why were you on a Luftwaffe flight to Istanbul in May 1944 with Mr Weisz, and who sent you?’
The question surprises Miklós. After all this time, Alon must know that it was Eichmann who sent Klein and Gábor to Istanbul to present his improbable offer of Jews for trucks.
But Klein is hesitating. He looks down at his hands, then up at the lawyer, and from his expression, it is clear that he is trying to decide how to answer. The judge props his elbows on the bench and looks as if he’s about to direct him to reply, but Amos Alon beats him to it.
‘I realise that you were in a delicate situation in 1944, but the war is long over, and I assume that past governments are no longer taking advantage of your expertise, so you can answer truthfully. I remind you that you are under oath. So I repeat my question: Why were you sent to Istanbul with Mr Weisz in May 1944, and at whose instigation?’
Klein holds the lawyer’s gaze and when he speaks, his voice is loud and clear.
‘At the instigation of Heinrich Himmler.’
The judge’s eyes widen and he looks at Klein in disbelief. ‘Heinrich Himmler? Hitler’s right-hand man?’ He doesn’t say You can’t really expect me to believe this, but his tone implies it.
‘That’s correct. Heinrich Himmler.’ Klein lets his thunderbolt hit home withou
t saying another word and looks around at the courtroom, clearly relishing the uproar he has caused.
The judge can’t conceal a smile at the ludicrous notion. As if Heinrich Himmler would have sent this third-class spy on such an errand. The usually imperturbable Amos Alon is frowning. This wasn’t the answer he was expecting and he is no longer in total control of the proceedings. As for Miklós, he can only stare at Klein, bewildered. He can’t understand why the spy is fabricating such a bizarre version of events that can so easily be contradicted. He himself was present when Eichmann ordered Gábor to Istanbul. Is Klein saying this to make himself important, to create a sensation? Or does he have some other motive? He looks at Klein again, and, improbable as it seems, he begins to wonder if his statement could possibly be true.
Amos Alon continues his questioning, but he is thinking on his feet and sounds less self-assured than before. ‘Mr Klein, up until now we have been told that Eichmann sent you and Mr Weisz to Istanbul to persuade the representatives of the Allies and the Jewish Agency to provide Germany with ten thousand trucks in return for releasing one million Jews. Are you now telling us that it was Himmler, the man in charge of implementing the atrocities of the Holocaust, the Nazi who was Hitler’s right-hand man, that it was Himmler and not Eichmann who sent you on this errand?’
‘Yes and no,’ Klein replies.
‘What do you mean by that?’ The judge breaks in. ‘You must stop talking in riddles, Mr Klein. The answer is yes or no, not yes and no.’
Klein shrugs. ‘It’s not so simple but I’ll try to be exact. Yes, Himmler sent us, but no, it wasn’t on the errand that you mentioned.’
‘Another riddle. We are all ears, Mr Klein. Please enlighten us.’
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