The Pearl Thief

by Fiona McIntosh

  ‘You can walk me home, Daniel – I’m guessing you may know a shortcut?’

  He smiled sadly, not showing his relief. He said nothing but fell in step with her, sensibly waiting for her cue.

  ‘What do you want from me?’ she said.

  ‘I’m surprised you’d ask that,’ he replied, sounding glad to have the recriminations behind him and eager to get on with why he’d set up this masquerade to trap her. ‘I don’t know what Ruda Mayek looks like. To tell the truth’ – he frowned and caught her look of irony slanted at him across a square shoulder – ‘only truth now,’ he assured her, ‘I only found out about Mayek a few years ago. Until then I believed Ayla died at the hands of the guards of Terezín. I spent years researching the name of every soldier I could hunt down who did time at that place. My role at Mossad gave me authority and access that is denied to most and I diligently checked and cross-referenced every name until I had a file of men, most with photos, some without. Germany, as you would know from your own work, was an exemplary record keeper and the Nazis were the finest exponents of keeping detailed records. The lack of photos would have been Czech sloppiness at a very local level and of course one of the photos I didn’t have was of Ruda Mayek, who arrived at Terezín during December 1941. He was there for fifteen months and then I have him bobbing up at two Polish death camps – one of them Auschwitz, although Ezra does not recall hearing his name there and doesn’t believe he ever saw him.’

  They were entering the vicinity of the Natural History Museum, making for the gates that would lead them through the gardens; these would take them to rue Buffon and her tiny street. In her mind she joined the dots of what he’d said, arriving at the only conclusion she could.

  ‘You want me to recognise him for you.’

  ‘Yes.’ He didn’t embellish.

  ‘How did you know me?’

  ‘Ah, I have been looking for anyone who could recognise him since the war ended. I am a spy but I am also a diehard analyst. I like to look at a puzzle and solve it. I knew that this man called Ruda Mayek came from a hamlet just outside Prague, so I focused my efforts there to find everyone I could who might have intersected with his life. There was a small window of chance for me. During 1948 and into the following year, the Soviet Bloc, which has taken over Czechoslovakia, supported the newly created State of Israel. I was part of the framework that helped remaining Jews who wished to emigrate to Israel to do so out of Czechoslovakia. It meant I could get into the country in an official capacity and I managed to hunt down Mayek’s home.’

  She gasped.

  ‘It was deserted at that stage – most of the village’s houses were empty by that time, or accommodating squatters of sorts, a few people starting again. There were a couple who recalled Ruda Mayek but their descriptions made him sound like every other German. The town hall had been burnt down so all of its records were gone. I was looking for photos of him, you see – perhaps as mayor. He wasn’t mayor long enough for there to be many. Can you imagine none were to be found in his home? All removed from albums or frames in a deliberate attempt to cover his tracks. He might even have burnt the municipal building or arranged to have it torched, for all we know. But I did find a number of other photos carelessly cast aside at his home and amongst them were a few that featured a family called Kassowicz. And on the back of one was the inscription: Taken by Rudy. You were a child in that photo but there were enough snapshots of this family that I realised he must have spent time with them. It didn’t take much digging to discover who you all were, your father’s standing, and that the family Kassowicz disappeared sometime in late 1941. There are no records, no matter how I searched, of any of your family turning up in any of the concentration camps. As I say, the German records are reliable. So where were you all? I had no one else to count on and my single hope was that just one of you children had survived, wherever you were.’

  ‘You pinned all of this on the hope a Jewish child of Prague from a photo with Mayek’s name on the back had survived the Holocaust?’ She was past sounding incredulous.

  He shrugged. ‘There were five of you, and to the best of my knowledge none entered a camp. I had to hold out hope that all or some of you had got away, and so I remained patient, waiting for a sign. Don’t think I haven’t chased down every lead, though, for anyone, not just a Kassowicz, who might have known Ruda Mayek. I’ve been looking for years. But it was you who answered my prayers when the Pearls appeared and I got word through my London office that a war criminal might have surfaced through a potentially stolen piece of jewellery that one of the museum’s experts knew intimately – was in fact claiming to be the owner. It was a breakthrough but I didn’t realise how important until your Mr Partridge was interviewed by one of our people and he told us about you. Once I heard the name Kassowicz I couldn’t contain my excitement. I learned you’d been living and working in Paris for all these years but of course you had a new name … I would never have found you without the emergence of the Pearls.’ He shrugged. ‘So I waited for your inevitable return from London, watching the Louvre for your arrival.’

  ‘I didn’t see you,’ she said.

  ‘You never would – unless I wanted you to. Katerina, all I need is for you to recognise him for me. We have some photos taken at Terezín and Auschwitz featuring groups of the garrisons. You might be able to pick him out from one of those; you can certainly give me the best description I’ll have of him, even if it is of a man from twenty years ago.’

  ‘In order to do what?’

  ‘To end his miserable life.’

  ‘You don’t even know he’s alive.’

  ‘I know you believe he is.’ And before she could respond, he continued. ‘The re-emergence of the Ottoman Pearls alone has so profoundly affected you that I am guessing you won’t sit still and would never forgive yourself if you didn’t find out who is behind them. You’ve pieced together the story of Ruda Mayek for me. It has to be him —’

  ‘Or his family, or someone he sold them to, or a collector whose lap they’ve fallen into, or someone who has dug them up from where he buried them during the war, or —’

  ‘Yes,’ he interjected. ‘There are all of those potential scenarios but still you want to know, don’t you, Katerina? You want to confirm whether it’s him behind the piece arriving at the British Museum.’

  They angled into her narrow street and she could see her building already. His time to convince her was ticking down.

  ‘How old was he in 1941?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know … perhaps mid-thirties.’

  ‘So he is at least mid-fifties now – he still has years ahead to enjoy his life, while our lives grind along in misery from our past. Would his death bring you peace of mind?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you believe he’s out there, living an easy life on what he stole from your family, from others? Do you think he believes he got away with his monstrous acts?’

  ‘I do now. And while I’ve convinced myself otherwise, perhaps I always have believed it.’

  They arrived at her apartment building’s short flight of three shallow steps.

  He paused and surprised her by taking her hand. ‘Then … for Ayla, for Lotte, for the twins, for your dear mother and father but especially for you, the woman who defied him by surviving his brutality, I am going to kill him.’

  She regarded his face, which had known few laughter creases, and saw herself reflected in it. To others like him she must appear serious, aloof, guarded … damaged by life. Standing outside her doorway, digging and finding her keys in the bottom of her crocodile-skin handbag and hearing Daniel’s strong words, she finally made sense of the cauldron of feelings that had been simmering since she’d laid eyes on the lambent Pearls again. Her response tumbled from her as though a second person within was framing and speaking her deepest-kept thought.

  ‘No, my pain is not yours to share – and that’s not me being noble, Daniel; it’s me selfishly protecting what belongs to me.
My hurt, my memories, my physical injuries at his hands, my mental torment from his actions. I understand your heartache and I sympathise but Ruda Mayek does not belong to you. You cannot bring Ayla back or heal me by confronting him, for within me are the ghosts of all the dead, including Ayla. I have known him; I have suffered directly beneath him – you have a much lesser claim.’

  Through what was beginning to sound like a mission statement, she’d watched Daniel’s features slacken with confusion before tightening with alarm. His thick eyebrows met. ‘And?’

  ‘And you are not going to kill him on my behalf.’

  ‘But why, Katerina?’

  She slipped the key into the lock and twisted it until the door opened. Stepping over the threshold, she turned and fixed him with a stare, like pressing a drawing pin into a cork noticeboard. She needed him still, fully concentrating, while she took a heartbeat to consider the shocking decision she had reached and was now about to air. It had taken twenty years of silent suffering to know this other person within had the right to say it. She gave permission and her darker self spoke.

  ‘Why? Because I am going to kill him.’

  She closed the door on her words and the look of horror that swept across Daniel’s face. She ignored the banging behind her and the calling of her name. She scorned the day by closing curtains and creeping beneath her bedcovers. Finally, Katerina allowed the terror of her promise to carry her trembling into the depth of unconsciousness to sleep on the thought of how she would actually end Ruda Mayek’s life.

  18

  HAMPSTEAD

  Hersh stood at the doorway of the dining room, not wishing to intrude across the threshold as a ritual was taking place. He watched with growing admiration as Nissa moved around the table lighting holy candles that would usher in Shabbat and begin the day of rest that the Jewish community observed. Growing up in an English household Hersh had had little choice but to follow the ways of his foster parents. The Evans family were not without their piety, eating only fish on Fridays, not working on Sundays – not even playing cards, which they all enjoyed, because playing snap or rummy somehow constituted blasphemy – and while he had not attended Sunday school, he had certainly walked beneath the vaulted ceiling of the parish church each weekend alongside them. His father had proudly told him that a church had been on that site for one thousand years.

  As Henry he had listened conscientiously to the prayers and the service, had stood when his parents stood, had knelt when they did and had shaken the hand of the vicar most Sundays, but he had struggled to feel as one with the congregation. It was only when he’d first tiptoed into a synagogue at fifteen, taking a kippah from the basket at the door to cover his head, had been welcomed by other worshippers and shown how to proceed that he’d begun to feel his faith finding him.

  He’d lived a double life as Henry and Hersh these last years, which included giving his attention and care to two faiths, believing both essentially asked the same thing of him – a generous spirit.

  His family had objected at first but they were grocers to so many in the Jewish community that they couldn’t prevent him attending the synagogue, as countless shoppers remarked on how happy they had been to see their son at prayer. He’d had the conversation with them when he was in his mid-teens that they must not disallow his heritage and his only link to his ‘dead family’. The effect had been immediate, and presumably because he attended Sunday morning services with them, his mother and father no longer frowned on his interest in Judaism.

  And now he’d found the courage to let them know that from here on he would be spending Shabbat with Nissa’s folks.

  ‘It’s the most important time of the week for a Jewish family and I simply want to be part of it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, I like what it stands for. Everyone essentially stops work and gathers around a table for wonderful food, good company, singing …’

  ‘And?’ His mother had sensed there was more.

  ‘And I like Nissa. I want to spend time with her.’

  He’d watched the glance pass between his parents.

  ‘You’re fond of her, we’ve noticed,’ she’d replied and he’d nodded with a shrug.

  ‘If they don’t mind,’ his father had mumbled around his pipe, flapping his newspaper.

  ‘Mind? They’d enjoy it if you both came and shared their supper as well.’

  ‘Well, we’ll think on that,’ his mother had said, looking suddenly embarrassed.

  He knew he should have been at prayer with the other men this evening but his father had required help with an unexpected early delivery of goods that needed to be unloaded, stored neatly and some of it unpacked and stacked onto shelves. He’d watched the clock, knowing it was vital that he arrive at Nissa’s in the hour before sundown.

  Hersh had only just made it with cringing apologies, grateful for the lighter evenings that had saved him. Now he smiled to regard Nissa’s dainty movements as she prepared to touch the lit taper to one of the wicks.

  ‘I’m single, Hersh. I only get to light one,’ she said and he wasn’t sure if there was a special message being passed to him in her innocent explanation. ‘My elder sister and my mother may light two each.’

  ‘One for each of the family – is that right?’

  ‘In our household that’s how we do it. We’re lighting an extra one this evening, though.’

  ‘Why?’

  She grinned and her coquettish glance made his pulse speed. ‘For you, of course.’

  Hersh smiled. ‘I gave some money to a person who was begging on the corner before I arrived. That’s right, isn’t it?’

  Her expression had straightened out of respect – they both knew it would be frowned upon if they flirted in the presence of the holy candles. ‘Yes, before we kindle the Shabbat candles we have been taught to give charity to others. Now, hush, I must do this properly and say my prayer.’

  He watched her light the wick and then drop the taper onto a metal tray for that purpose; she’d already taught him that she must not extinguish a match or taper used for a Shabbat candle. ‘It must go out itself, Hersh, or be extinguished by someone who has not yet accepted Shabbat because the moment I light this wick, Shabbat has begun for me.’

  Hersh enjoyed the elegant movements of her slim arms and long fingers as Nissa stretched out her hands towards her candle and moved them inwards in a circular motion. He knew she was ushering in a special holy guest. She did this three times before she murmured a prayer of blessing. He noted she didn’t open her eyes immediately but let them remain closed in private prayer. He couldn’t help but wonder what she prayed for and allowed himself a moment of indulgence that her prayer was about him and that they might be allowed to discuss marriage very soon.

  Daniel was waiting for Katerina the following morning, standing on the other side of the street watching for her to emerge. She wasn’t surprised to see him and noted a change of clothes so he’d been home and returned, but for how long he had been observing her entrance she couldn’t judge. Overnight her decision had cemented and she stepped out confident in that plan. He caught up with her, falling in step with a long, floating stride. She smelled baked yeast scenting the air.

  ‘Morning, Daniel. That must have been an awkward wait, with people wondering what you were up to.’

  He paid no attention to her jibe. ‘We have to talk.’ Direct, this time; he was no longer being cunning, she noted, and despite his fresh set of clothes and neatly combed hair, the darkness surrounding the spy’s eyes told her that unlike her he had not slept. She’d not woken for nearly ten hours. When she had, she’d realised it was in the same position she’d curled into and fallen asleep. This surprised her; whatever her dreams had been, they had not troubled her. And if she was honest, today she felt strong. It may not last – she was a realist at heart – but even so, it felt powerful to have this new purpose against Rudy’s silhouette that had shadowed her all these years. She’d pretended he was dead, had allowed
herself to entertain it as a defence, but confronting him – now that she suspected more than ever that he lived – was the only way forward.

  ‘I shall not change my mind.’

  ‘Katerina, you don’t —’

  ‘I’m known as Severine Kassel in this neighbourhood.’

  He put up a hand in acknowledgement of his slip, hurrying to keep up with her. ‘You have no experience of what you’re proposing.’

  ‘So what? There’s a first time for everything.’ She dropped her voice. ‘Even killing.’

  He paused in what appeared to her to be fresh dread and she moved on; she was halfway across the rue Buffon before he caught up with her. ‘Please, can we talk?’

  ‘There’s nothing more to discuss.’

  He grabbed her arm, but gently. ‘Have you had your breakfast coffee? There’s a café over there.’

  Katerina felt an eddy of pity for him. He was rightly concerned. ‘Black coffee,’ she confirmed.

  He gestured to one of the small tables outside. Only one other person was seated, hunched over a newspaper, smoking. She could see the remnants of his breakfast bread; the tartine crumbs were scattered around the coffee bowl. The street was busy: people had their chins dipped into their scarves against spring’s nip as they headed to their offices, while the café was thronging with workers grabbing their morning hit. She watched them toss some coins onto the counter before swallowing their caffeine, still standing, in quick gulps and departing, many of them lighting up immediately from the distinctive Disque Bleu box as they passed her. The smell of the tobacco that the French favoured was in sharp contrast to what the English chose in their smoother, sweeter smokes originating from the Americas. In France, so many preferred the darker leaf of the Arabs and now she understood that it likely still felt sentimental, even patriotic, to smoke the Gauloises or Gitanes that had protruded from the lips of their infantrymen and the romantic masquisard Resistance fighters of the south.