by John Gardner
On this particular afternoon, while most of the good senior citizens of Holiday Avenue were having a light lunch or taking their afternoon nap, a Federal Express van pulled up in front of 4188, a white stucco, red-roofed, Spanish-style place, almost hidden from sight by judiciously placed fronds and trees.
The Federal Express man got out of his van with a long parcel, checked his clipboard and walked up the path to the stout oak, metal-studded door. He rang the bell and, as he did so, another smaller van pulled up almost silently to park behind the FedEx vehicle. As he stood waiting, the FedEx man was conscious of the lawn sprinklers, of the spick-and-span nature of the property and the heavy wrought-iron grilles – again Spanish-style – which protected the windows. He rang the bell for a second time and heard a grumbling from behind the door.
Finally the door was opened by a tall, elderly man, grey-haired but with a figure not yet run to fat, and a back ramrod straight suggesting a former military career and a mind conscious of health and physical fitness. His eyes were hidden by dark prescription sunglasses and he wore expensive designer jeans and a leisure shirt which could not have left much change out of two hundred dollars. He remained in the shade of the doorway, his body braced between the door and the jamb, as though uneasy and ready to slam the port in his visitor’s face.
‘Package for Leibermann,’ the FedEx man smiled. ‘Has to be signed for, sir.’ He balanced the package under his left arm as he proffered his clipboard and a pen.
The older man nodded, his face turned, looking curiously towards the package as if trying to see who it was from. He reached out for the pen and as he did so two men in dark slacks, sneakers and black turtleneck sweaters slid from the rear of the FedEx van and began to run soundlessly towards the house, keeping well out of the sightlines from the door.
At the same moment, just as Mr Leibermann held the clipboard in one hand and the pen in the other, the FedEx man shifted the parcel slightly under his left arm. It was an oblong package, around eighteen inches in length and some two inches square. His right hand moved beneath the package which he raised like a weapon.
There was a ‘plop’. No more than this. Not a bang nor even a pop. Simply a plop. If heard it would raise no alarms nor cause dismay.
The plop came from a small air pistol within the package, the barrel held firmly in place by a snugly fitting wooden jig, the butt and trigger accessible through a hole cut neatly in the rear underside. Leibermann dropped the pen and the clipboard, his right hand clutching at his shoulder where the dart had penetrated with the sting of a bee.
He said nothing and did not even cry out as the strong, carefully measured anaesthetic moved rapidly into his bloodstream, paralysing him for a second, then plunging him into total unconsciousness. By the time he crumpled, the two men from the back of the FedEx van had caught him. The FedEx man swept up his pen and the clipboard then closed the door firmly. By the time he reached his van, the other pair had carried Mr Leibermann from the house and bundled him into the back.
The FedEx van drove away in no haste and the smaller vehicle remained, its occupants scanning the street for any sign that this small act of violence might have been spotted by an inquisitive neighbour. But the good people of Holiday Avenue did not stir. The only observer appeared to be a tired dog who dozed under a tree bordering 4188 and 4190. The dog opened one eye, then closed it, stretched its body lazily and returned to sleep.
Yet somebody else did see the entire drama. Across the street at 4187, the elderly couple called Lichtman viewed the whole thing and took frantic action. Nobody knew the Lichtmans well. They were the kind of couple who kept themselves to themselves, and in the two years since they bought the house there had been much neighbourhood talk about the good-looking young men who visited them and stayed, sometimes for a week. Mrs Goldfarb, who knew everything, was one of the few people who had managed to get the Lichtmans into her home, for lunch, and she told other people that the Lichtmans had seven sons and fifteen grandchildren who visited all the time.
Asher Lichtman was on the telephone at this very moment talking to one of his ‘sons’, describing what had taken place, giving the licence number of the FedEx van and the smaller vehicle still outside 4188.
They had used 4187 as a surveillance post for two years. In fact, everyone was keyed up, expecting the order to snatch Leibermann any day. Now, under their very noses, the target had been grabbed, disappearing almost into thin air.
After waiting for five minutes, the other van drove away, the figure in its passenger seat talking rapidly into a microphone.
Markus Leibermann was due to be at a small dinner party that evening, given by the Rubinsteins at 4172, so that a few of their friends could meet their son, the psychiatrist, Adam, on a short visit to his parents. Adam did not get to meet Mr Leibermann, and though he was not to know it, he did not miss much.
Natkowitz did his stuff with the assistance of two slide projectors and a large computer screen, the kind software manufacturers use at trade shows. They had all trooped down to one of the secure briefing areas shielded from external directional mikes and bugproof, forty feet below ground in the huge basement, half of which was car park, the rest being rooms like this, or debriefing facilities.
The room was not unlike a film company’s screening theatre. There were no distracting pictures on the bare walls and it was furnished with soft, comfortable chairs which were bolted to the floor. A little console of coloured telephones was built into an enlarged armrest in the seat reserved for M. Apart from Bond and Natkowitz, M and Bill Tanner were joined by the man they all referred to as the Scrivener, Brian Cogger, an officer of great skill when it came to the preparation of documents, mainly passports and assorted pocket litter which made up the outward and visible signs of many an agent’s inward and spiritual cover. It was a hint that M had already made up his mind about the operation into Moscow. The Scrivener’s art was a dying trade, yet he was a busy man and his presence suggested that his talents would be required.
Bond wondered if they were taking precautions out of habit or whether there was yet cause to believe the old Eastern Bloc and Soviet intelligence communities were still at it and could pose security problems. Eventually he decided that, whatever the politicians said out loud, tolling the tocsin for Communism and the Cold War, the secret world would go on playing by its own rules. It was safer that way.
The hearty dilettante farmer image Natkowitz had presented in M’s office seemed to slide away once he started to brief them on the Mossad’s side of things. It was like watching a snake shed its skin but in reverse, for Bond felt the man had put on his true nature once he began. Here was the real Pete Natkowitz – able, steeped in the arcane ways and the secret language and with his subject at his fingertips.
First he dealt with the question of identity using great blow-ups of Joel Penderek side by side with existing pictures of SS-Unterscharführer Josif Vorontsov as he was in 1941 when he served with the Waffen-SS Special Duties Brigade.
Natkowitz flicked between the two side-by-side photos and a copy of Vorontsov’s recorded details filched from the SS files.
‘As you can see, the height’s about right,’ he said, his accent changing from the drawl to a more clipped, authoritative tone. ‘Around six one in 1941 according to the SS; and Joel Penderek about the same in ’46 if US Immigration is to be believed. The age is also nearly correct. Vorontsov was born January 19th, 1917, while Immigration says Penderek’s birthday is November 19th, 1916, which makes him a Scorpio if anyone should be interested in that kind of thing. It also makes him a couple of months older than Vorontsov, which is okay, or as near as damn it.
‘If, as we suspect in Tel Aviv, the Scales of Justice have gone out of their way to find a ringer, they’ve done a lot of homework.’ He took his wooden pointer and started to tap first one of the photographs and then the other. ‘You see, even in relatively old age, there is a resemblance. Look particularly at the nose, the eyes, chin and forehead. Distinct simila
rities. On the surface Joel Penderek could be taken for Josif Vorontsov.’ He gave them a knowing smile and gestured with his right hand – a quick tipping motion, fingers splayed. ‘Someone wishes us to believe they are the same person. But, on close examination, this is not so.’
He started to enumerate the obvious features. Vorontsov had a tiny scar below his lip and above the chin, the result of a childhood accident involving sharp little milk teeth and a tumble in his father’s Ukrainian home. There were blow-ups of the area on both sets of pictures. The scar was there for young Vorontsov while it was missing from old Penderek.
Again he turned to the details from the SS files on one hand and US Immigration’s profile on the other. A scar on Vorontsov’s right thigh was not mentioned in Penderek’s distinguishing marks listed in 1946. There was also the matter of an appendicitis operation performed in the Gorky University Hospital, Kharkov in 1939. ‘Vorontsov’s father was a medical practitioner who taught anaesthesiology at the university, and, it seems, was a favourite of Stalin. Certainly he escaped Stalin’s Great Terror, and our psychological profile of Josif suggests that he was both anti-Semitic and ambivalent about the way things were being run in the USSR at the time of the Nazi invasion – Barbarossa. This made him an ideal candidate for the SS recruitment, or so our tame shrinks tell us.
‘The US INS, the Immigration and Naturalisation Service, seems either to have missed the appendix scar or it just wasn’t there. No prizes for guessing which.’
Natkowitz continued with further contradictions, this time in a more detailed manner, using a computer programme which converted the photographs into three-dimensional heads. Someone had entered what measurement details existed on the two men, and the result showed likely bone structure which in turn drew attention to large discrepancies.
‘The pretty pix?’ Bond queried.
‘What about them?’ Nobody but Pete Natkowitz attempted to answer.
‘Obviously we’ve all got Vorontsov’s stuff on file, but what about Penderek? He on file as well? Does the Mossad know something we don’t?’
‘James, you’re a doubting Thomas. No, nobody had Penderek on file, except INS, passport control, and the FBI who found a large box of snaps in the poor old guy’s bedroom. FBI kindly circulated them for us. We all got them, including those wonderful people who gave us the camps on the Gulag, the mental hospitals for those who held different views, the quick bullet in the back of the neck in the Dzerzhinsky dungeons and encouragement to families to betray one another while they tickled every would-be traitor as a poacher tickles trout.’
‘Come on, Pete,’ Bond interrupted, ‘we’ve all done our fair share of tickling, most certainly your Service . . .’
‘Not to the extent KGB did it,’ Natkowitz snapped. So Bond kept his thoughts to himself as the Israeli continued. ‘We did have a large file on the real Vorontsov.’ Natkowitz ran his splayed fingers through his fireball of hair. ‘And don’t accuse us of fomenting family feuds when I say it’s common knowledge that we in the Mossad use a large number of part-time agents all over the world. One of those led us to Vorontsov. An accident, like so many others. An old lady, whose name I’ll keep to myself, was doing some grocery shopping at a Winn Dixie in Tampa, Florida, about four years ago. She turned a corner, from the canned goods to frozen foods, and there he was, his back towards her, selecting a TV dinner.
‘Identified by his back? Don’t even think of asking, James. This particular old lady had been on intimate terms with Josif Vorontsov. She made it through Sobibór, and at that camp Vorontsov was her personal torturer. She swears she would know him anywhere. You see he raped her, not once but around one hundred times in an eight-month period. It would appear that these rapes were what kept our informant alive. He liked the way she fought back, and all those years later she knew him, by the way he stood, by the set of his shoulders and the manner in which he held his head.
‘Eventually he turned around and she saw his face. It was undoubtedly her torturer, so she followed him, got an address and alerted us. We sent some people in.’ He gave a little amused gesture using his body, hunching his right shoulder forward and turning his head in what would have been in another person a coy expression. ‘I have to be discreet. These people shouldn’t really have been there, but they took a ride up to Tampa and did a short surveillance. Son et lumière. Everything. Now look.’ He flashed a new photograph on to the screen so that it sat alongside the official SS black and white.
The Israelis had cropped the clandestine picture to match the earlier uniformed version. They had also chosen it because of the angle of the old man’s head and the way his eyes looked straight into the camera. It was the perfect before-and-after match. Age had not altogether wearied the Ukrainian, nor had the years completely condemned him. It was unmistakable, even before Natkowitz showed the computer-enhanced shots and the stats of the INS forms, plus a very private medical report. The scars were all there and nobody could doubt they had the real man.
‘Your Service did nothing?’ It was M who, though he knew the answer, put everyone’s question square on the table.
Natkowitz made another gesture, this time a one-handed business, the hand moving upwards as though he were tossing some invisible object into the air. ‘It is difficult,’ he said quietly. ‘You know how difficult it can be. He calls himself Leibermann now. When he entered the United States, he came as an Austrian of Jewish parentage. We had sight of all the documents which were not altogether forgeries. Markus Leibermann was certainly an Austrian. Son of a bank clerk. The entire family perished in the Polish camp of Chelmno. It was the way the SS used everything, even dead men’s shoes and papers. Josif Vorontsov became Markus Leibermann by courtesy of Spinne, that organisation which was so successful in getting its murderers out of Europe to safety. You know how many war criminals came to shelter using the papers, and the lives, of those they had killed? I tell you, many more than we have ever caught. I often wonder when I’m in New York, or Florida, if that nice old couple you see in a restaurant or at the beach in fact hold nightmares in their heads and laugh quietly to themselves about how gullible the Americans have been.’
‘So you knew about this man, yet nobody did anything?’ Bond rammed home the question.
‘We took photographs. We prepared a case. Our American friends lobbied the authorities. You see, we like to be sure that we’ll win when we identify someone like this. So many have slipped through the net and there are young men in power who cannot be made to understand. They say, “Sure. Sure it was a bad time, the Holocaust. Six million Jews murdered, but that was then. Now is now, we must forgive and forget. We’re all friends now. Look at the Japanese and the Germans. What’s the point in prosecuting an old man or an old woman who were only obeying orders in youth?” These people really do not understand.’
‘You couldn’t make a good enough case against Mr Leibermann?’ from Bill Tanner.
‘Let’s say we were quietly told that it was unlikely that Leibermann would be extradited. Unlikely that he would ever be expelled.’
‘So you let it drop?’ Bond again.
‘Not altogether. There are ways, and we have the means which are not unlike the methods the Scales of Justice used on poor innocent Penderek.’
As if on cue, the small red telephone buzzed at M’s elbow. He answered in a low, cautious voice, then looked up quickly at Natkowitz. ‘A man who calls himself Michael appears to know you’re here, Mr Natkowitz. Would that make sense?’
The Israeli nodded. ‘Only three people know, sir. Michael is one. He wishes to speak with me?’
‘No, gave me a message for you.’ M slowly replaced the receiver.
‘Well?’
‘He says you’ll understand if I tell you Rachel is missing.’
Pete Natkowitz stood unnaturally still for a second or two, his face frozen as he drew a sharp audible breath. Then he relaxed. Unsmiling, he said, ‘Markus Leibermann has disappeared, gentlemen. Something has gone very wrong. I should s
peak with Tel Aviv, but this worrying news should be something kept between us. I don’t think anyone else will be officially informed just yet. In view of what you’re proposing, sir,’ he looked hard at M, ‘I think we might well have some unfortunate problems.’
4
FROGS IN THE OINTMENT
It was just before six thirty in the evening that Nigsy Meadows took the call from his junior. It was the simple code they altered once a week – more recently since the Gulf crisis – sometimes as often as three times a week.
‘Mr Meadows, sir, could you drop into the office sometime this evening,’ Williamson said as though it could not matter less. ‘Sylvia has a couple more letters for you to sign. They want them in the bag for London tomorrow.’
‘Can’t it wait till Thursday?’ Nigsy hoped he sounded bored. Shabak, the Israeli Security Service, had all the embassy and consular buildings in Tel Aviv bugged and monitored out of existence.
‘ ’Fraid not, sir. They’re part of the stuff the FS’s yelling for.’
‘All right, okay, I’ll be in later on, but don’t hang by your nails.’
Translation: there is a top secret flash from London unbutton personally. Fine, I’ll be in within the hour.
Nigsy had been looking forward to a quiet evening watching a video of a concert, taped by his wife in London and broadcast the previous week on BBC 2. The ‘eyes only’ signal, he figured, could be anything from a run-and-hide, to some panic-button crash meeting with the one man he still ran in Arafat’s shop.
He had only been on station for six weeks and knew it was temporary because his real forte was Eastern Bloc and the Soviets. Now the Service was behaving like the old army days when they used to make a cook into a gunner and an all-round athlete into an education officer.
Good old Nigsy, they had said. Got a bit of the Moscow twitch. Been over there too long. Bring him in and let him rest up in Tel Aviv for a while. ‘Only a few months,’ M said when he last saw the old man. ‘Change of scene. Do you good.’