Promised Land

by Martin Fletcher

  “The fact is, you were supposed to stop Skorzeny and so far, the score is a hundred and fifty to him, zero to us.”

  They’d been fighting over this at long range for weeks. “Look,” Peter said slowly. “Let’s put the cards on the table.” He looked at Duvshani, who nodded.

  “Unit 131 wants to attack British targets in Egypt,” Peter said. “We know that one way or another that will end in disaster for Israel. That appears to be out of our hands, thanks to Ben-Gurion’s support for Aman. They also want to bomb the Nazis. No bad thing, in principle. But in practice? Kill a hundred and fifty Germans? Working legally in Egypt? This is a fantasy. And Sela’s only answer would lead to a fiasco too. There is only one way, and even that is a long shot, and that is what my team and I are working on, with, and I say this sarcastically, the help of Mr. Sela, here.”

  I shouldn’t have said that. I went too far, he thought immediately. “I take that back, there is some frustration in the field,” Peter said. “Our hope is that the Nazis we are pressuring in Germany will force Skorzeny and his gang back from Egypt. They’ll do the work for us, cleanly, with no fingerprints.”

  “And it’s working so well,” Sela said. “If you’ll excuse my sarcasm.”

  “All right, that’s enough,” Duvshani cut in. “I’ve read the reports, so has Isser, and we want to proceed quickly in a slightly new direction. Nesher, your Nazis are not doing what they’ve been told. Not one of them. So we have to up the ante.”

  “Which means?” Peter said.

  “This meeting is over,” Duvshani said. “Nesher, Sela, to my room.”

  When it was just the three of them, Duvshani turned to Peter.

  “You have to scare them. Show we mean business. Choose one. Expose his past and eliminate him.”

  “Eliminate? In Germany?” Peter said.

  “Yes. And that doesn’t leave this room.”

  “You mean, it is not all right to kill a German in Egypt, but it is in Germany?”

  “Yes, I do. Because your target will not be a nameless rogue in Egypt but a Nazi working high up in the German government, respectable, prominent, it will be a humiliation for Germany to have such an established person exposed and murdered. They will be forced to act against their own people, more Nazis, in Egypt, openly planning to kill the Jews. Again.”

  “Especially after a list of a hundred and fifty Nazis permitted by the German government to work in Egypt against the Jewish state appears in The New York Times, The Times of London, and Le Monde,” said Sela.

  “Precisely,” Duvshani said.

  “Does Harel know about this?” Peter said, knowing he was ruffling feathers.

  “Of course he does. Now get to it.”

  * * *

  If there was trouble at the Office, there was trouble at home too.

  Diana’s leave of absence from the Office had stretched from a month to three to five. With Peter rarely home and the twins to care for, and her mother banned from Israel until she changed her ways, Diana could not go back to work. The small apartment was hot in the day and noisy in the evening. None of the neighbors seemed to communicate below a shout. She sometimes found herself longing for her British terrace house, where neighbors were rarely seen and never heard. Here it was like a bus station, and everybody had a different unkind theory about where Peter was, most of them involving women in other towns, especially, for some reason, the desert town of Be’er Sheva. She could have written a book with all the advice she received, none of it welcome.

  For Diana to go somewhere with the twins was like provisioning a day’s training march for an army brigade. Only Tamara helped keep her sane. On hot days in Tel Aviv, where they sometimes strolled in their clinging, low-cut dresses, not a man walked by who didn’t stare or comment. It was on one such morning in a nearly empty café that Tamara laid her hand on Diana’s and confided, in a low voice, that she had a little problem with Arie.

  Diana laughed. “Oh, you don’t say!”

  “That’s not nice,” Tamara said.

  “Sorry, I didn’t want to be mean. But, really. You don’t say!”

  “Well, this is different. Listen, I don’t know what to do, or think.” She told Diana of one evening when Arie had come home late and when she’d asked him where he had been, he had almost shouted, “I’ve been home all night and don’t you forget it.”

  “It’s like he wanted an alibi or something, a real police alibi. Why would he say that?”

  “Because he wanted an alibi, you’re right. But why? Did you ask him?”

  “No. You don’t understand. If he doesn’t want to talk, he never will. He’s like a rock. He can be so loving and the next minute nasty and hard. So, no, I didn’t ask him. There’s no point.”

  “So why are you telling me?”

  “Do you think he could have done something wrong? Something bad?”

  “Oh, Tamara, please. You know who you married. Of course he could. And it isn’t anything to do with a woman or he wouldn’t have mentioned it. When was it? Do you remember the exact date? Did Arie leave town that day or was he in Tel Aviv?”

  The next day Diana phoned Gingie at the Office and asked her to get the Tel Aviv police to check their logs of that day and the next. Were there any unexplained criminal events? Someone leaving the scene of a car crash? A fight? Anything?

  Gingie called back the same day. Of the open files, only one was serious. The body of a male, identified as Yonathan Schwartz, twenty-eight years old, of Tel Aviv, had been found by the rocks north of the city. His head wounds were consistent with a fall. But spots of blood had been discovered nearby. So he must have been bleeding before he fell. Or it could be somebody else’s blood. Women who frequented the area at night had been questioned and nobody heard or saw anything untoward. The file was open but no investigation underway.

  “Is anything known about this man?” Diana asked.

  “Not much,” Gingie said. “I asked for the file. He was a single father, one son, nine years old, no sign of where the mother is. He worked at the Kaete Dan hotel as a waiter. A concentration camp survivor.”

  Diana, who was thinking of any possible link to Arie, asked, “Which camp? Or camps?”

  “Auschwitz. There were others but that was the only one he talked about to colleagues at the hotel. They said he was a very nervous, excitable person. That’s all the police have at this point. They didn’t pursue it. His son is in care with social services.”

  Everyone knew Arie had been in Auschwitz. He never said a word about it, but then neither did anyone else who had survived there. Voices dropped, eyes shifted, shoulders drooped. The very name began with an expression of pain.

  “Did Arie ever go to the Kaete Dan hotel?” Diana asked Tamara.

  “In Tel Aviv? Probably. It’s a place where businessmen meet. Why?”

  “Just wondering.”

  When Diana asked Gingie if she could get hold of the hotel records to see if a certain person ever stayed there, Gingie said she could do better than that. The secret services used the hotel too. All the best rooms were bugged.

  “Really?” Diana said. “Can you get hold of recordings? How?”

  “I’d need a good reason. I haven’t asked you, but I will now. Why are you asking for all this?”

  “I’ll get back to you if I need more, all right?”

  Later, on the telephone, Diana asked Tamara if she really wanted to know what Arie had meant. “Sometimes it’s better to let sleeping dogs lie. I think you should drop it.”

  Tamara went silent, tapping her fingers. She said, after a while, in a questioning voice, “Sometimes I think I don’t know who I live with.”

  “How is he with the children?”

  “Oh, he loves them, he’s a wonderful father. But I know he has other women.” Tamara sighed, a silent appeal for help.

  “You’re so beautiful,” Diana said. “Men are beyond me.”

  So Diana didn’t tell Tamara what Gingie told her. There was no reason, it c
ould all be just coincidence.

  But she told Peter.

  * * *

  After almost two months running the operation from the Office with only short trips to Germany, two months at home with the babies, Peter had never felt so close to Diana, every moment with her and the boys was a pleasure beyond anything he had ever imagined. When they cried he comforted them, when they slept he watched over them, when they rolled over he exclaimed in delight, and all this while holding Diana’s hand. At night they all slept in the same bed, and so as not to wake the boys, he and Diana made love on the balcony in the cool air.

  But when Diana told him about Arie’s apparent demand for an alibi, and what Gingie had found out, his blood ran cold. Diana should have stayed out of it, left it up to Tamara, but it was too late now. He wouldn’t put anything past his brother. Of course he did it, whatever it was. Why else would he need an alibi? A car accident? An affair? A robbery? No. His instinct screamed it, every supremely trained sense knew it. The victim, Schwartz, knew something about Arie in Auschwitz and couldn’t be allowed to live to tell the tale. Quite an assumption, but what else could Arie be hiding?

  Yet, so what? What should he do, if it’s true? Turn his brother in? He’d never do that. Warn him? Arie was damaged, whatever the concentration camp equivalent of shell-shocked was, nothing would ever stand in his way, his moral compass was stuck on south, he had nothing to lose because he had already lost it all. Arie had never told him much about how he’d survived in the camps. But he didn’t need to, Peter had read all the reports, he knew what it took to survive so long. The nice guys died first. So why challenge him? To stop him doing anything so crazy again, of course.

  Tamara. Would Arie ever harm Tamara? No, she’s the mother of his children, on whom he dotes. Anyway, why would he? Was he ever violent at home? Tamara had never said so.

  And it occurred to Peter, who was he to talk? He was going to Germany to kill a Nazi he was already blackmailing. Didn’t that make him worse than Arie? Does the end justify the means?

  Best to let it ride.

  * * *

  A week later the whole family came together for a barbeque at Arie’s, complete with ribs of beef, sausages from Germany, and piles of salads and sauces. As they milled around with plates of food and beers and orange juice, Moshe revealed his news with pride. “I’ve got a new job at the foreign ministry,” he said, “as a Near East analyst. They’re moving their offices to Jerusalem, to help get Jerusalem recognized as our capital.”

  “I wouldn’t hold your breath on that one,” Peter said. “But congratulations, that’s wonderful.”

  “How will you get there, though?” Tamara asked.

  “By bus, of course.”

  “And I’m teaching Hebrew to new immigrants,” Rachel said, and looked mock-upset when everybody laughed. She could hardly put two sentences together herself.

  “Well, while we’re all mentioning our new jobs, I’m going back to the Office,” Diana put in. “Part-time. Gingie found me a good girl to look after the twins in the mornings. No more tittie-feeds.”

  Wolfie introduced his new girlfriend, a striking girl called Mayan, born on the same kibbutz as Moshe Dayan, the one-eyed warrior tipped as the next army chief of staff. Natanel was there too. Apparently he’d gotten over Arie stealing Yasmine, who, anyway, had disappeared over the horizon.

  The adults sat and smoked on the cane sofas beneath the pergola or milled around the garden, while the children played on the grass. “He’s a natural leader,” Tamara said proudly as Ido arranged the other children into rows. And look at Estie.” The little girl was balancing on the railing like a tightrope walker. “Be careful!” Rachel shouted in alarm, grabbing her by the arm and hoisting her to safety. Then a ball came sailing over the chairs. Ido lashed out with his foot, sending the ball crashing into a jug of orange juice, which smashed to the floor, scattering shards of glass in all directions. “Nobody move,” Tamara yelled. “Put your shoes on. And Ido, go to bed! Now!”

  At Peter’s request, the buffet included hummus, tehina, falafel, and shawarma, the food he most missed when eating the sauerbraten and kartoffelsalat of Herr Willi Stinglwagner, Munich importer of medical products.

  PETER

  BONN, GERMANY

  July 1954

  The former SS-Sturmbannführer Hans-Dieter Braun, alias Dr. Lothar Genscher, torturer and murderer, now living in Germany with his first family, didn’t know how lucky he was: He had been struck off the list, for now. Amnon Sela and the men at the Office decided he should be left to rise in the ranks of Germany’s industrialists until he could become more useful. The same applied to two more Nazis hiding in plain sight, one of whom was a Christian Democratic Union member of parliament, and the other a young aide to Cologne’s police chief. They were on fast tracks, let them be promoted until their exposure would humiliate the country, if that was ever required, or their position of power gave them access to information Israel needed, or both. One thing was sure: Sooner or later they would pay for their evil past.

  The name that Sela eventually gave Peter Nesher’s hit team in Germany was infinitely more powerful and controversial. Eight Israeli agents were tracking him around the clock, looking for the sweet spot, a time and place that he regularly could be found. By definition, it took weeks. But everyone had something they did like clockwork. Maybe he left home at exactly the same time each morning, or left work at the same time. Maybe he went for a sauna or met friends for a drink each Tuesday evening at six o’clock on the way home. Or he took a child to her piano lesson, or brought food to an aging parent. The later at night the better. Somewhere quiet and inconspicuous. Visiting a lover? A walk before bed? Some routine that left him vulnerable, when he could be snatched, leading to his filmed confession and silent death.

  The team rented a safe house in the countryside of Rhineland-Westphalia, and in different names and places rented five cars, one for the snatch, one for escort, one for backup, and two for the switch.

  They procured untraceable weapons from trusted sources, one in Hamburg and one in Munich, opposite ends of the country, and they met in the middle: Bonn, the birthplace of Beethoven, a sleepy backwater now the capital of the Federal Republic of Germany.

  Mossad had discovered that Kurt Bohlendorf, the head of protocol of the chancellor’s office, a man privy to Konrad Adenauer’s complete schedule, who organized state visits and who had access to all relevant private information of visiting world leaders, had spent part of the Second World War as Deputy Reichskommissar, Ukraine. Together with his Nazi boss, Kommissar Erich Koch, who had described himself in his glory days as “a brutal dog,” the pair had imposed a German wartime occupation policy in the Ukraine that led to the deaths of 1.3 million prisoners of war in 160 concentration camps. Another three million Ukrainians died of starvation and disease. If Koch was a brutal dog, Bohlendorf was his pitiless bitch.

  “And this animal,” Nesher said to Yehuda, the muscleman analyst who was now a field agent, “today approves who enters the chancellor’s room first and for how long they shake hands. He probably decides on the menu.”

  “The Germans must know who he is,” Yehuda said. “And they don’t care.”

  “All the better. Stay focused on what you have to do.”

  Yehuda’s role before the snatch, which he would help perform, was to put together the cover story on who killed Bohlendorf: revenge-driven Ukrainian nationalists. No Israeli fingerprints. And, to make it all perfect, to add even more to the West German government’s humiliation, while following Bohlendorf Mossad had discovered another of his secrets: He was a spy for East Germany, in the heart of the West German government.

  This last nugget, though, provoked a furious debate among the team, which Peter knew could only be resolved at headquarters. Was Bohlendorf too important to kill? Could he be more valuable to Israel alive than dead?

  While his team continued with the planning and preparations, Peter flew home. This needed a full discussion about w
hether they should change their plan, and only Harel could decide. Peter wanted to be there.

  But while he was in the air, the debacle began.

  He heard about it from the Tel Aviv taxi driver leaving Lod Airport.

  “Did you hear the news?” the driver said, elbow resting on the open window, a cigarette in his hand, turning down the radio with his other hand, and staring in the mirror. “It was just on the radio.”

  “Do you mind keeping at least one hand on the wheel,” Peter said. “And looking at the road, I have two little children.” He smiled as he thought of them. He’d be home in half an hour.

  “Those clowns at Mossad,” the cabbie said.

  “What?”

  “Think they’re so smart. Let me tell you, the country’s going to the dogs. And the puppies are in charge. They don’t know a thing. And now this. It’s embarrassing.”

  “What is? And please. Slow down.”

  “You didn’t hear, then?”

  “No, I just landed. What happened?”

  “Believe me, there’s worse to come, there always is.” He shook his head. “What’s the country coming to?”

  “I don’t know,” Peter said. “You tell me. So what did the clowns at Mossad do?”

  “What didn’t they do!”

  “For God’s sake, tell me what happened. Or rather, tell me what the radio said happened. It isn’t always the same. And I mean it, slow down.”

  A car coming toward them took the bend too fast and crossed into their lane, forcing the cabdriver to hit the brakes. “Damn drivers,” he yelled, thumping his horn, but the car was long gone.

  “It was just on the radio,” he said. “The Egyptians are arresting Israelis. Apparently one of our boys was about to put a bomb in a British theater in Alexandria but guess what, the thing blew up in his pocket. Can you imagine that? What happened to his balls? Not to mention his schlong. Oh, it hurts just to think about that.” He squirmed in his seat as he spoke, taking a drag from his cigarette. “I hope for his sake it was his back pocket. I mean, who carries a bomb in their pocket? Was it a big pocket? Or a small bomb? And if it was a small bomb, then what was the point? Or maybe it was a jacket pocket. Jackets have bigger pockets. But who wears a jacket in Cairo; it’s much too hot. Anyway, when a bomb goes off in your pocket … well … I hope he has a family already. What an idiot.”