The Jerusalem Assassin

by Avraham Azrieli

  He gestured at the small window. She opened it, and a soft breeze carried in the scents of Jerusalem pine. He watched the trees pass by, heard the whistles of sparrows, and contemplated his next move.

  *

  Tanya greeted the two soldiers at the entrance to the Mount Herzl Cemetery. She followed the path through the rows of rectangular gravestones, each bearing the name of a dead soldier. Elderly parents and a few young women tended to pots of flowers. An old man lounged in a beach chair, arguing with a headstone, his hands gesticulating in emphasis.

  She reached Lemmy’s grave and knelt beside it to brush off the dust and dry leaves from a recent storm. Her movements were almost automatic after years of practice-a ritual she had kept since 1967, stopping by every time she visited Israel. A few pieces of gravel rested on the stone-a mourners’ custom. She counted six-one for each time Rabbi Gerster had visited his son since she had last cleaned the headstone. She sighed. O, Abraham, what pain we’ve caused each other.

  With a handkerchief she cleaned the letters carved into the stone, shining each one patiently, and stepped back to look at the writing:

  Private Jerusalem (“Lemmy”) Gerster

  Killed in Battle, June 7, 1967

  In the Defense of Israel

  God Will Avenge His Blood

  Tanya brushed off an errand leaf. She noticed age spots on the back of her hand. So many years had passed. Such a loss. Unfair. Lemmy would have been forty-six now, a g rown man with a family and a career. Successful. Happy. But no, he had been deprived of all the wonderful experiences of adult life. He was dead. Buried. Gone.

  “Haven’t seen you in a long time.”

  She turned, wiping her tears.

  It was the old man with the beach chair, now folded under his arm. “Been away, eh?” His handlebar mustache moved with each word. It would have been comical if not for the wet lines down his creased cheeks.

  Tanya nodded.

  “ I visit my son every day. I’m retired, wife’s dead, so what else is there?”

  “ I work,” she said, “to keep my mind busy.”

  He gestured at Lemmy’s grave. “Your son?”

  She hesitated. “Lover.”

  “ Ah, well. That’s a different kind of pain.” The old man looked at Lemmy’s inscription, likely trying to calculate their age difference.

  “ He was eighteen, I was thirty-seven.”

  “ A boy with good taste.”

  “ Thank you.” She thought for a moment, and then told the stranger what she had not told anyone else. “I killed him.”

  He pointed to the stone. “Says here he was killed in battle. You don’t look Arab to me.”

  “ If not for me, he wouldn’t have been on the Golan Heights. Or in the army.”

  “ That explains it.” The man put down the folded chair and leaned on it like a crutch. “The men of Neturay Karta don’t enlist in the army.”

  “ How do you know he was from Neturay Karta?”

  “ I see his father here every once in a while. The infamous Rabbi Abraham Gerster, leader of the ultra-Orthodox fanatics. But he’s not the extremist the media made him out to be. A kind man, actually.”

  “ True.” Tanya sighed. “And I took away his only child.”

  “ Do you have any children?”

  Tanya hesitated. “A daughter.”

  “ No husband?”

  She shook her head. No one but Elie and Abraham knew that her daughter, Professor Bira Galinski, was the daughter of SS Oberstgruppenfuhrer Klaus von Koenig, whom Abraham shot dead in the snowy forest one night near the end of World War II.

  “ Guilt is the worst pain.” The man pointed at his son’s grave. “Shalom was our only child. Our pride and joy. A handsome, smart, miracle boy. Our precious Shalom.” He sighed. “An irony, isn’t it? We named our baby for peace, and he grew up to die in war.”

  “ Yes,” Tanya said, choking on sudden tears. “An irony.”

  “ As an only child, Shalom was supposed to serve in an office, far from the front. But I agreed to sign a consent form. He wanted to serve as a frogman. It was a matter of pride for him, to serve in a fighting unit, like his friends. And he had never asked for anything else. What could I do? Refuse his only request?” He stooped, as if all the air deflated from him. “ Ay, yai, yai. Don’t tell me about guilt. I hold a world record in guilt.”

  “ I’m close behind you,” Tanya said. “If not for me seducing him, Lemmy would have stayed in the yeshiva, studying Talmud, becoming a rabbi. I often think of what he lost-all those beginnings that make life worth it-a wedding, a first child’s birth, a baby’s smile, the joys of a full life-”

  “ Don’t beat yourself up.” The old man waved his hand. “Those black hats live in a kosher cocoon. At least you gave him a taste of real life before he died.”

  She remembered Lemmy on top of her, inside her, crying her name, possessed by passion and joy. The memory made her smile. “Thank you for putting it in perspective.”

  “ My pleasure.” He glanced at his wristwatch. “Got to see the wife before dark. She’s at Sanhedriah Cemetery. So, shalom!”

  “ Shalom.”

  He turned toward his son’s grave and yelled, “See you tomorrow, Boychik! ”

  Tanya sat on the ground by Lemmy’s grave. His face came to her, tanned under the military haircut, his blue eyes squinted in laughter, his lips moist and sweet and warm. Despite what the old man had said, the guilt would forever fester in her. She had won Lemmy’s heart, and his body too. But to achieve that, she had to tear him away from his world and put him on a path that took him to war and made him another statistic in the great victory of the Six Day War. And now, twenty-eight years later, Abraham was living as a monk among the ultra-Orthodox, and Tanya was working around the clock without a break lest her mind find the time to roam a regrettable past. And if she ever retired from Mossad, would she come here every day with a beach chair to carry on a conversation with a dead boy?

  A while later she got up to leave. It was true, she realized, that the older you get, the fresher your memories become. Before she reached the gate, rain started to fall. She quickened her pace. The drizzle turned to a downpour. The guards hid under a canopy.

  Bira leaned over and opened the passenger door. She held a pen between her teeth and a pile of students’ exams in her lap. “You’re soaked.” She handed Tanya a box of Kleenex.

  The rain drummed on the roof of the car, and the water formed streams down the windshield, giving the world a distorted, gray appearance.

  When she wiped her face, the thin tissue paper fell apart, the pieces sticking to Tanya’s skin. “Look at this. Who makes this junk?”

  “ It’s not a bath towel, Mom.”

  They looked at each other and burst out laughing.

  “Do you see these spots?” Tanya showed the back of her hand to Bira. “Like an old woman!”

  Bira put the exams on the back seat and turned on the engine. “You’re sixty-seven. What do you expect? Acne?”

  “ I expect nothing,” Tanya said. “I had misery when I was young and beautiful, so why should I care about getting old.”

  “ Why don’t you retire and come live with us? The kids would love it. Eytan wants to build an extra bathroom to provide you with privacy. He’s giving a new meaning to the Oedipal complex-he’s in love with his mother-in-law!”

  Tanya looked out the window at the passing views of wet sidewalks and people bent under umbrellas. “A man told me that he sees Abraham here often.”

  “Don’t change the subject.”

  “ I wish you didn’t choose a career that runs so opposite to his people.”

  “ You agree with what he said?” Bira quoted. “‘Archeologists incite hate and violence between secular and Orthodox Jews for the sake of meaningless clay shards!’”

  “Here we go again.” Tanya sighed. “You could sympathize a tiny bit with his lifelong efforts to prevent fighting among Jews-”

  “By appeasing thos
e fanatical black hats?”

  “Fine. You win.” Tanya looked away. “Let’s go home. I only have one night to spend with my grandkids.”

  “Only one night?” Bira glanced at her mother while changing gears. “Can’t they leave you alone? You’ve done so much. Let others risk their lives.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m not risking my life. I’m a government bureaucrat, a paper-pusher.”

  “ I read the news, okay?” Bira drove slowly, staring forward through the mist left by the swishing wipers. “The Palestinian, Al-Mazir, killed in Paris. The attack on the synagogue. Abu Yusef’s macabre departure. The Saudi prince’s botched haircut. And the next day you suddenly show up in Jerusalem with a nasty bruise on your forehead, looking like you’ve been up for a week straight. I’m not stupid, and you’re too old to dodge bullets.”

  “ Rabin is older than me. And Golda Meir was even older when she took office. Maybe I’ll run for prime minister? Shamir left Mossad to enter politics.”

  “You took over his job, didn’t you?”

  Tanya looked at her with surprise. “Shamir ran the Europe desk before me. But we are very different.”

  “I hope so. Had Shamir won another term as prime minister, we would still have no hope of peace. I couldn’t wait for Rabin to beat him in ninety-two.”

  “Me too,” Tanya said quietly. “Me too.”

  *

  “ Herr Horch?” Christopher was on the intercom. “There’s a call for you. From Jerusalem.”

  “From whom?” A cold front passed through Lemmy’s chest.

  “ He says his name is Grant Guerra.”

  “From Senlis?”

  “It’s the same name, but the call came from Jerusalem through the international operator. It’s a collect call.”

  “I’ll take it.” Lemmy had seen the news of Abu Yusef’s gruesome assassination and the ensuing firefight at the villa in Ermenonville, where most of his men were either killed or injured in a massive police raid. A clever setup, vintage Elie Weiss. But why would Elie’s agent call from Jerusalem?

  Christopher transferred the call, and it rang on Lemmy’s desk.

  “ Yes?”

  “ Herr Horch?”

  “ Speaking.”

  “ Have I reached the right person?”

  “ There is no other banker in Zurich with my name, if that’s your concern.”

  “ Good. Are we alone?”

  “ I’m alone in my office. As to the open international phone line you’re calling on, we might as well be shouting at each other across Bahnhofstrasse.” Lemmy switched his computer to the video portal.

  There was hesitation, as if the caller was framing his sentences with great caution. “You saw the news from Paris?”

  “ I watch CNN like everyone else. How can I help you?”

  “ It’s about E.W. You know who he is?”

  “ What is this about?”

  “ He’s been confined.”

  “ Yes?”

  “ He ordered me to call you, tell you to launch CFS.”

  “ Say again?” Lemmy looked at his computer screen and saw Christopher at his desk, holding the receiver to his ear, his hand on the mouthpiece.

  “ E.W. wants you to launch CFS. I don’t know what it means.”

  “ Neither do I,” Lemmy lied. “You called the wrong number. This is a bank in Zurich. We don’t launch anything. Good day.”

  “ Wait! You transferred the money-”

  Lemmy hung up. On the screen he saw Christopher put down his receiver. Why was his assistant listening in on the conversation? Lemmy put the thought aside. The message from Israel was more important right now. Elie had looked sick at their last meeting, and his order to get rid of Herr Hoffgeitz and expedite the takeover of the bank had implied the urgency of a man whose time was running out. And then he had phoned Armande and scared him into a heart attack. And now this! The order was clear. Launch CFS! Launch Counter Final Solution!

  How was he supposed to launch it? The money was within reach, but what about an organizational chart, detailed plans, lists of agents? Everything had been Elie’s exclusive domain. He had hinted about sleeper agents, ready to activate at any time. But how was Lemmy supposed to find their names and contact information? Perhaps someone else would soon be activated, ordered to make contact. For now, it was clear that his task only was to penetrate Herr Hoffgeitz’s veil of secrecy and take possession of the Koenig account. Perhaps that’s what Elie had meant with his order.

  *

  Bira’s home was in Ramot, a suburb of two-story homes built of roughly cut Jerusalem stones. Her oldest son, Yuval, was home on leave from the army. There were three other children-two girls in their teens and a nine-year-old boy who walked around the house wearing Yuval’s red beret.

  As they sat down for an early dinner, the doorbell rang. Bira went to the door and returned with Gideon. He was introduced to everyone. The girls giggled and whispered in each other’s ears.

  Tanya led Gideon to the small garden in the back, where they sat at a white plastic table. Three bicycles in different sizes leaned against the wall near a barbecue grill covered by a piece of stained gray cloth. A fence with climbing vines separated them from the next house, but the back of the garden was open to the east, where arid hills stretched all the way to the glistening lights of a distant Arab village.

  Tanya rubbed her hands to warm up. “Isn’t it good to be home?”

  “Mom’s happy.”

  Bira brought a pitcher of fresh grape juice and cookies. She poured the juice into plastic cups. “Why don’t you stop by the university tomorrow? A Bedouin man has brought us a piece of clay with Aramaic writing. He found it near the Dead Sea. We’ll start a dig as soon as I can find financing.”

  He watched Bira return to the house. She was tall and big-boned, with shoulder-length blonde hair. “She doesn’t look like you,” he said.

  “More like her father.”

  “You did a good job raising her alone.”

  “We weren’t alone. Mossad is like a big family. We moved often, different assignments, but she got a lot of love and grew up fine.”

  “ That’s an understatement”

  “ I always marvel,” Tanya said, “how natural it seems to raise kids with a loving partner in a busy home, to pursue an interesting career and worry about soccer practice and monthly bills. To me it seems like a miracle.”

  “ Thanks for the hint.” Gideon sipped juice. “You didn’t invite me here to discuss my love life or Dead Sea excavations, right?”

  Tanya rested her elbows on the plastic table. “We have a problem with Elie Weiss. He didn’t give us any info last night in Paris, and now the Shin Bet has him. We’re trying to locate his human assets abroad so we can run them under Mossad. We’re also curious about his source of funds. But we can’t find anything.”

  “Elie never shares information. He doesn’t trust anyone. Keeps it all in his head.”

  “ Was there another safe apartment in Paris?”

  “ I don’t know.”

  “ How about a safe deposit box in a bank? Did you drive him somewhere or pick him up in a certain location?”

  “ Even if I knew, I wouldn’t tell you.”

  “Listen, I understand. He’s a scary man.” Tanya looked at Gideon for a long moment. “After the war, alone with a small baby, I was so afraid of Elie Weiss that I joined the Mossad to hide from him.” She gestured at the three bikes leaning against the wall. “It’s a different world now. And Elie’s locked up. Retired. You don’t have to be afraid of him any longer.”

  “I’m not afraid of him,” Gideon said. “I’m loyal.”

  “ Your loyalty should be to Israel, not to Elie Weiss.”

  “ I don’t see the difference.”

  “ There’s a big difference! A long time ago, Elie Weiss was legitimate. He started under Ben Gurion, building up the Special Operations Department right out of the prime minister’s office. The idea was to control homegrown
insurgents, such as ultra-Orthodox fanatics and religious fundamentalists, by planting moles in every yeshiva and sect. But the law required all domestic-security operations to come under the Shin Bet. Elie was never a team player, so in sixty-seven he moved SOD operations to Europe.”

  “ Serving the State of Israel.”

  “ His agents think they work for Israel, but they-and you-work for a rogue outfit.”

  “ Elie said that all SOD assignments come from Prime Minister Rabin personally. Did he lie?”

  “ Even the prime minister can’t legitimize unauthorized assassinations!” Tanya took a deep breath, calming herself. “Mossad is the only government agency authorized to conduct secret operations abroad. We are entitled to his agents and resources.”

  “You’re wasting your time. I work for SOD. Elie took me in, you didn’t.”

  “But Elie is out,” Tanya persisted, now that Gideon had implied being silent out of loyalty, not out of ignorance. “Why let his life’s work go to waste-the agents, the funds, the contacts? You must do the right thing!”

  “Will you hire me as a full Mossad agent?”

  “You think Mossad is so glamorous? You’ll spend the next thirty years in anonymity, in constant temporariness, away from family and friends, sleeping in cheap hotels and buying information from the slime of the earth. And you won’t be able to tell your friends that you’re sacrificing your life for them. That’s what you want?”

  “Yes.”

  “I won’t do it,” Tanya said. “I’ve ruined enough lives. I won’t ruin yours.”

  “Mom?” Bira showed up with the phone. “It’s for you.”

  Tanya listened as one of her subordinates in Paris reported on the investigation of Abu Yusef’s murder, which headlined every news program in Europe. “Make reservations for me,” she said. “I’ll fly to Zurich first thing in the morning. Alone. No escort.”

  She put down the phone and looked at Gideon. “Our contact in the French police said that a man resembling Abu Yusef visited a bank in Senlis, supposedly for a meeting with a young business associate regarding a large cash payment. The money had come from the Hoffgeitz Bank in Zurich. Does it ring a bell?”