The Jerusalem Assassin

by Avraham Azrieli

  “ I’ll try again. Auf Wiedersehen. ” He hung up and turned to Itah. “Wilhelm Horch. That’s my son’s name.”

  “ Wilhelm?”

  “ I bet his wife calls him Lemmy.”

  *

  Traffic was heavy on Herzl Road, which led into Jerusalem through dense residential neighborhoods, none of which had existed when Lemmy had last lived in the city. On his right, a restaurant on the ground floor of an apartment building spilled tables and chairs onto the sidewalk, most of them occupied by families. He remembered one of his father’s sermons, given on the last Yom Kippur Lemmy had spent at home. Why was it, his father had asked, that every time the ancient kings of Israel had made peace with their enemies, the Bible went on to describe the elaborate feast that followed? The answer, according to Rabbi Gerster, was that feeding the body calmed the mind, including its fighting spirit. On Yom Kippur, on the other hand, fasting was designed to create a sense of urgency, intensifying reflection over one’s sins and prompting repentance. The memory made Lemmy realize how hungry he was. As the light changed and traffic began to flow, he noticed a parking spot and veered right.

  He chose a table that allowed him an open view while a wall protected his back.

  A short, dark-haired woman began shuttling plates, not bothering to take an order. The pita bread was warm and slightly singed. The pickles were salty and crisp. And the humus was garnished with olive oil, chickpeas, and toasted pine nuts. Lemmy swiped a healthy load with a folded slice of pita bread and bit into it. The rich taste literally made him sigh with pleasure.

  She rushed over. “Everything okay?”

  Lemmy’s mouth was full. He gave her a thumbs up.

  She beamed and disappeared into the kitchen.

  Lamb skewers came next, with couscous and chopped salad. He concluded with mint tea and baklava. While paying the bill, he asked her for directions to the YMCA.

  *

  Elie sat in a nearby park for a couple of hours. He enjoyed the unseasonal sun and watched a group of kids chase a ball. On his way back to the hotel, he paused occasionally to catch his breath and furtively search for suspicious persons lurking about. There was nothing but the usual bustle of Jerusalem on a busy afternoon.

  When he returned to the suite, Rabbi Gerster and Itah Orr were watching a TV talk show, which pitted two Knesset members against each other. The raised voices and red faces were no surprise, but even the moderator seemed riled up when he asked the Likud MK: “Why is Netanyahu pouring oil on the fanatics’ fire? Does he also wish to see Yitzhak Rabin burned at the stake?”

  “Your plan is working,” Rabbi Gerster said, pressing the remote control to lower the volume. “You must be proud.”

  “Indeed.”

  “I’m sorry for losing my temper.”

  “And I’m sorry for speaking harshly.” Elie patted his shoulder. “Anger and grief go hand in hand, as we both know from our days of fighting the Nazis. Losing your son must be a never-healing wound. I wish I could ease your pain, my dear friend.”

  Abraham nodded, but the look on his face was too cryptic for Elie’s comfort. Did he know more than he was saying? Had he and Itah really dug up Lemmy’s grave? And even if they had, how could Abraham tell if the remains belonged to his son? Elie was about to ask him, but Itah grabbed the remote and increased the volume.

  The TV screen showed two photos side-by-side, with a subtitle: Rabbi Abraham Gerster amp; TV Reporter Itah Orr.

  “The two suspects evaded police yesterday,” the news anchor said, “when investigators sought them in connection with unauthorized hacking into financial databases and the theft of confidential bank records. The investigation revealed a criminal conspiracy with non-profit religious organizations, including Talmudic yeshiva institutions in Israel and New York, which have allegedly been utilized for money laundering.” The two photos were replaced by a video showing several police cars at the entrance to the Meah Shearim neighborhood, and officers carrying boxes of evidence down the road from the Neturay Karta synagogue. A group of bearded men in black hats and coats held a prayer on the pavement nearby, swaying devoutly.

  “Channel One,” the anchor said, “announced it was suspending Itah Orr until the investigation is concluded. Anyone with information on the suspects’ whereabouts should contact the police.”

  Itah switched off the TV. “I don’t believe this!”

  “They’re clever,” Elie said. “You were identified on the security system at Hadassah, but they don’t want to mention that scene, so they made up a criminal investigation. All you need to do is stay out of sight or change your appearance. Once my operation reaches its successful conclusion, Rabin will pull back Shin Bet, and we’ll be home free.”

  “What if Shin Bet stops your operation?”

  “They’re groping in the dark,” Elie said. “They know I’m up to something, but they don’t know what. They’re clueless.”

  “You’re an optimist,” Itah said, exchanging a glance with Rabbi Gerster. “Anyway, I can use Sorkeh’s headscarf.”

  “Yes,” Elie said, “but what about the famous leader of Neturay Karta?”

  Rabbi Gerster stood up. “It appears that my rabbinical career is over.”

  Elie watched from the bathroom door. The scissors in Itah’s hands were small but relentless. She snipped off the payos and worked through the bushy, gray beard that had masked Abraham Gerster’s face for fifty years. The medicine cabinet was well stocked with shaving cream and disposable blades. She shaved him carefully.

  Removing his black skullcap, Itah watered her hands and combed his hair backward. “My my,” she said, standing back to examine her handiwork, “you’re drop dead handsome!”

  Elie felt a stab of envy. It had been the same with Tanya Galinski in 1945. Despite the deep snow and the warm corpse of her Nazi lover, Tanya had stared at Abraham Gerster the same way-enamored, enchanted. It was incredible to watch him now, at age sixty-nine, impact a woman the same way. Elie cleared his throat. “Shall we go downstairs for dinner?” He had decided not to warn them that Freckles would be arriving to pick him up. Their reaction would reveal how much they knew about the chubby agent-provocateur.

  “I’m starving.” Itah adjusted Sorkeh’s headscarf over her hair.

  “ Why don’t we order room service?” Rabbi Gerster absently rubbed his smooth cheeks.

  “ Don’t worry,” Elie said. “The restaurant here is too expensive for Shin Bet agents.”

  *

  Traffic inched uphill while pedestrians threaded their way among the moving vehicles. Lemmy turned into the YMCA parking lot and found a spot for the Fiat. This was the last known stop in Elie’s escape, and the mention of going to Haifa could have been a diversion for the benefit of the taxi driver’s ears.

  He stepped out of the Fiat, looked around, and immediately saw the solution.

  Across the street, he strolled into the circular driveway at the King David Hotel and balked at the sight of two Subaru sedans with the familiar roof antennas. He kept moving along the circular driveway until he was back on the street, this time walking downhill. Was this the next trap? But how did the Shin Bet know he would be coming to the King David Hotel? Had they made the same assumption as he and were now searching the hotel?

  A limousine passed by with small flags fluttering from the corners of its hood. It occurred to him that the King David Hotel was the preferred place for visiting foreign dignitaries. Shin Bet, or another government agency that used similar Subaru sedans, was probably at the hotel for reasons that had nothing to do with Elie Weiss, SOD, or the man travelling under the name of Baruch Spinoza. He almost laughed in relief. The world wasn’t revolving around this single crisis! He turned back toward the hotel.

  *

  Rabbi Gerster felt naked without his black coat and hat, without the long beard and dangling payos. For decades, throughout his adult life, whenever he entered a public place, people recognized him, bowed their heads in respect, and made way for him. But as
he entered the La Regence Grill, the only glances he attracted came from two middle-aged women, who smiled at him, and from a single man in a pink jacket, who looked up from his soup and winked. It took Rabbi Gerster a moment to comprehend that his new appearance was attracting a different type of attention, the type drawn by a handsome, mature man who radiated confidence and authority.

  Elie ordered a cup of chicken soup. Itah and Rabbi Gerster ordered steak dinners.

  Before the food arrived, a stout young man joined their table. His face was infested with the dotted pigmentation that had earned him his nickname. He was dressed inadequately in worn sandals, khaki shorts, and a white T-shirt that bore a quote from the prophet Isaiah: Your detractors and destroyers shall emerge from within you. The knitted skullcap sat askew on his head, jauntily contrasting with the nervous twitch of his mouth. At first glance, he seemed like a beggar who had slipped through the lobby to hit on gullible tourists before the maitre d’ threw him out.

  Elie looked up from his soup. “You’re early.”

  “ Am I?” Freckles glanced over his shoulder.

  “Three minutes,” Elie said. “How uncharacteristic of you.”

  “ Trying to get better at my job, you know?” He laughed nervously. “Ready to go?”

  “ Hungry, Freckles?” Itah nudged the basket of fresh rolls toward him.

  He creased his eyes. “Do I know you?”

  Itah pulled off the headscarf.

  “ Oh, God!” He stood, then sat back down, looked left and right. “No cameras, right?”

  Itah laughed. “Not today. Hush hush. Like spies. You ever heard of Kim Philby?”

  Freckles looked at Rabbi Gerster, and his eyes widened. “God, have mercy!”

  “ Amen.” Rabbi Gerster’s hand instinctively reached to touch his beard, which was gone. He realized that Elie had tricked them by summoning his agent to take him somewhere else. “How’s business going for you? Money coming in steadily?”

  “ What’s going on here?” Freckles got up again, glanced at the door. “I don’t like this!”

  “ Sit down.” Elie said it quietly, but the tone was icy. “You all know each other?”

  “ Freckles has been a great source,” Itah said. “I’ve earned many kudos for my reports on ILOT. But lately I’ve come to doubt him a bit.”

  Elie’s little black eyes focused on her. “Why?”

  “ Hold on.” Rabbi Gerster noticed that Freckles kept looking toward the entrance to the restaurant. “I think we should-”

  “ I had a little peek,” Itah said, “at his bank account. Regular deposits of French francs in cash, but also a monthly paycheck from Shin Bet, plus medical and pension. Did you know about that?”

  “ It’s a trap,” Rabbi Gerster said, rising.

  Elie didn’t answer Itah’s question, but his hand landed on the rabbi’s toothed steak knife, rose unhurriedly, and stuck the knife’s point under Freckles’ chin, penetrating the skin, and pulled him closer. “Is that true? Do you work for Shin Bet?”

  Freckles couldn’t nod, and opening his mouth was also impossible. Only his lips moved when he squeaked, “I can…explain.”

  Rabbi Gerster grabbed Itah’s arm. “We’re leaving!”

  Several of the patrons suddenly rose, including the man in the pink jacket, and surrounded their table.

  “ Step back,” Elie said, “or I’ll puncture his brain.”

  A man in a blue jacket jogged across the restaurant to the table, his hand held up. “Good drill, fellows. Excellent practice!”

  “ Agent Cohen.” Rising slowly, Elie kept Freckles’ chin impaled on the steak knife. “Call off your men and have a car ready for us outside.”

  “ Let him go.” The Shin Bet officer spoke too quietly for the other patrons to hear. “We can discuss our differences elsewhere.”

  “ I think not.” Elie headed for the door with Freckles.

  Rabbi Gerster was determined not to allow Jewish blood to be spilled. “We’re outnumbered. Let’s live to fight another day.”

  “ Follow me,” Elie said, leading Freckles with the knife.

  The rabbi saw Itah raise her eyebrows in a manner of someone accepting defeat. They had made a mistake not telling Elie about the Shin Bet salary Freckles was earning, and Elie had kept from them the fact that he had summoned Freckles to the hotel. Now the game was over.

  Rabbi Gerster could have pulled down Elie’s hand to release the hapless Freckles, but the young man’s double-crossing irritated the rabbi enough to make him choose a less-pleasant method. He swung his arm and hit Freckles on the forehead with the back of his hand. The agent’s head flew backward, his face turned to the ceiling, and his chin tore off from Elie’s knife. The strike’s momentum caused him to fall backward, where he stayed sprawled on the carpet, too shocked to move.

  Removing the knife from Elie’s hand, the rabbi flipped it in the air and offered it to Agent Cohen with the handle first.

  “ Thank you.” Agent Cohen clapped. “Great show!”

  The other Shin Bet agents joined the clapping.

  “ It’s only a drill,” Agent Cohen said to the shocked patrons as his agents steered the group to the door. “Thanks for your patience. Enjoy your dinner!”

  The clapping proved contagious, and the thirty or so patrons joined in, visibly relieved.

  *

  Wearing a burgundy windbreaker and a baseball hat, his overnight bag hanging from his shoulder, Lemmy approached the entrance to the King David Hotel. He had to go without the sunglasses, which would have raised suspicion at this hour. The two Subaru sedans were still there, and several idle men in civilian clothes stood along the driveway. He felt like a criminal entering a well-policed compound.

  The tall doors were propped open to allow fresh evening air into the lobby. As he stepped closer, a large group was coming out, a tight circle surrounding an inner core of-he assumed-dignitaries that merited VIP protection. He stepped aside as the group emerged. Behind him, car engines came to life.

  In the center of the group, one man was taller than the others, his thick mane of gray hair brushed back from a handsome face. He sensed Lemmy’s gaze, glanced, and stopped in his tracks, causing the whole group to come to an awkward halt, bumping into each other.

  It took a moment for Lemmy to recognize the blue, wise eyes.

  Father!

  Lemmy was stunned, not only by seeing his father for the first time in almost three decades, but by the loss of his rabbinical manifestations. Yet years of honing his self-control in a life of clandestine survival kept Lemmy from expressing any emotions while his mind absorbed all the details within his field of vision: Elie, much shorter than the rest, looked frail. A woman, about fifty, wore a headscarf and an anxious expression. The men with the guns were alert, professional, focused on their three prisoners.

  Lemmy reached into his pocket to draw the Beretta he had taken from the security man at Hadassah, but his father gave a quick shake of the head, turned in the other direction, and bellowed in the familiar baritone that Lemmy remembered so well: “Benjamin! Benjamin!”

  Everyone turned in that direction. The agent in charge-blue jacket, thin lips, and rusty hair-recovered quickly and ordered them into the cars. A moment later they drove off.

  “What a bunch of showoff girls,” one of the bellmen said. “These guys think the world should stop for them.”

  “Come on,” his colleague said, “they have to be ready if someone attacks a bigwig.” He noticed Lemmy standing there. “Welcome to the King David Hotel.” He reached for his shoulder bag.

  “I’m fine,” Lemmy said. But he wasn’t. His hands shook and his knees threatened to buckle. His father’s eyes had been surprised, but not shocked, as if he had expected to see his dead son show up alive. And his coolheaded diversion had prevented disaster. But had his father yelled “Benjamin!” only as a diversion, or also as a directive to go to Benjamin in Neturay Karta?

  He entered the lobby and bumped into a chubby young
man in sandals and shorts, who picked up his blue skullcap, which had fallen to the marble floor, and pressed it to his head. His freckled, sweaty face turned up to Lemmy for a second, and he sprinted to the exit, pausing to check that the circular driveway was vacant before running out into the night.

  *

  “ What was that about?” Itah’s lips were warm on Rabbi Gerster’s ear. “Did you see Benjamin near the hotel? On the street?”

  He shook his head.

  “Then why did you yell his name?”

  The rabbi smiled.

  Agent Cohen, who sat next to the driver up front, glanced over his shoulder. “No more tricks, guys. We could be less polite, if you get my drift.”

  “Same here,” Elie said. He was sitting by the window, looking out.

  The Shin Bet officer sneered. “And I was told you’re a dangerous man. Ha! ” He faced forward and switched on the radio, filling the car with fast-paced Hebrew music.

  Itah squeezed Rabbi Gerster’s knee.

  He leaned closer and whispered in her ear. “When we were leaving the hotel lobby, did you see the guy with the baseball hat?”

  She nodded.

  “That was Lemmy.”

  Itah jerked backward as if he had hit her. She mouthed, No!

  Rabbi Gerster nodded and whispered, “My son!” And before he knew what was happening to him, his face crumbled, and hard, painful sobs burst from his chest. Itah put her arms around him, and he cried, rocking back and forth, consumed by joy and relief and by a terrible fear that this encounter, this brief, wordless eye-contact with Lemmy, would turn out to be the end, rather than a new beginning.

  *

  Tuesday, October 31, 1995

  Lemmy checked out of the King David Hotel in the morning. He left the rented Fiat at the YMCA and walked through the streets of Jerusalem, which bore little resemblance to the divided city of his childhood.

  He crossed the point where the border had once cut an arbitrary north-south line and saw none of the bullet-scarred, half-ruined buildings that had abutted the no-man’s land. Through the Jaffa Gate, which had been in Jordanian territory the last time he saw it, Lemmy entered the Arab Quarter of the Old City. He followed the market alleys, finding himself in the revived Jewish Quarter, home not only to Talmudic yeshivas and bearded scholars, but to artists’ studios and galleries. Stone-built residences had been restored to original antiquity with meticulous details. Fenced-off archeological digs reached down through layers of sediment, unearthing physical remnants all the way back to King David’s empire. Looking down into one of the deep holes, Lemmy could see the layers of Jewish life, each era settled atop the previous era, century after century, accumulated on this mountaintop citadel.