City of Secrets

by Stewart O'Nan

  He hadn’t heard from Asher in weeks. Some mornings, waking early and driving the empty streets, Brand could believe this quiet routine was his life, everything else a mad dream. And then one afternoon, dropping off a couple of tight-lipped RAF colonels at the English Sports Club, he rolled up the drive to find the blonde from the Eden looking lithe in a riding ensemble, her hair pulled back in a neat chignon, climbing into the driver’s seat of the Daimler as a valet held the door.

  The club was south of the city, by the train station. The quickest route back was Julian’s Way through the German Colony, which now, after the war, was mainly British. He watched the Daimler glide down the drive and turn left as he expected while the colonels compared handfuls of change. The taller haltingly counted out three hundred mils into Brand’s palm—a minimal tip.

  “Cheers,” Brand said, and sped off.

  Julian’s Way would take her up between the YMCA and the King David and into the main business district at the Jaffa Road. This time of day the only traffic was a stray patrol and a few cabs bringing passengers from the two o’clock train. The Daimler was hard to miss, and by the Montefiore Windmill he had it in sight. A long touring car the gray of sharkskin, polished, like his Peugeot, to a wet gleam, it made him think of Rommel and goose-stepping parades.

  Brand was hoping she would lead him somewhere or to something he could connect to Asher. As they sped along, climbing the rise of Mount Zion, he stayed three cars back, not wanting to spook her. As if she’d spotted him, as the Y’s Jesus Tower rose ahead of them to the left, without signaling she braked and turned right into the King David.

  While the rest of the hotel was open to the public, the Mandate rented the entire south wing for its more sensitive offices. An obvious target, the Secretariat had a separate entrance ringed by barbed wire. A pair of armed Tommies waited at a guardhouse, checking every visitor. The last time he’d dropped off a fare there—a soft-spoken undersecretary of agriculture—they’d opened the man’s suitcases as if he might be one of the Stern Gang. As Brand shot past and the Daimler rolled up the main drive, the blonde gave the soldiers a wave as if she were a regular.

  “Someone’s mistress,” Eva guessed. “Or someone’s wild daughter. Maybe both.”

  “Why would she be with Asher?”

  “He’s using her for access.”

  “Why her?”

  “Apparently she can get in anywhere.”

  It made sense, yet the idea, being incomplete, unsettled Brand. Shipboard, the captain let the crew know where they were going, and what the seas would be like. There wasn’t another crew hidden belowdecks with a destination of their own.

  According to protocol, he couldn’t ask Asher, just as he couldn’t discuss the truck bomb in Jaffa with anyone.

  After her third glass of brandy, Eva would talk. Like an interrogator, he listened for the littlest slip.

  “You weren’t here for the riots. They killed hundreds of us. They broke down doors and cut children’s throats. It’s like they went mad.”

  “These weren’t the same Arabs,” he said.

  “We’re not the same Jews. That’s the point. We won’t sit around and be killed anymore. That’s what they have to understand. We’ll fight.”

  “I think they understand that now.”

  “You have to remind them, otherwise they’ll go back to their old ways.”

  Like him, Brand thought. The New Jew, they called the Sabras. The other night he’d felt like one. Now he wasn’t sure. His own philosophy was closer to the Jewish Agency’s—nonviolent resistance—though they directly supported the Haganah, who’d ditched their policy of self-restraint when they joined with the Irgun and the Stern Gang, this after calling them dissidents and terrorists and helping the British hunt them down. Brand didn’t understand how they were all one now, only that he was part of them. On one count Eva was right. While he didn’t agree with her on the means of the revolution, he did admit that what happened to his family was his fault. Too late, he was no longer afraid to die.

  “You’re Irgun,” he said.

  “We all are.”

  “From the beginning.”

  “Now.”

  “What about then?”

  “We don’t believe in fighting our brothers and sisters.” She sounded like Asher.

  “So before then.”

  “We were still Haganah. We’re still Haganah.”

  “And Asher?”

  “Asher’s Asher.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Asher’s his own man. He likes you, you know. He doesn’t like everyone.”

  “I know. I like him too.” The Widow, he called you. But that would start a different argument, one he’d lose.

  “You don’t trust him.”

  “I trusted him the other night.”

  “Touché,” she said, toasting Brand. “It’s me you don’t trust. You know, every night I could cut your throat.”

  “You mean while you’re sleeping and I’m listening to you snore. That’s how you’ll surprise me.”

  “Exactly. You’ll have no idea until it’s over.”

  “That’s how I’d prefer it.”

  It seemed to be his gift, making her laugh, though in this case he was serious.

  Christmas was finally over. The dead season was upon them, the trains from Jaffa running empty. It wasn’t worth sitting in the station queue. He followed Pincus and Scheib’s advice, sticking to the better hotels, laying for rich Americans, even if it meant the occasional search. Against his instincts, he strewed old rags and oilcans and crumpled lunch bags about his trunk to confuse the dogs. There was nothing in the compartment, only the promise of contraband—enough to hold him. At every checkpoint he practiced his English accent. “What’s all this then, eh?” Clever Jossi, everybody’s friend. That he wasn’t making any money was annoying but ultimately meant nothing. Eventually Asher would call, and Brand’s other life would begin again.

  When the call finally came, it wasn’t from Asher but Fein, throwing off not just Brand but Mrs. Ohanesian, who frowned at the mysterious voice as if Brand should have prepared her. It was Thursday evening. He’d been at Eva’s every night that week, yet somehow they knew he was home. He’d forgotten: there were watchers everywhere.

  The meeting was in Mekor Baruch, not far from the old-age home. Brand drove Eva and Lipschitz, a mismatched couple, parking on a street lined with scabby sycamores and squat apartment blocks. Here the luckier children of the war swarmed the dusty alleys, playing commando with branches and seed balls, hollering to one another in Polish mixed with Yiddish. Above, their mothers hung boiled laundry from the fire escapes like dull bunting. The coded address Fein had given Brand led to the building most likely to host a secret meeting, a drab Ashkenazi synagogue beside a butcher shop with headless chickens in the window for Sabbath dinner. Before he opened the door, he had a hunch it might be a trap. Why had Fein called? Had something happened to Asher?

  Inside, Brand wasn’t sure where to go. For a taxi driver, he had no sense of direction. As always, he thought the basement would be the safest place. As if she’d been there before, Eva took the stairs straight to the second floor.

  In a small meeting room with a chalkboard on wheels sat Asher, Victor and, in a rumpled seersucker suit, his Star of David and lion tattoo hidden beneath an Oxford shirt, the Sabra.

  In the suit he looked more than ever an Arab, the hawk nose and dark skin making the yod-shaped scar above his eye seem even stranger, the mark of fate. He had a boxer’s build, a scrappy bantamweight like John Garfield, and Garfield’s carelessly tousled hair. He looked like a gangster dressed for a trial. It was hard to believe he’d nearly died just a month ago. Brand realized he was staring and recovered.

  “Glad to see you’re feeling better.”

  The man nodded in acknowledgment. To Eva, he nodded significantly, as if in gratitude. Brand recalled him moaning wordlessly in the backseat and wondered if he was a mute. After a minute, Brand
realized no one was speaking—not Asher or Victor. Protocol. There would be no introductions.

  They all sat around the table waiting for Fein and Yellin. The chalkboard was sponged clean. Lipschitz took out a pad and began writing. The Sabra waved a hand and he put it away.

  From the hall came footfalls, the clash of a door. Fein was alone, and though Brand wanted to ask after Yellin, he waited for someone else to break the silence.

  “Close the door,” Asher said.

  Apparently Yellin wasn’t coming, another development Brand didn’t like on principle.

  The Sabra stood and buttoned his jacket, smoothing his front as if he were going to make a speech. “First, I want to thank you. My friend here tells me how instrumental you were in helping me the other night. I’m indebted to you, and will do my utmost to repay your kindness.” He spoke stiffly, as if addressing a crowd. Brand, who had practice, couldn’t place the accent—part Spanish, part something else. Maybe French, with its buzzing sibilants. It was possible the Sabra wasn’t a Sabra at all.

  “I would especially like to thank Miss Eva for the use of her apartment. You’re very brave.”

  Miss Eva. She beamed, a star accepting an award.

  “I want to thank Jossi for the use of his car. You’re very brave as well.”

  Brand nodded, thinking Asher shouldn’t have told him their names. Protocol worked both ways. And what about his sweater?

  “You risked your lives to save mine. Don’t think I’ll forget. Long Live Eretz Israel.”

  “Long Live Eretz Israel,” they echoed.

  With that, he sat down and Victor stood up. They made an odd pair, the dark, clean-shaven bantamweight and the ruddy, ginger-bearded giant. How had they met? Brand wondered. Who else was in their cell?

  Victor flipped the chalkboard, revealing a diagram—a crude map with train tracks and two parallel roads marked with arrows. As in a geometry problem, the tracks crossed both roads at an angle. Between them, in the center of the tracks, sat a pirate’s X for treasure.

  “Every Friday the British payroll arrives by the same train.”

  The plan was ridiculously simple. They were going to blow up the tracks and stick up the train. To Brand the idea seemed like something out of the Wild West, sure to end in a bloody shootout, but no one protested.

  Once the train passed the first crossing, they’d blow the tracks behind and ahead of it with mines. With the train trapped, two of them would use the crew as hostages while the others disarmed the guards and blew the safe. They’d use a stolen car, one they could ditch after they’d gotten away, then Jossi would drive them back to the city, the loot safe in the hidden compartment. The payroll was over thirty thousand pounds.

  “That’s a lot of weapons,” Asher said, as if they needed an incentive.

  After the substation, Brand expected he’d be part of the assault team, along with Asher, Victor and the Sabra. The Peugeot could hold five. Maybe Fein? Eva and Yellin would handle communications.

  They had one week.

  “I know that’s not a lot of time,” Victor said, “but Gideon and I both think you’re ready.”

  “Thank you,” Asher said, and as Brand held on to the assumed name, he understood that Gideon and Victor weren’t coming with them. They’d be going it alone.

  To avoid suspicion, after the meeting was done, they left in shifts. Asher stayed behind with Gideon and Victor to work out the necessary materials. Lipschitz had business in Mahane Yehuda, so he could walk. Fein said he could use a ride.

  In the car they were somber, as if right now they were heading out on the mission. They passed the Schneller Barracks and the fields of the orphanage. Brand glanced at the barns and the spindly tower rising in the distance. A moving train was a completely different proposition. Hostages, and guards. Not to mention the safe.

  After a mile-long silence, Eva finally spoke. “So, what happened to your buddy Yellin?”

  “Nothing,” Fein said. “He had a dentist appointment.”

  5

  Gideon was Sephardic, a Moroccan whose missionary parents ran a yeshiva in Tangiers. Eva had known all along.

  “I couldn’t tell you. Believe me, I wanted to. Asher said it was for your own good. We have to be safe.”

  “You already knew Victor.”

  “I never said I didn’t.”

  He questioned her like a deceived husband. How well did she know them? How long? She was evasive and outraged, the faithful wife, citing protocol. As he had that first night, he sensed it wasn’t the first time Gideon had visited her bed, or Asher. Why was he surprised she was a whore? He was used to Katya, whose past, like his own, was clear as water. He was just a dumb mechanic, he wasn’t meant to connive with spies.

  “What about the blonde?”

  “She’s new. Honestly, I have no idea who she is.”

  “‘Honestly.’”

  Her face changed. She pointed to the door. “Get out. Now.”

  All weekend he stayed away from her place, working late and eating at the Alaska. In Riga the trials had wrapped, the five men responsible for the massacre hanged, the rest of the city tacitly exonerated—just as he expected, meager consolation. His old life was over, his new one a shambles and a sham. To celebrate, he paced his flat with a glass of Johnnie Walker, bumping his nose against the cold window, leaving a greasy smudge. The humming, stumbling melancholy of solitary drunks. Why was Katya dead and Eva alive? She probably didn’t even miss him. She’d probably already hired another driver. The station was so close, he heard the last train from Jaffa laboring up the final grade of Mount Zion, and then his fellow cabbies shuttling passengers into the city, making money. In the crypt his pistols waited, newly oiled. Child of the Great War, survivor of the last, his entire life he’d never pointed a gun at another man, only had them pointed at him. Innocent Brand, the pigeon of history. It was a miracle he’d lived this long.

  “Goddamn, yes,” he said to his reflection, and was surprised to find his glass empty.

  He woke in his clothes, sour-mouthed. At the garage Pincus brought him coffee, hovering like a mother. Greta set him up with an older American couple going to Bethlehem for their anniversary. With everyone on his side, how could he fail?

  He wasn’t so much afraid as annoyed at the prospect of the mission, as if it were a checkpoint blocking the route to his new life. He could see the reasons for it, and generally agreed with them, but as the workweek kicked in, he began hoping it would rain on Friday, making the desert impassable for anything but a jeep. Even that would only postpone it.

  Tuesday Asher called a meeting for the following evening at the high school. If stopped, they were an amateur drama club working with Eva. Brand thought the idea would please her. Out of habit he swung by to give her a ride, taking the shortcut through the flower market to her gate. The lamp wasn’t lit, but when he knocked, there was no answer.

  She’d taken the bus. She wanted him to be shocked, and while he was, mildly, he was also flattered that as she schemed, she was thinking of him. Yellin apologized for missing the last meeting but didn’t mention the dentist. On a chalkboard Asher ran through the plan, which seemed to Brand both overly complicated and too simple. Asher would meet them with the second car at a kibbutz a few miles from the chosen spot. Brand, Fein and Yellin would watch the hostages while Asher and Lipschitz blew the safe. The car could hold only five of them, so Eva would monitor the escape route from the kibbutz and handle communications. The whole operation was wishful, based on the guards trading the payroll for the hostages. If they refused, would Asher really kill them? From experience Brand was leery of anything with too many moving parts. At least Eva would be safe.

  Afterward, she refused a ride home, then, in the parking lot, when it began to rain, changed her mind. She sat in back and spoke only to Fein and Lipschitz, letting Brand know it wasn’t a victory. Brand, used to losing, knew it was.

  He expected they would make up before the operation. Eventually she’d forgive him,
he’d apologize, and they’d go on in their normal, tortured way—or that was how it had worked with Katya. He believed this until two o’clock Thursday afternoon, sitting at the Lions’ Gate. Mad as it sounded, in twenty-four hours, inevitable as the sun rising, he would be in the Valley of Ayalon, aiming a gun at a train. Rather than spur him to go see her, the idea made him colder. At this moment, if that was all she cared for him, the hell with her. She should have told him about Gideon in the first place. And yet that night, listening for Mrs. Ohanesian’s phone to ring, he debated getting dressed and going down to the Peugeot. Their first night together, when she was just The Widow, he’d felt her husband and Katya in the room with them, their presence both mournful and a comfort, as if this was what was left to them. Only a fool would sacrifice that last consolation to pride, yet here he was.

  In the morning a guilty vestige of the feeling remained, like a faintly remembered dream, but it was too late. He unlocked the Peugeot and slipped into the cemetery for his pistols, the old and the new both wrapped in oilcloth. Popping the trunk, he pictured Mrs. Ohanesian watching him from her window. With all the rain, the hidden compartment smelled of mildew. He set the bundle down as if it might explode.

  Eva was the first one he picked up, giving them some time alone. She wasn’t used to being up so early and looked tired around the eyes. As always, she’d thrown herself into the role, wearing a powder-blue headscarf, a white blouse and khaki pants like a Youth League kibbutznik, as if, with her soft hands and mascara, she might fit in. Before the checkpoint, he apologized.