The Damascus Cover

by Howard Kaplan

  The other possibility, the Syrian police, was equally implausible. For if the police rescued a foreign businessman lying unconscious in an alley, certainly they would take him to a hospital. On the other hand, they might not have called a doctor if they knew who he really was, but if that was the case they wouldn’t have bothered protecting him in the first place. The whole incident just made no sense. He realized the best thing to do now was to put the dilemma out of his mind—to let his subconscious work on the problem in its own way. The answer would come to him in due time.

  Back at the New Ommayad Ari took three aspirin and climbed into the shower. He had a nasty bump on his head but the swelling would go away in a few days. He’d phone room service and have some ice sent up as soon as he was dry. The jets of hot water streamed against his body, the steam clouding the tiled bathroom. The oppressive heat of Damascus drained him. He decide he would try and rest for a few hours before meeting Kim for dinner.

  ◆◆◆

  “It was horrible,” Kim said, after they had been seated in the hotel dining room. “Screaming women, crying children unable to find their parents, bleeding bodies strewn in the rubble. I took a picture of one young man sitting on the steps of a wooden shack, the tears rolling down his face. He held his dead son in his arms.”

  “Do you know why the refugee camp was bombed?”

  “Kol Yisrael Radio is claiming a commando group that infiltrated the Golan Heights and attacked a school there was trained in Khan esh Shih.”

  Ari picked up the menu and stared blankly at the Arabic and French lettering. He wondered if the Israeli retaliatory raid accomplished anything, if it edged the Middle East closer to peace, if attacking a refugee camp brought any measure of comfort to the families of those slain in the Golan. He shook his head in sadness. He accepted the raid for what it was: the Israelis’ attempt to mask a pervasive sense of helplessness with an excessive show of strength. Retaliation produced nothing; it merely spurred the cycle of violence. Ari belonged to that school of men who believed war should be fought exclusively by soldiers.

  “What are you going to do with the pictures?” he asked, putting the menu down and sipping the water.

  “I’ve already sent them to my editor. I think they illustrate graphically the senselessness of these killings. I hope they’ll be printed and given wide circulation, with or without my name.”

  “Why? What possible good will it do to show the absurdity of raids and retaliation? Everybody already knows killing is senseless. Can your pictures ground the war planes or silence the shelling? Will a photograph splashed across the cover of Newsweek save one life?”

  “Maybe not, but at least the world will see what’s really happening here. People are deadened by the sterile recital of statistics; so many casualties this week in the Middle East fighting, so many planes lost, so much money spent. But one picture, one sensitive layout can move millions of readers.”

  “So what if they’re moved,” he said angrily. “What difference does it make? Are they going to cease digging graves in Khan esh Shih or the Golan Heights because people are moved?’

  “Well at least it’s a place to start.”

  He wanted to say, “Yes, the wrong place,” but he stopped himself. He realized suddenly that his anger was misdirected; he was venting his frustration on her. The afternoon’s events and his inability to understand them had set him on edge.

  A long silence held. She toyed with her silverware as if she was pondering what to say next. Finally she studied his face and spoke:

  “Who was that girl in your room last night?”

  “I can’t tell you, Kim.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s best that you don’t know.” His voice was soft, contrite.

  “That sounds like an excuse.”

  “I want you to trust me.”

  “How can I? You ask me to change my travel plans, to meet you in Damascus. I do, and you jump into bed with another girl, state that you can’t explain because my life would be in danger, and after all that you expect me to simply keep quiet and trust you?”

  He said nothing. It was becoming increasingly difficult to play the role of Hans Hoffmann in her presence.

  “Who are you?” she asked, her voice starting to quake. “Nothing makes any sense. What were you doing in Israel? Why did you suddenly decide to come to Syria? Who was that girl? What was she doing in your room last night? This import-export business is some sort of front, I know it. What are you really doing in the Middle East?”

  “Kim, don’t ask any more questions.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  Ari felt the shadow of the Service creeping behind him. As soon as he’d changed passports in Frankfurt he had become Hans Hoffmann, import-export magnate, ex-Nazi. He was obligated to play that role with everyone, regardless of personal considerations. But he was finding it nearly impossible to continue doing so with her.

  “I lied to you when I was in Israel,” he said. The rest of his sentence stuck in his throat; he had to force the words out. “I didn’t tell you everything about me.”

  “I know that.”

  He thought about the three Palestinians and his mysterious rescue. There was a chance that somehow the Syrians had broken his cover; if so, she might be in real danger. He had to protect both of them.

  “I’m not exactly who I appear to be.”

  She stared silently into his eyes, waiting.

  “Telling the truth now is difficult.” He hesitated, uncertain if he did have to tell her.

  “Go on,” she said.

  He nodded. “During World War II I was an SS Lieutenant at Dachau concentration camp.”

  She looked at him in horror. “Oh no,” she mumbled. “No, not that.” She hesitated for a moment, then bolted up, knocking over her water glass. “How could you? “I can’t….” Shaking, she ran toward the exit, bumping into the maître d’ as she fled the room.

  Ari sat there, numb. He expected her to be alarmed, upset, a little afraid; but the intensity of her reaction startled him. She was an American. She couldn’t even have been born until after the war was over. He stared toward the exit sign, wondering if she had become so emotional because she was half-Jewish. The irony of that possibility paralyzed him. He wanted to get up and chase after her, tell her the truth; but he knew he couldn’t, not while they were in Syria.

  12.

  SEPTEMBER 11

  Near the Jordanian border the narrow highway turned into the twisting main street of Der’a. Proceeding toward the olive wood factory across town, Mustafa Suidani drove the dust-covered Peugeot 404 through a maze of crooked alleys. Entering the poorer quarter of the village, Ari quickly rolled up the window—he preferred the heat to the stench. The corridor-like, shabby streets were strewn with refuse and human waste. Housewives used them as a garbage dump, indiscriminately casting potfuls of water and the remains of food out their windows. Hoards of undernourished children with sick eyes and running noses, wearing only underwear or nightgowns, played among the refuse. Dogs, chickens, camels, and horses wandered around unbridled; swarms of green-black flies buzzed over dung heaped in the street. As Suidani navigated a sharp curve he narrowly avoided a barefoot man, standing calf-deep in mud, washing his jackass. The donkey brayed plaintively as the car accelerated by.

  The unpleasant physical surroundings notwithstanding, shopping for merchandise to export to Germany became an enjoyable diversion for Ari. At first he’d dreaded the day-long trips with Suidani, for they expended much time and produced little. But soon he found that it was on these excursions that he could really relax into the role of Hans Hoffmann. He argued with manufacturers, demanded pieces be custom crafted to rigid specifications, and stomped out of shops in mock outrage, only to be called back and have the price lowered, a deal agreed upon, and sweet mint tea served amidst handshaking and smiling. Ari gained a genuine satisfaction from striking a successful deal, as if he really were a German businessman who would reap succulent profits
from his bargaining. As the years bumped into each other, then brushed away, a sense of accomplishment, any accomplishment, was all Ari had left to cling to.

  Kim was gone. She had departed on a three-day visit to Aleppo without saying good-bye. The desk clerk assured him that the American lady, taking only a small suitcase with her, had not checked out of the hotel. Ari was relieved. He could wait.

  Aleppo had once been a thriving Jewish community, he remembered from one of the texts Yosef Tsur had given him to read. Then in December, 1947—a few months before the partition of Palestine—anti-Jewish rioters attacked the haret, destroying one hundred and fifty Jewish homes, fifty shops, ten synagogues, five Jewish schools, one orphanage, and one youth club. Afterward the angry mob burned one hundred and sixty Torah scrolls in a public bonfire. No accurate estimate of the number of dead could be taken, for thousands of Aleppo’s Jews fled the city and sought refuge in Lebanon, making it impossible to determine if those missing had escaped or been killed. The Syrian Internal Security Service tried to halt this exodus unsuccessfully—that is, until they ordered frontier guards to shoot any Jew attempting to cross the border illegally. Emigration ceased; those left behind huddled together waiting for the outbreak of war, hoping for an Israeli victory, yet knowing such a success would be brutally blamed on them. When cholera broke out in Syria in early 1948 a rumor spread that the Jews had poisoned the water. Mobs swept through the ghettos in Aleppo and Damascus—the killing and looting began again. Like a ceaseless drumbeat in a night without end, the Jews recited the haunting mourner’s prayer and buried their dead. Upon “request” they contributed forty thousand Syrian pounds in support of the Arab defense of Palestine.

  In the years following the 1948 war, with the help of vast sums of money and agents working inside Syria, large numbers of Jews passed illegally into Israel, most of them via Mardjayun, Metulla, and Bint Jubayl. When the Syrian government finally discovered this route and sealed off its southern border, arresting scores of its own citizens on the charge of helping emigrants enter Palestine, Israeli agents opened a corridor from Syria to Lebanon, from whose shores the Jews traveled to Israel by motorboat. Not all arrived safely; hundreds were caught and imprisoned. Others were not so fortunate. In November 1950, a band of Arab seamen smuggled thirty Syrian Jews out of Damascus, promising to take them to Israel. Halfway between Beirut and Haifa the Arabs turned on their passengers, took their valuables, and murdered them. Twenty bodies were washed ashore and buried in Haifa.

  The trickle of escaping emigrants continued to flow until the Six Day War. Immediately after Israeli troops captured the Golan Heights the humiliated Syrians locked a stranglehold on the few thousand Jews left inside the country, imprisoning them in guarded ghettos—as if afraid that the Jewish community would vanish, depriving the populace of someone to blame for their country’s military defeats. Air Force Commander Hafez Assad, taking control of the government in 1971, eased the restrictions on Syria’s Jews somewhat, but still only a handful had managed to escape since ‘67.

  When Ari returned to the hotel from the olive wood factory at Der’a he found a message tucked into his mailbox. He unfolded the yellow piece of paper, hoping the note was from Kim, only to discover that Franz Ludin had called and requested Ari telephone him at his earliest convenience. Disappointed, he moved across the faded red carpet to a house phone in a corner of the lobby and asked the operator to connect him.

  “Well, how has the buying been going?” Ludin asked, after they had exchanged greetings.

  “Not bad. I was in a village in the south today. Vile place, but I found some hand-carved olive wood bookends and chests inlaid with camel-bone that I think might sell well in Europe.”

  “And the price?”

  “After an hour of haggling I threatened to find another factory, and the proprietor hastily agreed to a fifty percent reduction.”

  “Which means he’s still making twenty-five percent.”

  “At least,” Ari agreed.

  Ludin laughed. “Listen, I’m having a few friends over for dinner on the sixteenth, some people I think you’d be interested in meeting. Are you free?”

  “If not, I would immediately become so.”

  “Good, let’s say about seven-thirty. I’ll have a car and driver pick you up.”

  “Excellent. I’ll look forward to seeing you again and meeting your guests.”

  “I think you will enjoy yourself. I’m trying to arrange to have someone you should know join us, Hauptsturmführer Rudolf Heinneman. He was also at Dachau. But he’s not well. It’s uncertain if he will be able to come.”

  Ari’s mouth went dry. The Colonel had not foreseen any of the old SS officers from Dachau being in residence in Damascus. Heinneman would spot him as a fraud!

  “I don’t seem to remember a Hauptsturmführer Heinneman,” he stalled, trying to think of an excuse for not knowing the infamous Nazi. “But then there were quite a number of officers at Dachau in ‘44, ‘45.”

  “That seems strange. I was sure you two would have worked together. You were in charge of the productive labor of the prisoners and Hauptsturmführer Heinneman was responsible for the Sonderkommandos. Your workers must have transferred to him after they were no longer strong enough to be of use to you.”

  The Sonderkommandos ran the gas chambers. Ari realized he’d better change his story. “Of course. I remember the Hauptsturmführer now. We called him ‘The Kosher Butcher.’ I’d forgotten his real name, hardly anybody used it.” He hesitated for a moment, then continued. “We talked on occasion but actually our jobs were quite distinct; we almost never came into contact.” He knew his explanation was inadequate.

  “A pity. In any event you should have plenty of old times to talk about.”

  Sweat formed where Ari held the receiver. “If not, we shall create some stories that never happened,” he said, laughing the way men do when they’re recounting some sexual exploit that is drawn from their imagination rather than their past. He switched the receiver to the other side and wiped his hand on his pants. Somehow he would have to convince Heinneman that he really was an officer at Dachau. He had one thing in his favor—he knew Heinneman well. As a young man Ari had peered through the barbed concentration camp wire and watched the bald, monocled Nazi strut around the compound. Even after so many years Ari could picture him clearly: a tall, thin man with an aquiline nose and narrow lips that always held a cigarette. Heinneman’s most distinctive feature, though, was a raised vein, running along his forehead and part of his cranium, that pulsated when he was angry. Ari was not surprised to hear he was ill; the Butcher of Dachau had to be seventy or more. Yes, he remembered him—a young man does not forget the face of the person who burned two hundred and fifty thousand Jews.

  “My driver will come for you at seven-fifteen,” Ludin said, snapping Ari back into the present.

  “I’ll be waiting in the lobby.”

  “Good, then until Sunday…”

  “Oh, one more thing before you hang up. If it is not too much of an inconvenience, Herr Ludin, that Jewess you sent me. I wouldn’t mind…”

  “What time do you want her?” Ludin asked impatiently.

  “After dinner. I see no reason to waste good money feeding her.”

  “She shall be there. Now, you must excuse me.”

  “Yes, of course. We will talk Saturday evening.”

  Ludin said good-bye and hung up. But instead of doing so himself, Ari turned around and faced the center of the lobby, affecting a continued conversation. Sitting in a leather chair on the far side of the room was a small, squat Arab, dressed in a dark business suit. Ari was not ready to jump to any hasty conclusions; he just memorized the reader’s face. Satisfied that the Arab’s physiognomy was permanently etched in his memory, he hung up and walked to the front desk.

  Approaching the bell captain, he took a ten-pound note out of his wallet. “The American, Miss Johnson. When she returns to the hotel I would consider it a favor if you called me.” Ari
slid the bill across the desk.

  “As the monsieur wishes.” The bell captain took the money and slipped in into his pants pocket.

  “I’d prefer that Miss Johnson did not know about this discussion.”

  “Of course.”

  Ari nodded and went into the bar, thinking about the incident in the alley and the man with the book, trying to create a connection. If somehow the Syrian Second Bureau had penetrated his cover, to protect him until they learned why he came to Damascus, they might have attacked the muggers. If so, that would explain the man in the lobby: a team of agents would be watching him. He took out a fifty-piaster coin and spun it on the counter. But the Syrians could not have found out he was as Israeli, not so quickly. It was impossible. And the Arab by the phone—in all likelihood he was exactly who he appeared to be, a man choosing to read in a cool place rather than venture out in the afternoon heat. Ari ordered an Al Chark beer and reached into the bowl of salted pistachio nuts the bartender slid in front of him. When the beer arrived he took a long drink. The cold liquid felt good as it rolled down his throat. He nursed the rest of the Al Chark, sipping it slowly. But an hour later he was still stuck with the same conclusion: only the Mossad and the Second Bureau had sufficient reasons to rescue him from the Palestinians.

  As he left the bar he wondered if any Israeli agents he knew nothing about had recently entered the country.

  Later, he stood on the balcony waiting for Rachael to be delivered to his room. He had asked to see her almost as an afterthought, being careful not to appear overly anxious. Ludin hadn’t seemed suspicious.

  Moving inside, Ari opened the dresser drawer and removed a bottle of Chivas Regal. The Scotch, with a stiff eighty percent import tax added on, had cost him a lot of money; but it was worth it. He was sick of the licorice taste of arak. Besides, his expense account was designed to enable him to purchase unforeseen necessities, and good Scotch was definitely a necessity. Next to the bottle lay a stack of Villars Larme de Crème chocolate bars. He had wanted to buy Rachael something. Never very good at selecting presents, he settled for the candy after rejecting a dozen more personal items.