“Why? What am I? A balm to assuage your guilty conscience? The token Jew who’s somehow different from the vermin you exterminated? Why do you want me? I thought Nazis believed they would be polluted if they slept with anyone with Jewish blood.” Anger cut through her voice. “Didn’t Hitler enact some law to protect you from the poison secreted by our genitals?”
“To me you’re a person, not a Jew.”
“In other words, a Jew’s not a person.”
He stood there numb, as if he were some clay object she was sticking her thumbs into, but on closer inspection he saw the thumbprints were his own.
“I don’t hate Jews,” he said.
Nervously she knocked the ash from the tip of her cigarette. “I don’t understand. How can a Nazi not hate Jews? It’s impossible. It doesn’t make sense.” She paused for a moment. “That is, unless…your behavior…I told you my mother was Jewish that first night in Jerusalem. It didn’t matter. You still continued to see me.” She crushed out her cigarette and looked at him.
“You’re not really a Nazi, are you?”
Ari’s cheeks whitened. He was making a mistake and he knew it; but something in his subconscious told him he could trust her, that if need be he could tell her everything. Two intruders in a hostile land, their fates were intertwined, dependent on each other. But to protect himself, to protect her, he had to remain anonymous.
“I can’t tell you who I am,” he said, dropping into the chair by the bed. “Anything I say would only endanger you.”
“How? I don’t understand. You said that before—it scares me.”
“Kim, just be patient. In a little while I’ll be able to leave here, then I’ll explain everything.”
“Why can’t you at least tell me who you are and what you’re doing in Damascus?”
“I just can’t!” he shouted. Angry at himself he moved onto the bed next to her and spoke in a gentle voice. “I’ll be finished here in ten days. Trust me until then, please, it’ll be the best for both of us.”
She kicked at the fringes hanging from the edges of the bedspread. “I want to, but…”
“All I’m asking you to do is wait for a week and a half.”
She hesitated.
“Please.”
She stared out the open window, then dropped her gaze to the floor. “I went to Aleppo to work you out of my system, but I couldn’t. I shot ten rolls of film but every time I looked through the viewfinder I kept seeing your face.” She smiled. “Even when the lens cap was on. I didn’t want to believe you were a Nazi. I tried to block it out of my mind, to convince myself that the concentration camps were a long time ago, that you could not have been part of …”
He kissed her, toppling the two of them over. Half-heartedly she struggled against him, pushing his hand away as he reached for the buttons on her blouse.
“Don’t. It’s the middle of the afternoon.”
“I noticed.”
She laughed and let him pull the soft material away from her body.
Afterward he lay back, thinking about the mission. Everything would work out, he told himself. Turning on his side, he rested his head against her shoulder.
“Is Hans Hoffmann your real name?” she asked, breaking the stillness.
“No,” he said.
“What is it?”
Silence.
“I won’t tell anybody. You can trust me.”
“I know that.”
“Why are you in Damascus?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Why not?” she said, suddenly angry. “Is screwing me all you care about?”
“If a body was all I wanted I would pay for it.”
“Well, what do you expect me to do; just jump into bed with you on demand, not knowing who you are or even what your name is—and then talk about the weather afterward?”
“When my work’s finished here…”
“What work? What are you? Some underworld figure? A smuggler? A dope dealer? An assassin?” She hesitated. “A spy?”
“Does it matter if I’m any of those things—or all of them?”
“Yes, no. I don’t know. Oh God, why can’t we just get out of here.” She kicked at the blankets. “So don’t tell me, don’t tell me anything.” She slammed her head into the pillow.
He moved toward the side of the bed and stepped on the floor. “Just be patient. After the twenty-second I’ll be able to tell you everything.”
She stretched her hand toward him. “Don’t leave yet.”
“I have to.”
“More secret business?”
“Yes,” he nodded, dressing quickly.
“Will you be back early?”
“I don’t know, maybe. I’ll call you.” He stretched across the bed to kiss her good-bye but as he came near she turned away.
◆◆◆
After Muslim troops wrestled control of Damascus from the Byzantine Empire in 635, the Jews and Christians were pressed into those parts of the city farthest from the west winds and fresh waters of Lebanon. Ari thought about this as he squeezed through a crowd of veiled women and sweaty men on the Street Called Straight. Heading east toward the Bab Touma, the Christian quarter, he turned the corner and neared a sherbet seller. Wearing red and white striped robes, with brass ewers strapped to his chest and bowls clicking, the man approached, urging him to “eat the sweet fruits of Damascus and make love five times a day.” Ari shook his head no, and increased his gait, skirting around two dogs fighting over a mutton bone in the narrow street.
The Bab Touma, crushed and confused, its streets wrapped in sudden belts of din and silence, struck Ari as being medieval. The few new houses he spotted seemed to be wedged in against the jumbled architecture of other generations. Decorated coffee tables, shesh-besh boards, mother-of-pearl inlaid boxes, and polygonal stools called kursi spilled onto the sidewalk from open shops. Soon he passed the khan of Suleiman Pasha, a Turkish warehouse, once filled with bales of Chinese and Indian silk. Now, empty oil drums lined its crumbling walls.
As he proceeded north up Dja Afar Street in the direction of the Church of Saint Ananias the lane twisted and narrowed, winding past closed doors. From around a curve in the alley a group of ragged boys emerged, their pajama-like shirts dirty and torn. Realizing from his dress and coloring that Ari was a foreigner, they clustered around him chanting: “Anania! Anania!” in unison. He shook his head, indicating that he was not interested in visiting the church. But they insisted, their cry reminiscent of the bleating of sheep. Ari dug into his pocket, withdrew a handful of coins, and flung them back behind him. The gleeful boys scurried after the money, squealing and shouting as they fought each other for the piasters. Ari hurried out of the alley and through the ancient Roman arch from whose base Azaryeh Street began—certain now that he wasn’t being followed.
Reaching his destination, he walked down a flight of stairs to the dark Café Shaam. Since Ottoman rule the kahwa has been an accepted meeting place for student groups, conspiring merchants, army officers, and government officials. In fact the city’s coffee houses are so closely linked with political factions, according to the affiliations of their customers, that the police and Internal Security Service mapped and classified them, invariably asking suspects which ones they patronized.
Ari stood at the entrance for a while waiting for his eyes to adjust to the lack of light. Kibbutz Revivim’s scale model of Damascus was exact; Ari had found the café without difficulty. Stepping inside, he glanced at the luminous dial on his watch. It read 5:30; he was half an hour early. As his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness he made out the shadowy figures of men seated at low tables, playing shesh-besh, and sucking on glowing nargilehs. The heavy aroma of tobacco and hashish hung in the air. Ari moved across the room and sat on a straw stool at a vacant table. In the center of the table was a nargileh. He removed the cover and dumped a small quantity of French Gitanes Blend into the metal bowl at the top of the pipe. Soon a special waiter approached and placed a
chunk of burning coal over the tobacco. After snapping the lid back on Ari brought the long snakelike tube to his mouth and inhaled. The water in the glass jar at the base of the nargileh bubbled as the smoke was drawn through it, cooled, and sucked into his mouth.
After a while a different waiter moved near and asked if he would like something to eat. Ari ordered salted olives, red peppers, a tray of sweetmeats, and a pot of mint tea. In the event Lieutenant Barkai was late, he would wait. Ari assumed that Barkai had crossed safely into Syria. He was supposed to have arrived early today. Carrying a forged Moroccan passport, the French- and Arabic-speaking lieutenant should have had no trouble entering the country.
While he waited Ari nibbled the sweetmeats and occasionally sucked on the nargileh. He let the tea steep. Waiting was the fundamental task of intelligence agents. Anyone could be trained to kill or blow up buildings. But the ability to wait for hours, days, or weeks if need be, without being tense, without betraying that you indeed were engaged in an assignment—such patience could not be taught. It had to exist in a person.
Ari allowed the thoughts to ripple through him. Noticing the total absence of women in the café, he mused about the anomalies of Muslim Syria. Fifty years ago polygamy and concubines had flourished in Damascus and a generation before that a woman appearing on the streets unveiled was automatically assumed to be a prostitute and could have been slain by any male passerby without fear of retribution. Even now many women would not talk to a man openly, or dare meet him; for such behavior could easily taint their reputations. A woman who has been touched by another man is often considered unacceptable by prospective suitors. On the eve of Druze weddings the bride hands her husband a knife and asks him to stab her should she not prove a virgin. Even after marriage most Syrian women are relegated to a lowly status. They cannot leave their homes without their husband’s permission and rarely speak with his friends, or for that matter converse with their own spouses in public. Syrian men never talk about their wives and consider it an insult to be asked about them. Because of the distance they must keep from women, many males find release from otherwise unsatisfiable pressures in homosexuality. In the far corner of the room two young men sat close together, one’s hands reaching under the other’s loose robes.
Behind the counter of the coffee house the radio blared the high-pitched songs of Om Kasthum, the beloved Egyptian singer whose funeral in Cairo in 1975 drew crowds as large as, and causing as much damage as, the mourners who rampaged through the Egyptian capital following the interment of Nasser five years earlier. After a while Ari’s thoughts drifted to Kim. He wondered whether his life still had to revolve solely around the Service. In any event, he swore that he would not let this assignment ruin his relationship with her. Sweeping the room with his eyes, he checked to make sure that Barkai was not seated at one of the low tables. Then he asked the waiter for a shesh-besh set and began playing against himself.
The blacks were ahead of the whites three games to one when Ari poured out the last of the tea. He slowly took one sip from the small porcelain cup at a time. The liquid left an unpleasant aftertaste in his mouth. It was lukewarm and poorly strained.
The hours ground into each other then blew away. Two men at a neighboring table, who wore styleless black suits and flowing keffigehs tied with gold ropes, offered Ari some hashish to mix with his tobacco. He smiled at them, graciously declined, then looked at his watch and followed the second hand around the dial. The calendar date read the twelfth, the day the Colonel had set for the first meeting between the two halves of Operation Goshen. After ordering another pot of tea Ari took up the small dice and rolled, beginning game five of the blacks against the whites. A double six came up and the blacks surged out ahead again. He wondered if the results of the game weren’t somehow symbolic.
It was a little after nine when Ari first allowed himself to realize that Barkai probably wasn’t coming. By ten-thirty he was sure of it. But there was always a chance the lieutenant had been delayed and would still show. So Ari tossed the dice, relit the pipe, and waited. The water at the bottom of the nargileh was warm now, and it did little to cool the harsh tobacco. Ari let the tube drop from his mouth and focused his concentration on the game. When the music blaring through the café was interrupted for the last and final news report of the night at midnight, he stood slowly, stretched, and headed for the door.
Outside he leaned against the stone wall of the building, hoping that if he lingered an additional minute Barkai might miraculously appear. The minute turned into two, then five. Ari walked up the steps to the street and stopped, listening hard to what he thought was the sound of approaching footsteps—but in reality was the creation of his own imagination.
He stared to walk under the moonless sky. The combination of the darkness of the streets, the arches over them, and the narrowness between the walls was a bit unnerving. From a nearby passageway he heard the howl of a wolf-dog, followed by rasping and swishing sounds as the animal dragged refuse along the gutter. Wild dogs, long-muzzled like wolves, slept in the fields and ruins during the day, then glided into the old city at night, after the town was silent. Suddenly a pack of them, snarling and yelping, rushed up and attacked the first dog. The barking, echoing down the dark alleys, sent a shiver through Ari. He saw nothing. He only heard the noise: the horrible howling, the snapping, the snarling. The attacked animal cried out in a long, high-pitched wail. Then its throat was ripped open and silenced.
Ari hurried through the night, the sounds of the dogs fading behind him. A fallback meeting with Barkai had been arranged for the eighteenth at noon. If he was not contacted at the hotel he would have to wait until then.
14.
SEPTEMBER 16
Franz Ludin’s driver picked Ari up at the New Ommayad and drove toward the western edge of the city, over the Nabek Bridge and into the fashionable Jisr district. Turning into Ibrahim Mansour Street, they passed the honey-colored minaret of the Raoudah Mosque spiraling into the sky directly across from the walled Italian Embassy, which had handled diplomatic relations with the United States until the President Assad reestablished ties with America in 1974. Soon the Czech Skoda stopped in front of a white stone villa at 14 Ataa el-Aiyouby Street, between the Banque de Syrie d’Outre-Mer and a florist shop. Ari got out and passed through a fountain courtyard into an arcade with vines climbing through the latticework. Hearing his approaching footsteps, Ludin swung the front door open and welcomed his guest in.
Ari bowed with Prussian correctness. “I’ve been looking forward to this evening.” With trepidation, he might have added. For if Rudolf Heinneman was well enough to attend the party, and his suspicions were roused by not remembering an Untersturmführer Hans Hoffmann, Operation Goshen would meet an abrupt end—and Ari’s life with it. Ludin led him through the classically Syrian house whose rooms, opening into two courtyards, were not linked together. As they stepped outside into the iwan the three men standing there stopped talking. A quick glance informed Ari that though they were all German émigrés, Heinneman was not among them.
“Kameraden, I would like to introduce SS Untersturmführer Hans Hoffmann.”
Ari smacked his heels together and remained at attention as the three men approached.
“Herr Hoffmann, may I introduce Colonel Ludwig Streicher, former instructor in military tactics at the Berlin War Academy, presently adviser to the Syrian army; my associate from Goebbels’s propaganda ministry, Gunther Brunner; and Adolf Eichmann’s aide, Heinrich Wolff.” The three men knocked the leather of their shoes together, each bowing stiffly as he was introduced.
Following the war these Nazis, along with an estimated one hundred former Reich officials still living in Damascus, were actively recruited as military advisers by the Arab Wehrmacht Lieutenant Colonel Akhram Tabassa. Some, contacted in Germany and Austria by former Nazis carrying Syrian passports, underwent a crash course in Arabic, then proceeded to Rome and Geneva where clandestine processing stations set up in the Syrian legations
supplied them with the papers necessary for travel to the Middle East. Others, fugitives contracted by the French and Spanish foreign legions to fight in Indochina, were sold to the Syrians for $500 apiece, smuggled through the French zone in Germany under the guise of legionnaires, and delivered for embarkation to ports in Italy and Turkey. The higher-ranking German officers, watched over by the paternal eye of SS Hauptsturmführer Rostal, who was in charge of the ODESSA’s European branch, gathered in Augsburg where they were given forged passports. From there they were driven across the border in newspaper delivery trucks to Lindau on Lake Constance, where Austrian women and children, hired to pose as their relatives, accompanied them to St. Gallen in Switzerland. Major Gunther von Hardenberg, stationed in Beirut, met each plane from Geneva. His association for Christian German War Refugees assigned the Nazis to units in the Syrian army and helped them on their last lap to Damascus. Ludin, Streicher, Wolff, and Brunner had all been passengers on Hauptsturmführer Rostal’s underground railroad.
As Ludin poured a round of drinks Ludwig Streicher approached Ari, glass in hand. “When we get together like this it reminds me how much I miss Germany. Where did you serve during the war?”
“Dachau.”
Streicher turned to their host. “It’s a pity Heinneman couldn’t be here. I’m sure he would have enjoyed speaking to Herr Hoffmann.”
Ari began to relax—he had escaped the Butcher of Dachau, again. Now, with the threat to his cover eliminated, he could concentrate on other matters. Accidentally he had struck a gold mine of high-ranking Nazi officers. He decided that upon returning to the hotel he would hide a coded request for further instructions in one of the backgammon sets and send it to Frankfurt. Maybe the Colonel would give him permission to liquidate Ludin and the others, if he could figure out a way to do it without jeopardizing his principal assignment. That is, if he heard from the Colonel. Though he had tried to put it out of his mind, the fact that Barkai had not shown up worried him—it worried him a lot.
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