An Accidental Murder: An Avram Cohen Mystery (9 page)

If half the reason he had put their names and faces out of his mind at the time was to help preserve the very secrecy required for the success of their relocation, the other half was his feeling of doubt about exile as a solution.

Cohen carefully collected the names. The trouble was that as part of the secrecy of the operation, nothing existed in the records about the informant’s new name. So his first round through the boxes and folders was to jog his memory and the second was to shake it hard, trying to remember the new names in the new passports.

It became a routine: Sunday through Thursday, every afternoon at five o’clock, Cohen walked the two kilometers to the Russian Compound, hoping that if there was indeed an assassin out there after him, the killer would try to make an Achilles’ heel out of the habit. But nothing, absolutely nothing, jumped out at him in the dark on his way home at midnight. No shots were fired at his window, though TMC was doing its best to keep the story of the attack alive in America and Europe.

He turned down every publisher in Israel who wanted his book. There were no explanations offered for anyone who managed to get his new phone number, which he had given to barely ten people. By December he was already deliberating ordering yet another new phone number that only a handful would know.

“So write a new one, for us,” said the Israeli publishers.

But Cohen just said no.

A week after Frankfurt, he had finally tracked down Lassman in New York at Tina’s office. They spent less than two minutes on the phone, with Cohen ordering Lassman not to discuss the case publicly. “No story, no interviews, nothing,” Cohen instructed. “Not until I say so.”

“You can’t stop me from digging up what I can find,” Lassman pointed out. “And I’m going after that crowd of Kaplan’s. Those nuts paying for other nuts to make religious war.”

“Dig wherever you want. Just make sure none of the dirt lands on my yard,” Cohen warned.

“But—”

“No buts about it,” Cohen interrupted. He spent five minutes on the phone with Tina, and made clear . to her that the investigation into the assassination attempt was very delicate, and any public appearance by him was too dangerous to make. He wasn’t giving interviews.

“You’re a regular Salman Rushdie,” Tina exclaimed.

“How can you not let us make press about it?”

“Do what you want. Just don’t give my number to anyone.

And do not compare me to Salman Rushdie. No state, no religion, has declared war on me. Yes, someone might have tried to kill me. But nobody has taken credit for it.

Not Jews. Not Moslems.”

Occasionally he spoke with his former assistant, Nissim Levy, sometimes calling with a question to clarify a point raised by one of the documents he found in the archives, sometimes because Nissim called to ask for Cohen’s advice.

Now chief of Intelligence for the Southern District, Levy had become a rising star in the police after a couple of years of suffering in small-town exile in the Negev as a result of his affiliation with Cohen’s own unhappy departure from the force.

Nissim’s skills as a cop—as one taught by Cohen— shone in the dusty development town where he was sent so ignominiously after being assistant to chief of CID in Jerusalem. In three years—in no small part because of two changes of police minister, as well as an investigation that Cohen accidentally handled in a private capacity—Nissim’s reputation improved enough to take him to the Southern District headquarters as deputy chief of Intelligence, and when his boss died of a heart attack the previous year, Nissim had become acting intelligence officer for the district.

Even if Nissim now lived in the south, had a wife—and soon a baby—and they only saw each other when Nissim was in Jerusalem for a meeting because Cohen hated traveling, they were as close as father and son. Cohen was, after all, almost old enough to be Levy’s father. And Nissim was worried.

“Nazis?” he had asked Cohen the first time they discussed the events in Frankfurt, that first week Cohen was back. Cohen had reassured him that the German police were looking into that possibility. Cohen had no intentions of digging in that direction.

And like Leterhaus—though with a far better understanding of the situation—Nissim asked about the radical right in Israel.

“Since the Rabin assassination they’ve been lying low,” Cohen said.

“Yes, but now they’ve got a government they like,” Nissim said. “Friends in high places.”

“All the more reason for them to lie low,” Cohen said.

“Besides, they know I’m out of things,” he reminded his former assistant. “And with even the government they like meeting Arafat, they realize they’re in the minority.”

“All the more reason for them to act.”

“I’m not in the force anymore,” Cohen emphasized.

“No, but you helped out in that Temple Mount business.”

“That was more than three years ago. Nobody’s heard from me since.” “The inspector general says that … “

“… I’m one of his ‘ friends,’” Cohen finished the sentence bitterly. “That’s politics,” Cohen reminded Levy.

Cohen had established a scholarship fund for the children of police officers, but the fifth floor wanted a recreation center for policemen’s families. “And don’t you ever forget it,” he reminded Levy. “Especially when he’s putting his arm around you.”

“He’s always asking me about you,” said Levy.

“You mean about me funding the recreation center?” “Yes,” Levy admitted. “He usually mentions it.”

“You see,” Cohen pointed out, “politics.”

“So which way are you looking?” Nissim asked.

“Into the past,” Cohen had said, almost dreamily. “But I’d rather hear about your present,” he told Levy.

“I’ve got Shvilli mapping the Russians, and have begun working with the Palestinian Authority police on stolen car rings. The Jordanians are incredibly cooperative. If things keep up this way, we’ll finally shut down the Bedouin smuggling routes across the Sinai and the Negev for good.

Eilat’s booming. Gambling. Massage parlors. Tourism’s down a bit, but they still outnumber residents. I asked for Shvilli. He’s doing a good job.” “Why not?” Cohen had said.

“Well, you know. He’s had his share of troubles.”

“He’s a good man. The best when Russians are involved.”

“I know, I know, you don’t have to convince me. It’s Bendor who needs convincing.” Ya’acov Bendor was Southern District commander, Nissim’s boss.

“You’ve got the inspector general behind you.” Cohen smiled. “You told me yourself.”

“That was almost a year ago,” Nissim pointed out. “You know how the flag flies on the fifth floor. The immigrant party’s not happy about high-profile task forces against Russian Mafia. And Bendor’s complaining about the budget.”

Cohen had laughed at the time.

“What’s so funny?” Levy had asked, almost offended.

“You sound just like me in the old days,” Cohen had said.

So it continued through the weeks and months following Frankfurt. But by the end of the year, three months after the incident, Leterhaus was deep at work on a case involving a serial murderer working the brothels of his city, and the BKA and BND were busy with their own agenda. Leterhaus still had flags out for anything related to Cohen coming out of neo-Nazi circles but nothing came in. His interviews with the known Israeli criminals in town came to naught, not even a rumor that might have led further.

The two who gave any reaction at all to Cohen’s name when Leterhaus interviewed them, described an officer who had been fair and helpful, even if he wasn’t friendly.

The Mossad and Shabak both were convinced, like Cohen, that the violent right wing might be angry at him, but Cohen wasn’t an important enough target. He began to believe it had all been a mistake, an accident. He even suggested that Leterhaus dig back into the hotel records for other guests who might have been targets. He didn’t let down his alert completely, of course. His search in the archives was still not over. But gradually, Cohen cut back his visits to the Russian Compound attic to only three times a week, instead of four, and then only twice a week he spent sitting beside the round window, even if it was only cracked open to a winter rain, reading files, and breathing the dusty air of his past, sometimes even forgetting for a moment what exactly he was seeking.

The storms attacked simultaneously from Africa and Asia, two low-pressure areas colliding over the intersection of three continents. It became a national emergency, taking precedence over everything, even the latest development in the peace process, and the brewing constitutional crisis over the Supreme Court’s authority.

Falling snow began sticking to the ground that Friday afternoon in Jerusalem. By dusk, there was no way Ahuva would allow Cohen to drive down to Tel Aviv for the weekend.

By eight o’clock, the snow in the street outside his house was ankle high, and if he intended to surprise her the weather prevented it. He had chains in the trunk of his car, but the radio reports were pleading with Jerusalemites to stay out of their cars unless it was an absolute emergency.

He spent much of the day on the Net wandering from Web sites about food to sites about history, following links as he followed clues, sipping cognac, and enjoying the sense of travel without having to leave home.

But just after ten o’clock, the electricity fell in the neighborhood.

He went to bed and slept deeply. Saturday, he stayed home all day. A stiff chill clamped the city beneath heavy gray clouds that threatened more snow. The municipality was salting the icy roads, said his transistor radio.

The army had sent plows to clear thoroughfares. But the ice was devilish, and the emergency regulations regarding driving remained in effect. “The worst snow storm in sixty years,” said the Voice of Israel. Army Radio said it was the worst in forty years. The electricity flickered back on for a moment in the afternoon but then crashed again. The weather did improve: rain, not snow, fell, sweeping away the small banks of snow and turning the ice into slush. Only at dusk did the electricity return completely. He put Daniel Beernbaum’s Beethoven piano concertos into the CDROM that evening while he surfed for pleasure, finally going to bed around midnight, planning on reopening the 1974 boxes in the attic archives of the Russian Compound the next day when he continued his search into his past.

Just before dawn that Sunday morning, as one of his several recurring nightmares reached the point of gunshot, alarms, and a sense of breathlessness from running as fast as he could away from the sound of ringing bells, he realized that it was the phone chasing him from beside his bed.

Reaching for it in the dark, he knocked the receiver to the floor.

“Avram? Cohen? Boss?” High-pitched and urgent, it sounded vaguely familiar but he couldn’t tell if the tinny sound was a calm woman or a nervous man. It came from the floor where he fumbled the phone into the darkness.

His hand found the spiraled wire and he yanked the receiver to the bed, dropping it on the pillow beside his head. His eyes still closed, he mumbled a hello.

“Boss?” the voice asked again.

It had been a long time since anyone called him boss.

“What time is it?” he demanded to know from whomever in his past suddenly intruded on his sleep. “How’d you get this number?”

“Yeah, that’s you,” the caller decided, and finally Cohen recognized the voice. “It’s five forty-five, boss. In the morning,” he added, just in case some of the rumors about Cohen were true and he really was working at night and sleeping during the day.

“Shvilli,” Cohen said, finally recognizing the voice.

It had been more than five years since Shvilli worked for Cohen. The last time Shvilli called his former boss was a year and a half earlier, to invite Cohen to a wedding. The Georgian-born, Soviet-trained polylinguist, whose favorite sport as a youth had been boxing, was giving away his first daughter, to a young lawyer she had been dating for less than a year. “I don’t know whether to hug him or kill him,” Shvilli had confessed to Cohen. “A lawyer,” he complained.

“With an earring.” Cohen laughed then. Now, he asked, “What’s wrong?”

Shvilli wasn’t calling to invite him at dawn to invite him to a brit.

“I’ve got bad news.” “Obviously,” said Cohen. “Just tell me, Misha,” he ordered, using Shvilli’s first name deliberately.

“Nissim is dead.”

Pain propelled by memories shot through Cohen’s mind like rain driven before the wind. He closed his eyes and for a moment thought he might be dreaming, that everything he expected in the nightmares he knew so well had suddenly given way to a new dream from which he’d yet awake sweaty, afraid.

Memories flooded him. Levy asking a question, Levy answering a question; from Levy’s first days in Cohen’s office, to the last—and beyond, when Levy’s natural loyalties to Cohen made the junior officer suspect to the fifth floor of national headquarters. It would take nearly two years before Cohen could repair the damage his reputation did to Levy’s career.

“Boss, you all right?” Shvilli finally asked.

Then, as suddenly as the phone call woke him, indeed as the too-familiar gunshot in his nightmare always inevitably arrived, he was alert and focused like so many times in the past when survival required it.

“Hold on,” Cohen said, seeking light, and a way to squelch the sour taste of alcohol-induced sleep that made his mouth feel glued shut. He pulled the little chain on the heavy brass night lamp on the table beside the bed. It illuminated a pale puddle at the bottom of the water glass he used for the cognac and water he drank before going to sleep. He downed those last few drops to get some moisture back into his dry mouth, smacking his lips with the sudden burn.

“How?” he asked.

“Looks like an accident,” Shvilli said.

“Car?” Cohen guessed sadly.

“Yes,” Shvilli admitted tersely.

“Where?”

“Down near Eilat.”

“In this weather?” Cohen asked, with as much curiosity as anger.

Flooding wadis could sweep across a dip in the road and take a car dozens of kilometers away. What looked like a puddle as a car started into a dip on the road could suddenly be window high, smashing into the car, carrying it kilometers off the road. Buses, even loaded trucks, were known to be shoved aside by the rage of one of those flash rivers. Cars sometimes ended up in the deep ravines, dropping from the Negev plateau down to the Jordan Rift, the lowest place on earth. “He was out on the road in this weather?” Cohen repeated.