The Jerusalem Assassin (26 page)

A man in oversized sunglasses came out of the Cadillac and climbed into the ambulance. The doors closed, and a moment later they were moving again.

Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin sat on the bench and took off his glasses. His face was wrinkled, his hair almost white, but his vital gruffness hadn’t changed.

Elie cleared his throat. “Shalom, Yitzhak.”

“Welcome home, Weiss.” Unlike most of his generation, Yitzhak Rabin was a born Israeli, not an immigrant from Europe, and his Hebrew was free of any Diaspora accent. “How’re you feeling?”

“In need of a major overhaul.” Elie coughed.

“The doctors at Hadassah Hospital will put you back on your feet.” Rabin leaned closer. “You’ve done Israel a great service by removing Al-Mazir, Abu Yusef, and their Saudi sponsor. Arafat can now proceed with the third phase of the Oslo process. And you can finally rest.”

“Rest? I must get back to work. Great dangers ahead—”

“You’ve done enough.” Rabin tilted his head sideways, signaling impatience. “It’s the era of peace, my friend. Two states for two people.”

“It’ll never happen if your government falls. I told you. Everything is lined up.”

“I can’t accept your deal.”

So that’s what he came to say.

“Don’t you want to stay in power? Don’t you want Oslo to succeed?”

Rabin shifted on the hard bench. “I can’t appoint you intelligence czar. Your agenda is too militant.”

“Peace won’t work without it. Carrots need sticks. Our enemies need deterrence.”

“You’re an old warrior. Me too. For us, peace is hard to believe in. But it’s happening.”

“All the more reason to eliminate anti-Semitic germs before they infect those willing to make peace with us. My network will launch—”

“Your time is over, Weiss. Retire, pass the torch, let other people do the job. We’ll take care of your people, of course, once you tell us who they are.”

Elie tried to speak, yet no voice sounded. He coughed again, and the burning in his chest blurred his vision. It was maddening that now, when he had finally managed to line up all his cards in a neat row, his own body was betraying him.

“Calm down, Weiss.” The prime minister rested his hand on Eli’s forearm. “Everything is taken care of.”

Feeling Yitzhak Rabin’s cool hand against his burning skin sent a shudder through Elie. It was a large hand, soft yet meaty, like a farmer’s hand that had been away from the plow for too long. This unexpected gesture of affection told Elie that this was a farewell visit, not the bargaining among equals he had expected. “Not yet.” He forced the words out. “There’s work to be done.”

Rabin smiled, his eyes creased. “Your life is a legend. I know better than anyone else that our victory in sixty-seven would have been a terrible defeat, a calamity, if not for your secret operation to destroy the UN radar. We owe you the glory of the Six Day War. And the Yom Kippur War, which could have been a second Holocaust if not for you. And now, our peace with Arafat would have been in peril if not for your decisive actions in Paris.”

“There’s more—”

“It’s time to say
enough.
You must cooperate with the Shin Bet in winding down your operations. It’s an order!”

Elie reached with great effort and grabbed the prime minister’s shirt. “Don’t you understand? I’m about to save you!”

“Save me?” Rabin laughed. “I have signed a peace agreement with Jordan, two interim agreements with the Palestinians—a dream come true! But when I come home at night, Orthodox hoodlums curse me and wave posters showing me in SS uniform. And to get Knesset approval for Oslo, I had to rely on the Arab members, and Shimon Peres had to bribe a member with a ministerial post and a staff car to get the tiebreaking vote. How can you help me? Get real!” The prime minister lit a cigarette, drawing on it a few times, filling the ambulance with smoke.

Elie extended his hand.

Rabin gave him the cigarette. “I don’t need killers anymore. I need peacemakers—doctors, scientists, entrepreneurs, farmers, builders. Your time has passed, Weiss, and my time will pass soon as well. History will recognize us for what we’ve done for our people—you in secret, me in public.”

The smoke filled Elie’s lungs. He let it out slowly. “I’ve set things in motion. To help you regain popularity.”

“I’m not making deals.”

“Imagine. A right-wing assassin. Caught red-handed. In public.” He drew from the cigarette and spoke while smoke came from his mouth. “In front of TV cameras. Your bulletproof vest shown to the world. The assassin’s bullets still stuck in it. You’ll bounce in the polls. You’ll win!”

“I don’t like to wear a bulletproof vest.”

“You should. You must!”

Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin got up, keeping his head bowed under the roof of the ambulance. He knocked three times on the partition separating the driver’s cabin. “I’ll win public opinion with peace, not with bullets.”

“The wheels are already turning.” Elie rose on one elbow. “You’ll see! Each bullet’s worth a million votes—”

“Shin Bet is dealing with local terrorists—Muslim Arabs, Orthodox Jews, whatever. They keep us safe. Keeps
me
safe.”

“It’s my expertise.” Elie fought to keep his voice even. “Orthodox militants can bring down Israel. I still have assets.”

“We have enough moles.” Rabin knocked on the partition again. “You’re very sick, Weiss. Make peace with the past. Take pride in what you’ve achieved. And share everything with the boys. Including your financial resources. We’re all on the same side, you know?”

“Come on, Yitzhak.” Elie tried to smile, feeling the ambulance slow down. “We go a long way back. Once I’m recovered, we can do great things together. Say the word, and the doctors will save me. They kept Golda alive for ten years with lung cancer!”

“Be well, Weiss.”

“I have money for your campaign.” Elie’s voice was reduced to hoarse screeching. He grasped the heavy bible, lifting it. “Billions of dollars—”

The ambulance swerved to the side of the road, bumping over a pothole, and the bible dropped to the floor.

Rabin picked it up, put it on Elie’s chest, and stepped down from the ambulance. A few seconds later, his chauffeur-driven Cadillac departed toward Jerusalem with a hiss of its powerful engine.

The nurse reappeared. She fixed the pillow under Elie’s head. The ambulance continued on, shaking on the bumpy road.

He gestured at the small window. She opened it, and a soft breeze carried in the scents of Jerusalem pine. He watched the trees pass by, heard the whistles of sparrows, and contemplated his next move.

*

Tanya greeted the two soldiers at the entrance to the Mount Herzl Cemetery. She followed the path through the rows of rectangular gravestones, each bearing the name of a dead soldier. Elderly parents and a few young women tended to pots of flowers. An old man lounged in a beach chair, arguing with a headstone, his hands gesticulating in emphasis.

She reached Lemmy’s grave and knelt beside it to brush off the dust and dry leaves from a recent storm. Her movements were almost automatic after years of practice—a ritual she had kept since 1967, stopping by every time she visited Israel. A few pieces of gravel rested on the stone—a mourners’ custom. She counted six—one for each time Rabbi Gerster had visited his son since she had last cleaned the headstone. She sighed.
O, Abraham, what pain we’ve caused each other.

With a handkerchief she cleaned the letters carved into the stone, shining each one patiently, and stepped back to look at the writing:

Private Jerusalem (“Lemmy”) Gerster

Killed in Battle, June 7, 1967

In the Defense of Israel

God Will Avenge His Blood

Tanya brushed off an errand leaf. She noticed age spots on the back of her hand. So many years had passed. Such a loss. Unfair. Lemmy would have been forty-six now, a grown man with a family and a career. Successful. Happy. But no, he had been deprived of all the wonderful experiences of adult life. He was dead. Buried. Gone.

“Haven’t seen you in a long time.”

She turned, wiping her tears.

It was the old man with the beach chair, now folded under his arm. “Been away, eh?” His handlebar mustache moved with each word. It would have been comical if not for the wet lines down his creased cheeks.

Tanya nodded.

“I visit my son every day. I’m retired, wife’s dead, so what else is there?”

“I work,” she said, “to keep my mind busy.”

He gestured at Lemmy’s grave. “Your son?”

She hesitated. “Lover.”

“Ah, well. That’s a different kind of pain.” The old man looked at Lemmy’s inscription, likely trying to calculate their age difference.

“He was eighteen, I was thirty-seven.”

“A boy with good taste.”

“Thank you.” She thought for a moment, and then told the stranger what she had not told anyone else. “I killed him.”

He pointed to the stone. “Says here he was killed in battle. You don’t look Arab to me.”

“If not for me, he wouldn’t have been on the Golan Heights. Or in the army.”

“That explains it.” The man put down the folded chair and leaned on it like a crutch. “The men of Neturay Karta don’t enlist in the army.”

“How do you know he was from Neturay Karta?”

“I see his father here every once in a while. The infamous Rabbi Abraham Gerster, leader of the ultra-Orthodox fanatics. But he’s not the extremist the media made him out to be. A kind man, actually.”

“True.” Tanya sighed. “And I took away his only child.”

“Do you have any children?”

Tanya hesitated. “A daughter.”

“No husband?”

She shook her head. No one but Elie and Abraham knew that her daughter, Professor Bira Galinski, was the daughter of SS Oberstgruppenführer Klaus von Koenig, whom Abraham shot dead in the snowy forest one night near the end of World War II.

“Guilt is the worst pain.” The man pointed at his son’s grave. “Shalom was our only child. Our pride and joy. A handsome, smart, miracle boy. Our precious Shalom.” He sighed. “An irony, isn’t it? We named our baby for peace, and he grew up to die in war.”

“Yes,” Tanya said, choking on sudden tears. “An irony.”

“As an only child, Shalom was supposed to serve in an office, far from the front. But I agreed to sign a consent form. He wanted to serve as a frogman. It was a matter of pride for him, to serve in a fighting unit, like his friends. And he had never asked for anything else. What could I do? Refuse his only request?” He stooped, as if all the air deflated from him. “
Ay, yai, yai.
Don’t tell me about guilt. I hold a world record in guilt.”

“I’m close behind you,” Tanya said. “If not for me seducing him, Lemmy would have stayed in the yeshiva, studying Talmud, becoming a rabbi. I often think of what he lost—all those beginnings that make life worth it—a wedding, a first child’s birth, a baby’s smile, the joys of a full life—”

“Don’t beat yourself up.” The old man waved his hand. “Those black hats live in a kosher cocoon. At least you gave him a taste of real life before he died.”

She remembered Lemmy on top of her, inside her, crying her name, possessed by passion and joy. The memory made her smile. “Thank you for putting it in perspective.”

“My pleasure.” He glanced at his wristwatch. “Got to see the wife before dark. She’s at Sanhedriah Cemetery. So, shalom!”

“Shalom.”

He turned toward his son’s grave and yelled, “See you tomorrow,
Boychik!
”

Tanya sat on the ground by Lemmy’s grave. His face came to her, tanned under the military haircut, his blue eyes squinted in laughter, his lips moist and sweet and warm. Despite what the old man had said, the guilt would forever fester in her. She had won Lemmy’s heart, and his body too. But to achieve that, she had to tear him away from his world and put him on a path that took him to war and made him another statistic in the great victory of the Six Day War. And now, twenty-eight years later, Abraham was living as a monk among the ultra-Orthodox, and Tanya was working around the clock without a break lest her mind find the time to roam a regrettable past. And if she ever retired from Mossad, would she come here every day with a beach chair to carry on a conversation with a dead boy?

A while later she got up to leave. It was true, she realized, that the older you get, the fresher your memories become. Before she reached the gate, rain started to fall. She quickened her pace. The drizzle turned to a downpour. The guards hid under a canopy.

Bira leaned over and opened the passenger door. She held a pen between her teeth and a pile of students’ exams in her lap. “You’re soaked.” She handed Tanya a box of Kleenex.

The rain drummed on the roof of the car, and the water formed streams down the windshield, giving the world a distorted, gray appearance.

When she wiped her face, the thin tissue paper fell apart, the pieces sticking to Tanya’s skin. “Look at this. Who makes this junk?”

“It’s not a bath towel, Mom.”

They looked at each other and burst out laughing.

“Do you see these spots?” Tanya showed the back of her hand to Bira. “Like an old woman!”

Bira put the exams on the back seat and turned on the engine. “You’re sixty-seven. What do you expect? Acne?”

“I expect nothing,” Tanya said. “I had misery when I was young and beautiful, so why should I care about getting old.”

“Why don’t you retire and come live with us? The kids would love it. Eytan wants to build an extra bathroom to provide you with privacy. He’s giving a new meaning to the Oedipal complex—he’s in love with his mother-in-law!”

Tanya looked out the window at the passing views of wet sidewalks and people bent under umbrellas. “A man told me that he sees Abraham here often.”

“Don’t change the subject.”

“I wish you didn’t choose a career that runs so opposite to his people.”

“You agree with what he said?” Bira quoted. “‘Archeologists incite hate and violence between secular and Orthodox Jews for the sake of meaningless clay shards!’”

“Here we go again.” Tanya sighed. “You could sympathize a tiny bit with his lifelong efforts to prevent fighting among Jews—”