The Jerusalem Assassin (45 page)

“A handsome fellow,” Elie said. “Is he a hat salesman?”

“Don’t!” Agent Cohen poked Elie’s chest. “Tell me where to find him, because if I have to track him down myself—and I will!—then I’m going to shoot him in the head!”

Elie looked down at the poking finger. “Be careful where you stick it.”

“I’m warning you! He’ll be trapped and killed like a stray dog!”

“It’s not good to be obsessed with revenge. All because he shot your guy in the leg?”

“And knocked out a nurse at Hadassah!”

“You should be grateful that your agents survived those encounters.” Elie tapped the Amsterdam photo. “And how is Mossad’s Europe chief doing?”

The mention of Tanya’s official title caused Agent Cohen to exhale and drop into a chair. “We’re not sure. She was picked up by an ambulance in pretty bad shape but doesn’t appear on any patient list.”

Elie chuckled. “It’s not so easy to operate in Europe, is it?”

“We’re learning.”

“Let me speak to your Number One. I’ll advise him to recall all his Shin Bet boys, send you back to chasing Arab stone-throwers in the refugee camps.”

“She looks terrible.” Gideon spoke for the first time. “Didn’t you follow her to the hospital?”

“It’s more complicated than that,” Agent Cohen said. “There are sixteen hospitals nearby, a lot more within driving distance of Amsterdam. The Dutch emergency services and hospitals are connected to a central computer system, which is having some problems right now.”

“That’s odd,” Gideon said. “What are they doing about patients’ records, medical histories, prescriptions, operation schedules? People could die.”

“No, no.” Agent Cohen steered sugar into a tiny cup of coffee. “The problem is limited to records of hospital admissions. It also disabled the search module for patients’ names, replacing it with numbers. Everything else is working fine, but for us it’s a really bad coincidence—”

“It’s not a coincidence,” Elie said. “It’s a taste of what’s to come if you don’t pull back and stop interfering in things that are way over your head.”

Agent Gideon waved in dismissal.

“A surgical hacker,” Itah said. “Impressive.”

“That’s good news,” Rabbi Gerster said. “Someone’s protecting Tanya.”

“No one is protecting her,” Agent Cohen said. “This computer problem will be fixed soon. We’ll find her and we’ll find
him!
” He pointed to the photos from Amsterdam, Hadassah, and the King David Hotel. “Based on the time each of these photos were taken, we know he entered Israel during a twelve-hour window—too brief for a boat ride, so he must have come by air through Ben Gurion Airport. We’re scanning all video surveillance tapes. Once we have his name, it’s over. We’ll hunt him down.”

*

Benjamin led the group of men through the paved campus paths. The Hebrew University at Mount Scopus covered the hillside with squat buildings constructed between wars in conflicting architectural styles. Students in flannel shirts and military-style winter coats glanced curiously at the ultra-Orthodox men.

The archeology department occupied a three-story structure that faced the descending desert hills to the east. The office on the top floor was marked: Professor Bira Galinski – Department Chair.

In the small reception area, a young woman looked up.

“Good morning,” Benjamin said. “I’m Rabbi Mashash from Neturay Karta.”

“I know who you are. I heard your speech at our dig in Tel Gamla.”

Benjamin smiled. “Did you like it?”

“It was better than throwing rocks.”

“But you still won’t leave our ancestors’ bones in peace for the coming of the Messiah?”

“I don’t think the Messiah wants to come while the bones of
live
Jews are broken with rocks.”

“Excuse me,” Lemmy said, “but can we see Professor Galinski?”

“She’s not here.”

“Where is she?”

“At home. Something happened to her mother. She got the news last night.”

Lemmy was surprised. Other than he, only Shin Bet knew about Tanya’s injury. Why would they tell Bira about it?

On their way back to the van, Lemmy asked, “Do you know where Bira lives?”

Benjamin smiled. “Last month, the Supreme Court rejected our petition against the digging of an ancient graveyard on the French Hill, north of Jerusalem. Our people were very upset, and there was talk of violence. Rabbi Gerster and I met with Professor Galinski at her home. No one knew about it. At Neturay Karta, she’s considered an instrument of the devil.”

“The devil?” Lemmy laughed. “She’s just an archeologist.”

“She’s the leading archeologist in Israel.”

“I see. How did the meeting go?”

Benjamin sighed. “It started well, she explaining how Israelis crave archeological evidence of our past national life here, and he explaining that Orthodox Jews believe that graves were resting places until the Messiah comes and resurrects the righteous. But soon their voices rose, she accused him of trying to enforce primitive religious rules at the expense of modern science, and Rabbi Gerster called her Bar-Giyorah.”

“Bar Giyorah?”

“The uncompromising nationalist leader in the great revolt against Rome, which ended in the destruction of the Second Temple.”

“I remember.” Lemmy imagined his father with Tanya’s daughter or, more strangely, with the daughter of SS Oberstgruppenführer Klaus von Koenig, confronting each other over an unbridgeable ideological gap.

The van followed Martin Buber Road, down the ridge connecting Mount Scopus with the Mount of Olives, past the Russian church spires of St. Mary Magdalene on the left, along the Valley of Kidron, where Lemmy noticed the hewn stone hand of Absalom’s Tomb, King David’s beloved, rebellious son.

*

Rabbi Gerster imagined Lemmy running, out of breath, a group of armed Shin Bet agents hot on his heels. There was silence around the breakfast table, and Agent Cohen repeated his threat: “We’ll hunt him down like a dog!”

“A bunch of foxes,” Elie said, “chasing after a dog.”

“That’s right!”

“Be careful. Sometimes the hunter becomes the hunted.”

“Who’s going to stop us? You?” The Shin Bet agent unbuttoned his jacket, reached inside, and pulled out Elie’s sheathed blade. “Won’t you need this?”

“In my time, Shin Bet was very selective.” Elie flexed his yellow-stained fingers as if preparing for a delicate piece of manual undertaking. “No Sephardic boys were let loose running sensitive operations.”

“Come on,” Itah said, “that’s below the belt.”

Agent Cohen laughed, but his face was bitter. “Intelligence czar, ah? Exterminator of enemies?” He slammed the sheathed blade on the table. “You’re a nobody, Weiss!
Nobody!
”

With a sense of pending doom, Rabbi Gerster said, “It’s not worth it, Elie.”

“You’re a has-been,” Agent Cohen kept going, “a nursing home candidate, a useless piece of broken machinery!”

Elie removed the oxygen tube from his nose and let it drop to the floor by the tank. “Sometimes a little pinky can bring down a mighty lion.”

“Now you’re a poet too?” Agent Cohen leaned over the table, his face up close against Elie’s. “Everybody tells me to be careful with Elie Weiss. A dangerous man, they say.” He poked Elie in the chest. “All I see is a pathetic old man. A sclerotic mummy.
A joke!
”

Rabbi Gerster suddenly realized that this was the culmination of Elie’s calculated provocations, carefully staged in rising succession to build up Agent Cohen’s rage and recklessness like a musical composition building up to a climactic crescendo. And there was nothing anyone could do to save the foolish agent.

“Again with the poking?” Elie looked down at the finger. “Is this some kind of a Moroccan custom? Iraqi? Egyptian? Where did your parents come from?”

“You have a problem with it?” Agent Cohen poked him harder. “Do you?”

With calmness that distracted from the speed of his movements, Elie’s right hand clenched Agent Cohen’s forefinger and twisted it sideways, producing the crunchy sound of a breaking bone.

“
Ahhhh!
”

Still holding the broken finger with his right hand, Elie’s left hand rose to Agent Cohen’s red face and threaded a pinky under his upper eyelid.

“Don’t move,” Elie said, “or you’ll lose the eye.”

Agent Cohen’s cry was interrupted by a burst of vomit from his mouth.

Elie moved out of the way, let go of the broken finger, and collected his blade. He maneuvered around the end of the table, his pinky remaining inside Agent Cohen’s eye socket. “That’s a good fellow.” From behind, he made the Shin Bet officer sit down. “Will you cooperate or do you want to look like Moshe Dayan?”

Agent Cohen bit down on his lower lip and moaned in pain.

“Take his gun,” Elie ordered Rabbi Gerster. “His comrades will be here soon.”

*

The boy who opened Bira’s door wasn’t crying, but his effort to fight back tears was endearing. He looked at their black coats and hats and started to close the door.

Benjamin blocked the door. “May we speak with your mother please?”

“She’s not available now.”

“It’s important.”

The boy disappeared.

Lemmy and Benjamin entered the foyer and closed the door, shutting out the sun. The rest of the men waited in the van.

Bira showed up a moment later. “Rabbi Mashash? What are you doing here?”

“We need to talk. It will only take a few minutes.”

She led them through a narrow hallway, a kitchen, and out the back door to a patio bordered by climbing vines. They sat on white plastic chairs around a coffee table.

Lemmy remembered her as a twenty-year-old in an olive uniform, shouldering an Uzi machine gun. She had aged well, keeping an athletic build and lush hair, but her face was sun-beaten and her blue-gray eyes examined him with discomforting coldness. He asked, “Have you received any news from your mother?”

“You know my mother?”
“We know she’s missing.”

“That’s what I heard.” Bira’s shoulders slumped. “Her boss called me yesterday.”

“The chief of Mossad?”

She nodded. “I could tell he’s worried. She’s not a field agent. Why in the world would she be out there interacting with hostile—”

“It was a business meeting,” Lemmy said. “She didn’t expect any danger.”

“And who told you that? God?”

He laughed.

Bira glared at him. “What the hell is going on?”

“I’m also wondering.” Lemmy removed the hat with the attached beard and payos.

Bira wasn’t amused. “What’s this? Dressing up for Purim already?”

“We met once.”

“I don’t think so.”

“It was way back, when your mother lived near the border and you were in the army.”

She shook her head.

“I carried your duffle bag. It was bloody heavy.”

“That boy died in the Six Day War.”

“We argued. You dismissed faith, saying that Zionism is all about history, about proving who was here first, like establishing a legal ownership record. I countered that belief in the historical truth of biblical stories was a form of faith, which meant you were religious too.”

She leaned closer to look at him. “That’s impossible!”

“We said good-bye at the gate to Meah Shearim. I watched you go, and you waved at me from the corner.”

She turned to Benjamin. “Is this some kind of a sick joke? My mother has grieved for Jerusalem Gerster for twenty-eight years, poured enough tears to refill the Dead Sea. I’m not going to accept this man—”

“It’s me,” Lemmy said. “It’s really me.”

Bira looked at him at length in the manner of a scientist examining a specimen that couldn’t possibly exist. Then, without any warning, she leaned forward and slapped Lemmy across the face with such force that he fell off the chair and onto the floor.

*

Rabbi Gerster pocketed Agent Cohen’s gun and pushed over the table, creating a barrier between them and the door. He crouched with Itah behind the tabletop and whispered. “Get away when nobody’s watching. Find my son. Warn him!”

She nodded and pecked him on the cheek.

Gideon stepped over to the kitchen and stood with the housekeeper, who watched the whole thing with an open mouth. Elie positioned himself behind Agent Cohen, his pinky hooked inside the eye socket, his blade drawn, the sharpened edge resting nonchalantly on the trembling man’s shoulder.

The door flew open and the two Shin Bet agents rushed in, guns ready.

“This feels like a déjà vu,” Elie said. He was panting from the exertion, but no one mistook his thin voice for weakness. “Put down your weapons and slide them over, or Agent Cohen here will be shopping for an eye patch or a prosthetic arm. Or both.”

The nurse hesitated while the other agent glanced at her. She aimed at Elie. “You know the drill—we’re trained to kill hostage takers, not negotiate.”

“You’re trained to kill
Arab
hostage takers,” Elie corrected her. “Not a Jew who’s old enough to be your grandpa, who’s been abused physically and mentally by this bully.” He pressed a bit on the blade, which broke though the shirt and penetrated the shoulder slightly.

Agent Cohen groaned.

“Don’t shoot,” Rabbi Gerster said from behind the upturned tabletop. “We’re all Jews here!”

*

Benjamin jumped up and stood between them. “No violence! Please!”

“Get out of my house!” Bira stood with her fists clenched, ready to hit Lemmy again. “
Out!
”

The boy who had opened the door for them came running, followed by a younger girl, who rushed to her mother’s side. Their presence instantly soothed Bira’s anger. Her hands fell by her side. “Everything is fine,” she said. “Go back to your room.”

The two kids looked at her and at the two men, unsure what to do. The boy pointed at Lemmy. “Where’s your beard?”

Lemmy got up from the floor and showed him the hat and attached facial hair. “You want to try it?”

The boy put it on. His sister laughed, and they ran off.

“Just like my son,” Lemmy said. “Klaus is ten, almost eleven. We’re trying for a girl—”

“I don’t want to know.” Bira’s anger flared again. “Son of a bitch! I could kill you for what you did to her—”