Triple Identity (13 page)

I had said “Office” in a lower voice. Use of the epithet was meant to
instill further confidence in my relationship with Mina. She could fill in the blanks.

“Why do you need to know? Couldn't you find out about this in his file? You could also call him.”

I had to tell her now. Perhaps it was better to do so even without preparation. Bluntly.

“Dov was murdered a week or so ago,” I said quietly, “and Ariel's disappearance might be connected to that. So everything concerning Dov's background is now important. You may know things the file is lacking.”

There was a long pause. Mina was clearly stunned. And just as clearly working to keep her emotions under control. “Murdered! Why? How?”

“The why I don't know yet. It happened here in Munich; someone shot him. It looks like it was deliberate, more like an assassination. The German police are looking for suspects and motives. So now you can understand why I said that you and Ariel could also be in danger. I didn't realize that you weren't aware of Dov's murder. So until the killer is caught, you must exercise caution.”

Mina looked away for a moment but I saw the tears begin to slide down her cheeks.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I had no idea I was going to be the first to tell you.”

“There was no one else to tell me,” she whispered. “As I said, I haven't seen Ariel and no one else here knows that I was married to Dov.”

Although I was hungry for information, I could see that Mina Bernstein needed a moment to compose herself. I stepped across the hall and asked the old gent if he could find us coffee and tea for two. He turned, walked toward the back of the house, and in a minute, to my surprise, he presented me with a tray, cups, a pot of coffee, a pot of tea, sugar, and cream. I carried the tray back to the sitting room.

Mrs. Bernstein reached gratefully for the coffee cup, and I got back on track.

“Let's talk about your marriage to Dov,” I suggested softly, trying to be compassionate. I had a job to do, and expressions of human empathy would serve that purpose. But I have been trained to focus on my goal. “You must always be target oriented,” said Alex, my instructor. “Be a nice
guy after hours, but when you do your job you do your job, and if being nice advances your position, then be a nice guy. But only to the extent needed at that time.”

Mina wiped her eyes, took a sip from her cup, and took a deep breath. “I married Dov in 1955, when he was already in the Mossad. He used to work very long hours and I barely saw him. We tried to have children, but I had problems. Dov only told me that his work involved collecting scientific material. He loved science, especially physics. Then one day he told me that he was being sent to France to work on a project that would take a long time. He said I couldn't come with him because that was the requirement of the Office, but he would come for visits. I guess they sent him to France because he spoke French fluently. In Romania, it was almost a second language for him. His mother was a French teacher and she frequently spoke the language with her son.”

While Mina drank her coffee, I asked, “Do you know where he worked?”

“Yes, in the French Atomic Energy Commission installation in Saclay, near Paris.”

“Did he tell you what he was doing there?”

“Not much. He said he became a paper pusher. He worked in the procurement department where they were buying their materials and supplies. He used to return to Israel every two months, sometimes just for the weekend and sometimes for a whole week. We never had time to be a real family. During his visits I noticed how nervous he had become. Dov had started smoking. We had arguments. He refused to talk about his work. I was not allowed to call him. I didn't even have his number. His salary went directly to my bank account and every month someone from the Office came to see how I was doing. Sometimes they would bring me letters from Dov, and once or twice a small present. At the beginning I thought that the Office sent Dov to work with the French government or something. He told me that several Israeli scientists were working there for the French government in planning the first French reactor. I don't know if you could remember because you look too young, but the relationship between Israel and France began to warm up during that period.
So it seemed natural to me. I discovered later that he never spoke Hebrew with any of the Israelis and nobody even knew he was an Israeli. I don't even know under what name or nationality he worked in France. Even when he flew to Israel, he never arrived from France; it was always through a third country.”

“How do you know that?”

“I saw once or twice his airline tickets. He'd also buy me presents in duty-free stores in various European countries on his route to Israel.”

I tucked that away in my mind. Was it possible that Popescu/ DeLouise/Peled had a fourth identity supplied by the Mossad?

Mina sighed. “Then my world collapsed. During one of his longer visits to Israel we had a fight. I think I was already pregnant with Ariel but didn't even know it. I felt lonely. I needed him, and I wanted to have his attention. Dov exploded. He said that I should stop whining because he was under great pressure.” She looked at me sadly. “I still remember his words: ‘If they catch me I'll end up under the guillotine!’ ‘They?’ I had asked him, horrified, ‘Who are they?’ ‘The French government,’ he answered. ‘What do you think they do to people spying on their nuclear shopping lists?’”

Mina paused and looked at my face, expecting my reaction. I sat motionless; I couldn't appear to be surprised. I searched for words to show that I understood her feelings, but I didn't want to interrupt her.

Mina soon continued. “I cried nonstop for two days, until he left. I didn't know. I simply didn't know. I thought he was working with the French, not stealing from them. Dov called a few days later telling me he wanted a divorce. He said he was going to change his life completely, and that included being free from his marriage too. I didn't tell him that I had just found out that I was pregnant. I was in a cloud, in a bubble. I lost contact with reality. I didn't know what was going on with me. The people from the Office made the arrangements. Dov delivered me a Jewish divorce through the Mossad's chaplain and it was over. Dov returned to Israel for a week or so, but the tension between us was so strong that I couldn't tell him about the baby. He said he was leaving the Office and moving to America to start a new life.”

I needed time to think. What Mina was saying dropped on me like a bomb. In the middle of the 1950s, Israel had planted a Mossad operative to be its agent-in-place in the most secret center of the French government. He had never been caught and nobody had found out about it. Only a wild imagination could fathom what the French government's reaction would have been to such a revelation. Mina said that her husband told her he was stealing their shopping lists. That explained why he was planted in the purchasing office of the French. Apparently Israel wanted to know what was being bought and from whom, in case the official French aid dried up. So it was not espionage proper, although I don't think the French would have appreciated Dov's real purpose if they'd found out.

In those early years the Israeli–French relationship was softening under the unrelenting efforts of Shimon Peres, who was then Ben-Gurion's deputy in the Ministry of Defense. France had realized that it and Israel shared a common enemy: the Arab world was supporting the Algerian rebels in the same manner it had always supported the Palestinian fight against Israel. In late 1957, France agreed to supply Israel with essential material for a second nuclear reactor, which Israel then secretly built in the Negev desert near the town of Dimona.

“It's a textile factory,” Israel had claimed, when the skeptical American government had raised questions. But aerial photographs made by highflying U-2 planes told a different story. The U.S. military attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv had collected additional information, enough to confirm the American government's suspicions. Israel was building a nuclear reactor with a capacity to manufacture weapons-grade plutonium.

“What did you do then?” I finally prompted her.

“I had some money saved up and Dov had given me his share of our apartment. I was pregnant. What could I do? I stayed at home feeling sorry for myself until Ariel was born.”

“Did you ever hear from him?”

“He used to send me cards on my birthdays, sometimes with a few words about himself. I guess he wanted me to know how successful he had become. For years I suspected that his move to the U.S. was a part of
a Mossad plan to plant him there. But I guess I was wrong. He really left the Office. Only when Ariel was three or four months old did I write him a letter telling him he was a father. I didn't hear from him for a month. Then he called me and said he had just returned from Japan, where he had a real estate business, and read my letter. I expected a shouting match for not telling him earlier. But he was nice. He asked for Ariel's picture. He started sending me money to help raise Ariel and about three months later he came to visit. Since then he has been a good father and kept in touch with his little girl. When Ariel was eleven years old she went to the United States to visit him and his new wife, and she returned thrilled. Not with the new wife, but with Disneyland. For her that was more important. Through Ariel I heard he had made it big in America. He sent newspaper clippings from time to time describing his growing empire, the bank he bought, and his successes. The clippings were sent to Ariel, but I knew he wanted me to see them.”

“Why did Dov leave the Office, do you know?”

“I only know what he told me, that the French government was satisfied with his work and wanted to promote him by sending him to their purchasing office in the United States. He'd always wanted to go to America but his controller at the Office said no. I don't know why. Maybe they wanted to keep him in France, close to the source of information. I know he had a big fight with his Israeli boss and then told them he was resigning.”

“When did Dov change his name to DeLouise?”

“He told me that in the United States he felt some anti-Semitism coming from his coworkers and decided he needed a new identity. So he chose a name that wouldn't sound Jewish but that would be foreign sounding, explaining his accent. He told people that he came from France. He spoke excellent French, so DeLouise sounded right, I guess.”

“And now your name is Bernstein? Did you remarry?”

Mina lowered her eyes and blushed. I almost smiled; it was such a girlish gesture for a grown woman.

“Yes,” she replied, “Two years after my divorce I met a wonderful man who worked in the Israeli Navy as a radio operator. His name was Rafi Bernstein.”

“Was?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said sadly, “he died two years after we married. I wanted Ariel to have a father in her life, but he died when Ariel was only four years old, before she could really remember him.”

Mina then looked up at me. “Now you know it all. I still don't know how all this could be connected to Ariel's disappearance. Can you help me find her? I was afraid to go to the police because she insisted that I not talk to anyone about this. ‘It's a matter of life and death,’ she said. Now I understand how right she was.”

I had a long laundry list of questions, but I held back.

“I'll help you find Ariel,” I said.

“Thank you so much,” she said, “I need your help. There's just no one else.”

“So let's get started,” I said. “Do you know if Ariel had a bank account in Europe?”

“No, she didn't. She made me a signatory in all her bank accounts. I would have known that. She only banks in Israel. Why are you asking?”

“Because sometimes people just take off. If she had a bank account here, we could see if she withdrew money lately and see any unusual movements in her account. You said that her father sent her money?”

“Yes, from time to time. He also bought her an apartment in Haifa and a car. He wanted Ariel to have a comfortable lifestyle. Anyway, Ariel never really cared too much about money.”

I wanted to ask Mina to let me have access to Ariel's bank account in Israel. If DeLouise had wired her money also from his foreign bank accounts, it would be a beautiful lead. But I couldn't ask for it now. Not just yet.

“Let's talk to the receptionist here. Maybe he knows something,” I said.

“Did I miss any messages during my stay here?” Mina asked the man behind the desk.

“No,” he said, “but someone asked about you.”

“Who?” asked Mina.

“I don't know,” he answered. “It was a man with a foreign accent and he did not leave any message.”

Mina looked troubled.

“He'll probably call again,” he added in a comforting voice, when he saw Mina's obvious confusion. “It's the same person who called for you twice just a few days ago.”

Mina looked at him and snapped: “No one told me that people were looking for me. Why wasn't I told?”

“There was no message to deliver,” he said apologetically, with a half-embarrassed smile. “I asked him if he wanted to leave a name or number, but he said that you'd soon know.”

“Soon know what?” asked Mina confusedly, as we went back to the sitting room.

“Did you get any mail here?” I asked.

“No.”

I knew I had to intervene. I asked Mina to wait for me in the lounge and returned to the reception desk. I didn't want her to know that I had checked out the phone calls DeLouise made and that, in view of Mina's account of her conversation with Ariel, it was obvious he had called the pension to speak with Ariel.

“Mrs. Bernstein and I are trying to find Ariel Peled. Has she actually checked out?”

“Excuse me,” said the man firmly, “could you tell me who you are?”

“I'm a friend of the family,” I responded. “Ariel Peled is Mina Bernstein's daughter.”

“I see,” said the man relenting. “That explains why my wife let Mrs. Bernstein move Ms. Peled's luggage to her room.”

“Are you Mr. Bart?”

He nodded.

“So Ariel Peled never checked out?”

“No, she just left. Sometimes people do that. Her room was paid for, so I guess we weren't concerned about the bill. Why are you asking? Is there a problem?”