by John Meaney
I waited, observing.
Young mothers in hip-length woollen coats walked past pushing prams, returning from the school where they'd dropped off the older kids. An old woman shuffled to the grocery store, a thin scarf knotted around her head, clutching her net-bag of woven nylon. A lone brown dog stopped, peed against a lamppost, trotted on.
Nothing untoward.
I got out of the car. One of the shops sold newspapers, so I went inside and bought the late edition of the Süddeutsche Zeitung plus a bar of Toblerone. This evening's headlines were about the nascent re-arming of Outer Germany, finally with EEC and NATO approval, overruling the Knesset. The chocolate was sweeter than the news.
Coming out, I crossed the side-street and walked on, continuing past the Boaz family home. Twice I stopped to break off some chocolate as a covering gesture, scanning the windows and hedges all around. No watchers. After a circuit round the block, it was back to bei Boaz, where I went up the path and rang the bell.
Shana Boaz answered.
"Hello?"
"I'm a colleague of Moshe's, and I wondered if—"
"Yes. Please."
She stepped back to allow me in, making no attempt to check my identity. Then she closed the door behind us, shutting herself in with a stranger. Shutting out the world.
"This way." She went into a small, neat sitting-room.
Surely she was too trusting. There's darkness in the world, don't people realize?
Or perhaps she did. Her skin was tanned but with an underlying greyness. Stress-lines webbed her face: not the best thing, considering the bump beneath her dress. Two months, possibly three, before she gave birth.
"Please sit." She touched her hair, which was carelessly brushed. "Anywhere you like."
"Thank you." I chose the nylon-covered couch because it was low. My profile would be unthreatening. "My name's David Wolf, and I've worked with Moshe on a couple of deals."
Policy is that spouses should not know our real jobs; but sometimes Internal Security swear a wife to secrecy and tell her the truth, while scaring her half to death with hinted consequences of letting something slip. (We have female operatives, but as far as I know the married ones have kept it in the family: Branch 7 or Mossad.) I had revealed my real name now in case Moshe had mentioned it.
Then a fantasy, incredible and yet so ordinary, came to me. If I could marry Fern, we might live in a house like this, together all the—
For God's sake, concentrate.
Charcoal sketches stood on the mantelpiece. One was an ink drawing of the Brecon Beacons. Moshe had drawn it with his Rotring pen while an icy wind tugged at his sketch pad, as I drank hot tea from a tin mug, wishing the conditions would change.
What was the weather like where he was now?
"The other man, earlier..." Shana closed her eyes, opened them. "He said Moshe was... delayed. But Moshe's never been gone longer than he said he would be."
"What other man was that?"
"A Mr Aaron, Aaronsen... I'm not sure."
That had been Pinchas. He'd told me about his visit.
"Yes, Aaronsen from head office. I hope he didn't worry you."
"I'm not stupid." Black hair swinging, Shana shook her head. "Your damned company trades with the East. Moshe's gone over the border, hasn't he?"
"We're not sure." This was dancing close to the truth. "Moshe is overdue. Did Aaronsen say anything about you contacting the police?"
"Only that it might get Moshe in trouble. He didn't say it exactly, but he implied it. But it's been over a week."
"Yes."
I'd almost forgotten that today was Friday, but an empty kiddush cup stood on the table in the corner, and a box of matches lay beside unlit candles as a reminder to light them before dark. Yet there were no cooking smells, no bustling preparations for the Shabbat.
Never mind ceremonies I didn't believe in. Shana wasn't taking care of her basic needs.
"When did you last eat?"
"I... Last night, I—" She shook her head. "It doesn't matter."
"Sit down and I'll make some coffee."
"No, please, Mr Wolf..."
"Just call me Wolf. My friends do that."
I got up and went into the kitchen. In the cupboards were two sets of crockery – red plates and blue in identical patterns – for separating chalavi from b'sari dishes, dairy from meat. There was instant coffee in the pantry, so I filled the kettle and put it on the stove.
There were no matches in sight for lighting the gas. I fetched the box from the sitting-room, and Shana followed me back in.
"There's no need to—"
"You have to keep your strength up." I tugged open the fridge, took out a bottle of milk, and poured her a glass. "Here, drink that."
She took it in both hands and drank like a well-behaved child.
Moshe. What the hell are you playing at?
I spooned cold falafel into a split pitta bread, sliced two tomatoes, and gave it to her. On the stove, the kettle began to whistle. I put Nescafé into two mugs – weak for her, strong for me. It would not matter if the caffeine gave me the shakes because I was already trembling inside with rage: at Moshe for ignoring the most obvious loyalty of all, and at Pinchas for leaving her like this, twisting in the wind for nine long days: bait for his errant servant who might yet return home.
"You're very kind."
"No," I said. "I really don't think so."
So Moshe wasn't dead, or hadn't been when he sneaked out of Berlin Central. How to put myself into Moshe's state of mind? If Fern was available to me and expecting my child, nothing would keep me away.
You only get one chance at love, everyone knows that.
After I left the Boaz house, I ignored the car and went for a walk to subdue the insistent images beating in my head. That cold house. The lines on Shana's face when she ought to be radiant. A mission file that Ops should have stamped Closed, but had shifted instead to the Orange List: the one we call Turned Or Burned.
During endurance training in Wales, Moshe's humour remained unfailing throughout a hundred-mile trek in harsh wet conditions. There had been a day spent prone and unmoving beneath a covering of cold turf as we spied on a pale stone farmhouse before descending at night to 'kidnap' the designated enemy colonel – actually an English paratrooper who had sunk deep into the role and did not expect to wake up with a gag entering his mouth and a Browning 9mm muzzle pressed hard against his scalp.
Moshe and I, with two regular SAS men, took our prisoner past the guards in silence, floating through the enemy installation like determined ghosts. The camp had been grey and cold in the moonlight, so like Shana's unlit house.
Now, there was a junction before me, and I stood at the curb waiting as a Volvo slid past. Then a full minute had gone by and I was still standing there, waiting to cross an empty road. A woman on the far side was staring.
"Oh, dear God. Moshe, you silly bastard. You wouldn't."
My subconscious had linked two images together: the house and the covert exercise. It was unnecessary to know what subliminal perception – what scent or sound – had triggered the intuition. Because you can trust your unconscious mind, where most cognition happens.
Did you think all our training is guns and combat? We're predatory psychologists, and the mind is our hunting ground.
So I turned and went back to the kiosk by the shops and phoned in a message for Pinchas, requesting a strong-arm team who knew when to hold back and when to take it all the way. It would be nice to be wrong.
You stupid, stupid bastard.
The operator on duty said he'd got it, and I replaced the black Bakelite receiver, then stared at nothing until someone tapped on the glass.
"Entschultig meir." I raised my hand in apology and stepped out. "Es tut mir bahng."
Turning up my collar, I shrugged inside my coat, and went back to the car to wait.
By 5 p.m. it was dark and so officially the Sabbath. I left my overcoat in the car and turned up the la
pels of my suit to cover my white shirt. The air was cold, but so what? I stopped at the house next to Shana's.
The gate latch felt rusty, likely to squeal if opened. I vaulted onto the pathway and made my way down the side of the house. In the rear garden, everything was black. After waiting for my eyes to adjust, I crossed to the wooden fence and hauled myself up. My hands were damp and my skin was crawling, but the thing about fear is this: you get used to it.
In Shana's house, only the empty kitchen was bright. Shana would be in the darkened sitting-room with the unlit candles, hugging herself in the absence of a husband's warmth. The garden's shadows were empty.
I went over the fence with a rustle of cloth, no more.
A drainpipe rose vertically, black against the wall. I checked the fastenings, then scrambled up with plenty of lean-back. Crouching on the bathroom window-ledge, I slid my hand inside the small ventilation-window opening, reaching for the main handle. With concentrated pressure, the window opened in silence, allowing me in. I crouched on the sink.
Entering the dragon's lair.
I stepped down and went through to the upstairs landing. Above me was a plywood hatch leading to the attic. In front of me, lino-covered treads descended to ground level. A soft sound, not quite sobbing, emanated from the sitting-room below.
Careful.
The wooden banister was solid enough to take my weight without squeaking. I climbed up onto the rail and squatted there. With my left hand, I reached around to the small of my back and drew my Beretta, thumbing the safety off and getting ready to spring.
Then I launched myself upward, smashing the ceiling-hatch open with the heel of my right hand, shouting out: "Moshe, it's me! It's David!"
No shots hammered into my face. But a bright torch snapped on, flicked toward me, then away. Then a shadowed figure set the torch upright on the boards. He was lying prone, like a sniper.
It took effort to lighten my voice.
"Cosy place you've got here, Moshe."
For one extended moment, Moshe looked at me with stone cobra eyes. Then he nodded and crawled forwards. I jumped back down to the landing, making room, as Moshe jack-knifed headfirst through the opening and swung down to the floor.
"What—?" Shana called from below.
I flicked the landing light-switch on-off three times, then flipped it on and left it that way. Moshe stood still as the front door crashed open downstairs, and bulky figures rushed inside.
"Up here. There's no problem." And, to Moshe: "That's right, isn't it?"
Moshe gave the tiniest of nods.
Then I was backing into the bathroom, giving Pinchas's men clearance and keeping my weapon well out of Moshe's reach. But there was something almost saintly in his calm acceptance as they led him downstairs. It wasn't my place to tag along, because he might have left a surprise in the attic, and it was up to me to check.
Nine days.
After holstering the gun I boosted myself up, and crawled on hands and knees to the position Moshe had occupied. Then I commenced a slow, careful search for tripwires and timers, working from one end of the attic to the other, finding nothing.
Nine whole bloody days.
Moshe had gone to ground in classic SAS style without abandoning his wife. In one corner were small tied-off plastic bags containing body waste. A jerry-can. Dry rations and water bottles were neatly stacked at the opposite end. His long sniper's rifle was in its case, unloaded. His Beretta, holstered, lay beside it.
My instincts about Shana Boaz had been correct: she had not known where Moshe was, never suspecting that he was secreted here in their own house. As for what tipped me off... that was impossible to work out.
(And the conscious part of me thanked the deeper, greater part for yet another job well done. If you think that's crazy, ask yourself what part of your brain puts your shoes on every morning and ties your laces, and keeps you breathing while you sleep. And how grateful are you for that?)
But that acceptance in Moshe's gaze worried me. It was out of character, the look of a man who had snapped under pressure. What would have happened if a male friend had offered Shana sympathy that might have appeared or actually been intimate, while Moshe was up here with his guns and his brooding, broken thoughts?
(And I thought of Fern, and her deep dark eyes, then pushed the image aside.)
It took ten minutes to establish that the attic was clear of booby-traps. Pinchas might be carrying a Geiger counter all over the place, but if someone was constructing an atomic bomb, it sure as hell wasn't here. After tucking the holstered Beretta in my waistband, I hauled the rifle case down through the opening to the landing. The clean-up team could deal with the rest.
Near the bottom of the stairs, rifle in hand, I stopped. Broken shards lay across the door-mat. In the lounge Shana was on an armchair with Pinchas squatting before her, clasping her hands in his, murmuring something soft and conciliatory.
Shana's gaze swung up but there was no sign of recognition in her eyes. So I pushed on into the darkness, breath steaming, and walked along the path into the cold. Far down the road, the truck's heavy roar diminished, taking Moshe Boaz away.
THREE:
BERLIN, November 1962
On the hard bench outside Schröder's office, I sat reading The Odyssey, trying to divert my mind from radioactivity, from neo-Nazi corpses. Usually I prefer science fiction, but it was fun and disturbing to think back to bloody, violent times when everyone saw the world through different eyes. Some scholars take it literally, reckoning that people in Ulysses' time saw stars in the sky even during bright Mediterranean daytime. It makes you wonder what else we fail to notice every day.
My copy of the book was secondhand, coffee-stained and tattered: the T.E. Lawrence translation that I'd picked up in Brooklyn, visiting Uncle Isaak. Lawrence had been a strange and enigmatic figure, and his role in the founding of New Jerusalem – persuading Einstein and western diplomats – remains shadowy, ambiguous, though probably pivotal. How the hell had he found time to translate Homer?
At the corridor's far end an ancient brass and iron lift rattled up and down. This was the Sabbath and the lift was set to stop at every floor, ascending and descending on automatic throughout the day. It was for the benefit of Orthodox visitors, so they wouldn't have to perform the manual labour of pressing a button. A katsa – me and every other case officer – was expected to use the stairs. As for the proscription on walking farther than two kilometres from home on the Shabbat, well that's a laugh. Most of us are ragged-arsed nomads or we wouldn't be in this bloody job. If I had a proper home like Moshe and Shana—
The mahogany door swung open, rescuing me from my mood. Schröder beckoned. I stuffed the book in my jacket pocket and went in.
"Sit down, Wolf." He walked back around his desk and took his own advice, leaning back in his chair, hands clasped behind his head. "You feeling all right?"
His white shirt was immaculate, failing to conceal the thick powerlifter's body. His sleeves were rolled up; a splashed burn-mark half-covered his left forearm.
"You mean because of Moshe?" I said. "Yeah, I'm OK."
A fine glass figure, a ballerina with wings, stood on a low sideboard: one of Schröder's smaller pieces. The glass-blowing relaxes him – and accounts for the usual small burns and occasional bigger ones. You can imagine his fierce intensity as he handles the glowing viscous fluid with total concentration in his powerful frame. There's also a rumour that under the pseudonym of Malachi Levi, Schröder holds the national deadlift record for over-40s. But it's no good asking him about it: we learn to conceal the truth in this place, to internalize the habits of secrecy; and we are all of us obsessive.
"Good." His upper arm strained the fine cotton sleeve. "I want you to go and talk to Moshe."
"I won't—"
"Take him through the Grinder, I know. You're not a witchfinder, Wolf. But you did a good job in tracking him down."
He probably meant it as a compliment.
"Is that what you wanted to see me about?"
"Not really. What do you know about building atom bombs? And H-bombs, for that matter."
Last week he had phoned me in Hamburg and told me to brush up my nuclear physics. That should have been a clear sign that we were in trouble, even before a night of corpses on the dock, and Pinchas sweeping over them with his Geiger counter.
"I don't know that much." Then, assembling my thoughts: "There's a difference in complexity. A thermonuclear bomb is more sophisticated. It's probably got an atomic bomb inside it, a trigger for the real deal."
"So it's simple to build an A-bomb, is it?"
"Relatively simple. You know the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos? It was supposed to have a staffing requirement of thirty men. In the end, it took more than ten thousand people to build the bomb."
"But they were working out the theory," said Schröder. "Because it was the first time. And they were refining the ore and such, right? Nowadays, with the right knowledge..."
"And the right kind of people."
"...and people, OK, they could do it. How much uranium would you need, Wolf? "
I held out my hand, palm cupped. "About the size of a baseball."
"Don't you mean a cricket ball?"
"Either goddamn one."
Schröder shook his head, but I didn't think I was telling him anything new: he was imagining the consequences of a bomb going up.
"You need to go the Sanatorium," he said after a moment.
"Shit. Is that where they've put Moshe?"
"We could have slammed him in a cell" – Schröder's tone grew hard – "or worse."
"I know."
Schröder had angered me, but as I rose from my chair he made one of those remarks that always throw me off balance, coming from someone who looks like a steel worker: "You're reading the Odyssey?"
"Um, yeah. That's right."
"It's about a guy who goes away to war" – Schröder scratched the small of his back – "then comes back to find his world has turned to shit. Is that the one?"
"Pretty much."
"Same old world, twenty-eight centuries later. Makes you think."
