The Jerusalem Assassin

by Avraham Azrieli

  Tanya stood by the arched bridge, observing the traffic of pedestrians and cyclists. Her composure didn’t lend itself to coincidences. There was only one logical explanation for her sudden appearance in Zurich. She wanted Koenig’s blood money. She had admitted to a long feud with Elie, and this was the final round-she had locked Elie up in Jerusalem and headed to Zurich to grab hold of the Nazi fortune! And if she had lied to Lemmy about the reason for coming to Zurich, she must have lied about the rest. The man hiding behind the chess board and the whole story about Shin Bet had been a show, put up for Lemmy’s benefit, to confuse him, trick him into trusting her as they escaped together so that he would hand over Koenig’s account to her.

  Lemmy picked up the receiver and dialed. A tram rattled by, its bell tolling to ward off cyclists and pedestrians, hiding her from him. When the tram cars reached the next street corner, he saw Tanya step into the green phone booth and pick up the receiver.

  “It’s me,” Lemmy said.

  “ You’re late.”

  “ I was on the phone with my assistant in Zurich. We managed to penetrate the most secret account at the Hoffgeitz Bank.” Sweat dripped down his forehead, but he had to keep on his fedora, especially with the security camera so close. “It belonged to Klaus von Koenig.”

  “After all these years. Klaus was very good at his job, but he was also a romantic.” Her tone was endearing, almost longing. “There must be an incredible amount of money in the account by now, after so many years of appreciation.”

  “You’d think.” Lemmy stepped as close to the glass doors as the cord permitted and surveyed the street in both directions. If he was right about Tanya, there would be a whole Mossad team waiting to pounce on him.

  “What do you mean?”

  “ Life’s full of surprises.” Sure enough, at the top of the arched bridge, a young woman in a knitted cap leaned on her bicycle by the railing, sipping from a coffee mug. Near her stood an older man, who wore sunglasses despite the cloudy day, pretending to watch the ducks in the canal. “I was also expecting a large balance.”

  “And?”

  “It’s disappointing.” In the opposite direction, where the street leveled out, lined with small shops, Lemmy saw another couple, also pretending to ignore each other, both smoking as they examined window displays. “Seems like my father-in-law made some foolish investments in the seventies, then lost a great deal on Black Monday in eighty-seven.”

  “ There must be a lot left though, right?”

  “ Less than a thousand dollars,” Lemmy lied, watching Tanya for her reaction. “The account’s practically empty.”

  *

  The two guards screamed and sprang from their chairs. One of them doubled over and vomited. The other tried to shake off a length of intestine that had hooked on his belt. He moaned as if he’d lost the ability to speak coherently.

  “Oh, my God!” Itah shoved the gurney against the wall and pointed at the staircase at the end of the hallway. “Run! Second floor! Biohazard showers!”

  The two of them stumbled toward the double doors.

  “Strip down and scrub everything!” Itah ran ahead of them and opened both doors. “Quick! Before the virus gets in your system!”

  They were cursing as they ran down the stairs. Itah let the doors close. She grinned and motioned at Rabbi Gerster to get into the room while she dealt with the nurses, who were rushing over. “Don’t worry,” he heard her yell, “just a little accident.”

  Inside the room, Elie was already out of the bed. He removed the oxygen line from his nose and took off his hospital gown.

  Rabbi Gerster emptied the plastic bag on the bed. “Put those on.” He gestured at the long-sleeve dress, a woman’s headscarf, shoes, and sunglasses.

  Elie dressed and sat in a wheelchair, panting hard.

  Itah distracted the nurses while the rabbi wheeled Elie out of the room and down the hallway. With all the commotion going on, no one paid attention to the little old woman in the wheelchair and the white-bearded man.

  Downstairs, a line of taxis waited at the circular driveway outside the hospital’s lobby. By the time Elie was settled in the back seat and the wheelchair was secure in the trunk, Itah showed up.

  “Take us to the YMCA,” Rabbi Gerster told the driver. “Near Agron Street.”

  As the driver began to ease away from the pavement, a white sedan raced down the access road and came to a screeching halt perpendicular to the pavement, blocking the taxi. Its doors flew open, and four men jumped out.

  *

  “ It’s impossible!” Tanya’s voice was sharp, angry. “There’s no way! How could he lose everything?”

  “Armande likes to spend,” Lemmy speculated. He noticed the man on the bridge speak to the woman while keeping his face toward the canal, his lips barely moving.

  “ It wasn’t his money to spend.”

  “ With Koenig gone, why shouldn’t he?”

  Tanya stood inside the phone booth, her hand pressed against her forehead. “I don’t believe it. Israel needs this money.”

  “ I’m sorry if you’re disappointed.”

  “ That’s an understatement!” With the constant noise of people and bicycles around her, Tanya must have missed the sarcastic tone of his voice. “Did he move funds to another account? There must be a record!”

  Lemmy was tired of lying to her. Tanya’s reaction had already confirmed his suspicions. It was obvious she had come for the money. “Is your team ready to grab me?”

  “ What team?”

  “ Take me to a safe house? Drug me up for the interrogation?”

  Her face was white through the phone booth glass. “What are you talking about?”

  “It’s all about the money, isn’t it? You and Elie, the same-plotting, manipulating, using other people like pawns.”

  “No!” Across the street, through the pedestrians and cyclists, he saw Tanya pound her chest with a clenched hand. “It’s not about the money!”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “ Lemmy, I beg you-”

  “ You set me up, didn’t you?” He glanced up and down the street. Both couples were watching Tanya, barely pretending any longer. “There’s no Shin Bet, no big secrets, no conspiracy. You came for the Koenig account.” His voice rose to a shout. “ Didn’t you? ”

  The two tulips stopped greeting shoppers and turned.

  “That’s not true.” Tanya looked around. “Where are you?”

  “Where I can see you and your team.”

  “I don’t have a team! I’m alone here!” Tanya noticed him across the street and through the glass doors. She dropped the receiver and ran out of the phone booth.

  Lemmy’s mind registered the rings of a coming tram while his eyes were locked with Tanya’s eyes, wide and glistening. He dropped the receiver and held up his hand. “Stop!” But he was inside the store, and the glass doors silenced his warning.

  Up on the bridge, the young woman tossed her coffee cup into the canal, mounted her bicycle, and pedaled down toward Tanya.

  Emerging through the sliding glass doors, Lemmy saw the tram rushing at them from the right. Now holding both hands up, showing his palms to Tanya, he yelled again, “Stop!”

  The woman on the bicycle gained speed, racing at Tanya from the left, while the tram arrived from the right, and they collided, the handlebar ramming hard at Tanya’s left kidney, jolting her forward into the coming tram, which screeched and groaned, attempting to stop.

  *

  When the sedan blocked their way, Elie’s hand went to his side, groping for the blade that wasn’t there. All he had with him was the heavy copy of the Bible. He recognized the man who emerged from the front passenger seat. Agent Cohen yelled something at his subordinates, and the four of them sprinted across the pavement and into the hospital.

  Elie let the air out of his lungs. It was time to instruct the driver to go, but he didn’t trust his voice to sound like an elderly female.

  The cabby curs
ed, maneuvered around the white sedan, and drove off.

  “Maybe they had a medical emergency,” Rabbi Gerster suggested. “One must assume good intentions.”

  “They seemed healthy to me,” the woman said.

  Elie recognized her. She was a TV reporter. Why was she here?

  They travelled in silence. At the YMCA, Itah directed the driver to the parking lot. “My car is right there.” She pointed. “The red Mitsubishi.”

  “Do you have enough gas to get to Haifa,” Rabbi Gerster asked, “or do we need to fill up?”

  “I have plenty,” she answered, playing along. “Are you happy to go home, Mom?”

  Elie nodded.

  They got out of the taxi. Rabbi Gerster unloaded the wheelchair from the trunk while Itah paid the driver. They pretended to engage in discussion until the taxi was gone. Elie walked slowly toward the Mitsubishi.

  “ Where are you going?” She pointed at the King David Hotel across the street. “I arranged a room for us.”

  Realizing it was only a diversion, in case the cabby was later questioned, Elie nodded and sat in the wheelchair. “Let’s go.”

  Itah looked at him closely. “Now I recognize you! You’re the creep who came to my apartment to scare me off the story about Rabbi Gerster and his dead son.”

  “ You have a long memory,” Elie said.

  “ And you had a long knife!” She shoved his wheelchair toward the busy road. “I was hoping to catch you one day, throw you under a bus or something!”

  “ Calm down,” Rabbi Gerster said. “You’re getting a much better story now.”

  “ You bet!” She stopped the wheelchair abruptly at the curb’s edge as a bus rumbled by.

  *

  The tram stopped with an ear-piercing screech of metal brakes clamping on steel rails. Tanya lay on the cobblestones. Lemmy ran to her. A circle of spectators formed around them.

  The right side of her body was covered with blood. Her arm was broken, and her leg pointed at an impossible angle. But her face was clear, and her thick hair spread around like a soft cushion.

  “ I’m sorry.” He touched her cheek. “I thought they were your team.”

  Her lips parted and she tried to speak. He bent over her, his ear near her dry lips.

  “Abraham.” She struggled to push air through her vocal cords. “Abraham.”

  “I’m not Abraham. It’s me, Lemmy.”

  Tanya’s eyes had no confusion in them. He realized she had recognized him, that she was trying to tell him something else. “Abraham,” she repeated.

  “You want me to go to my father?” He kissed her forehead. “I will. I promise.”

  Peace settled into her eyes.

  Medics shoved him aside and began working on her. He stood back and searched the faces of the spectators, trying to find the agents he had seen before. Rage swept over him. He thought he saw one of them in the back of the crowd and pushed through.

  Powerful hands grabbed Lemmy from behind. It was Carl. “They’re long gone,” he said and practically carried Lemmy through the crowd and down a set of narrow stairs.

  “ There was another couple-”

  “ The smokers?” Carl pushed him along the stone dock. “They split. I watched the whole thing.”

  A speedboat was tied under the bridge. Carl untied the rope and hit the throttle. The boat’s tail sank and its bow rose as it took off, raising waves that rocked the houseboats along the canal. Lemmy held on, his face turned into the cool wind.

  After racing through a maze of narrow canals for fifteen minutes, Carl cut the engine, and the boat drifted to the wooden dock. “I found a Citroen for you in Israel. It’s a DS, but most parts would fit your SM. It’s been sitting outside a mechanic’s shop in a small town near Jerusalem. The owner said you can stop by anytime. I wrote down the address and directions.” He handed Lemmy an envelope. “There’s also a passport, driver’s license, American Express and Visa cards.”

  Glancing inside the envelope, Lemmy saw the name on the passport. “Baruch Spinoza?”

  “ You’re going to Israel, aren’t you? It’s the first Jewish name that came to me.”

  “ Are you out of your mind?”

  “ Wasn’t he a brilliant philosopher? I thought you’d be flattered.”

  “ He was excommunicated by the Jews of Amsterdam. Carrying his name would make me stand out like a pig in a kosher butcher shop.”

  Carl laughed. “But nobody would suspect your papers are forgery. I mean, who in his right mind would choose Spinoza as an assumed name?”

  There was nothing he could do right now but plow ahead. “Can you check where they took Tanya and protect her in the hospital?”

  “ Fight it out with those Israelis?” Carl chuckled. “Her only defense would be anonymity. I’ll play around with the computer records, make her disappear, so to speak.”

  “ I leave it to you,” Lemmy said. “Take care of Tanya for me.”

  “ What if she dies?”

  “ Call the Israeli embassy and tell them. They’ll take care of her remains.”

  They hugged for a long moment, and Lemmy climbed out. He stood on the bank of the canal and watched Carl’s boat speed away. Again, he was alone.

  *

  “ Long live Jerusalem?” Rabbi Gerster held up the note Elie had sent from Hadassah Hospital. “Where does he live?”

  “ I meant it metaphorically.” Elie reclined in the large hotel bed, resting his head on the pile of pillows. “Kind of a salute to your son’s memory.”

  “ A bit peculiar,” Itah said.

  “ I knew that Jerusalem’s heroic sacrifice on the battlefield would prod you to act.” Elie rubbed his hands. “I’m glad you understand. Surely you didn’t think I would falsely imply that Lemmy really is alive. I mean, that would be too far-fetched.”

  They had checked into a suite at the King David Hotel and helped Elie into bed to ease his shortness of breath. He was still wearing the dress Benjamin’s wife had lent them but had taken off the headscarf and glasses. As Itah had proposed, they didn’t tell Elie about their visit to the cemetery the previous night or about their investigation of Freckles and Yoni Adiel. Her theory was that Elie’s lies might reveal more about his agenda than anything he would tell them if he knew how much they had discovered already.

  “ No hard feelings,” Elie said. “I hope.”

  “ Even now,” the rabbi said, “after so many years, any mention of his name hurts.”

  “Your son’s death was a tragic loss,” Elie said. “Such a promising young man. And what’s most upsetting, I’m sure, is how unnecessary it was. Basically, if not for Tanya’s seduction, he would never have left Neturay Karta. If not for that woman’s irresistible allure, he would be alive today. That must make you very angry with her. It makes me angry with her!”

  “Let my son rest in peace, would you?” Rabbi Gerster was barely able to conceal his rage. It was hard to believe he had once fought the Nazis with Elie Weiss, had served as his mole among the ultra-Orthodox, had followed his commands and trusted his idealism. By now it had become all too clear that this diminutive man was a colossal liar. “I got you out of Hadassah,” he said. “Now tell me what’s going on. Everything!”

  “Of course.” Elie smirked. He obviously thought that his manipulation had worked, that he was now in control. “Did you attend the Likud rally last night?”

  “We did.”

  “I would have liked to have been there, see the action firsthand.” Elie used the remote to turn on the TV. “They didn’t let me watch the news.”

  On the screen, talking heads criticized Likud leaders Sharon and Netanyahu for tolerating the multitudes of placards showing Prime Minister Rabin in Nazi uniform and in PLO headdress, as well as the crowd’s vicious chants, especially those calling for his death. But at the end of the program, as if in an afterthought, the moderator mentioned that opinion polls conducted on the morning after the rally show Netanyahu leading Rabin by nine points among likely vot
ers.

  “Everything’s falling into place,” Elie said quietly, almost in a whisper. “All according to plan.” But before Rabbi Gerster could ask him anything else, his head slumped, and he began to snore.

  *

  Part Five

  The Duplicity

  Monday, October 30, 1995

  The Mediterranean glittered with whitecaps as the plane began its descent toward Tel Aviv. Over the years, in moments of weakness, Lemmy had imagined visiting Israel. He knew he could never return as Jerusalem Gerster. That boy had died, and Wilhelm Horch had taken his place. He had a wife, a son, and possibly a baby on the way. And his position in Zurich was about to become even more powerful when he permanently assumed Herr Hoffgeitz’s job. He had once considered taking Paula and Klaus Junior on a sightseeing vacation to Israel, but Elie had forbidden it, reasoning that someone might recognize Lemmy and blow his cover.

  The coast appeared in the window, a strip of golden sand between the breaking waves and the towering hotels. Beyond the beach, Tel Aviv was an urban sprawl, stretching as far as he could see.

  The KLM plane turned in a wide sweep over the southern outskirts of the metropolis and touched down with a healthy bump on a runway bordered by plowed fields.

  The immigration control agent took one look at Lemmy’s Dutch passport and laughed. “Baruch Spinoza!” She spoke loudly enough for her colleagues at the other counters to hear. “It’s an honor to welcome you to the Jewish homeland!”

  Lemmy voicelessly cursed Carl. “Thank you. Happy to be here.”

  “I’ve studied Ethics at the university. Clever how you questioned God’s existence without actually expressing blasphemy.”

  “Appreciate the compliment. The late philosopher is my great-great-great-great-uncle. And I don’t think he questioned God’s existence, but rather suggested that God and nature could be the same, philosophically speaking.”