The Jerusalem Assassin

by Avraham Azrieli

  “ Tell her what?”

  “ That I sent you to take care of her. To be with her. Tell her!”

  “I will.” Rabbi Gerster tiptoed to the door, put his ear against it, and waited. A while later, the soft sound of the guard’s snoring came through. He cracked the door and slipped out.

  *

  The Kings of Israel Plaza was a vast concrete square in the center of Tel Aviv. Gideon looked up at the massive, Soviet-style city hall, which towered over the plaza on the north side. In its shadow, carpenters were assembling the stage for tomorrow night’s peace rally. He had already briefed the director of security on the need to empty the building at the end of the workday and keep it secured until after the rally tomorrow night.

  Around the plaza, teams of laborers unpacked audio equipment and placed loudspeakers at regular intervals. Ibn Gevirol Street ran along the east side. It was a six-lane artery that connected north and south Tel Aviv and was due to be shut down to vehicle traffic hours before the event. They waited for a lull in traffic and ran across.

  The sidewalk teemed with pedestrians, who patronized the retail stores on the street level. Above the stores, the buildings had six or seven floors of residential apartments, many sporting balconies that enjoyed unobstructed lines of fire at the stage, as did the hundreds of apartments along King Saul Boulevard on the south side of the plaza.

  “ This is unacceptable,” Gideon said. “We have to remove the residents and secure all these apartment buildings before the rally.”

  “ You can try,” Agent Cohen said.

  “ Why not?”

  “ You’ve obviously spent too much time away from Israel.” He gestured at the buildings. “You think these Israelis would just pack a bag and leave their apartments? Every one of them has already invited his friends and relatives to come up and sit on the balcony during the rally. They’ll drink lemonade and crack sunflower seeds, spitting the skin shards on the poor schmucks below, who will stand on their toes to catch a glimpse of the dignitaries, get squeezed by total strangers, and gag on body odor and cigarette smoke, because they don’t know anyone who owns an apartment overlooking the plaza.”

  Gideon laughed.

  “ That’s why we have to count on sharpshooters, about a hundred of them, on the roofs all around.”

  “ They should pay special attention to empty balconies,” Gideon said. “I don’t think Spinoza would try shooting from a populated apartment, even if he can somehow get invited.”

  “ He won’t be able to bring a rifle to the area. We’re setting up roadblocks. Anyone carrying a package or a bag will be searched. Israelis are used to being searched at the entrance to every mall and movie theater, so no one would mind.”

  “ We have to assume,” Gideon said, “that Spinoza knows those facts, that he has a plan that’s not vulnerable to a roadblock, a search, or a pat-down.”

  *

  At Lemmy’s request, Benjamin had called the chaplain at Hadassah Hospital and asked for his assistance in accommodating a group of Neturay Karta men, who wished to visit the sick before the Sabbath, comfort them, and pray for their salvation. It was a common enough occurrence, and the chaplain was happy to oblige.

  Twenty minutes later, the van dropped Lemmy, Benjamin, and eight other men at the hospital entrance. The chaplain waited for them with visitor stickers, which they placed on the lapels of their black coats.

  The hospital rooms held six beds each. Benjamin conducted a brief service in every room, his men following his lead, praying with the patients, some of whom were too sedated to notice.

  *

  “ What is Spinoza’s plan?” Gideon shaded his eyes with his hand as he looked up at the buildings surrounding the King of Israel Plaza. “Without a long-range rifle, he could try a handgun with a silencer. Could he enter the area behind the stage and ambush Rabin on arrival or departure?”

  “ Impossible,” Agent Cohen said. “Our VIP Protection Unit always sets up a sterile area to prevent such attempts. It’s standard procedure for public events. No one but the VIPs and our own guys can enter a sterile area. But he could shoot at the stage from the front, standing among the crowd.”

  Gideon turned and looked across the plaza toward the half-constructed stage. “Even if he’s up front, aiming up at the stage, he would still be pretty far. And let’s say he can manage a perfect shot, how does he plan to get away?”

  “ There’s going to be panic. He could slip through the crowd and disappear.”

  “ What if the guy next to him is a kibbutznik? Or a reservist from an elite commando? Spinoza knows that almost every Israeli is an IDF veteran. They won’t panic. They’ll jump him!”

  “ Only if they notice the gun.”

  Gideon wasn’t convinced. “It’s too chancy. This guy is calculated, careful, Swiss. He won’t risk a wild shot at the prime minister while surrounded by thousands of aggressive Israelis.”

  They strolled to the middle of the vast plaza. A couple walked a dog nearby. A woman rode her bicycle toward King Saul Boulevard. And a teenager dribbled a basketball, jogging with oversized headphones. The sun was up now, its warmth building up.

  “ A diversion,” Gideon said. “He could use a few small bombs, even firecrackers, to create mayhem. He’ll shoot Rabin and disappear.”

  “ Dressed up as a policeman, he could easily slip away.”

  “ For all we know, he might have a collaborator, ready with uniform and appropriate IDs.”

  “ There could be a rifle hidden someplace on one of the roofs or in an apartment, waiting for Spinoza.” Agent Cohen waved at the surrounding buildings. “There are a thousand spots he could have chosen.”

  “ That’s right. And tomorrow night, he would walk through a checkpoint, get to his prearranged position, prime the rifle and shoot at his leisure.”

  “ And walk away while Rabin bleeds to death.”

  Despite the fresh morning air, the image made Gideon break into a sweat. “Would Rabin agree to speak via video instead of attending the rally in person?”

  “ Yeah, right!” Agent Cohen rolled his eyes. “The peace process hinges on this event. Labor Party officials expect a record number of supporters-two or three hundred thousand, possibly more. Rabin’s political career depends on this event. If it’s successful, they expect an upswing that will last through the elections.”

  “ Will he at least wear a bulletproof vest?”

  “ He considers it a sign of chicanery.”

  “ An old soldier.” Gideon sighed. “Then we must find Spinoza before tomorrow night.”

  “ And eliminate him,” Agent Cohen said. “A final solution.”

  Gideon followed Agent Cohen into the Shin Bet mobile unit, a box truck that was parked in the designated sterile area near the stage. It was packed tight with electronic equipment, operated by several technicians in civilian clothes. A number of monitors showed video input from various sections of the Kings of Israel Plaza.

  “ Let’s watch the video from the King David Hotel.” Agent Cohen loaded a cassette into a player connected to a TV set. “Maybe you’ll see something I’ve missed.”

  The black-and-white picture showed the main entrance to the King David Hotel from above, with two bellmen, guests coming and going, and car horns in the background. A man in a baseball hat appeared on the right, just as a group came out of the lobby.

  “Here!” Agent Cohen paused the player and used the stick taped to his broken finger to indicate each person on the screen. “That’s Spinoza, standing aside with the baseball hat. That’s me, with my four agents around Itah Orr, Elie Weiss, and Rabbi Gerster without his beard and hat.” He restarted the video.

  The group proceeded through the wide exit doors. Rabbi Gerster’s head turned, and he stopped in his tracks as if he hit an invisible wall. The agent behind kept walking and bumped into him, and the group stopped with grunts of surprise.

  “ Did you see that?” Agent Cohen paused the video again.

  “Rabbi Gerster d
idn’t stumble,” Gideon said. “He stopped walking when he noticed Spinoza.”

  “But why?”

  “They’re both SOD agents, right? Maybe they trained together.”

  “The Neturay Karta rabbi and the Swiss assassin? Come on!”

  “Clearly they know each other.”

  “ And now they’re both missing. The rabbi slipped away from the hospital before dawn this morning.” Agent Cohen pressed play. On the TV screen, Spinoza’s hand went into his pocket. Rabbi Gerster shook his head once, turned the other way and yelled, “Benjamin! Benjamin!” Everybody followed his gaze, and then Agent Cohen barked an order, and the group moved forward, exiting the video frame at the edge of the driveway. Car doors slammed, engines rumbled, and tires screeched. Spinoza and the bellmen exchanged a few words, and he entered the hotel.

  “Did you notice,” Gideon said, “Rabbi Gerster’s quick head shake? Spinoza was about to draw his gun.”

  “It’s not his gun,” Agent Cohen said petulantly. “He stole it from our agent at Hadassah.”

  “ You’re lucky he didn’t use it.”

  “ He’s the lucky one. There were five of us, guns in hand.”

  “ You still don’t get it, do you?” Gideon stepped out of the mobile unit and turned his face up to the sun, his eyes closed. The tape presented more riddles rather than clues. Who was Spinoza, or Horch? An agent of SOD, or a Saudi agent spying on SOD? Or was he a gun for hire? And how could a Neturay Karta rabbi control such a coldblooded assassin with a quick shake of the head, saving the lives of five Shin Bet agents? The only known connection between them was Elie Weiss. He held all the answers.

  Gideon heard Agent Cohen come out of the mobile unit and turned to face him. “How quickly can you get us to Hadassah?”

  The agent pointed up, where a helicopter was hovering. “Fifteen minutes, give or take.”

  *

  It took the better part of an hour until they completed a series of prayers with patients and reached Elie’s room. A guard sat outside the door. He put aside his newspaper and stood up. “Sorry. This room is off limits.”

  “Off limits to God?” Benjamin placed a hand on the guard’s shoulder. “Did you say your prayers this morning, my good friend?”

  The guard blushed and said something about taking his kids to Friday night services. Benjamin blessed him with good health and longevity and opened the door. The guard didn’t stop him.

  The room had not changed since Lemmy’s previous visit, except for a TV set on a shelf, tuned to a news channel. The night table carried a plate of untouched food and metal utensils-possible weapons, but low grade-and a thick book bound between carved wooden plates. Benjamin and his men gathered near the bed, shielding it from the surveillance camera above the door, as Lemmy had instructed them earlier.

  Elie’s black eyes watched them. An oxygen tube run from a wall outlet to his nose. The sheet over his chest rose and sank, accompanied by a squeaky sound.

  Lemmy removed the black hat with the attached beard and side locks.

  “Nice outfit,” Elie said.

  Benjamin and his men chanted the “Prayer for the Sick.”

  “ Where is my father?”

  “ Flew out of the cuckoo’s nest.”

  “ Where did he go?”

  “ Back to the field.” Elie pressed a button, and the head of the bed rose, lifting him halfway to a sitting position. “Why are you here? Haven’t you received my orders?”

  “ Tanya came to Zurich. I almost eliminated her by mistake. She told me about my father’s real job, about your manipulations.”

  “ Ah.” Elie looked toward the window. “Tanya.”

  “ I know what you’ve done.” Lemmy kept his voice lower than the praying voices behind him. “You manipulated my father into a life of lies. Then you deceived me, an eighteen-year-old kid, to give up my life and become someone else.” He took a deep breath, controlling his rage. “It’s monstrous!”

  “ You feel sorry for yourself?” Elie breathed a few times. “You suffered?”

  “ Yes!”

  “ You don’t know what suffering is. Go back to your job!”

  “ All your schemes are for naught. Shin Bet has shut down your ILOT. You’ll never become intelligence czar.”

  A weary grin appeared on Elie’s gaunt face.

  “I tried to protect Tanya, but they got to her in Amsterdam. I had to leave her, broken and bleeding, surrounded by strangers, abandoned. Is she suffering enough? Are you pleased with the consequences of your games?”

  The grin faded away. For a moment there was no other reaction, but then Lemmy saw something that stunned him. In the corners of Elie’s eyes, tears bubbled up.

  There was a knock on the door, and the guard peeked in. “Are you done praying?”

  *

  “ You see this road?” Agent Cohen had to yell over the racket of the rotors. He pointed down at the narrow blacktop that slithered up the Judean Mountains. “It’s the Burma Road. Back in forty-eight, when Rabin was a young commander, he tried to save Jerusalem from the Jordanian siege, but the main road was blocked by Arab terrorists. Someone found this goat path and broke through with supplies for the Jewish civilians. But it was too late to win the battle.”

  The helicopter was flying low, the tree summits almost within reach. Gideon rested his forehead against the window, looking down at the landscape of planted pine forests and deep ravines, an occasional boulder breaking through the green with the bleached white of sandstone.

  “He never forgave himself,” Agent Cohen yelled.

  “Who?”

  “Yitzhak Rabin, for losing the battle for Jerusalem, leaving it divided for nineteen years. That’s why he insisted on winning it back in sixty-seven.”

  Gideon nodded. These historic details seemed trivial now, as he was flying to Hadassah Hospital to confront the man who had hired and mentored him. Despite his misgivings about Elie’s methods, joining with Shin Bet against the old man felt like a betrayal.

  “ Three minutes.” Agent Cohen pointed at a distant cluster of buildings among the green mountains. “There’s Hadassah Hospital.”

  *

  “ We’re almost done,” Benjamin told the guard, closing the door. “Psalms, seventy-nine. Lord, how the Gentiles invaded your domain, contaminated your Holy Temple, turned Jerusalem into wreckage. ”

  While the men of Neturay Karta repeated after Benjamin, Lemmy leaned closer to Elie. “Shin Bet is hunting us down. I fear for my family. I must make a trade with them. Offer them something they can’t refuse.”

  Elie grimaced.

  “ I’ll give them Koenig’s money. It’s a king’s ransom-they won’t turn it down. I already know the account number and password.”

  “ You do? That’s good. Very good.”

  “ Where’s the ledger?”

  “ What ledger?”

  “ The record of all deposits that Armande Hoffgeitz signed in forty-five. Where did you hide it?”

  Benjamin recited, “ They fed the carcasses of your fallen faithful to the circling vultures, the flesh of your disciples to the earthly scavengers. ”

  “ I gave you my orders.” Elie’s head rose from the pillow, trying to show himself to the surveillance camera over the men’s black hats. He gave up and lay back. “Counter Final Solution. That’s your job.”

  “ Tanya told me she gave it to you, and you presented it to Gunter Schnell in sixty-seven. Where’s the ledger?”

  “ Go back to Zurich and serve the cause, or your cute little Nazi namesake will die-”

  “ In a ski accident? Like Christopher’s father? And Paula’s brother?”

  The gaunt hand gestured in dismissal. “Gentiles.”

  “ I want the ledger!” He placed his hand on Elie’s neck. The skin was cold against his palm. He closed his fingers and squeezed.

  *

  From above, Hadassah Hospital looked like oversized Lego blocks, positioned among the pine trees in cascading order on a moderate
slope, adjacent to the Ein Shemen village. A heliport was marked with a crossed circle and an orange wind bag. The pilot descended slowly, balancing the chopper against a gust of wind from the north.

  *

  Elie’s weak hands clasped the bedrails, rattling the frame. His mouth opened and closed, his yellow teeth clinking.

  Lemmy let go. “Where is the ledger?”

  His breathing fast and shallow, Elie reached under the sheets. His hand came out with his sheathed blade, which he offered to Lemmy. The gesture was more than a sign of capitulation, of a lifelong killer expressing his readiness to be killed by his successor. It was meant to symbolize a passing of the torch.

  But Lemmy had no interest in carrying Elie’s torch or in trying to figure out if this was yet another manipulation, another clever signal intended to achieve the opposite result of what its plain meaning would suggest. He grabbed the blade and tossed it to the floor. “Answer me!”

  Elie turned his face to the window.

  Lemmy applied pressure again, shutting off the wind pipe.

  Elie writhed, his legs kicking the mattress.

  “ They spilled your chosen’s blood around Jerusalem,” Benjamin chanted, “ and no one to bury the dead.”

  The men of Neturay Karta repeated the verse, their voices louder to drown out Elie’s noisy struggle.

  “ Where is it?” Lemmy’s grip tightened. He leaned so close that his face almost touched Elie’s aquiline nose. The squeaky breathing had stopped. Elie’s legs kicked once more. His hands feebly pulled against the rails.

  Benjamin stepped closer to Lemmy and chanted, “ Be forgetful, Lord, of our early sins, put forward your compassion, for we are pitiable.”

  Elie’s eyes opened wide, focused on Lemmy, who released the pressure.

  The chest under the white sheet heaved abruptly, air shrieking as it filled the sick lungs.

  “ We are your chosen,” Benjamin recited, “ your sheep, Shepherd, our gratitude is eternal, from one generation to the next, forever we shall praise your glory.”

  Lemmy put his hand on Elie’s chest, weighing down. “For the last time, where is the ledger?”

  “Let’s…make…a deal.” Elie’s sallow face twisted into a grin, and he coughed hard.