City of Secrets (11 page)

“Jossi, it wasn't me, you've got to believe me. They all think it was me, but it wasn't.”

“I don't know what they think.”

“Someone broke into my flat while I was away. No one will talk to me.”

“We're not supposed to be talking to anyone.”

“I swear I didn't say anything. You know me, I wouldn't do that.”

“I know you wouldn't,” Brand said to calm him down. “Where do you want to go?”

“Eva's.”

“We can't go to Eva's.”

“Your place.”

“You know I can't do that.” Lipschitz probably had a sketch of it showing all the exits.

“I can't go back to my flat. They're watching it.”

They were probably watching them now, Brand thought. “Do you want me to take you to the station?”

“That won't help. Tell Gideon I didn't say anything.”

“When would I talk to Gideon?”

“Tell Eva.”

He couldn't lie, and after everything, he couldn't say no. “I'll try.”

“Thank you, Jossi. I knew you'd help me. You saved me before.”

“It may take a while. We're not supposed to be talking to anyone right now.”

“I'm sorry, I didn't know what else to do.”

“Where do you want to go?”

They were cruising along Sultan Suleiman Street in the shadow of the wall. Lipschitz twisted round to watch the cars following them as if they were being tailed. Across from the Damascus Gate was the Arab bus station. In their numbered stalls, under a shady overhang, a dozen coaches waited to take him to Nablus and Beersheba and Jericho.

“Want me to drop you at the station?”

“No. Turn here.”

They headed for the western suburbs. Instead of shooting straight out the Jaffa Road, he had Brand detour north through the Russian Compound, then left on the Street of the Prophets, cutting up to Mea Shearim until the traffic behind them had dwindled. He checked over his shoulder before telling Brand where to turn next. As Brand had guessed when they were casing the substation, Lipschitz was from the teeming apartment blocks of Zikhron Moshe. Instead of taking a room in an obscure corner of the city, he was hoping to disappear into the familiar alleys and boardinghouses of this far-flung outpost of Kraków.

Brand let him off outside a bookbinder's with the slate of the Workers' Party decorating its window.

“Be careful,” Brand said.

“Tell them.”

“I will.”

“Thank you. You be careful too.”

Brand gave him a last wave, and once he was in traffic and free of him, banged the steering wheel with the heel of his hand. “Damn it.”

Contagious, Fein said. As Brand would be if anyone found out. How was he supposed to tell Eva, and who was she supposed to convince?

You saved me before
. Brand cringed, remembering. He hadn't saved him, it was just a splinter. He'd never saved anybody.

His hope was that Asher would be released, relieving him of the responsibility, but tomorrow was Monday. At his table,
by lamplight, he toiled over his note to Eva. Below, Mrs. Ohanesian stumbled through a Chopin étude, making him start again. He was a poor spy. He didn't know any secret codes, and every metaphor seemed obvious and incriminating.

Our young friend is out of the hospital but feeling lonely
.
Please let everyone know he's no longer contagious
.
He's had laryngitis for two weeks and would love to talk to someone
.

She wrote back:
The doctors said no visitors for a reason
.
The most important thing for him now is rest
.

Brand thought her advice wise, but with no way to tell Lipschitz, felt he hadn't fully discharged his duty. Every time he queued up at the Jaffa Gate, he expected to see the pantomime Arab standing in line. In his flat, when the phone rang, he cocked his head, froze until Mrs. Ohanesian closed her door again. Like Lipschitz, he was turning squirrelly on his own.

Two days later, the radio broke the silence. While he was sleeping, an Irgun team masquerading as policemen bringing in a busload of Arab detainees had raided a detention camp in Ramat Gan, liberating a dozen prisoners and the contents of the armory. “This is the voice of Fighting Zion,” the announcer heroically signed off, and though he had no evidence, Brand was convinced Asher was one of them.

Lipschitz must have figured Asher had escaped, because that morning when Brand called in from the Jaffa Gate, Greta had a pickup for a Mr. Ge'ula in Zikhron Moshe. Mr. Hope. He thought it was unfair of Lipschitz, and on the way out, checking his mirrors to make sure no one was following him, Brand bit his cheek, trying to find the right words to tell him this had to stop.

The address was a basement flat in the rear of a cement apartment block, the kind of dingy hiding place Brand himself would choose. The back door was riveted steel, the windows louvered slits at ground level to let some light in, and as he pulled the Peugeot abreast of the stairwell, he noticed the pair on the left was boarded over. He expected the place was fortified, wired with Asher's favorite booby-traps, and rather than risk tripping one, he didn't get out, just honked twice, lightly. Lipschitz could come to him.

He honked again, longer.

When there was no answer, like a bit player in a movie, he called, “Taxi! Taxi for Mr. Ge'ula!”

He didn't turn the car off, left the driver's side open as he approached the entrance. The cement of the stairwell was cracked. At the bottom a mat of trash and wet leaves had gathered in one corner. Brand examined the lock. Years of keys had left scratches in the brass. It was impossible to tell if it was rigged. By twisting the knob, he might be wrapping a half-inch of piano wire around the other side, pulling the pin on a homemade grenade, the blast unleashing a handyman's blend of shrapnel—fence staples and roofing nails and wood screws.

He knocked.

“Mr. Ge'ula.”

He knocked harder.

He scanned the backs of the other tenements to see if right now Lipschitz was watching him. That was the problem with going out on your own. You had only one set of eyes.

He thumped the door with a fist and called for him again,
then dropped his hand to the knob and, averting his face, turned it gently, listening for a click.

The door opened.

A dank concrete hallway, dimly lit and smelling of dead mice, ran the length of the basement. The number Greta had given him matched the first flat on the left—the one with the boarded-up windows. He knocked, expecting nothing, and was surprised to hear from the other side a faint scratching, like a cat asking to be let out.

“Taxi,” Brand said.

The scratching stopped, making him stoop to see if he could pick it up again.

It might just be mice.

“Mr. Ge'ula.”

He dropped to one knee and pressed an ear to the door like a safecracker. Nothing, but now a second smell reached him, familiar yet unwelcome, and he recalled the scene in Eva's bright bedroom and, later, kneeling in the driveway, scrubbing his backseat.

The door, for all his precautions, was unlocked. It opened a few inches, then abruptly stuck, caught on Lipschitz's hand like a doorstop.

He was facedown, reaching for the door as if to answer it. A dark smear stretched across the linoleum behind him. He must have crawled.

His hand was still warm. Brand moved it and sidled through. He turned Lipschitz over. His throat was cut, his shirt soaked. He was missing his glasses and his face was swollen, his eyes
rolled back, showing the whites. Brand wanted to ask who'd done this to him, but saw it was useless.

At second glance, he knew who it was. As a message, they'd cut out his tongue.

Brand didn't stick around to find it.

W
ith the dry season came the heat, and the khamsin, whipping in from across the desert, topping the walls, chasing through the alleys of the four quarters, sending whirlwinds skirling down the lanes of the suburbs. The sky was gray and freighted with dust, the cypresses rustling in advance of a storm that built all day, promising relief, yet never arrived. At night the air was suffocating, and it was impossible to sleep. In his skivvies Brand sat at his window, smoking black market Gitanes, looking down on the huddled domes of the Old City. The cuckoo sent up its two-toned call like a broken clock.

Asher was in hiding, probably in Tel Aviv, pulling strings like Begin. Victor was their contact now, Gideon their commander. The killing of Lipschitz was official, a necessary security measure, a proclamation as blatant as the memorial
handbills pasted about town, a plain black border containing his alias, at once a tribute and a warning. The
Post
identified him as Yaakov Ben Mazar, a watchmaker's apprentice and lifelong member of Congregation B'nai Avraham of Zikhron Moshe. He would always be Lipschitz, squinting behind his glasses.

Eva tried to defend the murder to Brand, as if he were an innocent. She didn't like it either, especially the execution, but they couldn't take the chance. Lipschitz had cracked and given up Asher, compromising all of them.

She knew that for a fact?

They knew it, and she believed them. They had people inside the CID.

What if they were wrong? Brand asked.

If they were wrong, they'd be forgiven.

So killing was no longer a sin?

Not in the cause of freedom. He was being impossible. He wanted a revolution without bloodshed.

No, he wanted a revolution that was just.

Just. What did they do with informers in Latvia? In the camps?

Brand was unconvinced. Lipschitz visited him nightly, begging him to plead his case.
Jossi, it wasn't me
. To his eternal shame, Brand hedged, condemning him. That wasn't what happened, the conscious Brand argued, but as the days passed, he grew to understand he'd betrayed him by his silence, as he'd betrayed Koppelman and Katya and everyone he loved. He had the selfish habit of saving his own life.

He needed to rely on it now. As Lipschitz's go-between, he
was suspect. At the garage, while Pincus was chatty as ever, Scheib was quiet, and Brand wondered how much they knew. Victor didn't have a role for him in their next operation, which didn't make sense. He was the only one with a car. Following protocol, while the rest of the cell met at the high school, Brand waited outside in the Peugeot. On the drive home, Fein and Yellin sat in back. Though he hadn't seen them in weeks, they had nothing to say. No one spoke of Lipschitz, as if he'd never been their friend.

“Of course no one knows what to say,” Eva said. “We're in shock.”

She didn't tell him what the job was. He understood. Because she was with him, she was suspect. If anything went wrong, she'd take the blame. From the minute he recognized Lipschitz beneath his disguise, that was exactly what Brand was afraid of. There was no one he could appeal to, no way to explain. So the murder had worked. From then on, they all kept their mouths shut.

He thought the operation might take place on Lag B'Omer and involve a fire around sundown, in accordance with the story. There were oil refineries and pipelines everywhere, stores of kerosene. The British had the same idea, and tightened security as the day neared. At five they called curfew and closed the gates of the Old City, prompting a riot among the younger Hasidim they countered with mounted police. The post office that burned in Mahane Yehuda was the spontaneous act of a mob, though the next day the
Post
gleefully pointed out the symbolism.

The train station. The YMCA. It was impossible not to
speculate. His passengers parroted the same rumors that had been circulating for months.

The British held off sentencing the Sarafand prisoners, afraid it might trigger riots. The khamsin was blowing, and the whole country was restless. In Jaffa and Tel Aviv the telephone workers went on strike, Jews and Arabs both. No one blamed them. During the war prices had skyrocketed while wages stayed the same. The civil servants walked out in sympathy, followed by the railway workers and longshoremen. When the shipping lines tried to bring in strikebreakers, there were bloody skirmishes on the docks.

Brand's American fares worried about the communists' influence.

“People just want to eat,” Jossi reassured them.

Monday he was back driving Eva to the King David, imagining the man balling his socks and shutting the closet door. Their affair had gone on too long for simple blackmail. She had to be gathering information on the Secretariat, maybe on the floor plan, which offices belonged to what branch of the Mandate. The elevator was a natural place for an assassination. He could walk right in as if he were looking for her, press the button and watch the arrow slowly sweep through the numbers, though the lobby was probably seeded with plainclothesmen. Once in the elevator, he'd choose the preordained floor, then draw his gun, aiming for the center of the doors at chest level—or eye level, since the high commissioner was tall. Neither of them would survive, but there would be that exhilarating descent, knowing he'd struck a blow for his people. The next
day his name would be on light poles and kiosks up and down the Jaffa Road.

Daydreaming Brand, waiting for her, as always. She was late. He tried not to let it bother him. He pretended to read the paper, watching the front doors and the drive behind him in the mirror. He hadn't seen the Daimler since the museum, but kept an eye on the new arrivals. He wondered if the heiress was with Asher in Tel Aviv, the two of them shacked up in a seaside tourist court like Bonnie and Clyde. He wondered if she knew about Lipschitz and his tongue.

When Eva finally came out, she was with Edouard from the Kilimanjaro, laughing at some joke, a hand on his arm. To Brand it seemed dangerous, the two of them meeting in public. Even off-duty, in the midday sun, Edouard wore a morning coat. She kissed him on both cheeks and he set off down the drive toward the guardhouse.

“Does he want a ride?” Brand asked.

“He's not going that far.”

She was struggling with the catch of the pendant, her head bent, her chin tucked to her chest. He wanted to ask what they were laughing about—how could she after having just been with her Englishman?—but knew it would end badly. With a professional patience, he waited for an explanation.

“Really, don't be jealous. He was just having his hair cut.”

“Here?”

“They're very good, but very expensive. It's impossible to get an appointment. Not for Edouard, of course. He knows everyone. I wish you liked him more.”

“I like him enough, I just don't know him very well.”

“He's a darling, that's all you need to know about him.”

They left the hotel grounds and turned up the broad boulevard of Julian's Way, crossing Abraham Lincoln Street. Again, like a teacher, he waited.

“We had a drink, just one. I think I've earned one drink.”

“You have.” That explained the laughter, and the glibness. He doubted it was just one.

She had a double brandy at her flat, and poured herself another before he said he had to get back.

“Stay with me,” she said. “Take the day off.”

“I wish I could.”

“I hate when you're like this.”

“Like what?”

“Mad at me. Do you want me to tell you what it is? Is that what you want?”

“No.”

“It's where they fix the trains.” The railyards in Lydda. His first thought was that it was too far, they had to pass too many checkpoints.

“I said I didn't want to know.”

“I told them you should drive. They said they already had someone.”

“Stop it.”

“It's not my fault. You're the one who wanted me to tell them.”

It was true. He'd put her in the same position Lipschitz had put him. “I know it isn't.”

“Then why do you make me feel like it is?”

“If it's anyone's fault, it's mine. I didn't know.”

“What did you think was going to happen?”

“I didn't think they'd kill him.”

“That's your problem—you don't think. You shouldn't have given your friend those notes.”

“Pincus.”

“It's not his fault,” she said. “He was just doing what he's supposed to.”

Pincus, Greta. He wondered when the call from Lipschitz had come in. They'd given the killer the address and a head start. That was why there were no booby-traps. Lipschitz thought it was him at the door.

“He trusted me.”

“It would have happened anyway,” Eva said. “Now you have people worrying about you.”

“And you.”

“And me. So stop wallowing and start thinking. You don't want people worrying about you.”

He agreed, he needed to be smarter. Then why, he wondered afterward, did she tell him about the job? He suspected it was a test. At the garage he played dumb, palling around with Pincus and Scheib as if nothing had happened. As he drove, he planned the operation like a tactician. A night raid on the repair sheds, their faces blackened with greasepaint. Unlike the tracks, the engines were irreplaceable, new diesels shipped from England. Every evening she was unavailable, he waited for the radio to confirm it, and then, one morning the week after Shavuot, as he was delivering a Lebanese couple to the Pool of
Bethesda, the Voice of Fighting Zion celebrated another glorious victory at Lydda Junction. Freedom fighters had blown up a locomotive and burned a dozen coaches belonging to the occupation. The announcer said nothing about the roundhouse or the fuel depot, nothing about the repair sheds themselves. Brand expected more damage.

“It was a mess,” Eva said. “Two of the charges didn't go off, and one barely did anything. We needed you and Asher.”

And Lipschitz, he thought.

He couldn't ask who else had gone along, and listened to find out. Fein, Yellin, Victor—all that was left of the cell. The driver's name was Thierry. Another Frenchman. Again, Brand wondered if her drink with Edouard had been a coincidence.

“Victor had us pull back when the charges didn't go off. Asher would have stayed and fixed them.”

“Asher's would have gone off.” So, no Gideon. Why was he surprised?

“I wish you'd have been there.”

“Me too.”

He thought he shouldn't be so pleased the action was a failure. Though it proved nothing, he counted their misfortune toward his case for reinstatement. Asher had chosen him for the substation and praised him after the train. What had changed?

The Lydda raid prompted the usual curfews and searches, leading to the usual random arrests. Despite the radio's claims, it meant little strategically, except that the revolution had become a war of gestures. The British were through being humiliated. A few days later, a military court found the Sarafand prisoners
guilty and sentenced them to death. The women received ten years each. In retaliation, a gunman in the back of a speeding cab sprayed a group of soldiers patrolling Julian's Way, killing two. Brand cursed the news, knowing it would make things harder for him.

That night, minutes after he'd come back from the Alaska, Mrs. Ohanesian's phone rang. It was Fein, earning Brand the fisheye.

“This is Mr. Grossman. My train comes in at eight fifteen and I need a ride.”

“Certainly, sir.”

There was no eight fifteen, and no Grossman, only Fein himself waiting at the station, dressed in black, as if for a funeral, carrying a familiar valise. He kept it balanced across his knees in the backseat.

“Where are we going?” Brand asked.

Fein had him head north toward the city, then turn into the grid of Yemin Moshe, long, low stucco apartment blocks gliding by on both sides. The streetlights were out, and the moon cast shadows over the road. In the gray light, as the same buildings repeated, regular as barracks, it struck Brand that the neighborhood was laid out like the camps.

“Up here,” Fein said, pointing to a corner block. “Flash your lights.”

As they rolled to a stop, the front door of a villa opened and three figures scurried across the yard, hunched as if under fire. Fein shifted noisily to make room. Brand stretched for the passenger door and let in Gideon, dressed, like Fein, entirely in
black. In back, Victor and Yellin wore the same uniform. Brand thought they could have told him.

The car was full. They weren't taking Eva, and he understood the operation was yet another test. While he resented the implication, he was grateful for the chance to prove himself again. Wasn't that all Lipschitz had wanted?

“We need to go east,” Gideon said.

This time of night, five men in a taxi would never get through a checkpoint. Brand avoided the Old City, detouring through the American Colony and out the Jericho Road. While they were busy evading patrols, the moon outraced them, hanging bright as a spotlight above the desert. In its pale glare, every shadow might be hiding a jeep. Beside him, in Gideon's lap, a nickel-plated pistol glinted. Brand wished he had his. He couldn't ask where they were going. He had half a tank of gas, and scourged himself for not filling up after work. It didn't matter that they'd given him no warning. He was a soldier. From now on he needed to be prepared. As the Peugeot ate up the miles, no one spoke. He thought they should be monitoring the radio, but drove in silence, his eyes on the road, all the while figuring out his best play, as if he were their hostage.

They came down from Bethany into the Jordan Valley, dipping below sea level, the descent making his ears pop. It was Arab territory, the terraced hills dotted with whitewashed villages. He'd driven the road dozens of times, though never at night, for fear of bandits. The tourists had to see the tomb of Lazarus and the walls of Jericho and finally the River Jordan, wading its brackish shallows with their cuffs rolled up, filling
vials to take home, as if the slimy water were a curative. Ahead on their right stood the Inn of the Good Samaritan, who'd helped the man fallen in with thieves. On the hilltop above it loomed the ruins of Qa'alat ed-Dum—the Castle of Blood, a trap for weary travelers and highwaymen alike.