The Jerusalem Assassin (30 page)

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Rabbi Gerster felt a sensation he had not experienced since hiding with Elie in the attic of the butcher shop while the Nazis slaughtered their families. It took him a moment to recognize the sensation, which resembled a flush of cold water through his veins: Fear.

*

Lemmy left the bank early, wrapped in his coat and a soft hat with a narrow brim. He had fitted the silencer to the Mauser, which he carried under the coat against his right hip. From Bahnhofstrasse he veered left into the Rennweg, then to Fortunagasse, a narrow, uphill alley lined with one-story, well-preserved medieval houses—a sharp contrast from the stately splendor of Bahnhofstrasse. The rubber soles of his shoes paced silently on the wet cobblestones.

At the top of the hill, a low stone embankment surrounded Lindenhof Park. Light rain curtained off the views. He passed among trees whose thin, bare branches simulated spider webs, spread wide to trap the unwary. Farther in, he zigzagged between black-and-white checkered squares and hip-high chess pieces, which waited in pre-game rows for springtime. Before marrying Paula, he had lived in an apartment building on the opposite hillside, which offered fair weather views of Lindenhof Park and its chess boards. Years later, he had brought Klaus Junior here to play a long and cheerful game on one of the giant boards.

But today the views were masked by rain and fog, which turned the park into a trap with a single entrance and limited opportunities for anyone seeking to hide. If the German woman attempted to bring reinforcement, Lemmy was confident he could pick them off as easily as ducks in a pond.

The ground under his feet was hard and bare, no grass or flowers. The fallen leaves had been cleared away, the lines of rake teeth drawn finely in the earth. He approached the edge, where a water fountain was topped by an armored statue. Far below, the Limmat River snaked between the hills of Zurich. Should he push the woman over the low wall at the edge instead of shooting her? The police would be less suspicious of foul play. But what if she didn’t die? No. A bullet to the head would provide finality. The Mauser was tried and proven, a reliable tool that made him confident of the outcome, almost like a good-luck charm he had inherited—in fact, had stolen—from his father.

The wind picked up, the drops prickling his face like icicles. He slipped his hands into the coat pockets. His right hand touched the Mauser. His breath turned white from the cold.

He scanned the park. No one was around. A squat building was all that was left from the ancient Roman citadel. He imagined the steel-clad sentinels scanning the horizon, their alarm upon detecting invaders advancing from the distant, snowy peaks.

The gas lamps came on, shedding circles of yellow light on the ground. Lemmy sat on the low wall and looked down the cliff. He was not prone to height anxiety, but it occurred to him that his whole life was now teetering at the edge of an abyss.

A set of spotlights around the fountain illuminated the statue, and he realized it was a woman in black armor, a steel sword tied to her belt, a flag held up in her iron hand. A brass plaque told of Zurich’s brave women, who had saved their city from the Hapsburg Army in 1292 by stripping the armor from their dead husbands and marching to Lindenhof. From across the Limmat, the enemy mistook the women for a reinforcement army and retreated. Lemmy saw in the steel face of the armored woman a determined expression, unafraid of the enemy gathered across the river. He heard marching, and it took him a moment to realize it was the real-life sound of a pair of advancing boots.

The woman’s pace was fast and decisive. She was small, enshrouded in a long, buttoned coat, a dark scarf tied around her head. Her face was covered with large sunglasses despite the weather.

His fingers clenched the Mauser. Was she the caller, here to meet with him?

She passed in and out of the circles of light, approaching him in a manner that removed any doubt. She was not a casual visitor to the park. She was the target.

He tilted the weapon under his coat, the silencer aimed at the advancing figure. He scanned the park, seeing no one else. She was alone.

The rain intensified, drowning all other sounds, blurring his vision. The lower half of her face, under the sunglasses, stood out in its whiteness. He would start with a stomach shot—fatal, but not immediately—and after questioning her, complete the job with a bullet to the head. If she implicated Christopher, it would shorten the time Lemmy would need to interrogate his traitorous assistant.

His forefinger rested on the trigger.

The distance between them narrowed quickly.

He took a deep breath and stepped away from the water fountain, out of the pool of light.

The target kept walking.

He lowered the tip of the silencer, aligning it with her midriff.

Her pace slowed. Did she notice his hand in the pocket, the bulging coat over the pointed gun?

His finger began to press the trigger.

She made a quick move that brought her purse from the side to the front. He couldn’t see her hand. Was she reaching for a gun?

The target entered the range of a gas lamp.

The Mauser in his hand adjusted slightly to account for the narrowing distance, lined up with her stomach. Lemmy exhaled, relaxing his muscles while his finger applied growing pressure on the trigger. At this point it became harder to press, a tiny steel bump to signal that the hammer was about to be released to knock on the pin, which would tap the base of the bullet. The exploding charge would shoot a cap of brass at high speed into her flesh. A stomach wound with this caliber would give her ten minutes of life, enough to reveal the information he needed.

The target stopped. “Herr Horch, I presume?”

Again, the same as on the phone, her voice unsettled him, like noticing a face on the street, reminiscent of someone he knew, like the target in Paris, who had Benjamin’s smile.

Concentrate!

Lemmy’s finger applied delicate force, avoiding an abrupt pull that would shift the perfect aim at her chest—

“The weather has turned against us, hasn’t it?” She resumed walking toward him.

Her voice—closer, louder, clearer—hit him with shocking familiarity. It drew his gaze upward to the target’s face, his hand instinctively following the sudden movement of his eyes, shifting the Mauser sharply just as his finger completed its travel backward. The hammer sprang, the Mauser jerked against his hip, the lapel of his coat blew sideways, and the muted pop of the shot tapped on his ears.

The woman collapsed. Her sunglasses fell off, her face suddenly visible, and Lemmy heard his own voice speak in wonder. “Tanya?”

*

Rabbi Gerster led Itah Orr up the stairs to Benjamin’s apartment. When Sorkeh opened the door, he said, “A guest shouldn’t bring a guest, but this friend needs a safe place to stay until after the Sabbath.”

“Of course,” Sorkeh said. “Come in, please, welcome. We love having guests for the Sabbath.”

The little ones, clinging to her skirt, looked up with big eyes. Even they could tell that the woman in immodest clothes and exposed hair did not belong in Neturay Karta, that something out of the ordinary was going on even though the adults were pretending otherwise.

“Thank you.” Entering the foyer, Itah’s gaze rested on the single photo on the wall. She approached it, squinting at the small letters. “Your son?”

“Yes,” he said, “that’s my Jerusalem.”

“A handsome soldier.”

“That’s nothing,” Sorkeh said. “He was much more handsome in real life. And a brilliant Talmudic scholar. But God had different plans for him. How mysterious His ways are.” She caressed her little daughter’s head.

“Lemmy is with God now,” Rabbi Gerster said. “Forever young.”

Itah gave him a questioning look.

“I must hurry to the synagogue for evening prayers,” he said. “You’ll be fine here.”

The two women, surrounded by the young children, went into the dining room to prepare the table for the Friday night dinner.

Heading back downstairs, Rabbi Gerster thought how good a wife Sorkeh was for Benjamin, as she would have been a good wife to Lemmy. If not for Tanya’s irresistible allure, which had drawn Lemmy away, this apartment would have passed to Lemmy, who would have filled it with his own children. How would it feel to have grandchildren, Rabbi Gerster wondered. Wonderful? Joyous?
Normal?
But it wasn’t meant to be, and time had taken the edge off the pain and anger. He no longer blamed Tanya. She had taken Lemmy as a substitute because she couldn’t have the man she truly loved, and when he did change his mind, it was too late. What if he had agreed immediately to leave his wife and son and this sect of misguided zealots for Tanya? What if he had dropped everything on the day of her reappearance in October 1966 and joined Tanya, the woman
he
truly loved?

What if?

A hypothetical world of dreams. In reality, by his foolish decision he had doomed his wife and son—practically sent Temimah and Lemmy to their death.

*

The bullet tore off her headscarf and knocked her down, but it didn’t kill her, Tanya knew, because she could still see Herr Horch. He approached her and stooped over, staring down. His next shot would be at point blank to ensure her demise. She managed to speak. “No need…for violence.”

He knelt next to her and pressed a handkerchief to the side of her head. “Sit up,” he said. “It’ll reduce the bleeding.”

She held his arm and sat up slowly, unsure of his intentions. Her decision to come here alone had clearly been a fatal miscalculation. But why would a respectable Swiss banker resort to shooting? It made no sense!

“It’s just a scrape,” he said. “You’re very lucky. I never miss.”

“Don’t do…anything foolish.” She closed her eyes to stop the world from spinning. “My colleagues…will come after you. They’re big…on revenge.”

“I know.”

“Why did you…shoot me?”

“You don’t recognize me, Tanya?”

He knew her name?

She opened her eyes and examined the man’s face in the yellow light of the park lamp. He had a pleasant, handsome face, short, blonde hair with a few strands of gray, and blue eyes that radiated intelligence. She touched his face, her fingers feeling his wet forehead, the creases by his eyes, the strong jaw, the soft lips.

“You haven’t changed much,” he said.

“No!” She withdrew her hand from his face and tried to crawl away. “
No!
”

He smiled, and her remaining doubts went away. It was
him!

She was cold. The world was dark and wet around her, not white like the hospital. But she had the same out-of-body feeling. “Am I dead?”

“That’s right. We both died and went to Zurich.” He put his arms around her and pressed her shivering body against his. “Or heaven. Who the hell knows anymore?”

Tanya was paralyzed. Her hands fell beside her body, her face buried in his coat.

He held her. “It’s okay. It’s really me. Your little Lemmy.”

She began to cry.

*

When Rabbi Gerster entered the synagogue, the men were reciting the
Song of Songs
, a long poem that King Solomon had written three millennia earlier. “
How beautiful you are, my betrothed, how beautiful, your eyes like doves.”

On Friday evenings, the betrothed was the Sabbath, Solomon’s verses recited to welcome the holy day. “
Like a rose among the weeds, my beloved among the women.
”

He found Benjamin by a bookcase along the side wall, perusing a heavy volume. “I brought Itah to your apartment. She needs a place to hide. It’s my fault. I asked her to look into things that were better left undisturbed. Now some people are upset with her.”

Behind them, the men continued reciting. “
Your curls, a thick herd of goats, skipping down the slopes of the Gilead, your teeth, like scrubbed sheep, perfectly aligned, without a blemish.
”

“With my family?” Benjamin closed the book. “Is it safe?”

“For now,” Rabbi Gerster said, “it is safe.”

*

Lemmy helped Tanya to a park bench by the water fountain. The rain had stopped, and she gazed at him through a curtain of tears. “I don’t understand.”

“It’s simple. I work for Elie.”

“But why?”

His eyes wandered away. “Why not?”

“You were a kid. Your whole life was ahead of you.”

“I’ve been living my life, a great life, in fact. My mission has given me a meaningful existence—”

“To work for Elie Weiss is
meaningful?
”

He felt her trembling under his arm. “I was eighteen, and he offered me a chance to dedicate my life to our national survival, to fight for something I believed in.”

“Do you still believe it?”

“I do. Elie’s plan is the only way to end anti-Semitism once and for all. Eradicate Jew-hating with true finality.”

Tanya saw the conviction in his eyes, still young and idealistic, the eyes she remembered from so many years ago. Young Lemmy, the boy from Neturay Karta, the avid reader, with his endless questions, with so much passion. “But how?”

“You remember the UN radar at Government House in East Jerusalem?”

“In sixty-seven? Of course. That radar would have detected our planes as they took off, and the UN would have alerted the Arabs, cost us the element of surprise, probably the whole war.”

Lemmy smiled. “I detonated the installation right under the UN chief’s nose. But they later captured me and handed me over to the Jordanians for execution. Elie saved me, shipped me to Europe, and arranged a substitute corpse to be found on the Golan Heights with my ID tags but otherwise too mutilated for identification. Do you remember the aftermath of the Six Day War? Euphoria and a huge mess. No one knew what was going on.”

“But what really happened?”

“I assumed the life of a German boy whose parents died in a fire. Wilhelm Horch had died too, but Elie had the records altered as if Wilhelm had survived. My German was pretty good already, having grown up speaking Yiddish. Elie had an old lawyer in Munich become my guardian and send me to Lyceum Alpin St. Nicholas, a boarding school in the Alps.”