The Jerusalem Assassin (44 page)

“Then he must have left me a note somewhere. Where could it be?”

Benjamin waved at the walls. “They took everything.”

A memory came to Lemmy. On his last day here, back in 1967, his father carried
The Zohar
, the book of Kabbalah mysticism, which only the most righteous rabbis dared to study. “Go back into the synagogue and have the men search all the bookcases for my father’s copy of
The Zohar
. It’s bound in brown leather.”

“I know how it looks.” The hesitation confirmed Lemmy’s assumption that
The Zohar
was the perfect hiding place for a note. Even an accomplished scholar like Rabbi Benjamin Mashash was wary of it. “Your father wouldn’t leave it in the synagogue, where others could happen upon it.”

“Please,” Lemmy said. “Trust me.”

Benjamin left, and a moment later his voice boomed from the dais inside the synagogue. Lemmy could hear the benches creak and the floorboards groan as the men fanned out to the walls of the synagogue to search the long shelves that carried thousands of books.

*

They were sitting in the living room on black leather sofas around a chrome-and-glass coffee table. Rabbi Gerster said to Itah, “Start moaning. I need background noise so they can’t hear what I’m saying.”

Itah complied, uttering a low moan toward the ceiling.

Rabbi Gerster leaned close to Elie. “I demand that you come clean with me!”

Itah kept going, interrupted only by a brief intake of air.

Elie gave him a cold, dark glare. “Tell her to shut up.”

“The man in the photo with Tanya is my son. If you don’t cooperate, Shin Bet will find and kill him!”

“Quiet, please,” Elie addressed Itah directly. “This game could end badly.”

Rabbi Gerster put his much bigger hand on Elie’s. “If you don’t level with me, I’ll tell Agent Cohen everything I know—about Tanya, about you, and about the fortune left by Klaus von Koenig.”

“You know nothing.”

Itah raised her hand to quiet them and stopped moaning. She took a sip of water, gargled it, and resumed moaning. Meanwhile the housekeeper went to the phone and began punching numbers. Gideon leaped from the sofa and took away the receiver, hanging up. The woman shrugged and returned to the dishes in the sink.

“I won’t sit idly,” Rabbi Gerster said, “and let my son die again. Tell me the truth!”

Elie scratched his scalp. “The truth? You seem to know the truth already. Jerusalem Gerster died in sixty-seven, and a German teenager came to life in his stead. My Swiss agent might be living inside your son’s physical body, but he’s someone else. For him, you don’t exist.”

“That’s a lie!”

“Can you blame him? When Jerusalem rebelled against the ultra-Orthodox lifestyle, you declared him dead and sat shivah for him—made your own son homeless and hopeless. And that was even before he became a soldier, before the war. You lost him forever when you excommunicated him.”

“That’s between me and Lemmy. You had no right to lure him into your spider web.”

“Why? You had tossed him into the garbage, and I dug him out and made use of him. Why is it your business?” Elie’s colorless lips curled, exposing teeth yellowed from smoking.

“Wilhelm Horch. That’s his name, correct?”

The grin disappeared from Elie’s face.

Itah ran out of breath, and the room quieted down. Instantly Gideon raised his head and howled, which made Itah burst out laughing and caused the housekeeper to smile for the first time.

Elie, however, was not smiling. He pointed at Rabbi Gerster’s chest. “If you utter that name again, you’ll cause Lemmy’s death.”

It seemed that Elie didn’t know Lemmy was already in Jerusalem. “But Agent Cohen said they’ll catch him—”

“Bravado. Kids playing spies.” Elie sneered. “You have no reason to fear Shin Bet.”

“I fear
you!
”

“For good reason.” Elie raised two fingers, held together. “I have a backup agent, right next to him inside that bank. You disobey me one more time, and I’ll have your son’s throat slit. We understand each other, yes?”

Before Rabbi Gerster could respond, two Shin Bet agents burst into the apartment, guns at the ready. One of them was the nurse, a large, muscular woman, who aimed at Gideon. “Quiet!”

He stopped howling.

“What’s going on here?”

“We’re having a contest,” Itah said, “a coyote-imitation contest. Would you like to try out?”

*

“We found it!” Benjamin rushed into the small room with the leather-bound book. “You were right. Rabbi Gerster hid it in plain view on the top shelf.”

Lemmy opened
The Zohar
and browsed through the pages, which were yellow from old age. On page 67 he found a sheet of paper, folded in half, attached with a strip of tape. He peeled it off.

Jerusalem, October 29, 1995

My dear Lemmy,

Until a few hours ago, I had only grief, guilt, and regret to occupy my mind. Now I have hope—to hug you, to kiss you, and to beg for your forgiveness.

Much needs to be explained face-to-face, but just in case fate is again unkind to us, please know that I had deceived you and your mother. I don’t believe in God, and so I’m not a true rabbi.

why had I done that?

I have witnessed the Holocaust firsthand. No God stopped the Nazis, and no God will prevent future disasters and deaths. It’s up to us to reduce Jewish suffering, each with the skills we possess. My skills are rabbinical by upbringing, and so I’ve dedicated my life to this job.

And what is this job?

As you have studied, civil wars and brotherly hatred typified the repeat demises of Jewish sovereignty in Israel. I came to live among the ultra-Orthodox as a mole, assigned to keep the extremists in check, lest they bring down this current iteration of the Jewish state, as they had destroyed all its predecessors since the empire of King David.

In the course of my duties, I caused you and my saintly wife much suffering. I condemned you to the loneliest agony—that of a son who hates his own father—because your innocent eyes saw in me only the cruelty of a devout fanatic. Was that the reason for your cruelty in rebuffing the pleading letters that your mother sent to you in the army?

But now I know how Elie had manipulated our lives to serve his fanatical ends. He caused me to become a deceiver, a hypocrite, a husband and father who cheated his family out of the love and loyalty which they deserved. And he made you repeat my errors in your own life. How ironic!

But Elie’s malice does not diminish my responsibility. It’s too late for either of us to obtain your mother’s forgiveness, yet I hope you can find it in your heart to understand, and perhaps accept, that my choices were motivated by selfless idealism, foolish as it might be.

Now to the present. I am convinced that you will return to seek answers soon, as Elie’s current scheme stinks more ominously than anything he tried before. This morning we’ll try to pluck him out of the hospital and question him.

Stuffed into the binding of this book you will find a complete summary of my investigation, assisted by Itah Orr. The agent nicknamed ‘Freckles’ is the key. Seek him, and you’ll find what Elie is up to, how to stop him, and how to free yourself from his web.

And for this—your freedom—I’m willing to lose my life. I’ll do anything to bring you home, to give you a second chance to live a normal life.

I love you, my son, more than anything in this world or the next. I love you more than I love life itself, more than the sun and the air that I breathe.

Your father, Abraham Gerster

Lemmy held the letter before him, too choked up to do anything but look at his father’s handwriting. He wiped his eyes and read the letter again, more slowly, from the beginning. One sentence especially made no sense: Was that the reason for your cruelty in rebuffing the pleading letters that your mother sent to you in the army? Lemmy could not understand. What letters? He had received no letters from his mother during his IDF service!

“Jerusalem?” Benjamin touched his arm. “Are you okay?”

Lemmy tore off the book’s binding and found a densely scribbled, three-page note that described everything Rabbi Gerster and Itah had uncovered about ILOT, Freckles, and Yoni Adiel. A copy of the table of contents of the
ILOT Member Manual
was also hidden there, together with bank statements showing the money that passed through the young men’s accounts and old paychecks from the VIP Protection Unit.

A youth, about eighteen, came in and whispered in Benjamin’s ear.

“My son tells me there are strangers in the neighborhood. They might be looking for you.”

“Then I must leave.” Lemmy folded everything and put it in his pocket. There was no point in breaking Benjamin’s heart with Rabbi Gerster’s blasphemous confession. “I don’t want to put you in danger.”

“Nonsense. You’re not going anywhere.” Benjamin took off his black coat and hat. “These should fit you.”

Lemmy put them on.

“Now,” Benjamin clapped his hands, “let’s go home and have something to eat!”

*

Wednesday, November 1, 1995

Lemmy woke up in a room he knew well. Sunlight came in through the window. Hushed voices filtered through the closed door. He lowered his feet to the floor. The bed screeched under him. His old bookshelves lined the wall, heavy with tall volumes of Talmud. He stuck his hand behind them, but there was nothing hidden there. He rubbed his face, chuckling at the memory of Benjamin’s stunned expression at the sight of the novel he had pulled from behind the Talmud volume. They had been teenagers, budding Talmudic scholars in Neturay Karta, a sect dedicated to God’s worship, where secular novels, like all forms of alien entertainment, were strictly banned. But Lemmy’s secret relationship with Tanya, and the books she had lent him, had penetrated the walls of isolation, planted doubts in his mind, and eventually led to his blasphemous rebellion and his excommunication. He touched the first volume of Talmud—
Baba Metziah
—and wondered how things would have turned out if there had been no place to hide Tanya’s novels in his room.

He washed and joined Benjamin’s family for breakfast. His parents’ old dining room had remained unchanged, the long table that left little room to get around, the portraits of famed rabbis that looked down from the walls. Like Rabbi Abraham Gerster before him, Benjamin sat at the head of the table, slurping tea from a tall glass. But unlike the old days, the other chairs were taken by children. They looked up at Lemmy, their chatter abruptly halted.

“Did we wake you up?” Benjamin stood, beckoning to a vacant chair.

“It’s time.” Lemmy smiled at the children. “Good morning, kids. My name is Baruch.”

“Hi Baruch,” they chorused as their mother appeared from the kitchen with a fresh cup of tea and toast with butter.

Last night, when Benjamin had brought him home, Sorkeh accepted his resurrection with surprising equanimity. “
Baruch ha’ba,
” she had said, which meant
Blessed be the newcomer
. “I never
felt
that you were dead. Now I know why.”

The name Baruch stuck to him, and they agreed that Lemmy’s return from the dead would remain a secret, not to be discussed with anyone.

The children resumed their busy chattering, the older ones getting ready for school. They breathed new life into his parents’ old apartment.

After the meal, as he took his plate back to the kitchen, Lemmy thought of his late mother, bending over this very sink, cleaning a fish with a serrated knife. For a moment, he could smell the carp, hear his mother’s scraping knife, and see the shining scales on the countertop.

After the children had left, Sorkeh brought him a black hat that had a fake beard and side locks attached to it. “Our kids have a treasure trove of costumes for Purim.”

He put it on and looked at the mirror. That’s how he would have looked had he stayed at Neturay Karta.

Benjamin summoned a few of his men, and they boarded a van. Driving through the narrow streets of Meah Shearim, Lemmy looked around, absorbing the changes and the things that had remained the same. He was surprised at the abundance of graffiti on the walls:

Meir Kahane lives! Death to the Arabs!

Stop obscene advertising! Boycott Coca Cola!

Digging up Jewish graves is sacrilege!

He who violates the Sabbath should be stoned to death!

God’s land is not for sale! Peace comes from God!

Zionism is blasphemy – we must wait for the blessed Messiah!

They stopped to buy the morning papers, and Lemmy looked through the news pages. A brief report described the accusations against his father and Itah Orr, who were being interrogated at an undisclosed location. But there was no mention of Tanya Galinski or even a reference to an accident in Amsterdam involving an Israeli woman. It was the third day already, and nothing! He searched through the list of funeral announcements, relieved to find nothing there either. Tanya had run into the street because of his false accusations, and now she was lying in a foreign hospital surrounded by strangers. There was only one thing he could do to help Tanya right now, and it was worth the risk. “Let’s get it done,” he said to Benjamin, who nodded and spoke quietly to the driver.

*

“Enough with the games!” Agent Cohen stormed into the apartment. He slammed four photographs on the kitchen table in front of Elie Weiss. “Look!”

“You again?” Elie put down his knife and fork.

Itah said, “Here goes another good breakfast.”

“If you don’t give me answers, there won’t be any more breakfasts—good
or
bad!”

Rabbi Gerster looked closely. The first photo was the one they had seen yesterday of Lemmy and Tanya in a Zurich park. The second photo showed him wearing a fedora, kneeling by Tanya, who was lying on a cobblestone street across rail tracks. The third photo was in a hospital room, Lemmy wearing a baseball hat. The fourth photo was grainy, likely enlarged from a wide-angle video lens. It showed Lemmy at the entrance to the King David Hotel, also wearing a baseball hat, but in a different color.