The Old Boys (19 page)

I said, “Why do you say that Heydrich was dead because of Lori?”

Schwarz’s cell phone rang in his pocket. He ignored it.

He said, “Why do you ask?”

“As
I understand it, Heydrich’s assassination was supposed to be a British operation, carried out with British weapons.”

“It’s true that Heydrich was killed with Sten guns. But the British weren’t the only people in the world who had Sten guns. Or friends in Prague. Or even the strongest motive to eliminate Heydrich.”

“Are you telling me Heydrich’s assassination was a Jewish operation?”

“If I were, I’d only be guessing,” Schwarz said. “Let me tell you what I know about Lori Christopher.”

Her ship had sailed from Bari, on the heel of Italy. To get from Czechoslovakia, across Austria, and down nearly the whole length of Italy through the chaos of Europe in 1945 was no easy matter. The roads were clogged with displaced persons fleeing the Russians or simply trying to get back home after having been kidnapped by the Nazis. Lori had no papers, but neither did anybody else. The trains weren’t operating. Almost no one had a motor vehicle and there was no gasoline for civilians in any case. There was no way to get anywhere except by walking.

“She lost herself in the mob until she was out of Czechoslovakia,” Schwarz said. “Then she walked across Austria, alone, traveling at night, her belongings wrapped up in a shawl.”

“What belongings?”

Schwarz said, “I think you already know the answer to that question. The Amphora Scroll.”

His phone rang again. This time he answered, speaking in Hebrew.

“Please excuse me,” he said. “But I really have to go now.”

And with a charming smile he was gone.

Jack Philindros and I dined with the monks, who did pretty well for themselves at table. Greek salad, roast lamb, fruit, sour red wine mixed with water, gritty sweet coffee. Except for the coffee, Septimus Arcanus might have eaten a similar supper two thousand years ago in this same neighborhood.

Afterward, in Jack’s whitewashed cell, we talked about Norman Schwarz. The walls and door were thick. One tiny shuttered window was set high in the wall above an ornate Byzantine crucifix. The silence was almost perfect, so Jack was almost audible.

I said, “Likeable fellow, your man Schwarz.”

“Everybody notices,” Jack replied.

“Do you believe what he was telling us?”

“With the usual reluctance, yes,” Jack said.

“You’ve dealt with him before?”

“Yes.”

“Then why the reluctance?”

“Truthful men sometimes lie and liars sometimes tell the truth,” Jack said. “All things being equal, Norman is a truthful man.”

“I was a little surprised at his suggestion that Lori was an agent of Zionists.”

“It’s
not impossible. Norman’s mother, who was Lori’s contact in the
Mahican
operation, was Yeho Stern’s sister.”

“Oh.”

The late Yeho Stern had been head of the Israeli intelligence service during the earliest years of Israel’s existence. Yeho was legendary in the original sense of the word. During his long tenure as Memuneh, meaning the Big Boss of the Mossad, no one outside his service, and not everybody inside it, could be absolutely sure that he really existed.

I said, “What about the Brits?”

“Maybe Yeho piggybacked their operation,” Jack replied. “Taking free rides on better-financed services was one of his many specialties.”

“So you see no holes in what Norman has told us so far?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“What, then?”

“A possible funny coincidence,” Jack said. “Norman was in the Jewish Brigade, a unit of the British army that saw action in northern Italy in the spring of 1945, just before V-E Day. In the summer of 1945 members of the Jewish Brigade were active all along the Italian frontier with Yugoslavia and Austria, helping escaping Jews to get aboard the underground railroad for Palestine.”

“So?”

“Norman may have met Lori in Italy on Uncle Yeho’s orders and put her on the right boat for Haifa.”

This made sense. No introductions would have been necessary, no explanations required. Lori already knew Norman from Berlin days, and anything he did for her could be explained as payment of a personal debt.

Having planted this seed, Jack fell into a silence. Monastic surroundings notwithstanding, I was in no mood for silent communing and besides, he had aroused my curiosity about Norman.

“You said that Norman is a scholar,” I said. “What’s his field?”

“Byzantine art,” Jack said. “That’s why he’s a regular here.
He uses the library. Some of the monks are Byzantine scholars, too.”

“Don’t tell me he’s another doctor of philosophy.”

“No, he took it up in retirement. For most of his life he was a professional poker player.”

According to Jack, Norman had learned the game from seamen on the Australian tramp steamer that had taken his family from Copenhagen to Haifa after their escape from the Nazis. Norman showed an immediate flair for poker. He had phenomenal eyesight, which meant that he could read every card that fell, a retentive memory, and a gift for arithmetic. As a result of a boyhood spent in the company of people who mostly wanted to see him dead, he was also good at reading faces and body language.

Soon after Norman came home from the war he sat down to a game of five-card stud with his Uncle Yeho and some of his Mossad friends. He cleaned them out.

Yeho immediately saw his nephew’s possibilities. The kid was young and handsome and smart and already a cool experienced killer—as a soldier he had been an unusually competent sniper in Italy. This résumé would have made Norman interesting to Yeho even if he had had no other qualifications. His skill at poker made him special. Needing no other cover, he could go anywhere in the world and play cards with anyone, and because gamblers lived at night while the rest of the world slept, he could get away with just about any kind of operation.

That very night, Yeho popped the question.

“Norman made a condition,” Jack said. “He insisted on keeping whatever money he won at cards. Yeho said okay. How could he play without an incentive?”

“And did he come out ahead?”

“After a few years in the field he used his winnings to buy a small hotel in Miami Beach,” Jack said. “It didn’t really matter to Yeho where Norman lived, of course.”

“Did he go on playing poker after he became a hotelier?”

“Until
he began to lose to younger players, but that didn’t happen until years later,” Jack said. “He played in high-stakes games all over the world. Norman met a lot of interesting people, rich Arabs and so on. Rich Germans, too.”

Jack had something to tell me, but he expected me to ask for it.

I said, “Tell me more about the rich Arabs and Germans.”

“You can ask Norman when you see him again.” He looked at his watch. “Midnight. You know, Horace, I think you’d be better off staying here tonight. The monks will be glad to have you, and Norman does come by almost every day.”

“What about tomorrow?”

“We’ll see what we see,” Jack said. “Meanwhile, you’re welcome to stay here for a few days. The King David is a goldfish bowl.”

“You want me to go into hiding?”

“No, but you have nothing to gain by being conspicuous. I know you don’t care about security anymore, but Israel is full of Russians and not all of them are innocent returnees.”

“Meaning?”

“From what I’ve heard about what you and Harley were up to in Moscow, you may have created resentments in Russia.”

I said, “Is this a warning on general principles or do you know something specific?”

“There’s some local anxiety about your safety,” Jack said.

“You’re telling me both the Russian mob and the Mossad are after me?”

“Not the Mossad, as far as I know. Why should they be when you might have better luck than they’ve had so far in finding the missing bombs? They’d rather just watch you work.”

“And Norman is the watcher?”

“One of them, maybe,” Jack said. “But I think he represents an offer of friendship. A broker between two parties who have similar objectives.”

The other party was Yeho’s old organization. I had never heard
of anyone going into partnership with the Mossad and coming out ahead.

I said, “A broker who belongs to the competition and just happens to be one of the best poker players in the world?”

“Yes, but he’s also Norman.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning I really don’t think Norman is going to lie to a cousin of Paul Christopher’s or betray him,” Jack said. “He may have an agenda of his own, but he has his memories, too.”

In his elliptical way Jack was saying that Norman was an Old Boy who lived by old principles. The Christophers, who had saved his family at the risk of their own lives, were his friends. So were their friends, and especially their families.

We finished our breakfast. Jack said, “Why don’t you take the day off? Stay in your room and wait for Norman to show up. I have some things to do.”

The monks did not speak to me, but they didn’t seem to mind my presence. After wandering around the monastery for half the morning looking at icons and books, I settled down in my cell with a novel I had brought with me. Around one o’clock I heard the monks shuffling by my door and then, drifting down the corridor, convivial sounds as they tucked into lunch. Jack had vanished and I felt diffident about going down to the refectory by myself. I ate an apple and went back to my book.

An hour or so later came a tap on the door. My caller was Norman Schwarz, carrying a tray covered with a napkin.

“The monks were afraid you might be faint with hunger,” Norman said. “And I have this for you.”

From a string shopping bag he produced a package containing clean socks and underwear, a razor and toothbrush, and a secondhand sweater old enough and large enough to have been made for Goliath. Apparently Jack had asked him to do some shopping. Again I noticed his small hands. His Uncle Yeho, whom he did not otherwise resemble, had been a tiny man. Imagine a hairy tenyear-old.

Under
the napkin I found a bowl of soup based on last evening’s roast lamb, a chunk of bread, a slab of cheese, a jug of water.

“Eat,” Norman said.

While I chewed, he talked. Norman had vivid memories of Lori Christopher as she had been after she came ashore by night in Palestine.

“She had been emptied out,” Norman said. “Everything she had been before Heydrich had run down some psychological drainpipe. She was alive, yes, and apart from being thinner and very, very quiet, she was the same as she had been in Berlin. Back then she had crackled with intelligence, exuded vitality. She was still beautiful, but you felt that she was someplace else emotionally. And so she was—she was between her last self and her next self.”

“I’m not sure I follow you,” I said.

“Before the war, even with the Nazis in power, she had been a reckless person. She said whatever came into her head, she did what she wanted. She had everything—an ancient name, enough money, beauty, a husband she loved, Paul. She lost all that, even ownership of her own body. So she was not the woman she had been, and never could be that woman again.”

“This is speculation?”

“No,” Norman said. “She told me this.”

“Whatever for? Were you her psychiatrist?”

“No,” Norman said. “Her lover.”

I could not have been more astonished if he had pulled out a pistol and shot me with it.

It was Lori who started the affair. She had been staying with the Schwarzes in Jerusalem. Norman was on terminal leave from the army. One night she simply got into his bed. In Norman’s experience it was usually the woman who made the first move, but this surprised him. There was not that much difference in their ages. He was in his early twenties; she was still in her thirties. But the last time he had seen her he had been a boy and she had been Paul’s mother.

“I
was startled,” Norman said, “but I was young and she woke me out of a sound sleep in which I was probably dreaming of a girl, so I didn’t think twice. She had the body of a girl, she smelled like a girl, but she had the sexual intelligence, the bed language, of a woman to whom nothing is new and nothing is forbidden.”

This was my aunt he was talking about. I was quite uncomfortable.

I said, “You told Paul this?”

“Of course not.”

“Then why are you telling me?”

“You have a reason to know and no reason not to be told,” Norman said. “And I assume you can keep a secret.”

Norman fell in love with Lori. “I was under no illusions,” he said. “She didn’t love me. She couldn’t have been better to me in bed and in every other way if she had loved me. But she didn’t.”

“Your parents didn’t notice what was going on?”

“I saw little smiles on their lips. Mothers like their sons to get laid. My parents were old-fashioned radical socialists, believers in free love. To them, sex was like eating an ice-cream cone on a hot day. Who doesn’t like ice cream?”

“If she didn’t love you and she was still in shock from what had happened with Heydrich, what was she getting out of it?”

“She was burning a bridge.”