Avraham Azrieli - The Jerusalem inception

“You think too much,” he said. “Don’t over-analyze what we have. It feels good, so it must be good. Leave the hair-splitting to the Talmudic scholars.”

The mugs safely on the table, she blew her nose and wiped her eyes. “I’m sorry. The last few months have been tough.” She stopped there, not explaining further, not sharing with him the terror of a victim’s deja vu, of recognizing the rising ghosts from another war, gathering again, circling gleefully with the single goal of exterminating the Jewish people. It was Hitler all over again, only that his incarnation had taken the three-headed identity of Nasser, Assad, and King Hussein. They spoke Arabic instead of German. They propagated Pan Arabism instead of Nazism. But just like Hitler, their language and ideology was but a masquerade for their true aim. And among their chosen prey, among those they sought to murder, were the two people she truly and unconditionally loved. But unlike the Nazi Holocaust, which caught her as a budding and hapless young teen, this coming war would include her as a fighter. All her training and skills were now going to count in the struggle to prevent this war from following the Nazi Holocaust with an Arab Holocaust. And the fight would require her total commitment, all her physical and mental resources, as she would be fighting not on the front lines, but in the back alleys of Marseilles, or the power hallways of Paris, where armament, money, and military secrets could give Israel the upper hand in what seemed like an unavoidable calamity. And for her to win the secret battles under her command, Tanya had to regain the single-minded ferocity of a hunter who was simultaneously being hunted. She had to focus, to forget everything else, including the two souls that occupied her heart-Bira and Lemmy-a daughter she loved by force of motherhood and two decades of a perilous-yet-joyous life together, and a boy she loved by force of fate, or coincidence, or sheer stupidity and feminine weakness for which she had only herself to blame.

“Enough,” he said as if reading her mind. “There’s only here and now, okay?”

They held each other for a long moment.

Tanya breathed deeply. She rebuked herself silently for letting gloom and fear take over. Israel wasn’t a Shtetl, or a ghetto, but a Jewish state with an army of dedicated men and women, ready to defend it. And she had a vital role in that effort. “My assignment here will end soon. I’ll probably be sent back to Europe. This house might be empty or occupied by someone else when your next leave comes around.”

“I’ve never been abroad. Can I visit you?”

There was no way she could see him in Europe. Mossad life didn’t allow for casual visitors. To change the subject, she asked, “Have you received any letters from home?”

“Are you kidding?”

Tanya was surprised. Abraham had clearly said that his wife would write to Lemmy. “Your mother didn’t write to you?”

“She probably forgot about me already.”

“Don’t be stupid!” Tanya immediately regretted her sharp tone. “There’s nothing my daughter could do to make me forget her. Your mother will never-”

“What do you know about Neturay Karta?”

“I know how a mother feels.”

“Not my mother. She feels what my father allows her to feel, which obviously can’t include feelings for a banished son.”

“That’s not what-”

“I don’t want to talk about it!” Lemmy put down his coffee and left the kitchen. She heard him enter the bathroom, and a moment later the water was running in the shower.

E lie Weiss had spent the night at the Pension Naurische, a small hotel run by an elderly couple near Zurich’s train station. When he came downstairs, Frau Naurische handed him a thick envelope addressed to Herr Danzig. Taking his breakfast in the cozy lounge, Elie used a butter knife to open the seal.

One of his agents had collected background information on Armande Hoffgeitz. Technically it was a violation of Israeli law, which limited all overseas clandestine activities to Mossad. But Elie had never considered his operations to be subjected to this or any other law. Only the best interest of the Jewish people counted.

He pulled out a manila folder, which contained approximately twenty black-and-white photographs. In the first photo, a family was seated on the deck of a sailboat, chewing on sausage sandwiches. The parents were pudgy, but the two children seemed athletic. The note on the back of the photo read: Armande, wife Greta, daughter Paula, and son Klaus V.K. Hoffgeitz.

Another photo showed a thin, tall man in a dark suit and a tie standing by a Rolls Royce. The note on the back read: Gunter Schnell, long-time assistant to Herr Hoffgeitz. In the next photo, the family entered a church whose front was adorned with three stained glass windows that seemed familiar. The agent noted that the Hoffgeitz family regularly attended Sunday afternoon mass at the Fraumunster on the Limmat River, which apparently was opened to tourists in the morning hours.

As he walked to church through the streets of Zurich, Elie remembered walking with his father to the synagogue through the muddy roads of the shtetl, both of them in black coats and wide-brimmed hats. At the door of the synagogue, Rabbi Yakov Gerster greeted them with his son, Abraham. The rabbi asked how Elie had been progressing as an apprentice shoykhet, and while Elie’s father bragged about his son’s proficiency with the slaughter of livestock, Abraham scrunched his face in revulsion.

With this memory on his mind, Elie mounted the stone steps of the Fraumunster church and entered the cavernous space, which was braced by multiple cross-arches high above. The three aisles of the gothic basilica were lit by the rays of the sun, filtered through the stained glass windows. Less than a third of the pews were taken. The Hoffgeitz family sat up front. The organ played a thunderous tune, and the parishioners sang a hymn. He sat in the rear, far to the right. It was chilly, the damp air scented with candles. He hesitated before removing his wool cap, but he had no choice.

The pastor, in a black robe, signaled to the organ player, who picked up the pace, bringing it to a roaring climax. The organ was enormous in size, with hundreds, perhaps over a thousand pipes rising to different heights.

“This is a special day,” the pastor began, his German spoken with a French accent. He pointed to the front of the choir room and the stained-glass windows. “Thanks to the generosity of our faithful and the divine gift of the inspired artist, we are blessed with the presence of prophets Elijah, Elisha, and Jeremiah.”

This jolted Elie’s memory. Months earlier he had read in a newspaper article criticizing the elderly Jewish artist Marc Chagall for accepting a lucrative commission to create biblical scenes for a Swiss church, including one of Jesus Christ, in whose name countless Jews had been murdered over the past centuries. Elie shifted in the pew to get a better look.

While Elijah was rising to heaven in a chariot of fire, Jeremiah hovered in a hazy blue cloud. The next stained window showed Moses looking down on the Israelites in the midst of battle. Jacob occupied the next, his ladder reaching for the sky while a seraph wrestled him to the ground. Elie almost laughed at the next scene, which had the walled city of Jerusalem descending from a yellowish sky while King David and Bathsheba looked on amorously.

The pastor, meanwhile, crossed over to the most striking depiction, a greenish-orange creation that starred Mary, Baby Jesus, a floating tree, a lamb, and the crucifixion, with an adult Jesus ascending to divine heights that required Elie to crane his neck to look at the top, near the ceiling, where their Messiah was finally free from his earthly suffering.