Avraham Azrieli - The Jerusalem Assassin

Elie extended his hand.

Rabin gave him the cigarette. “I don’t need killers anymore. I need peacemakers-doctors, scientists, entrepreneurs, farmers, builders. Your time has passed, Weiss, and my time will pass soon as well. History will recognize us for what we’ve done for our people-you in secret, me in public.”

The smoke filled Elie’s lungs. He let it out slowly. “I’ve set things in motion. To help you regain popularity.”

“ I’m not making deals.”

“ Imagine. A right-wing assassin. Caught red-handed. In public.” He drew from the cigarette and spoke while smoke came from his mouth. “In front of TV cameras. Your bulletproof vest shown to the world. The assassin’s bullets still stuck in it. You’ll bounce in the polls. You’ll win!”

“ I don’t like to wear a bulletproof vest.”

“ You should. You must!”

Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin got up, keeping his head bowed under the roof of the ambulance. He knocked three times on the partition separating the driver’s cabin. “I’ll win public opinion with peace, not with bullets.”

“ The wheels are already turning.” Elie rose on one elbow. “You’ll see! Each bullet’s worth a million votes-”

“ Shin Bet is dealing with local terrorists-Muslim Arabs, Orthodox Jews, whatever. They keep us safe. Keeps me safe.”

“ It’s my expertise.” Elie fought to keep his voice even. p his vOrthodox militants can bring down Israel. I still have assets.”

“ We have enough moles.” Rabin knocked on the partition again. “You’re very sick, Weiss. Make peace with the past. Take pride in what you’ve achieved. And share everything with the boys. Including your financial resources. We’re all on the same side, you know?”

“ Come on, Yitzhak.” Elie tried to smile, feeling the ambulance slow down. “We go a long way back. Once I’m recovered, we can do great things together. Say the word, and the doctors will save me. They kept Golda alive for ten years with lung cancer!”

“ Be well, Weiss.”

“ I have money for your campaign.” Elie’s voice was reduced to hoarse screeching. He grasped the heavy bible, lifting it. “Billions of dollars-”

The ambulance swerved to the side of the road, bumping over a pothole, and the bible dropped to the floor.

Rabin picked it up, put it on Elie’s chest, and stepped down from the ambulance. A few seconds later, his chauffeur-driven Cadillac departed toward Jerusalem with a hiss of its powerful engine.

The nurse reappeared. She fixed the pillow under Elie’s head. The ambulance continued on, shaking on the bumpy road.

He gestured at the small window. She opened it, and a soft breeze carried in the scents of Jerusalem pine. He watched the trees pass by, heard the whistles of sparrows, and contemplated his next move.

*

Tanya greeted the two soldiers at the entrance to the Mount Herzl Cemetery. She followed the path through the rows of rectangular gravestones, each bearing the name of a dead soldier. Elderly parents and a few young women tended to pots of flowers. An old man lounged in a beach chair, arguing with a headstone, his hands gesticulating in emphasis.

She reached Lemmy’s grave and knelt beside it to brush off the dust and dry leaves from a recent storm. Her movements were almost automatic after years of practice-a ritual she had kept since 1967, stopping by every time she visited Israel. A few pieces of gravel rested on the stone-a mourners’ custom. She counted six-one for each time Rabbi Gerster had visited his son since she had last cleaned the headstone. She sighed. O, Abraham, what pain we’ve caused each other.

With a handkerchief she cleaned the letters carved into the stone, shining each one patiently, and stepped back to look at the writing:

Private Jerusalem (“Lemmy”) Gerster

Killed in Battle, June 7, 1967

In the Defense of Israel

God Will Avenge His Blood

Tanya brushed off an errand leaf. She noticed age spots on the back of her hand. So many years had passed. Such a loss. Unfair. Lemmy would have been forty-six now, a g rown man with a family and a career. Successful. Happy. But no, he had been deprived of all the wonderful experiences of adult life. He was dead. Buried. Gone.

“Haven’t seen you in a long time.”

She turned, wiping her tears.

It was the old man with the beach chair, now folded under his arm. “Been away, eh?” His handlebar mustache moved with each word. It would have been comical if not for the wet lines down his creased cheeks.

Tanya nodded.

“ I visit my son every day. I’m retired, wife’s dead, so what else is there?”

“ I work,” she said, “to keep my mind busy.”

He gestured at Lemmy’s grave. “Your son?”

She hesitated. “Lover.”

“ Ah, well. That’s a different kind of pain.” The old man looked at Lemmy’s inscription, likely trying to calculate their age difference.

“ He was eighteen, I was thirty-seven.”

“ A boy with good taste.”

“ Thank you.” She thought for a moment, and then told the stranger what she had not told anyone else. “I killed him.”

He pointed to the stone. “Says here he was killed in battle. You don’t look Arab to me.”

“ If not for me, he wouldn’t have been on the Golan Heights. Or in the army.”

“ That explains it.” The man put down the folded chair and leaned on it like a crutch. “The men of Neturay Karta don’t enlist in the army.”

“ How do you know he was from Neturay Karta?”

“ I see his father here every once in a while. The infamous Rabbi Abraham Gerster, leader of the ultra-Orthodox fanatics. But he’s not the extremist the media made him out to be. A kind man, actually.”

“ True.” Tanya sighed. “And I took away his only child.”

“ Do you have any children?”

Tanya hesitated. “A daughter.”

“ No husband?”

She shook her head. No one but Elie and Abraham knew that her daughter, Professor Bira Galinski, was the daughter of SS Oberstgruppenfuhrer Klaus von Koenig, whom Abraham shot dead in the snowy forest one night near the end of World War II.

“ Guilt is the worst pain.” The man pointed at his son’s grave. “Shalom was our only child. Our pride and joy. A handsome, smart, miracle boy. Our precious Shalom.” He sighed. “An irony, isn’t it? We named our baby for peace, and he grew up to die in war.”

“ Yes,” Tanya said, choking on sudden tears. “An irony.”

“ As an only child, Shalom was supposed to serve in an office, far from the front. But I agreed to sign a consent form. He wanted to serve as a frogman. It was a matter of pride for him, to serve in a fighting unit, like his friends. And he had never asked for anything else. What could I do? Refuse his only request?” He stooped, as if all the air deflated from him. “ Ay, yai, yai. Don’t tell me about guilt. I hold a world record in guilt.”

“ I’m close behind you,” Tanya said. “If not for me seducing him, Lemmy would have stayed in the yeshiva, studying Talmud, becoming a rabbi. I often think of what he lost-all those beginnings that make life worth it-a wedding, a first child’s birth, a baby’s smile, the joys of a full life-”

“ Don’t beat yourself up.” The old man waved his hand. “Those black hats live in a kosher cocoon. At least you gave him a taste of real life before he died.”

She remembered Lemmy on top of her, inside her, crying her name, possessed by passion and joy. The memory made her smile. “Thank you for putting it in perspective.”

“ My pleasure.” He glanced at his wristwatch. “Got to see the wife before dark. She’s at Sanhedriah Cemetery. So, shalom!”

“ Shalom.”

He turned toward his son’s grave and yelled, “See you tomorrow, Boychik! ”