Avraham Azrieli - The Jerusalem Assassin

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.”

“ It’s not a coincidence that Elie sent you there. Armande Hoffgeitz and Klaus von Koenig studied there together, became friends.”

“ It’s a great school, fancy old buildings, great facilities, and wonderful teachers. I was supposed to be sixteen, so I stayed there for three years, made friends, and during school holidays Elie trained me.”

“While we mourned you.”

“You rejected me, remember? Told me I was too young for you. Sent me to live with Bira and her friends.”

“ For your own good, yes, but-”

“ But what? I was eighteen, alone in the world. Eighteen! ”

Tanya sighed. “I remember how old you were. And even if you were older, you would have been no match for Elie Weiss. He’s too clever, even for me.”

“He taught me how to blend in, how to court the right girl, how to plan ahead. It has worked like a clock. I married and joined the Hoffgeitz Bank under the tutelage of my father-in-law.”

“What did you say?”

“Armande Hoffgeitz is Paula’s father.”

“Oh, no!”

“ And we have a son. Klaus Junior.”

“ Klaus?” A look of horror took over Tanya’s face. “This is a nightmare.”

“ My work is very important. I’ve developed clients in the Middle East, oil-rich sheiks and so on. They give money to terrorist groups, I trace it, report to Elie, and-”

“ I know how it works. But that’s a red herring. Elie didn’t recruit you to spy on Arab sheiks. Or to assassinate them. He recruited you with the single purpose of gaining control of the bank.”

“ Eventually.” Lemmy shrugged. “Family relations are the only way to power in a Swiss private bank.”

“ So Elie told you to marry a Swiss sausage to get to the cheese.”

“ Initially it was a calculated move. But I didn’t have to pretend for long. Paula is wonderful. I’ve grown to love her very much.”

Tanya closed her eyes. “Jerusalem Gerster loves Armande Hoffgeitz’s daughter. This is absolutely insane.”

“Jealous?”

“You haven’t lost your sense of humor.” She searched his eyes for a long moment. “How could you do this?”

“What? Marry Paula?”

“Marrying for duty is in your genes. Your father made the same mistake.”

“ Say again?”

Tanya made a dismissive gesture. “How could you leave Israel, leave your life, your language, your friends? How could you turn into somebody else?”