Avraham Azrieli - The Jerusalem Assassin

“ Tit for tat?”

“ An exchange of favors. Big favors. We felt it was inappropriate and took steps to investigate. Do you know what I’m talking about?”

“No idea. I’ve been in Paris, chasing Arab terrorists.”

“You don’t know anything about Elie’s grand plans? His political schemes?”

“No idea.” It was the truth, but Gideon could tell that his interrogator didn’t believe him. “You don’t really know Elie Weiss, do you?”

“Only the myths,” Agent Cohen said. “And our surveillance in the past few weeks.”

That was shocking news. Had Shin Bet watched them in Paris? “Do you realize how dangerous he is?”

“Weiss? He is a pathetic old man. An archeological joke.”

“A joke?” Gideon picked a crumb from the table and held it up as if there was something interesting about it. “Even now, as sick as he is, Elie Weiss could kill you before you had enough time to wipe the smirk off your face.”

“Not anymore.” Reaching under his jacket, Agent Cohen pulled out Elie’s blade in its leather sheath.

“Without the blade he would only make your death more painful. You’re better off giving it back to him.”

The expression on Agent Cohen’s face went from smug to wary. But the tone of his voice remained businesslike. “Have you trained with any of the local SOD agents? Have you met any of them?”

“I only knew Bathsheba. And I’d like to attend her funeral, by the way.”

“Sorry. She was buried last night in Jerusalem.” He raised a hand to stop Gideon’s protests. “She received a soldier’s burial. Family members attended, a representative from the defense ministry gave a moving eulogy, and six Shin Bet agents lowered the coffin. A very respectable ceremony, I assure you.”

Gideon got up and went to the window. “A tragic ending to a tragic life.”

“Elie mentioned to Rabin something about money. He claimed to have unlimited funds. Do you know anything about it?”

“Elie is a good liar.”

“True,” Agent Cohen said. “Have you been to Zurich with him?”

“Why Zurich?”

“He’s got some business there, we’re not sure what. Do you know?”

It was a trick question, Gideon realized. They must have followed him when he had made the call to the Hoffgeitz Bank. “I think he maintains an account there. It’s standard procedure. Switzerland is a good place to keep money. Didn’t Rabin’s wife once maintain an illegal account there?”

“That was in New York.”

“ Oh.”

“ Which bank did Elie use?”

Now he was sure Agent Cohen knew the answer. So he told him. “The Hoffgeitz Bank. I’ve never been there, but Elie mentioned the name.”

“Interesting. We’ll follow up on it.”

“ In Switzerland? Aren’t you limited to domestic investigations?”

“ What do you want us to do? Refer it to Mossad?” Cohen laughed as if the idea was ridiculous.

“ That’s exactly what the law requires, doesn’t it?”

“ The law doesn’t exactly permit the activities SOD has recently engaged in-shooting people on French roads, making people swallow explosives in seedy hotels, and so on. You could be prosecuted as a murderer, you know?”

“ I know an unsubtle threat when it hits me in the face.”

“ That’s right. And if you insist on an answer, it’s simple. The VIP Protection Unit is tasked with pursuing any and all potential threats to the prime minister’s safety. We may conduct our investigational operations anywhere.”

“ Including overseas?”

“ Including outer space, if needed.” Agent Cohen gathered the napkins and empty plastic cups into the bag and walked to the door. “Which is the reason my offer still stands. If you cooperate fully with our investigation, we’ll sign you up as a Shin Bet agent.”

“ Right now?”

“ As soon as our current operation is concluded successfully.”

*

Rabbi Abraham Gerster had not given a sermon in Meah Shearim in over a decade. His extended retreat to the rear benches had elevated him to a tzadik, a man of mysterious righteousness, revered by everyone in the sect. Therefore, when he rose from his seat after the reading of the Torah and approached the dais, the men of Neturay Karta stood up in awe, and even the women in the upstairs mezzanine became completely silent.

“Good Sabbath!” He motioned for them to sit down.

The crowd murmured while sitting down.

“Some of you remember the days of the abortion debate, three decades ago, when the Zionist Knesset was preparing a law that was an anathema to us and to other God-fearing Jews.” Rabbi Gerster smiled at Cantor Toiterlich, Sorkeh’s father, who nodded knowingly in the front row. “And even the young among you know that we chose peace, shalom, rather than add internecine bloodshed to that of the unborn.”

A wave of hushed exchanges went through the synagogue. For most of them, it was ancient history, yet the 1967 ruling had left its mark on every aspect of their insular, inward-looking life since then.

“Today the Promised Land is again torn by a political conflict over life and death. The so-called Oslo process promulgates a transfer of sacred parts of Israel to Arab control in exchange for their promise not to kill Jews anymore. The faithful must wonder: Are we allowed to give away God’s land? Is there validity to the Arabs’ promise to refrain from further terror and mayhem? And what of the deadly peril to Jews living in towns and villages in Judea, Samaria, and the Gaza Strip? Are they slated to live under Arab rule or be expelled from their homes?”

He let the silence linger, but no one broke it.

“ Since the first Oslo Accord two years ago, Palestinian terror has taken more than one hundred and fifty Jewish lives. But the current Zionist leaders still believe that, in the long run, peace will bring security to our people. What else can the faithless Zionists believe in but brittle papers and human promises?”

The question lingered in the silent synagogue.

Rabbi Gerster glanced up at the women’s mezzanine, where Itah sat with Sorkeh. “A schism threatens to tear apart our nation. A grave danger faces us, the Chosen People, who have returned to this sliver of land on the Mediterranean Sea, as God had promised to Abraham the Patriarch, To you and your seed I give this land. Our secular brothers and sisters are also Abraham’s seed.”

Many of the men followed his gaze upward at the women’s section. Word had swept through the sect within an hour of Friday’s encounter at the gate about the secular, immodestly dressed woman, who was granted shelter at the home of Rabbi Benjamin Mashash. And now she was attending Sabbath services among the families of Neturay Karta, while Rabbi Gerster was breaking his long silence.

“ Handing over parts of the sacred land of Israel and risking lives of Jews are crimes under God’s laws.” He opened a tall book of Talmud that Benjamin had prepared for him on the lectern. “In the tractate of Sanhedrin, page forty-eight, Talmud discusses the murder trial of Yoav, King David’s former military commander, who had killed Avner in revenge for Avner’s killing of Yoav’s brother, Asael. But Avner claimed that he had killed Asael because Asael had been pursuing him. In other words, Avner argued that Asael was a Rodef, a pursuer trying to kill him. According to Talmud, during Yoav’s trial, King Solomon agreed that, if Avner had been justified in killing Asael in self-defense as a Rodef, a pursuer with the intent to kill, then he was in the right, and Yoav, who killed him in misguided revenge, was guilty of murder.”

One of the men raised his hand. “But Yoav argued that Avner deserved to die because Avner could have disabled Asael by stabbing him, as the book of Samuel says, in the fifth rib, rather than kill him. The killing of a Rodef is allowed only if he cannot be disabled, only if his pursuit cannot be stopped with a strike that’s less than deadly force.”