Avraham Azrieli - The Jerusalem Assassin

Her face was white through the phone booth glass. “What are you talking about?”

“It’s all about the money, isn’t it? You and Elie, the same-plotting, manipulating, using other people like pawns.”

“No!” Across the street, through the pedestrians and cyclists, he saw Tanya pound her chest with a clenched hand. “It’s not about the money!”

“I don’t believe you.”

“ Lemmy, I beg you-”

“ You set me up, didn’t you?” He glanced up and down the street. Both couples were watching Tanya, barely pretending any longer. “There’s no Shin Bet, no big secrets, no conspiracy. You came for the Koenig account.” His voice rose to a shout. “ Didn’t you? ”

The two tulips stopped greeting shoppers and turned.

“That’s not true.” Tanya looked around. “Where are you?”

“Where I can see you and your team.”

“I don’t have a team! I’m alone here!” Tanya noticed him across the street and through the glass doors. She dropped the receiver and ran out of the phone booth.

Lemmy’s mind registered the rings of a coming tram while his eyes were locked with Tanya’s eyes, wide and glistening. He dropped the receiver and held up his hand. “Stop!” But he was inside the store, and the glass doors silenced his warning.

Up on the bridge, the young woman tossed her coffee cup into the canal, mounted her bicycle, and pedaled down toward Tanya.

Emerging through the sliding glass doors, Lemmy saw the tram rushing at them from the right. Now holding both hands up, showing his palms to Tanya, he yelled again, “Stop!”

The woman on the bicycle gained speed, racing at Tanya from the left, while the tram arrived from the right, and they collided, the handlebar ramming hard at Tanya’s left kidney, jolting her forward into the coming tram, which screeched and groaned, attempting to stop.

*

When the sedan blocked their way, Elie’s hand went to his side, groping for the blade that wasn’t there. All he had with him was the heavy copy of the Bible. He recognized the man who emerged from the front passenger seat. Agent Cohen yelled something at his subordinates, and the four of them sprinted across the pavement and into the hospital.

Elie let the air out of his lungs. It was time to instruct the driver to go, but he didn’t trust his voice to sound like an elderly female.

The cabby cursed, maneuvered around the white sedan, and drove off.

“Maybe they had a medical emergency,” Rabbi Gerster suggested. “One must assume good intentions.”

“They seemed healthy to me,” the woman said.

Elie recognized her. She was a TV reporter. Why was she here?

They travelled in silence. At the YMCA, Itah directed the driver to the parking lot. “My car is right there.” She pointed. “The red Mitsubishi.”

“Do you have enough gas to get to Haifa,” Rabbi Gerster asked, “or do we need to fill up?”

“I have plenty,” she answered, playing along. “Are you happy to go home, Mom?”

Elie nodded.

They got out of the taxi. Rabbi Gerster unloaded the wheelchair from the trunk while Itah paid the driver. They pretended to engage in discussion until the taxi was gone. Elie walked slowly toward the Mitsubishi.

“ Where are you going?” She pointed at the King David Hotel across the street. “I arranged a room for us.”

Realizing it was only a diversion, in case the cabby was later questioned, Elie nodded and sat in the wheelchair. “Let’s go.”

Itah looked at him closely. “Now I recognize you! You’re the creep who came to my apartment to scare me off the story about Rabbi Gerster and his dead son.”

“ You have a long memory,” Elie said.

“ And you had a long knife!” She shoved his wheelchair toward the busy road. “I was hoping to catch you one day, throw you under a bus or something!”

“ Calm down,” Rabbi Gerster said. “You’re getting a much better story now.”

“ You bet!” She stopped the wheelchair abruptly at the curb’s edge as a bus rumbled by.

*

The tram stopped with an ear-piercing screech of metal brakes clamping on steel rails. Tanya lay on the cobblestones. Lemmy ran to her. A circle of spectators formed around them.

The right side of her body was covered with blood. Her arm was broken, and her leg pointed at an impossible angle. But her face was clear, and her thick hair spread around like a soft cushion.

“ I’m sorry.” He touched her cheek. “I thought they were your team.”

Her lips parted and she tried to speak. He bent over her, his ear near her dry lips.

“Abraham.” She struggled to push air through her vocal cords. “Abraham.”

“I’m not Abraham. It’s me, Lemmy.”

Tanya’s eyes had no confusion in them. He realized she had recognized him, that she was trying to tell him something else. “Abraham,” she repeated.

“You want me to go to my father?” He kissed her forehead. “I will. I promise.”

Peace settled into her eyes.

Medics shoved him aside and began working on her. He stood back and searched the faces of the spectators, trying to find the agents he had seen before. Rage swept over him. He thought he saw one of them in the back of the crowd and pushed through.

Powerful hands grabbed Lemmy from behind. It was Carl. “They’re long gone,” he said and practically carried Lemmy through the crowd and down a set of narrow stairs.

“ There was another couple-”

“ The smokers?” Carl pushed him along the stone dock. “They split. I watched the whole thing.”

A speedboat was tied under the bridge. Carl untied the rope and hit the throttle. The boat’s tail sank and its bow rose as it took off, raising waves that rocked the houseboats along the canal. Lemmy held on, his face turned into the cool wind.

After racing through a maze of narrow canals for fifteen minutes, Carl cut the engine, and the boat drifted to the wooden dock. “I found a Citroen for you in Israel. It’s a DS, but most parts would fit your SM. It’s been sitting outside a mechanic’s shop in a small town near Jerusalem. The owner said you can stop by anytime. I wrote down the address and directions.” He handed Lemmy an envelope. “There’s also a passport, driver’s license, American Express and Visa cards.”

Glancing inside the envelope, Lemmy saw the name on the passport. “Baruch Spinoza?”

“ You’re going to Israel, aren’t you? It’s the first Jewish name that came to me.”

“ Are you out of your mind?”

“ Wasn’t he a brilliant philosopher? I thought you’d be flattered.”

“ He was excommunicated by the Jews of Amsterdam. Carrying his name would make me stand out like a pig in a kosher butcher shop.”

Carl laughed. “But nobody would suspect your papers are forgery. I mean, who in his right mind would choose Spinoza as an assumed name?”

There was nothing he could do right now but plow ahead. “Can you check where they took Tanya and protect her in the hospital?”

“ Fight it out with those Israelis?” Carl chuckled. “Her only defense would be anonymity. I’ll play around with the computer records, make her disappear, so to speak.”

“ I leave it to you,” Lemmy said. “Take care of Tanya for me.”

“ What if she dies?”

“ Call the Israeli embassy and tell them. They’ll take care of her remains.”

They hugged for a long moment, and Lemmy climbed out. He stood on the bank of the canal and watched Carl’s boat speed away. Again, he was alone.

*

“ Long live Jerusalem?” Rabbi Gerster held up the note Elie had sent from Hadassah Hospital. “Where does he live?”

“ I meant it metaphorically.” Elie reclined in the large hotel bed, resting his head on the pile of pillows. “Kind of a salute to your son’s memory.”