Avraham Azrieli - The Jerusalem Assassin

The group proceeded through the wide exit doors. Rabbi Gerster’s head turned, and he stopped in his tracks as if he hit an invisible wall. The agent behind kept walking and bumped into him, and the group stopped with grunts of surprise.

“ Did you see that?” Agent Cohen paused the video again.

“Rabbi Gerster didn’t stumble,” Gideon said. “He stopped walking when he noticed Spinoza.”

“But why?”

“They’re both SOD agents, right? Maybe they trained together.”

“The Neturay Karta rabbi and the Swiss assassin? Come on!”

“Clearly they know each other.”

“ And now they’re both missing. The rabbi slipped away from the hospital before dawn this morning.” Agent Cohen pressed play. On the TV screen, Spinoza’s hand went into his pocket. Rabbi Gerster shook his head once, turned the other way and yelled, “Benjamin! Benjamin!” Everybody followed his gaze, and then Agent Cohen barked an order, and the group moved forward, exiting the video frame at the edge of the driveway. Car doors slammed, engines rumbled, and tires screeched. Spinoza and the bellmen exchanged a few words, and he entered the hotel.

“Did you notice,” Gideon said, “Rabbi Gerster’s quick head shake? Spinoza was about to draw his gun.”

“It’s not his gun,” Agent Cohen said petulantly. “He stole it from our agent at Hadassah.”

“ You’re lucky he didn’t use it.”

“ He’s the lucky one. There were five of us, guns in hand.”

“ You still don’t get it, do you?” Gideon stepped out of the mobile unit and turned his face up to the sun, his eyes closed. The tape presented more riddles rather than clues. Who was Spinoza, or Horch? An agent of SOD, or a Saudi agent spying on SOD? Or was he a gun for hire? And how could a Neturay Karta rabbi control such a coldblooded assassin with a quick shake of the head, saving the lives of five Shin Bet agents? The only known connection between them was Elie Weiss. He held all the answers.

Gideon heard Agent Cohen come out of the mobile unit and turned to face him. “How quickly can you get us to Hadassah?”

The agent pointed up, where a helicopter was hovering. “Fifteen minutes, give or take.”

*

It took the better part of an hour until they completed a series of prayers with patients and reached Elie’s room. A guard sat outside the door. He put aside his newspaper and stood up. “Sorry. This room is off limits.”

“Off limits to God?” Benjamin placed a hand on the guard’s shoulder. “Did you say your prayers this morning, my good friend?”

The guard blushed and said something about taking his kids to Friday night services. Benjamin blessed him with good health and longevity and opened the door. The guard didn’t stop him.

The room had not changed since Lemmy’s previous visit, except for a TV set on a shelf, tuned to a news channel. The night table carried a plate of untouched food and metal utensils-possible weapons, but low grade-and a thick book bound between carved wooden plates. Benjamin and his men gathered near the bed, shielding it from the surveillance camera above the door, as Lemmy had instructed them earlier.

Elie’s black eyes watched them. An oxygen tube run from a wall outlet to his nose. The sheet over his chest rose and sank, accompanied by a squeaky sound.

Lemmy removed the black hat with the attached beard and side locks.

“Nice outfit,” Elie said.

Benjamin and his men chanted the “Prayer for the Sick.”

“ Where is my father?”

“ Flew out of the cuckoo’s nest.”

“ Where did he go?”

“ Back to the field.” Elie pressed a button, and the head of the bed rose, lifting him halfway to a sitting position. “Why are you here? Haven’t you received my orders?”

“ Tanya came to Zurich. I almost eliminated her by mistake. She told me about my father’s real job, about your manipulations.”

“ Ah.” Elie looked toward the window. “Tanya.”

“ I know what you’ve done.” Lemmy kept his voice lower than the praying voices behind him. “You manipulated my father into a life of lies. Then you deceived me, an eighteen-year-old kid, to give up my life and become someone else.” He took a deep breath, controlling his rage. “It’s monstrous!”

“ You feel sorry for yourself?” Elie breathed a few times. “You suffered?”

“ Yes!”

“ You don’t know what suffering is. Go back to your job!”

“ All your schemes are for naught. Shin Bet has shut down your ILOT. You’ll never become intelligence czar.”

A weary grin appeared on Elie’s gaunt face.

“I tried to protect Tanya, but they got to her in Amsterdam. I had to leave her, broken and bleeding, surrounded by strangers, abandoned. Is she suffering enough? Are you pleased with the consequences of your games?”

The grin faded away. For a moment there was no other reaction, but then Lemmy saw something that stunned him. In the corners of Elie’s eyes, tears bubbled up.

There was a knock on the door, and the guard peeked in. “Are you done praying?”

*

“ You see this road?” Agent Cohen had to yell over the racket of the rotors. He pointed down at the narrow blacktop that slithered up the Judean Mountains. “It’s the Burma Road. Back in forty-eight, when Rabin was a young commander, he tried to save Jerusalem from the Jordanian siege, but the main road was blocked by Arab terrorists. Someone found this goat path and broke through with supplies for the Jewish civilians. But it was too late to win the battle.”

The helicopter was flying low, the tree summits almost within reach. Gideon rested his forehead against the window, looking down at the landscape of planted pine forests and deep ravines, an occasional boulder breaking through the green with the bleached white of sandstone.

“He never forgave himself,” Agent Cohen yelled.

“Who?”

“Yitzhak Rabin, for losing the battle for Jerusalem, leaving it divided for nineteen years. That’s why he insisted on winning it back in sixty-seven.”

Gideon nodded. These historic details seemed trivial now, as he was flying to Hadassah Hospital to confront the man who had hired and mentored him. Despite his misgivings about Elie’s methods, joining with Shin Bet against the old man felt like a betrayal.

“ Three minutes.” Agent Cohen pointed at a distant cluster of buildings among the green mountains. “There’s Hadassah Hospital.”

*

“ We’re almost done,” Benjamin told the guard, closing the door. “Psalms, seventy-nine. Lord, how the Gentiles invaded your domain, contaminated your Holy Temple, turned Jerusalem into wreckage. ”

While the men of Neturay Karta repeated after Benjamin, Lemmy leaned closer to Elie. “Shin Bet is hunting us down. I fear for my family. I must make a trade with them. Offer them something they can’t refuse.”

Elie grimaced.

“ I’ll give them Koenig’s money. It’s a king’s ransom-they won’t turn it down. I already know the account number and password.”

“ You do? That’s good. Very good.”

“ Where’s the ledger?”

“ What ledger?”

“ The record of all deposits that Armande Hoffgeitz signed in forty-five. Where did you hide it?”

Benjamin recited, “ They fed the carcasses of your fallen faithful to the circling vultures, the flesh of your disciples to the earthly scavengers. ”

“ I gave you my orders.” Elie’s head rose from the pillow, trying to show himself to the surveillance camera over the men’s black hats. He gave up and lay back. “Counter Final Solution. That’s your job.”

“ Tanya told me she gave it to you, and you presented it to Gunter Schnell in sixty-seven. Where’s the ledger?”