Hour of the Assassins (23 page)

Close by the Zion gate stood the Dormition Abbey where the Virgin Mary passed into eternal sleep. Huddled against the abbey on Mount Zion was David's tomb, which also contained the Coenaculum, the room in which Jesus celebrated the Last Supper. The rosy light painted the city with a glowing silence and Caine fancied he could almost hear the mumble of
maariv
prayers of black-robed Orthodox Jews at the Western Wall. Even the traffic along Rehov David Ha-melekh seemed subdued at the twilight hour, the electric Delek sign at a corner gas station burning white and solitary as an eternal light. Someone had to say it, and finally Temira, Amnon's wife, brought it out, the cherry tip of her cigarette describing an arc in the gathering darkness as she took it from her mouth.

“Jerusalem the Golden,” she said.

They were sitting at a table on Amnon and Temira's apartment balcony overlooking the city. Scattered on the table were the remains of the meal, plates of humus and tahini and kabob scraped clean with torn pieces of pita bread. They were sipping Turkish coffee from small demitasse cups, a drink Temira made with as much sugar as coffee.

The faint breath of the evening breeze cooled their skin, after the blistering afternoon heat of the
khamsin
, the hot, scouring wind that blew from the desert of Arabia. The word
khamsin
came from the Arabic word for “fifty,” because there were supposed to be fifty such days every year, when instead of the prevailing Mediterranean breeze the wind came hot and dry and full of static electricity from the desert. It was an oppressive and irritating wind and a law, dating from the days of Turkish rule and still on the books in Israel, stated that if a man murdered his wife after three consecutive days of
khamsin
, he was not to be charged, because no one could be expected to put up with nagging after three days of
khamsin
. Now the cool breeze had brought a sense of peace to the spectacular golden sunset, characteristic of the end of
khamsin
.

“The City of Peace,” Yoshua said without a trace of irony, putting his cup on the table with a faint clink. Perhaps he really believed it.

“Until the next time the PLO leaves a
plastique
calling card at a crowded bus station,” Caine said, stretching his frame restlessly against the chair. He lit a cigarette and watched the exhaled smoke form a cloud, twisted as a challah Sabbath bread, over the honey-colored city.

“We live in dangerous times,” Amnon pronounced sententiously.

“Words to live by,” Caine responded sarcastically, conscious of the irony that Amnon's clichéd sentence, like all clichés, held a seed of truth.

“And so we do. This land has been a battleground for ten thousand years,” Amnon said pedantically, his triple captain's bars gleaming like gold on his epaulets in the fading twilight. He lit a cigarette, his dark face glowing in the match flare like the head of Caesar on an ancient bronze coin. He had the tan skin and curly hair of the Moroccan Jews, with intelligent brown eyes and an intense manner that might have given him the appearnce of an Arab intellectual were it not for the Israeli Army officer's uniform he wore.

“That's the trouble with this country, it's been gorged with soldiers and religious nuts for too long,” Temira put in, tossing her long dark hair with a nervous gesture. Amnon looked at her sharply, as though she were resurrecting a long-standing quarrel.

“The trouble with this country is that our very shortsighted God had Moses pick the only damn place in the Middle East where there isn't any oil,” Yoshua said, grinning, and they all laughed.

That was what he liked best about the Jews, their finely honed sense of gallows humor, Caine realized, feeling himself relax for the first time in two weeks. They had been among the most frustrating weeks of his life and it felt good to be trying something positive again, even if it blew up in his face. And if the Israelis followed procedure, that's exactly what would, happen. But he didn't care anymore. Because unless they could give him a lead, it was all over anyway.

He had escaped from Paraguay following the same route Mengele had used. Abandoning the Ford on a side street of Porto Merdes on the Brazilian side of the Paraná, he had taken a river launch to Puerto Iguassú. From there he had hopped a local flight to Buenos Aires to meet with Judge Luque.

The judge was a slender, aristocratic man who proved to be sympathetic, but not very helpful. He could only confirm what Caine already knew. Mengele hadn't been sighted in more than six years. Caine promised to keep in touch if he found anything and caught the morning Aerolineas flight to Bariloche.

It was high summer in Bariloche, the streets and cafés thronged with festive crowds up from Buenos Aires for the Bavarian beer and clear mountain air. German and Spanish were the languages he heard as he brushed by couples in shorts, who spent the time between heavy sauerbraten meals shopping for camera film and sunburn lotion, and every afternoon at three, an oom-pah-pah band gave a concert in the small town square.

But Caine couldn't exactly share the holiday mood, because he was dirty from the minute he had checked into the Lorelei, an Alpine chalet with a wooden facade carved into more curlicues than an Afro hairdo. The first time they came at him was on the curving mountain road on the way to Cerro Catedral, its snow-capped peak sparkling in the bright sunshine. Two blond young men in a BMW had tried to force his rented Mustang over the precipice at the edge of the road. He had managed to throw the Mustang across the road in a racing skid that brought him hard against the cliff face, badly denting the fender. His hands were still clenched around the wheel as he watched the BMW disappear around a curve, leaving a cloud of exhaust fumes hanging over the road like a memory.

The second time was more serious. It was evening during the dinner-hour promenade in the plaza, the couples talking and flirting while the boisterous sounds of the serious beer drinkers resounded from the sidewalk cafés. He knew they weren't kidding this time because it was a front-and-rear tail and when he tried to reverse, so that he could flush and tail one of them and find out what it was all about, he discovered that it was a four-man box. They were serious and professional, the two blond men from the BMW and the two older types. They took their time because they knew exactly what they were doing, and he knew he wasn't going anywhere.

The Foster cover was blown wide open and the only chance he had was to get out. Somewhere he had cut one corner too many and the word had gone out, probably from Paraguay. Like a spider sensing an intruder by tremblings in the web, Mengele had become aware of his inquiries and had given orders. The hunter had become the prey.

What made it all the more frustrating was that there was no clue to Mengele's whereabouts in Bariloche. But that didn't matter anymore because the town had become a death trap for him. His only chance lay in sticking with the crowd. As he threaded his way through the promenade, like a desperate halfback, he latched onto a pretty blond waitress in a dirndl sitting at a café with some friends. They needed a ride to a house party in the hills and the next thing he knew, they all piled into the Mustang. Later he was able to slip out of the party around the time that it got to the jumping-in-the-pool stage. He left the waitress delicately snoring on a pile of clothing in one of the bedrooms, her skirt pulled up over her hips and a naked bleary-eyed young man tugging at her sleeping legs, trying to separate them.

In the morning Caine was able to take the airport bus, hugging the security of the crowd, and safely boarded the first flight back to Buenos Aires. From there he had connected to Madrid, being careful to always keep a crowd between him and the two tails.

The two blond men from the BMW stayed with him all the way to Madrid, where they peeled off. He knew it wasn't because they had lost interest. They wouldn't do that until he had a paper tag tied to his big toe in the deep-freeze box of some local morgue. They were Judas goats, there to identify him to whoever had picked up the contract to terminate him. The fact that they were gone only meant that someone new had picked up the tag. And they weren't playing for baseball cards, because whoever took over had been good and Caine had been unable to spot him until Rome, when he made a break at the taxi stand at Fiumicino Airport. The tail was a tall, well-dressed Mediterranean type with wraparound sunglasses and chiseled features that must have wowed the Scandinavian girls who came to disco on the Costa Brava. He hurriedly grabbed the taxi right behind Caine's.

Caine made the break in the middle of a colossal Roman traffic jam, the Fiats honking and climbing the sidewalks. He handed a wad of lire to the driver, then jumped out of the taxi and weaved his way through the bedlam of horns and noisy Italian comments on his ancestry to a department store, where he picked up a Tyrolean-style hat and raincoat, then added a false mustache to change the image. He left the department store by a side entrance after quickly scanning the crowd for Mr. Sunglasses. Although Caine appeared to have lost him, he knew that he would have to jump back into the frying pan to catch his connecting flight. Fiumicino was the red zone, where they would try to pick him up again. He waited under the big Cinzano sign for the Alitalia flight to Ben-Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv, booked under his own name, until he felt reasonably sure he was clean by the time he boarded.

Things were becoming a little too hairy, he thought. When they forced you to use your own ID to change the image, it was time to start reaching for the rip cord. Then he remembered the stamps and C.J., her long lithe legs opening to him and the little cry of pleasure when he entered her. It was all his if he could pull it off. He remembered the old Gypsy and knew that he no longer had any choice in the matter. He had to go on with it, no matter how many alarm bells he set off, or what kind of nasty little back-alley death they had planned for him.

“Are you done, Signore?” the Alitalia stewardess with the dark eyes that matched her uniform was asking him, gesturing at the pinkish melting ice cubes that was all that was left of his Campari and soda.

“
Si, grazier
.”

“
Prego
.”

He had telephoned Yoshua from Ben-Gurion Airport and it was Yoshua, whom he had worked with on the Abu Daud job in Paris, who had set him up for this evening's meeting with Amnon Sofer, a Mossad staff intelligence officer. So far as Yoshua knew, Caine was still working for the Company. Caine let him believe that and Yoshua didn't press him. One of the advantages of being a spy is not having to do a lot of talking about your work.

“Retribution,” said Amnon quietly, picking a speck of tobacco from his lip. Myriad pinpoints of light began to blink on in the gathering darkness, the hills dotted with them like the bivouac fires of an invading army. The air had grown cold and soon they would have to move inside.

“An eye for an eye. The biblical injunction still applies,” Yoshua said. Temira began to clear away the dishes and take them inside.

“To be sure, to be sure,” Amnon murmured, raising his eyebrow as a signal to Yoshua to leave them alone. Yoshua got up and went inside and Caine could hear the musical babble of Hebrew as Yoshua began talking with Temira. He became aware of the sound of a radio newscast being turned on. The announcer was mentioning the names of politicians and using the word
shalom
, so Caine assumed that he was saying something about peace talks. Amnon pulled a cigarette out of his pack of Dubek's, Caine struck a match, and they both lit up. Smoking was a national epidemic-among the excitable Israelis, Caine observed.

“Why is the Company suddenly interested in Mengele? And why does your being here have to be unofficial?” Amnon said.

“I'm an operative, not the DCI. They only tell me what to do, not why.” Caine shrugged.

“Retribution,” Amnon said again. “We've been trying to get away from that policy for a long time, since the days of Isar Harel.”

“That's not what Yoshua thinks. ‘An eye for an eye,' he said. And the hate in his eyes was real enough.”

“Get any two Jews together and you're bound to get at least three opinions on everything. Anyway, Yoshua doesn't make policy.”

“Don't tell me the policymakers don't have to take men like Yoshua into account.”

“I remember someone once asked Levi Eshkol—blessings on his memory—how it felt to be prime minister. Eshkol replied, ‘You try being prime minister of a country with three million prime ministers,'” Amnon said, chuckling.

“Are you trying to tell me that the Mossad no longer has any interest in the Nazis?”

“Let's just say that we have all the present enemies we can handle. We don't need to go around trying to dig up enemies from the past,” Amnon observed mildly. The pale crescent moon hung over the city like an Islamic omen, as if to underscore what Amnon was saying.

“Don't tell me the Jews have decided to forgive and forget the
malachos mavet
of Auschwitz,” Caine retorted.

Amnon smiled at Caine's clumsy Hebrew pronunciation. Then he sighed and shook his head, the cigarette tip glowing like a tiny beacon in the shadows of his face. His sad Jewish eyes examined Caine's face carefully.

“
Im eshkahaich Yerushalaim
, If I forget thee, O Jerusalem. No, we haven't forgotten, or forgiven,” he said at last.

“Look I don't know what the Company is running or why. My job is to locate Mengele. Period. If there's more, they'll tell me when the time comes. We work strictly on a need-to-know basis, you know that. But I doubt that retribution has anything to do with it. The Company isn't given to subscribing to Jewish philanthropies. Whatever it is, it's strictly top drawer, ‘For your eyes only,' because otherwise we'd be running it through channels. Now do you have a lead on the son of a bitch or don't you?” Caine said irritably, standing up. He had played his trump and all he could do was hope that his manufactured anger was convincing.