Ring of Lies (32 page)

9 A
UGUST
1961

My hair is once again acrid with smoke. The deputy commandant has had a nervous breakdown. I sit at his bedside at the Hôpital Hôtel-Dieu in Île de la Cité.

You will not break, Roger, he whispered to me today when he awakened for a moment. I will give you money again.

I told him that I read in the newspaper that a Syrian tourist has been arrested on suspicion of having committed the crime.

His breath caught. Do you know who lives in Syria now? he asked.

I did not.

The commandant.

The room spun around me.

I remember a nurse and a glass syringe.

You are suffering, sir, the doctor whispered to me. We can help.

Not me, I replied. I am lost.

10 A
UGUST
1961

Old wounds reopened. The fire department ruled that it was arson. The Syrian tourist confessed that he set fire to the café at 5:15 in the morning.

Less than three hours before the opening. There had been hope in my heart.

The smell of smoke and damp earth. My fresh grave.

Exodus called.

“Remember the deposit of one million, two hundred thousand euros we found?” The tension in her voice was tangible.

“Dopo Domani Holdings. I remember,” Alex said.

“We traced the owner. Are you sitting down?”

What more did this night have in store for him? “Who is it?”

“Someone you know, Alex. Someone we all know.”

“Spit it out.”

“Reuven.”

“What!? Reuven?! Are you sure?”

“A hundred percent.”

Alex paced the kitchen, his mind in turmoil.

“Could it have something to do with the funding of the Ring?”

“Financially speaking, the Ring is totally autonomous. It has no links to Mossad whatsoever. It's funded directly by donations from Jewish communities in North America. If they needed more money, Erlichmann reached into his own pocket. We've found quite a lot of transactions like that.”

“When was the deposit made?”

“Eighteen days ago.”

“What could it be?”

“Only a bribe, Alex. That's what bribes look like.”

Ever since the beginning of the crisis, there had been something fishy about Reuven's behavior. He'd put a spoke in every wheel; he'd lied and sabotaged their efforts—and failed them.

He'd even messed with Alex's personal life by making the call to Daniella.

Reuven was garbage. Reuven was a piece of shit. But Reuven wasn't a traitor. There was a difference.

He was about to be brought down—an earthquake—but strangely, Alex didn't have any feeling of schadenfreude, nor pity for the man. Mostly, he was disappointed. Reuven was dirty, and he wasn't a mere union rep in a factory in a forgotten town.

Alex felt sick to his stomach. The time had come to bring the ax down on Reuven, but he didn't intend to stoop to his level. Exodus had him pegged. If the tables were turned, Reuven would never give him the benefit of the doubt, but Alex felt that he had to hear his side of the story first.

Reuven picked up on the third ring. “I was just about to call you,” he said.

“Were you?”

Reuven remained silent.

“We know that you took money from Justus Erlichmann, Reuven. One million, two hundred thousand euros depos
ited in the account of Dopo Domani Holdings. You're the sole owner.”

“Alex?”

“Go to the prime minister and submit your resignation.”

“Is this some kind of sick joke? Are you bored?”

“What was the money for?”

“That's enough, Alex. It's not funny anymore!”

“I don't have time to play games, Reuven. Resign now, or I'll contact the PM myself.”

“What do you mean,
resign
?”

Glass striking glass. A bottle being opened. A gulp.

“Reuven, it's over.”

“You don't decide what's over and what's not over!”

“You took a bribe.”

“Why would Justus Erlichmann give me a million euros?”

“One million, two hundred thousand. This is your last chance, Reuven. I have to deal with Schlaff.”

“Justus passed his last polygraph. If he gave me anything, Drucker would know, wouldn't he?”

“When did you start believing in polygraphs? All they're good for is putting the fear of God in junior agents. Squeeze your ass at the right time, and the fucking machine is blind.”

“Is that what you did?”

“Resign now, and the press might never discover the real reason. You'll still have a future.”

If Reuven went straight to the prime minister, things would take their course. The PM would call security, and the head of Mossad would not be allowed to return to his office. He'd be put under house arrest and stripped of his rights, he would be barred
from leaving the country, and he would undergo interrogation. That seemed like enough for the time being.

“You can't stomach the thought that I'm Daniella's real father,” Reuven said.

“Reuven, the only person who can't stomach that thought is Daniella.”

4 J
ULY
1967

I placed my hand on Arianne's hard, round belly. I felt the heartbeat of my child, his young heart lusting for life. I am fifty-six today, the age my father was when he died of heart disease.

Please, let me live long enough.

13 J
ULY
1967

The doctors say that my heart is functioning at 40 percent capacity. My breathing is labored, and simple tasks tire me out. Six years have passed since the café burned down for the second time, right before it was supposed to open. I am sated with disappointment and tragedy and pain. I do not have the strength to try again.

8 A
UGUST
1967

I am the happiest man in the world. Our son was born this morning. A green bud in the black, smoking embers.

My Arianne is young and healthy. She will be his anchor in the world. Please, God, watch over her.

Arianne, my love, how were you able to pull me out of the grave?

16 A
UGUST
1967

My comrades from the Resistance came to the circumcision ceremony in the synagogue. The deputy commandant and his wife ar
rived from Berlin and brought their son. The boy is ten. During the ceremony he never laughed or played or made any noise; he simply watched as if hypnotized by Gerard, the baby.

I held my son in my arms, and tears wet my prayer shawl.

You were there with me, my scorched roots.

Once again the image of the machine gunner in Leipzig tried to rise from the dead.

His first order of business was to confront Oskar Schlaff face-to-face. Soon he would go to the cellar of the modern-day Nazi. Soon he would go there and rip out his heart.

Alex oiled the Glock and wiped it down with a kitchen towel. Then he checked the chamber. It was empty. He snapped a full magazine in place and cocked the gun.

His phone vibrated.

Reuven said falteringly, “Do I have your word?”

“About what?”

“The press.”

A deep swallow.

“Are you going to the prime minister now?”

“I'm counting on you,” Reuven said, his voice choked.

The call was disconnected.

Text message from HQ in Glilot: Gerard's condition critical but stable.

Oh God!

He slipped the Glock into his jacket pocket. Its heaviness was reassuring.

He went up to the workroom and selected several tools. Coming downstairs for the last time, he switched off the lights in Justus Erlichmann's home and left. As he trod through the snow on
the street, he turned and took a final look at the house, knowing that he would never be back.

He drove south toward Wannsee, the dark forest emerging from between the fancy houses.

On Am Grossen Wannsee, the street leading to the grill house, he suddenly shuddered. Just down the road was the villa where Reinhard Heydrich, Adolf Eichmann, and their cohorts had plotted the Final Solution to the Jewish Question.

Here, on January 20, 1942, the Holocaust was born.

The curling neon letters of
SCHLAFF
were reflected on the ice that covered the parking lot. Alex parked the Mercedes behind a row of trees and watched the restaurant complex from a distance. The single-story structure aboveground was about a quarter of the area of the cellar. It was painted a mustard yellow. There were eleven cars in the lot. The elegant curves of a white Porsche Carrera stood out among the other vehicles.

An older couple came out, the wife supporting her husband's weight. His legs were like jelly. The woman burst into raucous laughter. The man slipped on the ice, losing his balance and nearly falling from her arms. They stumbled into a car and left.

One down.

Butthead called. “Do you have time for a quick profile?”

“Let's hear it,” he whispered.

“Oskar Schlaff was born in 1957 under the name Fritz Jungbluth. His mother was Alois Brunner's sister. His father left when he was a year old. His mother died of cancer when Fritz was five. He was sent to an orphanage in Munich and thrown out before the age of ten. Reason unknown. He was transferred to a home for orphans and juvenile offenders in Nuremberg.”

Alex cracked the window.

“At fourteen, he was gang-raped by six boys. Two weeks later, the body of the gang leader was found in the showers. He'd been strangled by a steel cable.”

Alex took a deep breath.

“Listen to this, Alex: the other five all vanished and have never been found. Schlaff was questioned repeatedly by the police, but they were never able to tie him to their disappearances.”

Chills ran up and down his spine.

“In 1975, on the day he turned eighteen, he officially changed his name to Oskar Schlaff. He had a number of short-lived jobs before he opened the restaurant in '79. He expanded it in '86 and then renovated it to look like it does now in 2005. It does very well.

“Schlaff also owns three pig farms. Their website says they mix special herbs into the feed to give the meat a flavor uniquely suited to the European palate. He operates a huge slaughterhouse about forty miles north of Berlin, and he's now negotiating a contract to market his pork outside Germany. He has a fleet of twenty-six trucks of different sizes.”

Alex hit the steering wheel.

“He's about to go public on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. A leading Berlin law firm is preparing the company prospectus for an IPO. He has a line of credit of around three million euros from a number of banks for business development. All his enterprises are profitable and financially stable.”

“That's it?”

“I'm just getting started. In the early years, his restaurant was patronized by Americans working at the NSA listening station on Teufelsberg. They stopped coming when Schlaff was caught recording their conversations. Later he was suspected of sub
versive activity for the far right and for neo-Nazis. He took part in right-wing demonstrations in the late '70s and was picked up three times, first by the police and then by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution. The last time he was arrested was in 1981. His record is clean after that. It's possible he became an informant. Mud Man could be his code name.

“Schlaff was also suspected of working for the Stasi right up until the fall of the Berlin Wall. In 1993 they uncovered a tunnel leading from East Berlin—near Checkpoint Bravo on the Glienicke Bridge—to the west. It came out in a pigsty Schlaff owned. According to records in the Stasi archives, his restaurant was the staging area for quite a few assassination attempts.”

“Hold on a minute,” Alex croaked. Afraid he was about to puke, he breathed in and out deeply.

“Okay, go on.”

“For the past thirteen years, he's been flying to Damascus once a month. But in the last six weeks, he was there five times.”

“Is there much more?”

“Seven pages.”

“I'll get back to you later.”

“Finish him off, Alex. He smells like an informant for the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution; that means he's got immunity. The piece of garbage could walk away from this without a scratch.”

17 A
UGUST
1967

Yesterday, during the ceremony at the synagogue, the deputy commandant placed a hand on my shoulder. I am creating a secret Zionist organization, he said. Give me your son, your only son.

Gerard is a baby, only eight days old, I replied.

So we will wait, he said.

What will this secret organization do? I asked.

It will make sure that it doesn't happen again, he replied.

Gerard is yours, I said.

22 J
ULY
1970

My days are numbered. I lie in bed in the Hôpital Hôtel-Dieu. The deputy commandant does not leave my bedside. Arianne comes with our Gerard. He will be three soon. He kissed me on the lips.

Papa is crying, he said.

7 A
UGUST
1970

Gerard is enchanting, small but strong. Tomorrow is his third birthday. He gets his beauty from my Arianne, and the space between his teeth from me. I hope that when he grows up, he will rebuild the Café Trezeguet, construct a proofing cabinet, and create a starter dough. I hope that he will once again fill the air with the scent of yeast.