Ring of Lies (5 page)

22 J
UNE
1940

They hung the swastika flag from the pinnacle of the Eiffel Tower. Each day at noon they march in a parade to the beat of drums from the Arc de Triomphe, along the Champs-Élysées, to the Place de la Concorde.

The Nazis stomp on our land in their occupiers' jackboots.

Like a dog marking its territory with a yellow spurt of urine.

23 J
UNE
1940

The Führer was here today.

The Führer arrived in Paris, and the commandant brought him to our café. My hands shook.

The Führer was here today and tasted my brioche, and for a moment he smiled, but then he sniffed the air and grimaced.

What is it, mein Führer, the commandant inquired.

The Führer put the brioche down and said: There is a smell of Jews here.

11 O
CTOBER
1940

I cannot go to the synagogue or ask forgiveness from the Merciful One. It is Yom Kippur eve, but our forged papers say we are Christians.

The hall of the Friedrichstrasse station looked like the inside of a food processor in action. People flowed up and down the many staircases, packed together on the platforms, and poured out onto the busy street. Heavy smells of frying and reused oil rose from the fast-food stands.

Alex boarded the first train going west and then south, toward Wannsee.

Rough Boots boarded the car adjacent to his.

A beep announced the closing of the doors. Alex leaped off the train, but at the last moment grabbed the pole next to the door and swerved back into the car.

Rough Boots discovered his mistake too late and was stranded on the platform.

The doors closed with a whoosh. Rough Boots kicked a bench and pulled a phone out of his pocket.
Amateur.
Alex could have taken him easily, could have neutralized him and dragged him outside to the tracks, where he'd shove his face into the filthy snow and pull his secrets out of him. But it was rush hour, and security cameras were installed all over the station. Earlier, he'd spotted a couple of uniformed policemen.

The train gathered speed. The Germans kept their eyes lowered. He had time to think about recent events.

What did the murder of Lisbon mean? Did it exonerate the Turks?

Who'd decided to attack the Ring?

Justus's tree needed another, harder shaking.

He'd lost Rough Boots easily, but he'd been in the business long enough to know that every Rough Boots had a replacement. Now he himself was in their crosshairs.

A chilly voice announced in German:
Nächste Station—Hauptbahnhof
. People filed off and onto the train in perfect order. The doors closed. The train moved away from the platform. He got off at the Zoologischer Garten and crossed over to the opposite platform. Three minutes later, a train approached with a low whistle and a chilling gust of air. He boarded and got off at Hauptbahnhof. He walked toward the fast-food stands. He didn't see any suspicious reflections in the shop windows facing him.

Alex took the escalator down to the bottom floor. Then he turned around and went back up to the S-Bahn level and stood at the edge of one of the platforms. Dozens of people were waiting for the train.

A train arrived and stopped. They all got on.

Alex didn't.

He was alone.

The station clock showed 17:07. He took out his phone, located the cemetery on the map, and checked the distance: just over half a mile—a ten-minute walk on slippery ice.

He exited the station and turned right, onto Invalidenstrasse. His phone started vibrating.

Reuven said, “Turkish TV is showing a picture of the body of General Farzan Karabashi, including close-ups of his face and the burns. The Turkish lawyer tried again to see Galia. The Turks won't let him in. They claim she has a severe infection and her condition is deteriorating.”

The nail that had been pounded into his head penetrated deeper; the pressure became more painful.

“How was the meeting with Justus?” Reuven asked.

“We only just started talking,” Alex said. “Justus is being followed. I wanted to attack. Justus preferred to shake them off. We're going to meet somewhere quiet now. We have to warn the Nibelungs.”

“If someone's sitting on Justus, warning the Nibelungs might expose them all,” Reuven said in the distant tone of a Swiss pharmacist.

“Saving lives is more important,” Alex said.

“I'll be in the office till late. I'll wait for your call,” Reuven said, hanging up.

Alex checked the time. Fourteen minutes left. The temperature was plummeting.

He needed a taxi.

But traffic was snarled, and a river of taxis filled with lucky passengers was creeping past him. He began to walk.

He switched to running, slipped, and almost fell. Running would at least get his blood circulating and warm his body. On the other hand, everyone on the street would notice the six-foot-five man sprinting on the ice.

He slowed down to a quick walk, passing the Hamburger Bahnhof Museum and the Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Energie, then turned left onto Scharnhorststrasse.

The cemetery gate was open.

17:33.

Justus the pedant must certainly be here already.

The cemetery was dimly lit from the streetlights. He walked for a while on the snow-covered main path and then stopped and
listened. His eyes were adjusting to the darkness. It seemed that no one was there.

He could make out the silhouettes of crowded headstones. The keys to his house and car were in his pocket. The keychain had a tiny flashlight on it. He pressed the button, and a pale white light poured onto the snow. Bare trees moaned in the wind.

Where was Justus?

He retreated, slipped on something wet, and fell flat on the frozen snow. The keys flew out of his hand. He was in total darkness. He felt around in the snow until he found them. He pressed the button. The white light came on.

His heart was pounding.

He was sitting in a pool of blood.

Alex's heart was thumping painfully. He stood up and shone the light on the backs of his legs. His jeans were covered in blood. So was his blue jacket.

Whose blood was it?

The time on his phone read 17:41. He called Justus's number.

The call was picked up on the second ring, but the person on the other end didn't utter a word.

“Hello?”

The call was disconnected.

Alex redialed.

Justus's phone had been shut off.

He passed his flashlight over the snow. The pool of blood was the size of a large washbasin. Big dark drops led to the far end of the cemetery, where it bordered the Spandau Canal. The small beam of light revealed freezing water and cracked ice.

Going back to the puddle of blood, he took out a fresh tissue and dipped it in.

That's when he noticed it. A black leather glove with raised white stitching.

He called Reuven.

“How do you know it's Justus's blood?” the chief asked.

“His glove is lying on the snow. I took a sample. I'll send it to you on the plane waiting at Tegel. I need a courier here to bring it to the plane.”

Silence.

“Without Justus's BlackBerry, we have no way of warning the Nibelungs,” Alex said.

“This is a disaster,” Reuven said from far away, absorbed in his own thoughts.

Then he hung up.

Alex was left there, freezing under a bare tree.

Mossad's outer ring of defense had lost its head.

He had to get out of there. Whoever had attacked Justus might still be nearby, waiting for him.

The remains of the Berlin Wall cut through the cemetery. He was standing in what used to be the death zone.

If he dug in the ground under the snow beneath his feet he would be able to touch the bones of SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, the head of the Gestapo and the Third Reich's Main Security Office, the commander of the SS, the SD, and the Einsatzgruppen, and the chief architect of the extermination of Europe's Jews. Heydrich had been assassinated. A temporary wooden marker resembling a totem pole with a swastika carved into the top had been erected over his grave. Hitler planned to construct a monumental tomb in his honor, but he never got the chance.

At the end of the war, the marker disappeared.

A passerby might notice the beam of the flashlight. He had to get out of the cemetery.

Alex took off his bloodstained jacket and rubbed at the synthetic fiber with a handful of snow. It did no more than blur the edges of the stain. He emptied the pockets and folded the jacket under his arm. Freezing, he hurried out of the gruesome cemetery.

This time luck was with him, and he managed to hail a taxi.

“Where to?” the cabbie asked in Turkish-accented German.

Alex struggled to remember the name of the main shopping center.

“Sir?” the cabbie prodded.

“KaDeWe,” he said finally, surprising himself.

The driver gave him a dicey look in the rearview mirror.

In the dim light in the rear of the cab, he saw dried blood on his left glove.

It was a frustratingly slow drive through congested streets with blinding lights. The tires threatened to lose their grip on the icy surface. It had begun snowing again, the flakes catching in the headlights of the cars moving in the opposite direction.

“KaDeWe,” the cabbie said under his black mustache as he rolled to a stop.

Alex paid the man and got out.

He twisted his jacket around his waist so that only the lining showed, and tied the sleeves together in the front.

He purchased black trousers, T-shirts, a sweater, a black jacket, thermal socks and underwear, and a black trolley bag. Then he went into the men's room and changed, folding his stained clothing neatly and taking it with him. He threw the dirty bundle into a trash can outside. After stocking up on basic toiletries at a drugstore in Europa-Center, he hailed another cab. The radio crackled noisily.

Alex texted Reuven: “Send courier to Abion Spreebogen Hotel. Visconti.”

Done, Reuven texted back with surprising alacrity.

He didn't really need a lab test. The blood on the ice belonged to Justus. If only he'd made it to the cemetery a few minutes sooner . . .

Reuven called as he was about to enter the hotel, which was situated on a bend in the Spree River.

“I need people. Time isn't on our side.”

“I can't send the team. The PM refuses to sign off on it. What else do you need?”

“A gun, ammo, money. Make that two guns.”

He could sense that Reuven was about to burst from curiosity, but Alex kept his silence.

“Any news on Galia?” he asked instead.

“No.”

Reuven hung up.

Alex checked the street before walking through the door.

The young lady behind the Abion Hotel reception desk was charming, but he found it hard to return her smile. Alex went up to his room. Two glass walls looked out over the frozen river.

Alone, he was powerless. He needed his people here, but they were off-limits to him. Whoever had brought down Istanbul and Lisbon was still out there. Other Nibelungs were in danger. Every second counted.

He couldn't do it alone.

He called the only Nibelung he knew.

“It's all over the news, Alex,” Jane Thompson told him. “It's all they're talking about on TV reports, commentary. Are you all right?”

“You're in danger. The Ring is in danger,” he said in a measured tone.

“What do you mean?”

“Two Nibelungs have been killed. Their bodies haven't been found.”

“What?”

“Istanbul and Lisbon.”

“How do you know?”

“I'm in Berlin. I met with your boss.”

“You didn't!”

“Justus is dead.” He was desperately thirsty. Opening the minibar, he took out a bottle of water.

“Justus?”

“I'm sorry.” He drank from the cold bottle.

“He's really dead?” she said. He could hear the pain in her voice.

“I need you here. We fucked up.”

“Where are you?”

“Alt-Moabit. Abion Spreebogen Hotel.”

Silence on the other end.

He held his breath.

“Name?” she asked.

“Visconti. Be careful.”

“I'm on my way.”

He prayed that he wasn't making the worst mistake of his life.

Reuven called.

“We just heard from a reliable source in the Milli Istihbarat, the Turkish intelligence agency. They raided the home and office of Haroun Falacci in Istanbul. They found his pickup truck. There were large bloodstains on the backseat, and signs of a struggle.”

“That's it?” Alex asked warily.

“I wish. In the back of the truck they found an eight-gallon tank of fluoroantimonic acid, along with an empty bathtub, a shovel, gloves, and a gas mask. They got the picture.”

“What about Istanbul's body?”

“Nope. They took his wife and three brothers in for questioning. They've called a press conference for eight thirty, about half an hour from now. They'll probably release the information then.”

Alex finished off the rest of the water in one long gulp.

“The Turks didn't find out about Bolu from interrogating Fa
lacci, Reuven. If they'd nabbed him, they would have plastered his picture all over the news and now they'd be celebrating their coup. They'd be basking in the glory of having uncovered an Israeli spy ring. That's a much more dramatic story than Galia's arrest.”

“You're saying it was the other way around? They found out about Falacci from the warehouse in Bolu?” Reuven asked.

“Not necessarily. But someone else iced Falacci. And the Turks only did it after the raid in Bolu. And that same someone also took out Lisbon.”

“So you think the person who got to Falacci has no connection to the Turks or Bolu?”

“Exactly. Somebody has decided to take down the Nibelungs. He's already finished off two of them, and Justus. Without Justus's BlackBerry, we can't know whether he's gotten to any others. We're in the dark here.”

Alex got the other bottle of water from the minibar.

“You're saying the discovery of the Bolu warehouse was just dumb luck?” Reuven asked.

“Maybe. Someone could have tossed them a crumb and it set the Middle East on fire. But whoever it was isn't targeting Mossad. They're only targeting the Nibelungs. I'll check out Justus's place tonight. What's his last name?”

“Erlichmann. Justus Erlichmann.”

“I need the address,” Alex said.

“I'll send someone ahead to disable the alarm. It's a job for a specialist.”

“Why?”

“You'll see when you get inside.”

“What do I tell his wife?” Alex asked.

“His wife died just over a year ago.”

Alex undressed and
got into the shower. His whole body ached from cold and tension. Under the soothing hot water, he was able to unwind a little. It was the best thing that had happened to him in the past twenty-four hours. He closed his eyes, attempting to suppress the thoughts racing through his head.

The water washed it all away. He lathered the soap and scrubbed his body vigorously with the suds.

When he was a child, he'd once sat down in his father's reading chair with a Time–Life picture album on his lap, as heavy as a gravestone. It contained shocking photographs from World War II that brought to life his mother's terrifying stories, about her as a young girl struggling to get free from the war's claws: the concentration camps she managed to escape from with his grandmother, the fear, being at the mercy of traitorous Poles, the loss of her childhood, of hope, of joy.

Those Germans
—that's what her parents called them.
Those Germans
, they'd say, stressing the demonstrative with loathing.

The appalling pictures in the book had given shape to the stories in his mind. It was the first time he'd seen the face of death. One group of photographs in particular remained engraved in his memory.

It was a series of four photos taken in rapid succession during the battle for Leipzig. In the first, two American soldiers were firing a machine gun at German troops from the balcony of an apartment.

In the second picture, one of the soldiers was missing and the other was lying lifeless on the balcony floor, still wearing his helmet, with dozens of empty shells around his feet. Beside his head was a pool of blood that reflected the white clouds.

In the last two pictures, the pool of blood grew progressively larger.

He'd been forced to listen to his mother's horror stories about the war in Poland. He remembered how she'd described their desperate escape, hunger, fear, capture, escaping again and being captured again, torture, shots fired, being wounded.

After she had kissed his brow and tiptoed out of the room, the pictures of the machine gunner in Leipzig would rise up and haunt him.

He was six, and even the electric trains he got for his birthday couldn't restore his innocent happiness.

The bathroom had steamed up.

The water was boiling hot.

Alex felt cold.