I shrugged. 'What would you have done now?' I asked. 'Today. If you'd got your thirty-day visa after all.'
Eichmann shrugged. 'I suppose we would have visited the German Freemason colony at Sarona. Gone up Mount Carmel. Looked at some Jewish farming settlements in the Jezreel Valley.'
'Then my advice is to go ahead and do exactly that,' I said. 'Call Reichert. Explain the situation and then get back on the boat, tomorrow. It sails for Egypt tomorrow, right? Well, when you get there, go to the British embassy in Cairo and apply for another visa.'
'He's right,' said Hagen. 'That's exactly what we should do.'
'We can apply again,' cried Eichmann. 'Of course. We can get a visa in Cairo and then travel back here overland.'
'Just like the children of Israel,' I added.
The carriage left the narrow, dirty streets of the old town and picked up speed as we headed along a wider road, to the new town of Tel Aviv. Opposite a clock tower and several Arabian coffee-houses was the Anglo-Palestine Bank, where I was supposed to meet the manager and give him the letters of introduction from Begelmann, and from the Wassermann Bank, not to mention the camel-back trunk Begelmann had given me to take out of Germany. I had no idea what was in it, but from the weight I didn't think it was his stamp collection. I could see no advantage in delaying my going into the bank. Not in a place like Jaffa, which seemed full of hostile-looking Arabs. (Possibly they thought we were Jews, of course. There was little liking for Jews among the local Palestinian population.) So I told the driver to stop and, with the trunk under my arm, and the letters in my pocket, I got out, leaving Eichmann and Hagen to carry on to the hotel with the rest of my luggage.
The bank manager was an Englishman named Quinton. His arms were too short for his jacket and his fair hair was so fine it was hardly there at all. He had a snub nose that was surrounded by freckles and a smile like a young bulldog. Meeting him I couldn't help but picture Quinton's father, paying close attention to his son's German teacher. I suspected he would have been a good one because young Mr. Quinton spoke excellent German, with many enthusiastic inflections, as if he had been reciting Goethe's 'The Destruction of Magdeburg.'
Quinton took me into his office. There was a cricket bat on the wall and several photographs of cricket teams. A fan turned slowly on the ceiling. It was hot. Outside the office window was a fine view of the Mohammedan Cemetery and, beyond, the Mediterranean Sea. The clock on the nearby tower struck the hour, and the muezzin at the mosque on the other side of Howard Street called the faithful to prayer. I was a long way from Berlin.
He opened the envelopes with which I had been entrusted with a paper knife shaped like a little scimitar. 'Is it true that Jews in Germany are not allowed to play Beethoven or Mozart?' he asked.
'They are forbidden to play music by those composers at Jewish cultural events,' I said. 'But don't ask me to justify it, Mr. Quinton. I can't. If you ask me, the whole country has gone insane.'
'You should try living here,' he said. 'Here, Jew and Arab are at each other's throats. With us in the middle. It's an impossible situation. The Jews hate the British for not allowing more of them to come and live in Palestine. And the Arabs hate us for allowing any Jews here at all. Right now, it's lucky for us they hate each other more than they hate us. But one day this whole country is going to blow up in our faces, and we'll leave and it'll be worse than ever before. You mark my words, Herr Gunther.'
While he had been speaking, he'd been reading the letters and sorting out various sheets of paper, some of them blank but for a signature. And now he explained what he was doing:
'These are letters of accreditation,' he said. 'And signature samples for some new bank accounts. One of these accounts is to be a joint account for you and Dr. Six. Is that right?'
I frowned, hardly liking the idea of sharing anything with the head of the SD's Jewish Department. 'I don't know,' I said.
'Well, it's from this account that you are to take the money to buy the lease on a property here in Jaffa,' he explained. 'As well as your own fee and expenses. The balance will be payable to Dr. Six on presentation of a passbook that I will give to you to give to him. And his passport. Please make sure he understands that. The bank insists on the passbook holder identifying himself with a passport, if money is to be handed over. Clear?'
I nodded.
'May I see your own passport, Herr Gunther?'
I handed it over.
'The best person to help you find commercial property in Jaffa is Solomon Rabinowicz,' he said, glancing over my passport and writing down the number. 'He's a Polish Jew, but he's quite the most resourceful fellow I think I've met in this infuriating country. He has an office in Montefiore Street. In Tel Aviv. That's about half a mile from here. I'll give you his address. Always assuming that your client won't want premises in the Arab quarter. That would be asking for trouble.'
He handed back my passport and nodded at Mr. Begelmann's trunk. 'I take it those are your client's valuables?' he said. 'The ones he wishes to store in our vault, pending his arrival in this country.'
I nodded again.
'One of these letters contains an inventory of the property contained in that trunk,' he said. 'Do you wish to check the inventory before handing it over?'
'No,' I said.
Quinton came around the desk and collected the trunk. 'Christ, it's heavy,' he said. 'If you would wait here, I'll have your own passbook prepared. May I offer you some tea? Or some lemonade, perhaps?'
'Tea,' I said. 'Tea would be nice.'
My business at the bank concluded, I walked on to the hotel and found Hagen and Eichmann had already gone out. So, I had a cool bath, went to Tel Aviv, met Mr. Rabinowicz, and instructed him to find a suitable property for Paul Begelmann.
I did not see the two SD men until breakfast the next morning when, slightly the worse for wear, they came down to look for some black coffee. They had made a night of it at a club in the old town. 'Too much arak,' whispered Eichmann. 'It's the local drink. A sort of aniseed-flavored grape spirit. Avoid it if you can.'
I smiled and lit a cigarette but waved the smoke away when it seemed to nauseate him. 'Did you get hold of Reichert?' I asked.
'Yes. As a matter of fact he was with us last night. But not Polkes. So he's liable to turn up here looking for us. Would you mind seeing him, just for five or ten minutes and explaining the situation?'
'What is the situation?'
'Our plans are changing by the minute, I'm afraid. We may not be coming back here after all. For one thing, Reichert seems to think we won't have any better luck getting a visa in Cairo than we've had here.'
'I'm sorry to hear that,' I said. I was not sorry at all.
'Tell him we've gone to Cairo,' said Eichmann. 'And that we'll be staying at the National Hotel. Tell him to come and meet us there.'
'I don't know,' I said. 'I really don't want to get involved in any of this.'
'You're a German,' he said. 'You're involved whether you like it or not.'
'Yes, but you're the Nazi, not me.'
Eichmann looked shocked. 'How can you be working for the SD and not be a Nazi?' he asked.
'It's a funny old world,' I said. 'But don't tell anyone.'
'Look, please see him,' said Eichmann. 'If only for courtesy's sake. I could leave a letter for him,
