At the Cafe Renault, where tourists sipped coffee in booths resembling cars, they turned left onto Rue Pierre Charron and passed by the window displays of Iran Air. Bathsheba motioned at the Iranian flag. “Do you have any bullets left?”
He walked faster.
On Rue Francois they turned right.
Near the end of the block, a short, thin man wearing a dark wool cap leaned against a white Citroen BX. He drew once more from his cigarette, dropped it, and put it out with the sole of his shoe.
Bathsheba got in the back, Gideon behind the wheel, and Elie Weiss in the passenger seat. The car smelled of cigarette smoke. They drove off.
Elie looked forward, not turning his head.
“ Your source told the truth,” Gideon said. “Al-Mazir was on the Damascus flight. Abu Yusef’s men picked him up, but drove north to the suburbs, not to the city. They split up. We chased the car he was in and shot him.”
“ Any problems?”
“Not with the Arabs.” Gideon glanced at Bathsheba through the rearview mirror.
“ We had fun.” She leaned forward and ruffled his hair. “We’re a good team.”
Elie coughed in a slow, deep rumble that sounded as if it should emerge from a much larger man. He pulled the tight-fitting wool cap down over his ears. It gave his head a conical shape. His face had a sickly hue.
Gideon drove fast, passing other cars whenever possible, taking turns with sudden jerks of the wheel. In Paris, slow driving drew attention.
Heading east on Rue La Fayette, he slammed on the brakes and made a tight U-turn. A quarter-block back, he turned into Rue Lamartine, a narrow one-way street with little traffic, and took a swift left turn into Rue Buffault, where he stopped at the curb.
They waited a few minutes.
Elie opened the door. The air was cold and moist. He led the way across the street and down the opposite pavement, past the municipal office building. Next was number 32, a public elementary school, where a marble plaque commemorated twenty thousand Parisian Jewish children deported to Auschwitz between 1942 and 1944. A bouquet of dry flowers rested in a metal ring under the plaque, wrapped in the French red, white, and blue flag.
The next building, number 30, was a synagogue. Its three mahogany doors were embraced by ornate marble pillars resembling palm fronds, and a Biblical quote on top: Blessed are you in coming, and blessed are you in leaving. A temporary wall of plywood, supported by police barriers, separated the sidewalk from the street, shielding the forecourt and doors from passing cars. The synagogue had been the target of a terrorist attack a decade earlier.
Gideon pushed open the heavy door at number 28 and held it for Elie and Bathsheba. The old apartment building had an elevator, but they took the stairs.
On the third floor landing, Elie was out of breath. He coughed hard and spat into a handkerchief. Gideon entered the apartment with his weapon drawn. He checked the bedroom, which had one bed and two thin mattresses on the floor, and the workroom, where a large metal desk carried a telephone, a computer, and a small TV. Electrical wires crisscrossed the floor.
Elie sat at the desk and pulled off the wool cap. He opened a file, took out a small photograph, and showed it to them.
“That’s the one who shot back at us,” Gideon said.
“Hassan Gaziri.” Elie tapped the photo with his finger. “A nephew. Abu Yusef must be very upset. And nervous. He’s hunkered down in a secluded house, difficult to access, lots of hiding spots for his men to wait in ambush for foolhardy attackers.”
“ So what?” Bathsheba kicked the leg of the table. “We give up?”
“ We plan ahead,” Elie said. “Let him stew in grief and anger and dread. Let him experience what he has caused so many others to experience.”
“ That’s never going to happen,” Bathsheba said. Her father, a judo champion, had represented Israel in the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich. At his funeral near Tel Aviv, three-year-old Bathsheba had held a red rose. The next day, her picture was picked up by news outlets worldwide. “He’s a murderer,” she said. “He doesn’t experience the feelings we experience. Right now, all he’s thinking about is how to kill more Jews.”
“ That too,” Elie said.
“ Then we should go now, drive around Ermenonville, ask people. Someone might have noticed a bunch of Arabs living in a house.”
“My father,” Elie said, “may he rest in peace, was a shoykhet, the only kosher butcher within a week’s mule- ride from our shtetl. He taught me that a successful act of slaughter requires meticulous preparations-for both the shoykhet and the animal.”
Bathsheba laughed, but Gideon didn’t. He had once seen Elie work with a long blade on a former SS prison guard, an elderly man who had spent decades evading the consequences of his crimes. Since then, despite Elie’s small stature and worsening health, Gideon had felt apprehension in his presence.
“ Driving around could draw attention to you,” Elie said. “We need an observation point. Show me the layout.”
With a roadmap flat on the desk, Gideon’s finger traced Charles de Gaulle Airport, the highway north, and the exit ramp. “That’s where the green Peugeot turned right. We can wait at this gas station.” He pointed at the intersection off the highway. “The Peugeot 605 is a pricey car. They’ll use it again.”
“ Start on Friday,” Elie said. “Give them a day to calm down.”
“ Calm down my ass,” Bathsheba said. “They’re going to strike back.”
Elie glanced at his watch. “I have a flight to catch.” He raised his hand to stop Gideon, who started to rise. “Stay here. I’ll take the train to the airport.”
Part Two
The Momentum
Thursday, October 12, 1995
“ Do you hear them?” Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin peered through the window shutters at a group of demonstrators on the opposite sidewalk. “They’re praying for my early death!”
“I didn’t know you believe in the power of prayers.” Elie Weiss sipped from a cup of tea, which the prime minister had fixed for him.
“It depends who does the praying.” Rabin sat down. It was the same sofa Elie remembered from past visits to the official PM residence in Jerusalem. He had reported to each of the previous occupants-Levi Eshkol, Golda Meir, Yitzhak Rabin himself during his earlier tenure, Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Shamir, and Shimon Peres. And now, with Rabin back in office, the place had a stale, museum-like quality, contrasting with the boisterous chants across the street.
“ My wife moved back to our apartment in Tel Aviv. Can you blame her?”
“ Not really.”
Prime Minister Rabin’s eyes had remained blue and steady, but he wore large glasses from a bygone fashion. His reddish hair had turned gray, and his firm jaw had slackened. “We’ve been through a lot, Weiss.”
“But not much has changed.” Elie lowered the cup to the saucer.
“I disagree.” The previous week, Rabin had signed the second phase of the Oslo Accords at the White House, moving forward with the land-for-peace deal with the Palestinians. “Arafat has changed. The PLO has changed. And the balance of hope has changed.”
“The balance of risk, also.” Elie took out a pack of cigarettes, but didn’t light any. The chanting outside stopped, and a single voice yelled, “ Rodef!” It was a Talmudic term, referring to a “Pursuer,” a Jew who was a menace to his fellow Jews.
The prime minister shifted-quickly, as if something had stung him. “Can you believe these Talmudic
