a few wrinkles around the eyes and strands of silver in her hair. He had locked away the memory of her face a lifetime ago, banned it from his mind, yet here she was, green eyes glistening over high cheekbones, thinly drawn lips that curved into a worried smile.
A whistle blew.
He saw a man run through the doors leading to the platform. “Get on the train!”
A conductor reached to shut the last door, waiting as Tanya mounted the three steps.
“ Halt! ” The man ran along the train.
“ I’ll call you,” Lemmy said. “What name will you be using?”
“Frau Koenig,” she said.
The conductor noticed the advancing man and held the door while the train began to move.
“It’s her husband,” Lemmy said to the conductor. “He’s very angry! Go! Quick!”
The conductor grinned and slammed the door.
The man tried to open another door, jogging beside the moving train toward Lemmy, who extended his leg and tripped him.
“ Ah! ”
“ Oops!” Lemmy caught the falling man, and with a subtle, rapid jolt to the back of the head turned him unconscious. “So sorry.”
Laying him carefully on the concrete floor, Lemmy glanced up and down the tracks, now deserted. He pulled the man’s wallet and found a driver’s license with a Zurich address and a business card of an office supply firm. The soft hands, genuine Tissot gold watch, and extended belly made it unlikely he was an Israeli agent. Or was he? Lemmy could take no chances. Tanya’s life was on the line. Maybe even his own.
A moment later two railway employees showed up. He told them the man had tripped while chasing the departing train, and they called for help.
*
Christopher lived in a condo not far from the bank. Lemmy entered behind a cheerful group of young men and women on their way to a party. He carried a gift-wrapped box of Schmerling’s chocolate. On the fourth floor, he rang Christopher’s doorbell.
“Who is it?” His assistant’s voice was muffled.
“Your boss.”
“Herr Horch?” Three locks turned before Christopher opened the door. He was still in his work suit, but the tie was loose, the shoes unlaced, and the beer bottle half-empty.
“ That’s for you.” Lemmy gave him the box of chocolate, forcing him to balance it in his left hand. “I apologize for surprising you like this, but as we approach a change of guard at the bank, I wanted to show my appreciation for your efforts.”
“ Thank you.”
“ And I also wanted to see how you live.” Lemmy smiled. “After all, as my assistant on the top floor, you’ll have access to a great deal of wealth. We don’t want another strange Gunter, right?”
Christopher put down the box of chocolate on a small table by the door. “Yes, I understand.”
“ So? Are you going to invite me in?”
“ Oh. I’m sorry. Please.”
“ Unless you have company,” Lemmy said. “I don’t want to intrude.”
Christopher shut the door and showed him into a living room. “I’m between girlfriends right now.”
“ Good.” Lemmy drew his Mauser and aimed it at Christopher’s chest. He removed the beer bottle from his hand and took a gulp. “Nice and cold.”
The expression on Christopher’s face barely changed. He obviously had strong nerves and good training. “Is this a real pistol?”
Lemmy sat on an armchair. “Toy guns have a red plastic tip at the end of the muzzle. And no silencer. But you already know that.”
“ Herr Horch, is this some kind of a test?”
“ A test?”
“ To see if I’m prepared for a bank robbery?”
“ You’re good,” Lemmy said. “You’re stalling for time, trying to figure out what I’m after and how you can retrieve your own weapon and reach parity here. Correct?”
“Weapon?” Christopher laughed. “You can’t be serious. This is a joke, right?”
In response, Lemmy shifted his aim and pressed the trigger. The bullet hit the TV behind Christopher, blasting the screen.
“God!” Christopher jumped sideways. t='0What’s wrong with you?”
“ Pull down your pants.”
“ What? ”
“Show it to me!”
Christopher hesitated.
Lemmy lowered the tip of the silencer until it pointed at Christopher’s crotch.
“ Don’t shoot!” Christopher unbuckled his belt and lowered his pants and underwear. Along his circumcised penis was a tattoo of a black swastika and the letters SS.
“Regards from Kibbutz Gesher.” Lemmy aimed the Mauser with both hands. “Tell me the truth or I will shoot it off.”
His face red, his smile gone, Christopher pulled up his pants. Without asking permission, he sat down on the carpet. “My father did it. He was much older than my mother, served as an SS officer during the war. He was angry that she had allowed the doctor to circumcise me-there was an infection around my penis, and the doctor said it would help. Dad took me to an SS reunion in Munich when I was five or six. They got me drunk and had me tattooed.”
“How touching,” Lemmy said. “Father-son bonding. Only that I don’t believe you. Tell me who you work for, unless you want to die tonight.”
“I work for Elie Weiss,” Christopher said. “Who else?”
“Don’t lie!”
“I’m not lying. I didn’t know his real identity when he first showed up, after my dad was killed in a ski accident.”
Lemmy’s curiosity was piqued. Paula’s young brother had also died in a ski accident. “What kind of an accident?”
“ When I was fourteen, we went on vacation to Unterstmatt in the Black Forest. My father didn’t return to the lodge after dark. A rescue team found him in a crevasse off the slopes. The pathologist said that a sharp icicle penetrated his throat and punctured his brain. It had melted long before he was discovered, but the stab wound fit a long icicle. A freak accident, really.”
The freakish part was that the exact same thing had happened to Klaus V.K. Hoffgeitz a few years earlier in Chamonix, a great distance from Unterstmatt!
“ Go on,” Lemmy said, struggling to control his voice.
“ My father owned a factory, making chemicals for pest control and agriculture. After he died, the accountants told my mother that the business was bankrupt. We had nothing. Then a miracle happened. A little man with black eyes and a long nose visited us.”
“ Elie?”
“ He introduced himself as Untersturmfuhrer Rupert Danzig, an underling of my father from the good old days of the SS. He offered secret help from a charity fund run by a group of veterans. The money started coming, enough to support my mother and send me to Lyceum Alpin St. Nicholas.”
“ Elie is a master in long-term planning.”
“ And in the summers I attended paramilitary youth camps to learn shooting and field work.”
“ Same with me,” Lemmy said, “fifteen years ahead of you.”
“ When I graduated, Herr Danzig encouraged me to go to Israel for a summer. He said I must learn from the Jewish people about building a new life from nothing, a new nation from the ashes, putting all energies into constructive work, and so on. But I had a little thing with one of the girls in the kibbutz, she saw my tattoo, and all
