bourgeois life filled with art, music, and afternoons in the Tiergarten. And here was the place they had stayed as the noose tightened slowly around their necks. Finally, in the autumn of 1942, they were herded by their fellow countrymen aboard a cattle car and deported east to Auschwitz. Gabriel’s grandparents were gassed upon arrival, but his mother was sent to the women’s work camp at Birkenau. She never told Gabriel of her experiences. Instead, she committed them to paper and locked them away in the archives of Yad Vashem.
Gabriel closed his eyes and saw the street as it had been before the madness. And then he saw himself as a child, coming to visit grandparents who had been allowed to grow old. And he imagined how different his life might have been had he been raised here in Berlin instead of the Valley of Jezreel. And then a cloud of acrid smoke blew across his face, like the smoke of distant crematoria, and he heard a familiar voice at his back.
“What were you hoping to find here?” asked Ari Shamron.
“Strength,” said Gabriel.
“Your mother gave you strength when she named you,” Shamron said. “And then she gave you to me.”
29
BERLIN
SHAMRON HAD REGISTERED AT THE ADLON under the name Rudolf Heller, one of his favorite European aliases. Gabriel wanted to avoid the security cameras of the famous old hotel, so they walked along the edge of the Tiergarten instead. The air had turned suddenly frigid, and the wind was whistling through the columns of the Brandenburg Gate. Shamron was wearing a cashmere overcoat, a fedora, and tinted eyeglasses that made him look like the sort of businessman who made money in shady ways and never lost at baccarat. He paused at Berlin’s new Holocaust memorial, a stark landscape of rectangular gray blocks, and frowned in consternation.
“They look like containers waiting to be loaded into a cargo ship.”
“The architect wanted to create an atmosphere of discomfort and confusion. It’s supposed to represent the orderly extermination of millions amid the chaos of war.”
“Is that what you see?”
“I see a small miracle that such a memorial even exists on this spot. They could have tucked it away in a field in the countryside. But they put it here, in the heart of a reunited Berlin, right next to the Brandenburg Gate.”
“You give them too much credit, my son. After the war, they all pretended they hadn’t noticed their neighbors disappearing in the middle of the night. It wasn’t until we captured the man who worked right over there that Germany and the rest of the world truly understood the horror of the Holocaust.”
He was pointing across the Tiergarten, in the general direction of the Kurfürstenstrasse. It was there, in an imposing building that had once housed a Jewish mutual aid society, that Adolf Eichmann had made his headquarters. Gabriel’s eyes, however, were still fixed on the gray boxcar-shaped stones of the memorial.
“You should write it all down.” He paused and looked at Shamron. “Before it’s too late.”
“I’m not going anywhere yet.”
“Even
“I’ve always found the memoirs of spies to be tedious reading. Besides, what good would it do?”
“It would remind the world why we live in Israel instead of Germany and Poland.”
“The world doesn’t care,” Shamron responded with a dismissive wave of his hand. “And the Holocaust isn’t the only reason we have a home in the Land of Israel. We’re there because it was ours in the beginning. We
“Even some of our friends aren’t so sure of that anymore.”
“That’s because the Palestinians and their allies have managed to convince much of the world that we are appropriators of Arab land. They like to pretend that the ancient kingdoms of Israel were a myth, that the Temple of Jerusalem was nothing but a Bible story.”
“You sound like Eli.”
Shamron gave a brief smile. “In his own way, your friend Eli is waging war in those excavation trenches beneath the Western Wall. Our Muslim brothers have conveniently forgotten that their great Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque are built on the ruins of the First and Second Jewish Temples. The political battle for Palestine is now a religious war for Jerusalem. And we have to prove to the world that we were there first.”
A gust of wind moaned amid the stones of the memorial. Shamron turned up his coat collar and rounded the corner into a street named for Hannah Arendt, the philosopher and political theorist who coined the phrase “the banality of evil” to describe Eichmann’s role in the extermination of six million European Jews. Shamron, who had spent hours alone with the murderer in a Buenos Aires safe house, regarded the characterization as misguided at best. He entered a coffeehouse, then, after noticing the No Smoking sign, sat at a table outside.
“Healthy Germans,” he said, lighting a cigarette. “Just what the world needs.”
“I thought you’d forgiven them.”
“I have,” Shamron said, “but I’m afraid I’ll never forget. I also wish their government would consider putting some distance between itself and the Islamic Republic of Iran. But I learned long ago not to pray for impossible things.”
Shamron fell silent as the waitress, a beautiful girl with milk-white skin, delivered their coffee. When she was gone, he looked around the busy street and treated himself to a smile.
“What’s so funny?” asked Gabriel.
“When you came out of that Saudi prison, you told me you would never do another job for the Office. And now you’re about to carry out one of our most daring operations ever, all because some girl took a nasty fall in St. Peter’s Basilica.”
“She had a name,” Gabriel replied. “And she didn’t fall. She was pushed by Carlo Marchese.”
“We’ll deal with Carlo when we’re finished with Massoud.”
“I assume you’ve reviewed the plan?”
“Thoroughly. And my instincts tell me you have no more than thirty seconds to get Massoud into the first car.”
“We’ve rehearsed it at twenty. But in my experience, things always go faster when they’re live.”
“Especially when you’re involved,” Shamron quipped. “But tonight you’ll only be a spectator.”
“A very nervous spectator.”
“You should be. If this goes wrong, it will be a diplomatic disaster, not to mention a major propaganda victory for the Iranians. The world doesn’t seem to notice or care that they target our people whenever it suits them. But if we respond in kind, we’re branded as rogue gunslingers.”
“There are worse things they could call us.”
“Like what?”
“Weak,” replied Gabriel.
Shamron nodded in agreement and stirred his coffee thoughtfully. “Getting Massoud out of his car and into yours is going to be the easiest part of this operation. Convincing him to talk is going to be another thing altogether.”
“I’m sure you have a suggestion. You wouldn’t be here otherwise.”
Shamron acknowledged the remark with a nod of his head. “Massoud isn’t the sort of man who scares easily. The only way you’ll succeed is to present him with a fate worse than death. And then you have to throw him a lifeline and hope that he grasps it.”
“And if he does?”
“The temptation will be to get every drop of information you can. But in my humble opinion, that would be a mistake. Besides,” he added, “there isn’t time for that. Get the intelligence you need to stop this attack. And then . . .”
Shamron’s voice trailed off. Gabriel finished the thought for him.
“Let him go.”
