documents were his specialty.
“Is he still alive? Last I saw him he was about to retire, and that was ten years ago.”
“Alive and kicking. He looks his age, but his hands are steady as ever.”
“Good, I'll call you tomorrow. Just push it.”
On my way back to the hotel I passed the Mielke Bank. It looked like any other. I decided not to tell David about the homemade power of attorney; sometimes “need to know” includes keeping even your own boss in the dark.
I entered the hotel restaurant and ordered the biggest veal schnitzel they had. A schnitzel as big as a carpet came with potatoes and cabbage. It set me up for a good night's sleep.
Early morning on the following day I called Ralph. “Well?” I asked.
“It's ready. The old man worked on it last night; it's just one page. Where do you want it delivered?”
“Send it by DHL to my hotel, but do not indicate your name or return address on the envelope. Pay them in cash.”
The envelope came in the next day. It was too early to go to the bank, so I drove the streets of Munich trying to reconstruct DeLouise's movements and what had happened to him. I went to the street corner where he'd been shot. A professional job. The hitman had selected a congested area where an experienced motorcyclist would have no problem disappearing while any police cars in pursuit would be caught in the traffic. That was clever. On the other hand, I was reluctant to give him that much credit. After all, he had shot DeLouise only once and my training had emphasized that to be absolutely certain that your victim is dead, more than one shot is needed, especially if you retreat immediately and cannot return to complete the job. “Death verification” was the chilling term. He hadn't done that, so I downgraded him to semiprofessional.
It was time to go to Mielke Bank. I went through revolving doors and asked to see the assistant manager. A heavy woman with eyeglasses on a chain over her ample bosom approached me. “I'm the assistant manager,” she said sternly, “yes?”
I showed her my power of attorney.
“I'm attorney Dan Gordon,” I said. “I have a power of attorney signed by your client Ms. Ariel Peled. I need to get copies of her records.”
The assistant manager looked at the power of attorney I gave her and snapped, “Please wait.” She walked away, the paper in her hand. She seemed so regimented that I was sure that when she walked into a room, mice would jump on chairs. She returned ten or fifteen minutes later.
“Problem. Miss Peled has only a safe-deposit box at the bank but no account.”
“Good,” I said, ignoring the negative beginning of her statement.
“But under the bank's policy, we need a special power of attorney. That's a form our bank issues. We can't accept this document,” she ended, returning the power of attorney I had given her.
I couldn't believe my luck, even if it outwardly looked like a rejection.
“At this time I don't need to open the safe-deposit box,” I said. “She moves between Israel and Germany, but all I have is her Israeli address. So let me see what local address she gave you. I'll leave a message for her to come in and sign the bank's form. I am an attorney working for her in an estate matter. As you can see, she signed this document before the German Consul in Tel Aviv and I don't know if she's still in Israel or here. I must return soon to the United States. It was entirely my mistake not knowing your procedures. I'm sure that the power of attorney I have is enough to see what local address she gave you.”
“Wait,” she ordered, looking annoyed, and walked back into her office.
I had aimed low when I'd asked for the address, but for my current purpose, that's what I needed to help me trace Ariel.
The assistant manager came out a few minutes later.
“The manager allowed me to give you the details you wanted, but you cannot see the actual signature card or open the safe.”
“That's fine,” I said, thinking it was better than nothing, particularly when it was just what I wanted at the moment.
She pulled out a white sheet of paper and read it to me.
“Ariel Peled rented a safe-deposit box at our branch on September 27, box number 114, and has not opened it since. On her signature card she gave her address in Haifa, Israel. Do you have it?”
Was she testing how much I knew?
“I have the one on Allenby Street,” I said. “Which one do you have?”
“11-36 Weitzman Street, Haifa.”
“Yeah, that's her new address,” I said knowingly. “Allenby is her mother's address. Did she give you an address in Munich?”
“No. But she wanted her mother to be a signatory also.”
“Yes, I know that.” I quickly added, “Has Mrs. Bernstein been in yet?”
“No,” she said. “Miss Peled told us that her mother would come at a later time to sign the card.”
“Was there anything else?” I asked.
“No. That's it.”
I thanked her and left the bank. This was at least solid proof that Ariel had set foot in Munich.
So what did I know so far? Ariel had come to Munich and had rented a safe-deposit box to be jointly owned with her mother. Her father was murdered here. I didn't need to be a rocket scientist to see that there might be a connection. But that was only a possibility, not a fact.
During our training at the Mossad, we were taught the art of report writing. NAKA was the acronym in Hebrew for uniform writing procedure. “You must always bear in mind that the reader of your report has only the paper before him. He doesn't know you and cannot and should not read between the lines. So when you mean to report about seeing a bird, and another combatant at the other side of the world wants to report seeing the same type of bird, both of you should use the same word bird and not one use bird and the other use fowl. The analyst reading your report would be confused: are both reports describing the same bird? Next, establish the level of security of the document. ‘Top secret’ is applied to information which, if disclosed, could be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to national security. ‘Secret’ is information which, if disclosed, could be expected to cause serious damage to national security. ‘Confidential’ is applied to information which, if disclosed, could be expected to cause damage to national security.
“Now, how do you define national security and the level of damage it could suffer without irreparable harm?” We had spent two weeks on that. The list of topics that had to be classified included military plans, weapons systems, or operations; foreign-government information; intelligence activities (including special activities); intelligence sources or methods; cryptology; foreign relations or foreign activities of the country, including confidential sources; Jewish emigration from economically or politically distressed countries; scientific (including nuclear), technological, or economic matters relating to national security; programs for safeguarding nuclear materials or facilities; and vulnerabilities or capabilities of system installations, projects, or plans relating to national security.
In Alex's words: “Once you've done that, select the degree of reliability of the information it contains. Remember, it is not your reliability that is being reviewed but that of the information you are providing. So don't beautify the facts. If you do that, then your credibility would really be put into question. If the information is obtained from a single source, tell that to the reader, on the top of your report in bold type. The source may be your own mother, but mothers can be wrong too, you know. And finally, always distinguish between an assumption, a lead, a suspicion, an opinion, and a fact. A fact gets the highest degree of certainty, so the word is to be used only if the data provided is worthy of that definition. Preferably it would be based upon all-source intelligence; that is, information accumulated from various available sources.”
Accordingly, all I could conclude was that Ariel Peled had rented a safe-deposit box. That was a single source fact. Still, somebody posing as Ariel could also have done the same. That she put something she felt needed protection in the box was an assumption, not a fact, because the box could still be empty. But if it was Ariel who rented the box and put something in the box, I figured it was connected to her father. That was definitely a suspicion.
Back at the hotel, I went through my papers again. I looked at the identified phone numbers Lan had sent me and compared them with Peled's hotel bill. I examined the line on the bill where the charge was made for the
