There was a pause. I could almost hear David's mind at work, analyzing the facts.
“How did he die?”
“A bullet to the head is detrimental to anyone's health,” I said dryly.
“How did you find him?” he asked.
“It's complicated. Triple identity,” I said. “It seems that there was more to DeLouise than met the eye.”
“Why was he left in the morgue for so long?” he asked.
“Well, from what I could understand from the city morgue office, DeLouise wasn't carrying any ID. The German police traced him through a hotel key they found on his body, and they've just notified the hotel of his death. But it took them a while because the key didn't have the hotel name on it. They had to have a detective visit every Munich area hotel to compare keys. The police are waiting for instructions from the Israeli Consulate about DeLouise's relatives and what to do with the body.”
“You mean the American Consulate,” David corrected.
“No. The Israeli Consulate. He also had Israeli citizenship, and he registered at the hotel under his Israeli name. That's identity number two.”
“Are you sure the body in the morgue is indeed our man?”
“Pretty sure; I went over the inventory list of personal belongings the police found in his room. There were some legal papers concerning his collapsed bank in California and a newspaper clipping describing his sudden disappearance from the United States. I think it's him all right. Besides, he looked just like his photograph only a lot paler. However, final identification will have to be made by the family. You can call the FBI directly because I'm not sure the Munich police realize that they should also notify U.S. authorities through INTERPOL.”
“Why?”
“The question is how likely is it that Munich police will check INTERPOL ‘wanted’ info about this guy. They would only be likely to notify U.S. law enforcement through INTERPOL if they'd checked and found that we were looking for a man with that name and ID and this is not the case here.”
“I see.”
“You may want to spread the word and score some points for your office,” I suggested.
David ducked the curve ball.
“I see you've already talked to the German police. Do you know who else might have been after him?
“No, I haven't talked to the police directly yet,” I said. “But the office of the morgue showed me the police report that came with the body for autopsy. There was testimony from a bystander who said that he saw DeLouise standing near a newspaper stand when a man dressed in black leather overalls and a black helmet rode up on a motorcycle. He stopped next to the guy, got off his cycle, pulled a gun, shot him once in the head from a distance of approximately four or five feet, and rode away.”
I let that sink in. “It seems like a professional hit. Not a robbery or anything else,” I added.
“The German morgue let you see the police report?” he asked in surprise.
“Well, the technician needed some encouraging. He settled for a green picture of Ben Franklin.”
David paused, as if to allow himself some deniability at a later stage. Federal employees are not supposed to break foreign countries' rules. I could live with that as long as the government could live with the few minor infractions I had to make, just to make major progress. Maybe I shouldn't have told David, but I trusted him, and more importantly, he trusted me. He knew and I knew that if the shit ever hit the fan, I'd be on my own. That was fine with me.
“Wasn't the report in German? How could you read it?”
“I'll tell you more when I get back home.”
I didn't want to tell him, at least not yet, that I also managed to make a Xerox copy of the report and translated it word by word by combining my average command of German with a good dictionary.
“Sounds as if you're on the right track,” he finally said. “Let me have your written report as quickly and completely as you can. I'll forward a copy to the Criminal Division, for information only. If I hear anything relevant to your investigation, I'll send you a memo through the consulate.”
I left the small conference room and stopped at Helga's workstation. Lovejoy hadn't returned yet. I had more urgent things to do, so I thanked her and left the building.
I suddenly realized how much I missed the sheer excitement of my earlier days at the Mossad. Of course I hadn't thought so then. Those had been three long, challenging years.
“Those of you who survive this course will be the best of the lot,” Alex had repeatedly said in his American- accented Hebrew. In fact Alex was born in Canada, but to us cadets, anyone with an accent like that must be American.
They'd recruited me at Tel Aviv University, which I attended after thirty months of active service in the Israeli military, a responsibility all young Israelis must fulfill. I was set to graduate that July of 1966 with a degree in international relations, a degree that offered few job opportunities outside academia or the government. I'd been easy prey.
“We want to talk to you,” a stocky fellow said when he approached me in the university's hallway. A man in his late forties, he had a receding hairline and hair that had once been blond but was now a poor gray. He used the word we but he was by himself. Who the hell is “we”? I remembered thinking, while looking at him with an amused curiosity.
“What about?” I finally asked, trying to figure out if he was somehow connected to the girl I'd met a week earlier who'd refused to tell me where she lived because her parents didn't approve of her dating “older men.” I was twenty-two and she was sixteen, and it was the sixties in Tel Aviv, a city that doesn't stop even at hours when Londoners in swinging Carnaby Street are already fast asleep.
His tone of voice became friendly. “I'm Michael from the prime minister's office, and I'm wondering if we can talk for a few minutes.”
I followed Michael into the cafeteria on the lower level of a three-story faculty building just completed at the quickly expanding campus in Ramat Aviv, Tel Aviv's northern neighborhood. The place was notorious for its stale coffee and sticky Formica tables, which were never stable. The cafeteria was deserted, but we sat in a far corner anyway. I looked at Michael, waiting for him to start.
He was brief. In a barely audible voice he said, “We at the prime minister's office have reviewed your background and believe that you may be suitable for the screening process which, if successful, will lead to your being invited to join us.” There were too many preconditions to this statement, I thought; it sounded like a preamble to a contract. I had to lean forward to hear the rest. He smelled of tobacco and Aqua Velva, the popular aftershave lotion one could buy at the army canteen.
I looked at his face, then at the small and wobbly table between us and said, as if I didn't know what he was talking about, “The prime minister's office? I'm still in school. Why would the prime minister's office be interested in a guy like me?” I played dumb, of course. I knew very well that the “prime minister's office” was the code name for the Central Institute for Intelligence, Israel's equivalent of the CIA. (In Hebrew, the word mossad roughly translates into “institute.”)
“You're going to graduate in a few months,” Michael said, “and your major is international relations. Your language skills and other traits as well as your Special Forces military background make you appealing to us. I can't tell you anything more at this time, but if you're interested, call me.”
“What do you know about my background?” I asked in surprise.
“Everything there is to know,” he said.
I didn't like the answer. I wanted to hear what he meant. I wanted to know how deep their inquiry went. The deeper the research, the more serious their offer.
“Tell me what you know about my parents,” I suggested.
Michael gave me a long look and finally said, “Your father, Harry, came to Palestine from Eastern Europe in the 1920s. In Russia he was active in Zionist movements and emigrated to Palestine as a pioneer motivated by ideology. Here he first worked as a laborer in citrus groves and paving roads until he saved up enough money to go to London to study law. After graduating he returned to Tel Aviv and joined two other lawyers and established one of Tel Aviv's first law firms. Your mother is a librarian at the law school. Your only sister is six years older than you, married with two children. She is a homemaker and her husband a medical doctor. Do I need to continue?”
“Yes. That information is hardly a secret. Anything specific?”
