born and lived in Israel all her life. She'd passed the second test.
“I'm Dan Gordon,” I said. “I'm your mother's friend. May I see you?” I had to be Dan Gordon, not Peter Wooten. Gordon was the name her mother knew.
“Where are you?”
“I'm in the lobby.”
“How did you find me?”
“Please come downstairs; you'll soon find out, I promise.”
She paused a moment, then said, “I'll meet you in twenty minutes at the Dariali restaurant, located on the left wing at the main lobby level.” I knew that Ariel would not hesitate, because she'd recognized in my voice the unmistakable inflection and dialect of a native Israeli and would trust that. Besides, we were about to meet inside the hotel where Ariel would feel protected.
“Good, I'll see you there.”
I hadn't planned on finding Ariel so quickly, so I had no plan for an introduction or how to lead the conversation. Was she friend or foe? Was she really Ariel Peled?
I decided to allow the meeting to flow naturally and let my instincts be my guide. This method left many things to chance, of course, and went against my training. If she were Mina Bernstein's daughter, I'd relax my level of caution. But then again, she would also be DeLouise's daughter; I tried to put that out of my mind.
I entered the restaurant. The place was completely empty. A mustached waiter greeted me wearing a costume typical of the Caucasus, a kaftan with two lapels in Turkic manner and a round embroidered cap laced with gold thread.
“Welcome,” he said in English, “Deutsch?” That sounded bizarre.
“No,” I said, “English. And I'd like a table for two.”
He looked down at his reservations book and said, “I don't know if I have a table available for tonight, let me see.”
I thought the guy was just a pompous ass playing games. The place was empty, so why the show? To get a tip for a stale joke?
Finally he said, “Yes, I can give you one table, please follow me.”
He took me through the empty restaurant and to a table like all the others, covered with a red tablecloth and set with Caucasian-style copper plates.
“Thank you,” I said, giving him a dollar. He thanked me vehemently. A U.S. dollar went a long way in the Soviet Union, where his salary might be only thirty dollars a month. “I'm waiting for a lady. My name is Gordon; please direct her to my table.”
“Of course, sir,” he said.
I sat so preoccupied with my thoughts that I was surprised to hear a woman's voice so close to me, “Dan Gordon?”
I got up, smiled, and said, “Shalom, Ariel.”
Ariel looked very much like her mother, perhaps taller and more slender but with the same blue eyes and the same smile. No further identity tests were needed; she was definitely Mina Bernstein's daughter. I was taken with her immediately. She looked younger than her early thirties. Her face was tanned and her body looked athletic in blue jeans. A close-fitting white sweater outlined her ample breasts. Her copper hair was braided loosely, falling below her shoulders.
As soon as she sat down Ariel began firing questions at me. “How did you find me? Are you one of them? How is my mother? Does she know I'm here?”
“Which one do I answer first?” I smiled.
“About my mother, does she know I'm here?” she asked in a serious tone.
“I don't know. I saw her in Munich just before she went back to Israel. She was worried about you; so frankly, I have no idea if she knows that you've escaped from the Latinos. Tell me, how did you manage it?”
She smiled. “I spoke with her on the phone from the consulate after I escaped. So, if you were with my mother before she returned to Israel, you must be from the Office!”
“I'm one of the good guys,” I said, deftly sidestepping a more direct answer. “Tell me.”
At that inopportune moment, as usual, the waiter came with the menu. It consisted of a sticky plastic card with an attached handwritten list in Russian, which I couldn't decipher. “Do you have an English menu?” I asked.
“No. But I can explain,” said the probably fake Caucasian.
“Never mind,” I said, figuring that the best way to get rid of him quickly was to ask him to decide for us.
“Don't pay attention to the menu; their selection is actually very limited,” said Ariel.
“Just give us your freshest meal,” I told the waiter, “and please make it only mildly spicy.” Off he went.
Ariel smiled at me again. “I see that you're impatient. When did you arrive?”
“Two hours ago. So, tell me, how did you get away?”
“From where?”
“From your captors in Munich.”
“How much time do you have?” she asked jokingly. She didn't look or sound like someone who'd just been through an ordeal. She sure was putting up the front of a tough cookie.
“All the time it will take. Just tell me the story.”
“There were two of them,” she recalled. “One who said his name was Tony, but I heard his friend call him Julio. I don't know the other's name. I'm not sure he could speak English, maybe only Spanish.”
“Do you know where you were?”
“No. It was a small apartment somewhere in Munich or its vicinity.”
“Did they tell you what they wanted?”
“They kept demanding that I give them some papers, which they said that my father had given me. But I didn't know what they were talking about. I told them that I had just received a personal letter from my father but no other documents. They kept on pressing me. I was petrified; I was sure I was about to die.”
“Why?” I asked. “Did they hurt you?”
“They never touched me, but they threatened to kill me five times a day. But oral threats weren't the reason I was worried. I wasn't blindfolded and I could identify them. That scared me.”
“Why?”
“Because if they didn't care that I saw them, that must have meant that I would never live to describe them. There was something alarming in their story that my father had kept documents that belonged to them. I didn't know if my father was looking for me, because I couldn't find him when I arrived. I couldn't take it anymore, so I told them about the safe-deposit box where I left my father's letter.”
The waiter came with ten small plates of a variety of unidentified salads and a loaf of freshly baked bread with a thick crust. Ariel waited until he left and continued.
“I told them it was in the Grand Excelsior hotel safe and that only I had access to it. I was hoping that I would be able to attract the attention of somebody at the hotel to help me get away from those terrible people. But when we went to the hotel, they were so close to me, one of them holding a knife underneath his jacket telling me he'd slaughter me like a pig if I made any move, that I realized I couldn't get away. So I had to invent a story: that I had forgotten and that the envelope was in fact in a safe-deposit box at the Mielke Bank. I guess they didn't want to risk going to the bank with me as their hostage, so they demanded to know who else had access to the safe. I told them that the only other person who had access was my mother, who lived in Israel, hoping that would force them to give up the idea. I always add her name to all my accounts, as she does with me. They made me call her in Israel from the hotel pay phone and reverse the charges. They put a tape recorder by the phone to record the conversation and said that if I told my mother anything alarming in Hebrew, I would die because their people can understand Hebrew. I was totally petrified and confused, so I did what they wanted. I asked my mother to come to Munich to help me. I really didn't care about giving them the letter, as long as I got away from them. But when my mother came over, I wasn't allowed to call her.”
“Did you try to escape?”
“Yes. When I understood from their conversation that my mother was in town, I was afraid they'd kidnap her too. I had to warn her. I constantly looked for ways to escape. When they left the apartment for the day they
