The Columbus Affair: A Novel

Or so he hoped.

“I am afraid not, Zachariah,” she said. “For that you are on your own. As I said, you and I will not speak again.”

No matter.

Until yesterday, he’d planned on accomplishing his goal without any help.

He’d stick to that plan.

They stood before the ceremonial hall, part of which jutted into the cemetery grounds, shaded by ash trees. More people were entering from the far side, admiring the graves, some offering stones to markers in remembrance. They all wore yarmulkes, which he knew were given to them with their admission tickets.

“Our heads should be covered, too,” he said.

“Not to worry, Zachariah. The dead will forgive us.”

———

TOM LEFT THE SECURITY ROOM AND FOUND A DOOR THAT LED outside.

But it was locked, no way to open it without a key.

He rushed to the interior stairway and leaped the short risers two at a time up to the first floor where visitors were entering the exhibits, showing their tickets to one of the female attendants.

This was too much.

Here he was in the Czech Republic, eight years after the fact, about to be confronted with someone who knew the truth.

He told himself to calm down. Think. Be rational.

Calmly, he left the stairs and excused himself past the visitors and out the door to the exterior staircase. The landing was enclosed on three sides, periodic openings offering views down to the cemetery. Through one of those he spied Simon and the woman, standing on a graveled path among the graves, talking. He watched them from the safety of his perch, no way for them to see him. To his left the stairway right-angled to ground level, the view open to a street that led down a short incline, past the vendor stalls, to the Old-New Synagogue.

He spotted Alle.

Fifty yards away.

Marching toward the hall.

———

ALLE IGNORED THE VENDOR STALLS TO HER LEFT, BUSY WITH tourists, and concentrated on the iron gate fifty yards away. More people were negotiating the exterior staircase for the ceremonial hall, heading up to the exhibits on the first and second floors, where she had been an hour ago.

Berlinger’s rebuke still stung.

As did her grandfather’s.

In the final years of his life she’d been there for him, pleasing him beyond measure with her conversion. He’d never thought his grandchild would practice his faith. He’d resigned himself to the fact that since his son had abandoned the religion, all would be abandoned.

“But you, my dear, are so special. You chose on your own to become what your birthright entitled you to be. It must be God’s will.”

They’d many times talked of life and the Jews, in the abstract, him responding to her questions.

“I may not agree with your mother’s beliefs,” he told her. “But I respect them. As much as I wanted my son to be a Jew I understand how she would want you to be a Christian. So I would never violate that.”

And he never had.

But in the end, he still hadn’t thought her worthy.

Or at least her new religion had not.

The Levite must be male and I failed to find anyone capable. So I took the secret entrusted to the grave.

She kept walking up the street, stepping around several tour groups. She was worthy. She could be the Levite. And do a better job than her father, who seemed not to care about anyone or anything. And where was he? Still inside the ceremonial hall? Her gaze focused ahead and she spotted two people beyond the iron gate, up another inclined path.

A man and a woman.

One was a stranger.

The other was Zachariah.

Here?

———

ZACHARIAH SPOTTED ALLE.

Too late for a retreat.