Authors: Roni Dunevich
“She has been sedated since the operation,” the nurse whispered.
The harsh neon lights were reflected on the linoleum floor, which was bare save for a few widely spaced beds.
Jane twisted fitfully under the sheet. Alex reached out and touched her hand. “I'm here, honey.”
She tried to clear her throat and grimaced in pain, her eyelids drooping. She mouthed, “Water.”
“Later,” the doctor said firmly. “Not yet.” She headed for the door. Alex hurried to catch up with her.
“How is she?” he asked.
“She has deep cuts on her neck. She was lucky. Another quarter inch at most and the artery would have been severed, but as it is she should recover quickly. If there are no complications, we should be able to release her in two days.”
The doctor went away.
Alex called Butthead. “Look for identical twins, assassins for hire. And look for strangulation with a steel cable.”
“Have you heard from Exodus or the econ division?” Butthead asked.
“No.”
“I hope you're lying down when she calls. I wouldn't want you to fall over.”
In the early afternoon they slipped out of the hospital, leaving behind fake identities. Jane gripped the armrests of the wheelchair as tightly as she could.
When they reached Justus's house, she collapsed onto the bed and fell asleep. Alex sprawled beside her and slept.
He awoke to the aroma of root vegetables stewing in the kitchen. A view of the forest filled the glass wall opposite the bed. Jane was sleeping on her side, breathing heavily.
The day was waning, growing colder and tinting the snow blue. At the edge of the forest, the bleak conifers were swaying in the wind. The last remnants of daylight gradually disappeared as darkness fell on the snow-covered lawn. The outside lights glowed, blazing orange.
Alex sat in the gloom, listening to Jane's troubled breathing. Her face was bathed in a dim glow. It's always odd to watch someone you love when they're sleeping, stripped of all expression. He suddenly felt apprehensive, concerned about the effort it would take to make their relationship work.
His phone vibrated.
“We're in,” Sammy Zengot informed him. “Like you thought, the system was in a cloud. We got it to work by keying in one of the codes you gave us with two plus signs in front. The guys say the owner of the phone has to have a chip with all the codes on it implanted somewhere in his body. The
chip communicates with the BlackBerry by Bluetooth. Happy now?”
“Very. What came up on the screen?”
“On the screen? A list of major European cities. Why?”
“How many?”
“Give me a few seconds to count them.”
The seconds felt like minutes.
“Thirteen.”
Alex's temples were pounding. “How many?”
“Thirteen. Why?”
“You sure, Sammy?”
“Sorry, make that fourteen.”
“How come?”
“Grunewald's on the list, too.”
Mossad's immune system was compromised. For the next few months at least, it would be impossible to operate in any city where a Nibelung had been killed. Someone had declared war on the Ring and had planned the attack meticulously.
Jane listened openmouthed as he told her what he'd learned.
“How many signal types does the chip have?” he asked.
“Five,” she whispered.
“Is there an emergency alert, one for imminent danger?”
“The fifth signal.”
He called Sammy.
“Find the menu for the signals in the phone and send out the fifth to all the numbers I gave you.”
“That'll take a while.”
“What's the last city on the list?”
“The last one?”
“Yes, Sammy, the last one.”
“Vienna.”
“When?”
“10:51 this morning.”
“I need the BlackBerry,” Alex said.
“On its way.”
He hung up.
Alex reported to Reuven the loss of fourteen Nibelungs, including Justus.
Reuven heaved a sigh. “It's an operational disaster.”
This wasn't a good time to be the chief. Very soon, Reuven would have to report to the prime minister. It could cost him his head. Alex was surprised to find that he felt sorry for the man.
“Alex,” Jane said.
“Did you get an alert?”
She nodded gingerly.
Finally, the dormant Nibelungs were being awakened. The vulnerable targets could become lethal weapons.
Alex went down to the kitchen. The stainless-steel counter was hidden under bulging shopping bags from Kaiser's supermarket. Paris was using a wooden spoon to stir the contents of a blue cast-iron pot. He tasted what looked like orange soup and threw in a pinch of salt.
Baby carrots were cooking in an integrated steamer in the counter. The Frenchman ground cumin and cardamom with a mortar and pestle and added the aromatic mixture to the carrots. Three brushed-stainless-steel Iittala saucepans with their crisp Scandinavian design were arranged on the counter beside two copper pots.
Paris displayed a two-pound cut of marbled entrecôte to Alex. “Hungry?” he asked.
Alex nodded and looked through the red grocery bags. He found a round country loaf, salami, cheese, mustard, mayonnaise, onions, garlic and fresh thyme.
The Frenchman was unaware of the crisis.
“Even in bad times, you have to eat,” he said.
“I'm sorry,” Alex said.
“You're not hungry?”
“Sorry I didn't trust you. I apologize.”
“Sometimes I act strange,” Paris smiled. He cut the meat into two substantial steaks and studded them with sprigs of thyme.
“How did Justus communicate with the Nibelungs?” Alex asked.
The Frenchman arranged boiled potatoes in a deep pan, adding a generous splash of olive oil, coarse salt, ground black pepper and thyme leaves. He put the pan in the hot oven and then sat down.
At least he didn't decide to organize the cupboards first
, Alex thought.
“Never by phone,” Paris said. “Not cellular or landline. There can't be a direct link between the Nibelungs. Not under any circumstances.”
“So how did you communicate?”
“Justus built nitro RC helicopters. He started a fictitious forum on the web, crazyheli.com, and installed a special search engine that got questions and answers off other forums. It would seem perfectly innocent to anyone who happened onto it. If I needed something from him, I left a coded message there. It sent an alert to Justus's phone. He'd respond with a signal to the chip in my crotch. It vibrates.”
Things were beginning to make sense.
“Each Nibelung has their own username and password,” Paris went on. “If Justus wanted to set up a meeting, he'd send a signal to my chip. I'd go into the forum and find a coded message with the details.
“I just got an alert,” Paris said, getting up. He chopped a few cloves of garlic and rubbed them into the steaks. Then he opened the oven door, and the kitchen was filled with the aroma of roasting potatoes and thyme.
Why did Paris wait until now to tell him about the vibrations in his crotch? He might have heard Alex give the order to send out an alert. The man could be setting a trap. Alex had to be sure of his identity. But there was no way to check him out, no one to ask.
Dinner was ready. The two men took their places at the bar. The roasted sprigs of thyme gave the steak an earthy aroma. The golden potatoes were roasted perfectly. They sat there chewing and eyeing each other. Alex filled their glasses with fine Tignanello he'd found in the wine cellar.
“No dessert,” the Frenchman apologized. They were silent, giving Alex time to think. Whoever was killing the Nibelungs was going from country to country, stalking his victim, taking them out, and then immediately moving on to the next target. Someone else had to be getting rid of the bodies. The legwork must also have been done before the assassin arrived. It demanded painstaking information-gathering over an extended period of time. An operation of that size could only be organized by the secret agency of a sovereign country with embassies and consulates throughout Europe. It would require dozens of field agents, sophisticated covert infrastructure, and secure communications.
Alex's phone vibrated against the thin stem of the wineglass. Exodus was calling.
“We dug deep, Alex. According to our preliminary estimate, Justus Erlichmann was worth roughly three hundred million euros. He might also have had additional income from property in Berlin that we haven't found yet. We're looking under every
rock. His name is never mentioned in the media. But that's not why I'm calling.”
All that remained from the wine was a dry, salty taste.
“Alex, Justus Erlichmann has been contributing large sums of money to a neo-Nazi organization.”
Alex fled to the snowy lawn behind the house, the piercing cold striking at his burning face. Out of earshot of the Frenchman, he whispered into the phone, “Justus? Neo-Nazis? Are you positive?”
“We checked and rechecked,” Exodus said. “We broke down his annual outlays and crossed off the regular expenses. In the end we were left with a monthly bank transfer of thirty thousand euros. We couldn't explain it, so we kept digging.”
A chill ran down his back.
“Where exactly was the money going?”
“Into the account of what was supposedly a Swiss NGO for Alzheimer's research.”
“His father had Alzheimer's. Couldn't they have been legit donations?”
“I sent someone to the address in Lucerne.”
“And?”
“It's an empty lot.”
“Maybe they moved.”
“It's been empty for nineteen years. The heirs are fighting over the property. We checked out the bank account. Justus Erlichmann was the only depositor. It was opened specifically for him.”
Thoughts were racing through Alex's head. “Does Reuven know about this?” he asked finally.
“I thought I'd give you the pleasure.”
“When was the first money transfer?”
“October 1994.”
“More than twenty years ago,” he said. It was freezing outside.
“Last month it was ten times as much as usual, three hundred thousand euros,” Exodus said. “The total figure is almost six million!”
Even a fire hose wouldn't have relieved the dryness in his mouth.
Justus Erlichmannâthe champion of Zionism and faithful servant of the State of Israelâhad a dark side.
“The NGO funnels funds to neo-Nazis?” he asked.
“We milked a reliable source in the German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution. They know the organization. It's a front for a neo-Nazi group, but they don't know anything else about it. All they know is that it exists.”
“What's the name of the group?”
“The Fourth Reich.”
Alex looked back
at the home of Justus Erlichmann. The exquisite house suddenly seemed hostile, its rooms contaminated. The imposing, tastefully lit library was infested with vermin. The artwork glittered like gold-plated shackles, and the thought of the swastika on the tail of the Messerschmitt made him sick to his stomach.
Repressed monsters threatened to soar up out of the depths of his memory. The Holocaust had lived in his parents' home like an unmovable tenant. Silent and bleeding, it had lain among the clothes in the closet and beside the empty bottles on the balcony,
puncturing his sleep with nightmares, slashing into his childhood with terror.
His mother's stories about Treblinka and Auschwitz. Her father hanged before her eyes. Aunts and uncles sent to the gas chamber or shot in the back and falling into open pits. The heavy barrel of a gun slamming into her little neck. A bullet penetrating her body. Unendurable pain.
He felt a pressing need to get as far away from this house as possible, but some dark, unnameable force urged him to stay, to resist and fight back. He'd let himself believe that his intimate conversation with Justus in Café Einstein had forged a genuine link between them. Now he knew that the despicable German had deceived him.
“
That's utterly ridiculous!”
Reuven declared. “Justus never gave money to neo-Nazis!”
“Exodus can fill you in on the details,” Alex told him.
“I already told you, the PM doesn't want us to investigate Justus Erlichmann. I gave you a direct order not to ask econ or intel to look into him. You chose to ignore my order, and now you want to embarrass me in front of the PM? How am I supposed to tell him your idiotic suspicions after he explicitly told me to leave Justus alone?”
That's your problem
, Alex thought. “When did Gunter find out he had Alzheimer's?”
“You're ignoring me,” Reuven said hotly.
“Do you really want to discuss what orders you gave or didn't give, or are you ready to deal with the fact that Justus had close ties to a neo-Nazi group?”
Reuven remained silent.
“Can we move on, Reuven? When was Gunter diagnosed with Alzheimer's?”
Reuven let out a sigh.
“Nineteen-ninety-four,” he said quietly. “The director needed to find a successor. Gunter suggested his son, Justus. The PM said it looked too much like nepotism. He didn't approve Justus's appointment until after the elections.”
“Isn't it strange,” Alex said, “that Justus transferred hundreds of thousands of euros to neo-Nazis just before he was killed?”
Reuven didn't respond.
“Maybe Gunter was the one who started giving them money,” Alex went on, thinking out loud. “No one ever looked into the Erlichmann family?”
A bottle uncorked. Liquid poured. A swallow.
“What difference does it make now?” Reuven said. “I have to bring all this shit to the PM.”
He hung up.
A light snow rustled through the trees. Snowflakes landed on Alex's face and melted away.
The photo of the dead machine gunner from the TimeâLife album floated up before him. His lifeless body lay with his legs on the balcony and his head on the wooden floorboards of the room inside. The dark pool of blood grew bigger from picture to picture.
Alex went back inside under a cloud of grief mixed with rage. His body shook from adrenaline and cold. He climbed the stairs to the bedroom and sat down beside Jane, telling her in a soft voice about Justus's secret donations to neo-Nazis.
“That's not possible,” she whispered back.
He nodded, his head as heavy as a church bell.
“He was more loyal to Israel than to his own homeland,” she said. “At most he might have made a small donation. Justus was no traitor!”
If only she was right. “He gave them close to six million euros.”
Jane's face fell. She lay there in silence.
It was almost midnight. The doorbell rang. Alex hurried downstairs, his Glock in his hand. He met Paris in the entrance hall and handed him the gun. Then he opened the door while the Frenchman covered him.
It was a courier with a thick envelope containing Justus's BlackBerry.
Alex went back upstairs, undressed, and got into bed. A nightlight cast a soft glow over Jane's face.
“We're in for some tough days ahead,” he said, moving closer. She reached out and put her arm around his neck. Alex switched off the light.
The silent BlackBerry on the bedside table blinked blue.
Within seconds, he had sunk into a deep sleep, dreaming of the bronze sculpture of the
Walking Man
. The figure was hunched over in despair.
On its chest was a yellow Star of David.