The Jerusalem Assassin Read online

  “ He could have found the ledger in a ditch somewhere.”

  “ But he showed familiarity with Herr General. He clearly knew him well.”

  “ Not well enough to know the account number and password.”

  “ He claimed to have forgotten.”

  “ But he never came back.”

  “ Not yet.”

  “ Not ever.” Herr Hoffgeitz knuckled his desk three times. “My old friend Klaus is dead. I’m sure of it. He must have perished in a bombardment or on the voyage to Argentina. By that time, the Allies were sinking most U-boats within three days of sailing.”

  “ Banking regulations require us to assume a client is alive, unless a death certificate is presented to us by the executor of the estate.” t="0" wra Fifty years has passed since we last saw Klaus at the border. Half a century! And twenty-eight years since that creepy little imposter showed up with Klaus’s ledger, trying to steal from us.” Armande Hoffgeitz pointed to the dictation pad. “Write this down: We are thus pleased to report that our records show no accounts in which the owners or their representatives have made no contact with the bank, directly or indirectly.”

  One floor below, Wilhelm laughed. His father-in-law was a clever man.

  “ That’s better,” Gunter said, writing it down.

  “ Honesty is the best policy!” Armande grinned. “And finish with: Please let us know if we can further assist you in your worthy endeavor. With best personal regards. Armande Hoffgeitz, President.”

  Gunter stood. “I’ll have the letter ready for your signature in a few moments.”

  “ We must indulge the association.” The banker pushed up the gold-rimmed spectacles that had slipped down his nose. “My poor colleagues have to pacify the damn Jews with a show of a diligent inquiry.”

  “ I’m more concerned,” Gunter said, “with the new computer system. My hard-copy records are locked up safely. But how can we keep our clients’ secrets when the information is stored as electronic signals? Wires everywhere, computer terminals on every desk-I’m very uncomfortable!”

  “ With the computers or with Wilhelm?”

  Gunter didn’t answer.

  “ Look, my son-in-law is forcing us to adjust to the information age.” Herr Hoffgeitz smiled. “It’s uncomfortable, old hands that we are, but-”

  “ I meant no disrespect, but he’s not one of us.”

  “ Look, you remember that I also had my doubts. A young man without kin, not of Swiss ancestry, wants to marry my Paula? I was very concerned. But our investigation showed nothing but the tragic circumstances of his parents’ death.”

  Gunter nodded.

  “ And he did graduate from Lyceum Alpin St. Nicholas with honors. ” Armande Hoffgeitz tapped his ring, which bore a serpent intertwined with the letters LASN. For two centuries, every man in the bank’s employ had worn the same alumni ring, a prerequisite to hiring.

  “ Yes, but-”

  “ His professional record was impeccable, and Paula loved him. Still does. How could I deny her this happiness?” The banker didn’t wait for an answer. “And he has proven himself. A hard worker, excellent with clients. And Klaus Junior is growing so nicely.”

  “ I don’t-”

  “ Wilhelm has been with us for how long?”

  “ Thirteen years.”

  Herr Hoffgeitz nodded. “Let me speak with him a bout the computer situation. I’m sure the two of you can find common ground.”

  The assistant, himself not young anymore, bowed stiffly. As he walked to the door, his bespectacled face grew, filling Wilhelm’s computer screen. The edge of the door appeared for a second at the bottom, just below the camera, and disappeared as Gunter exited.

  At the far end of the office, Armande Hoffgeitz got up and maneuvered his heavy girth between the chair and the desk. He turned to the window and looked out. Despite the distance from the miniature video camera above the door, the pleasure on the banker’s pudgy face came through. He loved his Zurich, where the Hoffgeitz Bank had operated for 216 years at the same stout building on the corner of Bahnhofstrasse and Augustinergasse, managed by a long line of Hoffgeitz males. The neighboring buildings housed other private banks with understated facades and long family traditions. A hundred feet under the neatly swept Bahnhofstrasse, thick walls of steel and concrete protected massive vaults that contained the formidable fortunes entrusted to Armande Hoffgeitz and his colleagues. They, and the institutions they ran, had made Zurich a financial mecca.

  Like the building in which his bank resided, Armande Hoffgeitz had weathered the years gracefully. At eighty-four, he was one of Zurich’s most respected private bankers, personifying the mystic aura surrounding the bank and its anonymous international clients. The bank’s investments in select private and public corporations were rumored to add up to several billion dollars. Diversifying among major industrial, agriculture, retail, construction, energy, and shipping companies, the Hoffgeitz Bank had refrained from accumulating a controlling position in any single public company, making it impossible to trace its investments.

  A minute after his head had disappeared from the computer screen, Gunter Schnell knocked on Wilhelm’s door. With a single keystroke, he made Armande Hoffgeitz vanish from the screen, replaced by columns of numbers, and pressed the button under his desktop, unlocking the door.

  “ Herr Horch?” Gunter leaned in through the half-opened door. “Herr Hoffgeitz wishes to see you.”

  *

  “ Hey! Open the door!” Bathsheba knocked and tried the handle again. “I’m going to wet my pants!”

  “I’m almost done.” Gideon dried his face on a towel and turned the key. “All yours.”

  “Don’t leave.” Bathsheba held the door as he exited the bathroom. “I like sharing.”

  “I don’t.” He realized she was about to slip out of her nightgown and turned away. “What happened yesterday should never happen again.”

  “Never? Then you’ll be in a lot of pain. I heard men have to ejaculate at least once a day to maintain-”

  “We’re colleagues, not lovers!” He reached back without looking and shut the bathroom door.

  “ Fine,” she said behind the closed door, “go ahead, play hard-to-get, I’ll play along if it makes you feel better.”

  “ I’m not playing. I mean it.”

  “ How about a cold shower then?”

  “ If you continue, one of us will have to resign from the service.”

  “The service?” Bathsheba started the water in the shower. “What service? We’re working for the Elie Weirdo Freak Show.”

  Gideon struggled to control his anger. “The Special Operations Department reports directly to the prime minister’s office, and Elie Weiss is a great mentor-”

  “Weirdo!”

  “He might be different, but he’s very powerful. We’re not the only team working for him undercover-”

  “ Weirdo!”

  “ He hired us when Mossad wouldn’t. Where is your gratitude?”

  “Weirdo!”

  *

  “ Lemmy!” Armande Hoffgeitz waved him in. “Did you made it back from Paris okay?”

  “Why not?”

  “Driving that little toy of yours?” The banker shook his head. “I’ll never understand why you’d rather drive an old Volkswagen all the way there instead of taking a short flight in first class.”

  “It’s a Porsche, not a Volkswagen.”

  Armande waved in dismissal. “A Beetle is a Beetle even with a low roof and a fancy name.”

  “ And a much higher speed.”

  “It should, considering all the time and money you have put into it. How was Paris?”

  “ Very productive. I took a Saudi client to see Madame Butterfly at the Paris Opera. Maria Teresa Uribe played Cho-Cho-Sun. Incredible performance!”

  “ Not my cup of tea. And how are Paula and Klaus Junior?”

  “ Your grandson insists on a Saturday-morning sailing. I told him it’s going to be chilly, but
he wouldn’t give it up.”

  “ He’s a true Hoffgeitz, just the way his uncle was.” Armande glanced at the photo of his late son in a black frame on the desk. Klaus V.K. Hoffgeitz had died in a freak skiing accident in 1973. “Tell Junior that I’ll join him at the bow. We’ll face the wind together!”

  “ Bring your coat and hat.”

  “ I will.” He patted a pile of computer printouts filled with numbers. “Look, I’m too old to learn new tricks, and so is Gunter. We’ve always kept records with pen and paper-”

  “It’s not the computer system. It’s me. I failed to earn Gunter’s trust.”

  “ Nonsense. He respects you greatly.” Armande Hoffgeitz pushed up his glasses. d up hi0 But he’s accustomed to the safety of physical records and steel doors, not wires and keyboards.”

  “ Let me propose,” Lemmy said, “that Gunter will enter new transactions into the computer database and at the same time continue to update his paper records.”

  “ Why can’t we let him keep only paper records for my clients while the rest of the bank transitions to the electronic records?”

  “ We need all the numbers in the computer system in order to maintain a correct daily balance of the bank’s total assets, reflecting deposits and withdrawals in all the accounts without exception. Every bank in Zurich will soon be automated the same way. The Banking Commission set the new accounting regulations, and compliance would be impossible without a computerized system.”

  Armande Hoffgeitz raised his hand. “I’m familiar with the regulations.”

  “ But it won’t change the fact that only Gunter has the account numbers and passwords for your clients. Only he can look at individual records-paper files and computer files. We bought the best equipment, with top security features and redundancy. It’s better than the systems used by Credit Suisse, UBS, and all the other banks.”

  “Still, it feels too…intangible…unprotected, you understand?”

  “That’s a common misperception. Imagine the computer as a large filing cabinet with a separate drawer for each account, made of steel that’s thicker than our underground vaults. Each drawer is equipped with two keys-account number and password. No one except Gunter will be able to look up specific records of your clients’ accounts. The only accessible data is the total financial positions at the end of each day, including net assets after deposits and withdrawals. I covered all this in my presentation last year, but if you want me to suspend the project-”

  “No. No. Keep going, but make sure Gunter is comfortable, yes?”

  *

  Gideon and Bathsheba left the Paris apartment and drove to Ermenonville. From the parking area beside a gas station they had clear views of the intersection connecting the local road with the highway. Other than single-lane roads hampered by slow farming machinery, this was the only way for Abu Yusef’s men to reach Paris.

  Bathsheba opened yesterday’s evening paper, Le Parisien. Al-Mazir’s bloody corpse was splashed across an inside page, his faced blurred, under a headline: Three Palestinians Shot in Turf War over Underage Prostitution

  “Phew,” Bathsheba said. “Profiteering from kiddie sex. These Arabs would do anything for a buck.”

  “You’re really twisted,” Gideon said.

  “Do you want to straighten me out?” She fluttered her eyelids. “Will you spank me?”

  “Just watch the road.” He had bought an audio edition of Frederick Forsyth’s The Day of the Jackal. With the first tape playing on the cassette player, he settled to scan passing cars for the

  green Peugeot 605.

  *

  Back in his office, Lemmy’s eyes rested on the wooden model of The Paula, her mainsail and jib full with wind. Klaus Junior had carved it out of a pine log as a school project recently. At the stern of the boat stood tiny people-Paula, flanked by Lemmy and her father. Klaus Junior stood at the helm, adorned in a miniature blue-and-white sailor suit resembling the one Lemmy had brought from Monaco for his birthday last year.

  “ Herr Horch?” It was his lanky assistant, Christopher, bowing his head to avoid the top of the doorframe. “Any news from upstairs?”

  “I think Gunter’s ulcer is bleeding again.”

  Christopher laughed. “That bad?”

  “Worse.” He had hired Christopher Ditmahr two years earlier. The young man had an ideal resume-a graduate of Lyceum Alpin St. Nicholas and Zurich University, followed by internship at Chase Manhattan bank in New York. His application had come in just as Lemmy was ready to hire. Christopher was smart, diligent, and devoted to his boss in the unspoken camaraderie shared by non-Swiss living among Zurich’s uppity purebreds.

  “I think Gunter is paranoid,” Christopher said. “I showed him how to sign in with his personal pass code, activate the program, key in each account number and password, and enter the amounts of deposits and withdrawals. He insisted that we practice with fictitious accounts. I couldn’t believe it! What did he think? That I’d memorize his secrets?”

  “That could be useful.”

  “Sir?”

  “Just kidding.” Lemmy sat back, placing his feet on the desk. “I sympathize with the poor fellow. Gunter has been with Herr Hoffgeitz since-”

  “Nineteen forty-one.”

  “Correct. Imagine working for the same boss for fifty-four years.”

  “ He thinks Herr Hoffgeitz is God.”

  “ And bank secrecy is the Ten Commandments.” Lemmy chuckled. “By the way, has there been any activity in Prince az-Zubayr’s account?”

  “All quiet on the Saudi front,” Christopher said. “Nothing since the transfer to the private account of the French Consul General in Damascus.”

  *

  Like every Friday night during the bitter Jerusalem winter, only the male sect members attended prayers in Neturay Karta. Their wives prepared the Sabbath meals and watched the young children at home. At the conclusion of the prayers, Rabbi Abraham Gerster recited the mourners’ Kaddish. He paused, took the required three backward steps, bowed toward the Torah ark, and chanted the last line: “ He, who brings peace to Heaven, shall bring peace upon us and upon all His people of Israel, and we say, Amen. ”

  Everyone answered, “Amen.”

  Rabbi Gerster put on his black coat and wrapped a scarf around his neck. He watched as Rabbi Benjamin Mashash, who had succeeded him as leader of Neturay Karta, walked down the aisle to the door and stood there to shake each man’s hand and wish them a good Sabbath.

  When the synagogue was empty, Rabbi Gerster joined Benjamin and his three teenage sons, who had their father’s dark eyes and their mother’s light complexion. The oldest, Jerusalem, was named after Rabbi Gerster’s son and Benjamin’s best friend, who had died during the Six Day War, almost three decades ago. Jerusalem Mashash already showed the start of a beard, and his dangling side locks swung back and forth as he reached to open the door.

  “ So, Jerusalem,” Rabbi Gerster said, exiting the sanctuary to the chilly air outside, “what do you know tonight that you didn’t know this morning?”

  Benjamin’s sons were accustomed to Rabbi Gerster’s daily query. They spent every day studying Talmud and were eager to share their knowledge with the elderly rabbi.

  Jerusalem said, “Today we studied a Talmudic rule: Where there are no men, be a man! One interpretation is that the rule applies to prayers. In other words, even in a place that has no minyan of ten Jewish men to pray together, one must pray alone.”

  “ That’s a convenient interpretation,” Rabbi Gerster said.

  “ Convenient?” The boy wasn’t afraid to argue, just like his dead namesake. “To pray is a duty. A task. The rule creates a chore where there wasn’t one. What’s convenient about that?”

  “ To pray is a chore?”

  “ Easier to be free from the duty to pray, right?”

  “ Praying is a ritual,” Rabbi Gerster said, “which gives men comfort, peace of mind, and a sense of fulfillment. It’s a privilege, isn’t it?”


  “ Couldn’t a privilege be also a chore?”

  “ Telling a Jew to be a man where there are no men sounds more serious than a mere technicality about prayer quorum, don’t you think?”

  “ One commentator suggests that the rule imposes a duty to be a Jew where there are no Jews.”

  Rabbi Gerster rested his arm on the youth’s shoulders. “But isn’t a Jew still a Jew, whether he’s with other Jews or alone?”

  “ The rule isn’t about technical hereditary Jewishness. It’s about being a good Jew when no one else behaves like a Jew.”

  “ Behaves like a Jew? What’s that?”

  “ To observe God’s laws, like keeping the Sabbath, eating only kosher food, and so on.”

  “ Then the rule should have said: Where everyone else is a sinner, be righteous! But Talmud said to be a man even where there are no other men. What does it mean to be a man?”

  “ To do the right thing?”

  “ Do we need a special rule for that?” Benjamin spoke for the first time since they had left the synagogue. “Shouldn’t we always do the right thing, whether we’re alone or not?”

  Jerusalem tugged on his payos. “If everyone else says that wrong is right, a man must still follow his conscience and do what’s right without fear of others.”

  “ Very good!” Rabbi Gerster winked at Benjamin, who smiled with fatherly pride.

  They climbed the stairs to the second-floor apartment and entered the small foyer, taking off their coats and hats.

  Benjamin’s wife, Sorkeh, appeared from the kitchen, her round face glistening with sweat. “Here you are!” She wiped her hands on her apron. “Come, let’s start. The little ones are starving.”

  In the dining room, Benjamin’s younger children-another boy and three girls under ten years old, sat at the table, chattering with careless innocence. Rabbi Gerster lingered alone in the foyer in front of a small frame on the wall. A military photographer had snapped the photo twenty-eight years ago. It showed the youthful chief of staff, General Yitzhak Rabin, shaking hands with a fresh paratrooper who had graduated with the highest honors from basic training. Clean-shaven and bright-eyed, his red beret was tilted to the right with a sharp crease. A strip of brass was glued to the bottom part of the frame: Private Jerusalem (“Lemmy”) Gerster 1949-1967