A flesh-and-white blur came to the pane. “Yes?” A young woman’s voice.
“It’s Yakov Liebermann.”
The mail slot below the pane clinked and gave light. “Would you put your I.D. through?”
He got out his passport and put it into the slot; it was taken from his fingers.
He waited. The door had two locks, one that looked like the original, and beneath it, a bright-brassed new-looking one.
A bolt clicked and the door opened.
He went in. A fat girl of sixteen or so with pulled-back red hair smiled at him and said, “Shalom,” offering him his passport.
He took it and said, “Shalom.”
“We have to be careful,” the girl apologized. She closed the door and turned its bolt. She wore a white sweatshirt and blue swollen-tight jeans; her hair hung down her back, a glistening orange-red horsetail.
They were in a tiny cluttered anteroom: a desk, a mimeograph machine on a table with stacks of white and pink paper; raw wood shelves piled with handbills and newspaper reprints; in the wall opposite, an almost-closed door with a Young Jewish Defenders poster taped to it, a hand brandishing a dagger in front of a blue Jewish star.
The girl reached for the umbrella; Liebermann gave it to her and she put it in a metal wastebasket with two others, black, wet.
Liebermann, taking his hat and coat off, said, “Are you the young lady who was on the phone?”
She nodded.
“You handled things very efficiently. Is the Rabbi here?”
“He just came in.” She took the hat and coat from Liebermann.
“Thank you. How’s his son?”
“They don’t know yet. His condition is stable.”
“Mm.” Liebermann shook his head sympathetically.
The girl found places for the hat and coat on a full coat-tree. Liebermann, straightening his jacket, smoothing his hair, glanced at piles of handbills on a shelf beside him: The New Jew; KISSinger OF DEATH: No Compromise—Ever!
The girl excused herself past Liebermann and knocked at the postered door; opened it farther and looked in. “Reb? Mr. Liebermann’s here.”
She pushed the door all the way open, and smiling at Liebermann, stepped aside.
A stocky blond-bearded man glared grimly at Liebermann as he came into an overheated office of men and desks and clutter; and coming out from behind the corner desk, Rabbi Moshe Gorin, handsome, dark-haired, compact, smiling, blue-jawed; in a tweed jacket and an open-necked yellow shirt. He took Liebermann’s hand, gripped it in both his own, and looked at him with magnetic brown eyes weighted with shadows. “I’ve wanted to meet you ever since I was a kid,” he said in a soft but intense voice. “You’re one of the few men in this world I really admire, not only because of what you’ve done, but because you did it without any help from the establishment. The Jewish establishment, I’m talking about.”
Liebermann, embarrassed but pleased, said, “Thank you. I wanted to meet you too, Rabbi. I appreciate your coming in this way.”
Gorin introduced the other men. The blond-bearded one, hawk-nosed, with a crushing handshake, was his second-in-command, Phil Greenspan. A tall balding one with glasses was Elliot Bachrach. Another, big, a black beard: Paul Stern. The youngest—twenty-five or so—a thick black mustache, green eyes, another crushing handshake: Jay Rabinowitz. All were in shirtsleeves, and like Gorin, skullcapped.
They brought chairs from the other desks and put them around the end of Gorin’s desk; seated themselves. The tall one with glasses, Bachrach, sat against a windowsill behind Gorin, his arms folded, the buff shade all the way down behind him. Liebermann, across from Gorin, looked at the sober strong-looking men and the shabby cluttered office with its wall maps of the city and the world, a blackboard easel, stacks of books and papers, cartons. “Don’t look at this place.” Gorin waved it away.
“It’s not so different from my office,” Liebermann said, smiling. “A little bigger, maybe.”
“I’m sorry for you.”
“How is your son doing?”
“I think he’ll be all right,” Gorin said. “His condition is stable.”
“I appreciate your coming in.”
Gorin shrugged. “His mother is with him. I did my praying.” He smiled.
Liebermann tried to get comfortable in the armless chair. “Whenever I speak,” he said, “in public, I mean—they ask me what I think of you. I always say ‘I never met him personally, so I have no opinion.’” He smiled at Gorin. “Now I’ll have to make a new answer.”
“A favorable one, I hope,” Gorin said. The phone on the desk rang. “Nobody’s here, Sandy!” Gorin shouted toward the door. “Unless it’s my wife!” To Liebermann he said, “You’re not expecting any calls, are you?”
Liebermann shook his head. “Nobody knows I’m here. I’m supposed to be in Washington.” He cleared his throat, sat with his hands on his knees. “I was on my way there yesterday afternoon,” he said. “To go to the F.B.I, about some killings I’m investigating. Here and in Europe. By former SS men.”
“Recent killings?” Gorin looked concerned.
“Still going on,” Liebermann said. “Arranged for by the Kameradenwerk in South America and Dr. Mengele.”
Gorin said, “That son of a bitch…” The other men stirred. The blond-bearded one, Greenspan, said to Liebermann, “We have a new chapter in Rio de Janeiro. As soon as it’s big enough we’re going to set up a commando team and get him.”
“I wish you luck,” Liebermann said. “He’s still alive all right, running this whole business. He killed a young fellow there, a Jewish boy from Evanston, Illinoise, in September. The boy was on the phone to me, telling me about this, when it happened. My problem now is, it’s going to take time for me to convince the F.B.I. I know what I’m talking about.”
“Why did you wait so long?” Gorin asked. “If you knew in September…”
“I didn’t know,” Liebermann said. “It was all…ifs and maybes, uncertainty. I only now have the whole thing put together.” He shook his head and sighed. “So it dawned on me on the plane,” he said to Gorin, “that maybe you, the Y.J.D.”—he looked at all of them—“could help out in this thing while I go on to Washington.”
“Whatever we can do,” Gorin said, “just ask, you’ve got it.” The others agreed.
“Thank you,” Liebermann said, “that’s what I was hoping. It’s a job of guarding someone, a man in Pennsylvania. In a town there, New Providence, a dot on the map near the city Lancaster.”
“Pennsylvania—Dutch country,” the man with the black beard said. “I know it.”
“This man is the next one to be killed in this country,” Liebermann said. “On the twenty-second of this month, but maybe sooner. Maybe only a few days from now. So he has to be guarded. But the man who comes to kill him mustn’t be scared away or killed himself; he has to be captured, so he can be questioned.” He looked at Gorin. “Do you have people who could do a job like that? Guard someone, capture someone?”
Gorin nodded. Greenspan said, “You’re looking at them,” and to Gorin, “Let Jay take over the demonstration. I’ll manage this.”
Gorin smiled, tilted his head toward Greenspan and said to Liebermann, “This one’s main regret is he missed World War Two. He runs our combat classes.”
“It will only be for a week or so, I hope,” Liebermann said. “Just till the F.B.I. comes in.”