‘Identified by his back? Don’t even think of asking, James. This particular old lady had been on intimate terms with Josif Vorontsov. She made it through Sobibór, and at that camp Vorontsov was her personal torturer. She swears she would know him anywhere. You see he raped her, not once but around one hundred times in an eight-month period. It would appear that these rapes were what kept our informant alive. He liked the way she fought back, and all those years later she knew him, by the way he stood, by the set of his shoulders and the manner in which he held his head.
‘Eventually he turned around and she saw his face. It was undoubtedly her torturer, so she followed him, got an address and alerted us. We sent some people in.’ He gave a little amused gesture using his body, hunching his right shoulder forward and turning his head in what would have been in another person a coy expression. ‘I have to be discreet. These people shouldn’t really have been there, but they took a ride up to Tampa and did a short surveillance. Son et lumière. Everything. Now look.’ He flashed a new photograph on to the screen so that it sat alongside the official SS black and white.
The Israelis had cropped the clandestine picture to match the earlier uniformed version. They had also chosen it because of the angle of the old man’s head and the way his eyes looked straight into the camera. It was the perfect before-and-after match. Age had not altogether wearied the Ukrainian, nor had the years completely condemned him. It was unmistakable, even before Natkowitz showed the computer-enhanced shots and the stats of the INS forms, plus a very private medical report. The scars were all there and nobody could doubt they had the real man.
‘Your Service did nothing?’ It was M who, though he knew the answer, put everyone’s question square on the table.
Natkowitz made another gesture, this time a one-handed business, the hand moving upwards as though he were tossing some invisible object into the air. ‘It is difficult,’ he said quietly. ‘You know how difficult it can be. He calls himself Leibermann now. When he entered the United States, he came as an Austrian of Jewish parentage. We had sight of all the documents which were not altogether forgeries. Markus Leibermann was certainly an Austrian. Son of a bank clerk. The entire family perished in the Polish camp of Chelmno. It was the way the SS used everything, even dead men’s shoes and papers. Josif Vorontsov became Markus Leibermann by courtesy of Spinne, that organisation which was so successful in getting its murderers out of Europe to safety. You know how many war criminals came to shelter using the papers, and the lives, of those they had killed? I tell you, many more than we have ever caught. I often wonder when I’m in New York, or Florida, if that nice old couple you see in a restaurant or at the beach in fact hold nightmares in their heads and laugh quietly to themselves about how gullible the Americans have been.’
‘So you knew about this man, yet nobody did anything?’ Bond rammed home the question.
‘We took photographs. We prepared a case. Our American friends lobbied the authorities. You see, we like to be sure that we’ll win when we identify someone like this. So many have slipped through the net and there are young men in power who cannot be made to understand. They say, “Sure. Sure it was a bad time, the Holocaust. Six million Jews murdered, but that was then. Now is now, we must forgive and forget. We’re all friends now. Look at the Japanese and the Germans. What’s the point in prosecuting an old man or an old woman who were only obeying orders in youth?” These people really do not understand.’
‘You couldn’t make a good enough case against Mr Leibermann?’ from Bill Tanner.
‘Let’s say we were quietly told that it was unlikely that Leibermann would be extradited. Unlikely that he would ever be expelled.’
‘So you let it drop?’ Bond again.
‘Not altogether. There are ways, and we have the means which are not unlike the methods the Scales of Justice used on poor innocent Penderek.’
As if on cue, the small red telephone buzzed at M’s elbow. He answered in a low, cautious voice, then looked up quickly at Natkowitz. ‘A man who calls himself Michael appears to know you’re here, Mr Natkowitz. Would that make sense?’
The Israeli nodded. ‘Only three people know, sir. Michael is one. He wishes to speak with me?’
‘No, gave me a message for you.’ M slowly replaced the receiver.
‘Well?’
‘He says you’ll understand if I tell you Rachel is missing.’
Pete Natkowitz stood unnaturally still for a second or two, his face frozen as he drew a sharp audible breath. Then he relaxed. Unsmiling, he said, ‘Markus Leibermann has disappeared, gentlemen. Something has gone very wrong. I should speak with Tel Aviv, but this worrying news should be something kept between us. I don’t think anyone else will be officially informed just yet. In view of what you’re proposing, sir,’ he looked hard at M, ‘I think we might well have some unfortunate problems.’
4
FROGS IN THE OINTMENT
It was just before six thirty in the evening that Nigsy Meadows took the call from his junior. It was the simple code they altered once a week – more recently since the Gulf crisis – sometimes as often as three times a week.
‘Mr Meadows, sir, could you drop into the office sometime this evening,’ Williamson said as though it could not matter less. ‘Sylvia has a couple more letters for you to sign. They want them in the bag for London tomorrow.’
‘Can’t it wait till Thursday?’ Nigsy hoped he sounded bored. Shabak, the Israeli Security Service, had all the embassy and consular buildings in Tel Aviv bugged and monitored out of existence.
‘ ’Fraid not, sir. They’re part of the stuff the FS’s yelling for.’
‘All right, okay, I’ll be in later on, but don’t hang by your nails.’
Translation: there is a top secret flash from London unbutton personally. Fine, I’ll be in within the hour.
Nigsy had been looking forward to a quiet evening watching a video of a concert, taped by his wife in London and broadcast the previous week on BBC 2. The ‘eyes only’ signal, he figured, could be anything from a run-and-hide, to some panic-button crash meeting with the one man he still ran in Arafat’s shop.
He had only been on station for six weeks and knew it was temporary because his real forte was Eastern Bloc and the Soviets. Now the Service was behaving like the old army days when they used to make a cook into a gunner and an all-round athlete into an education officer.
Good old Nigsy, they had said. Got a bit of the Moscow twitch. Been over there too long. Bring him in and let him rest up in Tel Aviv for a while. ‘Only a few months,’ M said when he last saw the old man. ‘Change of scene. Do you good.’
Silly old devil, Meadows had thought. Shoving me out into the Middle East where I don’t know my arm from my elbow, and at a moment of historical crisis as well. But he did like the climate though he missed his wife because it really was not worth her while coming over if this was really going to be a short-term posting.
He listened to the radio for half-an-hour – the end of Swan Lake, followed by a Chopin Prelude – (the one Barry Manilow pinched for Could it be magic?) then time was up and he went out into the chilly night, checked the Range Rover and drove from his end of the compound to the embassy building.
Williamson, one of life’s perpetual juniors who must have been five years Meadows’s senior, unlocked the cipher room and they both used their keys to prime the machine. The flimsy was in the safe and it took Meadows fifteen minutes to work the magic.