He got a corkscrew and handed it to me. I noticed that he only used his right hand. His left hand remained hidden in his jacket pocket throughout our conversation.
He noticed my gaze and smiled indulgently. "You're not a man much escapes from, are you, Adam?"
He withdrew his hand from his pocket and turned it over for me to see. It was not a pleasant sight. His pinkie was a mere nub. His ring finger was thinner than it should have been, withered. The other three fingers were red and grossly disfigured. He'd been badly burned. All four remaining digits were curved like talons. I doubted he could fully straighten them. His hand was a mess of scar tissue—red and white and sickly pink. The hair had been forever seared off the back of it. No fortune-teller would be able to read his palm. I couldn't see past his wrist, but it looked as if the left sleeve of his jacket hung more loosely than his right. This told me the fire had damaged more than just his hand.
He was studying my face as I gazed at his disfigurement.
"Quite a sight, isn't it? Most people have a definite reaction to it. Some flinch, others turn their eyes hurriedly away, and there are those whose mouth drops open idiotically. But I spotted no such reaction on your face, Adam. Extraordinary."
I felt my skin crawl, more due to the way he was examining me with his intent professional curiosity than due to his hand. Why should I have a reaction to it? I'd seen much worse. I'd seen whole bodies burned to a crisp. Heaps of them. What was one hand to me?
He raised his hand and made his fingers move. He couldn't close them all the way, and it was clear that trying to caused him some discomfort.
"It's not entirely dead but not entirely alive either." He paused, then added, almost parenthetically, "Just like the prisoners of Auschwitz." He closed his eyes for a beat, opened them and smiled. "Pour the wine."
I uncorked the bottle, releasing the aroma of squashed grapes and oak. I poured each of us a glass. We did not touch glasses, just saluted each other with them. The wine had a thick, slightly cloying taste. I felt it linger on my tongue. He set his glass on the table and refilled it almost to the brim.
Raising it, he said. "To revenge, Adam. To justice."
I left Feinstein's office shortly after eight o'clock and got to Café Ravel a few minutes before nine. Shimon Borovski was already there, a tall glass of beer in front of him.
He was a block of a man with a barrel chest, thick arms, and a big belly that only looked soft. Arms so hairy you couldn't see his prisoner's number unless you knew it was there. He had the face of an idiot, though he was nothing of the sort. His eyes were small and sunken between his puffy cheeks and protruding brow ridges. His pug nose had been further flattened years ago in some fight. His lips were fleshy. His chin was wide and thick. His forehead was low. His brawny frame had served him well in Auschwitz—he had been deemed fit for hard labor in the first selection on the train platforms and so got to live.
Before the war he was a petty criminal. He started off doing simple muscle work, but pretty soon graduated to driving when it was discovered he had a knack for high-speed getaways. He could drive anything on wheels, whether two or three or four, whether large or small. I asked him once where he had learned to drive so well, and he told me that it was easy to learn to drive recklessly when you practiced on other people's cars. Shimon's talent with cars extended to stealing them. He could often get a car open and running faster than its owner would have.
After the war he returned to breaking the law, but this time it was in the interest of justice. He joined a group of Jewish vigilantes and left a trail of dead Nazis in his wake. On account of his driving role in the group, he was usually not the trigger or knife man. But I heard that one time, while he waited outside a former SS officer's residence in Saxony, he spotted the target jumping from his bedroom window in the dark, still wearing his pajamas. Apparently, Shimon's comrades had made some noise while breaking into the man's villa.
Shimon intercepted the target on the expansive lawn that fronted the villa, and under the looming canopy of a weeping ash, he choked the man to death, smashing his head into the trunk of the ash for good measure. Once done, Shimon returned to the car, tapped the time-to-go signal on the horn, and drove the team away once they sprinted out of the house.
The story went that while he was choking the SS officer, Shimon had whispered to him the names of the entire population of his village in eastern Poland. Though, considering that no one else in the group was there to hear it, and Shimon was unlikely to have told it, the story's veracity was in question.
He wasn't a big talker, and contrary to Yitzhak, seemed perpetually serious. But he was as dependable as they came. A good man to do bad things with.
We shook hands and I asked him what he was up to these days.
"This and that," he said.
The "this and that" I heard involved working as a truck driver and supplementing his income with the occasional smuggling or getaway-driving gig.
"You'll be able to keep your job if you go to Germany for a couple of months?" I asked.
He shrugged. "There will always be work for someone like me. Unless they go back to using horses and carriages."
Yitzhak arrived, dressed sharply in pressed dark pants and shirt. His shoes were polished to a glossy shine. He was freshly shaved and his hair had been slicked back. He winked at a group of three young women at a nearby table, grinned when one of them blushed, and pulled himself a chair.
"How did it go?" he asked.
"We're on," I said. "He gave me some start-up money."
Yitzhak clapped his hands, joy in his sparkling eyes.
"Excellent. We'll nail some of those bastards. We'll nail them right into their coffins."
I held up a hand. "Don't get carried away. We're not even on the same continent as they are at the moment." I turned to Shimon. "Can you get some guns?"
"Just handguns, right?"
"Yes. And nothing Russian or East European. American or German is best."
He nodded and I gave him the money Feinstein had given me.
Yitzhak said, "Who knew there was so much money in treating crazy people? You couldn't pay me to have someone tinker with my head."
I ignored him and addressed Shimon. "When can you get the guns?"
Shimon thought for a moment. "Give me two days."
"Good. We'll meet again in two days. At the dunes. We'll try out the guns."
They nodded and Yitzhak asked, "What about passports?"
"We'll leave with our legitimate papers. It will make it easier to get back into Israel when we return. Go to France or Italy. I worked with some people in Europe. They'll supply us with false papers."
"Great," Yitzhak said. "When are we going?"
"As soon as we get things in order," I said. I did some calculations in my head. Rosh Hashanah was on the 12th of September and lasted till the 15th. Today was the 29th of August. Two weeks. Should be enough time to finish my investigation.
"I have some business to finish," I said. "We'll go right after Rosh Hashanah."
"A great way to start the new year," Yitzhak said, smiling broadly.
I nodded somberly. His excitement was infectious, but I knew too much to succumb to it. If I were to lead this team, I would be responsible for preserving the lives of two good men, not just for ending the lives of a few bad ones. This was not the kind of load that weighed easy on me.
"If everything works out as it should," I said.
"It will, it will. I'm not worried."
No, I thought. You never were.
12
I returned to Jerusalem the next day, just before noon, finding a much-relieved Magda Abramo. Baby David's condition had vastly improved during the night. His fever had broken, his skin cleared up, and he resumed eating normally. He was no longer cranky and weepy. He perused me with curious blue eyes from where he lay on the carpet, a rag doll clasped in his chubby fingers.