"On your knees, you filthy Jew," the man with the gun said in German.
5
The voice was harsh and scornful and commanding. The German words pierced me like stilettos straight into my heart, lungs, stomach, liver, eyes, ears. All at once.
I froze, just like I was standing at attention in morning roll call, in straight columns of five, starving, lice-ridden, diseased prisoners on all sides of me. For a wretched sliver of a second, I could smell myself as I had been at that time. Not as I had sensed myself then—we were surrounded by filth and unclean bodies and had grown accustomed to the stench—but as I might have been sensed by a normal human being, one still living in a sane and civilized world.
"I said on your knees, Jew. Do it now."
If it had been 1944 or 1945, or even the early part of 1946, I would have obeyed instantly, instinctively. But I was no longer the helpless victim of savage Germans. I had turned the tables. I had exacted revenge. It had not been much, and certainly not enough to even the score, but it proved sufficient in that moment. I feigned obedience, began to bend my knees, then brought my right foot up and slammed it down on the left instep of my assailant while jerking my head sharply to the side, away from the gun.
I heard the man grunt in pain. The gun was no longer pressed against my neck. I swiveled sharply, elbow notched, ready to smash it into the side of his head.
I connected with air. His head was not where it was supposed to be. I caught a movement of something from the left—a fist coming in a quick arc toward my temple.
I turned, ducking as fast as I could, bringing both fists close to my belly and driving them upward and diagonally, straight into the stomach of my attacker.
He was hard around the middle, but not hard enough to shield himself from my double-fisted strike. He folded nearly in half, air whooshing out, his chin smacking painfully onto the top of my head. Then he toppled backward and landed on his ass and elbows, gasping for breath.
I straightened, ready to cave his face in with my foot. He had a hand up, fingers splayed in a warding-off gesture. He was coughing, wheezing, but he managed to shout two words: "Stop, Adam."
If he hadn't used Hebrew, I don't think I would have stopped. In my mind, I was about to kill a German soldier, an inhumane camp guard. The fact that this was happening in 1950, in my apartment, in Tel Aviv, Israel, was forgotten. But he did use Hebrew, and I did stop, one foot in the air behind me, ready to kick at his head.
"Yitzhak?" I said, coasting back to reality.
"Yeah," he groaned. "I guess you're the wrong person to play that joke on."
A joke, I thought. Is this your idea of a joke?
But Yitzhak Heller had always been this way. The prankster, the lighthearted, optimistic youngster who found humor in everything. He hadn't been in the camps. He had come over later, eager to take part in whatever retribution was offered. But for him it had been more of an adventure than anything else.
This did not make him a bad operative. During the time we had worked together in Germany, before he returned to Israel, he had proved his mettle. He was devoted to our mission of eliminating Nazi officers, and he took our work very seriously. It was between jobs that he showed his lighter side. Tonight's trick wasn't the first time he almost ended up bruised, bloodied, or worse as a result.
Yitzhak was rubbing his foot, his face contorted in pain.
"You could have broken it," he said.
I picked up the gun from where it had clattered to the floor. I took out the magazine. Empty. Yitzhak might not have been nearly as funny as he thought, but at least he was not stupid.
"I could have killed you," I said. "Will you ever grow up, Yitzhak?"
"Me?" he said, in mock indignation. "I am grown-up. I just haven't lost my childhood humor, like you have, old man."
Yitzhak was twenty-three, twelve years my junior. Had I felt so young and brash when in my twenties? I did not think so. When I was twenty-three, I had been dismissed from the Hungarian police force after anti-Jewish laws came into effect. And when I was twenty-six, I'd been conscripted into the Hungarian forced-labor regiments and forced to dig ditches and pave roads. I'd felt pretty old at the time.
"And no way you would have killed me," he said. "I had everything under control."
"You haven't forgotten how to duck. I'll give you that."
"Which is a skill you would do well to master, my war-hero, battle-scarred, elderly friend," he said.
He was grinning now, his smile making him look even younger than he really was—like a schoolboy. I couldn't help myself. A smile was creeping its way onto my lips. Yitzhak had this way with people; they couldn't help but like him, even when they thought he was being an idiot.
His looks accounted for some of his charm. Yitzhak had the good looks that made women steal glances at him on the street. Fresh-faced, with clear blue eyes, a shock of thick, wavy black hair, chiseled jaw, full lips, and a mischievous smile that made you want to smile back. He stood six feet tall and had the lean, muscular body of a farm boy. Yet Yitzhak had been a city boy his entire life. He'd been born and raised in Tel Aviv, and the first time he went abroad was to fight in the war. In 1944, when he was just seventeen, Yitzhak joined the British Army. He wasn't conscripted. No one expected him to fight. He went against the wishes of his parents. But Yitzhak wasn't about to let the war pass him by. He wanted to strike a blow against fascism, against Hitler. He landed in France in late 1944 and fought his way into the Low Countries and Germany. The war had not marked him with so much as a scratch. And the end of it had not satiated his desire to kill Nazis.
His parents were Zionists who had emigrated from Germany in the 1920s, before Hitler became a national figure, when Jews had it good in Germany. Yitzhak spoke the language fluently, and Germans were not immune to his charm. He found it easy to enter into conversation with Germans. He found it easy to make them trust him. They shared information with him. They thought he was one of them. A fine specimen of their race. This made him a valuable operative.
"Can I have my gun back, please?" he asked.
"Maybe later. What are you doing here, Yitzhak?"
He pouted for a second, then shrugged. He got to his feet, pulled up a chair and dropped into it. He put his left ankle on his right knee, pulled the sock down, and inspected the skin. It was already turning blue.
"Do you have any ice?"
I sighed loudly, went to the kitchen, and chipped some ice from my icebox. I wrapped the ice in a towel and handed it to Yitzhak. He pressed it to his ankle.
"Thank you. I don't suppose a drink is also about to be offered. After all, long time no see, and all."
"Don't push it. It's late, I'm tired, and my patience is wearing thinner by the second. Why are you here?"
He grew serious, his face aging back to its proper form.
"I have a proposal for you, Adam. My joke with the gun wasn't merely for laughs—though it seems to have failed to lighten your humorless black soul—it was also a test. I needed to see whether you're still in shape. I see that you are."
"In shape for what?"
"Another mission. In Germany."
I stared at him and he stared right back. A silent minute stretched to two.
"Where did this come from?" I asked.
"It was always there," he said. "Don't tell me you feel that we've done enough."
I didn't tell him that. We both knew it wasn't true. It could never be enough.
"Yes. But why now?"
"Two things," he said. "One, the War of Independence is over. Israel has won. We have a country of our own. There's no more fighting to be done here. For a time, at least. Two, we have a backer. Someone who is willing to finance the whole operation. Passports, weapons, travel money. As you know, things are a bit more complicated than they used to be."