Match point.
Zabari burst out laughing, slapping the desk with an open palm. "By God," he cried, turning to Fifer, "he is one of us."
Zhava smiled warmly.
"I'm glad you're happy," said Remo. "All I had left was, 'Spring comes and the grass grows.' "
Zabari laughed harder. "I will tell you the truth," he finally managed. "All I had left was, 'A man should teach his child a profession-also how to swim!' "
Remo and Zhava joined in the laughter until Delit coughed softly.
"Of course," said Zabari, calming. "Sorry, Toe, but you know how much I love the Talmud." Still, Zabari could not hide a left-sided grin as he turned to Remo. "Now, Mr. Williams…"
"Remo."
"Very well, Remo. We have checked and double-checked," Zabari said, "but we can find no evidence of your standing as an American agent."
Remo wanted to ask how they had found out he was an agent in the first place, but instead he said, "I'd say that ought to be proof enough."
Zabari looked at Delit, who nodded. "A fair appraisal," Zabari conceded, "since everywhere you go there follows damage and destruction to both sides of the conflict. Besides the extermination of four terrorists…"-Zabari took a moment to spit in the wastepaper basket- "… there was a blast at an Israeli sulphur plant not far away.
Our agent Fifer reported you were in the area. We could not overlook that coincidence."
Zhava looked as if she wished they had.
"I can't help it if I'm unlucky," said Remo. "But I thought the idea of this meeting was to share opinions, not cross-examine my references."
"True," said Zabari, his left profile darkening. "We can find no connection between any of these terrorists and the Israelis that were so brutally mutilated. True, Toe?"
Tochala Delit ran his hand through his dark hair while checking the latest reports on his lap. "True," he said finally.
"Mr. Will… uh, Remo, have your people uncovered a connection?"
Remo looked at their faces. There was an electric silence in the room for a moment, then he replied, "No."
Zhava's face did not change, Zabari leaned back in his chair. Delit sighed.
"Then, what do you think is going on?" asked Zabari.
"You got me," said Remo. "As far as I know, the Arabs are trying to acquire a chicken soup monopoly. My people have come up with zilch."
"There it is then," interrupted Delit, "It is as I said it was, Yoel. Israel is overrun with foreign agents. There is no connection between these mutilations, the attempts on Remo, and the security this office is responsible for."
"I tend to agree, Toe," said Zabari, then directed himself back to the American. "These men who have been trying to kill you probably see you as just another American spy to be gotten rid of. It has nothing to do with our agency or our… uh, project." Even though everyone in the office knew what they were talking about, no one could seem to bring himself to say it.
Tochala Delit checked the time on his extra-width Speidel twist-a-flex wristwatch, then motioned a high sign to Zabari.
"Oh, yes, Toe, quite right. You must excuse us. It is the Yom Hazikaron today." He saw the question on Remo's face, then explained, "Our Remembrance Day. I am afraid we must call this meeting to a close since Mr. Delit and myself have many obligations to fulfill."
Zabari and Delit rose. Zhava got up to show Remo the way out.
"However," Zabari continued, "I do suggest that you consider another line of work since your cover is so completely blown. Say, continued study of this book of See-nan-you. It would be of great sorrow to me if you were to meet your ancestors in Israel."
Remo rose, raising his eyebrows. Was that a thinly disguised threat?
"Don't worry about me," he told Zabari. "As the Book of Sinanju says, 'Fear not death and it cannot become your enemy.' "
Zabari was shaking his head sadly as Zhava showed Remo out.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The service, as always, was in the evening, the eve of Yom Ha'atsmaut, the Israeli Independence Day. It always fell on the fifth day of lyar on the Hebrew calendar, but it is different each year on Western calendars.
It is also different from the West in many other important ways. There are no celebrations, no fireworks, no barbecues. There is no poetry, and little sermonizing. There is only the continuing agonizing awareness of reality, the tortured memories of past persecution, and the firm conviction that the massacres, the pogroms, the holocaust must-never-happen-again.
They honored the dead for one night, then went back to war the following morning.
Zhava explained this to Remo before she too had to leave in order to pay tribute to her family and traditions. She gave Remo her telephone number, at her grandmother's in case he wanted to reach her, then left. As Remo ambled back to the hotel, Tochala Delit and Yoel Zabari marched in a somber military parade up the Avenue of the Righteous Gentiles.
They marched up the ridge called Har Hazikaron, the Hill of the Remembrance, then stopped before a rectangular building made of uncut boulders and jagged, twisted steel. The Yad Vashem Memorial.
The Israeli military fired salutes, British style. A confused little girl, who was too young to remember, or even comprehend what she was doing here, ignited the Memorial Flame. Then the kaddish was recited. The Prayer for the Dead.
Some in the crowd remembered how it had been. Some hated. Some cried at the memory of murdered loved ones. One man was swelled with pride.
This man knew that without him, and others like him, they would not be standing before this nightmarish memorial. Without him and those like him, no hill could have been dedicated to the six million dead. Without him, there would be no fears, no hate. This was his monument. This was the memorial to a nation of Nazis.
The man who had been Horst Vessel slipped away from the crowd as a government official began a speech. He wandered inside the Yad Vashem to see again what he had helped do and to commune with his past.
It would be all right. No one would notice him gone. Not Zhava Fifer, too pious, too dedicated to her cause to lift her head up from prayer. Not the incredibly stupid Yoel Zabari, who was even now listening to the piteous platitudes that rolled over the crowd of sullen fools.
No one would notice if Tochala Delit slipped away.
Tochala Delit stepped into the crypt-like inner room of the memorial. He stood proudly in the huge stone room, the lone, naked flame in the middle sending an eerie burning light flickering across his high cheekbones and dark hair.
The muscles in his thick wrists clenched and unclenched as he slid his heels across the floor, across the plaques that recorded the Nazi death camps of World War II. Across Bergen-Belsen, across Auschwitz, across Dachau, until Tochala Delit came to his own. Treblinka. His personal holocaust. The man who had been Horst Vessel remembered, trembling with pride.
It had been his idea. They were losing the war. It was not traitorous to admit that. Not if he had a plan to use that very fact against the enemy. The only true enemy. The Jews. The others were only fighting for their misdirected ideals. They would soon come around. But the Jews, who embodied those misdirected ideals, they would have to be dealt with.
Tochala Delit heard words being chanted from outside. He dimly recognized them as the prophet Maimonides' thirteen articles of Faith. He heard the words that were chanted every morning by many Israelis and translated them.
"God is our only Leader."
Hitler is mine, thought Delit.
"God is One."
It is only a matter of time.
"God has no body."
Soon, neither will any of you.
"God is first and last."
The last part of that is true.
"We should pray to Him only."
See if that will help.
"The words of the Prophets are true, the prophecies of Moses are true."