“All red?” the old man says. “Red from horn to tail?”
“She was disguised,” Berko says. “Sprayed with some kind of white pigment. I can’t think of any reason you’d want to do that unless you had something about her that you wanted to hide. Such as that she was, you know.” He winces. “Without blemish.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” the old man says.
“Who are these people, Uncle Hertz? You know, don’t you?”
“Who are these people?” Hertz Shemets says. “They’re yids. Yids with a scheme. I know that’s a tautology.”
He can’t seem to make up his mind to light the cigar. He sets it down, picks it up, sets it down again. Landsman gets the feeling he’s weighing a secret rolled tight in its dark-veined leaf. A course of action, a tricky exchange of pieces.
“All right,” Hertz says at last, “so I lied: Here’s another question for you. Meyer, maybe you remember a yid, when you were a little boy, he used to come around the Einstein Chess Club. He used to joke with you, you had quite a thing for him. Yid named Litvak.”
“I saw Alter Litvak the other day,” Landsman says.
“At the Einstein.”
“Did you?”
“He lost his voice.”
“Yes, he was in an accident, his throat was crushed by the wheel. His wife was killed. It was out on Roosevelt Boulevard, where they planted all those chokecherry trees. The only one that didn’t die, that was the tree they hit. The only chokecherry tree in the Sitka District.”
“I remember when they planted those trees,” Landsman says. “For the World’s Fair.”
“Don’t get wistful on me,” the old man says. “God knows I’ve had my fill of wistful Jews, starting with myself. You never see a wistful Indian.”
“That’s because they hide them when they hear you’re coming around,” Berko says. “The women and wistful Indians. Shut up and tell us about Litvak.”
“He used to work for me,” Hertz says. “For many, many years.”
His tone goes flat, and Landsman is surprised to see that his uncle is angry. Like all Shemetses, Hertz was handed down a hot temper, but it served him ill in his work, so at some point he had it killed.
“Alter Litvak was a federal agent?” Landsman says.
“No. He was not. The man has not drawn an official government salary, as far as I know, since he was honorably discharged from the U.S. Army thirty-five years ago.”
“Why are you so angry at him?” Berko says, watching his father through the lantern slits of his eyes.
Hertz is startled by the question, tries to hide it. “I never get angry,” he says. “Except with you, son.” He smiles. “So he still goes to the Einstein. I didn’t know that. He was always more of a cardplayer than a patzer. He did better in games that favor the bluff. Deceit. Concealment.”
Landsman remembers the pair of tough-looking young men whom Litvak introduced as his grandnephews. There was one of them in the woods at Peril Strait, he realizes, driving the Ford Caudillo with the shadow in the backseat. The shadow of a man who didn’t want Landsman to get a look at his face.
“He was there,” Landsman tells Berko. “At Peril Strait. He was the mystery man in the car.”
“What did Litvak do for you?” Berko says. “For all those many, many years?”
Hertz hesitates, looking from Berko to Landsman and back. “Some of this, some of that. All strictly off the books. He had a number of useful skills. Alter Litvak may be the most talented man I ever met. He understands systems and control. He is patient and methodical. He used to be incredibly strong. A good pilot, a trained mechanic. Wonderful at orienteering. Very effective as a teacher. As a trainer. Shit.”
He stares down in mild wonder at the snapped halves of his cigar, one in each hand. He drops them onto his plate of sauce streaks and spreads a napkin over the evidence of his emotion. “The yid betrayed me,” he says. “To that reporter. He collected evidence on me for years and then handed it all over to Brennan.”
“Why would he do that?” Berko says. “If he was your yid?”
“I really can’t answer your question.” Hertz shakes his head, hating puzzles, faced for the rest of his life with this one. “Money, maybe, though I never knew him to take an interest in the stuff. Certainly not his beliefs. Litvak has no beliefs. No convictions. No loyalty except to the men who serve under him. He saw how things were going when this bunch took over in Washington. He knew that I was through before I knew it myself. I suppose he decided the moment was ripe. Maybe he got tired of working for me, he wanted the job for himself. Even after the Americans got rid of me and shut down their official operations, they still needed a man in Sitka. They really couldn’t find anyone better for their money than Alter Litvak. Maybe he just got tired of losing to me at chess. Maybe he saw a chance to beat me, and he took it. But he was never my yid. Permanent Status never meant anything to him. Neither, I’m certain, does the cause he’s working for now. ”
“The red heifer,” Berko says.
“And so the idea, forgive me,” Landsman says, “but talk me through it. Fine, you have a red heifer without a single flaw. And somehow or other, you get it over to Jerusalem.”
“Then you kill it,” Berko says. “And you burn it to ashes, and you make a paste of the ashes, and you dab a little of that on your priests. Otherwise they can’t go into the Sanctuary, in the Temple, because they are unclean.” He checks with his father. “Do I have that right?”
“More or less.”
“Okay, but here’s the thing I don’t get. Isn’t there what’s it called?” Landsman says. “That mosque. On the hill there where the Temple used to be?”
“It isn’t a mosque, Meyerle. It’s a shrine,” Hertz says. “Qubbat As-Sakhrah. The Dome of the Rock. The third holiest site in Islam. Built in the seventh cen tury by Abd al-Malik, on the precise site of the two Temples of the Jews. The spot where Abraham went to sacrifice Isaac, where Jacob saw the ladder reaching up to heaven. The navel of the world. Yes. If you wanted to rebuild the Temple and reinstitute the old rituals, as a way of hastening the coming of Messiah, then you would need to do something about the Dome of the Rock . It’s in the way.”
“Bombs,” Berko says with an exaggerated nonchalance. “Explosives. That part of the package with Alter Litvak?”
“Demolitions,” the old man says. He reaches for his drink, but it’s gone. “Yes, the yid is an expert.”
Landsman pushes back from the table and stands up. He gets his hat from the door. “We need to get back,” he says. “We need to talk to somebody. We need to tell Bina.”
He opens his phone, but there’s no signal this far out from Sitka. He goes to the telephone on the wall, but Bina’s number kicks him right over to voice mail. “You need to find Alter Litvak,” he tells her. “Find him and hold him and do not let him go.”
When he turns back to the table, he sees father and son still sitting there; Berko is putting some intense question to Hertz Shemets without saying anything. Berko has his hands folded in his lap like a well-behaved child, but he is not a well-behaved child, and if he keeps his fingers intertwined, then it is only to prevent them from enacting some mischief or harm. After an interval that feels to Landsman like a very long time, Uncle Hertz looks down.
“The prayer house at St. Cyril,” Berko says. “The riots.”
“The St. Cyril riots,” Hertz Shemets agrees. “God damn it.”
“Berko-”
“God damn it! Indians always said it was the Jews that blew it up.”
“You have to understand the pressure we were under,” Hertz says. “At the time.”
“Oh, I do,” Berko says. “Believe me. The balancing act. The fine line.”