The Jerusalem Inception - By Avraham Azrieli Page 0,55
of her body’s movements.
She sat down and removed the oversized sunglasses, revealing her turquoise-green eyes.
Elie swallowed with difficulty. “You make an unlikely spy,” he said. “No one in this room will ever forget you.”
“You’ll be surprised.”
“I’m serious. How do you survive in this line of work?”
“Ill-fitting clothes, out-of-fashion hats, and never meeting their eyes.” Tanya shrugged. “I don’t bother with it in Israel, but in Europe no one gives me a second look.”
“I find it hard to believe.” Elie flagged down the waitress. “Bring us tea with lemon.”
“I have terrible news.” She kept her voice low. “Abraham’s son saw a box delivered to the most extreme guy in the sect, someone called Redhead Dan. The description fits hand grenades. Abraham hit the boy before he could tell him what he’d seen. Hit him! I don’t understand it—why would Abraham hit his son?”
Elie was more concerned with why Redhead Dan had shown him the grenades. “Hand grenades in Neturay Karta?”
“Yes!”
“Impossible. The kid is confused.”
“His description fits perfectly. And there’s talk of violence. An eye for an eye. You must contact Abraham immediately. Only he can prevent disaster.”
“Well, better safe than sorry.” Elie rubbed his scalp with his hand. “I’ll inform Abraham right away. Did his son tell you anything else?”
“No.”
Elie was relieved, but he had to make sure. “Did he hear of any plans to actually use the grenades?”
“No.”
“Does he know where they’re hidden? Anything?”
“It was a coincidence. He ran into them—”
“Lucky for us, but what was he doing out there in the middle of the night?”
Tanya blushed and looked away.
“I see.” Elie lit a cigarette. “He’s a bit young for you, isn’t he?”
“He’s almost eighteen.” She parted her hair with both hands, throwing it over her shoulders. “You have a problem with that?”
“On the contrary. How else would you suck information from him?”
“You disgust me.” She glared at him, the blushing skin of her face as smooth as that of the seventeen-year-old girl he remembered.
“You are fortunate, Tanya. Few women get to go back in time, so to speak, do it over, save a lover from the wrong path.”
She leaned on the table, her face close to his. “Abraham was on the wrong path because you manipulated him to keep hunting down Germans, and I was too naïve—”
“I manipulated Abraham?” Elie sneered. “He was obsessed with revenge after he saw the Nazis butcher our families. He wanted to keep killing Nazis, terminate them in the most painful way, every one of them, including Nazis like your sweetheart, Obergruppenführer Klaus von Koenig.”
“Klaus was an accountant. He didn’t butcher anyone.”
“Himmler’s deputy, the protégée who facilitated SS operations with his financial genius, was just an accountant?”
“He didn’t kill Jews.”
“Your dear Klaus was no less a mass murderer than the rest of the Nazi high command!”
“I thought we were talking about Abraham.”
“Right. That’s what drove him—avenge the Holocaust and prevent the next one. It still drives him today. Drives us!”
Tanya smiled bitterly. “How could I compete with that?”
Elie didn’t answer. What could he say? The truth? That Abraham had changed his mind and wanted to quit his secret work to be with her? No. Telling her the truth would ruin everything.
“I don’t have to atone for failing to save Abraham or for losing him,” she said. “Abraham lost me then, and he lost me again a few months ago. He’d rather stay with those misguided Talmudic souls than live with me in happiness. But Lemmy is a different story. Him I can save!”
Elie clapped. “Bravo!”
For a moment he thought Tanya would hit him, but she turned and left. His agents put down the dice and started to rise, but Elie shook his head, and they sat back and watched her leave.
He took his seat and slurped cautiously from his tea. The waitress brought the check, and he dropped a few bills on the table. He had no intention of informing Abraham. The risk was small that Lemmy would approach his father again about the grenades before tomorrow morning. The boy was still smarting from a good fatherly beating.
Tanya left the café on the verge of tears, determined not to give Elie the satisfaction. She walked down the street, shielding her face from the wind. He was doing it again, the same as twenty years ago, during those few months in the forest with Abraham, when Elie’s dark eyes had cast a constant shadow over their passion, his thin lips lopsided in a humorless grin. Now he was doing the same thing, mocking her relationship