KARP WOKE UP with his arm in a cast, a throbbing pain in his head, and a dry taste like old pennies in his mouth. He was lying on a comfortable bed in what seemed like an ordinary bedroom. It was morning and pale, wintery light poured through sliding glass doors. Besides the bed, there was a bureau, a low table, and an armchair. In the armchair sat a slight, dark-haired young woman, dressed in jeans, a yellow turtleneck, and hiking boots. She was knitting a small white woolen garment.
She looked up and when her dark eyes met Karp’s, she smiled.
“Good, you are awake. How do you feel?”
“Like hell. What time is it, where am I, and what happened to me? And who are you?”
She laughed, a pleasant girlish noise. Her English was slightly accented. Karp realized he’d heard it before, in the van, last night. “So many questions,” she exclaimed as she got up and approached the bed.
“How about some answers?” he snarled. “Hey, what’s that?”
“A thermometer. I must take your temperature.”
“You some kind of nurse?” he mumbled around the glass rod stuck in his mouth.
“Yes, sometimes, and you are my prize patient. Let us see … good, you have no fever. Now I think I will bring the chief in. For your questions—”
“Who’s the chief?” ’
“Wait,” she said and dashed out of the room.
Like I could go anywhere, he thought sourly. He sat up stiffly and managed to prop a pillow behind his back with his good hand. In that position, by craning his neck, he could just see out through the glass doors. Bushes and barren trees, a patch of gray sky. When he looked back, Ben Leventhal was standing in the room, with the young woman hovering deferentially in the background. He was wearing a blue ski sweater and corduroy trousers, and had hiking boots on his feet too. He no longer looked like any of Karp’s uncles.
Leventhal smiled. “So, you are back among the living. How are you feeling?”
“Not bad, considering. Somebody shot me, right?”
“We extracted you from an assassination attempt, I’m happy to say.”
“And who might ‘we’ be?”
“Ah, excuse me. This is Devra Blok, who has nursed you back to health, and I am … but we have already met. You remember the night your charming young lady helped me with my car. Ben Leventhal.”
“Yeah, the Stereo King. This part of your one-year guarantee, Leventhal? Parts and labor and if somebody tries to shoot you, the firm brings in a bunch of commandos? It sure as hell beats the shit out of Korvette’s.”
Leventhal laughed. “I’m glad to see you’re in good humor, Mr. Karp. I trust you’re comfortable and if there’s anything you need—”
“How about a phone?”
The man frowned with his eyes, but kept a broad smile on his mouth. “I’m afraid that won’t be possible just yet. Perhaps later.”
As he turned to leave, Karp said, “She said you would answer questions.”
“So I will. But you are recovering from a serious injury. I don’t wish you to strain yourself.”
“You know a guy about six-two, two-forty, curly dark hair, looks like a weightlifter? Drives a blue van.”
Leventhal seemed surprised at the question. “Yes, that would be Yaacov. He works for me. Why?”
“Tell him thanks.”
“I will. You’re very observant, Mr. Karp.”
“I try to be. Where am I? Upstate? Connecticut?”
“Upstate.”
“Could you be a little less vague?”
“Not for now.”
“Do you know who tried to kill me?”
“Yes. A man named Sergio Ruiz and some of his friends.”
“Any idea why?”
“I think you should rest now, Mr. Karp.”
“Come on, Leventhal, it’ll ease my mind.”
“Please—”
“OK, OK. How about telling me why the Israeli army is interested in saving my skin.”
“Israeli army?” Leventhal’s face was a picture of surprise. He turned to the woman. “Devra, the man is hallucinating.”
“Or marines, or commandos, or whatever you are, because for damn sure you’re not a bunch of audio salesmen. And you’re not Croats, because I heard you speaking Hebrew back there in the van before I passed out. What are you, yeshiva bochers from Williamsburg? Who else talks Hebrew? OK, the only people I know who might have an interest in wasting me are Ruiz and his guys, who you say you defended me from, and some of Karavitch’s friends, of which he apparently has an unlimited supply.
“But why Israelis? Why have Israelis rescued me and why are they kidnapping me? You needed a minyan? You’re pissed off because I’m dating a shiksa? No, it’s got to be Karavitch.”
Leventhal performed an eloquent gesture of wonderment, holding his palms up and looking from side to side as if summoning support from an invisible crowd. “Mr. Karp, I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.”
Karp fell back on the pillows, exhausted. He had less strength than he had thought. “OK,” he said weakly. “Fine. You’re not interested in Karavitch. Nobody’s interested in Karavitch.”
Leventhal’s face became grave. In a quiet voice he said, “Ah, I think you have got it right, Mr. Karp. In fact, nobody is interested in Karavitch. Djordje Karavitch has been dead for thirty years. He died in Trieste in 1946, murdered by the man you are prosecuting under his name.” With that, Leventhal stalked out of the room. Devra Blok resumed her seat and took up her knitting again.
At her vanity mirror, wrapped in a silk kimono, Rhoda Klepp was considering how she was going to control the situation she had created for herself with that uncharacteristic burst of impetuosity. Sex was, she well knew, merely a question of control, once you cut through all the bullshit: a question of who screwed whom and who got screwed. Usually it was a pretty straight deal—you gave, you got, and Rhoda usually arranged it so that she got a little more than she gave, which was how she had reached her present status. In her world, sex was a tool, useful, if mildly distasteful, like giving dinner parties for a lot of boring, powerful people.
But Marlene had confused her with her tale of a different world, where people conducted themselves with abandon. Abandon! That was the problem. Rhoda still hadn’t figured out how you could get the benefits of abandon (in terms of having something to boast and condescend about) and still maintain total control.
A difficult problem, but not, she thought, beyond her powers. The trick would be to destroy his confidence. Booze and a show of boredom usually worked for her. After that, when he had been reduced to the pliable schmuckhood that she knew occupied the center of all male-kind, she would let him do his stuff. It would be something to talk about, at least, like drinking warm mescal from a bottle with a dead worm in it: the act disgusting, the retelling—the chance to be the center of attention—delicious.
She finished her face, stood up, and let the kimono slip down, examining her naked body like a carpenter testing the edge of a chisel. Let him drool over that, she thought. Afterward, she would bring out the costumes. And the equipment.
Guma sat on the white Haitian cotton couch in the large living room of her Murray Hill apartment and finished his third scotch. He’d been there only twenty minutes. A Burt Bacharach record was playing on the stereo. There had been some desultory conversation about what to “do” on their “date,” but both of them knew why he was here. He looked around the room. Where would she keep those keys? Lots of white, three large abstract paintings, chrome, glass, with bright plastic accents: science-fiction modern. All it needed was a robed and hypercephalic envoy from the Council of Scientists.
Rhoda was clinking things at the bar. Then she came toward him holding two drinks. She was wearing a kind of black pajama outfit, silky with little shiny threads woven into it, the sort of thing the Viet Cong would wear if they shopped at Bloomies. The top was half unbuttoned, and as she bent over to set the drinks down, Guma could see an entire large, white breast even without craning his neck. She seemed to take a long time arranging the drinks, ashtray, nut bowl, and chip-and-dip tray on the low glass coffee table. Guma casually reached out and slid his hand under the breast, hefting it slightly.
“Pound and a half,” he said. “My old man ran a meat market. I used to work there Saturdays.” He withdrew the hand, wondering why he felt so absolutely non-horny. Maybe it was the range of expressions that flickered across her face: outrage, horror, contempt, and simulated arousal.
“How interesting,” she said. She arranged herself at the opposite end of the couch and drank from her vodka gibson. “I’d rather hear about Thailand. Marlene Ciampi’s been telling me all about your exotic tastes.”
“She has, huh? What would she know about my exotic tastes?”
“A lot, according to her. She described your performance last weekend in great detail.”
This is definitely not going to happen, Guma thought, and what the fuck is she talking about? He took a deep swallow of his drink, and observed her watching him closely. She’s feeding me scotch like they were going to bring back Prohibition tomorrow. She’s trying to get me drunk? Me? He smiled inwardly and an idea began to take shape.
“Yeah, that. Well, I was a little off that night.” He drained his glass. “Hey, how about another drink? No, don’t bother, I’ll get one for both of us.”
Rhoda considered herself an experienced drinker. She knew how much she could take and never took any more. On the other hand, she couldn’t very well expect this jerk to drink alone. She decided that matching him one for two would be safe.
How serious a miscalculation this was she did not realize until around midnight. By then everything was moving in slow motion, and she felt like her skin was covered in masking tape. There was loud music playing on the radio. Guma kept moving in and out of her field of vision. He didn’t seem to be weaving much for a man who had drunk twice as much as she had, but then, how could she tell?
“Time to get th’ show onna road!” she said out loud. “Hey, Guma, y’creep. Time f’ some o’ that kinky stuff. I got it all, all the stuff. Hey, where are ya?”
She stumbled into the small kitchen. Guma was peering into a cabinet. “Hey, hey whatcha doin’?” she asked.
Guma looked up from his work. Rhoda was swaying like seaweed in the tide. Her black jacket was hanging entirely open and her pointed breasts rocked rhythmically from side to side. The motion was entrancing and started doing things to his groin area. He made himself stare into her face.
“Looking for more of those pearl onions,” he replied benignly. “You look like you could use another gibson.”
“Nah, no more drinks. Wanna do kinky. Now.” She made a clumsy grab for him and managed to latch onto his belt. She tugged at it, as one might on the bridle of an unwilling burro.
“OK, OK,” said Guma, detaching her hand. “Kinky coming right up. Hey, Rhoda, whyn’t you head for the bedroom and I’ll, uh, get some supplies from here.”
“Wha’? Wha’ splies?”
“Foodstuffs, Rhoda baby. You can’t go kinky without all kinds of foodstuffs. Now run along and make yourself, you know, ready.” He reached out and gave her left nipple a friendly honk.
She giggled and arched her back, ran a thick tongue across her lips. “Oh, yeah. OK, a’right. I got all the stuff inna room.” She staggered out. It’s working, she thought dully. I got him nailed.
Her bedroom was dominated by a huge brass bed dressed with black satin and set in the middle of a round white shag rug. It was lit dimly by wall sconces. On a side table were arranged a bottle of massage oil and a large white plastic vibrator with numerous rubber attachments. Sophisticated.
Rhoda plunged into the lowest drawer of her bureau, dragged out a large brown paper bag, and dumped its contents on the bed. Thin chains, a pair of knee-length leather boots with five-inch heels, chrome-studded black leather garments, and various other accessories fell in a tangle. She crumpled up the bag and shoved it under the bed. It would be tacky if he knew she had bought all this stuff yesterday.
Rhoda shucked off her pajama outfit and underpants. Clumsily she tried to sort out the tangle. She extracted a leather bra with shiny needle spikes around the cut-out nipple holes and heaved herself into it. It closed in the back with a miniature lock and key.
Next, the boots. They were tight, and she had to struggle to pull them on. She felt sweat running down her sides and matting her hair to her forehead. Wobbling to her feet, she stood up and sagged toward her full-length mirror to take a look at the effect. Immediately she crashed face forward to the ground. The tops of the boots were still wired together. She cursed viciously and tried to roll over, but found that her bra spikes were tangled inextricably in the shag rug. She lay there humping and thrashing like a tied hog.
Entering the bedroom with the tray he had loaded from the refrigerator and pantry, Guma observed this spectacle for some time, fascinated by the bounce and quiver of her generous buttocks. Chivalrously he suppressed a guffaw. Instead he said, “That’s a new one. Rhoda, baby. You getting all hot there by yourself?”
She heard this as from afar. Yes, it made sense. That was indeed what she was doing. She produced a quasi-sensual moan to suit. He put down the tray and quickly sorted things out. He unlocked the bra so she could get up and cut the boot wire with a nail scissors he found on her vanity table. She collapsed back on the bed and watched the ceiling rotate.
“What have we got here?” she heard him say. “Chains? OK, let’s check it out.”
She felt him fumbling at her wrists and sat bolt upright. Something was wrong here. “No, no, you’re spose to be tied up,” she complained. In fact, she had looked forward to having him helpless on her bed, but the idea of being chained up herself had never occurred to her. She began to panic through her stupor. “No, don’ wanna,” she cried, and tried to get on her feet.
He gently pushed her back and massaged her neck. “Sure, I’ll do it, baby, but you know the routine. You been around, right? I mean, Rhoda, would I waste my time with somebody who didn’t know the score?” And more of this, in such a smooth, knowing, insistent tone, that she came to think that this is what she had planned all along. In short order she was tied by her wrists and ankles to the four corners of the brass bed.
She felt his weight on the bed and soon after something cold was placed on her eyes, blotting out her vision. She felt him leave the bed. She rattled her chains and waited for the kinky stuff to start. From time to time he would return to the bed and touch her body. He was putting substances on her flesh, cool, viscous, dripping. Strange odors arose from her body. Maddening at first, these sensations soon become intensely sensual. Now he was doing something between her thighs. Waves of heat erupted from her loins. She gasped and writhed her hips. She began to murmur the obscenities she had learned from her extensive readings in softcore pornography.
Guma looked up from his handiwork. Rhoda’s eyes were covered with two beef patties. In the center of each one was a raw egg garnished with a maraschino cherry. He had decorated her breasts with catsup and Cool-Whip in a barber-pole pattern, and elaborately covered her hips and belly with a melange of oyster sauce, chocolate syrup, and a mass of lo mein he had found in a take-out container. Her crotch was heavily slathered with Louis Sherry grape jam. “Be right back, baby,” he murmured and proceeded to toss the room in a professional manner, except that from time to time he had to pass by the bed and stir the grape jam a bit to keep Rhoda amused.
Still, it took him barely five minutes to find them, about twenty keys in all shapes on a heavy ring with an “I love New York” brass tag on it. He turned to go.
“Hey Rhoda, I just forgot something I had to do at the office. I’ll be right back.”
This did not register in the slightest. “Uhnng, uhh, I want it. Give it to me. I’m burning up!” she sighed.
“Rhoda,” he said severely, “real people don’t say shit like that.”
“Ooh, I want that big passion pole,” she cried, flapping and spreading her thighs to the limits imposed by the thin chains. His gaze was drawn involuntarily to the center of this movement, to the little slivers of tender pink visible amid the dark purplish glop. He felt a familiar, if unexpected, stirring.
“Ah, what the hell,” he said, undoing his belt, “as long as I’m here.”
The second morning of his captivity Karp felt well enough to get out of bed. The previous day had passed in fitful bouts of sleep and dull awakenings. He knew he ought to have made a fuss, railed at Leventhal, tried to get away to a phone, but he simply didn’t have the energy.
“Being shot,” observed Devra Blok as she helped him to his feet and into a blue terrycloth robe, “is not like anything else. It knocks the stuffings out, isn’t it so?”
“Yo,” Karp answered shakily, concentrating on keeping his feet. He leaned heavily against her and was conscious of her strength and the heat of her body under the thin shirt. “You sound like you’ve been shot yourself.”
She shook her head. “Not me. But I have taken care of casualties. So, let us go get you feed.”
“Fed,” said Karp. “Bacon and eggs? Or is this a kosher kidnap? How about bagels and lox?”
A faint smile. “What you like.”
She brought him into a sunny breakfast nook that smelled of toast and coffee and frying onions. Karp felt the saliva flow; he hadn’t eaten any serious food since before he had been shot. He sat gingerly down at a round white table, and Devra sat next to him. Across the counter in the kitchen a lean man in a dark T-shirt stirred something at the range.
Devra poured coffee, and in a few moments the man came in from the kitchen holding a frying pan full of scrambled eggs made with minced lox and onions and a plate of toasted rye. The man nodded to Karp and sat down. Devra said, “Natan likes to cook breakfast, don’t you, Natan?” Natan grinned shyly and dug into the meal. Karp did the same, wondering what Natan did when he wasn’t cooking breakfast. The man was well built in a wiry way. He had a thick head of dirty blond curls and a wide mouth loaded with big white teeth. He had the air of a college student, but Karp figured he was four or five years into his twenties.
A door slammed somewhere in the back of the house. A few seconds later, Yaacov the weightlifter strode into the room, rubbing his hands. He had traded his track suit for a puffy red down parka, jeans, and hiking boots. He said “good morning” all around, unzipped his parka, and sat at the table.
Karp remarked lightly, “Yaacov, hang onto that parka. If the commando business ever goes bad, you can get a job with Michelin.”
“Pardon?” Yaacov asked politely.
“You know, Michelin, the tire company. Their little man?” Karp mimicked the great girth of l’homme Michelin and got blank looks. It must be the language barrier, he thought.
After breakfast they adjourned to the living room. This was furnished in an anonymous suburban style, vaguely early American. Floor-length drapes in a pale green silky material covered one wall. There were pictures on the walls and hook rugs on the floors, but no knickknacks or personal photographs to be seen. Karp wondered who lived here, or if anybody did. He presumed it was what the spy stories called a safe house. He spotted a phone sitting on a corner table and thought about what they would do if he just walked up to it and tried to call.
Yaacov turned on a TV and sat on a couch to watch it. Soaps. He seemed interested. Devra sat in a ladder-back rocker and took out her knitting. Natan disappeared somewhere. There was a grandfather clock that ticked loudly. After half an hour of this, Karp felt his mind softening. He wanted to know what these people wanted from him. He wanted to know what Leventhal was up to. And most of all, he wanted to know what he had meant about Karavitch not being Karavitch, but somebody else instead, who had killed the real Karavitch.
The hours dragged by. They had lunch—tuna fish sandwiches and Pepsi—and then returned to their original places. Karp studied his captors. The three of them seemed curiously flat in their personalities. No little jokes. No byplay. Very solemn. Of course, he reflected, maybe this is what kidnappers learn in kidnapping school: don’t flash anything at the victim, be cool. Maybe he could get a rise out of them.
“This is fun,” he said, “I always wanted to sit around for days on end and watch daytime TV. The problem is, I didn’t bring my ironing.” He stood up, walked over to the phone, and picked up the receiver. It was dead. Then he noticed that someone had removed the wire connecting it to the wall jack.
“Damn, I really could have gone for a pizza,” he remarked. Devra looked up from her knitting. “We can get. Do you like it?”
“No, Devra. It was sort of a joke. Kind of an incongruity that in many people would produce the sensation of humor, perhaps leading to a laugh.” She looked at him blankly.
Karp walked over to the floor-length drapes, pulled them back, and looked out through the huge picture window they concealed. A cleared gravel driveway and hedge-lined road, a snowy lawn, a row of black trees. A figure, a large man, was hurrying up the road. Leventhal? Before he could decide, Yaacov was by his side, closing the drapes.
“Please. You shouldn’t do.”
“Huh? Why shouldn’t I? You’re afraid I’ll make signals? Help, I’m a prisoner in a matzoh-ball factory?”
Yaacov looked uncomfortable. He exchanged a quick look with Devra. “No,” he said, “these men who shot you. They are outside.”
“What? Oh, for crying out loud! What is this shit, guys? Why the hell don’t you just call the goddamn cops?”
“I’m afraid we can’t do that yet, Mr. Karp,” said Leventhal.
Karp spun around. Leventhal was standing in the doorway of the living room, taking off his gloves. He was wearing a double-breasted tan car-coat, to which he gave a decidedly military air. His face was reddened, either with cold or exertion.
“Why not? When are you going to tell me what’s going on?”
Leventhal smiled. “Now, if you like.” He spoke to the two others in clipped phrases in guttural Hebrew, orders. They vanished. Leventhal removed his coat and threw it on the couch, then sat and gestured Karp cordially into an armchair opposite him.
“Now,” he said when Karp had seated himself, “we can have our talk. You are being well treated?”
“Sure. First class. Best kidnapping I ever had. Look, Leventhal, when are you going to let me get out of here? And what was all that about those guys that shot me hanging around outside? And what was all the stuff about Karavitch being somebody else?”
Leventhal, still smiling, held up his hands in mock defense. “Please, one question at a time. First, let me deal with your personal danger. It is true we have observed a van on the local roads that appears to be the one that carried the would-be assassins. There is also a Cadillac sedan that travels with it. These two vehicles are now parked about a quarter of a mile from the main entrance to this property, and Natan is observing them. They have automatic weapons and shotguns. We think it is possible they will attempt to assault this house, perhaps this evening. It will be quite dark by six.”
“How many guys do they have?”
“Natan says ten.”
“Ten! For chrissakes, Leventhal, how you going to hold off ten guys with machine guns? You got three people and a girl.”
Leventhal smiled and shrugged. “They’re Cuban gangsters, Mr. Karp, and we’re Israeli soldiers. You remember the Bay of Pigs? You remember Entebbe? I think we will do all right. Besides, we don’t intend to hold them off. We will attack.”
“Now I know you’re crazy,” Karp snapped. Leventhal’s beaming confidence was beginning to get on his nerves. “OK, before you get killed, just tell me, why not bring in the cops? Just let me make a couple of calls, I guarantee you, you won’t have to be involved.”
“Well, I’m afraid we are involved, and the presence of the police at this time would complicate matters in a way that would be inconvenient to our mission.”
“What are you talking, inconvenient? Stop these riddles, Leventhal. Tell me who you are, what you’re doing here, and most of all, what the fuck you want with me.”
Leventhal gave him a long look. His smile faded and was replaced by an expression that was both sad and angry. “All right, fine. You want information, I give you information. I notice there’s no ‘Thank you, Ben, you saved my life, you’re risking your lives to keep on saving it.’”
“You could just call the cops; nobody’s asking you—”
“The cops? Don’t you know anything yet? What cops? The New York police? The FBI? Don’t you know when you’ve been set up? How do you think those gentlemen out there in those cars found us so fast? Believe me, Mr. Karp, you want me to bring cops, I’ll give you a gun first, you could blow your own brains out.”
Karp looked at the floor and said nothing. He felt an odd shame about how plausible this was to him, that he could so easily credit the corruption of his country’s and his city’s police forces. After a moment Leventhal went on.
“Now, you are correct in thinking that I have a proposition for you. Simply, it is this. I am determined to capture and bring to justice in Israel an infamous war criminal whom you have in custody. I wish your help and cooperation in doing this.”
“You mean Karavitch?”
“The man you know as Karavitch, the man you are holding now on a kidnap and murder charge, is not Djordje Karavitch. He is Josef Karl Dreb. Hauptsturmfuehrer Dreb of the Prinz Eugen Division of the Waffen-SS and before that a junior officer in the Reichssicherheitshauptamt, Eichmann’s organization. Dreb was among the most promising officers in Amt IV B4, the organization responsible for the final solution to the Jewish problem. Accordingly, he was given a sensitive and important mission, which was mobilizing the forces of the Croatian puppet state and helping them round up all the forty thousand Jews in that country and dispose of them. Now, you understand that this was no easy task—”
“Wait a minute, Leventhal. How do you know Karavitch is what’s-his-name, Dreb? He looks like Karavitch, he talks like Karavitch, also the Croatians accept him as Karavitch, and he entered the country as Karavitch. On top of that, if there was a Nazi who wanted to cover his tracks, why would he use Karavitch as a cover? Apparently Karavitch wasn’t any sweetheart in the war either. It’s like Jesse James trying to pass as Billy the Kid.”
“No, it is not. Karavitch was a typical Croat fascist. He backed the wrong side in the war, maybe he shot the odd Jew, the odd Serb, but what’s a massacre or two or three against a good anticommunist Catholic background? No, Mr. Karp, Karavitch is small beer compared to Dreb. A Karavitch could get into the Croatian nationalist escape routes, could enter the United States, a poor refugee, everybody very sympathetic, you understand? Start a new life, bygones are bygones, no?
“But not Dreb. Mr. Karp, do you know what an einsatzgruppe was?”
“Yeah, as a matter of fact, I do. They were SS murder squads that followed the army and killed people the Nazis didn’t like.”
Leventhal raised his eyebrows. “Very good. Very interesting that you should have such knowledge. You have a special interest in the Holocaust perhaps?”
“No. But I was born Jewish in New York in 1943. Eat your soup, children are starving in Europe—that generation. My mother was a big-time Zionist, regional Hadassah officer for years, and for two hours every Sunday for six years I had Jewish history and culture pounded into my head, along with a load of Zionist propaganda. Mostly by Israelis, as a matter of fact. They had a lot of cachet in Brooklyn at that time. For years we had this book on our coffee table. Other people had, I don’t know, horses of the world, flowers, Picasso; we had Auschwitz snaps—piles of human hair, the guys, the skeletons in striped pajamas, the room with a hundred thousand eyeglasses on the floor.
“Which is how come I know what einsatzgruppen are. I also know the names of all the concentration camps, their years of operation, and approximately how many people died in each one. Also their commandants, and the particular or unusual atrocities associated with particular camps: the human skin lampshades at Bergen-Belsen, the rock quarry at Majdenek, the medical experiments at Ravensbrucke. I remember there was one guy who liked to kill little children one by one with a hammer, in front of their parents—”
“Scharfuehrer Schmidt.”
“Right, Sergeant Schmidt. They caught him and gave him eight years in the slammer. Apparently slept like a baby every night. Funny how that kind of stuff sticks in your head. Anyway, I’m just telling you this so you don’t think that raising my Jewish guilt or conscience with a bunch of Holocaust stories will make me help you move Karavitch illegally out of the jurisdiction of the County of New York. Sorry.”
Leventhal looked at Karp for several long minutes without saying anything. He was no longer smiling. Instead his large, liquid eyes glowed in their dark pouches with sadness, disappointment, a hint of contempt. It was high-intensity Jewish guilt-generating radiation, and Karp knew it well from countless cringing moments of his childhood. Despite himself he began to feel generalized shame and discomfort.
“It’s not going to work, Leventhal,” said Karp, feigning more confidence than he felt at that moment. “Get my grandmother in here, maybe you got a shot, but otherwise I can’t help you.”
“Yes, I see that,” said the other man. “And I’m sorry too. For you. It must be sad to be so cut off from your own people. Funny, we don’t learn. United we stand.” He clenched his fist. “Divided we fall.” He wiggled his fingers.
“I’m an American, Leventhal. We invented that.”
“Yes, and they thought they were Germans and French and Poles, but in the end, all that counted was, they were Jews.”
“True, but it turns out the Nazis aren’t on the ballot this year. Not in New York anyway. If they ever come to power again, I’m going to go with the Remington autoloader twelve-gauge, modified with the drum magazine. I ought to be able to take out most of a sturmbann before they get me.”
Leventhal looked sad again and cluck-clucked like an old lady. “What a shame we should be having a conversation like this, two Jews. A shame and a disgrace. Forgive me, Mr. Karp, if I must bore you with one more little tale from that time. You can add it to your coffee table collection, heh?
“In Zagreb in 1941, there were many Jews, refugees from Austria and Germany. The Yugoslavs were generous with visas at that time; perhaps they wanted Croatia salted with people who had some reason to be grateful to the Belgrade regime. And we were, we were.
“In April the Nazis came in. The war lasted ten days. Yugoslavia was broken up and Croatia became a German puppet, run by Pavelic and the ustashi. The pogroms started very soon. Of course, with so many Serbs to kill, it was hard for the ustashi to make room for the Jews, but they tried. These were, you understand, old-fashioned pogroms, with priests. The Jews were being beaten and killed because they weren’t goyim.
“But this was too sluggish for the Final Solution. So in March 1942 an einsatzkommando was detailed from Einsatzgruppe C and sent to Zagreb to inspire the multitudes by a special action, as they called it. Now, there was in Zagreb at that time a large kosher slaughterhouse, because of the big Jewish community there. In 1942, of course, it had been shut down for some time. There was no meat for anyone by then, much less for Jews.
“This particular sonderaktion began with a riot, which started in the evening of Good Friday, an Eastern European specialty, as I’m sure you know. The torches came out and soon virtually the whole of the Jewish quarter was engulfed. By dawn there were perhaps ten thousand homeless people on the street, and slowly they began to gravitate for shelter to the old slaughterhouse, which anyone could see was a good choice: it was large, strongly built, dry, and it had, of course, adequate water and sewage.
“Therefore, when the einsatzkommando and its Croat allies set out on its task, the remnants of the Jewish community of Zagreb were conveniently at hand in, of all places, a kosher slaughterhouse. Naturally, the humor of this did not escape the SS. The Jews were herded into the pens formerly used for the animals, the children and the good-looking women were separated out, and the remainder were divided by sex and stripped. Then the machinery, the hoists and sluices and so forth, was started up, and the Jews were, literally, slaughtered. They were knocked on the head, a hook was driven through their heels, they were jerked upside down by the moving hoist, and their throats were slashed.
“The children were killed in different ways according to the whim of the murderers and the availability of equipment. Some were beheaded like chickens. They had skinning equipment, of course, so some were skinned, alive, dead, who knows? Some were flung into the boiling vats used to remove feathers from fowl. The little corpses were hung neatly on hooks, twenty-three hundred and fifty-two of them, aged four months through twelve years.
“Of course, in the main room there was a great deal more fun, because the SS and the ustashi were pretending to observe the rituals involved in kosher butchering: the draining of the blood, the salt rubbed into the flesh, and so on. There was a catwalk in the koshering room so that the supervising rabbi and his assistants could have a good view that the rituals were being followed. Now this catwalk was occupied by the leader of the einsatzkommando. He had there with him, bound and watching in the most extreme horror, the religious leaders of the Jewish community, with whom he would mockingly consult from time to time about fine points of slaughtering ritual. Every victim was marked with a red-hot electric brand that said ‘kosher meat.’ We can imagine what was going on in their minds. This commander, I don’t need to tell you, was SS-Hauptsturmfuehrer Josef Karl Dreb.
“As you would expect, this event made his reputation. He was promoted and given the post of liaison officer between the SS and the Croatian police authorities. Did I tell you he was a native of Zagreb? Yes, indeed, a local boy, the son of an Austro-Hungarian imperial official and a Croat mother. In 1918, of course, they had to go back to Austria in disgrace.
“Not to psychologize, Mr. Karp, but you couldn’t ask for a better breeding ground for a Nazi. The ruined authoritarian father, impotent, enraged; the mother, a fanatic Catholic, tyrannized by the man, both of them anti-Semites and Slav haters. Of course, the mother is a Slav, but that just spices the pot, you see. And of course, in their intimate moments together, Momma teaches her first-born son perfect idiomatic Serbo-Croat, even with the Zagreb dialect. Of course, it is only German in public: the father insists.
“Well, Karl does well in school, mechanical engineering, joins the Nazis in 1934, and after Anschluss is admitted into the SS, very squeaky that is, because the Momma is not perfectly Aryan. However, he gets in, has a good record, a brave fighter and imaginative murderer, not like Eichmann, afraid to get dirty hands, not a paper pusher at all, a head breaker instead. Ideal for sonderaktionen. We see him in 1943, at the height of his powers, a very important young Sturmbannfuehrer now, working closely with the Croat allies to crush the partisans and the Serbs and other under-people.
“Of course, he had an opposite number on the Croat side, with whom he liaisoned, didn’t he? And how marvelously he got on with this other young man! They were the same age, they shared the same ideals, they had similar backgrounds. Also, strange to say, they even resembled each other, both tall, sturdy, blue eyes, long skull, straight blond hair, and the rest. Now, Mr. Karp, you are a clever man. What do you suppose the name of this other fellow was?”
Karp had to clear his throat. “Djordje Karavitch,” he answered hoarsely.
Leventhal seemed delighted with the reply. “Yes! Yes, Djordje Karavitch, a Croat patriot, reviving an ancient nation in the glow of the New Order. Well, they were thick as thieves for the next year or so, until things started to go badly for the Germans. The Russians were coming, the partisans were getting stronger. Dreb was detailed to a Waffen-SS division, the Prinz Eugen, where he was one of those responsible for reprisals against villages that were supposed to have helped the partisans. Dreb was able to get his good friend Karavitch the command of a company of ustashi attached to the German unit. Thus they were together when in the winter of 1945, their small column was ambushed by a reinforced battalion of partisans. From this attack only three men escaped alive. One was Dreb, one was Karavitch, and the other was, can you guess? No? It was Macek, whom I think you know, and who was then little more than a boy. They were scraping the barrel in 1945.
“So they escape and have many merry adventures, and at last in 1946 they find themselves in the city of Trieste. Karavitch and Macek are making contact with an organization that arranges the transportation of Croat fascists—I’m sorry, now it is Catholic nationalist anticommunists—to the United States.
“But Dreb? No, he is in much deeper trouble. He has to hide while his good friends bring him food. Because, you see, Dreb has made in the war a serious error. Oh, not the atrocities. People who were worse even than Dreb were at that moment being recruited by your government, Mr. Karp, to spy against the Russians. But in 1944 the American air force was conducting heavy raids from Foggia airbase against the industries of Central Europe. Many of these aircraft were forced down in Yugoslavia, and of course the partisans wished to help the crews escape as much as the Germans wished to capture them.
“To this game, Dreb brought his peculiar imagination. When he was able to capture an American crew he would send the healthy crew members to the stalags, to keep Luftwaffe intelligence off his back, but the wounded ones, these he would use as bait to catch partisans. His favorite trick was to stick a bunch of them in a barn or house and then have the partisans tipped off. The place would be heavily booby-trapped with the delayed-action devices he loved to use. He liked to observe the ‘rescue’ at long distance through his field glasses. Smiles, relief, cheers, then boom! Interesting, don’t you think?”
“Fascinating. So if that was known, nobody would have him, not even our intelligence guys. What happened then?”
“Ah, yes, the denouement. On August 14, 1946, a corpse was found in a cheap lodging house in Trieste. The throat had been cut. This was not an unusual occurrence at the time, of course, but what attracted attention to this particular corpse was that it had an SS identification number tattooed in the armpit. On checking, it was found to be the number of Josef Karl Dreb, SS-Sturmbannfuehrer. Imagine that! Shortly thereafter, Djordje Karavitch and Pavle Macek entered the employment of the U.S. Army’s Counter-intelligence Corps, and a year later, that of the Central Intelligence Agency.”
“And you think this was really Dreb?”
“We know it.”
“What’s your proof?”
“We have informants.”
“Yeah? Who?”
Leventhal smiled. “They are reliable. It is the man.”
“If you say so. But there’s something funny about this operation, boss. I mean, you’re not making a public fuss, not going through DOJ in Washington. Shit, they got a whole unit there does nothing but kick old Nazis out of the country. We got an election year here, you think maybe Begin could shake out a war criminal or two for the Jewish vote? Are you joking? President Ford goes, ‘Hey, Betty, guy says he saw you chalking swastikas in Bucharest in ’43. Sorry, kid, write when you get to Jerusalem.’
“Especially, you got a mutt who aced a bunch of our wounded guys in the war, hey, piece of cake. So why the hanky-panky, Leventhal? Maybe this isn’t an official operation, huh? Where you from, Leventhal? I don’t mean Tel Aviv, I mean before. Maybe Yugoslavia? Maybe Zagreb? You got a special interest in this one, a personal interest? Maybe your boy isn’t heading for a glass cage in Jerusalem. Maybe someplace a lot closer, like a car trunk in LaGuardia, how about that?”
“How about justice?” shouted Leventhal, his face darkening. He rose to his feet and glared down at Karp. “Justice is what’s at stake here, not somebody’s bureaucratic skirts getting dirty. He’s protected, as you well know. And you know why, too. Because the CIA people who hired him knew very well who he was, and that he had murdered American airmen in cold blood. So do you think we will be allowed to just take him away, thank you very much, so he can tell all that to the world?”
“Right,” Karp said wearily. “You got justice mixed up with revenge, Leventhal. Not the same thing at all.”
It had grown dark in the room. Light was no longer coming in through the drapes, and no one had turned on any lights. There was a scuffling noise in the hallway and a shadowy form entered the living room. Karp saw that it was Natan, his face blackened, dressed in baggy coveralls and a wool watchcap. He wore a belt from which hung various items of equipment and a large knife. Slung on his shoulder was an Uzi submachine gun. He conversed briefly with Leventhal and left.
Leventhal turned to Karp. “We are about to begin our operation. You must return to the bedroom, where Devra will look after you. If we are unsuccessful, she will help you get to safety. But under no circumstances are you to attempt to leave here by yourself. Is that clear?”
Karp started to object, then shrugged and went back to the bedroom. The curtains had been drawn over the glass door and the blinds on the window were closed. The only real light came from a tiny nightlamp plugged into the baseboard. By its glow Karp could make out Devra sitting in the armchair, her knitting in her lap. Karp lay on the bed. Outside, it grew darker. The woman stopped knitting. They were silent, waiting.
The noises started, a string of pops far off, shouts, once a shrill cry like that of a tropical bird. Karp wiped the sweat off his palms and concentrated on breathing.
Something exploded outside the room and a red glare shone through the glass of the sliding doors. Then the doors exploded inward, and a man leaped into the room amid a shower of glass and curtain rags.
He really does look just like a snake, was Karp’s first thought. The man was small and lithe and dressed in army fatigues. The face was so narrow and the yellow-brown eyes were so close together as to be almost a deformity. The mouth was a nearly lipless V, the nose two pits in a flat bump, and Sergio Ruiz had skin trouble too; his pale ochre face was covered with shiny bumps and excavations, adding to the reptilian effect.
On leaping into the room, he had crouched, sighting down the barrel of his Armalite automatic rifle into the four corners of the room in approved infantry-school fashion. He was angry and upset. He couldn’t understand why he was having all these problems with shooting one man, nor did he understand why his people were being shot down in the dark outside by hidden strangers. He wanted to do the job as quickly as possible and get out of this crazy place.
Ruiz saw the woman first, sitting wide-eyed in her armchair. A woman was no danger, another piece of the furniture; he would deal with her later. Turning a quarter turn, he spotted Karp sitting up in his bed. Even in the dim light the target was unmistakable. He raised his rifle, sighted on Karp’s chest, and touched the trigger. Karp had at that instant begun to roll off the bed in the direction of the nightlight. His hand reached out to swat it from its wall socket.
As soon as Ruiz’s eyes were no longer on her, Devra Blok reached into her knitting bag and drew out one of the little alloy .22-caliber automatic pistols the Mossad issues to its agents when they are in foreign parts and need to kill people. In one long-practiced motion she yanked the slide back to chamber a round, pointed, and fired twice into the back of Sergio Ruiz’s head. The assassin’s hand tightened reflexively on the trigger as the slugs tore into his brain and the Armalite erupted.
Karp landed on his bad knee and grunted in pain. He was down in the narrow space between the bed and the wall, trying to make himself small and reaching for the nightlight with a shaking hand. Above him, Ruiz’s assault rifle roared and bits of plaster, wood, and pillow feathers fell down on him. He waited for the pain of the bullets and worried fleetingly about wetting his pants. Then the firing stopped and he felt the bed jerk with the impact of a weight falling upon it.
He stuck his head up cautiously. Ruiz was facedown on the bed, his head in the center of a spreading red stain. One of his legs was twitching rhythmically. He was still breathing, a hoarse rasp, but Karp could see, and smell, that he had lost control of his bowels and bladder. Karp saw Devra Blok bend over Ruiz, as if to examine him. He saw the little dark gun in her hand and saw what she was about to do. He said, “Hey …”
She pressed the muzzle of the pistol against the base of Ruiz’s skull and pulled the trigger twice. The shots made almost no sound: bnff! bnff! Ruiz stopped breathing. Karp looked at the expression on the woman’s face. It was neutral, somewhat fatigued, like a suburban housewife who has just brought a load of garbage to the curb.
Their eyes met. She said, “Are you all right?”
Karp nodded. He stood up unsteadily, shaking, and felt an urgent need to visit the bathroom. He looked at the stinking corpse, then at Devra. She was sliding a fresh clip into her gun. “No more Anne Frank, right, Devra?” he said. She looked at him blankly, her brown eyes as innocent as a seal’s.