For a long while he saw nothing in the windows. So long, he became convinced either she wasn’t going to be allowed inside the house or whatever business she had would be conducted in front rooms, a possibility he and Denton had discussed. But just as he was about to suggest they move around to the front of the house, a movement in the kitchen window caught his eye.
The katsa breezed into the small room, still limping. Hinkle hulked in after her. She appeared to be trying to chat him up, talking gaily, but Hinkle only went to the phone on the wall and picked up the receiver, handed it to her as if to say, Do it and be gone.
She had to be playing the part of a dimwit, because she ignored the obvious message and continued to chat on.
Nate’s eyes were glued to her, watching for some clue that she was going to put some tiny auditory device on the receiver or anywhere else in the room. Fortunately, Hinkle seemed to be watching her just as closely. Nate almost cheered.
When the woman finally got on the phone, she did a slow turn. Her hands were animated, as if she was in conversation with whoever was on the other end of the line. But something in her face, particularly as her circuit turned her away from Hinkle, indicated she was studying her surroundings quite closely.
As she faced the window, her eyes looked up and straight through the glass. For a pulse, Nate thought she was looking at him, but then he realized that she was looking at Mr. Smith, though she probably could not actually see him from there. The hand that wasn’t holding the phone came in front of her, where Hinkle couldn’t see it, and she pointed, hard, to her left.
Nate swung the binocs and saw she was pointing to the tiny dining room table. On the table was a large black bag, like an attaché case. Nate’s toes curled.
“They have their papers in a briefcase,” he said, low, to Denton. “She’s spotted it.”
Denton put a hand on Nate’s shoulder and squeezed in reassurance.
The woman hung up the phone, putting a vapid look back on her face before turning to Hinkle. She started chatting again, but Hinkle took her elbow to escort her out.
She hung back, tugging at her purse. For a moment, Nate thought she was going to bring out a gun. But what she brought out of that voluminous space was a bottle of liquor.
She tried to press it on Hinkle. He shook his head. She tried harder, leaning into him. When Hinkle still wouldn’t take it she placed it on the kitchen counter and allowed him to lead her from the room. A few minutes later they heard the almost inaudible sound of a door closing and the katsa, still limping, started back down the road.
“Damn!” Nate said. He turned the binocs back to the kitchen window, willing Hinkle to reappear and toss that thing out the window. He didn’t. The bottle sat there. “Shit!”
“What is it?” Denton whispered.
Nate realized he’d been hogging the binoculars and Denton hadn’t been able to see a thing. He turned them long enough to see Mr. Smith slip back into the woods, toward the hole in the fence and the Holocaust museum, then handed them back.
“He’s going. It must be over. She used the phone, just like you said. And then she left him a bottle. Looks like vodka or gin.”
Denton didn’t look too concerned.
“Don’t you see, that would be the perfect way to get a bug in the house!” Nate insisted.
Denton raised the binocs to look at the kitchen. Nate squinted. As far as he could see, there was still no one there.
Denton spoke calmly: “Why put a bug on a bottle of liquor? It’s likely to be thrown out in a day or two, whether they drink it or not.”
He had a point.
“But why else would she give them liquor?” Nate asked.
Denton lowered the binoculars. “Let’s hope Aharon and Hannah find out.”
Aharon could not believe he was going into the Mossad’s actual rooms. Well, leave it to Hannah. The woman single-handedly could have brought the Roman Empire to its knees.
He looked around the hall once more—still nothing, not a peep—and put the key into the keyhole. Hannah had gotten the key, filched it from behind the reception desk as easily as if thievery had been mother’s milk to her. Aharon shook his head, but he had to admit, he was impressed. The door swung inward.
Could the Mossad have hidden cameras in the room? Infrared sensors? Booby traps? Naturally. That’s why Aharon had insisted on being the one to go into the room while Hannah watched downstairs to make sure their quarry didn’t return. But now that he’d won that particular battle and was here, it did not seem such a victory.
Thievery had not been mother’s milk to Aharon and he wasn’t sure where to begin.
He saw nothing of the booby trap ilk, no cameras. He went through the suitcases, trying to put everything back exactly the way he found it, but feeling clumsy about it. Rummaging through ladies’ underwear! And beardless rummaging at that. It was not to be believed.
In a drawer of the bureau under a pile of men’s pants Aharon found files. This was what he had come for, and though he wanted nothing more than to get out of this room as quickly as possible, he took out the files and sat with them on the floor.
There were half a dozen legal-sized manila folders with elastic bands to hold them closed. The one on top was his.
Aharon hissed in a breath and, fascinated, read someone else’s account of him. A photograph of him—a good one, taken outdoors, was in the front of the file. It had been taken without his knowing, apparently in Jerusalem. He was assessed as “fanatically Orthodox.”
Aharon looked at the picture of the man he had been and felt a strange tightening sensation behind the eyes. Looking at the photo, he would say that was a hard man, a man who believed he had all the answers, a man who, in fact, knew very little.
He put his own file down and flipped through the others. There was a file each on Dr. Talcott, Nate, and Denton. There was not a file, thankfully, on his wife. The last file was Anatoli’s.
Aharon knew that Anatoli had been going under a pseudonym for some time. In Poland he used the name Solkeski, not Nikiel. What frightened Aharon when he opened the file was the first image—a blown-up eight-by-ten photograph of Anatoli’s arm. There was a swatch of skin showing where his black wool coat sleeve had been raised, raised by the heavy, meaty hand that had a grip on the arm. The photograph must have been taken when the DoD agents were escorting Anatoli somewhere, Aharon thought. And it must have been taken with a telephoto lens. The numbers on Anatoli’s arm were as plain as day.
Aharon flipped the picture forward. Sure enough, there, on the biographical form was a photograph of Anatoli, at least twenty years old, and his real name. The file was thick, including printouts of some of the “pages of testimony” from Yad Vashem that mentioned Kobinski and Anatoli and camp records as well.
Aharon went to stroke his beard and found empty air. He clucked his tongue thoughtfully and rocked a little, the file in his lap.
The Mossad—Norowitz—knew who Anatoli was, that he was Kobinski’s closest ally and disciple. Aharon thought about the man who had wiped corned beef juice from his fingers to look at the code binder, the man who had called him so frequently in the last few months.
Rabbi, have you found any more of Kobinski’s manuscript?
What would Norowitz do to get his hands on Anatoli? What would he not do? But the DoD had Anatoli, at least for the moment. Then again, they’d also had Jill and that had not stopped the Mossad from attempting to kidnap her.
A beep startled Aharon from his cogitation. He scrambled to his feet, running to the window, heart hammering. Then he realized that the sound had not come from outside but from a device on the bureau that looked like an oversize portable phone. It beeped again.