The room smelled and looked like it had recently been cleaned. There was a low brown sofa, a couple of comfortable-looking armchairs, some newspapers. The walls were adorned with framed landscapes. Verdant farmland and clear skies. No stormy seas, no murky forests. A wall clock ticked the seconds away. It was one minute to seven.
"Good. You're here. And right on time."
The voice was deep and soft, the kind of voice that could soothe and comfort and console, perhaps even heal. It came from the doorway to the inner office. The man who stood there was five foot seven, around forty-five, and had the plump, soft frame of someone who worked a lot at a desk and was not a stranger to good food and drink. His face was round and bland and clean-shaven, with a medium-sized wide-based nose, and a curving jawline and chin. Behind horn-rimmed glasses with circular lenses was a pair of appraising hazel eyes topped by thin brown eyebrows. He had delicate, almost feminine lips, and his brown hair was receding at the temples and thinning on top.
He wore dark pants, a cream shirt, a red tie, and a black jacket with a handkerchief peeking from the breast pocket. His shoes were black and looked expensive. His left hand was stuck in the pocket of his jacket; the right he held out to me. I took it. The hand was warm and soft, but the grip firm and resolute.
"Nice to meet you finally, Mr. Lapid," he said. "I'm Dr. Felix Feinstein."
I told him to call me Adam. He reciprocated by inviting me to call him Felix.
He motioned me into his inner office. It was a spacious room. Bookshelves lined one wall, framed diplomas hung on a second, and an upholstered sofa, long enough for a tall man to stretch on, stood against a third. It smelled of pipe tobacco. There were some more paintings scattered around the room. All were beautifully framed in wood.
A thick shaggy carpet covered most of the floor. The desk behind which Dr. Feinstein now seated himself was large and ornate, with carved wooden trim. Two thickly padded armchairs stood in front of it. This wasn't the second-hand furniture I had in my apartment. This was high-end, expensive stuff.
"Yitzhak told me some extraordinary things about you, Adam," Feinstein said.
"Nothing extraordinary about it. Killing people is not remarkable. It's not something I invented or particularly excelled at."
"But you did get results," he said.
"Some."
"But not enough, I gather from your tone. Well, that's what we're here for, isn't it?"
I took one of the armchairs and looked across the desk. On its right side, beside a black telephone, a fist-sized glass paperweight with a dead butterfly in its middle pressed a batch of papers down. In the center, a sword-shaped letter opener—silver pommel, guard, and all—rested in its standing sheath. On the left side stood three photographs in gilt frames. From where I sat, I could see the front of only one—it showed a woman in her thirties, holding a child in her lap. Probably Feinstein's wife and son.
The room was well illuminated by the ceiling light and two standing lamps in opposite corners of the room. I read the diplomas on the wall behind the desk. One was a graduation diploma in medicine from Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Another was in the field of psychiatry from Oxford University in Britain. Both diplomas were issued before the war. Other diplomas were for various courses and specialties, all related to psychiatry. Now I understood Yitzhak's joke about not showing Feinstein my crazy side.
Dr. Feinstein noticed my perusal of his credentials and said, "Ever been to a psychiatrist before, Adam?"
I shook my head.
"Ever felt the need?" He was looking intently at me. His soft eyes had a surprisingly strong gaze, the sort that could hold you as tightly as a vise.
"No," I said, carefully controlling my voice. I thought over the past few days and wondered if I were telling the truth.
"Well, it is not for everyone," Feinstein said, and I got a feeling he'd caught my lie. "And a lot of people have the wrong impression of it. But it can help. It may not solve all problems, but it makes them easier to bear."
I shifted in my chair. This was not what I was there to talk about.
"Yitzhak said you wanted to finance a trip to Germany for myself, him, and Shimon Borovski."
"I do."
"Why?"
"Why? I don't follow."
"Why are you interested in doing this? Is it for your family, for the Jewish people in general, or is it personal?"
"Oh, now I understand. All of the above, Adam. It is partly for all of us Jews. It is partly for my family, though most of them have lived here in Israel since before the war. And it is partly for myself. You see, I had the misfortune of paying a family visit to Poland in the summer of 1939. Late August, it was. When war broke out, I was stranded in Poland, unable to return to Tel Aviv. I spent some time in hiding, but later was captured and sent to Auschwitz. I understand you were there as well."
I nodded.
"Does this answer your question?"
I nodded again.
"Good. Now let's get down to business. I am interested in financing this trip. I want revenge. Plain and simple. There are too many Nazis walking around as if nothing happened. I want them punished. No one else will do it. Not the Americans, certainly not the new Germany. I find it hard to rest when I think about them living a regular life while so many of us are ashes. Do you understand?"
"Yes," I said.
"You don't know how many people I see here. People who were in the camps, or had to flee east to Russia with nothing, or hid in the woods in the freezing snow. They have all sorts of problems. Bad dreams, irrational fears, panic attacks. The war has not ended for them, nor for me. Has it ended for you?"
I thought of my nightmares and the way I avoided the good memories of my family for fear of encountering the bad memories as well. I said nothing.
"The Nazis and those who helped them need to be punished." He pounded a fist on his desk as he said this. His eyes shone with determination; his voice rang with it.
"It can't be a long trip," I said. "The longer it is, the riskier it gets." I explained how current conditions in Germany made it more difficult to repeat what we did shortly after the war ended. "We won't be able to get many. Ten at most, probably less than seven. The moment things feel hot, we will leave."
"I understand the limitations you face, Adam," he said. "If this new country of ours had any self-respect, it would send out young men to bring Nazis to justice. But the politicians have other priorities, so it falls on us to act." He sighed. "Get as many as you safely can. I ask no more."
"It would be expensive. Thousands of American dollars."
"I have sufficient funds for it. Do not worry about it. Just get me some revenge."
I paused for a beat, examining him. His zeal for vengeance was powerful. I had met others like him in Europe, people whose lust for vengeance was so great it made them discard their morals. I had to make him understand the boundaries.
"I have one rule: We only kill those who were directly responsible. We don't kill families or random civilians. This is not a murder mission. It's a justice mission."
He nodded. "I wouldn't have it any other way. We are not beasts. Kill only those who deserve it."
I told him I would need some money with which to purchase weapons. From a drawer in his desk he withdrew a wad of notes and handed it over. American dollars, small denominations, the wad was tied across its middle with a thick rubber band. I counted it. Five hundred American dollars. More than enough to start. He told me he'd give me more on Sunday. We scheduled to meet at the same time then.
Once that was settled, he smiled pleasantly and said we should toast our venture.
"Wine?" He got a bottle of dark red liquid from a small cabinet and set it on the desk. "It's French. From before the war."