He decided to go for a drive in the Gray Ghost.
As far as David Strauss was concerned, Frankfurt, Germany, Alix’s situation, the bizarre shooting spree at the Kleine-Garten marked the end of it for him.
Anything that remained of the Nazi/Jewish/Strauss family melodrama could go on very well without him now. It would just have to.
At School Road, David sat in the gray Mercedes with the motor running. He lit up a cigarette, smoking it without moving a muscle or even an eyelid.
David was looking down on the field where his friend Hal Friedman had once made the most incredible diving catch in the history of American sandlot football. Christ, what an unbelievable fool he’d been with Alix, he was thinking at the same time. What had Alix been thinking of him all that time in Europe?
He saw a young girl in a tan Friendly’s uniform walking down School Road, going to work.
Against his will, he could see Alix moving, down the same street twenty years before. Wearing penny loafers, argyle socks, Ambush perfume; maybe his ridiculous school sweater with the big gold S; one of those gold circle pins. The memory was like a good hard punch in the stomach.
Paul Simon was singing on the car radio. “Slip-Sliding Away.” The radio station was devoting the whole hour to Simon—and to sending David snide messages about the condition of his life.
He lit another cigarette with the stub of the last. Delicious tobacco flavor.
David remembered an incident with Chaim Rabitz. Deserting the young Hasid boy up in the woods at Mountain House. Letting him cry his heart out. Hurting another Jew.
That was about the worst flicking thing David could ever remember doing to anybody.
Other than punching some troglodytic German photographer in the teeth, that is.
And killing Michael Ben-Iban in Frankfurt. Actually killing another man.
David’s cigarette had burned all the way down. He released the Mercedes’s hand brake and drove back home.
Twenty-five Upper North Avenue. Where he and Nick the Quick had been little goddamn boys together. Where Elena had made them onion and garlic bagels every Sunday morning for about twenty years in a row.
Two dark Oldsmobiles were sitting out in front of the house when David turned the corner.
The lonely old sailing ship had visitors. Something didn’t look right.
David switched off the radio and climbed up the front steps. What in the name of God was going on now.
“Slip-Sliding Away” was playing at full volume in his head.
CHAPTER 57
Harry Callaghan had come to Scarsdale with two new-comers from Washington.
The two men didn’t look like agents or interrogators, David was thinking as he accepted their handshakes. They were slicker. Big-business types. Suits. They looked like they ought to work for E.F. Hutton or PaineWebber.
They made David remember something his grandfather had told him once while they were strolling along Park Avenue near Forty-eighth Street in New York. “The American businessman is a peculiar animal, David. See there, that businessman in front of the Waldorf Every day he puts on his nice three-piece suit … to go and shovel horse manure.”
“We’re just here to have a little chat,” the more affable of the two men said to David.
“There have been a few significant developments in the past day or so,” the more aggressive government man said.
“I’m not interested.” David shook his head. “If I can help by talking to you two, good. But I’m not interested.”
“Look, I’ve got something to say here. Maybe you won’t want to hear this, Dr. Strauss.” The tougher of the two men from Washington spoke.
“You see, we’re fairly certain we know what Dachau Two is all about now. Both our Arab sources and Mossad feel that it’s a very large-scale strike. Something to put the Jewish terrorists way, way up on the hit parade. Something important, like Lod, or Munich. Only bigger than Lod or Munich.”
David put up his hand to stop the man from saying any more. “I don’t know if you people can understand this, but I don’t believe I have any more to give to this particular cause. What do you think you want from me now?”
“I want to try and make you feel the meaning of massacre. Do you feel massacre, Doctor?”
What David Strauss thought he felt was uncontrollable anger, some kind of terrible electrical overload in his brain.
He was beginning to understand that he couldn’t just leave things as they were now. He couldn’t simply bow out of it. They weren’t going to let him. And that meant unbelievable, unendurable pain coming up ahead.
He looked at Harry, and the older man bowed his head slightly.
David’s mind quickly ran over the events leading up to this point: the initial attack in Scarsdale; Heather’s and Elena’s deaths; Nick’s and Beri’s deaths in California; the trip to Europe with Alix; the shooting of Ben-Iban; Alix’s connection with the secret revenge group.
David thought about how Elena had felt he ought to be spared from knowing about the revenge group right from the first. How Nick had shouldered that family responsibility, and died because of it.
After the Frankfurt shooting, the American intelligence people had really given him no choice in the matter. They had shipped him right home, gotten David away from the scene of danger.
Thousands of miles away, he had been able to accept being out of the affair. More than that, it had begun to seem impossible that he ever might get involved again. David had settled into a slightly unreal, numb, but passable daily routine.
Now, David understood that the period of adjustment was over. He felt a terrible squeezing sensation in his brain. He felt nauseated all of a sudden.
“We have space booked for you on Aeroflot this evening, Dr. Strauss … early this week the Russians found the wreck of a small plane near Odessa that was loaded with arms and equipment. Two Storm Troop members were found dead near the wreck … We’d, like you to go to Moscow for us, Dr. Strauss. There’s always the chance you might recognize one of them. More important, we want you there in case there are any negotiations, any important communications. You might very well be able to help then.”
David looked over at Harry. “Are you still in this thing with me?”
The pipe-smoking man nodded in his quiet, confident way. Of course he was going to Russia. Harry Callaghan was committed until the job was finished.
They went to Russia together, David and Harry did.
They were going to hunt down Alix and the others, David knew.
CHAPTER 58
Time and Newsweek would construct neat, red-lined boxes on the Dachau Two strike team.
One cleverly entitled its piece “Black Sabbath: The Last Olympic Team,” and therein described the commando group in thriller prose worthy of John Le Carré, or at least Frederick Forsyth.
The Dachau Two group, a.k.a. “Storm Troop,” was a highly motivated and very well financed terrorist team.
It was the Jewish version of PLO’s Black September, and as such had learned its history lessons well. The group was lean and very sharp, with nearly all of its members handpicked from top Intelligence agencies or armies. Mossad, Shin Beth, the CIA, MI6 and Grenzschutzgruppe 9 (West Germany’s antiterrorist specialists) all contributed personnel to make the Dachau Zwei team the most awesomely professional and fearsome group that has been assembled to date.
All in all, twenty-nine Storm Troop members went to the Olympics to avenge wrongs committed against the Jewish people. They included:
Code name: Storm Troop Main.
Benn Essmann. The Soldier. Colonel Essmann was a decorated and widely known war hero in Israel. Joined the army when he was seventeen and just out of Jerusalem’s Rechavia High School. Mossad agent for four years. Then left the company because of concerns over political intervention. Father and sister killed in a PLO bombing. Two cousins murdered at Munich Olympics. There are Arab allegations that Essmann was still following orders from, the Menachem Begin governmen
t when he went into Russia. (Other reports have Ben Essmann listed No. 3 on Mosaad’s secret death lists.)
Joseph Servenko. The Architect. A Russian Jew and leader of past movements to recognize Jewish human rights in Soviet Russia. Three of Bervenko’s brothers are in Soviet prisons. Servenko’s wife was reportedly killed during a raid by the Russian secret police.
Gary Weinstein. The Engineer, or “Einstein.” Came from the CIA by way of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the Virginia Institute of Technology, and Honeywell Corporation. The most brilliant of the terrorists. Also the most unstable. Weinstein worked in a Washington, D. C., garage for 2 1/2 years perfecting the electronics for Dachau Two.
Anna Lascher. The Weapons Expert. Came from Britain’s MI6, where she was also a linguist. Expert in the use of small arms and explosives. Anna Lascher was part of the British team’s security force at the Munich Olympics.
Alix Rothschild. The Actress. Former model and Hollywood actress. Recruited by Michael Ben-Iban, at first solely as a money-raiser among wealthy American, Israeli, and French Jews. Was a spectator at the Munich Olympics. Mother and father killed at Dachau and Buchenwald, respectively. Came to Moscow to be the group’s spokesperson. (Also, see story on Dr. David Strauss.)
Arthur Silver. The Newspaperman. Former subagent for OSS, then for the CIA in both France and Germany. Met Nazi-hunter Michael Ben-Iban on several occasions and was very impressed by the man. Attended Munich Olympics as journalist for the New York Times.
Malachi Ben Eden. The Weapons Expert. Former Shin Beth agent. Once named “Father of the Year” by a Jerusalem newspaper. Also, a ruthless guerrilla fighter.
Shlomo “Sam” Herschel. The Dentist. Entire family of nineteen members killed at Dachau. Arrested in Argentina after “avenger-style” strangulation of former SS Colonel in back of furniture delivery truck. Arrested in Paris for similar “avenger-style” murders. Never brought to trial on any of these charges.
Marc Jacobson. The Medic. Youngest member of the Dachau group at twenty. Lived in Israel (Hayelet Ha-Schachar Kibbutz) on and off since he was ten years old. Attended UCLA, where he was a premed student. Minored in advanced weaponry. Plus … Code name: Storm Troop Minor—the cover team. Code name: Blitzkrieg—the attack team. Code name: Eagle—the setup team … twenty-nine members in all.
During their final dinner together at Lev Ginzburg’s dacha, Alix found herself being called upon to stand at the table, to make a toast that brought on sadness, joy, cheering, and confusion.
“For century after century,” she said with a glass of red wine up to her eye, “our nation has learned from catastrophe. Now I fear the others must learn something from this terrible lesson.
“May this be the final lesson, please God. L’Ch’aim! Chazack v’amotz!”
Tears were in her eyes when Alix sat down. Mixed in with all of her confusion, she was thinking about David. Alix missed David more than she would have believed possible. For the first time in her life, she thought, she had actually become dependent on someone other than herself.
The entire group was bedded down by nine-thirty that night.
Starting at 3:30 A.M., they began to leave for Moscow. Traveling separately, they boarded the Russian-Latvian Rail-road. They got into sputtering Fiats and fuel-spewing Russian trucks. The Medic and the Nurse rode motorcycles like two young students going to the Olympics.
Twenty-nine highly efficient commandos were now speeding toward Moscow, a city of some eight and a half million.
“It was like no commando unit that had ever entered a large civilian community during peacetime,” a London news magazine would say.
“It augured house-to-house fighting. Night fighting. The ultimate terrors that have become inevitable during the last third of our century.”
Part VI
CHAPTER 59
Very early on the morning of July 17, a blond fifteen-year-old girl named Marina Shchelokov, a prizewinning member of the Soviet Komsomol youth group, tramped through the black, rain-slicked Moscow Hills.
Behind the willowy girl runner, a convoy of Russian Army motorcycles rode slowly and noisily Their steady putt putt putt varoom, varoom disturbed the peace for several hundred yards in any direction.
Still, the motorcycle headlamps made purplish circles and shooting stars against the slanting rain and dark sky. It was all very pretty and moving.
Hundreds of sopping-wet Russians from nearby suburbs lined the muddy roadside, clapping and whistling for the local girl. It was very much like an American Legion or VFW parade in a small American town.
The petite teenager held the Olympic flame tightly in her right hand. As a surprisingly deep-voiced Marina Shchelokov had explained to Komsomol selection committees and at subsequent Communist Party gatherings, the tradition behind the Olympic flame was a rich and beautiful one. Since 1936, the flame had been transported by some form of relay from Mount Olympus to the site of the Olympics. The eternal flame was the symbol of friendship at the Olympics. For Moscow, the flame had already been carried thousands of miles from Olympus, where it had been lit by six vestal virgins.
And now it was all five-foot one-inch, ninety-seven-pound Marina’s. For her one-kilometer—approximately nine-minute—run Marina Shchelokov was the twenty-second Olympiad.
Her one-kilometer run wasn’t a particularly inspiring time for the idealistic Komsomol girl, however.
First of all, there was a cold stinging rain in her face and on the blue satin runner’s uniform that she’d labored for weeks to make for herself.
Then there was the steep uphill nature of her particular section of the run. Last though, and worst of all, there was the laughing and the cynical joking by the young Russian soldiers propped up on their husky black motorcycles.
As she ran into the rain, chin thrust out, bare arms stiff and tired, Marina wondered to herself if a glimpse behind other scenes at the grand and mighty Olympics might not be equally disillusioning. Getting her own little peek behind the pageantry, she wondered what all the rest of it was really like.
Such a sad and defeatist way to think, Marina finally decided. Why couldn’t people just look for the best in things, rather than the worst? Why was she beginning to think like a jaded Westerner herself?
The comrades from her hometown were clapping anyway: her school friends and neighbors.
She passed her father, who was beaming with tremendous pride. Her mother and small bratty brother were grinning like matriochki dolls from underneath the family umbrella.
In spite of the rude soldiers, in spite of the rain and the steep, unfriendly hill, it was a spectacularly glorious moment The young Russian girl felt a sudden rush of adrenaline that threatened to lift her straight up into the sky.
Marina Shchelokov looked into the eternal flame and tears rolled down her already wet and makeup-smeared cheeks. She was so proud of what she was doing, so proud of Russia, she almost couldn’t believe it.
The pretty fifteen-year-old had just reached the shadowy apex of her last hill when she tripped and fell.
Marina’s right knee simply buckled and she found herself performing an unexpected head-over-heels somersault.
She landed hard next to the roadway and her running suit was ruined in the mud. A heavy black motorcycle skidded right past her and fell on its side.
Through blue eyes stained with tears, Marina saw all sorts of concerned people racing toward her from the road-side. She saw her father running as fast as he could. The young soldiers were jumping off their motorcycles. The flame was still burning brightly, though.
Finally, the fifteen-year-old girl put her head down to rest on the glistening mud. Blood from the bullet wound under her blond hair mixed in with the rainwater.
Marina Shchelokov was the first to die.
CHAPTER 60
Alix was spending her first petrifying day in Moscow.
Over the course of two years, there had been a hundred-odd drafts and different versions of the ultimatum. World conditions—especially the
Middle East balance—shifted at least that many times. Strategies were changed. Only one factor seemed to remain constant.
This was the group’s obsession to get the points of the demands set down with precision and accuracy.
It was an obsession to make certain that the important document would finally communicate, or at least record, the truth about the Nazis and the Jewish people.
The indictment was to have begun: “For two thousand years, the world has attempted every possible overt and covert method to try to destroy one nation of people, the nation of Jews.”
Now Alix and Arthur Silver, the Newspaperman, carefully reworked the opening words. They had to get the opening just right. Perfect.
The tiny hotel where they were lodged was appropriately anonymous and out of the way. The hotel was owned by a Russian jeweler who had married a Jewish woman, then had seen her taken away to a labor camp in Minsk.
Seated at a worktable from which they could see a snatch of royal-blue Moskva River, Alix and Arthur Silver reworked the important opening.
They polished the section of the indictment pertaining to Nazis in modern-day Germany.
They worked on the long section that dealt with the slave-labor camps inside Russia.
Finally, Alix and the Newspaperman agreed on the shortened version that Alix was to read before the TV cameras.
Then they were ready.
After a snack of cold soup, smoked fish, and sour bread, Alix stood before Arthur Silver. Suddenly she was struck with the fear that she wasn’t going to be good enough to deliver the demands: Alix’s body felt cold and unnatural. She wished she hadn’t eaten anything. She wished she were anywhere else but this cramped, very foreign room.
“Now you have to help me rehearse,” she finally said.
“Do you take criticism well?” the Newspaperman asked.
“You have to be very tough with me. I have a tendency to be a lazy performer. I don’t concentrate as well as I should.”