Triple Identity (30 page)

“Welcome,” he said in English, “Deutsch?” That sounded bizarre.

“No,” I said, “English. And I'd like a table for two.”

He looked down at his reservations book and said, “I don't know if I have a table available for tonight, let me see.”

I thought the guy was just a pompous ass playing games. The place was empty, so why the show? To get a tip for a stale joke?

Finally he said, “Yes, I can give you one table, please follow me.”

He took me through the empty restaurant and to a table like all the others, covered with a red tablecloth and set with Caucasian-style copper plates.

“Thank you,” I said, giving him a dollar. He thanked me vehemently.
A U.S. dollar went a long way in the Soviet Union, where his salary might be only thirty dollars a month. “I'm waiting for a lady. My name is Gordon; please direct her to my table.”

“Of course, sir,” he said.

I sat so preoccupied with my thoughts that I was surprised to hear a woman's voice so close to me, “Dan Gordon?”

I got up, smiled, and said,
“Shalom
, Ariel.”

Ariel looked very much like her mother, perhaps taller and more slender but with the same blue eyes and the same smile. No further identity tests were needed; she was definitely Mina Bernstein's daughter. I was taken with her immediately. She looked younger than her early thirties. Her face was tanned and her body looked athletic in blue jeans. A close-fitting white sweater outlined her ample breasts. Her copper hair was braided loosely, falling below her shoulders.

As soon as she sat down Ariel began firing questions at me. “How did you find me? Are you one of them? How is my mother? Does she know I'm here?”

“Which one do I answer first?” I smiled.

“About my mother, does she know I'm here?” she asked in a serious tone.

“I don't know. I saw her in Munich just before she went back to Israel. She was worried about you; so frankly, I have no idea if she knows that you've escaped from the Latinos. Tell me, how did you manage it?”

She smiled. “I spoke with her on the phone from the consulate after I escaped. So, if you were with my mother before she returned to Israel, you must be from the Office!”

“I'm one of the good guys,” I said, deftly sidestepping a more direct answer. “Tell me.”

At that inopportune moment, as usual, the waiter came with the menu. It consisted of a sticky plastic card with an attached handwritten list in Russian, which I couldn't decipher. “Do you have an English menu?” I asked.

“No. But I can explain,” said the probably fake Caucasian.

“Never mind,” I said, figuring that the best way to get rid of him quickly was to ask him to decide for us.

“Don't pay attention to the menu; their selection is actually very limited,” said Ariel.

“Just give us your freshest meal,” I told the waiter, “and please make it only mildly spicy.” Off he went.

Ariel smiled at me again. “I see that you're impatient. When did you arrive?”

“Two hours ago. So, tell me, how did you get away?”

“From where?”

“From your captors in Munich.”

“How much time do you have?” she asked jokingly. She didn't look or sound like someone who'd just been through an ordeal. She sure was putting up the front of a tough cookie.

“All the time it will take. Just tell me the story.”

“There were two of them,” she recalled. “One who said his name was Tony, but I heard his friend call him Julio. I don't know the other's name. I'm not sure he could speak English, maybe only Spanish.”

“Do you know where you were?”

“No. It was a small apartment somewhere in Munich or its vicinity.”

“Did they tell you what they wanted?”

“They kept demanding that I give them some papers, which they said that my father had given me. But I didn't know what they were talking about. I told them that I had just received a personal letter from my father but no other documents. They kept on pressing me. I was petrified; I was sure I was about to die.”

“Why?” I asked. “Did they hurt you?”

“They never touched me, but they threatened to kill me five times a day. But oral threats weren't the reason I was worried. I wasn't blindfolded and I could identify them. That scared me.”

“Why?”

“Because if they didn't care that I saw them, that must have meant that I would never live to describe them. There was something alarming in their story that my father had kept documents that belonged to them. I didn't know if my father was looking for me, because I couldn't find him when I arrived. I couldn't take it anymore, so I told them about the safe-deposit box where I left my father's letter.”

The waiter came with ten small plates of a variety of unidentified salads and a loaf of freshly baked bread with a thick crust. Ariel waited until he left and continued.

“I told them it was in the Grand Excelsior hotel safe and that only I had access to it. I was hoping that I would be able to attract the attention of somebody at the hotel to help me get away from those terrible people. But when we went to the hotel, they were so close to me, one of them holding a knife underneath his jacket telling me he'd slaughter me like a pig if I made any move, that I realized I couldn't get away. So I had to invent a story: that I had forgotten and that the envelope was in fact in a safe-deposit box at the Mielke Bank. I guess they didn't want to risk going to the bank with me as their hostage, so they demanded to know who else had access to the safe. I told them that the only other person who had access was my mother, who lived in Israel, hoping that would force them to give up the idea. I always add her name to all my accounts, as she does with me. They made me call her in Israel from the hotel pay phone and reverse the charges. They put a tape recorder by the phone to record the conversation and said that if I told my mother anything alarming in Hebrew, I would die because their people can understand Hebrew. I was totally petrified and confused, so I did what they wanted. I asked my mother to come to Munich to help me. I really didn't care about giving them the letter, as long as I got away from them. But when my mother came over, I wasn't allowed to call her.”

“Did you try to escape?”

“Yes. When I understood from their conversation that my mother was in town, I was afraid they'd kidnap her too. I had to warn her. I constantly looked for ways to escape. When they left the apartment for the day they chained me to a water pipe in the kitchen with a chain long enough to let me reach the toilet. I started looking in the kitchen drawers to find a tool to break the chain — a knife, a can opener, anything. There was nothing I could use. Then I thought of a completely different angle. Under the sink there were a few bottles with detergents — cleaning stuff, you know.”

I nodded.

“The chain they used seemed to be made of iron. So I looked through
the detergents’ labels for ingredients I could use to prepare a caustic acid that would eat the metal.”

I looked at her, amazed, and then remembered that she was a chemistry teacher. But my chemistry teachers in high school never looked so good.

“Did it work?”

“Eventually, yes, I used a drain cleaner, which I mixed with other detergents,” she smiled. “But the problem was that the solution I was preparing would emit dangerous gases. It would also leave a stench and, most importantly, would take a long time to consume a thick iron link. I didn't know how much time I had.”

“So what did you do?” I asked. I found her, and the story, fascinating.

“I covered my face, prepared a small quantity of the acid in a glass cereal bowl, and left one ring of the chain dipped inside. I tried not to move, to keep the link soaked in the acid, but my eyes and nose were watering. I was able to keep it dipped for about an hour when my captors returned.”

“Did they notice anything?”

“Yes. They noticed the smell immediately and asked me what it was.”

“I said, ‘It was dirty here, so I cleaned.’ I guess they were satisfied with that.”

“Did they use the phone?”

“I didn't see any phone at the apartment. During the night they locked me in the living room and kept me chained to the sofa bed's metal leg. When they fell asleep, snoring so loudly they could've torn a hole in the wall, I checked the link I'd dipped in the acid and it looked to me like it had been damaged, but not enough to break. The following morning they brought me an apple and a roll for breakfast and tied me back onto the kitchen pipe. As soon as they left I started working on the acid and doubled the quantity. I said to myself, better to cry now because of the fumes than have my family cry over me. Two hours later, the metal was becoming weak so I twisted it and a few drops of the acid flew on my leg.”

“That must have hurt.”

“Well, I have a scar now,” she said, bending to show me her ankle. She came so close I could smell her light flowery perfume.

“You'll live,” I said. “Tell me how it ended.”

“Around noon I was able to break the link but it wasn't enough to release me. I couldn't touch the broken link because of the acid, and the broken part was not big enough to unlink the chain. I almost panicked. I didn't know when they'd be coming back. If they found what I'd done, they would've hurt me.”

“So what did you do?”

“I placed the broken link between the kitchen door hinges and opened and closed the door a million times until the weak metal was flattened and then broke. Then I was free! I still had the handcuffs on my left wrist and a chain of three feet dragging from it. I ran out the door and into the street. I know I must have looked awful, but I didn't care. I stopped a taxi and he took me to the Israeli Consulate. And the rest, you know,” she said, assuming that I already knew the whole story.

“You're lucky to be a chemistry expert,” I said admiringly.

Ariel smiled. “In fact my education and expertise are in physics. I'm finishing my Ph.D. in nuclear physics at the Technion. I teach chemistry in high school to support myself.”

The Technion, Israel's top technological academic institute, was often compared to MIT. So Ariel was following her father's path. Was she also doing it now in Moscow?

“So whom did you meet there?” I thought Benny Friedman might have been on the scene.

“It was a man named Ilan. He debriefed me and wanted me to leave on the first flight out to Israel. I refused and demanded to talk to my dad first.”

Her calmness took me by surprise.

“So they told you?”

“Yes.” She paused. I could see she was fighting tears; her eyes glistened. Impulsively I reached a hand out to touch hers, resting on the table.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “I didn't cry then. It hit me later. They told me that they'd had to send my mother back to Israel and that she was fine. I spoke with her on the phone and she begged me to return home. But I was angry and wanted to stay. I had to see what I could do to track down my father's killers. Everything happened so quickly. I went with Ilan to the
safe-deposit box but it was empty. I guess my mother had taken everything out.”

This was a good opportunity to upgrade my credibility level with her. “In fact, it was a combined effort of your mother and me. I have the letter in my room; I'll give it to you later.”

The place had become noisy all of a sudden. I looked around. A wave of people had washed into the restaurant. I'd been so immersed in our conversation that I hadn't even noticed.

“Have you met Hans Guttmacher?” I asked.

“My father's banker? I know he's holding some things for me, but I didn't get a chance to see him. When I first arrived in Munich, two or maybe three weeks ago, I've lost track, there was no answer from my father's hotel room. So I called Guttmacher. His name was mentioned in my father's letter. I thought that as his banker he might know where my father was. We had a short conversation.”

“Did you ask Guttmacher if he knew where your father was?”

“I only mentioned that I hadn't been able to talk to him yet.”

“Did Guttmacher say anything about it? Did he know where your father was?”

“No, he had no reaction at all, or maybe he said he didn't know. I don't remember.”

“So you never met your father in Munich?”

“No. I first called his hotel, but there was no answer from his room. I called him again several times and left messages but he never returned my calls.”

“Now you know why he never called you back.”

“Yes,” Ariel said quietly. “And I'm just beginning to accept the fact that he's gone.”

“Did you talk to Guttmacher again?”

“Yes, but only briefly.” Ariel pushed away her plate. She put her head in her hands. “I don't think I can deal with food anymore.”

I signaled the waiter to clear the table. But I needed to continue.

“Why did you travel to Munich in the first place? Did your father talk to you about that?” I found myself asking her a question to which I knew the answer from Benny. Was I questioning his story?

“The whole thing was very strange. First I got a call at home in Haifa from someone who told me his name was Gideon. He claimed to be my father's friend and that my father needed me badly in Munich. I didn't quite believe him. But Gideon insisted and told me that my father had wired ten thousand dollars to my bank account in Haifa from Bank Hapoalim in Luxembourg to pay for my trip and expenses. So I decided to check my account and see if the money was there. I thought that would indicate whether Gideon was telling me the truth.”

“And the money was there,” I said knowingly.

“Yes. Exactly the way he said. I had another indication that it was my father's money because he had used that bank to wire me money from time to time. He found it convenient, since the bank in Luxembourg is a branch of my Israeli bank. But this time I noticed something different: the money came from a trust with a long German name that I couldn't pronounce, not from my father's regular account.”

“Do you know who the man was who called you?”

“Gideon? No; I think he's from the Office. He never said it, but I suspected he was working for the Israeli government and that the call was connected to my father's distant past at the Mossad.”

“Interesting,” I said. “Did he explain why your father didn't call you directly, why he needed somebody else to call his own daughter?”