Black Cross

10

“Your tape machine stopped,” said Rabbi Leibovitz.

“What?”

The old man pointed a long finger at the Sony micro-cassette recorder lying on the end table beside his chair. I blinked twice, unable to break the vision of my grandfather at that Oxford window, or my thoughts of my great uncle, whom I had never known.

“You need another tape,” Leibovitz said. “And I need another brandy. Pass the bottle, please.”

I did. The rabbi glanced up at me while carefully pouring the amber liquid into the glass. “So, Doctor, what do you think?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know what to think.”

“Does that sound like your grandfather to you? Does it ring true?”

I pondered the question while I changed cassettes in the Sony. “I guess it does,” I said finally. “I can’t see him compromising his principles simply for revenge.”

“Are you so sure, Mark?”

I studied the rabbi’s wizened face. “I guess I’ll have to wait until you tell me, won’t I? It’s some story, all right. But the detail. . . How could you know all this?”

Leibovitz smiled fleetingly. “Some very long afternoons with Mac in my office. Letters from other persons involved. Once I learned about this story, it . . . possessed me for a while.”

“What about the girl?” I asked, reaching down to the floor. “The woman in this photograph? Who is she in the story? Is she the woman who sent that coded message to Brigadier Smith? What the hell was that about, anyway?”

Rabbi Leibovitz took a sip of his brandy. “Be patient. I’m getting to the girl. You want everything wrapped up in an hour, like a nice television movie.” The old man cocked his head and listened to the relentless cheeeep of the crickets in the humid darkness outside the house. “It’s time to shift focus for a little while. All this wasn’t happening in a vacuum, you know. Other people were pursuing their own ends, quite oblivious to Brigadier Smith in London. Some very evil people. Monsters, I would say, if you don’t object to the word.”

I watched the old rabbi’s eyes flick restlessly around my grandfather’s study. It seemed to me that we had come to a part of the story he did not like. “Where are we shifting our focus to?” I asked, trying to prompt him.

“What?” he asked, his eyes fixing on mine.

“Where,” I said again. “I guess you mean Germany, right?”

Leibovitz sat up straighter in the chair. “I do, yes,” he said in a hoarse but resolute voice. “Nazi Germany.”