The Confessor

MUNICH

Detective Axel Weiss of the Munich Kriminal Polizei was waiting outside Adalbertstrasse 68 two days later, dressed in civilian clothes and a tan raincoat. He shook Gabriel's hand carefully, as though he were feeling its density. A tall man with a narrow face and a long nose, Weiss's dark complexion and short-cropped black hair gave him the appearance of a Doberman pinscher. He released Gabriel's hand and patted him fraternally on the shoulder.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Herr Landau, though I'm sorry it has to be under these circumstances. Let me take you somewhere comfortable to talk before we go up to the apartment."

They set off down the rain-soaked pavement. It was late afternoon, and the lights of Schwabing were slowly coming up. Gabriel never liked German cities at night. The detective stopped in front

of a coffeehouse and peered through a fogged window. Wood floors, round tables, students and intellectuals hunched over books. "This will do," he said. Then he opened the door and led Gabriel to a quiet table in the back.

"Your people at the consulate tell me you own an art gallery."

"Yes, that's right."

"In Tel Aviv?"

"You know Tel Aviv ?"

The detective shook his head. "It must be very hard for you now--with the war and all."

"We make do. But then, we always have."

A waitress appeared. Detective Weiss ordered two coffees.

"Something to eat, Herr Landau?"

Gabriel shook his head. When the waitress was gone, Weiss said, "Do you have a card?"

He managed to pose the question in an offhand way, but Gabriel could tell his cover story was being probed. His work had left him incapable of seeing things as they appeared to be. When he viewed paintings, he saw not only the surface but the underdrawings and layers of base paint. The same was true of the people he met in his work for Shamron and the situations he found himself. He had the distinct impression Axel Weiss was more than just a detective for the Munich Kriminal Polizei. Indeed, Gabriel could feel Weiss's eyes boring into him as he reached into his wallet and produced the business card Shamron had given him in Venice. The detective held it up to the light, as if looking for the marks of a counterfeiter.

"May I keep this?"

"Sure." Gabriel held open his wallet. "Do you need any other identification?"

The detective seemed to find this question offensive and made a grandiose German gesture of dismissal. "Ach, no! Of course not. I'm just interested in art, that's all."

Gabriel resisted the temptation to see how little the German policeman knew about art.

"You've spoken to your people?"

Gabriel nodded solemnly. Earlier that afternoon, he had paid a visit to the Israeli consulate for a largely ceremonial briefing. The consular officer had given him a file containing copies of the police reports and clippings from the Munich press. The file was now resting in Ehud Landau's expensive leather briefcase.

"The consular officer was very helpful," Gabriel said. "But if you don't mind, Detective Weiss, I'd like to hear about Benjamin's murder from you."

"Of course," the German said.

He spent the next twenty minutes giving Gabriel a thorough account of the circumstances surrounding the killing. Time of death, cause of death, caliber of weapon, the well-documented threats against Benjamin's life, the graffiti left on the walls of his flat. He spoke in the calm but forthright manner that police the world over seem to reserve for the relatives of the slain. Gabriel's demeanor mirrored that of the German detective. He did not feign grief. He did not pretend that the gruesome details of his half-brother's death caused him pain. He was an Israeli. He saw death nearly on a daily basis. The time for mourning had ended. Now was the time for answers and clearheaded thinking.

"Why was he shot in the knee, Detective?"

Weiss pulled his lips down and tilted his narrow head. "We're not sure. There may have been a struggle. Or they may have wanted to torture him."

"But you told me that none of the other tenants heard any sound. Surely, if he was tortured, the sound of his screaming would have been audible in other parts of the building."

"As I said, Herr Landau, we're not sure."

Weiss was clearly frustrated by the line of questioning, but Herr Landau, art dealer from Tel Aviv, was not quite finished.

"Is a wound to the knee consistent with other murders carried out by right-wing extremists?"

"I can't say that it is."

"Do you have any suspects?"

"We're questioning a number of different people in connection with the murder. I'm afraid that's all I can say at the moment."

"Have you explored the possibility that his death was somehow linked to his teaching at the university? A disgruntled student, for example?"

The detective managed a smile, but it was clear his patience was being put to the test. "Your brother was much beloved. His students worshipped him. He was also on sabbatical this term." The detective paused and studied Gabriel a moment. "You were aware of that, weren't you, Herr Landau?"

Gabriel decided it was best not to lie. "No, I'm afraid I wasn't. We haven't spoken in some time. Why was he on sabbatical?"

"The chairman of his department told us he was working on a new book." The detective swallowed the last of his coffee. "Shall we have a look at the apartment now?"

"I just have one more question."

"What's that, Herr Landau?"

"How did the killer get into his building?"

"That's one I can answer," Weiss said. "Despite the fact that your brother received regular death threats, he lived in a very insecure

building. The tenants are very casual about who they let in. If someone presses the intercom and says 'advertisements,' they're routinely buzzed in. A student who lives one floor above Professor Stern is fairly certain she was the one who let the killer into the building. She's still very upset. Apparently, she was very fond of him."

They walked back to the apartment building through a steady rain. The detective pressed a button on the intercom panel. Gabriel took note of the corresponding name. Lillian Ratzinger -- caretaker. A moment later, a small, fierce-looking woman with hunted brown eyes peered at them around the edge of the door. She recognized Weiss and opened the door to them.

"Good afternoon, Frau Ratzinger," the detective said. "This is Benjamin's brother, Ehud Landau. He's here to put Benjamin's affairs in order."

The old woman glanced at Gabriel and nodded. Then she turned away, as if the sight of him made her uneasy.

An acidic odor greeted Gabriel in the lobby. It reminded him of the solvents he used to strip dirty varnish from a canvas. He peered around a corner and saw the cosmetic. A fat woman in the midst of a pedicure looked up at him over a glossy German fashion magazine. Gabriel turned away. Benjamin the eternal student, he thought. Benjamin would be comfortable in a place like this.

On the wall adjacent to the door was a row of metal postboxes. The one corresponding to Benjamin's flat still bore his name. Through the tiny window, Gabriel could see it was empty.

The old woman led them up the dimly lit staircase, a ring of

passkeys tinkling in her hand. She paused outside Benjamin's apartment. Tattered remnants of crime-scene tape hung from the door-jamb, and a mound of dead roses lay on the floor. Taped to the wall was a sign, scrawled in a desperate hand: liebe ist starker als hab--Love is stronger than hate. Something about the idealistic naivety of the slogan angered Gabriel. Then he remembered it was the same thing Leah had said to him before he left for Europe to kill Palestinians for Shamron.

"Love is stronger than hate, Gabriel. Whatever you do, don't hate them. If you hate them, you'll become just life Shamron."

The old woman unlocked the door and left without looking at Gabriel. He wondered about the source of her anxiety. Perhaps it was her age. Perhaps she was of a generation still uncomfortable in the presence of Jews.

Weiss led Gabriel into the front room overlooking the Adalbertstrasse. The afternoon shadows were heavy. The detective illuminated the room by turning on the lamp on Benjamin's desk. Gabriel glanced down, then quickly took a step back. The floor was coated with Benjamin's blood. He looked up at the wall and saw the graffiti for the first time. Detective Weiss pointed to the first symbol, a diamond resting on a pedestal that resembled an inverted V.

"This one is known as the Odin Rune," Weiss said. "It's an ancient Norse symbol that expresses faith in the pagan religion called Odinism."

"And the second one?" Gabriel asked, though he knew the answer already.

Weiss looked at it a moment before responding. Three numeral sevens, linked at their bases, surrounded by a sea of red.

"It's called the Three Sevens or the Three-Bladed Swastika,"

the German said. "It symbolizes supremacy over the devil as represented by the numbers 666."

Gabriel took a step forward and tilted his head to one side, as though he were inspecting a canvas in need of restoration. To his well-trained eye it seemed the artist was an imitator rather than a believer. Something else struck him. The symbols of hatred were probably sprayed onto the wall in the moments after Benjamin's murder, yet the lines were straight and perfectly executed, revealing no signs of stress or anxiety. A man used to killing, thought Gabriel. A man comfortable around the dead.

He walked over to the desk. "Was Benjamin's computer taken as evidence?"

Weiss shook his head. "Stolen."

Gabriel looked down at the safe, which was open and empty.

"Stolen as well," the detective said, anticipating the next question.

Gabriel removed a small notebook and pen from his jacket pocket. The policeman sat heavily on the couch, as if he had been walking a beat all day.

"I have to remain in the flat with you while you conduct your inventory. I'm sorry, but those are the rules." He loosened his tie. "Take as much time as you need, Herr Landau. And whatever you do, don't try to take anything, eh? Those are the rules too."

Gabriel could do only so much in the presence of the detective. He started in the bedroom. The bed was unmade, and on the cracked leather armchair was a stack of freshly laundered clothing, still bound in brown paper and string. On the bedside table was a black mask and a pair of foam-rubber earplugs. Benjamin, Gabriel remembered, was a notoriously light sleeper. The curtains were heavy and dark, the kind usually kept by someone who works at night and sleeps during the day. When Gabriel drew them, the air was suddenly filled with dust.

He spent the next thirty minutes carefully going through the contents of the closet, the dresser, and the bedside table. He made copious notes in his leather-bound notebook, just in case Detective Weiss wanted to have a look at his inventory. In truth, he saw nothing out of the ordinary.

He entered the second bedroom. The walls were lined with bookshelves and filing cabinets. Obviously, Benjamin had turned it into a storage room. It looked as though a bomb had exploded nearby. The floor was strewn with books, and the file drawers were flung open. Gabriel wondered who was responsible, the Munich police or Benjamin's killer.

His search lasted nearly an hour. He flipped through the contents of every file and the pages of every book. Weiss appeared once in the doorway to check on his progress, then yawned and wandered back to the sitting room. Again, Gabriel made abundant notes for the benefit of the detective but found nothing linking Benjamin to the Office--and nothing that might explain why he was murdered.

He walked back to the sitting room. Weiss was watching the evening news on Benjamin's television. He switched it off as Gabriel entered. "Finished?"

"Did Benjamin have a storage room in the building?"

The detective nodded. "German law requires landlords to provide tenants with one."

Gabriel held out his hand. "May I have the key?"

It was Frau Ratzinger who took Gabriel down to the basement and led him along a corridor lined with narrow doorways. She paused at the one marked 2B, which corresponded to Benjamin's flat. The old woman opened the door with a grunt and pulled down on the drawstring connected to the overhead light. A moth scattered, brushing Gabriel's cheek. The woman nodded and receded silently down the hallway.

Gabriel peered into the storage room. It was little more than a closet, some four feet wide and six feet deep, and it reeked of linseed oil and damp. A rusted bicycle frame with one wheel, a pair of ancient skis, unlabeled cardboard boxes stacked to a water-stained ceiling.

He removed the broken bicycle and the skis, and began searching through the boxes of Benjamin's things. In several he found bound stacks of yellowing papers and old spiral notebooks, the flotsam of a lifetime spent in the lecture halls and libraries of academia. There were boxes of dusty old books--the ones, Gabriel supposed, he deemed too unimportant to place on the shelves in his flat. Several more held copies of Conspiracy at Wannsee: A Reappraisal, Benjamin's last book.

The final box contained the purely personal. Gabriel felt like a trespasser. He wondered how he would feel if the roles were reversed, if Shamron had sent someone from the Office to rummage through his things. And what would they find? Only what Gabriel wanted them to see. Solvents and pigment, his brushes and his palette, a fine collection of monographs. A Beretta by his bedside. He drew a long breath and proceeded. Inside a cigar box he

found a pile of tarnished medals and tattered ribbons and remembered that Benjamin had been something of a star runner at school. In an envelope were family photographs. Benjamin, like Gabriel, was an only child. His parents had survived the horrors of Riga only to be killed in a car accident on the road to Haifa. Next he found a stack of letters. The stationery was the color of honey and still smelled of lilac. Gabriel read a few lines and quickly put the letters aside. Vera . . . Benjamin's only love. How many nights had he lain awake in some wretched safe flat, listening to Benjamin complain about how the beguiling Vera had ruined him for all other women? Gabriel was quite certain he hated her more than Benjamin had.

The last item was a manila file folder. Gabriel lifted the cover and inside found a stack of newspaper clippings. His eyes flickered over the headlines. eleven Israeli athletes and coaches taken

HOSTAGE IN OLYMPIC VILLAGE . . . TERRORISTS DEMAND RELEASE OF PALESTINIAN AND GERMAN PRISONERS . . . BLACK SEPTEMBER . . .

Gabriel closed the file.

A black-and-white snapshot slipped out. Gabriel scooped it off the floor. Two boys, blue jeans and rucksacks. A pair of young Germans spending a summer roaming Europe, or so it appeared. It had been taken in Antwerp near the river. The one on the left was Benjamin, forelock of wavy hair in his eyes, mischievous smile on his face, his arm flung around the young man standing at his side.

Benjamin's companion was serious and sullen, as though he couldn't be bothered with something as trivial as a snapshot. He wore sunglasses, his hair was cropped short, and even though he was not much more than twenty years old, his temples were shot with

gray. "The stain of a boy who's done a man's job," Shamron had said. "Smudges of ash on the prince of fire."

Gabriel was not pleased about the file of newspaper clippings on the Munich massacre, but there was no way he could smuggle so large an item past Detective Weiss. The snapshot was different. He wedged it into Herr Landau's expensive wallet and slipped the wallet into his coat pocket. Then he sidestepped his way out of the storage room and closed the door.

Frau Ratzinger was waiting in the corridor. Gabriel wondered how long she had been standing there but dared not ask. In her hand was a small padded shipping envelope. He could see that it was addressed to Benjamin and that it had been opened.

The old woman held it out to him. "I thought you might want these," she said in German.

"What are they?"

"Benjamin's eyeglasses. He left them at a hotel in Italy. The concierge was good enough to send them back. Unfortunately, they arrived after his death."

Gabriel took the envelope from her, lifted the flap, and removed the eyeglasses. They were the spectacles of an academic: plastic and passe, chewed and scratched. He looked into the envelope once more and saw there was a postcard. He turned the envelope on end, and the postcard fell into his palm. The image showed an ocher-colored hotel on a sapphire lake in the north of Italy. Gabriel turned it over and read the note on the back.

Good luck with your book, Professor Stern.

Giancomo

Detective Weiss insisted on driving Gabriel to his hotel. Because Herr Landau had never before been to Munich, Gabriel was forced to feign awe at the floodlit neoclassical glory of the city center. He also noted that Weiss skillfully made the trip last five minutes longer than necessary by missing several obvious turns.

Finally they arrived in a small cobbled street called the Anna-strasse in the Lehel district of the city. Weiss stopped outside the Hotel Opera, handed Gabriel his card, and once more expressed condolences over Herr Landau's loss. "If there's anything else I can do for you, please don't hesitate to ask."

"There is one thing," Gabriel said. "I'd like to speak to the chairman of Benjamin's department at the university. Do you have his telephone numbers?"

"Ah, Doctor Berger. Of course."

The policeman removed an electronic organizer from his pocket, found the numbers, and recited them. Gabriel made a point of jotting them down on the back of the detective's card, even though, heard once, they were now permanently engraved in his memory.

Gabriel thanked the detective and went upstairs for the night. He ordered room service and dined lightly on an omelet and vegetable soup. Then he showered and climbed into bed with the file given to him that afternoon by the consular officer. He read everything carefully, then closed the file and stared at the ceiling, listening to the night rain pattering against the window. Who filled you, Beni? A neo-Nazi? No, Gabriel doubted that. He suspected the Odin Rune and Three Sevens painted on the wall were the equivalent of a false-flag claim of responsibility. But why was he killed? Gabriel had one working theory. Benjamin was on sabbatical from

the university to write another book, yet inside the flat Gabriel could find no evidence that he was working on anything at all. No notes. No files. No manuscript. Just a note written on the back of a postcard from a hotel in Italy. Good luck with your book. Professor Stern--Giancomo.

He opened his wallet and removed the photograph he'd taken from the storeroom. Gabriel had been cursed with a memory that allowed him to forget nothing. He could see Benjamin giving his camera to a pretty Belgian girl, feel Benjamin dragging him to the rail overlooking the river. He even remembered the last thing Benjamin had said before throwing his arm around Gabriel's neck.

"Smile, you asshole."

"This isn't funny, Beni."

"Can you imagine the look on the old man's face if he saw us posing for a picture?"

"He'll have your ass for this."

"Don't worry. I'll burn it."

Five minutes later, in the bathroom sink, Gabriel did just that.

Detective Axel Weiss lived in Bogenhausen, a residential district of Munich on the opposite bank of the Isar. He did not go there. Instead, after dropping the Israeli at his hotel, he parked in the shadows on an adjacent street and watched the entrance of the Hotel Opera. Thirty minutes later, he dialed a number in Rome on his cellular phone.

"This is the chief." The words were spoken in English with a pronounced Italian accent. It was always the same.

"I think we may have a problem."

"Tell me everything."

The detective gave a careful recitation of the events of that afternoon and evening. He was experienced at communicating over open phone systems and was careful not to make any specific references. Besides, the man at the other end knew the specifics.

"Do you have the resources to follow the subject?"

"Yes, but if he's a professional--"

"Do it," snapped the man in Rome. "And get a photograph."

Then the connection went dead.