thousand-foot spire of the Olympia Tower sparkled against the crystalline blue sky. Gabriel lowered his gaze and kept walking.
Leaving the park, he drifted through Schwabing. In the Adalbertstrasse he saw Frau Ratzinger sweeping the steps of No. 68. He had no wish to speak to the old woman again, so he rounded a corner and headed in the opposite direction. Every few minutes he would look up and glimpse the tower, looming before him, growing larger by degrees.
Ten minutes later, he found himself at the southern edge of the village. In many ways Olympiapark was just that: a village, a vast residential area, complete with its own railway station, its own post office, even its own mayor. The cement-block bungalows and apartment houses had not aged gracefully. In an attempt to brighten up the place, many of the units had been painted in bright tie-dye patterns.
He came upon the Connollystrasse. It was not a street, really, but a pedestrian walkway lined with small three-story apartment houses. At No. 31 he stopped walking. On the second floor, a bare-chested teenager stepped onto the balcony to shake out a throw rug. Gabriel’s memory flashed. Instead of a young German, he saw a Palestinian in a balaclava. Then a woman emerged from the ground-floor apartment, pushing a stroller and clutching a child to her breast. For an instant, Gabriel saw Issa, leader of the Black September team, his face covered in boot polish, swaggering about in his safari suit and golf hat.
The woman looked at Gabriel as though she was used to strangers standing outside her home with disbelieving expressions on their faces. Yes, she seemed to be saying. Yes, this is the place where it happened. But now it’s my home, so please go. She seemed to sense something else in his gaze—something that unnerved her—and she quickly strapped the child into the stroller and headed toward a playground.
Gabriel climbed a grassy hillock and sat in the cool grass. Usually when the memories came, he tried desperately to push them away, but now he unchained the door and allowed them to enter. Romano . . . Springer . . . Spitzer . . . Slavin . . . the faces of the dead flashed through his memory. Eleven in all. Two killed in the takeover. Nine more during the bungled German rescue attempt at Fürstenfeldbruck. Golda Meir wanted revenge of Biblical proportions—an eye for an eye—and she ordered the Office to “send forth the boys” to hunt down the members of Black September who had plotted the attack. A brash operations officer named Ari Shamron was placed in charge of the mission, and one of the boys he came for was a promising young student at Jerusalem’s Betsal’el School of Art named Gabriel Allon.
Somehow, Shamron had come across the file from Gabriel’s unhappy compulsory service in the army. The child of Auschwitz survivors, Gabriel was found arrogant and selfish by his superiors; prone to periods of melancholia, but also highly intelligent and capable of taking independent action without waiting for guidance from commanding officers. He was also multilingual, an attribute that had little value in a frontline infantry unit but was much sought after by Ari Shamron. His war would not be fought in the Golan or the Sinai. It would be a secret war waged in the shadows of Europe. Gabriel had tried to resist him. Shamron left him no choice.
“Once again, Jews are dying on German soil with their hands tied behind their backs,” Shamron had said. “Your parents survived, but how many didn’t? Their brothers and sisters? Their aunts and uncles? Grandparents? They’re all gone, aren’t they? Are you really going to sit here in Tel Aviv with your brushes and your paints and do nothing? You have gifts. Let me borrow them for a few months. Then you can do whatever you want with your life.”
The mission was code-named Operation Wrath of God. In the lexicon of the unit, Gabriel was an aleph, an assassin. The agents who tracked Black Septembrists
Leaving the park, he drifted through Schwabing. In the Adalbertstrasse he saw Frau Ratzinger sweeping the steps of No. 68. He had no wish to speak to the old woman again, so he rounded a corner and headed in the opposite direction. Every few minutes he would look up and glimpse the tower, looming before him, growing larger by degrees.
Ten minutes later, he found himself at the southern edge of the village. In many ways Olympiapark was just that: a village, a vast residential area, complete with its own railway station, its own post office, even its own mayor. The cement-block bungalows and apartment houses had not aged gracefully. In an attempt to brighten up the place, many of the units had been painted in bright tie-dye patterns.
He came upon the Connollystrasse. It was not a street, really, but a pedestrian walkway lined with small three-story apartment houses. At No. 31 he stopped walking. On the second floor, a bare-chested teenager stepped onto the balcony to shake out a throw rug. Gabriel’s memory flashed. Instead of a young German, he saw a Palestinian in a balaclava. Then a woman emerged from the ground-floor apartment, pushing a stroller and clutching a child to her breast. For an instant, Gabriel saw Issa, leader of the Black September team, his face covered in boot polish, swaggering about in his safari suit and golf hat.
The woman looked at Gabriel as though she was used to strangers standing outside her home with disbelieving expressions on their faces. Yes, she seemed to be saying. Yes, this is the place where it happened. But now it’s my home, so please go. She seemed to sense something else in his gaze—something that unnerved her—and she quickly strapped the child into the stroller and headed toward a playground.
Gabriel climbed a grassy hillock and sat in the cool grass. Usually when the memories came, he tried desperately to push them away, but now he unchained the door and allowed them to enter. Romano . . . Springer . . . Spitzer . . . Slavin . . . the faces of the dead flashed through his memory. Eleven in all. Two killed in the takeover. Nine more during the bungled German rescue attempt at Fürstenfeldbruck. Golda Meir wanted revenge of Biblical proportions—an eye for an eye—and she ordered the Office to “send forth the boys” to hunt down the members of Black September who had plotted the attack. A brash operations officer named Ari Shamron was placed in charge of the mission, and one of the boys he came for was a promising young student at Jerusalem’s Betsal’el School of Art named Gabriel Allon.
Somehow, Shamron had come across the file from Gabriel’s unhappy compulsory service in the army. The child of Auschwitz survivors, Gabriel was found arrogant and selfish by his superiors; prone to periods of melancholia, but also highly intelligent and capable of taking independent action without waiting for guidance from commanding officers. He was also multilingual, an attribute that had little value in a frontline infantry unit but was much sought after by Ari Shamron. His war would not be fought in the Golan or the Sinai. It would be a secret war waged in the shadows of Europe. Gabriel had tried to resist him. Shamron left him no choice.
“Once again, Jews are dying on German soil with their hands tied behind their backs,” Shamron had said. “Your parents survived, but how many didn’t? Their brothers and sisters? Their aunts and uncles? Grandparents? They’re all gone, aren’t they? Are you really going to sit here in Tel Aviv with your brushes and your paints and do nothing? You have gifts. Let me borrow them for a few months. Then you can do whatever you want with your life.”
The mission was code-named Operation Wrath of God. In the lexicon of the unit, Gabriel was an aleph, an assassin. The agents who tracked Black Septembrists
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