His face spasmed in painful memory. "I thought she'd be happy, but she wasn't. When Talia woke up and saw the baby, she went insane. She wanted to know where Judah's body had gone and who the new baby was. When I told her, she slapped me and threatened to go to the police. It was all I could do to get her to keep her voice down so the neighbors wouldn't know what I'd done. I finally got her to calm down. I told her we could be happy again, that we could be a family, that we could say that this baby was Judah. No one will come looking for him. No one will know. All we needed to do was move to another city, where no one knew us or how the real Judah looked.
"For the next few days, I did not let Talia out of my sight. She seemed to be getting better. She took good care of the baby. I could tell she liked him. Then I had to go out to get food. When I returned, I found her dead. She'd opened her wrists in the bathtub."
Michael closed his eyes. His breathing sounded hard and fast in the stillness of the apartment.
"Talia left a note, blaming me for her death," he said, opening his eyes. "I burned it. After Talia was buried, I didn't want anything to do with the baby. He wasn't mine. I didn't love him. So I gave him to Malka, and I did my best to forget about him, to forget about Judah. I immersed myself in my work for the Irgun. But I didn't forget Judah, so I started visiting his grave and leaving flowers there."
"Why only on his grave?" I asked. "Why not on Talia's?"
"Because she wouldn't want me to. She died hating me. And—" his voice turned ugly "—it was all because of that traitorous bitch."
"Who?" I asked, the answer popping into my mind almost instantly. "Esther?"
"Yes. The traitor. Four good men died and Talia lost her mind fighting to free her from the British, and what did she do? Become the mistress of a British officer. And not just any officer, but of—"
"John Clapper," I finished his sentence for him.
Michael looked at me in surprise. "You know?"
"It came up during my investigation," I said, goose bumps sprouting on my arms. The apartment had felt cold earlier, but now it was freezing. It would not have surprised me to see snow flurries flutter by my face—like on so many wretched days in Poland. I had guessed much of what Michael had told me, but him knowing about Esther and Clapper was unexpected. I could now see how this tragedy had come to pass. It was even worse than I'd thought. "How did you find out about it?" I asked.
"I was watching Clapper. I'd been given the task of assassinating him, but could never figure out a good way to do it. Eventually, my superiors called the operation off. But I kept surveilling the son of a bitch, trying to find an opening. That's when I saw Esther and him together."
"And that gave you the justification to kill her?"
"You're damn right it did." He was sitting straight now. He thought he'd found a way to convince me that what he'd done was right. "She betrayed us. She—"
I cut him off. "She was spying on Clapper for the Irgun."
His lips fell open. He shook his head. "No. There's no—"
"Mira was her handler. She told me about it herself."
His eyes bored into mine. They were begging me to admit that I was lying.
"Esther was no traitor," I told him. "She was a hero."
He sat motionless for five seconds. He didn't move a muscle, didn't even blink. Then his face came apart. "Oh, God," he said, slapping his hands over his face. He stayed that way for a while. When he finally lowered his hands, his eyes looked haunted and his face was gray.
"I didn't know, Adam. I swear I didn't know."
"Michael, it makes no difference whether you knew or didn't. You had no right to execute a woman. You had no right to steal her child. Not even if she were the mistress of an enemy officer. You murdered a woman, Michael, and you need to pay for that."
"What about all I did? In the Irgun, in the War of Independence—does that count for nothing?"
"It counts for a hell of a lot. But it doesn't change the fact that you murdered a woman."
He was silent for a long moment. "You can't prove any of this," he said at length.
"No," I admitted. "I can't. I want you to come with me to the police station and sign a confession."
He shook his head. "They'll hang me."
"They won't. You'll spend some time in jail, but they won't execute you."
"I don't want to be locked up."
"It won't be pleasant, but there are worse places," I said. "You'll survive. You'll have access to books and a radio. You'll get adequate food and a proper bed. And you'll have something even more important."
"What is that?"
"A chance for atonement. A chance to come clean and ease the guilt that's eating you. And it is eating you, isn't it, Michael? A part of you wanted to be found out. Otherwise, you wouldn't have stepped in when Alon Davidson jumped me. You weren't on your way to work that night. I talked to your supervisor. You'd taken that night off, and the one before that as well. You were following me, weren't you?"
"Yes."
"Since the first time we met?"
