Instead of answering, Mira stepped over to a dresser and picked up a picture that was reclining on top of it. It showed two men and two women. All four were young, fit and tanned, and dressed in khaki short pants and shirts. And all had machine guns slung over their shoulders, hanging in front of their bodies. All four flashed the confident and arrogant smiles common to young warriors.
One of the women was a younger Mira Roth. How old was she when it was taken? Nineteen, eighteen, maybe even seventeen. Her hair had been shorter then, her face slightly leaner. She looked fierce, eager for battle. Fearless.
Mira pointed to the man at the left of the quartet of young warriors. "Yohanan died that night, and Talia…" Her finger lingered on the figure of the other woman in the picture, a willowy brunette. She raised her eyes to me. They glistened with withheld tears. Apparently, Mira had not cried out her share of tears. At least not yet.
"All told, we lost four members. What went wrong? In short, everything. The raid went badly from the get-go. Nothing went according to plan. Of the ten prisoners, six died. We only got four out. We also killed some British soldiers, but that was small comfort. Two of the prisoners we freed were Esther and Willie."
"What happened next?"
"We took them to a safe house, where they stayed until we arranged false papers and an apartment for them. When Esther told me the story of the baby, I suggested giving him to another family for safekeeping. She refused and said she would care for him until his mother arrived. I think she had grown attached to him. I think she loved him."
Mira sat down again and smoothed her dress. She crossed her legs, lacing her fingers on top of her knee.
"The papers we gave them said they were mother and son. We let Esther keep her first name; it eliminated the risk of her making an involuntary mistake if someone called out her name on the street. She chose the surname Kantor—German for cantor—because her father had been one in their synagogue in Germany. She gave the baby his first name—Erich. So that's who they became: Esther and Erich Kantor, mother and son."
Now I understood why Reuben Tzanani had failed to find a death certificate for Esther Grunewald and Willie Ackerland. Both had died under assumed identities. And the people who had been close to them—neighbors and colleagues and friends—knew them by their false names. Which explained why none of them had answered Henrietta's newspaper ad.
But that raised another question. "My client posted an ad in the newspaper, asking Esther to contact her. Didn't you see it?"
Mira asked me which paper the ad had run in and gave a rueful shake of her head when I told her it was
"
Of course. I could have smacked myself for not figuring this out for myself. Like all Israelis, I was well aware of the intense enmity between Mapai, the left-wing ruling party of Israel headed by David Ben-Gurion, and the right-wing Herut party led by former Irgun leader Menachem Begin. This enmity had its roots in the 1930s and '40s, when Zionists strove to establish a Jewish state in the Land of Israel. Despite sharing the same overall goal, the divergent politics and tactics of the two factions had led to tragic consequences, including internecine fighting and bloodshed. Even now, with the Irgun disbanded, its fighters absorbed into the Israeli Defense Forces, and its commanders turned to politicians, the hatred between Mapai and Herut burned blinding hot.
This blindness had led Mira, and perhaps other members of the Irgun who knew Esther Grunewald by her true name, to not see a particular newspaper ad. If they had, I would not have become involved in the case, and the terrible duty of informing Henrietta Ackerland that her son was dead would not have fallen to me.
"And the murderer?" I asked. "What happened to him?"
"He was never caught," Mira said.
I asked Mira a few more questions about the murders, but she had little information.
"Newspaper reports at the time were vague on the details, but I know both Esther and Willie were killed with a knife. Rumor was the scene was pretty gruesome." She had no idea what the police investigation had uncovered, nor whether there had been any suspects.
Mira offered to make me some tea and started asking me about Operation Yoav and the day I was injured. I told her I had to get going. I needed to inform my client her son was dead.
At the door, Mira asked, "Is that all, then?"
Her question puzzled me. "What else is there?"
She licked her lips. "I thought…well, I just hoped—never mind, I suppose."
I thanked her for her time and left.
