Ten Years Gone полностью

He dropped onto the sofa and said, "Are you making progress in your investigation? Any suspects?"

"I'm still working on it," I said, taking another drag.

He nodded sagaciously, and I got the impression he understood full well that so far I had next to nothing.

"Well, I'm not sure what help I can be, but I'll gladly answer any questions I can."

"Good. What I'm trying to do is get a clearer picture of who Esther was. I understand you met her on the night of the prison raid."

"That's right. I drove her to the safe house."

"You and Mira," I said.

"Yes."

"You drove them to the Klingers'."

A short pause. "You know about the Klingers?"

"Mira told me."

"I see. Yes, we went to the Klingers' house in Haifa."

"How was Esther that night?"

"How was she? Scared out of her mind. It's perfectly understandable. After all, she was just in the middle of a firefight. I was pretty shaken myself. That damned raid." He shook his head, and his tone became agitated. "The plan seemed solid, but everything went to hell within the first moments. If we had to execute the same plan a year or two later, the results would have been different. But back then we were untrained and inexperienced. We paid a heavy price."

His jaw was tight enough I expected to hear teeth grind. His gaze seemed to be turned inward, to where he stored bad memories. I let a few seconds slither by before asking, "Did you see her after that night?"

He took a quick sip of beer. "I came by with a camera and snapped their picture—hers and the boy's—for the false papers. I later returned when the papers were ready. So I went by there twice, maybe one other time."

"What was she like?"

"Like?"

"Yes. For instance, how was she with the baby? Was she close to him?"

A small shrug. "How close could she have been? She wasn't his real mother."

"Mira told me Esther loved Willie."

He pursed his lips. "Well, then I suppose she did. Mira knew her better than I did. I only saw her once with the baby, when I took their picture. The other time I was at the Klingers', he was asleep in another room."

"Anything else you remember of Esther?"

He thought for a moment. "One time I was there, she told me she wanted to join the Irgun, to take action against the British. She seemed very motivated. But eventually she did nothing. A lot of maapilim were like that—they were enthusiastic about taking part in the struggle in the first few days after getting off the boat. As weeks went by, their fervor died down. They became engrossed in day-to-day living—their jobs, that sort of thing—and forgot their previous declarations of dedication and willingness to sacrifice whatever was needed for the sake of the Jewish people." He fixed me with his steely gaze. "You know, the British did not get out of our country because they wanted to. They left because we drove them out." He punctuated the "we" by thumping his chest with his fist, and I recalled Goldberg expressing his admiration for the Irgun's fighting spirit, if not their politics.

"Were you part of any resistance group? Did you fight the British?" he asked me in a challenging tone.

"No."

"When did you get to Israel?"

"September 1947."

"Well," he said, mollified, and perhaps a touch embarrassed by his emotions, "by that time the work was nearly done. And you did do your part in the war."

He sipped his beer. I took a last drag and mashed out my cigarette in the ashtray.

"Did you have any contact with Esther after she left the Klingers'?"

"No."

"When you saw her there, did she seem to get along with them?"

Another small shrug. "She and the Klinger woman—I forget her name—seemed friendly enough. The husband I didn't see after the first night. Not that I missed him all that much."

"Why do you say that?"

His face tightened with anger. "A young, able-bodied man, and all he was willing to do was dole out the occasional contribution and host poor immigrants for a few days. And even that they stopped doing after that time. We needed fighters, not innkeepers."

I leaned forward, my skin tingling as it did when I was on a case and had just uncovered something that might prove important. "Esther and Willie were the last immigrants the Klingers ever sheltered?"

"That's right."

"Why?"

"I don't know. I didn't hear about it directly from them. All I know is that we never brought more immigrants to their house."

Scratching my jaw, I leaned back in my seat and pondered this new fact. It could mean nothing. I wouldn't know till I had a chance to see the Klingers.

"Anything else you can tell me that might help with my investigation?"

He considered, taking a long pull from his bottle. He set it on the floor between his feet and shook his head. "I don't think so. Like I said, I only saw her and the baby a couple of times."

I nodded. I could think of nothing more to ask him. Maybe that bit about the Klingers would lead to something and maybe it wouldn't. Other than that, my talk with Michael Shamir was a bust. I got to my feet.

"Thanks for your time. I'll be off now."