Chapter 12 Candlesticks in Bogotá - 3

In March 1946, Reber Michel Klimrod arrived in Cairo.He and Lazarus went separately, but they joined in the Egyptian capital. Joel Banich was the most direct and frequent witness to that period of the king's life.According to him, Klimrod, and especially Lazarus, are among the top terrorists sought by the British Palestinian Authority.This has a lot to do with the Yagur incident.Those few C． I． D．The personnel had had a good opportunity to observe their faces carefully, and Klimrod's height made him easy to recognize. The attack on the Yagur police station was just one episode in a much larger offensive that Irgon and Stern were launching together.Lazarus' mission was only one component of the general attack order issued on March 1.Military camps in Haifa, Rehovot, Dernos-Hana, major arteries and districts of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Petah Tikva were all attacked.Even the base of the 6th Airborne Division in Jerusalem was bombed.

When it comes to the reason why Klimrod and Lazarus went to Cairo and later to Europe, Bernice believes that it must be related to Lazarus.An organization like Irgon, which engages in military activities and does not want the outside world to know, is unavoidably wary of Lazarus, who has participated in the Irish Republican Army and has contacts with mob groups in North America; Violence can't help but make them frown, because it sometimes conflicts with their political goals. As for Klimrod, Bernice didn't know his motive at all.Only one thing is certain: it was his own request to leave Palestine. Bernice said: "At one point I even thought he had received some new orders, maybe Mossad sent them from Europe. It wasn't until August and September that I Knowing that's not the case and that he's going on his own. I'm disappointed, even worried. The mere fact that he's been at odds with Dolph doesn't bode well. I'm guessing a little bit ..."

Nadja Hakim lives in a villa on Jazire Island in Cairo, surrounded by residential areas.The former British Army Women's Auxiliary is married to a son of the Hakim banking family.The change of identity did not in any way affect her involvement in the covert activities of the Zionist movement. She was notified that two people were coming, please help: first to take care of them while they were in Cairo, and then to help them get to Europe.She lodged Lazarus and Klimrod in her old apartment behind the American embassy, ​​and got them passports—an Irish passport for Lazarus and a French passport for Kerry. Mrod-Ubrecht.

She booked a boat for them, and they arrived at Marseilles on March 30th. On April 8, Reber Klimrod came to Nuremberg alone. "Nakam," said Bunim Anerevich.Then he asked in phrases: "Do you know what that means?" "It means "revenge" in Hebrew," Reber replied. They walked between rows of destroyed houses on the outskirts of Nuremberg in the icy drizzle.They were about the same size, with Klimrod a little three to four centimeters taller.Anerevich was twenty-nine years old, with large, dark eyes, deep and melancholy, always dim and hazy. "I don't like your companion," said Anerevich after a while,

"First of all, he's too old. The oldest of us isn't over thirty. But mostly because he gives me the impression of a professional desperado. He looks like an American thug." "He's extremely capable. More capable than I am. At least for now." "I also value practicality. I hate the kind of empty talk that must quote the Talmud: Before deciding whether to do or not to do something, to open or close a door, those people can use 127 The reasoning goes on and on. But for the work we need to do, or have started to do, effectiveness is the second quality we want. I don't need any professionalism, Reb. What I need first is..." He hesitated, then said almost sheepishly: "...pure. We will kill, even though we hate killing. It is said that revenge is the weapon of the weak, but what can be done? It is important to punish those people, but it is more important to ensure that their crimes are not forgotten. People have begun to forget. Some of the perpetrators are currently being tried here. The newspapers are talking about it. But how long will it last? The whole world should know that such a crime book should be forgotten within two or three years. To achieve this goal, there is no other way but to kill people. Are you really willing to be one of us?"

Reber made a gesture that was both a nod and a shake of his head, and his two big hands were inserted into the pockets of his frayed jacket. "I've looked into your case. Our organization has members all over Europe. Besides, I have friends in Warsaw and Moscow, trusted friends. I mean personal friends. Tel Aviv doesn't approve of what we're doing; Hagar That wants to control us, maybe even destroy us. They bring up the Talmud at every turn and can talk for hours on end without doing anything. As far as your question is concerned, we have looked into it all. Among our members are One was in the concentration camp in Beuzec, he remembers your mother and your sisters, and he is willing to vouch for you."

"But no vouching for Dolph Lazarus." "No guarantee for Lazarus. We can use him, though. We'll need money soon, and a lot of it, and neither Haggana, Mossad, nor Irgon or Stern's hypocritical scoundrels will Don't want to offer us a dime, we have to figure it out ourselves. We have a network, smuggling gold and medicines... I know, there is a contradiction between what we are after and the illicit trade. But it's the same old saying , we have no other choice. If need be - but I'm against it - Lazarus can do something about this aspect of our organization. I have read his file: in the United States, he has contacted a large number of The so-called "Mafia" is in league with the Jewish gangsters in New York, and he is still in touch with them and their Sicilian friends. Well, let's talk about you , it is too late for you to take part in our next operation, at least not to play the leading role. But you can speak French very well, I understand that. Transfer to France. I hope you will be in charge of arranging this transfer, and you will go to France to prepare a place for them. Can you take it up?"

"I need some candied fruit." "The money will be given to you. Now you look at this first." Anerevich put a hand on Reb's arm and motioned him to stop.Rab raised his eyes and saw ahead of him a building he thought was a factory, with police guarding the gate and barbed wire surrounding it.But Anerevich shook his head and said: "No, it's a mechanized bakery. Two kinds of bread are made there and sent out every morning, but no one can get it wrong: white bread is for American, British and Polish soldiers. Of course we don't Go touch it. Black bread is eaten by the prisoners. These prisoners were held in the former 13th prisoner-of-war camp, a total of 36,000 people, all SS, and the Allied military police collected evidence of their crimes. We hope that at least They kill a third and use arsenic."

This mission was carried out on the night of April 13, 1946.The storm that night was part of the cause of the failure, despite all precautions that had been taken in the weeks leading up to the operation.Two members of Nakam's team, who did not mention being Jewish, had found work in the camp, one as a driver and one as warehouse manager.The chemists within the Nakam organization managed to concoct an arsenic-based concoction that was spread on bread in exactly the same concentration and color as German bakers sprinkled on their produce.Others also found work in the bakery, and they dug a small dark room under the warehouse where the bread was piled up to store poisons and tools without anyone noticing.The poison was hidden in a hot water bottle and carried in his bosom.In the late afternoon of April 13th, the three of them hid in the dark room, and it was advisable not to come out until after dark when all the employees had left.On this surprisingly bad and stormy night, they put on their gloves and masks and began adding “toppings” to the bread.The wind blew harder and shattered a window in the warehouse.The police came, but they found no one in the warehouse, so they assumed that someone was trying to steal, which was not unusual in those famine years.The next day, they made a routine investigation, but the operation of the Nakam team had to be abandoned halfway.

On the 16th the Nuremberg newspapers carried the news of the discovery of the darkroom by the police and the poisoning of 5,000 SS prisoners. Four hundred of them died. Accompanied by Mezier, a French Jew who had been a member of the Nakam, Reb Klimrod found a large apartment in Lyon.There he hid for ten days the four men who had planned the Nuremberg Incident.They are still deeply regretting that this operation did not achieve the expected effect. It was planned to poison 14,000 loaves of bread, but only 2,000 were poisoned. A week later, Agnerevich came to Lyon in person to meet Mezier and Klimrod.He asked Klimrod to accompany him to Belgium and Germany, acting as his guide and interpreter at the same time.At dawn on April 26, Meziere drove them off in a car they had bought for the Organization.Almost five months passed before Meziere saw the tall young man again.At that time, Klimrod left his only possessions in Lyon's apartment, that is, two books: one is Montaigne's "Prose Collection" in French, and the other is Whitman in English.

Reb Klimrod reappeared in Lyon in mid-September, and Dolph Lazarus also came. Before that, however, there was an episode in Paris. Susan Setiniaz loves her grandchildren.Although her husband bequeathed her enough to live in considerable comfort, she suffered from loneliness.She loves David so much that she decided to live in Boston in the spring of this year even though she can't speak a word of English, which shows how much she likes her grandson.She spent the summer as usual at Aix-en-Provence, where she had a house of her own; then, on September 9, returned to Paris.She suggested to the man on the phone: Since you are David's friend, please come to me. ’ Reber accepted her invitation. Leiber looked around and stopped at a small painting attached to the wall between the left and right halves of a carved mahogany bookcase overlooking an upholstered bench.It is painted in oil and color gel, probably from the early 1920s; it is mostly indistinct except for a blue plate containing two ocher fish still life. "This is the work of Paul Klee (Note: Paul Klee (1879-1940), a French abstract painter)." Reber said, "We also have this one, which is almost identical." "'us'?" "I mean my father and I. We lived in Vienna." He smiled, and suddenly his whole face changed.Before that, his face was not expressionless, but like a person contemplating deep thought, and his bright light gray eyes and a pair of large, deep pupils made this impression more and more intensified, but after he smiled , everything changes. "Your lodgings are magnificent," he said. "My father would have said that the casket was indeed worthy of the jewels in it. Perhaps he liked to use this admiration to show that he was, after all, a Viennese." Temperament." He seldom has a foreigner's accent, and he can completely pass a Frenchman from the East.Susan Setiniaz felt a sense of unease, as her grandson and Chobe Talas felt before her.She thought the visitor was about twenty-one years old, but in fact he was not yet eighteen; A feeling of extraordinaryness, so out of proportion to his appearance, also impressed the old lady. She asked the guests about her grandson and how they met.Reber replied that David and he had met "near Linz, Austria," shortly after the victorious arrival of the Allied forces, when he—Reber Klimrod—was in the " Dilemma" (this is his exact words), it was David who helped him.So they became friends. He said nothing about the concentration camps or his own near-death.Only once did Susan Settiniaz ask about his family, and hesitating for fear of being presumptuous, Reber replied that he had had a family not long ago and that his father had been "killed" in the war up.This is what Susan Setiniaz thinks is normal.She thought that the visitor's father, like most Austrians, had fought in the army of the Third Reich and must have died in battle.She even imagined that Reber himself must have participated in war operations in German uniform, because she had miscalculated Reber's age.It wasn't until later, when David told her the truth about his encounter with Klimrod, that she was particularly shocked: first, by the facts themselves, and second, by her own misjudgment, and perhaps to a greater extent Yes to the latter.For this, she cried a lot. He changed the subject without difficulty and began to talk about his six or seven visits to France, the last in April 1938.He said he had learned French from a governess from the neighborhood of Vendôme, during a summer in Paris and others at Deauville, Biarritz, and the Riviera. The holidays have almost improved his French.Yes, he knew the place of Aix-en-Provence; and, referring to the Musée de Granet, "has a Rembrandt and two Cranachs there (Note: Rembrandt Harmenz  Van Lin (1609-1669), Dutch painter. Lucas Cranach (1472-1553) German painter)." His knowledge of art surprised the old lady Settniaz, who herself knew Klee The name comes from the fact that her husband bought a painting by the artist. She told Klimrod that David had been demobilized and had just returned to Harvard to continue his law studies.She gave Reber her daughter-in-law's address in Boston, where David was supposed to be at this time of year, unless he was on vacation at his Connecticut villa and not back at school. "Shall I copy the address and phone number for you?" He shook his head and said with a smile, "No need, my memory is quite good." He got up to take his leave, calmly and courteously.Only then did the old lady think that maybe he was alone in Paris and France, and maybe he had no friends or home at all.Embarrassed to give him money rashly, the old lady tried her best to think how to help him, and then, under a sudden impulse, invited him to have lunch with her the next day.She saw Reb hesitate, but finally accepted the invitation, saying he would be "happy" to come back.He went to the door, and lingered a moment longer, looking intently and solemnly at his mistress with his wonderful gray eyes.The old lady suddenly felt a strange feeling of shyness, which she could only conceal with a not very wise wit. "I promise not to try to seduce you." "It's too late," his eyes sparkled with pleasure, "and I'm going to mention my father again, who would have said on this occasion 'my fortress has crumbled before you.'" He wiped the back of the old lady's hand lightly with his lips, and then left.The next morning she received a note and a rose.The font on the letter is neat, with an obvious downward tendency in its elegance.Leiber asked her to forgive him for not being able to come to the appointment, he was leaving Paris that day. A week later she wrote to David: "I have met one of the most puzzling, incredible, and brilliantly intelligent lads I have met in sixty-five years. Limrod do something, with or without my help, do it, David. I have a feeling that he's in a pretty bad situation, though he doesn't say a word to me... ..." The news of Reb Klimrod's reappearance, and above all the visit to his old French grandmother's house, greatly astonished David Setiniaz, whom he had expected to never hear again. I have heard from this person.In his reply he told his grandmother that he himself had been very impressed with the man, and asked her, "if he ever comes again," to try and find out where to find him, because David himself wanted to see him again. Meet his "Austrian friend".