At four o'clock, Charlie pottered into the square with the Mercedes, and one of the watchers in the car park cheekily trumpeted three notes of a fanfare over his headset. She had problems finding a space, but Litvak had ruled she should not be helped in this. Let her play it as it plays, no feather bedding. A space became vacant; she took it, got out, stretched, rubbed her backside, fished her shoulder bag and guitar from the boot. She's good, thought Litvak, watching her through his glasses. A natural. Now lock the car. She did, leaving the boot till last. Now slip the key into the exhaust pipe. She did that too, a really deft movement as she stooped to her luggage; then set course wearily for the railway station, looking neither left nor right. Litvak settled down to wait again. The goat is tethered, he thought, recalling a favourite phrase of Kurtz's. Now all we need is a lion. He spoke a word into his headset and heard his order confirmed. He imagined Kurtz in the Munich flat, crouching over the little teleprinter as the communications van tapped the signal through. He imagined the fraught, unconscious wiping gesture of his stubby fingers pulling nervously at his constant smile; the lifting of his thick forearm as he sightlessly consulted his watch. We're stepping into the dark at last, Litvak thought as he watched the early dusk gather. The dark is what we have been looking forward to all these months.
An hour passed, the good priest Udi paid his modest bill and disappeared at a pious pace down a side street for a rest and a change of profile in the safe flat. The two girls had finished their letter at last and wanted a stamp. When they had one, they departed for the same reason. Litvak watched with satisfaction as their replacements took up their positions: a battered laundry van; two male hikers needing a late lunch; an Italian guest-worker for a coffee and the Milan newspapers. A police car entered the square and made three slow laps of honour, but neither the driver nor his colleague showed any interest in a parked red Mercedes with its ignition key hidden in the exhaust pipe. At seven-forty, amid a resurgence of excitement among the watchers, a fat woman marched straight up to the driving door, forced a key into the lock, then did a comedy double-take and drove off in a red Audi instead. She had got her make wrong. At eight, a powerful motorbike made one swift pass before anyone could get the number and roared out again. Pillion passenger, long hair, could be female, looked like two kids on a spree.
"Contact?" Litvak asked over his headset.
Opinions were divided. Too careless, said one voice. Too fast, said another--why run the risk of being stopped by the police? Litvak's own view differed. It was a first reconnaissance, he was sure of it, but he didn't say so for fear of influencing their judgement He settled down to wait again. The lion has taken a sniff, he thought. Will he come back?
It was ten o'clock. The restaurants were beginning to empty. A deep country quiet was descending over the town. But the red Mercedes sat untouched, and the motorcycle had not returned.
If you have ever watched one, you know that an empty car is a truly stupid thing to stare at, and Litvak had watched a lot of them. With time, just by holding its focus, you find yourself remembering what a fatuous thing a car really is without man to give it meaning. And what a fatuous thing man is to have invented cars in the first place. After a couple of hours it is the worst piece of junk you have ever seen in your life. You start to dream of horses or a world of pedestrians. Of getting away from the scrap metal of life, and returning to the flesh. Of your kibbutz and its orange groves. Of the day when the whole world finally learns the risks of spilling Jewish blood.
You want to blow all the enemy cars in the world to pieces and set Israel free for ever.
Or you remember it is the Sabbath; and that the Law says it is better to save a soul by working than to observe the Sabbath and not save the soul.
Or that you are expected to marry a plain and very pious girl you do not particularly care for, and settle down in Herzlia with a mortgage and enter the baby-trap without a word of protest.
Or you reflect on the Jewish God, and on certain Biblical parallels to your present situation.
But whatever you think or don't think, and whatever you do, if you are as well trained as Litvak was, and if you are in command, and if you are one of those to whom the prospect of action against the tormentors of Jewry is a drug that will never let you go, you do not for one second take your eyes off that car.
The motorbike had returned.
It had been in the station square for five and a half eternal minutes by Shimon Litvak's luminous wristwatch. From his place at the window of the darkened hotel room, not twenty yards away as the bullet flies, he had been watching it all that time. It was a motorbike from the upper end of the range--Japanese, Vienna registration, and the high handlebars were custom built. It had coasted into the square on no engine, like a runaway, bearing one leather-clad, helmeted driver, gender still to be determined, and one male, broad-shouldered pillion passenger, instantaneous alias Longhair, in jeans and sneakers and a heroic neck scarf knotted at the nape. It had parked close to the Mercedes, but not so close as to suggest they had designs on it. Litvak would have done that too.
"Party collected," he said softly over the headset, and received four acknowledgements immediately. Litvak was so sure of his ground that if the couple had caught fright and run for it at that moment, he would have given the order without a second thought, though it would have meant the end of the operation. Aaron, from the cab of the laundry van, would have stood up and shot them to pieces in the square; then Litvak would have gone down and rolled a charge into the mess to make sure. But they didn't run for it, which was much, much better. They stayed on their bike, they fidgeted with their chinstraps and buckles and sat tight seemingly for hours, in the way motorcyclists can, though it was actually about two minutes. They continued to take the scent of the place, checking side turnings and parked cars, and upper windows such as Litvak's, though the team had made sure long ago that absolutely nothing showed.
Their period of meditation over, Longhair languidly dismounted from his pillion, then ambled past the Mercedes, his head innocently tilted while he presumably marked down the fishtail of the ignition key protruding from the exhaust. But he didn't make a lunge for it, which Litvak as a fellow performer appreciated. He strolled past the car and headed for the station concourse to the public lavatory, from which he emerged again immediately, hoping to wrong-foot anybody unwise enough to be following him. Nobody was. The girls couldn't anyway, and the boys were far too canny. Longhair passed the car a second time, and Litvak besought him very hard to stoop and help himself to the key, because he wanted a conclusive gesture. But Longhair declined to oblige. He returned instead to the motorbike and his companion, who had stayed in the saddle, doubtless in order to be able to make a smooth getaway if one were needed. Longhair said something to his companion, then pulled off his helmet, and, with a flick of the head, turned his face carelessly into the light.
"Luigi" said Litvak into his headset, giving the agreed cover name
As he did so, he experienced the rare and timeless blessing of pure satisfaction. It's you, he thought calmly. Rossino, the apostle of the peaceful solution. Litvak knew him really well. He knew the names and addresses of his girlfriends and boyfriends, of his right-wing parents in Rome and of his left-wing mentor at the musical academy in Milan. He knew the upmarket Neapolitan journal that still published his preachy articles insisting that non-violence was the only acceptable path. He knew Jerusalem's long-nurtured suspicions about him, and the whole history of their repeated fruitless efforts to obtain the proof. He knew the smell of him and his shoe size; he was beginning to guess the part he had played in Bad Godesberg and in several other places, and he had very clear ideas, as they all had, about what could best be done with him. But not yet. Not for a long time. Not till the whole tortuous journey was behind them could that score be settled.
She's paid her way, he thought joyously. With this one identification, she has paid her whole long trip till here. She was a righteous Gentile, and in Litvak's estimation one of a rare breed.
Now at last the driver himself was dismounting. He was dismounting, and stretching, and unbuttoning his chinstrap, and Rossino was replacing him at the custom-built handlebars.