This was too much. He was alive, but they thought he was dead. So they were going to hang him anyway and kill him in the process. I felt it was time to assert myself.

“That is barbaric,” I said. “We are not barbarians. We do not hang dead men.”

“It is the sentence. Alive or dead-”

“Sheer nonsense. He was tried and convicted and sentenced; that is sufficient. He died while awaiting execution, perhaps of a heart attack, perhaps induced by remorse for his crimes” – that, I thought, would be the day – “or perhaps in fear of the retribution he so justly deserved. It does not matter. Our organization has been the instrument of his death acting in the name of the Jewish nation and Jews throughout the world, and that is enough.”

“His kind buried living men. Why not hang a dead one?”

“We are not his kind.”

It went on this way for a few minutes. I was arguing nicely, but couldn’t have carried them by myself. Surprisingly, it was Zvi who came in on my side. His enthusiasm was evidently confined to the execution of living persons; once an enemy was dead, it ceased to interest him. Between the two of us, Zvi and I carried the rest.

“But there is one thing we may do,” Zvi added.

“What?”

“An old custom of our people. Do you recall in the scriptures when Saul slew his thousands of the Philistines and David his tens of thousands? Do you remember what was done to the fallen enemy?”

No one seemed to remember. I remembered, but said nothing.

“Evan, perhaps you know. You are from America, are you not? You know what it is that the American Indians did to defeated enemy tribes?”

“They scalped them,” I said, “but I don’t see-”

“This is similar. But our people have brought back as trophies something other than the scalp. An Indian might return to his village with the scalp of one of his tribesmen and no one would know the difference. But a Jew could not take this from another Jew, because another Jew would not have it to lose. You know what I mean, Evan, do you not?”

I nodded.

And gradually it dawned on the others. “But we don’t have a rabbi,” someone objected.

“Fool, we don’t make a b’rucha over him, either. It is not a religious ceremony. It is an act of military triumph. Who will do it?”

“My uncle was a mohel,” Ari said, “but-”

“Then you may do it.”

“Must I?”

“Don’t you want to? It’s an honor.”

“The honor should be yours.”

“Evan?”

“It was your idea. Go ahead, Zvi.”

And so he went ahead. We rolled Kotacek over on his back – and I prayed that he wouldn’t pick that moment to come out of his funk – and Zvi took down his trousers and undershorts and exposed him.

“Someone give me a knife.”

Someone gave him a knife. Greta had joined our little circle and was pressing against me, watching the proceedings with excited curiosity. Her eyes never left the theater of operations. I thought that corpses did not bleed and wondered if cataleptics did. This one didn’t.

So we crouched there, in a basement in Prague, and Zvi used the knife and, effectively if awkwardly, brought to completion the circumcision of Janos Kotacek.

Chapter 11

“Evan darling,” she said, “there are some things I do not understand.”

We were alone now. Well, not entirely alone; Kotacek, snug in the arms of living death, lay motionless a few yards from us. But my fellow Sternists had left. With them on their way, I was able to relax for the first time. As long as they remained with us in the basement, I kept waiting for Kotacek to come out of his funk and get himself executed all over again. Once they had finished their experiment in surgery, I couldn’t get rid of them fast enough.

And they were in no rush to be gone. Ari still had hopes of horizontal pleasantries with Greta, a thought which had apparently occurred to one or two of his comrades as well. Zvi was concerned about the disposal of the corpse. I insisted that it was dangerous for them to stay and selflessly assumed the task of tucking Kotacek’s corpse into the gentle waters of the Vltava. They felt I was taking an unnecessary risk. “We can all do it,” Zvi said, “and then we can all leave together in the car.” I told him to take the car, explaining that I had to get Greta back to Germany. We clasped hands all around, and each of them kissed Greta with rather more than pure fraternal affection. “You must come to Israel,” Ari insisted. “You will be truly welcome there, Greta.” She agreed that she would love to see their country. They all kissed her again, and felt her body against them, and remembered how grand she had looked, all soft and nude, in the arms of one Czech guard after another. I didn’t think I would ever get rid of them, but, reluctantly, they left.

And we were alone, alone with Kotacek, and there were some things she did not understand.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said.

“He is dead.”

“Yes.”

“They were going to kill him, weren’t they? The Jews?”

“Yes.”

“I wondered what you were going to do. I thought you might have a plan, a good plan, but then all at once he died. It was his heart?”

“Probably.”

“My father will be very sad to hear that. He was so proud of me, going with you on a mission of such great importance. He had hoped we would succeed, and now I must tell him of our failure.”

She looked exceptionally appealing just then. There was a little-girl tone to her voice, a look of abiding innocence in her blue eyes. And that, incredibly, was the girl’s chief quality – her innocence. No amount of furious and forbidden activity, whether sexual or political, could triumph over it. She remained, despite it all, a blonde and blue-eyed child.

“It was not a failure,” I told her. “Not entirely.”

“No?”

“Certainly not. Kotacek was in jail. He would have had a dreadful trial followed by a public hanging. We spared him that. Then the Israelis had him, the Jews, and he would have gone through another trial. And, unless we managed to save him, they would have hanged him. So instead what happened?”

“He died.”

“He would have died anyway, sooner or later. He was an old man, a sick old man. At least he died easily. At least we managed to spirit him from under the noses of the Czechs, and then cheat the Jews of their revenge. We have not failed, Greta.”

She looked at me. “Then I have done my part.”

“Your part and more. You were wonderful at the castle, you know.”

“Was I?”

“You were excellent. The guards-”

She giggled. “The poor men. The expressions on their faces, the strength of their desire. They wanted me very badly, you know.”

“I know.”

“To expect to make love and to get hit over the head for your troubles. They will wake up with headaches and with no pleasant memories. I thought perhaps we could wait until they had finished making love, and then knock them out.”

“It would have taken too much time.”

“Oh, I know, but it seemed more kind, don’t you think?” She walked over to the fallen Kotacek. “Ah, but look what they have done to him. I had always wondered how it was done, you know? And if it was painful. Of course there can be no pain when it is performed upon a dead man, can there? What did they do with it?”

“They took it along.”

“Back to Israel? Why?”

“As a trophy. Like a deer’s head, or a stuffed fish.”

“How odd.”

“They got the idea from the Bible.”

“Like the haircut for Samson?”

“A different part of the Bible.”

“Oh. It is a shame you were unable to hypnotize him before he had his heart attack. That was your plan, was it not? And thus you made him look at the flashlight?”

“You noticed that?”

“Of course. And you were not translating what they said. I don’t know Slovak, but much of it is like Czech. Some sounds are different. You were telling him to look at the light, were you not? It is unfortunate that it did not work.”