“That’s because they hide them when they hear you’re coming around,” Berko says. “The women and wistful Indians. Shut up and tell us about Litvak.”

“He used to work for me,” Hertz says. “For many, many years.”

His tone goes flat, and Landsman is surprised to see that his uncle is angry. Like all Shemetses, Hertz was handed down a hot temper, but it served him ill in his work, so at some point he had it killed.

“Alter Litvak was a federal agent?” Landsman says.

“No. He was not. The man has not drawn an official government salary, as far as I know, since he was honorably discharged from the U.S. Army thirty-five years ago.”

“Why are you so angry at him?” Berko says, watching his father through the lantern slits of his eyes.

Hertz is startled by the question, tries to hide it. “I never get angry,” he says. “Except with you, son.” He smiles. “So he still goes to the Einstein. I didn’t know that. He was always more of a cardplayer than a patzer. He did better in games that favor the bluff. Deceit. Concealment.”

Landsman remembers the pair of tough-looking young men whom Litvak introduced as his grandnephews. There was one of them in the woods at Peril Strait, he realizes, driving the Ford Caudillo with the shadow in the backseat. The shadow of a man who didn’t want Landsman to get a look at his face.

“He was there,” Landsman tells Berko. “At Peril Strait. He was the mystery man in the car.”

“What did Litvak do for you?” Berko says. “For all those many, many years?”

Hertz hesitates, looking from Berko to Landsman and back. “Some of this, some of that. All strictly off the books. He had a number of useful skills. Alter Litvak may be the most talented man I ever met. He understands systems and control. He is patient and methodical. He used to be incredibly strong. A good pilot, a trained mechanic. Wonderful at orienteering. Very effective as a teacher. As a trainer. Shit.”

He stares down in mild wonder at the snapped halves of his cigar, one in each hand. He drops them onto his plate of sauce streaks and spreads a napkin over the evidence of his emotion. “The yid betrayed me,” he says. “To that reporter. He collected evidence on me for years and then handed it all over to Brennan.”

“Why would he do that?” Berko says. “If he was your yid?”

“I really can’t answer your question.” Hertz shakes his head, hating puzzles, faced for the rest of his life with this one. “Money, maybe, though I never knew him to take an interest in the stuff. Certainly not his beliefs. Litvak has no beliefs. No convictions. No loyalty except to the men who serve under him. He saw how things were going when this bunch took over in Washington. He knew that I was through before I knew it myself. I suppose he decided the moment was ripe. Maybe he got tired of working for me, he wanted the job for himself. Even after the Americans got rid of me and shut down their official operations, they still needed a man in Sitka. They really couldn’t find anyone better for their money than Alter Litvak. Maybe he just got tired of losing to me at chess. Maybe he saw a chance to beat me, and he took it. But he was never my yid. Permanent Status never meant anything to him. Neither, I’m certain, does the cause he’s working for now. ”

“The red heifer,” Berko says.

“And so the idea, forgive me,” Landsman says, “but talk me through it. Fine, you have a red heifer without a single flaw. And somehow or other, you get it over to Jerusalem.”

“Then you kill it,” Berko says. “And you burn it to ashes, and you make a paste of the ashes, and you dab a little of that on your priests. Otherwise they can’t go into the Sanctuary, in the Temple, because they are unclean.” He checks with his father. “Do I have that right?”

“More or less.”

“Okay, but here’s the thing I don’t get. Isn’t there what’s it called?” Landsman says. “That mosque. On the hill there where the Temple used to be?”

“It isn’t a mosque, Meyerle. It’s a shrine,” Hertz says. “Qubbat As-Sakhrah. The Dome of the Rock. The third holiest site in Islam. Built in the seventh cen tury by Abd al-Malik, on the precise site of the two Temples of the Jews. The spot where Abraham went to sacrifice Isaac, where Jacob saw the ladder reaching up to heaven. The navel of the world. Yes. If you wanted to rebuild the Temple and reinstitute the old rituals, as a way of hastening the coming of Messiah, then you would need to do something about the Dome of the Rock . It’s in the way.”

“Bombs,” Berko says with an exaggerated nonchalance. “Explosives. That part of the package with Alter Litvak?”

“Demolitions,” the old man says. He reaches for his drink, but it’s gone. “Yes, the yid is an expert.”

Landsman pushes back from the table and stands up. He gets his hat from the door. “We need to get back,” he says. “We need to talk to somebody. We need to tell Bina.”

He opens his phone, but there’s no signal this far out from Sitka. He goes to the telephone on the wall, but Bina’s number kicks him right over to voice mail. “You need to find Alter Litvak,” he tells her. “Find him and hold him and do not let him go.”

When he turns back to the table, he sees father and son still sitting there; Berko is putting some intense question to Hertz Shemets without saying anything. Berko has his hands folded in his lap like a well-behaved child, but he is not a well-behaved child, and if he keeps his fingers intertwined, then it is only to prevent them from enacting some mischief or harm. After an interval that feels to Landsman like a very long time, Uncle Hertz looks down.

“The prayer house at St. Cyril,” Berko says. “The riots.”

“The St. Cyril riots,” Hertz Shemets agrees. “God damn it.”

“Berko-”

“God damn it! Indians always said it was the Jews that blew it up.”

“You have to understand the pressure we were under,” Hertz says. “At the time.”

“Oh, I do,” Berko says. “Believe me. The balancing act. The fine line.”

“Those Jews, those fanatics, the people moving into the disputed areas. They were endangering the status of the entire District. Confirming the Americans’ worst fears about what we would do if they gave us Permanent Status.”

“Uh-huh,” Berko says. “Yeah. Okay. And what about Mom? Was she endangering the District, too?”

Uncle Hertz speaks then, or rather the wind emerges from his lungs through the gates of his teeth in a way that resembles human speech. He looks down at his lap and makes the sound again, and Landsman realizes that he’s saying he’s sorry. Speaking a language in which he has never been schooled.

“You know, I think I must have always known,” Berko says, getting up from the table. He takes his hat and coat from the hook. “Because I never liked you. Not from the first minute, you bastard. Come on, Meyer.”

Landsman follows his partner out. Going through the door, he has to get out of the way so that Berko can go back in. Berko tosses aside his hat and coat. He hits himself in the head twice, with both hands at once. Then he crushes an invisible sphere, roughly the size of his father’s cranium, between his outspread fingers.

“I tried my whole life,” he says finally. “I mean, fuck, look at me!” He snatches the skullcap from the back of his head and holds it up, contemplating it with a sudden horror as if it’s the flesh of his scalp. He flicks it toward the old man. It hits Hertz on the nose and falls onto the pile with the napkin, the broken cigar, the moose gravy. “Look at this shit!” He grabs the front of his shirt and yanks it open in a skitter of but tons. He exposes the homely white panel of his fringed four-corners, like the world’s flimsiest flak jacket, his holy white Kevlar, trimmed with a stripe of sea-creature blue. “I hate this fucking thing.” The four-corners comes up over his head, and he shrugs and whips it off, which leaves him in a white cotton tee. “Every damn day of my life, I get up in the morning and put this shit on and pretend to be something I’m not. Something I’ll never be. For you.”