Introduction

Munich, 1950, occupied West Germany; Horst Vogle is quietly working to reassemble the city museum's art collection. Aspiring pianist, Greta Furster, introduces him to a group of ambitious war veterans seeking to restore German pride and help refugees fleeing the Communist East. Vogle learns that they are using Nazi gold to fund Egyptian weapons intended to be used against Israel. Vogle has his own secret. He is Jan Goldberg, one-time Jewish Partisan and soldier in the Israeli War of Independence, now an Israeli assassin, targeting Nazi fugitives. To Goldberg, recovering gold taken from Jewish victims is a way of gaining retribution for the Holocaust and as his bond to Greta intensifies, his mission and identity are tested. This fact-based thriller is a must-read for fans of John Le Carré and Alan Furst. It's an intriguing take on the Nazi legacy in Post War Germany and an exploration of the polarities of revenge and reconciliation, the limitations of ideology, and the power of love.

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Excerpt

The eighth game of a grueling set--set point in fact--and Hermann was serving. He observed Horst shifting from one foot to the other, head thrust forward, hair plastered to his forehead with sweat. Hermann summoned his confidence, and bounced the ball on the court a few times. Just an ace. He rolled back, his arm swung out like a pendulum, the racket head dropped behind his back as the ball slowly ascended, paused, then began to drop as he struck it obliquely on the sweet spot of his racket. The ball sliced toward the outside line and skidded just inside the box and he rushed the net. Horst lunged, caught the ball on the edge of the strings, and it came off the racket high and without much momentum. Hermann extended laterally and blocked the ball. Horst rushed toward it and spooned it up off a low bounce. It touched the tape, paused, then dropped back into his own service box.

Hermann straightened and thrust his hand across the net. “Nice playing,” he said pleased with himself at having won, given that Horst was taller and disconcertingly calm under pressure. True, Horst had what looked like some nasty bruises, judging by the bandages on his left arm and leg and claimed that he hadn’t played in a while.

“I’m afraid I wasn’t at my best either.” Having drunk too much the night before, Hermann had a throbbing headache and his tongue felt like the sole of a shoe. A calf muscle cramp, half way through the set, had also held him back. Add the cigarettes--for at least the fifth time this week he vowed to give them up.

As the players walked off the court to the bench Hermann wondered how Greta would take the result. Clearly she was fond of Horst; to what extent he wasn’t sure. She was something of a coquette; flirting but always dodging the response. And as for Horst, Hermann had observed something in his expression as they shook hands; a dark shadow, a quickly erased enmity, or was it only the look of a rival suitor? Hard to gauge what was going on behind the façade of affability. Perhaps Horst was concealing an SS background.

“Out here we have a custom,” Hermann said.

“Only one custom?”

“One that matters. The winner pays for the beer. After the shower.”

“I don’t want to get these bandages wet. Besides, I can’t take too much time. Greta needs to get back to Munich. Something she promised the Maestro.” Horst followed Hermann to the changing room adjacent to the stables.

“You must be confident of your relationship if you think she’ll put up with a sweaty athlete in a closed car.”

Horst dowsed himself with aftershave and went to the common room to wait. Hermann got two St. Paulis and glasses from the kitchen and brought them to a table. “We have the honor system. Pay up for what we drink at the end of the month.” Hermann poured his carefully; he liked two centimeters of creamy head. “Zum voll,” he said and drank half. “Nothing like a beer after exercise. Good German beer was one of the things I missed most during the War.” He looked at Horst confidentially as he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “What about you, Horst, what did you miss most?”

“A normal life.”

“What is normal?”

“A walk in the country on a Sunday, picking apples off of a tree, buying fresh cheese from a farmer.” Horst was weighing every word. He was curious and wanted to draw Hermann out, without revealing too much.

“We did all that and more.”

“Where were you exactly, Hermann?”

“Eastern front, Poland, Ukraine, and back again.”

“Greta told me that you were wounded.”

Hermann shook his head, flushed a little, and drank off the rest of his beer. “One of those stupid things. I was in a Panzer Grenadier unit, riding on an Sdk f2250, you know our light armored wagon. We were on patrol in those swampy, bug infested Polish forests. Partisans ambushed us. A mine blew the command car in front of us clean over. My damned MP 38 jammed. While I was fussing with it, it started and the recoil hit me in the throat. It did a job on my larynx. That was the trouble with those MP38s, always firing when they shouldn’t. Did you ever use one?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact, I did. It was a good weapon, but you had to keep it clean.” Horst felt his throat contract. He saw the command car leap up in an orange flare of fire, two soldiers flying, an officer pinned under the car just before the gas tank exploded, the men riding on the following light armored vehicle, hunched down, spraying the trees on both sides of the track with machine pistol fire. Outnumbered, his group had faded into the undergrowth, unharmed. The Germans hadn’t even tried to pursue them. Could it have been the same one? There were no doubt many such engagements. And yet what if he had actually witnessed what Hermann had just described? The speculation receded but the residue formed an awkward comradeship.

“What about you, Horst, were you wounded?”

Horst tapped his forehead with his finger. “Some shrapnel. And I carry a lot of scars up here.”

Hermann looked down. He drew something on the surface of the table using the sweat from the beer bottle, then looked up, gave a little nod and said gently, “Another beer?”

“I wouldn’t mind.”

The two men sat quietly, each immersed in their own painful memories.

“It sometimes helps to talk. It relieves the pressure,” Hermann said, his hoarse voice barely audible. “I lost a good friend in that ambush, Gerhardt Hassler. We had been together in the same unit since training. He was a funny guy, he had a refined sense of the ridiculous.” Again silence. “He wanted to be a lawyer.” Hermann’s eyes grew moist.

“What about the ones who ambushed you? Did you hate them for killing your comrade?”

Hermann looked as though he didn’t understand the words. “Hate? Not hate. After all, they were on their own soil trying to get rid of us. We had our mission, so to speak, our truths, and so did they. I really don’t remember what I felt then. It must have been sadness and shock, surely shock. I remember closing Gerhardt’s eyes and observing how empty they were. I remember taking his wallet, taking the letter he had in his pocket to send to his fiancé, Berta,--we all carried one--and thinking how hard it would be to tell his family.”

Greta came towards them. “What’s up?”

“Reminiscing,” they said together. view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

From the author:

1. Jan/Horst’s feelings have been burned by his life experience; the death of his family, the destruction of his future, the struggle for survival in Palestine. Can his willingness
to assassinate Nazis be justified by his life experience? Is killing another person ever justified?
2. Can you think of instances in the book in which stereotypes distort reality? How about instances in your own life?
3. What do the characters have in common? Horst, Hermann, Uri for example.
4. What motivates Freddie to suspect Horst?
5. The novel leads the reader to speculate on whether Jan/Horst leaves Germany. What do you think he does? What would you do under the circumstances?
6. What if anything changes Jan/Horst’s sense of purpose?
7. Do you believe that love can change us for the better? In what ways?
8. If you are familiar with Wagner’s opera, Gotterdammerung, Twilight of the Gods, can you identify any elements of the novel in which the author is alluding to that story?
9. What’s the significance of Bach’s Goldberg Variations?

Weblinks

»	Author Sheldon Greene's web site
»	Interview with author Sheldon Greene

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