The Alpine Pursuit by Richard Wake

Author:Richard Wake [Wake, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Manor and State, LLC
Published: 2022-04-21T16:00:00+00:00

24

The next night, we took a stroll through the old town. There was one in every European city, it seemed — except for the ones that had been bombed to shit, which was most of them, I guessed. But Innsbruck’s old town along the river, while small, was intact — the narrow winding streets, the ancient shops and apartments on either side. We made a few leisurely passes in the cool evening air, walking by the front door of The Black Dog two different times, scanning the entrance without appearing to notice it.

“Anything?” I said. We were sitting now on a bench in the plaza outside of the Saint James Cathedral.

“Just looked like a bar, I don’t know,” Rachel said. “But the bigger question is, why do we have so many of our discussions sitting in the square outside of cathedrals?”

“I don’t know. Maybe because there’s always a bench outside of a cathedral — you know, to sit and reflect.”

“You ever set foot inside of one?”

“For Mass?” I said, and Rachel nodded.

“Not for a long time,” I said. The truth was, the last church service I had attended was probably Otto’s funeral, which was more than a decade earlier. Any other trip through the door of a church had almost certainly been connected to an intelligence operation of some sort, receiving or delivering a message.

“And you?” I said.

“Sam’s services, then Sidney and Golda’s,” she said. “They say it’s supposed to be comforting, but I guess you have to be open to being comforted — you know what I mean?”

I nodded.

“This place, it kind of beats that out of you,” Rachel said. “At least, it’s beaten it out of me. I don’t think I’ve felt comfort for a single day since Sam was killed. That’s the only prayer I say — that I can feel comfort again when I get to Palestine. That’s it.”

We sat for a minute and then talked through what was about to happen. It was the third time we had rehearsed it, but I was nervous, and I could tell Rachel was nervous.

“Are you sure this makes sense?” she said. “I mean, are you sure I need to come into the bar.”

“I am sure,” I said, even though I also had my doubts.

“Why?”

“Because it doesn’t pay for us to be springing any surprises on these people at the last minute. For better or worse, we’re about to put our fate in their hands. If there’s going to be a problem with it being two of us, we need to know now. If there’s going to be a problem with you being a woman, or with you being a Jewish woman, it’s better to find out ahead of time. We might only get one shot at this, and it’s got to be as clean a shot as we can manage. Tell them the truth, pay whatever it takes — and if they refuse, let them refuse now and give us a chance to figure out something else.”

“They won’t refuse,” she said, almost to herself.

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