Professor Alfred Augsburg met the man five weeks before, who would murder him and send CIA agents on a frenzied chase. On this murky night, at the Prague grave of Rabbi Yehudah Lev ben Bezalel, the Maharal and creator of the Golem, the professor clutched his book and from memory recited Psalm 119.

Twelve bells rang and the rains stopped over the Old Jewish Cemetery.  From behind a tombstone, a young man, his muscles bulging, shouted, “Professor Augsburg, you are a creature of habit.”  

His voice quivering, the old man replied, “Who is there?” Augsburg soon breathed a sigh of relief. “What are you doing here, Boris?” He recognized the man as his director’s driver. “I’m an old man, and you frightened me.”

“I have this note for you to read.”  

“I can’t see too well. There’s no light.”

“I will shine this flashlight for you. There. Read please.”

“We know who you are Doctor Ivanchenko.” Augsburg grew angry. “What does this have to do with me? This is for somebody called Ivanchenko. I don’t know who he is.” 

In truth, Alfred Augsburg did know. He was born Alfred Ivanchenko, in Kiev, the bastard son of a Soviet general and the stage actress,  Anna Gerson of  Augsburg Germany. The actress had disappeared mysteriously after childbirth.

“Please, I’m here to recite Psalms at this holy place,” Augsburg went on.

“You can talk your gibberish later. Read this sentence Herr Professor.”

“Doctor Ivanchenko knows where we might find the missing vial with the antidote …”

Augsburg’s eyes widened in fear. Instantly, shadowy images flittered through the old man’s brain: his secret work with the KGB on a Soviet program of bio-warfare; the day he left Moscow, when the Berlin wall came down, to live in a two room apartment in Hamburg, Germany; his brief marriage to the songstress Mala, meeting her older brother, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood who introduced him to Abu al Kahlil. Abu and his dangerous games.

Augsburg shot an icy stare, then dropped his eyes and glanced up the hill towards the double vaulted roof of the Altneuschul, the old synagogue. 

“Speak!” the man shouted.

The professor hid the vial because he needed an insurance policy, he told himself often. “I’ll take the information to my grave.”

“Don’t be foolish. You’ve finished your work. Tell Boris where to find the antidote.”

Suddenly, the old man ran toward the cemetery gates. Boiling with rage, Boris raised his fist to his mouth and forcibly blew into the pin size opening of his clenched fingers, hurtling a dart at the professor’s neck. “You defy me!” The professor slumped to the ground like a dropped block of stone -- his wet obese, thick neck mixed with gushing spurts of dark red blood.

Outside the gates a young couple strolling by heard the thud as Professor Augsburg collapsed, and rushed in to help him. “Take my jacket. We’ve called for help.” A young American covered Augsburg and hovered over the shivering body to protect him.

“Thank you. You are a good son,” Augsburg told the youth, standing with a young woman. The old man soon heard the howl of horn-like screeching sirens -- then silence. The Prague emergency team ran onto the cemetery grounds and rolled the old man onto a stretcher.

The ambulance sped up Maiselova through the narrow winding streets in Josefov, the old Jewish quarter. Writhing in pain, Augsburg smeared with his own blood, -- Hunt the Hare!  -- across Psalm 119, trusting this would signal his student to begin the journey.

 A new moon shone. Through the window of the ambulance’s back doors, the old professor stared vacantly at moving clouds, heaved one last harsh breath and expired on the way to Czesky Hospital. 

Checking his watch at twenty-two minutes past midnight, Boris ran the three streets from the cemetery to Professor Augsburg’s second floor apartment. With his pocket knife, he spun the tumblers to the old lock on the wooden door and entered stealthily,  closing the door silently behind him, as he made his way around the square shaped sparse room with his flashlight.

“Exactly what I’m looking for,” he mumbled and grabbed a grey laptop from Augsburg’s book laden desk. Boris circled the light over the desk and on the floor nearby. Seeing a metal trash can, he thrust his hand in and found a crumbled map highlighting the distance between Augsburg Germany and Wormes on the autobahn. He straightened the paper, folded it neatly and placed the map in his jacket pocket. Then Boris shook the various books on the desk for papers tucked inside: first, an old Hebrew book with the word Haggadah written in old German gothic style characters. When he opened to the front piece he noted that it was printed in Augsburg, Germany in the year 1537. Boris shook his head. “So that is where he got his name.”  He quickly leafed through the seven other volumes, with Cyrillic letters on the front. He recognized those characters, which read Zohar. Ah, more gibberish. Stupid old man. You deserved to die.

Boris set the books back on the desk, flashed the light around the room, careful not to hit the large window facing the street. Satisfied nothing of value remained, he left and sprinted the ten blocks to a street, with low houses and shops and small bars. He entered the rear lot of xyz tavern jumped on his Harley-Davidson and at a stop sign pressed al-Kahlil’s number. “All done. I have a map for you, and his computer,” he said softly into the phone.

“Leave the map and the computer in my office,” Boris heard as he sped off into the night to pick up a prostitute.

Chapter 2

At ten that morning, still heavy with sleep, Montana Greene stumbled into the shower. He let the warm water cascade over him, sucking some into his mouth. Several shrill rings from his cell phone stirred him to a waking reality. When he clicked on his cell a man speaking with an American accent said he must meet with him at the U.S. embassy. 

“What the hell for …?” Montana wrapped a big white bath towel around his waist. He looked out his window at a thickening mist over Prague. Montana maintained a studio on Wenceslas Square in the center of town with views of the Prague Castle and close to the city’s theatres and restaurants.  Prague’s beloved statue of St. Wenceslas was barely visible, today.

“We‘re sending a car for you,” the commanding voice replied.

Montana wasn’t getting into a strange car because an unidentified person said he wanted to see him. “That won’t do. I have a long flight ahead.”

“Delay your trip.”

“Delay my trip? Hey, I’m flying home this afternoon. I’m dripping wet. Just got out of the shower. I’ll call you back.”

“Ask for Graham Shooter. You heard correctly. Straight Shooter, if you like,” the caller said.

Montana grabbed a mug, and poured the coffee he had brewed earlier. After spending the last ten weeks with Professor Augsburg and completing work on his dissertation yesterday on the Golem of Prague, he was eager to get back to New York.  He checked the kitchen clock. He had scheduled a lunch with Miki Bel-Hart, a sort of bon voyage meal, since they hadn’t connected this summer as planned. Miki, a soprano with the Metropolitan Opera by profession and his student in Kabbalah at Columbia University was in Prague, for a recital. He figured he had plenty of time to dash off to the Embassy, hear them out and rush back to the Hotel U Prince where he’d meet up with her.

Montana  was darkly handsome, with perennial stubble of black beard, brooding lips and unmarried. His lectures on Kabbalah were the rage with students at Columbia University; especially certain women students in whom he must have aroused erotic desire -- to the point that last semester, two coeds sitting in the back row raised a banner which read, I want your children, starting a tendency toward fawning over him. Two hundred and ninety-nine students filled Laky Hall three times a week to listen to lectures on Kabbalah, earning these students three academic credits.

“I’m aware that most of you need to fulfill the requirements for your degree, and I’m aware that many of you consider this course an easy A,” he had told the class. “Be that as it may, we’re going to learn, to study, to delve into the mysteries, the theories and practices of Kabbalah.” He paused, looked around the hall at a sea of students, dressed in sloppy blue jeans, with unruly hair, and sloppy posture. The few exceptions were the female students, and several religious male students.

Montana looked down at his seating chart. “Jeffers. Yes, you. An easy question for openers.”  At first, several students chuckled . Montana tended to pick on Bill Jeffers, a wiry young man with a scraggily blond beard. Jeffers was sent to class by the basketball coach. “What well known mystical phrase, that every child knows, is said to have been used to create a human being?”

“Abra kadabrah,” Jeffers responded.

“Exactly. And what does that phrase mean?”

“It is a Hebrew phrase. I will create at the same time as I speak.”

“Precisely.”  

Montana smiled. More than half the students in his class were young women.  He wasn’t shy about his sexual emanations. He had that quality, and that was that. Montana looked down at his seating chart again. “Roberts.”

One of the chicly dressed female students responded. “It is I,” to which the hall reverberated with laughter.

“What does the term Kabbalah mean?”

“To receive,” came the reply.“

And how many paths of wisdom are there? Hoffman.”

“Thirty-two”

“In your learned opinion what notion is central to Kabbalistic tradition, Bel-Hart?”

“That there are no coincidences in life and that every waking moment is a potential doorway to divine stimulus,” Miki Bel-Hart responded.

“Jeffers.”

“It is I.” A few chuckles.

“How many spheres of consciousness?”

“Ten.”

“And what are these called?”

“Sefirot.”

“Which “Sefirah, designates sexuality? Jeffers put away your laptop. You should know the answer instinctively.”

The laughter was loud. The bell rang, ending the class session.

“I’m sure that you’ll all be focusing on sexuality to come up with the correct answer for our next session,” Montana shouted above the din.

This morning at ten past eleven, with a backpack strapped to his shoulders, the forty-one year old American, in jeans, a white jacket and a New York Yankees baseball cap on his head, left his studio apartment for the Embassy.

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