Instead of answering, Mira stepped over to a dresser and picked up a picture that was reclining on top of it. It showed two men and two women. All four were young, fit and tanned, and dressed in khaki short pants and shirts. And all had machine guns slung over their shoulders, hanging in front of their bodies. All four flashed the confident and arrogant smiles common to young warriors.

One of the women was a younger Mira Roth. How old was she when it was taken? Nineteen, eighteen, maybe even seventeen. Her hair had been shorter then, her face slightly leaner. She looked fierce, eager for battle. Fearless.

Mira pointed to the man at the left of the quartet of young warriors. "Yohanan died that night, and Talia…" Her finger lingered on the figure of the other woman in the picture, a willowy brunette. She raised her eyes to me. They glistened with withheld tears. Apparently, Mira had not cried out her share of tears. At least not yet.

"All told, we lost four members. What went wrong? In short, everything. The raid went badly from the get-go. Nothing went according to plan. Of the ten prisoners, six died. We only got four out. We also killed some British soldiers, but that was small comfort. Two of the prisoners we freed were Esther and Willie."

"What happened next?"

"We took them to a safe house, where they stayed until we arranged false papers and an apartment for them. When Esther told me the story of the baby, I suggested giving him to another family for safekeeping. She refused and said she would care for him until his mother arrived. I think she had grown attached to him. I think she loved him."

Mira sat down again and smoothed her dress. She crossed her legs, lacing her fingers on top of her knee.

"The papers we gave them said they were mother and son. We let Esther keep her first name; it eliminated the risk of her making an involuntary mistake if someone called out her name on the street. She chose the surname Kantor—German for cantor—because her father had been one in their synagogue in Germany. She gave the baby his first name—Erich. So that's who they became: Esther and Erich Kantor, mother and son."

Now I understood why Reuben Tzanani had failed to find a death certificate for Esther Grunewald and Willie Ackerland. Both had died under assumed identities. And the people who had been close to them—neighbors and colleagues and friends—knew them by their false names. Which explained why none of them had answered Henrietta's newspaper ad.

But that raised another question. "My client posted an ad in the newspaper, asking Esther to contact her. Didn't you see it?"

Mira asked me which paper the ad had run in and gave a rueful shake of her head when I told her it was Davar.