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Danny Yatom called me a couple of minutes later. He said Rabin was still
alive. But from the details he gave me, I knew it would be a miracle for him to
pull through. "Three shots, from close range," Danny said. "From an Israeli, a
Jew." Like Rabin, like me too until this had actually happened, it was something
Danny was struggling to believe. He said that he'd call me back when he knew
anything more. But I had the TV on in the room. Before he did, I watched Eitan
Haber announce that Yitzhak Rabin was dead.

Although I hadn't known it until I'd arrived, Yossi Beilin was also in New
York, for meetings and a speech of his own. Though he was a Peres protégé,
and I was seen as closer to Rabin, the two of us had become friends. We
immediately made plans to get the next flight home. But before leaving for the
airport, I phoned Leah Rabin. However inadequate I knew it would be in
helping her even begin to cope with the loss, I told her that my, and Nava's,
thoughts were with her. That Yitzhak's death would leave a tremendous hole, in
all of us, in every single Israeli. "They shot him," she kept murmuring. "They
shot him. They shot him. They shot him." I called Peres, too. "Shimon, you
have a mountain on your shoulders," I said. "But your task is to carry on. All of
us will be with you, supporting, helping however we can."

It was the saddest flight I'd ever taken. Yossi and I barely spoke. Each of us
was deep in thought. I found myself lost in memories of Rabin – from the very
first time I'd met him, in the sayeret, to that last, long talk we'd had in his office
a couple of days earlier. For some reason, I kept wondering whether, when the
shots had been fired, he'd been turning to look behind him. It was an
idiosyncrasy he had, whenever he was leaving a meeting or an event – even, as I
now recalled vividly, when the two of us were leaving the municipal ceremony
in Ofakim. I was behind him as we left. "Ehud," he said, turning back, "are you
there?" It was a senseless detail. It wouldn't change anything. But I still felt torn
up inside thinking about it.

After we landed at Ben-Gurion, I went with Nava to the Rabins' apartment
in Ramat Aviv. There were hundreds of people outside, and nearly a hundred
crowded inside the flat. Leah looked exhausted, her face ashen. "They shot
him," she said over and over as Nava and I hugged her. "Three shots. In the
back. Why?" I said there was no sane answer, but that with Yitzhak's death,
Israel seemed different, the world seemed different, and emptier. Before we left,
we added our candles to the forest of flickering memorial lights outside the
apartment block. Then, we drove the Kings of Israel Square. Thousands of
people were huddled in small groups throughout the plaza, sitting around

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