by Nathan Ronen
Chapter 72
Café de Flore, Boulevard Saint-Germain, Paris
A summery Parisian morning. A misleading sun shone in the sky, and the air was cool. In the old café that had become a Paris institution, ‘Lame’ Bislan was sitting, waiting for Arik Bar-Nathan, sipping a macchiato and nibbling on a fresh brioche cookie.
A strange, pleasant whistle caught his attention. An older man, dressed with odd elegance including a colorful bowtie, was sitting alone at a corner table under the massive chandelier, holding a glass of wine in his hand. He dipped his finger in the red wine and spun it swiftly along the rim of the delicate crystal glass, causing the glass to emit a musical whistle of sorts.
Bislan exchanged a smile with him. Every time the whistle stopped, the waiter ran over to the man and refilled his glass with wine. In the tables around him, Bislan noticed a pair of lovers. The man’s pocket displayed a suspicious bulge. Another couple was looking around, examining anyone who entered the café with much interest. He had no doubt that these were Mossad agents tasked with ensuring the safety of his important guest. His own bodyguard, a Neanderthal giant with a low forehead, was sitting behind him, holding a leather case that was cuffed to his arm.
A black Mercedes Maybach stopped in front of the café, and an elegant, very pretty woman disembarked from it. The Mercedes remained parked at the entrance of the café, and a large man stepped outside to keep an eye on it. Only then did Bislan notice that the car bore diplomatic plates.
The woman strode toward him, her tall stilettos clicking along at an even pace. She gazed at him with gray eyes and asked, “Is this seat free?”
He surveyed her body, clad in a gray suit, and replied, “No, I’m sorry, I’m waiting for a friend.”
“Arik Bar-Nathan couldn’t make it. He was busy, and sent me instead.” She handed him a strong, well-groomed hand to be shaken. “My name is Maryam Halachi. Nice to meet you.”
Her French was perfect, but she had a heavy Iranian accent.
“You’re Iranian!” Bislan said suspiciously. His mind immediately analyzed the possibility of a trap and means of escaping it. He expected to see the Mossad agents leaping from their seats and whipping out their guns, but the two pairs of “lovers” did not budge from their spots.
“Do you have material for me?” she asked with the determination of a businesswoman.
“And do you have a package for me?” Bislan replied.
“It’s here, down to the last cent. But first I have to see and assess the material you’ve brought.”
Suddenly, he recognized her: she was the leader of Mojahedin-e Khalq, the Iranian organization attempting to overthrow the current mullah regime in Iran. He thought it was a stroke of genius on the part of the Mossad to use her, of all people. That way, there would be no Israeli fingerprints associated with the action. No one would ever suspect an Iranian woman of acting as a messenger for a senior Mossad operative.
“Sir, shall we get back to business?” The expression in her gray eyes was chilly. She was known among the Paris underworld as a cold-blooded killer, who placed no value whatsoever on human life. Although Bislan was the sort of shady character who had seen everything, her gaze caused a shiver to roll down his spine.
He signaled his giant, who passed him the case. Bislan quickly typed in the code and extracted a manila envelope from the briefcase, containing photos and a flash drive.
“It’s all here. Photos, bank accounts, wiretapping recordings and a weekly surveillance report specifying whom the target met and when,” Bislan boasted. “No one would ever have time to…”
Maryam raised a finger to her lips, signaling him to shut up. She gestured to her man keeping watch outside next to the black Mercedes Maybach, and he approached her at a light jog. She whispered something in his ear, and he returned to the car and took out a paper-thin laptop. Plugging in the flash drive, she skimmed through the dozens of scanned documents stored within it. She nodded to herself, put on a large pair of earphones, listened to some of the calls Eddy Constantine had conducted, and smiled to herself.
Bislan tracked her progress with wide-eyed fascination. She was a first-class professional. He had never seen a woman fill such a role: the leader of an Iranian guerilla group that required its fighters to divorce their spouses and remain married solely to the cause.
Suddenly, he remembered. He had watched a short documentary about her and her fighters on French TV. The film had described her as the only woman heading a rebel organization fighting the Ayatollahs’ control over Iran, an organization with many Iranian supporters. Most of the militia’s fighters were students, and the organization attacked Revolutionary Guard posts and assassinated Iranian nuclear scientists. According to the information in the film, the Israeli Mossad was the reason why the militia had been omitted from the list of terrorist organizations, and had received diplomatic status as an organization in exile in the French capital.
She finished reading, signaling her assistant once more. He trotted over, took the laptop from her and presented her with a locked leather case instead.
Maryam handed the case to Bislan. “Do you want to count it?”
Bislan peered inside, examined the stacks of euro bills secured with paper currency straps, lifting them with his finger, which sported a heavy gold ring. The bag contained thirty packets of 10,000 euros each. He nodded and closed the case.
“Have a good day,” Maryam said, taking the manila envelope with her and exiting toward her car, consciously swaying her hips, knowing he was watching her rear lustfully.
In Haifa, 2,800 miles from Paris, in the parking lot next to his late mother’s house, Arik received the call. He was exhausted after spending an entire night in the command shelter, going over all the details of Operation Dialena with his people.
“It’s all here. This material is dynamite. The transfer has been carried out. I’m on my way to the embassy to make copies of the material, as we agreed. I’ll convey the originals to Admiral Lacoste, per our agreement,” she updated him.
“The admiral’s at home.” He gave her the address.
Arik called Haya Calmi, the manager of the Mossad’s Paris station. “Maryam Halachi, the leader of the Iranian Mojahedin-e Khalq, is on her way to you. Give her the technical support she needs. Keep a copy of the material in the safe for yourself. It’s for your eyes only. I want you to be the only one dealing with this material. No secretaries or assistants. Just you. Is that clear? Send me a copy of all the material by courier in a diplomatic pouch today, and address it ‘Arik Bar-Nathan—For His Eyes Only.’ Return the original to Maryam. She knows whom it should go to.”
Arik went up to his mother’s apartment to say the morning Shacharit prayer with the worshippers who had arrived especially to recite the Kaddish Yatom47 (Orphan’s Kaddish) prayer for the ascension of his mother’s soul along with him. He knew his mother would have wanted this, and was doing it for her.
In Paris, half an hour later, Haya Calmi left via the side exit of the embassy and turned directly toward a black Mercedes Maybach that was parked in a secured courtyard, its windows locked. The tinted window of the car descended, and a feminine hand passed her an envelope. She took the material from Maryam and went up to photocopy and personally duplicate its contents. When she returned, she handed the package to Maryam Halachi, who had remained in her car the entire time.
Maryam instructed her driver: “Go to the Lacostes’ home, Rue Murillo, Eighth Arrondissement, Paris.”
* * *
47 The Kaddish Yatom or Orphan’s Kaddish is a traditional prayer for the dead recited daily by mourners throughout the period of mourning. It has a melancholy, rhythmic incantation, and actually makes no mention of death but rather affirms God’s presence in life.
Chapter 73
The Apartment in Katamon Tet Neighborhood, Jerusalem
At five thirty a.m., the alar
m clock next to Geula’s bed buzzed. The sun was already shining, and the humidity had fallen into dew on her patio furniture. She had a hard time waking up, experiencing vertigo and a sensation of nausea combined with endless heartburn. At seven a.m., she had to be at the office, going over Prime Minister Ehud Tzur’s busy schedule, which began at nine in the morning.
Usually, she was a healthy, active woman, but the sudden morning nausea made her feel helpless. She took off her pajamas and headed for the shower, but before she entered the warm water, she found herself on all fours, hunched over the toilet, struggling to throw up. The sour smell of digestive fluids rose to her throat with a burning sensation.
The toothpaste foaming in her mouth tasted like chalk. She turned on the percolator, filling it with a bag of the quality ground coffee she liked. But this time, she found the aroma of the coffee reaching her nose revolting. The date maamoul cookie was terribly sweet. She left the cup and the cookie on the counter. For some reason, the kitchen was rife with a pungent smell of cooking and frying that bothered her, and she opened all the windows wide to air it out.
Her head clearing somewhat, she got dressed, and before leaving the house, sprayed herself with Coco Chanel’s Mademoiselle perfume, bought for her by her lover, the young police officer Sasha Yarshanski. However, the intense flowery smell rising from her own body seemed sour this time, triggering a new round of nausea. She found herself crouching over the toilet again, perched on her knees, her head deep inside the bowl. She began to perspire heavily; feeling she couldn’t drive, she called a cab.
On the way to the office, she thought to herself that the mental tension she had been living with lately must be causing all this. For a few weeks now, she had been recording her conversations with Ehud Tzur, documenting all the cash she received from donors for the prime minister’s election campaign, summarizing the contents of the conversations between the prime minister and his tycoon friends in a journal, secretly documenting all the strategic tactics based on shaming and badmouthing the prime minister’s rivals, both in his own party and in the opposition, as conceived by the prime minister’s advisor, Arthur Schein, and then distributed in a single page stating “For the Prime Minister’s Eyes Only,” for his authorization.
She photographed the documents with a tiny camera, uploaded them into a secret file on her office computer, and saved them as a JPEG file in the mini flash drive she concealed in a small nook behind the mailbox in her home. She would mark the supporting wall next to her parking spot with a chalk X to signify a communication, and find that it had been erased by the time she returned from work. In her mailbox she would find a short-stemmed rose affixed to a police envelope, which contained a new nano-recorder, half the size of a pen, which she would insert into the cleavage of her bra.
At the end of the week, Sasha Yarshanski would arrive for the weekend, as was his habit. Usually, she would await his arrival eagerly, but this time, she felt that she was incapable of cooking him the spicy Kurdish food he loved so much, and that the last thing she was in the mood for was a torrid weekend of food, wine and sex.
She left a message on Sasha’s voicemail: “I don’t feel well. Call me when you can.”
Sasha called her back uncharacteristically quickly. “What’s going on, my love?”
“I don’t know; this tension is killing me,” she told him, embarrassed. She described what she was going through and asked to take some time off for herself over the weekend.
“No way! I’m not leaving you alone. We can just cuddle and live on omelets and salad this weekend…” he said indulgently. “This time, I’m in charge of cooking and shopping, and I’ll pamper you.”
The word ‘omelet’ ignited a new wave of nausea within her. “As long as it’s nothing fried,” she told him.
On Friday afternoon, Sasha rang her doorbell, and she opened the door wearing her flowery robe. She was pale and tired, her hair disheveled. He came in with plastic bags packed with bread, cakes, cheese, fruit and vegetables, as well as a variety of smoked fish, salami and two bottles of white Chablis wine that he put straight in the fridge.
“What’s happening, my love?” he tried to pull her toward him for a passionate kiss, but she turned him away gently, offering her cheek.
He gazed at her with his big blue eyes and aimed his heart-melting smile at her, but this time, to no avail.
“I feel dizzy, and I want to rest in bed for a bit,” she told him, lying down. He sprawled out beside her.
“Geula, I think you’re taking all this too much to heart. You’re too honest, with an overdeveloped sense of justice.” He inserted his hand into her robe and fondled her breasts. She stopped his hand.
“I can’t help it. I feel like I’m stabbing my friendship with Ehud Tzur with a dagger. Loyalty is the ultimate value to me. I’ve been with him since I was sixteen. I walked into his shabby little office on Hillel Street in Jerusalem and asked him whether he needed a secretary, because I had studied at Beit Hapakid secretarial school and knew shorthand and touch typing. Do you know he hired me only because I agreed to work for free at first, until the office started making money? What I’m doing isn’t fair. I don’t know how I stumbled into this.” She began to weep in frustration.
Sasha looked at her, saying, “Honey, I can promise you from my perspective as a police officer that there’s no connection between justice and morality, loyalty and friendship. You have to understand that just like Arthur Schein and Ehud Tzur plan ruthless elimination campaigns against potential enemies, they won’t hesitate to sacrifice you, either, if it’s in their best interests, especially now that he’s made it to the top. He’ll toss you out if it suits him.”
“You don’t know what we’ve gone through, how much mockery we put up with, and how we grew together,” she said.
Sasha’s hand crept into her robe again, caressing her lower belly, which usually heightened her excitement level, but not this time. Once again, she stilled his hand as if it were a bother.
“You told me you were targeting Schein. Well, then, why am I suddenly recording Ehud Tzur’s conversations, taking photos of materials related to Ehud Tzur, and making all those lists you asked me for?” she asked angrily.
“I’m an intelligence officer for the police’s national Fraud Unit. In the world of professional pool players, people watch a master player pick up a pool cue and hit a group of colorful balls arranged in formation, which scatter everywhere as a result. Most people don’t understand that he strategizes a precise angle of impact to hit a particular ball that will roll along the table, powerfully hitting the side and propelling the intended ball that will generate maximum points into the pocket.”
This comparison enraged Geula. She sat up in bed.
“So, what are you telling me? That I’ve been living in a fool’s paradise till now? Näively believing I was just fine? That nothing bad could happen to me? And suddenly you come into my life, and I become a black ball being jostled around by a pool cue on a game table just so all of you can get at the white ball, which you tell me is Arthur Schein, while maybe sinking a few more balls you’re not telling me about along the way?”
“That’s really not the case, darling,” Sasha tried to placate her. “Maybe that was a bad metaphor. I brought those chocolate croissants you like. Do you want some coffee and a fresh croissant?”
“No. I don’t want to eat anything, thank you. I just want to be by myself for a bit and think about everything that’s going on here, and what might happen to me if it all blows up. I’m a girl who lives alone, with no family to support me, and I have to take care of myself. Seemingly, I’ve had everything in life. But I’ve never really had myself. I always served others. Maybe it’s time I hired a lawyer who’ll protect me and try to strike a deal so I can turn state’s evidence for the state attorney, because otherwise, I’m a full accessory to these crimes, right?”
He stayed silent, but his eyes
expressed it all.
A moment later, he reacted like a scolded child who had not received the toy that had been promised to him. “Okay, I’m going to go sit in the living room. I’ve had a rough week too, and I actually really feel like a cup of coffee and a fresh croissant.”
She fell asleep alone in her big bed, and when she woke up in the evening, she found Sasha asleep in the living room in the recliner in front of the flickering TV set.
Geula examined Sasha’s handsome features and his athletic body. Suddenly, he seemed like a little boy to her, rather than a mate and a partner to the adventure she was going through. She sat alone in the kitchen, sliced herself some fresh challah bread and spread a generous amount of butter over it, adding a stack of hard cheese slices and plenty of pickles, which suddenly tasted delicious to her.
She woke up Sasha, who smiled at her, and told him: “Sasha, my love, don’t be angry, but I think I’d prefer if you drove back home to your apartment in Tel Aviv.”
He was offended. “Don’t you fancy me even a little?” he assumed the childish voice that always proved effective.
“I think I’m about to get my period, and you know what a bitch I can be when that happens. I need to be alone,” she lied to him.
He made himself a sandwich and went down to his car with a disappointed expression. She blew him a kiss from afar.
Early in the morning, the familiar assault of nausea woke her up again. A terrible sensation of heartburn was emanating from her stomach. She walked unsteadily, sitting down next to the toilet bowl and hugging it. The toilet had suddenly become a source of solace and relief.
She was sure she had come down with some kind of stomach flu or food poisoning. She didn’t have time to be sick now, before the elections and all the required preparations. She also didn’t want to miss a day of work on Sunday. She put on light clothing and went to the health clinic in Beit HaKerem neighborhood, which was open on Saturday.