Bashert

by Lior Samson

  “Yes, I think you’re right about that. They managed to tap into a colleague’s computer, and I think they were monitoring mine. But I don’t really know. This Novikov character told me that he was with Interpol and told my friend that he was with Mossad, but I suppose pretending to be what you are not is part of the job.”

  Her face lit up. “Did you say Novikov? Was it Lev Novikov?” Karl nodded. “He is our friend. He is the one who is making the arrangements for Migdal. Migdal worked with him at Mossad. His mother was a Moroccan Jew who married a Russian émigré. His father became like Migdal’s Israeli father after Migdal learned that his own parents had died in a car accident soon after he arrived here. I think that is why he stayed in Israel, at least in the beginning. He had nothing to go back to. I don’t know what brought him here, though. There was always something a bit mysterious about it, as if he were already working for Mossad, which makes no sense, since he was just a teenager.”

  Karl frowned slightly in concentration. “I knew him, briefly, back when I first started college, but I lost track of him. He was what we called a hacker—not the modern sense of a computer hacker. He pulled off stunts, practical jokes, like turning this big central dome at MIT into a giant pumpkin. Well, he didn’t do that one, but stuff like that.”

  She shook her head slowly side to side. “Now, that was not my Migdal. He was always very serious, very—what might one say—applied? He had a smile that never left his face, but the smile was one of warmth not amusement. People trusted him. They knew they could count on him. The very moment I met him, I knew this man would be a good father to our children.” Her voice caught. “Child. We only have the one. His name is Binyamin. He is five, and has this indefatigable imagination, which his father always fed with made up stories about spies and intrigue and adventure. Of course, maybe they were not all so made up. One never knew with Migdal. He led more than one life, one might say.

  “Which is funny. I trusted him completely, absolutely, from the beginning, yet I knew he was not always telling the truth, or not what you would say, the whole truth. Sometimes I would catch him in some small slip, an inconsistency, never anything important, but some detail about where he had once been or how he knew this person, that sort of thing. I would just start to open my mouth and he would seem to know what I was about to say. He would simply stop talking, even in mid-sentence, and his smile would broaden, and he would say, ‘Oh, well, you know.’ And that would be it. It was as if I had stumbled on a secret vice or something, and we both knew not to say any more. The Mossad smile. That’s how I always thought of it. The I-can’t-say-more-about-this-darling smile.

  “I knew Migdal better than any person on earth, I knew his soul, and yet I also knew so little about him. I knew the person and not the facts. Does that make sense to you?”

  “Yes. I had a friend once say something very much like that about me. Only she said she knew all the facts but so little of the person.”

  “It is funny, this trust, isn’t it? What makes us trust another person, sometimes all out of proportion to what we really know of them? Why am I talking with you about things that I have not spoken of with my friend Gila, who lives in the next building and has known me for years? Are you married, Mister Lustig?”

  “No. Not for many years. But my ex-wife is a good friend. Would you believe it? I was the one who introduced her to her husband. She is the friend who said that thing about not knowing the person. Except, I think by now she does know the person, or maybe I am becoming less about the facts, nothing but the facts.”

  “Did you have children?”

  “Thank goodness, no. I don’t think I’m cut out for children. They always seemed to me like bewildering beasts, another species. I suppose that is a terrible thing to say, but I just never responded to them much, except to feel awkward around them.”

  “Now there, Mister Lustig, that is not a fact.”

  “Oh, it is, I assure you.”

  “No, what I meant is that it is not about facts, it is about the person, the person you are. Perhaps you are right, that you are changing.”

  A silence passed between them, like a soft breeze. She held his eyes for only a moment, but it was a moment longer than he expected.

  “I think I could use that coffee, now,” he said, with a sigh. “How do you get a waiter out here?”

  “Oh, don’t. The coffee here is terrible. The food is good, but I make better coffee. Come with me, I’ll make you some. We can talk more on the way about this confusing calamity that has brought you to Israel. I hope you do not find me … find all this … too abrupt, but I have always been that way. I simply decide things and do things that seem right to me at the time. It is how I ended up here, in Haifa, in Israel.

  “But for a cup of coffee you will also have to put up with one of those bewildering beasts, because my son will be coming home from his uncle’s very soon. You watch out. He may make you uncomfortable. Or worse.” She gave him a broad smile as she held out her hand and gestured for Karl to follow. “Oh, and please don’t say anything about Migdal. I need to find the right way and the right time to tell my son. You understand. Right now he needs for things to be normal. As normal as they can be, anyway.”

  37

  The apartment was small and, by Karl’s standards, unkempt. Dirty dishes were stacked by the sink, a blue stuffed bear lay under the kitchen table, and toy cars were strewn across the living-room floor. Perhaps that is part of it, Karl thought. Children are messy. They are Trojan horses bearing gifts of chaos. Let them into your life and order is lost, all illusion of control vanishes.

  Karl was sipping his coffee when the apartment door burst open. A small boy with kinky blonde hair dashed toward the kitchen and skidded to a halt when he saw Karl. He turned and shouted something unintelligible to the elderly man just coming through the door. Both of them fell unexpectedly to the ground and started making chudda-chudda-chudda sounds as they sprayed Karl with imaginary machine-gun fire.

  Karl stood to face them, then, suddenly inspired, grabbed at his chest and jerked his body repeatedly as he slowly shrunk to the floor. He lay still and waited. The boy stood up and came over to look down at him. He was just drawing his foot back to kick at the body on the kitchen floor when Shira returned from the bathroom.

  “Binyamin! Avi! You know I don’t allow gunfire in the apartment. Now clean up the blood and get rid of the body.” They both laughed as she offered Karl a hand. He tried to keep from laughing as he continued to lie still.

  “Now you have done it, you two,” she said. “You have killed an American. President Bush will be angry. He will send troops to invade us. First Afghanistan, then Iraq, then Israel. Soon his troops will be everywhere.”

  Binyamin looked unsure of himself for a moment, then fell to laughing again. Avi crossed over to the kitchen and knelt beside Karl. “I am Uncle Avi. You must be the mysterious American. The dead mysterious American. Welcome to Israel. Please excuse the gunfire in the apartment.”

  Karl stood and offered his hand to Avi, then turned to Shira and said, “I hope that was okay. I don’t usually act like that.”

  “No? Well then I was right, wasn’t I, about changing.”

  Karl raised his eyebrows. “Are you always right, Mrs. Rozeyn?”

  “Oh, absolutely,” Avi said. “Just ask Migdal.” Shira looked at him and bit her lower lip. “Well, I must be going. Bini and I had a grand day today. I’m sure he will tell you all about it—more than once, I would hazard. But I was there and know the story, so I’ll be going.”

  Binyamin could not wait for dinner to begin to tell his tales. As Shira set the Shabbat table, he told about meeting the old soldier who had only three fingers on one hand but who could make a coin disappear and then pull it out of Binyamin’s ear, about going to the harbor and seeing “real” ships, about catching a beetle the size of a bagel in the garden behind Uncle Avi’s building.

  As Shira readied to light the candles, Karl began to feel awkward. “Look, I’
m intruding. I probably should get back to my hotel.”

  “Nonsense, you’re staying. You even brought the wine, thank you. Besides, it’s a mitzvah to have you join us. Sit down. You’re our guest.”

  This is a woman who knows what she wants and gets it, Karl thought. He sat down at the small table opposite Binyamin, who again recounted his adventures. With each of the several retellings over the course of dinner, the number of coins, the size of the ships, and the length of the beetle grew.

  After dinner, Shira told Bini that if he hurried into his jammies, he could pick out a story before bed. He emerged from his room a few minutes later in camouflage PJs carrying a book. He went over to his mother and gestured for her to bend down so he could whisper in her ear.

  “He wants you to read about Kippi ben Kippod to him. It’s a little young for him, but ever since … his hand, you know, he’s been regressing a bit. Especially at night.” She turned and spoke to her son. “I told him you don’t read Hebrew,” she said to Karl.

  “Oh, but I do, I do. I just read it in English. And you can translate back into Hebrew. Here, give me that book.”

  He sat down on the sofa with Bini and Shira on either side and opened the book. He leaned over toward Shira and asked in a stage whisper, “What is that thing?”

  “A hedgehog. A giant pink hedgehog who lives on Rechov Sumsum. Sesame Street, you call it. Are you sure you want to do this? I can read to him.”

  “No, I’m on a roll. Don’t stop me.

  “Once upon a time,” he began, “there was a giant pink hedgehog named Kippi who lived with his pet orangutan in an apartment on, er, some side street in Haifa. Nobody knew he lived there because he only went out at night to steal bananas.” Shira was trying to suppress a laugh. “Now, translate. Word for word,” he said.

  “I’ll try,” she said, “But I can’t guarantee results.” She translated. Bini looked at both of them skeptically, then said something to his mother. “He says that’s not the way the story goes. Kippi has a pet goat, not an orangutan.”

  “Tell him that this is how it goes in American Hebrew.”

  Over the next twenty minutes Kippi took a boat to Rangoon, got captured by giant frogs, escaped in a kite pulled by porpoises, and returned with a week’s supply of bananas for Igor, his pet orangutan. Bini clapped his hands and pounded on Karl’s leg.

  “He wants you to read it again. I told him you would tomorrow night.”

  “Oh, no. Now I am in trouble. I’ll never get it right a second time.”

  She carried Bini into his room, where they talked for several minutes before she turned off the light. She eased the door closed and came back to the sofa.

  “Bini likes you. He doesn’t like everybody, so take it as a good sign. I think he knows, in a way young children often know, who is a mensch and who is not. I think he is right. You are a mensch.”

  “It’s Yiddish, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it means …”

  “I know what it means. I speak German. Some. It’s the same word.”

  “Yes, but then you probably know it does not mean the same thing. There is a difference between simply a man and a mensch, a real man, a genuine person. It is a high compliment.”

  “Well, thanks, then, although I probably don’t deserve it. He just likes my goofy storytelling. But I do think your son is a great kid. His father must have been a mensch. I just wish I knew what this was all about, why and how I got dragged into it.”

  “If only you had not lost the mezuzah. From what you described, I think Migdal may have created that scroll as a message of some sort. Too bad it’s gone. I wish I could have seen it. Perhaps I could have helped figure out what it was about.”

  “Here, be my guest. Take a look.” He reached into his pocket and held out his keychain with the thumb drive on it.

  She looked puzzled.

  “I took a picture of it when I sent off my first email to you. It’s on the flash drive. All we need is a computer.”

  “We can use Migdal’s. It’s in the bedroom. After Bini was born, Migdal had to give up his Haifa office, as we called the spare room. Now it’s Bini’s room. I’m afraid the bedroom is a mess. I’ve never been much of a housekeeper, and Migdal was like a crow, always collecting shiny odd bits and stashing them here or there.” She led the way into the cramped bedroom. The door just cleared the double bed when it was open. She started grabbing things strewn on the bed and stuffing them into a locker at the foot of it.

  “That’s Migdal’s side,” she said, gesturing toward the far side of the bed. A laptop was sitting open on a small table squeezed in between the wall and an old-fashioned chifforobe. She turned away from him and put her hand up to touch her face, then quickly turned back. “We bought the chifforobe for him to use after he moved up here because my stuff already filled the closet to overflowing.”

  Karl walked around the bed, grabbed a stool from the corner, and plunked it down in front of the table. He reached to close the door of the chifforobe, which was in the way, but something caught his eye. He glanced over at Shira who was biting her lip.

  “Those were Migdal’s things. You might as well know. He used them sometimes when he was working for Mossad. Disguises. It gave him freedom of movement, he said, made him harder to spot. That’s what he told me. But even after he quit, he would sometimes, you know, dress up. He was really good, actually. I came home early one day when a buyer canceled a meeting, and I thought some strange woman was letting herself into our apartment. He probably could have fooled anybody. In fact, he once spent the better part of a year passing as a female student on a deep cover operation at a German university. That was before I knew him.

  “It helped that his voice wasn’t all that deep, and his face never really lost its baby fat. Actually, he was, well, kinda cute when he was all made up—in a boyish sort of way. I really didn’t mind. I grew up with a brother who liked to wear my clothes, so I wasn’t too shocked. But Barry, my brother, turned out to be a flaming homosexual, and Migdal was straight, at least as far as I could tell. He just had a few odd ways about him. Maybe having a brother who cross-dressed set the stage for being with Migdal. I don’t know. I do think the English are more matter of fact than Americans are when it comes to little eccentricities like that.”

  “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you for telling me all that, because I think it explains a lot.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He told her about meeting Maryam Cashman in Germany.

  “That does sound like Migdal. He must have lifted your driver’s license and slipped the mezuzah into your pocket then. I think he trained for such things in his work. It all makes sense. Well, except for why he might do that in the first place.”

  Karl sat down and booted up the computer. “Do you mind if I check email first? I am a little concerned about a friend in Germany.”

  “No, I don’t mind.”

  He opened a browser and started to type the URL for his Web-mail account. After the first letters, the dropdown opened with previous addresses and Karl stopped. “Your husband was stalking me. He was looking at my blog. And here,” he pointed, “he was checking out the MIT alum records.” He went to Google and clicked twice in the search box. The dropdown was peppered with entries that Karl recognized. “He knew my clients, he knew my friends, he undoubtedly knew where I was going and when. But why? And why, if he was so thorough, why would an ex-spook leave all these breadcrumbs? Unless he wanted them to be found and knew they would be.

  “I’m beginning to get that creepy feeling again that none of this has been an accident. Let’s take a look at that mezuzah scroll.” Karl slipped the thumb drive into a USB slot, waited for it to install itself, then typed in a long pass phrase to open the encrypted folder. He found the JPEG he was looking for and put it up on the screen.”

  “So clear,” she said, scanning it slowly. “My pictures are never this good.”

  “Technology. It’s all just technology. With a macro close-up
and six megapixels, your shot would look just as good.”

  She squinted at the screen and read, mumbling to herself. “Yes, I see. There are two extra words, as you said: zachor and bashert. Does that mean anything special to you?”

  “You know, I can’t say as I ever heard the word zachor before my friend David read it to me from the scroll, but I do remember where and when I first heard the other word, which is interesting, because it was in Mitchell’s—I mean Migdal’s—apartment, in 1963, my freshman year at MIT. That’s where I met this girl, Deborah Geffner, who I had a crush on. She had this spiel about us all being part of a network or something. I forget what she called it, but she said it was bashert, fated that we all came together.”

  “I think I know who you are talking about.”

  “You do?”

  “Yes, Migdal told me once about this girl he knew when he was young. I think he may also have been in love with her. She was killed on one of his first missions for Mossad, I think, something to do with our nuclear program.”

  “Nuclear program? God, now it all comes back to me. I must have completely blocked it out. I was in a kind of fog for part of that year. It was a tough time for me. I was in the hospital for a while and overwhelmed and away from home for the first time. But now I remember. There was this screwball plan that Mitch, er, Migdal and his friends were fantasizing about, to steal nuclear fuel from MIT. This girl, Deborah, was part of the group. But it was a game, a kind of oddball intellectual exercise. You know, sort of, ‘Mitch-found-this-stash-of-nuclear-fuel-at-MIT-and-now-let’s-figure-out-what-we-could-do-with-it.’ Deborah suggested selling it to Israel. They had this boat of some kind they thought could deliver the stuff. It was a game.”

  Shira shook her head. “No, not a game. They did it, I think. They brought that stuff here, although Migdal never talked about details. He never talked about a lot of things. We were married for more than a year before I knew that he was with Mossad. I just knew he was away a lot. Germany, England, America. I thought he made children’s toys. Would you believe that? Children’s toys? And here he was fighting terrorists, spying on extremists, who knows what, because he could never talk about it except in sentence fragments and opaque references.