by Allan Topol
“Look, I’m really sorry about leaving you that way in Paris. For me it was a question of…”
She cut him off sharply. “Don’t flatter yourself. I went to bed with you because it was my job. That’s it. Plain and simple.”
She paused to let her words sink in. They cut through him like the blade of a knife.
Then she added, “Obviously, I didn’t get what I was hoping for. The night was a waste. So now I’m back with a different approach. Right now we have to talk, and you have to provide some answers.”
“Not here,” he said, pointing to the open doorway behind her. “People sometimes come in to pick up things they’ve forgotten. Let’s go down to the litchi orchard. We’ll be alone there.”
She looked at him nervously.
“You’ve got nothing to worry about,” he said, resorting to a brusque tone of his own. “I have no interest in anything other than a business relationship with you. Paris was a one-night stand as far as I’m concerned. And, at any rate, you probably have a gun in that bag.”
His words had been intended to sting her, and they did. Wanting to show him who was in charge, she reached into her bag and pulled out a pistol. After holding it out to him and letting him know it was loaded, she put it away. “As a matter of fact, I do. I also have two men sitting in a car outside the front gate of the kibbutz, who will come if I hit the alarm button on the pager hooked to my belt.”
He chuckled, feigning amusement to conceal his true reaction: dismay that his situation had become precarious. He didn’t dare underestimate her. “All of that for me? I’m surprised you don’t want me to hand over my passport.”
“That’s not necessary. Your name, picture and passport number are already designated with a special classification in the computers of Passport Control. You won’t be able to leave the country.”
“Do you have any legal basis for that action, or do you people do whatever you want?”
She looked indignant. “Don’t confuse us with our neighbors. Here we have the rule of law.”
“Try explaining that to Yosef the next time he tosses somebody into a prison cell without any evidence.”
“Yosef’s no longer with the Mossad. He was fired because of what he did to you. That’s not how we operate.”
“Well, that’s at least one good thing. Now, would you mind telling me what your people think I did to deserve all of this attention?”
She snapped her fingers. “Try supplying false information on your application for citizenship, for openers. That’s a crime.”
David didn’t respond. He waited to see what evidence she had.
* * *
In the small pickup on the way to the litchi orchard, the two of them rode in silence. She had the gun on her lap, loosely gripped in her hand. She knew that she wouldn’t need it, but she wanted to underscore how she felt about him. He turned into the orchard, and parked among the trees—filled with ripe, luscious fruit ready to be harvested. The sun was sinking in the western sky, and a light breeze shook the branches.
They climbed out of the pickup and eyed each other warily. She kept her distance enough that she could go for her gun, or hit the alarm if she had to. Noticing this, David casually pulled a couple of litchi off a branch. He tossed one to her, then peeled and ate the other.
“Amazing they could be so hard on the outside and so soft on the inside,” he said languidly.
“Quit stalling and tell me whom you met in Paris.”
“You’ve got no basis to assert that I lied on my citizenship application,” he said hoping to flush her out before he decided how much he’d have to tell her.
“Really? We have a professor of dentistry who’s ready to testify in court that all of your dental work was done in the United States, which isn’t quite consistent with someone who lived in Russia until four years ago.”
He pretended to scoff. “That’s not very convincing to me.”
“We didn’t think it would be, but you left some items in the hotel room from which we got fingerprints.”
“Like what?”
“The bottle of chloral.” She decided not to mention the condoms.
David was wary now. “And?”
“They were only partial prints. The skin grafting you did is wearing out. You should have had it redone, or not left the bottle behind. That was a mistake.”
He smiled disarmingly. “I was distracted.”
“We don’t think so. We think you’re out of practice.”
“What’s that mean?”
“You were once CIA. You’re an exile.”
Her words hit him hard. She was smart, and he was impressed. He tried not to show it. “That’s total bullshit.”
“Listen—whoever you are—I came here today to give you one final chance to play it straight. We’re ready to ship what we have to Margaret Joyner in Washington, who happens to be a personal acquaintance of mine. And while we wait for some answers, you can cool your jets in jail, in protective custody, and it will all be perfectly legal.”
He realized that she was now holding all the cards. “You can’t do that,” he protested, exhibiting a false position of strength.
“Just watch us. One of our state attorneys just happens to be having dinner tonight at the home of a judge in Haifa. It’ll take about thirty seconds to get the attorney on the phone and have the judge sign a detention order, specifying that you’re awaiting extradition to the United States. I don’t know why, but somehow we’re sure Washington will be delighted have you back.”
He clenched his hands tightly. She was right, of course. They would love to have him back.
“Well, what do you want?” he asked, still trying to sound bold and self-confident.
“Answers.”
“To what questions?”
“For starters, try who you really are, and what happened in Paris after you left me.”
Uncertain about how much she knew, he decided to wade in carefully. “Why do you care?”
“An Israeli citizen’s dead because of some type of conspiracy and you’re involved in it up to your neck. We know that from your end of the telephone conversation in the Bristol in Paris.”
“And if I answer your questions, then you’ll agree that the information about me never goes to Washington?”
“Not a chance. We’ll agree that it doesn’t go at this time. We won’t give you any promises about the future. We’ll have to see how it unfolds.”
“Then it’s no deal,” he said emphatically.
She gave him a cold smile. “Don’t try to bluff me. Before my grandfather brought the family to Israel, he sold carpets in a souk in Baghdad. He taught me well. Nobody out-negotiates me. And certainly not when I’m holding all of the cards.”
“Meaning what?”
“You start talking now, or I push the alarm on my watch, and you spend Shabbat in a Haifa jail.”
He could see that she wouldn’t budge. Meanwhile, an idea was taking shape in his mind. He already knew that getting into Saudi Arabia to kill Nasser would be difficult. Being allied with the Mossad could be a big advantage when he made his move. Yael was one of twelve Israelis who had died in the explosion on Bus eighteen. The Mossad might be willing to assist him if he played that card at the right time.
“There is something else, though,” he told Sagit. “A condition you have to meet before I’ll talk to you.”
She eyed him suspiciously. “Yeah, what?”
“I have a stepdaughter in Paris.”
“Daphna at the Sorbonne. We know all about her.”
“What you don’t know is that she’s in danger because of me. If I agree to talk to you, I want you to promise to get her out of Paris and bring her back home before you take any action based on what I tell you.”
Sagit paused to think about what he had said. “That’s reasonable,” she responded at last. “Daphna’s an Israeli citizen. If she’s at risk, we’d get her out of a foreign country, even if you didn’t insist on it. But I can
’t commit. I’ll have to get the approval of my boss in Jerusalem.”
“Call him, then. I’m not answering any of your questions until I get that assurance about Daphna. And you can tell him, too, that I want the opportunity to have input on the plan you develop to get her out.”
His concern for a stepdaughter seemed excessive to Sagit. Was he using this whole Daphna business as a pretext to get back to Paris for some other purpose? She decided to play along with him. “That may be a problem, but I’ll make the call. I’m going to tell him the rest of the deal is that you’ll agree to answer all of my questions completely and truthfully, and if you don’t, the dental Xrays and fingerprints go to Washington right now.”
David nodded reluctantly.
It was twilight, and the air was growing cooler.
“You better take me up to the administration building,” she said. “I want to call Jerusalem and get the approval on our agreement.”
As he started toward the truck, she added, “After that, let’s go someplace quiet where we can talk, and I can take notes.”
He looked at his watch. “We’re going to be at it awhile. You might as well stay for dinner.”
* * *
Dinner was a community affair, served buffet style, with kibbutz members and guests seated at long tables. Friday nights brought lots of guests. It wasn’t a religious kibbutz, and the Shabbat service was brief.
David simply introduced her as his friend Sagit from Jerusalem. He had not had a guest since Yael’s death, and he could tell that Sagit’s presence prompted a fair amount of gossip, which was a mainstay of kibbutz life, as in any close-knit society.
At the dinner table, a debate raged about the Syrian government’s intentions on peace with Israel. The members were equally divided between those who viewed the Golan Heights as essential to Israel’s security, and those who argued that demilitarization and early warning with sophisticated technology could do the job as well.
During dinner, David noticed Gideon watching him from across the room, but the security chief never came over.
After dinner there was singing and then a movie: Murder at 1600 with Wesley Snipes.
As they started to leave the dining room, Sagit’s cell phone rang.
She took the phone into a quiet corner, and he watched her: first talking, gesticulating with her free hand all the while, and then listening. She hung up the phone and returned to him. “He’s approved the deal. Where do you want to talk?”
David was relieved to hear about Daphna. “My house.”
He saw her hesitate.
“Don’t worry, I’ll keep my distance.”
Walking along the path, lit only by the bright moon, he became conscious of his limp, and cursed that football injury for getting him into this mess. Suddenly, he heard footsteps behind him. David wheeled around quickly. It was Gideon.
“I guess you and I won’t be having a chess game tonight,” the security chief said.
“Not tonight, but I want to introduce my friend. Sagit, this is...”
“It’s not necessary,” Gideon said coolly. “I know who she is.” He turned to her and said, “You’ll give my regards to Moshe?”
* * *
David’s house, which he had shared with Yael, was a small wooden cottage with two rooms. The front door opened into a combination living room, dining room with a tiny kitchen on one side. In the back was a bedroom, with a double bed and unfinished wooden chest, and a bath. Everywhere there was clutter: books and clothes tossed about, with old newspapers piled on the floor and serving as makeshift tables for empty soda cans. Half a dozen pictures of Yael and Daphna occupied one wall. None of them with David. As Sagit walked into the house and looked around, she had to resist an instinctive desire to make some order out of the chaos.
They settled down in the small living room. Seated at a square wooden table, Sagit set up a tape recorder, then pulled a pencil and pen from her bag. Across the room, David was stretched out on an old frayed sofa, holding a glass of Slivovitz.
“Begin with Paris,” she said. “We need to know in detail what happened. Everything.”
“Everything?”
She blushed, then looked annoyed. “You know what I mean. You act like a smart ass, and you can spend the rest of the night in jail.”
He began with the telephone call he had received at the Bristol. Then he described everything that had happened from the time he left her at the Bristol until he returned home to Israel. He told her about his night at the Gironde, the meeting with Victor Foch, and the meeting at Renault. He talked for a half hour, not leaving out anything, and she interrupted him for small clarifying questions, like when and where his next meeting was in Paris. As he spoke, she tried to take meticulous notes, in case the tape recorder malfunctioned, but he spoke so rapidly that she found herself stopping him from time to time and blurting out, “Hey, slow down. I’m not getting all of this.”
When he was finished, he walked over to a small credenza, picked up the bottle of Slivovitz and an empty glass. He pointed them at her, still writing. She shook her head. “Then how about some strong black coffee?”
“That I could use.”
He brewed some coffee for her, then refilled his own glass with plum brandy and sat down again.
“Okay,” she said. “Now tell us what happened on the fifteenth of August five years ago in Saudi Arabia.”
He repeated that story as well, from the time the bomb exploded in Dhahran until his altercation with General Chambers. She was incredulous. “You broke General Chambers’ jaw?”
“And his nose, I think. The bastard deserved it, and worse. If he had listened to me and dealt with Colonel Azziz and the Saudi moderates, the terrorist attack would never have taken place.”
She was startled by his bold talk. In her experience, American agents have always been circumspect. He was a breed apart, this Greg Nielsen, now calling himself David. “That’s your opinion.”
“It happens to be correct. Chambers was a fool.”
“It also seems not to have stopped General Chambers from becoming chairman of the Joint Chiefs, which is his current position, as I recall.”
Talking about Chambers had put him on edge. “They’re a bunch of dumb fucks in Washington. With me out of the picture, he was free to lie about what really happened. So, before a closed Senate Intelligence Committee inquiry, which your big buddy Margaret Joyner chaired when she was still in the Senate, he blamed me for providing him with misleading information.”
“How do you know that?”
“I’d rather not say.”
She looked up from her pad and shook her head. “Sorry, that’s not an option under our agreement.”
He was resigned. “Early on, I had a couple of telephone conversations with Tim Donnelly, the assistant director at the time, and an old buddy, but I haven’t talked to him in a long while.”
“What about your former deputy, Bill Fox? Did you talk to him too?”
He kept his voice neutral. “Not for a long time.”
She was taking notes again. “At least not since you just saw him in London.”
How did she know that? he wondered.
As if reading his mind, she said, “You may have given our man the slip after the incident in Green Park, but he photographed you with the man on the bench. We passed it around the Agency, and today somebody called to say they recognized Bill Fox. So tell me about London.”
He described for her what had happened in London. He told her that he had taken a circuitous route back via Milan and Athens to avoid a tail, but he didn’t mention Bruno Wolk or Switzerland.
“All right, now go back to Saudi Arabia, David, or do we call you Greg?”
“Why do you always have to use ‘we’? Why can’t you say ‘I’?”
“Because I don’t want to be personally involved with you.”
He was trying to take charge now, to put her on the defensive. His tone was cocky. “I don’t think that’s it at all. I think
, as a woman and a Sephardic, you’re afraid of being an outsider in your own organization. I think you need the constant feeling that you belong.”
“Thank you for the free psychoanalysis. Now tell me, do we call you David or Greg?”
“I’ve rather gotten used to David. He was a powerful king, who could have any woman if he really wanted her.”
“God, you have sex on your brain.” When she glanced up from the pad, she saw him staring at her. A phrase in a novel she had once read popped into her mind: he was “undressing her mentally.” Embarrassed, she looked back down. “Forget it, and tell us what happened when you raced out of the building, after you struck General Chambers.”
“I managed to sneak out of Saudi Arabia.”
“How?”
He hesitated. “I don’t think you need to know.”
The stony look came over her face again. “We need to know everything.”
“A friend flew me out.”
“Who?”
“I won’t tell you that.”
She raised her voice. “Then you’re welshing on our deal. The prints and dental Xrays go to Washington.”
He shouted back. “Let them go. It’s not a critical fact. Besides, I don’t give a damn anymore.”
She slammed her pad shut and stood up.
As he watched her pull the pager from her belt and prepare to activate the alarm button, he thought. Her grandfather must have been one tough negotiator in that Baghdad souk. He hated backing down again, but he had no choice.
“There was a Saudi air force captain, a pilot, Khalid was his name. He was a friend of mine, and he supported Azziz and the moderates. I stole an army jeep and drove to his house. He dressed me up as a Saudi air force officer. Then he put me in the cockpit of a plane with him. In all the confusion after the Dhahran bombing, he flew me across the border to UAE. I used one of my back-up CIA passports to fly to Geneva, Switzerland, before the State Department could wire other governments with the list of all the passport numbers the Company had issued to me.”
“Why Geneva?”
David hesitated for an instant. He’d have to be careful. He wanted his story to sound credible, and yet he didn’t want to involve Bruno, who had directed and funded all of his moves from the time he got to Geneva until he arrived in Israel. He decided to tell her the true story and simply omit Bruno’s role.