Sayid stopped for a moment and looked at the faces of the other cadets. They appeared to be a single tight-knit entity, and he didn’t know if he’d find his place among them. He hoped he would. His Israeli experience thus far had been a complex one. He loved the country and inhaled its sacred air deep into his lungs. But his gentleness had been shattered time and again by the aggressiveness of his surroundings. As a child, he had learned a little Hebrew from his father, but it wasn’t enough. So he studied his heart out at the language school and his Hebrew was now fluent, and often elegant. But he hadn’t managed to shake his accent and was often mistaken for an Arab.
“People think I’m an Arab,” he continued. “Because of my accent. Because of my name. And perhaps because of my appearance. And it’s true. I am an Arab. An Arabic Jew. And an Israeli. I’d like to explain myself. A Jew who comes from France has no qualms when it comes to saying he’s French. And the same goes for a Jew who has immigrated from Russia or the United States. But Jews who have immigrated from Arab countries are afraid to identify with the countries from which they came. They may say they’re Egyptians or Iraqis; but when people in Israel say that, they’re talking about ethnicity, not a country. And they certainly won’t say they’re Arabs. Because the Arabs are our enemy, and because Arab culture in Israel is looked down upon. But I feel Arab . . . Arab as well as Jewish. Arabic is my mother tongue. It’s the language I spoke to my parents, the language in which I think, and my culture is Arabic, too. Arabic and French. So I am an Arab. But I was born a Jew, and I want to be a Jew, and I could read from the Torah already by the age of four. In Algeria, I went with my father to synagogue every Friday and every Saturday, until there were simply so few Jews left that it shut down. Now, I’ve been an Israeli for fourteen years.
“I studied economics at Constantine University. What was supposed to be a shortened military service turned into a four-year stint in uniform. I enrolled afterward in various supplementary courses to complete my BA, and then went on to obtain my master’s in economics. You can just imagine how difficult it is to get credit for courses you studied at an Algerian university. Having my bachelor’s degree recognized was out of the question, of course. Over the past six years, I worked for First International Bank’s Research Department, and God only knows how and why I quit a steady and stable job in favor of Ya’ara’s madness.
“Frankly, I told Ya’ara that if my parents were still alive, I wouldn’t have joined, because I wouldn’t have been able to explain myself to them. I wouldn’t have been able to justify my choice. But as things are, on my own, I am willing to dive headfirst into an empty pool. Besides,” he added with a smile, “I was told I could meet nice girls here.”
“Honey, you really have come to the wrong place for that,” one of the young women in the circle responded. “Serious, intelligent—yes, for sure. But nice?! Us? You shouldn’t count on that.”
“What’s your name? Nufar, right? I’m sorry. I was kidding. Although you’re surely not as fearsome as you’d like to make out.”
Nufar gave him a stern look, but Sayid noticed the smile she was trying to suppress.
8
“I’m Nufar Ben-Bassat, from Ramat Hasharon. Everyone’s clearly laying their cards on the table, so here are mine: My father was a contractor, the owner of a large construction company, Ben-Bassat and Brothers, you may have heard of it, although there weren’t any brothers, my father was an only child. He built primarily in Petah Tikva, Kfar Saba, Kfar Yona. These days he spends his time in Hadarim Prison, serving a three-year sentence for tax offenses. He always worked long days, but one day he came home early and told us—me, my mother, and my sister—that he had messed up. His face was gray, and his voice, which was always rich and full of life, was dead. His voice was the thing that made me realize that everything wasn’t going to be just fine. You see, I had always looked up to him, ever since I was a young girl. My friends used to say he looked like he just stepped out of a television commercial. He always drove a big car, an American car. Back then, when it happened, he owned a black Cadillac, which my mother hated and refused to travel in. But he was proud of his projects. When we were kids, he used to take us on weekends to his construction sites, to show us what he was building, and how the work was progressing. He was proud of his company’s reputation. ‘We set a standard for others,’ he’d say.
“My mother’s a judge. Still is today, on the bench of the Herzliya Magistrate’s Court. We looked like the model family. Well-established. Educated and wealthy parents who had acquired status in the world. And as for me, I did as they expected of me, I studied what they thought I should study, and I completed my economics degree at Tel Aviv University with distinction. I was on a summer break from my studies toward an MBA at INSEAD at the time. I felt I was on top of the world, studying in the best business school in Europe. And my sister, Tamar, was a recently released air force officer, just two months away from her big trip to the Far East. Our mother had been on duty that day at the court for remand hearings. She always returned home a little frazzled from days like that, and our father came through the door like a dead man, a walking dead man. He asked us to come and sit down with him in the living room; my sister offered him a glass of water and he just waved it off. I don’t really know why I’m telling you all of this, in such detail, but if everyone shares in . . . So anyway, my father, the squeaky clean and straight-as-an-arrow contractor, Ben-Bassat, told us he was in trouble. Really serious trouble. Certain factors had left the company facing a crisis, and the accountants did indeed warn him, but it wasn’t their company, damn it, it was his company, he explained. He had to come to its rescue. The investigators, he told us, had shown up at the company’s offices with a warrant that same day, in the early hours of the morning, and had seized computers and papers. His lawyer had already put him in touch with a firm that specialized in white-collar crimes. He couldn’t look my mother in the eye, and she just sat there holding his hand, with her own eyes fixed on some imaginary point in the distance. Two people incapable of looking at each other. Her face was pale, as if she, too, had joined the world of the walking dead.
“As for me, I ran away. I went back to France. I mumbled something about suspending my studies, about putting them on hold until everything had blown over, but my father said I had to continue, that it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and besides, the process would be a long one and he had the best lawyers working for him. He allowed me to go back to INSEAD, ordered me even, but the truth is I ran away. I couldn’t deal with his fall from grace, with my mother’s shame.
“The whole thing dragged on for two years—the investigation, the trial, the conviction. The rejected appeal. I had to beg for financial aid because his assets were frozen. The good life had come to an end, and I worked while I was studying. I returned to Israel before the entire process was over. The day he went to jail, he wanted me alone to escort him. Tamar was back in the East, on another trip, I knew it would have been too much for her, and my mother went to work that morning, as if it was just another regular day, her face pale and her hair tied back. Like she was the one going to jail and not him. She barely said good-bye to him. I accompanied him. They only allow you in up to a certain point in the jail, and my father went on alone from there. It’s like in the movies, the sound of the steel door clanging shut and the bolt sliding into place to lock it. I sat in my car and cried. I sat there, in the prison parking lot, crying for two hours—until the shift changed and there were too many people watching for me to stay. I haven’t shed a tear since.”
Sayid was surprised how much he wanted to reach out for Nufar’s hand, to console her. He wondered how she’d react if he did—probably not well. So he remained still, in the silent circle.
“I live alone these days in Tel Aviv. My computer games and I. I have the soul of a geek. I’ve always been good with computers, and I became a PlayStation addict from the moment the very first model was launched. I don’t think I’ve kicked the habit just yet
and I hope it doesn’t show. That’s what I did in the army, too—messed with computers. Or as the news would say, I ‘participated in cyberattacks on the information infrastructure of Israel’s adversaries.’ ” She smiled, and Ya’ara noticed it was a tight smile, almost a grimace.
Nufar continued, “There wasn’t a term for it back then. After I left the military, I went to work for an investment firm by the name of IIG, or rather I worked there up until two weeks ago. It’s a small firm with large portfolios—they only handle investments upward of one million dollars. I was responsible for keeping people like me out of their computers. Our offices . . . their offices are located in a Bauhaus building on Ahad Ha’am Street. I felt like I was suffocating there.
“My father is due to be released from prison in nine months, assuming he’s granted parole after serving two-thirds of his sentence. I visit him every week. Every Wednesday. Stepping into the prison after spending a day at a plush and discreet office in the heart of Tel Aviv is like entering another world, a completely opposite one.”
“You haven’t told us anything about your personal life,” someone said in a quiet voice.
“My personal life, right. A psychological cliché to the point of embarrassment. I had an affair for two years with someone twenty years older than me. He paints and also teaches painting. And he’s even pretty good at it. If you’ve visited a museum in recent years, you’ve probably come across one of his works, but his name isn’t important right now. We split up two months ago. It was a real love story, but it had to end. He wanted us to be just us, to forget the rest of the world. He used to say he didn’t need anything but me. It sounds romantic, and I got swept along for a while, but I soon realized that my overriding emotion about our relationship was fear. And it wasn’t just his possessiveness that scared me. I was afraid of surrendering to it, of remaining in that same state of togetherness with him forever, in this seemingly wonderful world he’d created for me, which was actually miserable and closed and destructive.”
“But what brought you here?” murmured the young woman across from her in the circle.
Ya’ara didn’t know whether Nufar had heard the question, but she appeared to shrug it off, and her voice was steady when she said: “I needed to restore meaning to my life. I felt like everything had faded into nothing. My family—the one I had or perhaps didn’t have—had come apart at the seams, my job had lost all its appeal, and my relationship was going nowhere.”
Nufar’s eyes dropped to the floor and her voice went soft. “I hope I’ll be good at what we’ll be doing, and I hope I can be a good team member. I’ve been on my own for too long—even when I was in a relationship. I want to be a part of this unit. I want to be a part of something that doesn’t have a profit-and-loss line at the end. And I want, finally, to win.”
Ya’ara hid a smile as she watched heads around the circle nod in unconscious agreement.
9
Ya’ara’s heart skipped a beat as she spotted the weather-beaten figure of Matthias at the far end of the hotel lobby. She walked toward him, and he saw her, too, that same familiar smile spreading across his face. She thought for a second about shaking his hand, but they quickly found themselves wrapped in a warm embrace, Ya’ara momentarily enveloped by his large frame.
“Matthias, it’s been so long.”
“And you, even more beautiful—if that’s at all possible.”
Matthias noted to himself that Ya’ara looked thinner than she had the last time he saw her, a wrinkle of concern now distinctly visible between her eyes. Yes, she had become a serious and grown-up woman. The young girl who once was seemed to have stepped aside.
He wondered if the change had been good for her, if the altered expression on her face was evidence of accumulated experience or something else. Without doubt, however, her beauty had turned more profound—and now possessed shades of determination. The same pearl necklace glistened around her neck, and only a single strand of rebellious hair somewhat softened the cool veneer she displayed to the world. But not to him.
He wondered, for a moment, if the strand of hair was also the product of a calculated act, but quickly dismissed the notion. She was Ya’ara Stein; he knew her. He knew how she worked—and why. He had seen her break and bounce back, bounce back quicker than anyone else he knew, as if she were made of particularly durable material. But he sensed she was happy to see him, and he knew for sure that the emotion was mutual and sincere.
“Let’s get of here,” she said. “We’ll go to a pub, by the port. You’ll feel at home there.” She winked at him as if to say that an old sea dog like him could only feel at home close to the waves. And actually, there might have been some truth in that.
Ya’ara was in the habit of leaving her motorcycle at home on rainy days. Matthias had been on the back of the bike with her before, on the streets of Berlin and in Tel Aviv. He felt relieved when he saw they were walking toward a four-wheeled vehicle, and he offered a silent prayer of gratitude to the goddess of transportation who kept Ya’ara from riding a motorcycle in the wet. She might have grown up after all.
“So you’re in trouble, huh, Matthias?” Ya’ara said as she started the car and watched him settle into the seat next to her. He had finally dropped the fixed expression on his face that said everything was just fine, and she could see how concerned he really was.
“Yes, big trouble,” he responded plainly. “I need your help.”
• • •
The pub was dimly lit—just as such places are supposed to be, thought Ya’ara, who was actually somewhat familiar with the specific establishment. And at that twilight hour, it was empty, too. Two glasses of Leffe, a half liter each, stood on the counter in front of them. It could have been a movie set.
“Before we begin,” she said, “you should know that I’m no longer working for the company.” The “company” was the customary term for the Mossad, BND, CIA, and basically every intelligence organization out there. “I’ve been sort of freelancing of late, and my capabilities are very limited. There you have it”—she gestured at herself—“what you see is what you get.”
“And that’s a great deal,” Matthias responded. “In some ways, it may be better like this. I’m going to tell you a story, and I want you to tell me what you think. Be tough on me. Not the softy you always are.” He smiled.
“Some two years ago, I met a young woman by the name of Martina Müller. She was twenty-seven when we met. There was something refreshing about her, something cheeky and full of energy, something that attracted me. I know it sounds like a cliché, but she was different from all the other women I’ve met. We met by chance, at one of the bars nearby the port. She was there with a group of friends, all university students, and she stayed on after they left.”
Matthias was a man who had always safeguarded his solitude. He had never married, his serious relationships with women had been few and far between, and he had always been frighteningly discreet about them. It suited his life as a man of the sea, and it also suited the clandestine life he made for himself thereafter. And truth be told, it sat well with his character—withdrawn, hard, and averse to the luxuries in life. Although he spoke somewhat lightheartedly about his acquaintanceship with Martina, Ya’ara knew that the mere fact that he was sharing it with her was out of the ordinary. She gazed at him and waited for the rest.
“We struck up a relationship,” he continued. “I’m no longer at an age at which I feel required to inform headquarters about every new person I meet. I don’t need the pencil pushers from Pullach—sorry, they’re based in Berlin now—meddling in my personal life. You know I’m not one to enter into a committed relationship lightly; but despite her age, Martina proved to be charming and mature, and the connection between us soon turned serious. She even shared my love for the sea, although she always said she preferred the forest. Martina was working—or rather is working—toward her PhD in political science. She was researching the radical left of the 1960s and ’70s. She
had delved very deeply into the subject and her life was her doctoral thesis. She herself was born after all that madness had died down, and she would often ask me to tell her about the period. About what things were really like. I told her that I was far removed from all that was happening at the time. I was a high school student in a small town on the shores of the Baltic Sea, and I joined the naval academy as soon as I could. After graduation, I lived mostly aboard ships. But she loved to sit with me in front of the big fireplace, cuddled up together on the sofa, and drink cognac or schnapps and tell me about the things she had come across in the archives and ask me questions. I was enchanted by her enthusiasm, even if the subject matter was of no particular interest to me. Yes, we moved in together four months into our relationship. She moved some clothes and a lot of books into my house. And her black laptop too, of course.”
“And you still haven’t informed headquarters about this now-serious relationship?”
A Spy in Exile Page 4