Ben-Gurion didn’t simply bark out orders, he had every intention of seeing them carried out, too. And indeed, within less than a month, he, Yanai, and three additional SHAI agents boarded a boat from Haifa to Brindisi, from where they went on to Paris by train. He knew that a small group from the intelligence service’s Arab division was making its way at the same time to Beirut, via Europe, but he wasn’t up to speed with all the details. Compartmentalization was a principle they adhered to very strictly. And now he was here with Raphael, just one soldier in an increasingly broad network throughout Europe.
Night had fallen by the time Raphael returned to his studio. A strong odor of smoke blended with the icy dampness that encapsulated his meager possessions, like an invisible cloak. After making sure that the bolt on the iron door was firmly in place, he walked over to a large block of wood standing in the corner of the room. He picked up a long, thin nail and inserted it into a small hole in the wood. The block split into two, revealing a hidden cache. Raphael reached into the inside pocket of his coat to retrieve the thick package wrapped in paper that Elhanan had given him. It contained fifteen hundred pounds sterling, a huge sum. His job was to deliver the package at the beginning of the following week to an Irish contact in Liverpool, as part of a deal to purchase submachine guns and ammunition that Elhanan had orchestrated from afar. He was looking forward to the trip. He was hoping to meet in nearby Leeds with Henry Moore, who was already at the height of his powers and fame as a sculptor, and had even staged a large retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York the year before. Knowing he’d have to make a trip to northern England in the days to come, Raphael had already sent a letter to Moore in which he mentioned a talk given by the renowned artist that he had attended as a student at Slade. The lecture had left Raphael profoundly shaken, and he still remembered it well, some fifteen years later. The manner in which Moore had described his perception of space, the way in which he had spoken about getting a true sense of the material his hands were shaping, had touched his heart.
Raphael walked over to the shrouded object in the middle of the studio. He removed its protective cloth covering and looked at the figure of the young man that had started to emerge from the stone. The figure was his height, five foot ten, and was slowly taking shape from within a spectacular block of white marble. Yosef Raphael was as familiar with the piece of stone as he was with his own body, and the near-complete sculpture was more precious to him than anything he had ever done before. He knew that elsewhere he would never have had the substantial amount of time he needed to shape the sculpture he had dreamed of. Certainly not in the Land of Israel, where his current work might have been condemned as anachronistic. Out of context in terms of place and time. But he was like a man in love. The stone, his marble, boasted semitranslucent particles that shimmered in the light. It was perfect. The torso he had already sculpted was long, thin, and muscular. The unmistakable body of a young man, but with something delicate and heartwarming about his posture. His face, too, was a thing of divine beauty, almost feminine, apart from the large and straight nose, which added a sense of determination and decisiveness to his features. Long curls adorned his face and fell to his shoulders, their softness clearly evident in the white marble. His feet were bare, the muscles in his right calf flexed and prominent. A combination of impending movement and the self-confidence of a body at ease. Was the young man’s ultimate fate evident in the sculpture? His terrible end? Yosef Raphael wasn’t sure. He looked at the serene beauty of the sculpted young man. He knew that everything was already there, in the marble. Absalom, Absalom.
15
They made their way to Berlin in a variety of ways. Two on an Air Berlin flight direct to Tegel Airport. One on a flight to Frankfurt, and from there by train. And another one along the same route the following morning. Two traveled by train from Prague. One arrived via Amsterdam. And one via Brussels. Eight Israelis out of thousands who entered Europe that same day.
Ya’ara and Aslan had come to a decision beforehand concerning the main premise of their cover stories. It was the exact opposite of what they had learned and put into practice in the past. They, and the small unit they were setting up, would operate under the cover of genuine identities. It had been done before, but this time it was their only alternative: With the means at their disposal, and up against a world of increasingly sophisticated security measures, they wouldn’t be able to construct watertight fictional identities. Their respective cover stories would be their real stories. They’d have real biographies, they’d have real parents and brothers and friends, their pictures would appear in school yearbooks, on university student rolls, they’d have Facebook accounts and they’d create a presence on Google. But from now on, they’d have to live perforated lives, real lives with self-made holes into which they’d be able to disappear. There’d be no rigid adherence to a fixed daily agenda, a tight framework. Their occupations would allow them to travel far and wide, to be mobile. And they would try in the midst of it all to live as far under the radar as possible. To attract as little attention as possible. To leave behind as few records as possible, within the boundaries of reason. The kind of life that Aslan and Ya’ara had been living all those years anyway. Ya’ara Stein’s Facebook account was a smokescreen, just for show. Her presence on the web was minimal, boring even. When they came into contact with their objects, of course, the cadets would be able to be whoever they chose to be. After all, they weren’t going to tell an Al Qaeda member or Iranian nuclear scientist that they were Israeli. But when coming into contact with official authorities, wherever they were asked to present state-issued documents, at border crossings, land registry offices, and bank safety deposit vaults, they would be who they truly were. They’d simply have to offer feasible explanations if instructed to do so. And never having to do so would be best, to let their actions and appearance and the context in which they’d chosen to operate be self-explanatory, without the need for words. The best cover story is the one that doesn’t have to be told, Ya’ara said during the briefing to her cadets, when she instructed them to compile their background stories in Berlin.
In truth, the first few months in Berlin aren’t very complicated at all. It was easy to blend in among the thousands of other young Israelis who had made the city their home. They, too, each for their own reasons, each in their own way, wanted to try and to taste, and all of them almost always went down the same road. German language studies, finding an apartment, checking out employment options. This one as a lawyer, that one as an investment consultant, another as an artist and the one who’s planning to write the Israeli Lonely Planet on Berlin. The challenge would come when they’d have to cement their covers for an extended stay, or to support frequent visits from Israel. Not that they’d ask many questions. But if they did ask, they’d better have a good response.
Ya’ara had an idea, a glimmer of an idea, regarding how she could further solidify her team’s presence in Europe, but there were still many loose ends to tie up. And most important, she needed to enlist the support of someone who had helped her before. She had learned over the years that the world was still full of people who loved Israel. People who had a sympathetic attitude—adoration and admiration sometimes—toward the State of Israel and the youths who served the country as clandestine fighters. Religion quite often was the basis for their support. Sometimes it stemmed from feelings of guilt for the wrongdoings of their parents’ and grandparents’ generations during World War II. In other instances, their support was motivated by an appreciation of strength, strength that those quiet and impressive Israelis epitomized. But even more frequently, it was rooted in a profound recognition of the justness of the Israeli cause, despite the occupation, despite the heavy-handedness, despite all the screw-ups along the way. Because at the heart of the matter, Israel’s story, in their eyes, was a just one. For the most part, it was a combination of some or all of the motivating factors. And when this fundamental support sparked the emergence and
development of a close personal bond with the Israeli handler, to a sense of intimacy and adventure, and feelings of friendship and loyalty, there wasn’t a thing they weren’t willing to do. Because what does this life offer us, ultimately, if not a handful of individuals to whom we’re tied by delicate and rare threads of love and true friendship? That was Ya’ara’s theory at least, even though those feelings were often foreign to her. Her friendships were professional, for the most part. Every deviation was ultimately rerouted back to her chosen track. And Ya’ara knew that while training the cadets and turning them into intelligence combatants, they would also have to work together to develop this critical network of covert partners, who could play their part, each in his or her own way, in the campaign they would be leading.
The infrastructure was already in place. A modest film production office, a branch of the production company she opened to serve their purpose in Israel, too. In the initial stage, the office would deal with script development, but later would go on to produce films by Israeli artists based in Berlin, and Germany in general. The Israel-Germany story after all was a fertile ground for ideas, the shadow of the past featured so powerfully in the present. Fragments of stories were scattered throughout the large expanse of the country, highly talented individuals craved expression, the second and third generations were standing in line, the conflicting identities, the attraction and the shame, the tranquil ground was still trembling under their feet. The office would serve as a location for meetings and preparations, and it would function as their base until they moved on, elsewhere, with a different cover story.
16
BERLIN, DECEMBER 2014
They met at Café Einstein on Unter den Linden. The wide thoroughfare was already filled with decorations ahead of the approaching Christmas holiday. The thousands of tiny lights flickered to life on the bare trees, people hurried along the sidewalk, their heads tucked into their coats in an effort to find relief from the bitter, biting cold. Hanging in the air was a hint of the smell of hot wine, spiced with cloves and cinnamon, and Ya’ara remembered just how much she loved that time of the year in Europe, the cold and colorful weeks of December. She was shocked to see how tired Matthias looked when she spotted him. His hunched figure seemed to stand out in direct contrast to the festive holiday mood, the large, tough man now appearing tired and vulnerable. He smiled when he caught sight of her, wrapped in her white coat, and embraced her warmly, crushing her against the coarse sweater he was wearing.
“You look wonderful,” he said, sizing her up.
“And you look like someone who needs a rest. You look like a wreck, Matthias.”
“Why, thank you, young lady, you’ve always been generous with your compliments.”
“You don’t want empty words from me, do you?”
“It wouldn’t hurt sometimes, to hear false flattery. But you’re right. I haven’t heard a thing from Martina yet. Sometimes I tell myself that I’m just feeling hurt, that she got up and left without any explanation, turned her back on me as if I meant nothing to her. An aging man with a bruised ego. But then in creeps this sense that something sinister is going on, and I can’t seem to figure it out.”
“Are you sleeping?” Ya’ara asked with genuine concern. “It looks like you haven’t slept a wink since our meeting in Haifa.”
“I’m sleeping too little. Time is moving too slowly. Perhaps the holiday season will give me a chance to relax a little, to put things into perspective.”
“Where are you for Christmas?”
“I may go to Alexandra. She suspects there’s something up with me; I wasn’t my usual self when we last spoke on the phone. I blamed it on stress at work, but she said, ‘I’ve known you since you were born, Matthias, you can tell tales to others, but not to me.’ ”
Ya’ara knew that Alexandra had raised Matthias after the death of their parents, serving not only as a big sister but as a solid and stable home base. From the little he had revealed to her about himself, up until this last episode with Martina at least, she knew that Alexandra was the closest person to him in the entire world.
“You’re lucky to have a sister like Alexandra. You’re not a big talker, but from the stories you’ve told me I can tell that she’s a lovely woman. Perhaps it’s time we finally met, and then I can get to know you a little better, too?”
Matthias chose to ignore Ya’ara’s remark. “Anyway,” he said, “I spoke to my friend at the BfV, our domestic intelligence service. I gave him all the phone numbers for Martina that I’m aware of. He’ll see what he can do. He’ll have to violate about a hundred regulations and fifty laws along the way. He’ll be in big trouble if he’s caught. I told him he could blame it all on me, say that I was the one to initiate an unofficial investigation, based solely on a general hunch, and that’s why I didn’t want to trouble the entire system and run everything through the formal channels. But you’re pretty familiar with us by now, and that’s something the Germans are not willing to accept. Order must rule. And the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution certainly cannot track phones and print call records without cause and without due process of law.”
“But he’ll do it, right?”
“Yes, he’ll do it. For me.”
Matthias sensed that Ya’ara’s attention had drifted momentarily. Her eyes had fixed on a woman walking along the sidewalk in front of the café. She was wrapped in a long, dark gray woolen coat. Her light-colored hair was uncovered. She moved off into the distance, her hand sliding over her hair, a gold earring glinting in her left ear.
“Do you know her?”
“No, no,” Ya’ara responded with an element of nonchalance designed to hide the elevated pulse in her neck. “I thought for a moment that she looked familiar, but it was only my imagination playing tricks on me.” That’s what she must look like now, twenty years later. Like that woman. Ya’ara almost got up to follow her, even though a second look told her that the eyes were different. Not the same sparkling catlike eyes of her sister, Tatiana. She shook her head, forcing herself to focus on Matthias and return to the business of Martina, who had disappeared on him now and not twenty years ago.
She steadied her voice and asked, “Have you checked the records from border crossings?”
“Yes. Nothing. But that doesn’t mean anything. She could have left Germany in a thousand different ways without ever having used a passport. She could fly to any country that’s party to the Schengen Agreement, she could board a ferry to Scandinavia or the Baltic states, she could travel by car or train to Austria, the Netherlands, Belgium, Poland, anywhere, without being checked, and aside from flights on airlines that insist on seeing some kind of identification nevertheless, she could leave Germany without ever having to present an ID document at all.”
“You said a car picked her up when she left.”
“Yes, but I didn’t catch its license plate number.”
“But you saw something, right? Make? Color? The number of people inside?”
“There was only one person in the car. The driver. A young man, I think. Well, that’s what he looked like from the back at least. It may have been an old Land Rover. But Toyota also makes cars like that. Very similar to the Land Rovers. Sand-colored. It looked like a military vehicle was taking her away from me. Only the color, a light brown, almost yellow, remains imprinted in my memory. It really could have been a military vehicle, were we in the desert. Our army’s military vehicles are camouflaged in dark shades of brown and green. The car that came to collect Martina looked somewhat like one of those off-road vehicles you see in ads for cigarettes or alcohol from the 1970s. Know what I mean?”
“How old am I, Matthias?”
“Okay, never mind. I keep forgetting that you’re such a youngster.”
“Are you going back to Hamburg this evening already?”
“Yes. I need to get back to the station. I’ll head to my sister in Basel only on the eve of the holiday. Lined up for me until then are more discussion
s on the work plan for 2015. We need to prepare a detailed proposal for the bosses in Berlin. They’re killing me, those discussions. Our planning procedures are so cumbersome and bureaucratic. The world’s changing all the time anyway. What’s the point of making such detailed plans?”
“Are you sure you’re a German, darling?”
“I’m not so sure any longer.”
“I hope that your friend at the BfV comes up with something. Another option, of course, would be to stake out her office at the university and her previous apartment, from before she moved in with you. Perhaps I could make contact with her colleagues from the faculty, or with her dissertation advisor. But those would be shots in the dark, and I don’t have enough people to do so. I need a sign of life from her. A single point on the radar screen.”
“Ya’ara,” Matthias said, staring at her in earnest, the flesh under his eyes dark and puffy, “I don’t know what to say . . . Having you see me like this, so helpless, is hard for me. I don’t know myself like this either, yet here we are . . . But having you here cheers me up. You don’t beat around the bush. And you’re optimistic. It’s a little pathetic to draw courage from someone twenty years younger, but . . .”
Ya’ara was clearly embarrassed by his candor. She almost scolded him. “Matthias,” she said, “the roles have been reversed before. Friends don’t busy themselves with such considerations. They come when you need them. And the age difference between us is getting smaller all the time.”
Matthias wanted to say that the laws of mathematics made that impossible, that the age difference between them couldn’t change. But he remained silent. Maybe there is something to what she’s saying, he thought. There’s more than one way to reduce such differences.
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