A Spy in Exile

by Jonathan de Shalit

  “Call when you hear something,” Ya’ara said, before standing up, kissing him on the cheek, and disappearing into the night that had fallen on the city like a dark carpet.

  17

  Ann and Helena entered the pub rosy cheeked from the cold. With a band of fur wrapped around her head, Ann painted a very fetching and refined picture. And when Helena took off her thin down jacket, the eyes of the other occupants of the establishment were drawn to her striking looks, too. Although each was accustomed to the effect she stirred and the attention that followed, their joint presence carried special weight. Ann was beautiful. Helena offered a different kind of beauty. She had a large, hooked nose, unyielding and aggressive. The scar appearing alongside her right eye stretched across that delicate bit of skin between the eye and her temple. Her features were bold, and her lips thicker than those commonly described as beautiful. But her skin was dark and velvety, and contrasted spectacularly with her fair hair. Some swore they had seen flecks of gold in her brown eyes. Her scar, too, was a touching feature. Ann was certainly more beautiful, but Helena’s looks conjured up images of the mythological figure for whom she was named. A woman for whom kings went to war.

  They found seats at the far end of the pub. The amber shades of the drinks placed before them twinkled under the hot lights, as if to herald the approaching holiday. They chose to sit side by side, with a view from afar of the entrance.

  “Always position yourselves in a manner that offers maximum control and information under the circumstances,” Ya’ara had told them, and they were implementing her advice.

  Ya’ara had outlined the task ahead for the entire team, telling them it was a real mission, not an exercise. “It may be nothing,” she said, “and if so, we would have tried our hand at locating someone, a young woman in this instance, who simply got up and disappeared one day. But there may be something to it, and then it could get dangerous. We need to assume the worst-case scenario, and be extremely cautious. Moreover, we’re a team with very little experience.”

  “To say the least,” Sayid commented quietly.

  “You’re right,” Aslan responded. “So we’ll do things slowly. In slow motion. We’ll review and analyze your proposals together, we’ll take breaks whenever possible to assess the situation. Your cover stories will be close to the truth and they’ll have to be well prepared, accurate, and detailed. Practice them with one another, to make sure you really know how to tell them. We’ve been given a rare opportunity, to practice in a real operational environment, and we intend to take advantage of it.”

  Ya’ara tasked Helena and Ann with making contact with Martina’s university, with her professor, with a friend or a classmate, too, perhaps. “To initiate contact,” she called it. Under a foreign identity of course. With the addition of a convincing explanation. She asked them to consider whether it would be best to initiate direct contact with the faculty administration, with her professor in person, or whether they should rather make contact via a third person, someone who would refer them to him. She also asked them to analyze the advantages and disadvantages of the different approaches—“the direct approach or the indirect approach,” as she had put it—and she requested at least three proposals for each. “Start by defining your ultimate objective,” she said.

  “To locate Martina Müller,” Ann said.

  “To find her and figure out what she’s up to, what she’s planning,” Helena added.

  “Let me suggest something a little different,” Ya’ara said, looking directly at her two cadets. “Locating Martina, learning if she poses a risk, figuring out the essence of that risk, and thwarting it. That’s the ultimate objective. And the mission then stems from that: finding updated information on Martina by means of people with whom she has ties. The university is our anchor point. That’s where you’ll start. The task may branch out from there.”

  “We should have a method, a modus operandi,” Ann said.

  “Very true,” Ya’ara said, hiding her admiration. “That falls under the category of planning principles. Quality planning is one of the most important things you will learn in the coming months. Devote more time to thinking and planning, and your actions further down the line will be more systematic and provide better results. Dedicate an hour and earn a day, something like that. But don’t get me wrong. You don’t need sophisticated props or an academic environment. Operational planning doesn’t have to be done around a fancy conference table or on a drawing board. And you can’t turn it into a never-ending saga either. You need to be efficient and purposeful. Sometimes we’ll have a week to plan, sometimes just a few minutes. That shouldn’t make any difference to you. You will need to run through the same thought processes, just a whole lot quicker. And you can do it in a hotel lobby, on a street corner, or while walking through a park. What matters is how the mind works, not the scenery or the surrounding conditions. We’re not performing rituals. We need to be focused and purposeful in what we do.”

    • • •

  “I don’t feel like being focused or purposeful now,” Ann said lazily. She stretched and stifled a yawn. “I want to drink a little, feel happy, and go to bed.”

  “Did you speak to Daniel today?”

  “No, I didn’t get a chance to, and then suddenly it was too late. We’ve been here for only a week but sometimes I miss him so much, like there’s a hole in my heart.”

  Helena squeezed Ann’s hand, a gentle gesture of support. “Yes, it’s going to be tough, being cut off from home and the ones we love. I don’t know how Assaf will last, he has two small children.”

  “And Batsheva? She has a daughter in high school. No, we don’t really know what lies ahead of us. And we certainly won’t know where it’ll stem from.”

  “Where what will stem from?”

  “The longing.”

  Helena remained silent in agreement. She sipped her cocktail, which was rich in brandy and spices.

  “And you, Helena, you haven’t told me. Have you left someone at home?”

  “Yes and no. We don’t have to talk about it now. I like being here with you like this. Only the present, without the past. I don’t need bad thoughts now.”

  Ann sought out Helena’s eyes. And when their gazes met, she saw Helena smiling through her tears.

  “You’re sweet,” Helena’s lips mouthed without a sound.

  18

  “Ya’ara, we’re onto something!” Matthias said, distinct excitement in his voice.

  They had met on the crowded platform of the express train from Hamburg. Ya’ara wrapped her arms around herself. It was difficult all of a sudden for her to make physical contact with Matthias, and he simply grasped her cold hands gently, as if to warm them.

  “I don’t have much time,” he said, “I need to be on the train back to Hamburg in fifty-three minutes.”

  The manner in which he informed her of his schedule made her smile. Precision was in their blood; they were raised on it from birth. Even Matthias, the hardened sea captain with the sun-etched face, was a stickler for precision.

  “Then we’ll sit here, in the bar.”

  And once again two half-liter glasses of dark amber liquid were placed on the table in front of them, but neither of them drank much this time. They had more pressing matters to attend to, and Ya’ara’s tastes when it came to alcohol tended to lie elsewhere anyway.

  After ensuring there was no one nearby who might be listening in, Matthias got straight to the point, without any preamble. “I got a call last night from Tomas, my friend at the BfV, and we went out this morning for a run together by the lake,” he said. “He did it. He located Martina’s cellphone, and another phone she could be using, too, perhaps. As you know, the BfV have their special ways and means.”

  “Can he triangulate them? Offer a pinpoint location for Martina’s phone and the second device he suspects she’s using?”

  “Martina’s phone, the one we know for certain is hers, hardly ever moves. While the second phone, or
the person using it rather, is quite active, moving from place to place. In the evenings, however, it appears to be at a location some thirty kilometers east of Bremen. A rural area. Forestland and agricultural farms. But there is a limit to what Tomas can do, to the number of queries he can submit. He isn’t even doing it on his own computer. It’s complicated. And dangerous. He’s already done a lot more than I could have hoped for. He really is a good friend. One more thing—a number of calls were made from Martina’s phone to numbers we were able to identify, but they were to a taxi station, the train ticket office, and a pizzeria in one of Bremen’s suburbs.”

  “That’s excellent! So you know the precise location of the telephone that Martina seems to be using, and that means you also know where Martina herself is.”

  “Not exactly. Like I said, it’s the countryside. The network cells in the area are very big. The location that Tomas was able to provide isn’t pinpoint accurate, but instead encompasses a number of cellular network cells. We’re talking about an area of almost sixty square kilometers.”

  “Don’t you have a way of getting a more precise location?”

  “Yes, our intelligence service has the capability to do so, but that would require implementing measures that are probably beyond Tomas’s means, and I don’t want to submit an official request on the matter. I can’t do that.”

  “That’s what we’re here for. You must have brought a map with you.”

  Matthias retrieved two maps from his briefcase, one of the city of Bremen and a second of the surrounding area. He moved the beer glasses aside and spread the maps out over the table. “Here,” he said, using a pen to mark several streets around Bremen’s central train station. “This is the area in which Martina’s cellphone was activated, and this is also where the other phone we think she’s using was turned on. And this is the area,” he continued, marking out a relatively large expanse on the second map, “where that second phone has appeared for the past five evenings.”

  Ya’ara thought quietly for a few moments before commenting in a somewhat philosophical tone, “It’s time for some fieldwork. There’s no substitute, unfortunately, for pounding the beat.”

  Matthias agreed. Despite all the technological innovations, you need ultimately to get physically close to your object of interest. Wiretapping, reviewing communications, and cyber work were all existing tools. But when it came to people, you needed to be able to touch them. Matthias preferred not to calculate how many years of his life he had wasted on fruitless efforts and plays in the field. But he couldn’t think of a single achievement, not even one successful operation, that hadn’t involved the most basic kind of fieldwork—surveillance, tailing, the questioning of passersby and neighbors, and initiating contact with the person of interest. Work that required patience, perseverance, waiting, scandalous quantities of bad coffee, lots of alcohol in dingy bars, rubbing shoulders and coming into contact with people you wouldn’t necessarily choose as your best friends, or even distant acquaintances.

  “Matthias,” Ya’ara said, “you have exactly four minutes to make your train. Keep seeing what you can do from Hamburg. I’ll see what I can do with my team.” Again she chose not to tell him she was working with rookies. They both stood up, and Matthias held out his hand to her. She took it, but they soon sank into a warm embrace, and Matthias was caught by surprise by the fragrance of daffodils she exuded.

  19

  The small conference room of the production company’s office in Berlin was windowless. The posters hanging on the walls conveyed the desired impression—a start-up company with artistic aspirations. Ya’ara fixed those present with a thoughtful look, which turned incisive and resolute. There were some who noticed her gray eyes take on a shade of blue.

  “We’re going into the field in four teams,” she said. “We’ll be working in pairs. Groups of three or four will attract attention in that remote region. Operating as couples provides the best cover. A couple speaks for itself. No explanations needed.”

  “The women here outnumber the men,” Nufar remarked. “One of the couples will have to be two women.”

  “Lo and behold, a math genius! INSEAD was worth it just for that. Education pays,” Ya’ara retorted, but in a way that brought a smile to Nufar’s face. “Sayid. You’ll be working with me. Batsheva with Aslan. Nufar and Ann together. Assaf, you’ll be with Helena, but no cooking for you this time. The objective—to try to find something, as trivial as it may seem, that could count as progress, within these sixty square kilometers. Yes, we’re moving from Berlin to Bremen. As quickly as possible. Get used to it, that’s how things work in the life you’ve chosen for yourselves. Aslan will brief you on the basic principles of the task and figure out the means of communication between us. He’ll pick out a rendezvous point, if needed, in downtown Bremen. We can find additional locations when we get there, and broaden our options in the area in which we’ll be operating. For each couple, Aslan will also determine at what point you’ll hire a car, and from which company. Following Aslan’s briefing we’ll split into couples, prepare cover stories for our relationships, and come up with a reason for being in the cold countryside in the middle of the December freeze. And we’ll stock up on equipment—cameras, binoculars, something extra for warmth, whatever we need. We’ll meet here tomorrow at nine to go over the cover stories and basic plans. The floor is yours, Aslan.”

    • • •

  Assaf and Helena were the first to leave the production office. One of the rules was not to enter or exit the office in large groups.

  “I still need to fully digest Aslan’s briefing,” Assaf said. “So many details.”

  “I’m a little freaked out by the fact that we don’t know exactly what we’re supposed to be looking for.”

  “That’s the point. We won’t know until we’re in the field. Like Ya’ara said, sometimes the field itself shows you what you’re looking for. I’m guessing she knows what she’s talking about. It worked for me in the army.”

  “Yes. It appears that way indeed. But all that talk about legwork, pounding the beat, like we’re detectives or something in a Raymond Chandler novel. You know him, right?” She looked at Assaf quizzically.

  “There’s more to me than meets the eye,” Assaf responded, pretending momentarily to be offended before flashing a wide smile.

  “That remains to be seen,” Helena retorted.

  “Oh, really? So you’re handing out grades now, I see. Tough girl. Would you like me to give you a reading list?”

  “I have no intention of trying to make an impression on you,” she replied sternly, widening her steps, “and you don’t need to make an impression on me. I like you, Assaf, even though it’s hard to say you’re doing yourself a good service. But I’m not keen on getting into a constant battle of wits and accomplishments. And I think we’ve already had this conversation. Let’s drop the nonsense and focus on our preparations. Come, let’s have a coffee, gather our thoughts, think about the task at hand, and get ourselves ready for this.”

  Assaf nodded without a word, rubbing his hand over the back of his exposed neck in embarrassment. He felt a sudden pang of longing for Tali, his gentle wife, and Shira and Nimrod, who gazed at their father with adoring eyes, and for a fleeting second he wondered not only about what they were doing at that very moment in Israel, but also what he was doing there, in ice-cold Berlin, while the people dearest to him were in the heart of the Sharon region, perhaps coming to terms already with his absence.

    • • •

  Nufar was behind the wheel of the silver Opel Insignia. Ann was sitting next to her, with a map spread out on her lap and a telephone with an open navigation app in her hand. Destination: Bremen. Nufar drove skillfully, maneuvering through the complex network of roads that led them out of Berlin and westward. Her mind was on the briefing they received from Ya’ara before they left.

  “You know,” she said to Ann, “there was something about the way she briefed us.”

&nb
sp; “I was thinking about that while we were talking,” Ann responded. “She took us through everything one step at a time. Asked us the right questions, to make sure we know what we’re about to do, or rather, that we know the boundaries within which we have to conduct ourselves. It felt more like an emotional coaching session than a briefing.”

  “I don’t think she buys into that kind of thing. What do you call it? Chicken soup for the soul?”

  “That’s just the Americans. But beside the point. I have no idea what lies ahead for us. And I don’t really know what we’re going to do there. We’ve been assigned to an area, we’ll carry out a sweep, and if we get lucky we’ll see something. I don’t even know what that something is. Nevertheless, Ya’ara instills confidence.”

  “We need to go over our cover story again. Are we a couple?”

  “That’s nobody’s business,” Ann replied vehemently, and Nufar burst out laughing.

  “You sound very authentic! That anger at the invasion of your privacy.” Nufar gave Ann an affectionate pat on the knee, her left hand gripping the steering wheel.

  “It really is nobody’s business,” Ann said. “But under the assumption that we’re going to have to be in this car together at all sorts of strange hours in the middle of nowhere, we’re going to have to come up with an explanation that’ll keep prying eyes and minds off our back. So yes, a romantic relationship could be the most plausible explanation.”

  “You’re very lovely, but no offense, I’m not into that kind of thing. As a cover story, okay. But in real life, it’s men only for me. Or should I say, once I get over the slight bout of nausea I was left with from the last one.” Nufar put her foot on the gas and moved into the lane to her left, leaving behind the large Mercedes she passed.