A Spy in Exile

by Jonathan de Shalit

  29

  “Have you spoken to Matthias?”

  Ya’ara and Aslan were sitting in the dimly lit bar of the Swissotel. The cadets had been released for the evening and the two of them were meeting to review and analyze the information they had gathered thus far.

  “Yes, I’ve spoken to him,” Ya’ara said, stifling a yawn, her face pale and drawn. “He’s still hung up on knowing if Martina is okay. He’s refusing to face the facts—his girlfriend is mixed up in something radical and dangerous, with a Russian intelligence official running things. He still sees her through the eyes of a middle-aged lover, which is what he was in fact.”

  “Do I detect a hint of jealousy?” Aslan asked in amazement.

  “God, what kind of a question is that?” Aslan shrugged his shoulders and Ya’ara decided to leave the internal debate about her feelings for some other time. “I sent him the picture of Ivan. We’ll see if he comes up with an ID.”

  “We’ve done some pretty good work so far, but perhaps it’s time now to bring in the police, special forces, God knows who, to conduct a raid on the farm, arrest everyone there, seize the weapons, and put an end to this whole thing, which doesn’t paint a very pretty picture right now.”

  “I’m not sure if the information we have is enough to convince them to take action,” Ya’ara said, ignoring the bits she didn’t want to hear. “And besides, if they apprehend Martina, her relationship with Matthias will come to light. And that would mean the end of his career.”

  “Maybe it’s inevitable. He got himself into this mess by behaving like a fool. And now he has to pay the price.”

  “Matthias aside, if we bring in the police at this stage, they’ll only dispatch a patrol car with two polite officers, and then they won’t find a thing at the farm. That, or the small army there will simply eliminate them.”

  “But even a visit from a patrol car would deter them. They’d realize they’ve been exposed and they’d put a hold on whatever they’re planning—if anything at all.”

  “And what if they don’t necessarily think like you? It could spark them into action. Make them bring things forward. What we really need is incriminating material. We can’t make do with tenuous scraps of information and conspiracy theories.” And I do still want to try to save Matthias, she thought.

  “What do you suggest?”

  “We need to get into the farm.”

  “There are six of them. The chances of their all being away from the farm at the same time are slim. They were today, but we don’t have sufficient time or the resources to wait for the farm to be empty again.”

  “You’re right. And today, too, four of them were just a ten-minute walk away.”

  “We could try to waylay them if they were to return unexpectedly from the firing range.”

  “I don’t like the sound of that,” Ya’ara said. “If they’re coming back from the range, they’ll be armed. I don’t want any of us to have to encounter them under such circumstances. We’ll wait until we see four of them leaving, and then we’ll try to draw the other two out. We can manufacture a window of opportunity for a quick search through the living quarters.”

  “What do we do if there’s a dog at the farm, or dogs?” Aslan asked. “I heard barking on our first stakeout.”

  “A good piece of meat could do the trick . . .”

  “That’s a gamble. A well-trained dog won’t fall for that.”

  “Okay, so I don’t have answers for everything. We’d be risking it. But you’re right, the operational conditions are undoubtedly extreme.”

  “Ultimately, Ya’ara, we’re here to train cadets. Don’t you think we’ve gone too far?”

  “I think it’s a lot more than a training exercise. I think we’ve stumbled onto something big.”

  Aslan looked out the window. Outside was as dark as the bar in which they were sitting. He wasn’t someone who tended to overthink things, yet he couldn’t help but wonder if their improvised operation wasn’t going to turn suddenly into a quagmire, and if it wasn’t time now to fill in their mysterious superiors on what they had been up to. After all, no one was expecting them to come to the aid of a German intelligence officer. Or perhaps they actually were. His acquaintanceship with Ya’ara and the time they had spent working side by side in the past hadn’t confused him or led him to believe that he truly knew her. He loved her, but he didn’t know her, not to the core. He looked again now at her determined chin. He knew she was going to press on with or without him. With him would be best.

  “Listen,” he said, “the Christmas festivities are just four days away. I don’t think the timing is coincidental. My guess is that if they’re planning something, it will go down on Christmas or New Year’s Eve. A terror attack during a period that is all about celebration and family and tradition could really rock the boat. So let’s give ourselves another two days. And if we aren’t able to come up with anything, we’ll find a way to spark the police into action.”

  “Agreed. I’m buying the last drink.”

  “Cheers, my bro,” she said, softly and with a great deal of affection, after their drinks were served.

  “To you, my sister,” Aslan responded, clinking glasses with her and downing his whiskey in one gulp.

  30

  Helena and Batsheva stood outside the front door of the farmhouse. They had already been waiting an entire day for an opportunity to come their way, but to no avail. The night before, following a day of no results, the teams had assembled in a gloomy mood. That’s just the way it is, Aslan had said, informing them that he had wasted half his life waiting endlessly and coming up empty-handed. “Tomorrow’s another day,” he added. This time it was Assaf who said: “Nice one, Scarlett O’Hara.”

  And then that morning, four of the farm’s occupants—the two women and two of the men—left the house and made their way to the cars. Martina and the second woman got into the Land Rover, the two men into the Golf. The vehicles pulled out of the farmyard one after the other, got onto the narrow road, and headed west, in the direction of the village. Aslan, who was waiting with Assaf near the intersection, saw them speed by and reported back to Ya’ara. It was the only access road to the farm, and Aslan and Assaf remained in position there, ready to catch sight of the vehicles on their way back. If the infiltration team was still in the farmhouse, they would need to alert them and also try to block or detain them at the same time. Stopping a traveling car is never easy. Ya’ara, Nufar, and Ann, who were still on stakeout duty, informed Batsheva and Helena that four of the farm’s residents had left, and the two began walking toward the house. Sayid had taken up a position between the farm and the makeshift shooting range. His job was to warn of approaching strangers from the direction of the woods. The likelihood of anyone approaching from there was slim, but Ya’ara was adamant about not leaving such a wide sector unmanned. If someone were to come and ask what I’m doing there, Sayid had thought, I’d have no convincing story to tell. There I’ll be, sticking out like a sore thumb in the middle of a black swamp somewhere in northern Germany. Ya’ara insisted that he come up with a cover story, so as not to find himself at a loss for words at crunch time. “Don’t go easy on yourself,” she said. “Think of something. And let me know.” In the end, he took along a notebook bound in a leatherlike fabric that he had bought on first arriving in Berlin for the purpose of recording ideas and thoughts about life, about the city, general impressions and the like, obviously nothing related to the training and activity awaiting them. The notebook was still empty, and not because he had run out of ideas and thoughts. He simply wasn’t able to muster the desire or energy to put them down in writing. And now it was going to serve as the notebook of a budding artist who had gone out to sketch a drab and monotonous nature coming together in oblique lines to a vanishing point on the horizon. He really loved to draw. Perhaps it was time to develop a second career, just in case. Let them prove him wrong, he remonstrated with himself, adding a quick sketch of the branches of the beech tr
ee in the shadow of which he was hiding, gaining confidence and conviction ahead of his task.

  Helena knocked vigorously on the door of the farmhouse with Batsheva by her side. It was only after she had knocked for a third time, pounding a beat that conveyed a sense of desperation or urgency, that they heard footsteps approaching, and standing in the doorway was a bearded young man with black-rimmed glasses balanced on his nose.

  “Thank God there’s someone here,” Helena began in English, breathing heavily and appearing somewhat embarrassed. “Do you speak En-

  glish?” Batsheva was standing next to her, her face smeared with several streaks of black oil. She had tears in her eyes.

  “You must help us, bitte,” Helena continued, without giving him a chance to respond, and pretending to know only a handful of German words. “We fell into a ditch, or should I say our vehicle skidded into a ditch, and we can’t get it out. The wheels got stuck deep in the mud, and the more we tried, the deeper the car sank.” The shoes they were wearing, too pretty and elegant for rescue missions, were indeed covered in disgusting black mud.

  “We’re on our way to Bremen,” Batsheva explained. “My son, her husband”—she nodded to indicate Helena—“is expecting us. He’s giving a talk this afternoon at the Lutheran church,” she continued, adding a patently irrelevant detail, and Helena nodded to confirm. The main thing was to come across as not particularly intelligent women, harmless, and primarily helpless. And a charming smile couldn’t hurt either. “We thought we’d take a scenic drive along the country roads from Bremerhaven, to see the views,” she chattered on, “and look what happened.”

  The young man had yet to utter a word. He looked at the two women facing him—elegant and dirty, and clearly foreign.

  “Yes, I speak English. Are you from England?”

  “No, no, from Prague,” Batsheva replied, and broke into a stream of rapid-fire sentences in Czech. “Oops, you don’t speak Czech,” she eventually stopped herself and said, blushing, and switching to English again. “Will you help us? Please?” she added. Helena fixed the young man with her big, beautiful, trust-inspiring eyes.

  “I don’t have a vehicle that can tow you right now,” the young man said. “What about calling a road rescue service? Do you have insurance?”

  “It’s a rental,” Helena replied, “but it’ll take half a day for someone to get here. Perhaps you could help us nevertheless? You look pretty strong,” she added with a smile.

  “Is the car far from here?”

  “Not too far. We got a little mixed up at the crossroads and turned down the road leading here. It’s very narrow, you know, that’s how we skidded. I skidded, I mean, I may have been driving a little too fast,” she said with an air of false contrition. Batsheva looked at her reproachfully, thus confirming that the mishap was indeed all Helena’s fault.

  “Stefan!” the young man shouted into the house. “Come here for a moment. We have a couple of damsels in distress at the door,” he called out, his use of the flowery English expression leaving him obviously pleased with himself.

  Stefan took his time, but eventually showed up alongside his friend. His disheveled hair appeared to indicate that he had just woken up, or hadn’t planned on being in the company of others that day.

  “Let’s give these nice ladies a hand,” said the young man who had opened the door for them, speaking cheerfully in English so they’d understand, and then adding softly in German, “So we can get them the hell out of here. We don’t need them hanging around here for hours, not to mention calling in a tow truck and who knows what else.”

  “Thank you, thank you,” Batsheva said, and Helena expressed her gratitude, too, with a sweet smile. “I’m Alenka,” Batsheva said, holding out her hand to the young man. “And this is Suzanna, my daughter-in-law.”

  “Nice to meet you. Klaus. Stefan. Let’s see what we can do.” He whistled and a large herding dog came bounding from somewhere deep inside the house to join them, wagging its tail, pleased to be going out for a morning walk.

  The two young men slammed the door of the house shut and followed the women. The dog ran ahead of them, stopping to look back at the group every now and then, as if to make sure they were following him. They’re in for some hard work, Helena thought with satisfaction. Even after they manage to get the car out of the ditch, they’ll find out that it won’t start. The fall into the ditch had caused the cable leading from the ignition switch to disconnect. They had taken care of that, of course. It would take Klaus and Stefan some time to figure out the precise problem. And then we really will get the hell out of here, she said to herself. Only then.

  After watching the group leave the farmyard, Ya’ara signaled to Ann and Nufar to join her. “Remember,” she whispered, “time isn’t on our side. Be precise. We’ll start with a quick sweep through the house. Make a mental note of everything that looks interesting. And then, look for computers, iPads, phones, paperwork. Don’t touch a thing before you take a picture of its position in the room, so it can be put back exactly where it was before.” They approached the back door of the house. Ya’ara reached into her pocket for a thin nail file and began fiddling with the lock. She had the door open within seconds. They began their systematic sweep. Room by room. First floor, second floor, attic. Ann’s heart was pounding. This was a first for her. It’s a good thing I studied breaking and entering skills at Oxford, she joked, to herself only. Mother would be so proud if she knew.

  The house was filthy, and every single thing inside appeared to be covered in a layer of dust and grime. The beds weren’t made and the rooms were stuffy. There were two beds in each room. Ya’ara was taken aback by the spartan conditions and shoddy upkeep, and particularly by the fact that the room of the two young women looked just like the other two rooms. She was expecting something different. Not because she believed that women would always be neater and cleaner than men; it was because of Matthias. The group’s equipment appeared to have been thrown into several large backpacks and military kitbags. A single bathroom served the entire house, and it, too, was caked in a yellowish layer of dirt and neglect. She felt like throwing up. What had happened to Martina? she asked herself. Matthias couldn’t have fallen in love with a filthy, neglectful young woman. Suddenly that seemed more serious to her than the knowledge that his young lover was involved in something sinister. But perhaps she, too, had succumbed to the barrackslike mood and living conditions.

  They ended up finding two laptops and an iPad. The laptops were in one of the bedrooms, charging. The iPad was in the girls’ room. There were no cellphones. And none of the papers appeared to be of any interest. One of the kitchen drawers contained a collection of receipts, from supermarkets, pharmacies, gas stations. Ya’ara took pictures of them with her phone. She then instructed Ann and Nufar to sit down at the laptops. “Get to work,” she said. “Copy everything that’s on them onto your portable hard drives. We’ll do the sorting later. Quickly, but thoroughly. Don’t worry. Helena and Batsheva will keep them busy. And Aslan and Assaf will warn us if the others are on their way back. In case we have to leave quickly, we’ll do so via the back door, at a sprint, toward the woods. Get moving. I want us out of here within twenty minutes tops.”

  Ya’ara left the two cadets upstairs and went back down to the first floor of the house. She took a chair from the kitchen and placed it under the door handle. That should delay them for a few seconds if necessary. She then went into the living room, where the final remnants of warmth were coming off the large iron stove that stood in the open expanse. She settled down alongside the window, hidden by a thick curtain, from where she could keep an eye on the dirt track leading away from the farm. If one or more members of the group were to return to the farm, they’d do so from there. She’d see them and be able to warn Ann and Nufar. She had chosen them for the task because of all the women in her team, they were the most proficient when it came to computers. And they both spoke German. That, too, was important when trying to find one’s
way around computers that were probably running on German-language operating systems. She was tempted to use the time to search the barn, but she wouldn’t allow herself to abandon her lookout spot. And the restraint she was forced to exercise in order to maintain operational discipline caused her actual physical pain, as if it were twisting her arm. If she had had another team member at her disposal, she would have sent him in there. Perhaps she shouldn’t have left both Aslan and Assaf on stakeout at the crossroads. Assaf could have finally proven his worth to her, if he could just stop asking questions. But it was too late now.

    • • •

  When she answered the phone, Aslan began speaking without any unnecessary niceties. “The Golf’s on its way back. At breakneck speed. We weren’t able to detain them. They’re on their way to you.”

  They’d be there in a minute and a half, two minutes at most. She walked toward the staircase and shouted: “Nufar, Ann. Shut down the computers immediately! Did you get that?”

  “Got you,” Nufar responded.

  “Just a moment,” Ann said.

  “You don’t have a moment. Now!”