Aharon had told him that Ido, the bureau chief, was coordinating the handling of the matter on behalf of the head of the Mossad and would help him with whatever he needed. Michael asked Ido to check the Interior Ministry’s records to see if Ya’ara was in the country or abroad somewhere. He asked for her border-crossing history, in and out of Israel, for the previous six months. He asked for wiretaps on her father’s phones, and for a number for Ya’ara’s German phone, and maybe other phones she was using, too, based on her father’s incoming and outgoing call records, from both his landline at home and his cellphone. He asked for a wiretap on Ya’ara’s Israeli phone and a location for the phone over the past six months. If they were able to identity foreign phones that Ya’ara was using, he wanted them to try to locate them, but without asking for assistance from outside elements. In no way were they to involve foreign intelligence officials. Ido said all his requests required the approval of the head of the Shin Bet security service, and Michael said Ido wasn’t the Mossad director’s bureau chief for nothing and should do whatever needed to be done. He knew he was asking a lot, and he, too, wasn’t sure if anything would come of all the inquiries. He was hoping with all his heart that Ya’ara had nothing to do with the assassinations, but feared his hopes would be crushed. But he knew at the same time that if Ya’ara was in some kind of trouble, he should be on her side. Should be. Wanted to be.
• • •
When it is called for, the Mossad and Shin Bet know how to work very quickly. That’s how Michael learned that Ya’ara had spent the majority of the past six months overseas. She was abroad now, too, with her last departure from Israel a month earlier. Her Israeli phone went with her, but remained switched off for most of the time. Berlin was the only place in Europe where she had used that phone. They also identified two German phone numbers from which she had called her father several times. They must have been her phones. One of them was located the night before in Oxford, England.
“Is she connected somehow to this whole business—that young woman?” Ido asked.
“It’s something I need to check.”
• • •
When Michael updated Aharon Levin, he stressed that he had come up with no information linking Ya’ara to Brussels or London, and certainly not on the dates the assassinations took place.
“I want you to go to her,” Aharon decided. “Even if it’s a shot in the dark. Yes, you could simply call her German phone, but if she has something to hide, she’ll feel under pressure and disappear on you. She’ll also wonder how you got her number, and you definitely won’t want to tell her that there’s a tap on her father’s phone. That’s all we need.”
“Why would she think of a wiretap? I’ll tell her I got her number from her father.”
“She’ll check with him and he’ll deny it, of course. You won’t get away with that story.” Aharon paused for a moment, deep in thought. “Unless,” he continued, voicing the idea in his mind out loud, “unless we have him arrested and thus unavailable for forty-eight hours.”
“I’m going to forget you suggested that,” Michael responded. “You can leave the Mossad, but apparently the Mossad never leaves you. Excuse me for saying so, Aharon, but that’s an abhorrent idea. It wouldn’t work anyway. There’s nothing to justify arresting him like that, and as someone with so much experience under his belt, you should know it.”
Aharon didn’t like Michael’s tone. He would never have dared to speak to him like that in the past. “Reasons of state security would justify an arrest. Far more serious things than holding someone in custody for two days have been done in the name of state security.” But he knew Michael had a point. “You know what? The best thing would be for you to get yourself to London, and then straight on to Oxford. We’ll try to guide you to her by tracking her phone location, if possible. You used to be an excellent field operative. You’ll find her. That’s the best way to go about it. Something like this can’t be handled from afar. You need to look her in the eyes when you speak to her.”
57
OXFORD, FEBRUARY 16, 2015
After landing at Heathrow, Michael received a message that Ya’ara’s phone was still in Oxford, and a second update came in when he arrived in Oxford on a train from London’s Paddington Station. The experts at the Mossad had managed to narrow down the location to the city center. The Mossad director’s bureau chief also passed on another piece of information that left Michael momentarily stunned and breathless. “Fuck,” he said to himself out loud. “Fuck.”
The day was gray and damp, and his clothes were no match for the wet cold. He had left his suitcase in a locker at the Oxford train station; there was no point in wasting time settling into the hotel room that had been reserved for him.
He set out on foot from the train station without any fixed ideas on how to go about finding Ya’ara. He wandered aimlessly and veered off in the direction of the Covered Market, where the remains of holiday decorations still adorned some of the stores. Dead animals, hanging from hooks, stared at him. Game meat on offer at the butcher stalls. Wild boars, rabbits, deer, and pheasants with their dead heads turned to face the paved walkways. Resting on plastic leaves in the illuminated displays were wild fowl, quails, and ducks, some skinless, some adorned with a few festive feathers. He hadn’t eaten meat for a year already, and sights like the ones before him only strengthened his resolve.
He passed by the shops quickly, hoping against all odds to catch a glimpse of Ya’ara’s fair face in one of them. He went out into the open street, and a cold, murky gust of wind slammed him in the face. He walked on, his eyes scanning the street. Across from St. John’s College he spotted the Eagle and Child, the pub frequented by J. R. R. Tolkien, the author of Lord of the Rings. Or was it C. S. Lewis?
He remembered Aharon Levin, the Anglophile, telling him about it. At the center of the pub sign, the red eagle’s wings appeared proudly spread across the sky-blue backdrop. Across the street stood the rival pub, the Lamb and Flag. It was a gloomy afternoon, and both pubs were practically empty. He went into the Eagle and Child and ordered a whiskey, drinking it standing up, in one gulp. The alcohol burned his throat and made his eyes tear. He felt the warmth spreading through his chest and offered a nod of thanks to the photo hanging on the wall of Colin Dexter, the creator of the magnificent and morose Inspector Morse. This city overwhelms me, he thought, feeling a pang of sorrow and regret. He would never be a young student at Oxford. Another of those paths that might have been open to him in the past had closed, and suddenly he regretted ignoring them with such reckless abandon. Perhaps it was a matter of age that caused him to look back at the past with remorse.
Out on the street again he tightened the cashmere scarf around his neck. He thought about his good friend, Tamar, whom he affectionately called Professor de Vuitton. She really was a professor, an expert on classical studies at Tel Aviv University, but he called her de Vuitton because of the beautiful bag that formed an inseparable part of her look. It’s a modest little bag, she’d always say to him, and Michael had laughed—every time.
Tamar had studied at Oxford for five years, and he thought of her walking through the same streets, reading the age-old books in the Bodleian Library, listening to one of Bach’s fugues in the college church. If I sat down for a few hours at Blackwell’s, she had once told him, referring to the city’s huge bookshop, half the people I knew would pass by.
Michael decided to view the memory as a sign and took off in the direction of the well-known store. He was sandwiched at the store’s entrance between a woman with bags in her hands who was making a concerted effort to leave and two teenage girls dressed in school skirts, their knees blue from the cold, who were trying to get in. He climbed the spiral staircase to the second floor, and there she really was, as if she’d been waiting for him. But she wasn’t alone. With her fair hair gleaming and her neck gracefully tilted, she was sitting next to a young Arab man with bleached hair, a large cup of tea clutched between
her two hands.
Fortunately for Michael, Ya’ara was focused on the young man sitting next to her and didn’t see him. He moved on, taking care not to stop abruptly, trying to mix in among the shoppers. He kept his distance. He didn’t want to approach Ya’ara in the presence of the guy she was with. They seemed to be friends, and were engaged, as far as he could tell, in a relaxed conversation, their heads tilted slightly toward each other, her hand touching his for a moment. He decided to leave the large store, find somewhere to settle down and keep an eye on the exit, and try to follow Ya’ara to a spot where he could intercept her on her own. He knew that an effort to keep track of her in such a manner was doomed to almost certain failure. All it would take would be for her to get into a car, or a taxi, or even a bus. In any event, he wouldn’t be able to get close to her without exposing himself. And if he kept his distance, chances were he’d lose her. But he didn’t have much choice, and couldn’t think of a better plan. He had been incredibly lucky to find her so easily, and he, as was his wont, was aware of his good fortune but took it for granted at the same time, too. Perhaps it would keep smiling on him.
• • •
He waited for more than an hour for Ya’ara and her friend to leave Blackwell’s. They put on their coats and shook hands, parting ways with a slightly odd sense of formality. He turned to the left and she turned in the opposite direction, retrieving a woolen hat from one of her coat pockets and placing it on her head, covering her ears, protecting herself against the damp cold. Ya’ara then set off down the darkening street, and he followed in her wake. She was heading in the direction of the city’s central bus station when she suddenly turned sharply and entered a pub that seemed rather remote to him. He walked in a few minutes after her, expecting to see her sitting at the bar or one of the tables. But she wasn’t there. He went straight into the women’s bathroom. The doors of the two stalls were open. All he found in the men’s room was one old man, swaying and groaning over the urinal. He returned to the bar and spotted a narrow staircase, dimly lit, leading to a second floor. Black Gothic lettering on a wooden sign read “Hotel.” The stairs were covered in a faded red carpet, stained with black patches. He approached the counter and asked the publican: “Do you rent out rooms?”
“Yes, darling,” she replied, “but they’re all taken.”
“Do you have a guest, a young woman, blond . . . ?”
The publican looked at him suspiciously. She didn’t like the question.
“I suggest you go drink somewhere else,” she said. A middle-aged man, his arms covered in tattoos, approached from the far end of the bar.
“The gentleman’s leaving now,” the publican said to him. “It’s okay.”
Michael left the pub and moved away to a point from which he could still see the entrance, but wasn’t exposed to the gaze of the bartender, whose piercing eyes he had felt on his back until he closed the door behind him. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and called Ya’ara’s German number. He heard her low voice answer: “Hello.”
“Hi, Ya’ara,” he said. “It’s Michael Turgeman. Don’t panic. Everything’s okay.”
He had the feeling that nothing was okay.
58
“You can’t stay in this dump,” he said to her. “Drive on to the Old Bank Hotel, please,” he instructed the cab driver. “Stay with me. There must be a sofa in the room,” he continued, addressing Ya’ara again. “I can sleep on it, and you’ll have a normal bed.”
“Michael, you can’t act as if we’ve met up here by chance. I need you to explain to me what’s going on.”
“I think it’s you who has a lot of explaining to do, but not right now. We’ll get there, settle in, sit down together in the hotel library in front of the burning fire, drink something. I need to warm up. And I’m pleased to see you. I was worried about you and have missed you.”
When she sat down next to him in the back of the Oxford taxi, their hands almost touched. Suddenly she squeezed his hand affectionately. “I’ve missed you, too,” she said. “It’s been quite a while since I’ve been with someone normal.”
Michael wasn’t sure if he should take that as a compliment. “So I’m just some sort of family friend to you then?”
“There’s no need to take offense at everything. Just because you’re a settled person, with his feet on the ground, who can be trusted, that doesn’t make you an uncle, or anything like that.”
Michael wanted to tell her that he really didn’t want to be either her uncle or even best friend. But he forced himself to hold back. He needed to maintain some degree of authority over her, although he doubted whether there was anyone in the world who could tell her what to do. He shifted slightly to the left, toward the cab door.
“You’re moving away from me,” she said. “Don’t.”
• • •
She washed her face in the bathroom of the large, plush room. And yes, there was a very big bed in the room, and a sofa, too, which Michael didn’t view as particularly inviting. She looks tired and tense, he thought, turning to look at Ya’ara’s pale, washed face.
“Should we go down?” he asked.
“Yeah, sure,” she replied, trying to brush aside the tension in her voice.
A large fire was indeed blazing in the library fireplace, and they settled into two comfortable armchairs in front of it. A silent waiter served them two glasses of cognac. Ya’ara inhaled the sharp alcohol fumes, steeped in rich and intoxicating scents of oak and vanilla and leather.
“There’s a reason I’m here, Ya’ara,” Michael said. “I didn’t come here out of longing for you. There are bigger things on the go than my personal wishes . . .” He felt he was getting a little tongue-tied, and started over. “In all honesty, I wouldn’t have found you without the Mossad exercising its capabilities. People there are very concerned, very very concerned, about a few things that have happened, and I’m here to ask you—straight up, no games—if you’ve had any part in them.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Two targeted killings were carried out in Europe in recent days, and both have left the country up to its neck in shit,” Michael said. “A Muslim preacher who spewed hatred to his followers was assassinated right here, in England, but a young girl was killed in the incident, too. Moreover, this preacher was also a British security service source. That you didn’t know, did you? The individual who killed him didn’t just run wild in the heart of one of the capital’s neighborhoods, but also severely compromised the Brits’ war on Islamic terrorism.”
He paused for a moment, trying to figure out what impression his words were making on Ya’ara. When he was informed that to top all the trouble, the preacher was also an MI5 asset, he didn’t want to believe it. And it was clear to him that whoever had killed the preacher couldn’t have known they were shooting at a rare and particularly valuable intelligence source. With that in mind, however, the entire operation, with the dead child, went from being a sad mishap to being a terrible farce. The expression on Ya’ara’s face remained unchanged, her eyes inquisitive, waiting to hear the rest. “The British are convinced that we assassinated Anjam Badawi. That we violated all our commitments to them, and that we’re the ones who turned London into the Wild West. And in the process, we killed an innocent child and took out one of their assets.”
“You know,” Ya’ara said, “if he was indeed a source, he may have been exposed and killed by a Muslim terror activist who wanted to avenge his betrayal.”
“If and if and if. That’s just a guessing game. It was a sniper kill from very far away. It was the work of a professional, experienced assassin.”
“And Al Qaeda or Islamic State or whoever else doesn’t have experienced snipers?”
“Enough, Ya’ara, be serious. The incident here is connected to the assassination of Osama Hamdan. The two killings are related; none of us believe in coincidences. And Hamdan’s assassination was an act of revenge. Someone really wanted him dead, and wasn
’t going to make do with seeing him sentenced to life in prison by a Belgian court. Someone was very angry about the murder of Yael Ziv. Making it highly likely that the assassination was the work of an Israeli squad. And the close proximity indicates that the same team killed Badawi, too. The Mossad wasn’t behind this madness, and I want to be sure that it wasn’t you.”
Ya’ara looked unfazed. He felt she was absorbing and digesting the things he was saying to her with interest, like an intellectual, aloof and at ease. “And because the Mossad tells you that they didn’t do it, you come running straight to me?” she said. “Do you have any grounds for doing so? Is there something linking me, directly or indirectly, to these assassinations? Does it seem reasonable to you to come all this way based on . . . I don’t even know what. Are you here as a result of guesswork or male intuition?”
For a moment, the suspicion cast on Ya’ara appeared to Michael to be unfounded. What actually tied her to the killings? The ferocity and daring with which they were carried out? Because she was overseas when they occurred? It could have been mere coincidence, after all. Clearly she couldn’t have carried out the operations on her own. And running a team costs a lot more money than she had. And what was her motive? She was no longer a part of the system. Why would she assume responsibility and take action? He knew her, wild perhaps sometimes, crossing red lines, but no, she didn’t have delusions of grandeur. And in any case, two targeted killings are worthless on their own. Without waging a widespread campaign, there’s no chance of winning anyway. And in order to conduct a prolonged campaign, you need people and infrastructure and money. In an instant, his entire trip appeared misguided and unnecessary.
A Spy in Exile Page 24