A Spy in Exile

by Jonathan de Shalit

  “We don’t have to—can’t—solve every problem or answer every question right now. And I can’t tell you what to think or how to think. That’s your responsibility, to make the best of everything you’ve been through. Because ahead of us lies a long road that only very few can follow. I’ve already told you, it’s a great privilege to be selected, but no one can force you to follow that road. And personally, I’ve no interest in anyone who doesn’t want to follow that road. All I can say is that there’ll be more ups and downs, more victories and, yes, more crashes. And just as I am, you, too, will be accompanied throughout by that same sense of mission and duty that gives me meaning and allows me to feel, despite all the pain, that my life has a reason.” Ya’ara smiled. “There you have it, just the kind of grandiose statements I didn’t want to make. They must sound meaningless to you.”

  Ann looked at her with her big eyes, attentive and serious. She felt she had gotten to her. “We’ll be okay, Ya’ara,” Helena said. “We’ll meet up in Berlin as arranged. We can make all our decisions then.”

  It was as if a door had been slammed shut in her face. Her cadets were looking at her, forming a united front. Something had happened between them, and Ya’ara knew she had to think out her next move carefully after they had been the ones to decide to end the conversation.

  Evening had fallen, and dismal yellow lights were casting a weak glow over the street visible from the café’s windows. She thought of Aslan walking along the length of Hadrian’s Wall, pitching his tent somewhere sheltered from the wind, snuggling into his sleeping bag, waiting for the long night to pass. She tried to think of what Aslan would say to them and remembered his well-known penchant for silence. She thought about Michael. She hadn’t planned on being a parental figure for her two cadets. It was not what they needed and wasn’t something she could offer.

  She stood up and left, nodding farewell to the two women. Ann responded with a faint smile; Helena looked at her blankly.

  Standing there in a foreign city in the cold evening air, after closing the door behind her, Ya’ara suddenly felt incredibly lonely.

  62

  “I’m leaving tomorrow,” Ya’ara said to Michael. They were sitting opposite each other in Ya’ara’s hotel room. Even before she spoke, Michael had noticed her suitcase in a prominent place on the floor. Ya’ara had already packed the few clothes she had.

  “I need to get back to Germany.”

  Michael looked at her pale, drawn face.

  “I don’t think you should go,” he said. “You’re traveling on empty. You need to rest.”

  “You’re not my father, Michael.”

  “I don’t know where you went this afternoon, but you were wiped out when you got back here. Let’s stay in the hotel for a few more days. We can sleep late, we’ll find nice places for lunch, we’ll go to shows in the evening. This place is full of music spots; maybe we’ll discover the new John Lennon.”

  She smiled at him wearily and a wave of affection washed over Michael.

  “Listen,” he said, “whatever’s waiting for you in Germany can wait a little longer, can’t it? And if you need to do something to postpone things, perhaps I can help . . . Ya’ara, your eyes are telling me that you need to stop for a while. Do you know who you remind me of?”

  She looked up and gazed at him questioningly.

  “You remind me of myself. This itinerary of yours, from Oxford, to Liverpool, to Germany. That’s what I used to do when I was in service.”

  Ya’ara tensed up, wondering just how much Michael knew about what she was doing. She allowed him to continue nevertheless.

  “And I remember something else.” Michael knew she was listening to him, but also noticed the hint of an arrogant smile, the shadow of the condescending look she was giving him.

  “I remember, too, that each and every one of them needed something from me. And everyone I met with took whatever they needed. A piece of my experience, a piece of my courage. A piece of my optimism. And then there’d come a moment when I’d feel drained. That I had nothing more to give. And the worst part of it was the sense I got that they could see it, too. That their faith in me and regard for me were faltering. And then I had to take a time-out. Had to take a step back. Had to stop giving of myself. Even for a limited time only. But I needed that space to myself. Because in those moments, I no longer had anything to give.”

  He knew Ya’ara thought that she wasn’t that type of person. That her reserves would never run dry. That was the source of her strength, but a source of grave danger, too. It was plain to see that something had sapped her of her strength and left her vulnerable. As if her core temperature had dropped drastically and she wasn’t aware of it, despite the intense distress signals her body was trying to convey to her.

  “As I see things,” he continued, despite getting no response from her, “the right thing to do now would be to cover you with a thick blanket, turn out the light, and let you sleep. Tell me when you were planning to fly out tomorrow and I’ll cancel your ticket for you. If you need to let anyone know, I can do that for you, too. Don’t worry.”

  Ya’ara reached out to him, touching his fingertips. “Maybe you’re right. Even though you and I are very different people. But I really don’t have to leave tomorrow.” She gave him the details of the flight she had booked to Cologne. “I’d appreciate it if you could let them know about the cancellation,” she said.

  “Can you sleep with me tonight again?” she asked quietly. “Like at the hotel in Oxford?” He wondered how many nights he could sleep in the same bed with her without feeling humiliated. But he knew she needed him, and knew, too, that he was making progress, even if he wasn’t aware of where it would lead. He knew that Ya’ara was struggling with strong forces, and thought he was beginning to understand.

  “Yes,” he said to her. “I’ll be with you. Don’t worry.”

  63

  They walked toward Strawberry Field. Once a wide-open stretch of land. Closed in today by ugly redbrick housing estates. But some green space remained, surrounded by a rickety fence with a layer of peeling paint. Just the gate, made of intricate ironwork, was painted a bright red. These were strawberry fields forever. It was a surprisingly warm day, the kind of day that leads people to remark gleefully to one another about the good weather. Ya’ara walked along with her head bowed, her fair hair covering her face, her hand almost touching Michael’s.

  “Look,” she said to him, raising her head, her eyes squinting in the sun. “Just us and the Japanese tourists.”

  The visitors from Japan were taking photographs alongside the sign displaying the name of the location, Strawberry Field, grinning at the camera lens each time someone from the group snapped his friends.

  “Should we get our photo taken, too?” Michael asked.

  “You know I don’t like to be photographed.”

  “I thought you had stopped working a long time ago.”

  “You’re right. Let’s ask them to take a picture of us with your iPhone. How come after knowing each other for so long we don’t have a single photograph of us together? We’re a little screwed up, right?”

  “No, it’s just habit. Are you sure you don’t want a selfie?”

  “There’s a limit to everything, Michael.”

  A smiling Japanese girl was happy to photograph them. She waved them closer to each other. And then motioned with her arm for Michael to place his own around Ya’ara’s shoulders. And gestured a little more to tell Ya’ara to tilt her head toward him.

  “A real Antonioni she is,” Michael muttered, grumpily, tugging Ya’ara closer to him at the same time. Ya’ara played along with an air of softness.

  “Good that she’s an Antonioni and not a Tarantino. Otherwise there’d be a massacre here by now.”

  “We’d look like figures in a Francis Bacon painting.”

  “I’m not sure he painted women at all,” Ya’ara remarked, and Michael told her in response about the first time he saw a Francis Bacon s
elf-portrait and felt as if someone had managed to capture the essence of humanity.

  “Maybe there are some of his works on display here, at Tate Liverpool. It’s worth checking out,” Michael suggested.

  Ya’ara wondered if he was trying to tell her something. Just yesterday she had met at the Tate with Ann and Helena. But his face revealed nothing.

  “And while we’re on the subject,” he added casually, “maybe we should take a trip to Leeds tomorrow? It’s where Henry Moore studied, and some of his pieces are on display at the municipal gallery. Up for it?”

  “Gladly. Why not? I’d forgotten that you’re such an art lover. And maybe we’ll find a good place to eat there, too. Let’s pretend we’re tourists.”

  Michael looked at her and wondered when she wasn’t pretending, when she was really telling him the whole truth. But Ya’ara was standing there next to him, tall and erect, beautiful and happy, as if there wasn’t a single worry in the world weighing her down.

  He decided he’d make do with that for now.

  64

  TEL AVIV, LIVERPOOL, FEBRUARY 2015

  Michael had met up with Ronit late in the evening before his flight to London. Ronit had once been a combatant in the same squad in which Ya’ara had served. So they were friends, but he didn’t know if they were still in touch. As talented and daring as she was, Ronit was also viewed as a strange bird. Maybe that’s what had drawn Ya’ara to her, he thought. She had left the squad and the Mossad, and Michael had heard that she was doing something obscure in the hi-tech field. It took her a few moments to recognize his voice when he called, but she agreed to meet him right away. “But you’ll have to take a walk with me and Nora,” she said.

  “Nora? Your daughter?”

  “My dog, dummy.” A slight faux pas only, but it flickered in Michael’s head like a warning signal.

  They met across the road from Ronit’s house on Be’eri Street. It was dark and wet, and Michael closed his coat. Nora was bounding around them energetically, and Ronit let her off the leash, remarking that it was a quiet street and not a problem. Nora circled around them excitedly and sped off down the empty street, savoring the freedom and space that had opened up to her.

  “Is she a purebred dog, or what?”

  “No, Michael, she’s not purebred. She’s a mixture of so many kinds that I have no idea what she is. Is this what you called me for after so many years? To talk about my dog?”

  “I wanted to ask you about Ya’ara Stein. Are you still in touch?”

  “Unfortunately not. I left the squad and two years later Ya’ara went on unpaid leave. Went off to study film. We slowly lost touch. It just happens sometimes. Although I think about her a lot.” She paused for a moment. “She’s okay, right?”

  “I have no reason to think otherwise. But there’s something important that I need to clarify. Do you know if she had any connection to the late Yael Ziv?”

  “I’m not sure I know who you’re talking about, although the name sounds familiar . . .”

  “Yael Ziv was murdered in a terror attack in the central synagogue in Brussels.”

  “Ah, right. Of course I’ve heard about her.” They had reached the public park, with the dog right behind them. Tall trees swayed like black shadows against the cloudy sky. “I don’t recall any ties between her and Ya’ara.” She hesitated for a moment, quietly trying to sift through her memory. “No,” she said. “Is it important? Why do you ask?”

  “I’m looking into something at the request of Aharon Levin. It would be easiest to try to inquire via the Mossad, but the truth is I don’t want to involve them. Doing so could put Ya’ara in harm’s way, and I want to protect her, if possible.”

  “Are you still with the Mossad?”

  “No, no. I’ve been out for two years already. I opened a law office. But I get asked to do various things sometimes. I never say no.”

  “Maybe it’s time you started. I have to ask: Did anything ever happen between you in the end?”

  “Between who?”

  “Who are we talking about? Between you and Ya’ara.”

  “No. Never.”

  “You worked together on several operations,” she said. “And she spoke about you in a manner that got me thinking, and getting information out of her . . . Oh, well, never mind.”

  “I value her greatly. She’s an exceptional fighter and an interesting woman. But nothing happened between us.”

  “You have paternal feelings toward her, right? A feeling of wanting to shield her.”

  “Yes,” he said, impressed by her sharp senses. “Most of all, I don’t want anything to happen to her.”

  “She has a tendency to reach into the flames and then wonder how she got burned,” Ronit said. “Fortunately, that doesn’t happen to her much. She’s too smart. But sometimes she’s more hard-headed than smart.”

  Michael smiled softly, sympathetically. He felt that she needed to talk, that his role in their conversation was that of a listener to things she wanted to get off her chest.

  “I miss her,” Ronit said. “I really do. More than I’d like to admit, in fact. I miss her even though I doubt the feeling’s mutual. I’ll try to find out for you if she had any connection to that woman. Hold on. Hold on. Do you think . . . ?”

  Michael realized that Ronit had connected the dots and seen the link between his questions and the reports published about the assassination in Belgium.

  “I don’t know anything for certain and there’s no reason to jump to wild conclusions. But now you understand my concern. So a few discreet inquiries on your behalf would be to her benefit. I’m worried about her. Don’t go through any official Mossad channels. I’m going away tomorrow morning, but I’ll call you in a day or two, okay?”

  Ya’ara was still sleeping when he called her from the small garden across the road from the hotel.

  “Hi,” Ronit said, careful not to use his name, still maintaining the habits acquired during the years she spent as a field operative. You can never know what name the person on the other side of the line is using. “I spoke to her father. He remembered me and was happy to hear from me after so long. I visited her parents’ home with her on several occasions, and was even their guest once at the family’s Passover Seder. It turns out it was her mother who knew Yael, actually. They were very good friends, they shared common interests, and Yael was a big help to Ya’ara’s mother during the family’s initial years in the country. And later, when Ya’ara’s mother fell ill, Yael was her angel, so he told me.

  “He got very emotional talking about his wife. Naturally, of course. I apologized to him for stirring such charged memories, but he said that speaking about her allowed him to remember her best. He said that the news of Yael’s murder had left him broken. He went to the funeral, but there were so many people there and he didn’t have the courage to speak to her husband and children. He didn’t really know them anyway. The friendship, he said, was strictly between the two women. A private friendship. Does that help you at all?”

  “It’s a big help. Thanks. Don’t discuss this with anyone, okay? Keep it to yourself. There’s no need for people to start telling stories to themselves.”

  “Send her my warmest regards if you see her. And tell her I miss her. And when you get back to Israel, perhaps we can get together for a coffee, you and me. Nora’s been asking about you.”

  Michael sat down on a bench in the garden. He sighed, took a cigar out of his jacket pocket, and lit it, losing himself in his thoughts as he inhaled the thick, fragrant smoke.

  65

  PARIS, FEBRUARY 2015

  Batsheva peered out into the street through the café’s glass wall, waiting for Claude’s figure to emerge from around the corner. The glass was distorting the shapes outside and she felt as if she was in a movie; at that precise moment, she was the viewer watching the scene unfold, but at any minute she could step into the shoes of one of the main characters. She recalled the missions she had been given as a teenager, miss
ions that had led her, ultimately, to this moment, the crisis she had chosen not to share with Ya’ara and the other cadets. Becoming a cadet enabled her to find meaning in her life again. She felt as if she had been reborn. And in the end, she overcame everything, the slight depression, the sense of meaninglessness. She was in Paris, and not simply for the pleasures it offered. She had a reason for being there.

  Across the street, through the incessant rain, the fringes of the Luxembourg Gardens looked like a grayish-green stain, wet and blurry. She was hoping desperately that the rain would stop.

  When he walked through the door, Batsheva couldn’t help thinking that he looked like a street mongrel, almost pitiful, his hair wet and shaggy. His face, with its look of misery and suffering, lit up when he saw her. She stood up and embraced him gingerly, to avoid getting wet. He was a head shorter than her, his dripping-wet hair plastered to his scalp, his shirt hanging out of his trousers, his umbrella inside-out and broken.

  “Once again you chose one of the most expensive cafés in the city,” he said. “The price here of a café au lait is outrageous. You could have had something to drink at my place for free.”

  But Batsheva had chosen this time not to have to forge a path among the piles of folders and mountains of paperwork that cluttered the musty system of rooms composing his office, one of the oldest insurance agencies in Paris. The last time she was there she was served a turbid lukewarm coffee, and along with the coffee, she was also subjected to the overtly hostile looks of Madeleine, Claude’s personal assistant, who was clearly in love with him. A normal café was a better option, she thought.

  In spite of his clumsy, shabby appearance, and notwithstanding the dreariness of his profession, Claude was one of the most learned and brilliant people she knew. He spoke fourteen languages and apologized for being able to read and write in only ten of them. He had a phenomenal memory and oozed personal charm, the moment you gave him a second chance. He once had plans to pursue an academic career in the United States; he believed he could become a world-renowned historian, a historian of ideas. But when his father fell ill, he was summoned back to Paris to provide for the family. You should never rely on first impressions, he had once told her. Ya’ara had said the same. But Batsheva recalled an American saying she had heard many years earlier, that you never get a second chance to make a first impression. Thus, despite the gross injustice of having to do so, you should invest a great deal in the initial impression you make. That’s what she had said to Ya’ara, and Ya’ara, who always left a dazzling first impression, said, You’re right, Batsheva, even if I’ve never put it that way myself.