Traitor

by Jonathan de Shalit

  Alon swallowed his saliva and nodded, confirming he had understood.

  “Repeat the instructions I have given you,” Roberts said.

  The young man did so clearly, his voice shaking suddenly.

  “If we meet in Israel,” Roberts went on, “and the chances as I’ve said are very slim, we’ll do so in the lobby of the Tel Aviv Hilton. If you wish to contact us, call this number.” The embassy official handed him a business card bearing the name of a trading company and a telephone number in Hamburg. “Don’t call from a telephone associated with you, and always identify yourself as David Mannheim. Ask to speak with Alan Stone. We’ll get back to you. Be patient. It may take some time.”

  The young man stood up, his face blank and his eyes cold. “I appreciate the time you’ve given me,” he said, shaking Roberts’s hand. “It was good meeting with you—I hope,” he added with a smile, well aware of the cliché on his lips, “that it’s the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

  5

  The man who had introduced himself during the meeting as Roberts was actually William Duke. He waited for the walk-in to leave the room in the company of the security guard, stood up, stretched his aching back, ran his fingers through his hair, and returned to his office. With a brief glance at the photograph of his wife and children on the desk and a despairing look at his watch, he retrieved a yellow notepad from one of the drawers and began writing up his report on the meeting that had just ended.

  1. Attached hereto are the questionnaire forms containing the complete particulars of the individual in question. See comments below.

  2. Intelligent, calculating, knows what he wants, determined.

  3. Appears to be motivated primarily by money. The subject is looking for a long-term relationship that would ensure him a steady income. If he does indeed rise through the ranks of the Israeli establishment as he intends to do, his price is expected to rise accordingly. Although still early days, it’s safe to assume already at this point that if his aspirations bear fruit and he truly finds himself walking the corridors of power and influence, we’d probably be happy to pay.

  4. The deal the subject is offering us reflects a profound degree of cynicism, which, based on my initial impressions, forms a significant aspect of his personality.

  5. The subject appears eager to be a part of “something” bigger than himself—a great nation, an all-powerful organization, and the like. Dime-store psychology aside, I direct your attention to the matter of the subject’s father and his abandonment of the family during the subject’s early childhood (see questionnaires), with all its emotional and financial implications.

  6. The subject makes a point of stressing that his approach to us doesn’t conflict with his country’s best interests, both due to the fact that we are allies and because he views us as the “responsible adult” with the power, diplomatic wisdom, and international standing to know what’s best for his country; more so than its leaders themselves. It’s important to preserve and develop this line of thought.

  7. The subject’s current value is marginal. Our prime interest is not the military intelligence to which he has access in the framework of his service in the reserves, although we may be pleasantly surprised. And the political information to which he is privy as a parliamentary aide won’t offer much more than our embassy staff can obtain openly. Nevertheless, a position in the bureau of one of the government ministers—if he is able to secure one—may offer some real potential.

  8. His true value, therefore, lies somewhere in the future. There’s no guarantee that the subject, of all people, and not others from among the thousands of talented individuals seeking advancement in the Israeli political establishment and civil service, will rise to the key positions that truly interest us. That said, I must point out at this stage the subject’s obvious drive, cool-headedness, lack of scruples, and impressive capabilities as factors that bode well for the rise through the ranks he has promised. Most significant is the fact that the subject has already offered himself to us.

  9. I don’t think we’ve got anything to lose by viewing the subject as an investment for the long term. Our financial input to begin with should be modest. We should pay the subject the minimum sum required to preserve the relationship and fuel his motivation to move forward under our guidance.

  Duke put his pen down. His draft report was ready. He placed the pages in the small safe in the corner of his office, shut the heavy door, locked it with a key he retrieved from his pocket, and turned the number dial.

  On the way home to Parioli, he stopped outside a café he was in the habit of drinking at almost every day—espresso in the mornings and whisky in the evenings. With a piece of white chalk he removed from his pocket, he drew a small star on the crumbling brick wall on the corner of the street. He had given the signal. And he was now waiting for the meeting.

  6

  He waited. After alerting his handler of his need for a meeting, William Duke sat for three evenings in succession in the plush bar of the Hassler Hotel, looking out over the city’s domes and steeples, sipping exorbitantly expensive whisky, passing the time in idle thought, and casting a bored gaze over the establishment’s incoming and outgoing patrons. If he didn’t show up tonight, he would have to repeat the same waiting process in precisely one week, and this time at the Grand Hotel de la Minerve, near the Pantheon. Driving by his regular café two days ago in the morning, he had seen a red circle around the white star he had left there on the wall. His signal had been received and confirmed. All he had to do now was to wait. Duke was pleased to be serving in Rome on his own. His wife had chosen to remain in Washington to continue managing her trendy boutique—a surprisingly successful and prosperous venture, or one that at least hadn’t folded like her previous business efforts, which had left an increasingly large hole in their bank account. Their two children were grown up and were both at college—Patty at North Dakota, and Greg at Michigan State. He needed the foreign-service pay to support them and also to finance his wife’s rather extravagant lifestyle. His relationship with his wife had long since become a business arrangement. The warmth and intimacy had disappeared—just as the love had before them. Could what they had had really be called love?

  He closed his eyes and thought back to their first night together, at that dismal motel along the highway north of St. Louis. He remembered how beautiful she had looked, her blonde hair, her teeth so incredibly white, the sweetness of her smile. She was still dressed in her Lafayette High School cheerleading squad uniform when he picked her up. She looked like a breath of fresh of air. He, a discharged soldier, had just completed six years as an army intelligence NCO, mostly in Darmstadt, West Germany. He was to report in four weeks’ time to the CIA in Washington for an additional series of tests, after having already undergone an interview and initial screening at the agency’s offices in Frankfurt. Many years had passed since then, he thought to himself, inadvertently fiddling with the knot in his tie and then brushing back his graying hair. His secret, his terrible private secret, warmed his heart and made him feel that here, in his small realm of sin, he was the master of his own fate—far away from his wife, whose teeth were indeed still white but whose smile hadn’t been sweet for ages; far away from his demanding children; and far away from his arrogant bosses. He’d been in the service of the CIA for exactly twenty-six years; and for quite some time now, he’d been working under people practically half his age, stuck with the duties of an aide to a department head and watching others take the credit for his modest achievements. He thought for a moment about his father, who had worked all his life at a steel plant in Pittsburgh, and said to himself: For fuck’s sake, he helped build America no less so than all the others, and perhaps even more. His father had served in the Pacific for two and a half years during World War II—a Marine, a rank-and-file combat soldier, but trustworthy and spirited. Yes, he, too, deserved credit, no less so than all the others; but what did he get in return?

  Duke suppressed th
ose thoughts, which washed through his mind from time to time. He was often haunted by the image of his dying father, riddled with lung disease. During the final months of his life, his father was no longer the broad and solidly built high-spirited man he used to be. Lying there in his bed in their home at 515 Jefferson Street, he cut a pale and thin figure, and appeared to be withering and fading further from one minute to the next. The hospital was too expensive, and the health insurance had disappeared along with the bankrupt steel plant. His father, choking and gasping for breath, was occupying less and less space in the world. He remembered his rage from back then. Hadn’t his father done his fair share? Yet it seemed as if the world saw him as a weightless speck of dust. He was thirty-six when his father died. His father was sixty-one, just ten years or so older than he was now. He was buried in the Catholic cemetery, among tall and tightly packed tombstones, green with moss and prematurely blackened with age. He hated visiting the grave, shivering with cold in the shadow of the dilapidated plant, which blocked the sun’s pale light and painted the cemetery in dark patches of blue and purple.

  As always, his heart skipped a beat when Gunther entered the bar. Night had fallen over the city, and the palely floodlit white dome of St. Peter’s Basilica looked like a clear and weightless celestial body hovering in the dark sky. Gunther walked over just as he rose from his chair.

  A broad smile lit up Gunther’s face as he shook Duke’s hand and then, in one continuous motion, tugged him closer and warmly embraced him, his free hand slapping down firmly on Duke’s shoulder. “Good to see you, good to see you,” Gunther joyfully exclaimed; and Duke, who feared the entire bar—and not just the bar, but the whole world—was looking at them now, remembered what Gunther had told him a thousand times already: Act natural, act like a regular guy. Only if you whisper will everyone listen. Are you happy to see me? Yes? So be happy! Hug me! Greet me loudly. We’re two friends who don’t get to see enough of each other, and we’ve finally made time to get together. I love you, he’d say, lowering his voice a little. You know that, right? Our “business” connection aside, I really do feel like we’re family—kindred spirits, he’d say, so as not to sound too dramatic or embarrass him too much. And Duke truly did feel that Gunther wasn’t simply another handler blindly chosen for him by fate. He had worked with other handlers before Gunther, and he knew that there’d come a day when Gunther, too, would come to see him—in a somewhat celebratory mood, tinged with just the right amount of sadness—to tell him that the time had come for him to move on, that he, Gunther, was being transferred to a different arena or had been appointed to a senior position at headquarters, and that he, Duke, had no choice but to get to know a new handler. But, he would continue to monitor his progress and take pride from afar in his significant contribution, he’d say—because what do we have in this fucking life if not a handful of people we care about and with whom we have a real and heartfelt connection that doesn’t fade even if we see less of one another, even if life takes us in opposite directions? He knew all that, but still felt a sense of intimacy and true friendship, and he hoped that the time to say farewell to Gunther lay as far in the future as possible.

  Gunther sat down in the armchair across from Duke and let out a sigh of relaxed contentment. “I’ve had a long and hard day,” he said, as if to let Duke in on a secret. “I need a drink,” he continued, signaling with his hand to the elderly waiter, ordering a shot of Lagavulin whisky and a glass of soda water on the side, and asking Duke if he’d like something else. Roberts asked for a Lagavulin, too, and an espresso as well; he liked the bitter brew they served at the bar of the Hassler, and he especially liked the plate of small sweets they served on the side. It has to be the most expensive espresso in the world, he thought to himself, but the price included the view, and the ambience was quiet and dignified, and Gunther was paying anyway. That was the cost required to oil the wheels of the revolution, wasn’t it, he thought, aware of the wry irony that sometimes trickled into his thoughts uncontrollably, poisoning them.

  “So what do you have to tell me, my dear sir?” Gunther asked after relaxing a little and settling comfortably into the leather armchair. “What’s happened that couldn’t wait for our regular meeting?” he added with a sharpness unfamiliar to his conversation partner. “Just so we’re clear on this, when you call me to a special meeting, I have to assume you have good reason to do so. Don’t think I’m complaining or anything like that, okay? I’m always at your disposal; I’ll come whenever you need me to.”

  “Look,” Duke said, “it may very well be nothing, but something happened that triggered—how can I put it—triggered an instinct of sorts, a sense, I’m sorry to say, that had been pretty dulled thanks to all the crap that those idiots give me to do.”

  Gunther nodded, and his eyes reflected a kind of sympathy, as if to say that Duke wasn’t the only one with superiors who weren’t very smart, and that over the years he, too, had worked under people who weren’t always the brightest minds of the generation.

  Duke continued: “A walk-in showed up last Monday. There was something unusual about him, something that set him apart from the endless and familiar collection of intelligence junkies and frauds who come banging on our door. A young Israeli guy, highly intelligent, cool and collected enough to make your hairs stand on end, an individual who had already made the decision to sell his soul. All that remains to work out is the price. He offered us a long-term arrangement: We’re to invest in him, and he’ll fast-track his way ahead and repay our investment further down the line, in a few years’ time, or perhaps even much later.

  “We get quite a few who approach us with the same kind of offer, even if they aren’t able to express themselves as clearly and deliberately,” Duke added contemplatively, “but this guy gave me the impression that if we manage things properly, we’ll be able to recoup our investment. Look, if it’s of no interest to you, I’ll pass on his details to headquarters in Langley. I’ll have to file some kind of a report anyway. But if you want to develop this asset, I can kill the Langley angle.”

  Gunther signaled to the waiter, who was standing at the back of the bar, his purple uniform blending in with the velvety wall, and ordered another glass of whisky. He appreciated Duke’s gut feelings, but wanted a better understanding of where his faith in the walk-in was coming from. His organization would take on the operation only if its potential value was assessed to be particularly high. Not every Israeli who was willing to work with the Americans would be willing to work with the East German intelligence service, too. In fact, the chances were very low. Establishing a relationship with such a walk-in and developing him into a real agent would require costly and complex handling under a foreign identity, an American identity, and making such an investment would be worthwhile only if the future promised a real return. He asked Duke to elaborate on his encounter with the young man, not to spare any details, and in particular, he stressed, he wanted to hear his insights and impressions with regards to the man’s character, with respect to his motives—and also Duke’s view of the future, of how he saw the operation in five years’ time, in ten years.

  Gunther was adept at doing what Duke’s CIA superiors had long forgotten. Unlike them, he didn’t see Duke as an old, worn-out dog that couldn’t learn new tricks, but knew instead to seek his advice, appreciate his opinions, and listen to him. He sincerely valued his judgment. And under such conditions, in this type of atmosphere, Duke flourished. He presented his case in a detailed and well-organized manner, distinguishing between facts and assessments and allowing his imagination to run free. He drew on his experience to paint the bigger picture with broad and bold brushstrokes, yet took care at the same time not to omit the finer details, the subtle areas of light and shadow, the translucent dabs of color. He was an intelligence officer, and in the presence of Gunther, and together with Gunther, in fact, he was also an artist of sorts, perhaps even a bit of a poet, one who could cast an eye into the future.

  Gunther waited
for several minutes after Duke had completed his report before speaking again. “I’m going to advise taking it on,” he said. “Headquarters in Berlin will have to make the decision, of course, but I’ll strongly recommend it. It may take time,” he warned, “and you’ll have to handle things delicately from your end. File a brief and banal report to Langley. Tell them you got the impression that he’s nothing more than a money-hungry fraud, with symptoms of a slight intelligence addiction. But note explicitly that the final decision is theirs to make. And one more thing,” Gunther added after a moment’s thought, “send them an incorrect phone number in the report. Jumble two digits in his phone number. You can always blame the typist in the cypher office. . . . With a bit of effort, they can always locate him if they want to, via the parliament’s telephone exchange or simply by knocking on his door at home,” he said with half a smile, “but if they have no particular reason to be eager to get their hands on him, their idleness and workload will win the day. You know, of course, that I won’t be able to inform you if we’ve decided to pursue the matter with him. When it comes to operations that could turn into something special, the need to maintain a high level of confidentiality from the outset is particularly important. But we’re going to need real-time updates from you—if your guys decide to do something with him after all. It’s best for the mistakes to be made elsewhere, and not by us, my friend,” Gunther said in a cheerful tone, his eyes suddenly moist. “You really are something special. It’s a shame that too many of our officers can’t match you for intelligence, experience, and the ability to understand the human psyche. It’s good to have you on our side.”

  Gunther stood up, approached Duke, and embraced him warmly. “It was good to see you; we don’t do it often enough,” he said as he stepped back a few paces, moving away from Duke and toward the exit, waving absentmindedly to say good-bye, good-bye and see you around.