“A real love affair with someone in Israel could actually be an excellent cover story for her trips to the country,” Aslan commented with obvious skepticism.
“True, but if it was all part of a plan, if it was part of an operation, she would have given Igor the name that appeared in her passport. Otherwise it wouldn’t be a cover or anything at all. Imagine this: She goes through passport control at Ben Gurion Airport as Elena Yampolsky—that’s the passport she used, after all—and they ask her, ‘What is the purpose of your visit, madam?’ And following some persistent questioning, she shyly admits to a love affair with someone, Igor Abramovich, and when they check with him, he innocently confirms it, telling them that he’s involved romantically with a Russian woman by the name of Katrina Geifman, and yes, that’s really her picture, and boom, the cover story becomes an incriminating one, or something suspicious, at least. No. It was a real love affair, and Katrina, the KGB operative, broke numerous rules in order to follow her heart. The connection between this high-class woman from Moscow and a humble artist from Bat Yam remains a mystery, but you can never tell when it comes to these kinds of things. The letters, in my opinion, indicate that it happened, and that it was real.”
“We need to find her, this Katrina Geifman,” Aharon said. “She’s the only lead we have, even if it’s only to rule out the possibility that she’s connected to the affair we’re looking into. We have to find out if the bloodhound from Ashdod is on the right scent,” Aharon added in reference to Hagar Beit-Hallahmi, the “bulldog” who had rarely erred in the past. Rarely. “How do we locate her?”
“I’m working on it,” Adi said. “Using the Internet to begin with. Ya’ara is helping me with the Russian, and Michael gave me the go-ahead to seek the assistance of a young Russian guy who’s working now with my brother at Amdocs, a boy wonder of sorts, who served in the IDF’s SIGINT unit, Unit 8200. I told him to find her for me, that she’s someone I need to locate for my master’s thesis. Taking into account that our Katrina is now sixty years old or so, we’ve narrowed down our search to around ten potential women. Let’s hope that the woman we’re looking for is one of them.”
“Igor will be the key,” Aharon said. “If we find her, we’ll make contact with her on his behalf. We obviously won’t be able to hide the fact that he’s dead. But we can approach her with a final letter that he wrote to her before he died. And Galina, his daughter, will be the one to take it to her. Meet Galina,” Aharon continued, turning to look at the entire team. “Hi there, Galina,” he said, gesturing toward Ya’ara.
“But I don’t look like her at all, and she’s older than me, and I’m sure her Russian is better than mine.”
“She’ll want to see Igor’s daughter. She’s all that remains of something that was apparently very deep and meaningful for her, that caused her to violate all the rules that secret organizations impose on their people. Don’t forget, she barely saw Galina, her visits to Israel were very brief, and twenty years have gone by since. She won’t expect her Russian to be perfect, there’s no reason it should be, and she’ll see what she wants to see, particularly if some of the things we show to her are indeed genuine, or we present them as genuine to her. The letter, and maybe a sketch of her, which he did at the time. And something personal from among the items that Galina collected from his drawers and packed into boxes.
“Compose a letter written by Igor on his deathbed, and show it to me. Michael will then get one of our forgers to put it into Igor’s handwriting, based on samples you’ll give to him.
“So let’s get on with it.
“Adi, you’re finding Katrina. Ya’ara, you’re coming up with a letter and you’re also choosing a sketch and one of Igor’s personal items to give to her. After Adi finds her, Aslan, it’ll be up to you to plan the trip. You’ll be responsible for ensuring that you and Ya’ara enter and leave Russia safely. Yes, you’ll be traveling with genuine documentation, we don’t have a choice. We don’t have access to the Mossad’s capabilities. Remember, unless explicitly authorized by either me or Michael, no one else, no one at all, can know of our mission.”
“Come, Ya’ara,” Adi said, stretching her back, “let’s get a little work done.”
28
“It was easier than I thought it would be,” Dima, her brother’s friend, said, beginning the conversation without any preamble. He really has become so Israeli, Adi thought, and her heart seemed to skip a beat. “The picture you gave me helped a lot, despite you telling me it’s from twenty years ago. My search led me to a young woman by the name of Anna Geifman. On Facebook. Obviously. Where else?” The “Where else?” rolled around in Dima’s mouth like a piece of candy, with the faint hint of a Russian accent. “She has her entire family tree on Facebook, down to the very roots. Her mother, Natalya, is a chemist at an oil company in a relatively small city, not far from Moscow. South of Moscow, to be precise. Anna, herself, is studying animation at the Academy of Fine Arts in Moscow. She sees her sweet grandmother, Katrina—that’s how she describes her, sweet, I’m simply quoting—very infrequently, because she lives in Dimitrovgrad. I checked, it’s about a thousand kilometers east of Moscow. A real dump, check out its website, really pathetic.” There’s that accent again, Adi thought to herself, flavoring Dima’s words with a heart-warming spice. “Pathetic,” like a tiny melody. “There’s a picture of the three of them, Anna and her mother and her grandmother. From last Christmas, a little less than a year ago. The grandmother caught my eye right away. She looks young, not like some old woman of sixty, and she—how should I put it—isn’t simply beautiful, impressive would be a better word, as if she’s emerging from the picture.”
“You said the picture I gave you helped.” Adi had scanned and e-mailed him a photograph of Katrina that she had found in one of Igor’s boxes.
“Yes, for sure. From the outset, she, Anna’s grandmother, looked like the picture you sent me. And then I played around a little with Picasa. It’s a program that among other things also offers facial recognition capabilities.” Dima paused for a moment, to make sure Adi knew what he was talking about.
“Tell me, Dima, how old do you think I am? Am I also an old woman of sixty?”
Dima laughed sheepishly. “You’re Yair’s big sister nevertheless. I have no idea how old you are. Oldish. Relatively so. You already have two daughters, right? They’re Yair’s screen saver. He’s a sentimental guy, you know.”
“You’re digging a hole for yourself, Dima. Didn’t you study Tact 101 at the Technion?”
“Okay,” Dima said, choosing to ignore her remark and change the subject. He learned, too, at that very moment, that speaking about a woman’s age is like walking through a minefield, and actually stepping on the mines themselves, not in the spaces between them. “So I enlarged the faces in the two pictures, ran them through Picasa, and, believe it or not, got a very high degree of likeness, particularly if you take into account the fact that there’s a twenty-year gap between the photographs, and they’re not the optimal quality for the purpose of comparing faces.”
“You’re a sweetheart, Dima. And that’s coming from an old and mature woman. Mail me everything. With the pictures and all.”
“If you’d checked, you’d have seen you already have it all,” Dima said slightly condescendingly, and Adi smiled, admitted defeat, and said, “You’ve done a great job. You’ve helped me. I’m truly grateful. Regards to Yair and remind him that he’s at our place this evening at eight. And not to be late.”
29
Ya’ara could hear the hesitation in her voice. After saying, in Russian, of course, “Hello, my name is Galina Abramovich, may I speak to Katrina Geifman,” she heard nothing but silence, and then, a slow, deep voice said, “Could you repeat that, please?” And she did. And silence again. Ya’ara proceeded cautiously.
“We met only once, or twice, in our apartment in Bat Yam, in Israel, but my father spoke about you often. I mean, he didn’t say very much, but you were clearly very important t
o him. Dear to his heart,” she added, lowering her voice slightly, like someone who felt embarrassed by her invasion into her father’s intimate, foreign, space. A sigh came from the other end of the line. “Oh, Igor. It was so long ago.”
“Yes, so many years have gone by. I have to tell you, so you know—my father passed away a long time ago, in 1998.” Silence. “He loved you until the day he died.”
“Igor’s dead?”
“Sadly, yes. My father passed away.”
“It’s complicated, it’s all too complicated.”
“I . . .” Ya’ara hesitated, “if you’re willing, I’d like to see you. I know it’s been a long time, and perhaps it was wrong of me not to write to you when my father died. But you weren’t in touch with each other at the time, and I didn’t know exactly what to do. Mostly I was embarrassed. But I’ve been going through several of my father’s old things recently, and I’ll be traveling soon to Moscow for work, and in my hand right now is a final letter my father wrote to you, right before he died, and I thought to myself that these kinds of things don’t happen by chance and perhaps we could see each other.”
“Russia is a big country, my dear, and I live so far away from Moscow. I won’t be able to come meet you there. It’s far, the train fare is expensive, and times aren’t that easy right now . . .”
“No, no, I thought I’d come to you. I’ll take two or three days off after the work in Moscow, and we can meet. There must be a small hotel where you are.”
“There is one hotel, but I live a little out of town. There’s only a small hostel in our suburb, but anyway, you can stay with me, I have an empty room. I mean, it’s full of stuff I’ve collected, you know, we collect and collect things . . . I’ll make room for you. You’ll stay with me, Galinka.”
30
BEN GURION INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, FEBRUARY 2013
“You know that with your real passport and the story you told Katrina Geifman, you’re going to be in trouble in the event of an investigation,” Aslan said to Ya’ara. They were sitting at the Segafredo café, close to their boarding gate at Ben Gurion International Airport. They still had an hour before their flight to Moscow was due to take off, and they, one with a cappuccino and the other a double espresso, and a bottle of mineral water, were going over the cover stories, and what they planned to say on entering Russia, and then in Dimitrovgrad, and what would happen if someone were to waylay them, Katrina and Ya’ara, in the very midst of their meeting. And who they were to each other, Aslan and Ya’ara, and what they were doing there together.
“After all, she knows you as Galina Abramovich, and your passport says Ya’ara Stein. How are you going to explain that?”
“The chances of someone taking any interest in the two of us together are slim.”
“Don’t forget that she, based on our best assessments, is a KGB operative.”
“She was. In the past. We believe after all that she’s no longer a part of the organization. She’s old, and she probably broke every rule in their book. She lives in a shithole in the middle of nowhere. Do you really think there’s any KGB in that miserable town, a thousand kilometers east of Moscow?”
“It’s 966.”
“What?”
“It’s 966 kilometers. Besides, it’s no longer the KGB. They’re the FSB these days, as you know. And the Federal Security Service has offices everywhere throughout the empire. And with a nuclear research institute in the city, I’m not so sure they view Dimitrovgrad as an insignificant town. But, yes, I agree that it isn’t very likely at all that they’re still keeping an eye on Katrina Geifman. Nevertheless, if she knows you as Galina and you’re required by an FSB official or a policeman sent by the FSB to present your passport, bearing the name Ya’ara Stein, in her presence, what do you say?”
“You know. The usual story. In the event of any confrontation, I’ll say that it’s all simply a misunderstanding. I’m not Galina. What are you talking about? I’m a friend of Galina, well, an acquaintance, to be more precise. When Galina heard about my upcoming trip to Russia, she asked if I’d contact someone on her behalf, a woman by the name of Katrina Geifman, who her father had known and been in contact with many years ago. I’m simply delivering an old letter and maybe a small memento. I was in Moscow for the purpose of gathering material for my final film school project, and stopped off in Dimitrovgrad on my way to Kazan. There I’m hoping to find the gravesite of my great-grandmother, my father’s mother’s mother. And if Katrina believed otherwise, if she mistakenly thought that I’m Galina Abramovich, then either she heard wrong, or misunderstood me, or it’s simply wishful thinking on her part.”
“So who am I then?” Aslan asked.
“You? What kind of question is that? You’re my lover,” Ya’ara responded, holding his hand for a moment.
31
RUSSIA, FEBRUARY 2013
She hadn’t properly considered the awful cold of Russia in February. Ya’ara had worked before in cold places, in Sweden, in Finland, but somehow she avoided making the required mental connection between the fragrant, colorful, and wonderfully pleasing winter of Israel’s coastal plain and the intense, unyielding cold that greeted them the moment they stepped out of the plane at the airport in Moscow. The years spent at university, without her having to be constantly primed to take off on a trip somewhere, must have had an effect, and her negligence, her failure to take her destination into account, exacted an immediate price. She knew, of course, that she was going somewhere cold, but she didn’t remember just how big a difference there is between minus three degrees and minus thirteen. Traversing the short distance between the aircraft’s stairs and the wide passenger bus, diesel fumes spewing from its exhaust, was enough for her to feel the cold biting and stinging and encapsulating her body through her thin sweater and the seams of her leather jacket, and her jeans turned stiff, frozen, and coarse, scratching her skin, cooling the flow of blood through her thighs. Aslan, for his part, appeared pleased with himself. He tightened his long woolen coat around his body and with a triumphant smile pulled out a woolen hat, put it on, and pulled it down, his ears protected, his forehead covered, his teeth white and his eyes sparkling. Within seconds, however, he could feel the cold penetrating the wool and seeping inward, into his head and his body. He knew that fifteen minutes on lookout or manning a security position on the street and he wouldn’t be able to see a thing, that all he’d be able to do would be to try to cope with the ever-increasing discomfort, before the cold turned into a burning and painful sensation that prevented him from acting as required. He pressed up against Ya’ara, in the bus that was now filled with passengers, and said: “We didn’t take cold like this into account. I’m such an idiot. Me, with two treks in the Himalayas under my belt. With thousands of pairs of thermal underwear. Which I left at home, of course. The first thing we’re going to do is get ourselves properly equipped. And dress in the clothes that the people who live here wear.” And she responded, her scent still fresh and pleasant despite having slept cramped up in the narrow aircraft seat: “Yes, my darling. It’s about time you bought your love a fur coat.”
32
Katrina, my love,
Katrina. This is my final letter to you. Six years have gone by since my last one. I didn’t think I’d ever write to you again. I asked you back then, my dearest—pleaded almost—to be mine. To decide that you are able to take the bold leap of faith with me, to walk away from your previous life, from your husband whom you no longer love, and to live with me. Your letter was so cold, cold and bleak. Even the very letters that made up the words appeared to disfavor me. And the words themselves were like a sword through my heart. You told me you would never see me again. And that I should cease writing to you.
We were so happy, sweet Katrina, and each time we met we shared such a simple and innocent joyfulness. From the very first time, and year after year to follow. Until you decided that you couldn’t any longer. You touched my soul, elevated me, transformed me, proved to me that I
was not dry and shriveled as others thought, that I could be interesting for the most part, and even exhilarating at times, that there was a spark of life left in Igor, who used to think that his life was closing in on him.
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