Aharon and Ya’ara sat down in the large living room, which was a model of comfort and good taste. A fire burned in the stone fireplace, casting a golden glow over the volumes of books on the shelves, and antique-looking Greek urns that Ya’ara presumed were hand-crafted copies stood proudly in small, well-lit display cabinets. Everything spoke of old money, stability, and refinement. Noticing the two empty wine bottles on the floor, alongside one of the armchairs, Ya’ara looked away. She was playing her part to perfection, as she always did, slipping easily into any and every character, and now she was a loyal academic assistant, serious and altruistic. She sat there looking innocent, her feet together, upright and alert. Frances Hart excused herself and went to the kitchen to make tea. The sound of glass shattering disturbed the silence, and Ya’ara thought she also heard a stifled sob. Then she heard Frances speaking softly. Probably on the phone.
Frances returned from the kitchen a few minutes later, bearing a tray with two porcelain cups and a plate of cookies. Ya’ara thought she looked troubled, but even if she had been crying, her eyes were now dry. Her hands trembled slightly as she placed the tray on the low table in front of them. “I have called for a taxi to take you back to town. Remind me of your names, please,” she asked, and sat down across from them, folding her arms across her chest, as if she needed to keep warm. Or protect herself.
“I’m an antiquities dealer from Israel,” Aharon introduced himself. “With a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Studies from many years ago,” he said, alluding to his advanced age. “Back then already, I ran into your husband’s name. I’m aware of his expertise when it comes to ancient texts from our part of the world, and I wanted to interest him in a scroll that came into my possession in one of those ways that are best left untold, as is customary in the field. A scroll that was discovered in the Transjordan region, passed from one hand to another, and was brought to my attention by a colleague from Bethlehem. I was thinking that Professor Hart might like to review the manuscript, check it, verify its originality, and perhaps receive first rights with respect to its study.”
“Surely you have experts in ancient scrolls back home. What brings you all the way here?”
“We came over for a series of meetings, at the Metropolitan in New York and at Harvard. Annabelle, my assistant”—Ya’ara flashed a pleasant smile—“suggested that we also pay a visit to the library at your university, believing that it would be worthwhile trying to meet with staff members from the Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World. Our universities in Israel have limited funds, and the leading universities in the United States have actually been the ones investing in recent years in the acquisition of manuscripts, scrolls, archives, anything related to the ancient and contemporary culture of Israel, and the land of Israel. We were hoping to interest Professor Hart in an item that may turn out to be one of the most significant findings of recent decades.”
“I’m sure he’d be happy to meet with you . . . but he had to go away unexpectedly. I’m sorry,” Frances Hart said. Ya’ara caught sight of the shadow of worry in their hostess’s eyes. And the slight trembling of her hands. And her furtive glance at the wine bottles on the floor.
“Annabelle, can you please give Mrs. Hart one of my business cards?”
Ya’ara reached out to hand her the card, and after some hesitation Frances Hart placed it in the corner of the table. Whether she was going to make use of it or simply throw it away after her guests departed was impossible to tell, but Ya’ara’s money was on option one.
“May I use the bathroom, please?” Ya’ara asked.
“Certainly. Just around that corner, second door on the left.”
Ya’ara set off in the direction Frances had indicated, then passed by the bathroom to get a quick look further into the residence. Her memory took note of the layout of the house, of the various items on display, of the pictures and bookcases that popped into view from unexpected angles. She then returned to the bathroom, and after stepping back into the living room she said, apologetically, “Sorry, I got a little lost. But everything’s fine. I found my way eventually.”
Frances smiled at her. “Truthfully,” she said, “I’m happy you’re the ones who came. Julian left in the early hours of the morning so unexpectedly that it got me thinking strange thoughts. He looked so stressed and pale. He travels quite frequently, but this was something really out of the blue, and he wasn’t quite able to explain to me what had happened and why the urgency. Something about a colleague in Heidelberg who had taken ill suddenly. That’s what he said. But the e-mail he received, I didn’t really read it, but I caught a glimpse, over his shoulder, that’s just me sometimes”—she smiled, coyly, like a shamefaced teenager—“I saw he received an e-mail to confirm a flight to Zurich. Why fly to Heidelberg via Zurich? Wouldn’t one fly via Frankfurt? I asked him, but he just muttered something about airfares and the research budget.” Ya’ara knew now for certain that Frances had been drinking, and quite a lot, too, since her husband’s hasty departure in the early hours of the morning. A person with her wits about her wouldn’t be chatting so freely, certainly not with strangers who had almost forced their way into her home. “Anyway,” Frances continued, “when you rang at the door, I thought maybe two Mafia thugs had shown up, Sopranos-like, you know.” She smiled again, trying to capture Ya’ara’s gaze. Ya’ara reciprocated, her gray-blue eyes warm and deep. “I can just imagine what went through your mind,” she said.
“Yes,” Frances said, “that alarming ring at the door, echoing really loud through the silence all around. And who do I see? Not two killers from New Jersey but a harmless professor, forgive me”—she threw a somewhat embarrassed glance at Aharon, who was watching the scene with wide-eyed innocence—“and an attractive young woman, tastefully dressed. And suddenly it dawned on me that I was simply imagining things, that I’ve just been telling myself stories ever since Julian got the phone call.”
“I’m sure everything’s fine,” Ya’ara said. “People involved in the world of antiquities and manuscripts are always going to get strange phone calls and have to go away sometimes, even out of the blue. It’s a little like being a secret agent . . .”
The sound of an approaching car came from outside, followed by footsteps, heavy breathing, and a ring on the doorbell. “That’s your taxi,” Frances said. “I’m really sorry that Julian isn’t home, but I hope within a few hours to know what’s happening with him and when he’ll be back. I’ll tell him you were here. I’ll give him your phone number, sir.” She looked at Aharon.
“I’m planning on being in Providence for a few days,” Ya’ara said. “I’ll be staying at the Heralds Inn. If you hear anything, you’re welcome to let me know.” She moved toward Frances and hugged her gently. “Everything’s okay, you’ve nothing to worry about. These things happen sometimes, those demons of the night following us into the day.” She held Frances’s hands. “And thank you for the hospitality. We showed up uninvited, and you were so welcoming. I hope our scroll finds a place for itself at Julian’s institute. It deserves to be studied by a scholar of stature. You’ll see, Frances, everything will fall into place just fine.”
• • •
“Well, that didn’t go very well at all,” Aharon said to Ya’ara, who was sitting to his left in the backseat of the taxi. “I had trouble convincing myself even. An antiquities dealer, come on.”
“Look, something’s happened. She’s upset. She doesn’t know where he is, and she’s imagining all kinds of things. She must have picked up on his sense of danger or urgency. Otherwise she wouldn’t have behaved like she did. After all, it’s not the first time he’s gone away.”
“And what’s this Heralds Inn business? Do you feel like a bit of a holiday?”
“I get the sense that I should stay for a while. I’d like to meet with her again in a day or two. You need the patience of a hunter. You once told us that.”
“Yes, spying is waiting. Le Carré penned that, I believe.”
“
My father likes to read him. He always spoke of him as a master spy, and it took me a while to learn that Le Carré had worked for the British secret service for just a few years and in a junior role. How does that make him an authority when it comes to matters of espionage?”
“Literary fiction can sometimes paint a truer picture of our gray reality. Look at us, an old man and a young woman in a filthy taxi in a city buried in this dreary winter. It’s better to be a writer, isn’t it?”
“It’s better to live life, that’s what I say. Anyway, I’m staying for a few days. I’ll keep you posted. Are you going back today already?”
“There’s someone I have to see in Boston. And I’ll meet with Bill again in New York; he’ll be there for a couple of days for some conference. We’ll have a drink or two together, and then tomorrow, at around midnight, home, on the El Al night flight.”
“Yes, you two really didn’t drink enough, obviously. You’re full of surprises, Aharon. A woman in Boston?”
“All men have to guard their secrets,” Aharon replied with a thoughtful look on his face. He didn’t tell her the woman was someone who had worked for him in the United States many years back, and who now lived in an institution about a thirty-minute drive from the city, her memory fading, getting thinner by the day, a chill fixed in her bones, with no one else in the world but him. The office footed the bill without fail, through a branch of an Irish bank, but he was the only one who visited her once every few months, a debt of respect on the part of a veteran combatant.
45
DIMITROVGRAD, MARCH 2013
Katrina was in heaven. A soft mattress, clean, crisp sheets, a thick comforter. A gentle hand caressing her forehead. “Sleep, dear, sleep,” said the soothing voice of an old woman. The hand caressing her was the woman’s hand. The caressing hand was now tightening the blanket around her body. Soft footsteps moved away. The light in the room went out. She drifted again in and out of a light sleep, rocking gently among the waves of slumber.
“How’s she feeling today?” Arkady Semionov asked his mother in a whisper.
“She’ll be okay, she’s a strong woman. We went through far worse during the Great Patriotic War.”
Arkady took a deep breath. “I want you to nurse her until she’s back on her feet,” he said. “And then I’ll take her.”
“I hope you’re not doing anything foolish, Arkady.”
“I’m doing only what you taught me. Don’t worry.”
“I’m an old woman, but you?”
“Mother, who’s the FSB commander in Dimitrovgrad?”
“That’s exactly what I’m afraid of. You’re riding a white horse and telling yourself that you’re noble-hearted, a knight in shining armor. Arkady, Arkady, very little has changed in our country. Don’t fool yourself. You may rule the roost here in your small, remote kingdom, but don’t underestimate those who wield the true power. They’ll crush you like a bug. Without a second thought.”
“And yet, Mother, you are still helping me.”
“I told you. I’m old. There’s very little left to take from me. And I’m tougher than you. Don’t be mistaken.”
“You’re right. I’ll be careful. But I couldn’t just leave her like that. And I don’t shoot people in the back of the head. As far as I’m concerned, those days are over. I won’t allow them to force us back to places we should never have been in to begin with. We can be humans, too. I don’t think that’s asking too much.”
Arkady’s mother clucked her tongue and went to the kitchen to get Katrina another cup of tea. She was proud of her only son and concerned for him. She hoped that the tortured woman lying in the bed in the small guest room would recover quickly and disappear elsewhere, somewhere better. Later, she approached her again, caressed her forehead and face, saw her eyes open, and brought the cup of tea to her lips. “Be careful, dear, it’s hot.”
Arkady was sitting in the large armchair in the deliberately darkened room, his eyes closed. He could hear his mother’s soft mutterings and felt that he and Katrina Geifman were in good hands. Good, safe, and brave. He had returned to his mother like a young boy with a broken toy that needed mending. He didn’t have a plan of action. He didn’t know what he’d do with Katrina once she was on her feet again. The instructions had been clear: Katrina Geifman must die. He didn’t know how he was going to hide the fact that instead of resting in an unmarked grave in the forest, Katrina was at his mother’s house. He’d been given a direct order from the deputy commander of the FSB and he had defied it without a second thought. “Put her out of her misery,” he’d been told, and it would be impossible to argue in any way or form that his actions had complied with the intentions of the senior commander from Moscow. Arkady could picture her broken fingers, her swollen face, her one eye closed, bruised purple and yellow. He could still hear her groans of pain, the quiet sobbing that had shaken her thin frame. He could still see the bloodstains on the thin mattress upon which she had lain, long, wet strands of saliva and bloody phlegm dribbling from her lips. What else could he have done?
Late in the frozen night he dragged her unconscious body into the backseat of his car. He removed his coat and draped it over her gently. He opened the trunk and threw a spade inside. His car was covered in mud when he returned to his office the following morning. Pine needles were stuck to its tires. The magazine of his personal weapon was two cartridges short. He instructed his aide to get the car washed and to clean the pistol. He didn’t offer any explanations and didn’t say where he had spent the night and why he appeared to have returned tired and battle-weary. He then instructed the maintenance officer in person to clean the detention cell in which Katrina Geifman had been held and to make it look as if no one had been in there for a very long time. Once again he offered no explanations, issuing his order with a tired and emotionless look in his eyes. In the early afternoon he informed his secretary that he hadn’t been sleeping well at night and was going home to rest. And thus Katrina Geifman disappeared from the FSB’s regional headquarters, as if she had never been there at all. No one documented her arrival. No one made note of the particulars of the officers who came all the way from Moscow just for her, no one filled out a release form or a death notice. There was no paper trail. Anyone who might have seen something had forgotten. Anyone who might have heard cries of pain and sobs of defeat hadn’t actually heard a thing.
The furnace was ablaze in the home of Arkady’s mother. Katrina was asleep under the thick blanket, breathing easily. The elderly mother was sitting in a chair by her side, her head drooping now and then in fits of sleep. The fire died down around midnight. The house fell quiet.
46
ZURICH, HOTEL BAUR AU LAC, MARCH 2013
Alon spotted Brian from afar. Following security procedures came to him automatically by now. He’d been meeting with his handler once or twice a year for decades. Sometimes in Zurich, sometimes in Paris. He never felt compelled to account to anyone for his trips, but he always took the trouble to offer an explanation to those around him. Sometimes it was a trip for work purposes that he’d extend for a day or two. “Once I’m abroad, I may as well enjoy the weekend, too. I deserve it, don’t I?” he’d say. And sometimes it was a vacation with his wife during which he’d disappear for brief periods of time. “This job is impossible,” he’d sigh, and explain how he’d been instructed to deal with some crisis. His wife didn’t ask questions. She had long since grown accustomed to the fact that his work was in the habit of invading their private lives without explanation or hesitation. And she also enjoyed the moments of quiet and sudden sense of freedom afforded her by his absences. Each city required him to operate in keeping with precise instructions—when to arrive, the rendezvous point, which taxi to hail, and when to switch to a different one, which route to take on the subway, where to wait, and where to make the necessary time adjustments and keep himself busy for the exact amount of time set aside to allow his undercover counter-surveillance team to regroup. Once—it was hard for hi
m to believe that so much time had passed since then, almost thirty years—once it was all new to him. The thrill, the anticipation, the meticulous carrying out of the instructions to the letter. His handlers were strict and unwavering, unwilling to cut any corners. He had gone through the same ritual many times, even on cold winter days, even if it was snowing, and he was used to it by now. Alon had grown accustomed to many things. To these meetings, to the excitement that washed through him nevertheless, to the constant fear of being exposed that never left him. When he wasn’t able to sleep he’d imagine fists banging on the door of his home in the middle of the night, and him being led out in shackles, handcuffs around his wrists, two burly plainclothes policemen dragging him from his home, neighbors who had woken up peering through half-drawn curtains; his son, who still lived at home, waking up in fear; his wife, her hair disheveled, the rude awakening of the night exposing her vulnerability, mumbling, “Alon, Alon, what’s happening?”
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