Traitor

by Jonathan de Shalit

  63

  TEL AVIV, APRIL 2013

  “Listen, Aharon,” Ya’ara said to him after they had sat down in the other room and closed the door. “I think there’s only one way to end this affair. We both clearly know what can’t be allowed to happen. Cobra can’t be allowed to get away. The affair has to remain under wraps. Not only would it cause terrible embarrassment, but it would also undermine the trust between ourselves and our most important allies. If one of the Israeli prime minister’s closest aides can’t be trusted, then we can’t be trusted at all. No one else can be allowed into the loop. We have to remain the only ones in the know. And no investigation team from the Shin Bet either. And we also don’t have much time. I can sense it. So that means there’s only one way out. Cobra has to be thwarted.” She went quiet for a moment. “Forgive me,” she then continued. “I have to say it straight. Cobra has to be killed. There’s no other way.”

  Aharon looked at her as if he was seeing her for the first time.

  “How old are you, Ya’ara? Remind me.”

  “I’m thirty-three, but that has nothing to do with what we’re talking about. Let Aslan and me end this story right now.”

  “Listen to me, Ya’ara,” Aharon said. “We need Cobra alive, not dead. I despise him no less than you do. But we have to clarify a certain matter with him and find out for certain if he’s passed on information regarding this matter to his handlers. It’s critical, a directive I received from the state president himself. So I don’t agree with your proposal. I have reservations about it for other reasons, too, but we’re not going to get into a philosophical debate right now. I am not going to sanction your proposed course of action.”

  Ya’ara listened but her face remained expressionless.

  “Did you understand what I just said?” Aharon asked.

  “I understood very well. But you’re wrong.”

  “Listen, Ya’ara. This isn’t a Godfather movie or the Wild West, and we aren’t a gang of outlaws or mobsters. And there’s a hierarchy here, too, even in our unofficial team.”

  “Aharon, Cobra is going to get away. I know it. I know how he feels and what he is going to do. This is what I would do. I would act quickly, cut my losses and get the hell out of here. You always taught us to be one step in front of our adversaries. So we must act swiftly. This is what my instincts tell me to do. And all my field training and my field experience. I know the streets, Aharon. And I can imagine how Cobra feels now. He is surrounded, he is under imminent threat and he will try to flee. He is going to slip between our fingers if we don’t act now. Without hesitation. He will disappear, and all you’ve said is going to remain merely theoretical. We need to be very aggressive. We must act quickly and decisively. Perhaps,” she added contemplatively, without masking an element of audacity that was somewhat out of character, “perhaps you and Michael, who adores you, have lost it. Have gone soft.”

  Aharon’s face paled in anger. “Who are you to teach me about being tough and decisive? The subject’s closed. You can go now, and for your own good—I’m going to try to forget we ever had this conversation.”

  • • •

  Ya’ara knew she was right. She respected Aharon, but she was sure he was wrong. Whatever information he was hoping to get out of Cobra, he just didn’t have the time. She actually felt the Russian escape plan being put into motion. If she, or one of her fellow operatives, was cornered, in danger of being apprehended, they would execute the emergency protocols immediately, without hesitation. Quick, decisive reaction, this was what professionalism required. And there was no reason to think that the SVR was not as professional as the best of them. Cobra was in imminent danger and they were going to get him out. Unless she was faster than they were. Unless she unleashed her fury without hesitation.

  64

  Army Radio was the first to carry the report, which was the third item on the list on the midnight news. “Businessman Alon Regev, a close confidant of the prime minister, was killed this evening in a hit-and-run accident nearby the community of Nitzan, north of Ashkelon. Regev was driving a sports car and appears to have been hit by a truck, which fled the scene. An investigation into the incident is under way, according to a statement from the Israel Police’s Southern District.”

  65

  TEL AVIV, APRIL 2013

  They had assembled again in the apartment. Everyone but Ya’ara.

  Aharon looked at them one by one: Michael, Adi, Amir, and Aslan. “This won’t take very long,” he said.

  Amir opened the window and the smell of blossoms drifted into the room along with the noises of the city. Aharon gestured for him to shut the window again.

  “I want to thank you for the good work you’ve done,” Aharon said. “For your willingness. Your dedication. We were given a job to do and we came through. And it’s time now for each of us to return to what we were doing before. Life didn’t come to a halt. We simply took a break. Those of you who still need to be reimbursed for expenses can arrange that with Amir. Michael, I want you to be responsible for ensuring that all material related to the operation is destroyed. Including Adi’s computer.” He paused. “If anyone ever happens to question you about the Cobra affair, you obviously don’t know what he or she is talking about. Total denial. If it’s someone official, on behalf of the state, refer him to me. Only to me. Without saying a word.”

  “That’s it?” Adi asked. “We’re wrapping things up just like that? Without discussing what happened?” Her eyes filled with tears.

  Michael put his hand on her shoulder. “Adi. Not now. We’ll talk about it. You and me.”

  “Yeah, sure, we’ll talk.” The tears streamed down her cheeks. “But it can’t end like this. Aharon’s thanking us for the good work but we all know things got out of control at the end. We were supposed to have questioned Cobra, and we failed. He slipped out of our grasp and also managed very conveniently to get himself killed on the way. And I don’t buy that accident story. Where’s Ya’ara? Why isn’t she here? What did she say to you here, Aharon, after our previous meeting?”

  “You’re upset, Adi. I get it,” Aharon said. “And yes, it didn’t end exactly as we had planned. I didn’t tell you that, but the state president called me last night, at about one-thirty. He told me that his military secretary informed him of Alon Regev’s death in a car accident. He asked me if I know anything about it. And truthfully I said I didn’t. Adi, we did not plan it this way, but we achieved a great deal, and you played a very big part in that. We exposed a spy who caused us terrible damage, and it’s over now. And sometimes an accident is simply an accident, even if it appears to be an improbable coincidence.”

  Adi didn’t respond. She gathered herself and wiped her hand over her face, which looked suddenly to Michael like that of a young girl. All the members of the small team stood up and weren’t quite sure how to bid one another farewell.

  Amir busied himself with tidying the apartment. There wasn’t really much to tidy, so he simply moved chairs from one place to another, adjusted the angle of the table slightly, and then returned it to its original spot, picked up a few pieces of paper he managed to find and vigorously put them through the shredder he had purchased at the start of the operation. “Darling,” he said to Adi, somewhat embarrassed by her outburst, which had echoed his own sentiments, “I’m taking your computer now. There’s nothing personal on it, nothing that you need, right?”

  Adi nodded.

  He removed the computer’s hard disk and smashed it to pieces with a hammer he found in the toolbox in the kitchenette.

  “Careful, bro,” Michael said. “Don’t destroy the apartment. I still have to open a law firm here, unless Aharon decides that we’re going to continue working for him.”

  “I heard that just fine,” Aharon called out from the other room. He was struggling with his raincoat, and trying with all his might to remember if he had brought an umbrella with him or had forgotten it elsewhere. The fact that it was a pleasant spring day, bathed
in soft sunlight, didn’t seem very relevant to him.

  “Okay, guys, we’re locking up,” Michael said. “Get out of my office already. If you have nothing to do, don’t do it here.” He looked at Adi tenderly and said, “Come, let’s go for a coffee on the boulevard. And then I’ll take you home.” Adi smiled at him gratefully.

  Through the window Michael saw Aslan putting on his helmet and starting up his huge BMW motorcycle. Aslan hadn’t said good-bye when he left, but he caught Michael’s gaze now and waved to him.

  “I’m closing, Aharon,” Michael called out, and Aharon hurried toward the door. He stood there for a second, looked Michael straight in the eyes, nodded to Adi, who managed to bring a faint smile to her face, and left the apartment. He appeared to Michael to be talking to himself, or making an important point in an argument. He then saw him stop for a moment alongside Aslan and say something to him, but Michael of course couldn’t hear.

  “She worked her magic on you,” Aharon said to Aslan, who was sitting on his motorcycle. “She worked her magic on you.”

  Without waiting for Aslan’s response, Aharon continued walking and disappeared around the corner. Michael heard the roar of Aslan’s motorcycle, which accelerated powerfully, pulled into the traffic with another mighty roar, and disappeared in seconds.

  “Amir?”

  “Right here, sir. I’m just making sure that everything is closed.”

  “They asked about you at the university, you know.”

  “Don’t you start with me now, too.”

  A pleasant breeze caressed their faces as they headed off in the direction of the boulevard.

  “You know,” Adi said to Michael, “I’m sure I’m going to enjoy being with my girls a little. To read them stories about rabbits and balloons. They say that childhood goes by so quickly. I have to go back to work in a month and a half. To start anew.”

  “Yes, new beginnings await us all. What we did here wasn’t easy. If it was up to me, everyone here would be getting a medal, you know.”

  “Yes.” She went quiet. “I trust all of you, Michael. I want you to know. But it’s hard for me.”

  He clasped her hand briefly. “I know, Adi. I know.”

  66

  PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND, MAY 2013

  Julian Hart saw them from the bedroom window, on the second floor of his home. The black van with the tinted windows stopped right on the corner of the street. A second and third car continued slowly toward the house. He knew exactly what he’d see next, in just a few seconds. Two or three men in suits, shiny badges fixed to their belts, would soon be stepping out of each vehicle.

  He was right, but only partially. Because two police cars, their lights flashing blue and red, joined the scene unfolding before his eyes, playing out in a strange silence and seemingly in slow motion. The police cars pulled up at an angle in front of his home, and the officers who emerged drew their weapons and took cover behind the doors of their respective vehicles. Men in suits did indeed step out of the unmarked cars, but over the jackets they were also wearing dark windbreakers. He knew that emblazoned on their backs, large and luminous, were the letters FBI. Two of the FBI agents were carrying shotguns. The others moved forward with their right hands resting on the handles of the weapons tucked into their belts.

  They’re heading into battle, he thought. Advancing in silence, inching forward, with evidently way too much firepower. No, he was not going down that Via Dolorosa that awaited him. He was not going to be dragged from his home cuffed and shamed. They were not going to take Professor Julian Hart and turn him into a media circus, for all to see and shame, a miserable Soviet spy, fighting wars long since irrelevant. They were not going to tear apart the life he had so diligently and painstakingly built for himself. He couldn’t do that to Frances and the kids. That he certainly wasn’t willing to do. The thought of himself dressed in orange prison overalls, his wrists and ankles cuffed and shackled, day after day after day in the dock, with Frances among the public, sitting there in the courtroom, elegantly dressed, heavily made up, showing her support for her man, the man who betrayed her and deceived her—that thought, those images, were too much to bear. He felt a sharp pain in the side of his stomach, and gastric acid burned its way up into his esophagus. He wanted to throw up, but managed to suppress the feeling. He retrieved his SIG Sauer P226 from its hiding place in his closet. A nine millimeter. Seventeen rounds. He cocked the weapon and went down the stairs leading to the front door. He could hear Frances busy with something on the back porch of the house. She was completely unaware of the scene that was unfolding in the front of her home. He was thankful for that. He glanced through the window next to the front door to see the FBI agents reach the grass line, at the edge of the driveway to the house. He opened the heavy wooden door, gripped the SIG Sauer just as his instructor in Moscow had taught him, got into position, and opened fire at a slow and uniform rate. Round by round by round. He watched one of the FBI agents drop to the ground, like in a dream, and immediately thereafter he felt something slam hard into his torso. The shotgun rounds threw him violently backward, exiting his back in a wide spray of blood and pieces of bone. Then two rounds from a .38 Smith & Wesson slammed into his head, splattering his brains on the wall behind him.

  67

  ASHDOD, MAY 2013

  Alona was standing in the dining room and sorting through the mail she had just removed from the mailbox. Hiding among the flyers, bills, and bank statements was a cream-colored envelope. “Hagar,” she called out to her aunt, “you have mail. It looks like a wedding invitation.” Hagar Beit-Hallahmi emerged from her room holding the book she’d been reading, her finger marking the page she was at. She grasped the envelope with a shaky hand and turned it over, immediately noticing the absence of a sender’s address but spotting the small illustration, a German shepherd in black ink. Another one of Aharon Levin’s quirks, she fondly thought. Back in the day he’d sometimes send her memos accompanied by that same odd signature, and she could never quite figure out if the drawing alluded to him or to her. “Thank you, my dear,” she said to Alona, and returned to her room. After settling back into her armchair, she put the book aside and opened the thick envelope. An expensive envelope from high-quality paper, she said to herself. He was never short on style. From it she retrieved an old postcard, a photograph of a giant statue of Lenin in a dusty city, somewhere on the outskirts of the empire. If he was willing to part ways with a postcard from his famous collection, she thought to herself, he really was giving it all he had. She pursed her lips. “My dearest,” he had written. “You were right. Like always, you were right. You sent me down the right path. But remember, sometimes an accident is simply an accident. Comrade Vladimir Ilyich sends you his warm regards. An old friend is giving you a hug.” She returned the postcard to the envelope, stood up from the armchair with a groan, slipped the letter into one of the desk drawers that already contained so many secrets, and made sure to lock it with a small key. She sat down again, the book still by her side. Closing her eyes, she lost herself in her thoughts. She remembered hearing the report about the accident north of Ashkelon. Everything was falling clearly into place now.

  68

  BAT YAM, PROMENADE, JUNE 2013

  It was ten in the morning, and there were few people on the promenade. The restaurant owners were sitting idly outside their establishments, and the walkway’s benches were dotted with old folk with time on their hands. The French tourists had yet to arrive, and school wasn’t out yet for the summer. It was early June, and the humidity was still bearable, but the heat was on. It would be sticky and scorching in just a few weeks. The clear air would turn hazy. The light clouds would scatter and disappear and the sky would take on the appearance of sheet metal. Somewhat out of character, Ya’ara walked along the pedestrian path in a daydream, with a takeaway coffee from the corner of the street in her one hand and her motorcycle helmet in the other, looking for a bench on which to sit, a bench that offered a view of the shipwrec
k off the coast.

  She found one, sat down, and stretched her legs out in front of her, the paper cup clasped between her hands. Tiny gusts of cool air were coming off the sea. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a woman approach her. “May I sit down, please?” the woman asked in Russian. Her voice was deep and lovely, and it sent a tremor of sorts through Ya’ara. There was something familiar about it. She didn’t divert her gaze, and with her eyes still fixed on the sea she said, “With pleasure, here you go, there’s room for both of us.”

  “Galina . . . ?”

  Ya’ara looked at the woman who was sitting to her right.

  “Galina?” the woman asked again. “Or at least that’s the name you used back then.”

  Ya’ara froze. Sitting alongside her was Katrina Geifman, Igor Abramovich’s lover, the woman she had met with less than four months ago—it seemed like light-years away—in the icy cold of Dimitrovgrad. She was still beautiful, but had lost much weight, her cheekbones were pronounced, her blue eyes sparkled, and the wrinkles around the corners of her full mouth appeared to have deepened.

  “You must think I’m a ghost,” she said.

  “I tried to contact you,” Ya’ara said. “I called and called and there was no answer. I was afraid something had happened to you.”

  “They took me,” Katrina responded. “I thought I was going to die there, during the interrogation, in custody.” She paused, and her eyes filled with tears. “I wanted to die. That’s the truth.”