Ya’ara took her hand. They were both looking straight ahead, at the sea. White seagulls glided through the air close to the beach.
“But there was someone there who saved me. He smuggled me out. They must have thought he was going to finish the job. To put a bullet in the back of my head. But he took me to his mother’s home. I have no idea why he did it, why someone would tempt fate like that. His mother was a partisan fighter during the Great Patriotic War. An old woman who fears nothing. The heart of an angel. And soft hands. They cared for me as you would care for a baby, and I eventually got back onto my feet. He told me I couldn’t remain in Russia. That they’d find me and kill us both. He gave me a Czech passport he had made for me and money, too. He accompanied me all the way to the border with Ukraine. He drove through the night, and then the following night, too, and sent me over the border. I can still picture him there, just standing there and not moving, the sun rising over the hills, and him just standing there and watching me. And I went. I think he was the bravest man I’ve ever met.”
“And how did you get here?” And why did you come? Ya’ara didn’t voice her second question out loud.
“I wanted to see Galina,” Katrina said, answering the question she wasn’t asked. “I had to. I wanted to get in touch with the one person who forms a part of the sweetest moments in my life. I didn’t know how to find her, but the Bat Yam Artists Association was able to track her down. Someone by the name of Vladislav is still in contact with her. He used to be a friend of Igor. And I wanted to see you, too. To find out where you live I had to remember things I’d already forgotten, and it took a fair deal of patience to learn that you come here at least once a week, to the Bat Yam Promenade.”
Ya’ara felt a cold shiver down her spine. She suppressed the fear that momentarily froze her.
“How was your encounter? Yours and Galina’s?”
“You know how it goes. Such reunions always come with an element of disappointment. But it did me good. It took me back to those times. And she was a lot nicer than she had been back then. Oh, well, she was a seventeen-year-old girl then, at odds with herself, and full of hate for me for taking her father away from her, and worse even, for taking the place of her mother. That’s how children see it. She’s a lot more amiable these days, of course. And you must know that she doesn’t look like you at all.”
“My name’s Ya’ara.”
“I know. They slammed me with it during my interrogation, time and again, between punching me in the face and forcing my head into a bucket of ice water.”
“I’m sorry,” Ya’ara said softly. “If you prefer, you can call me Anna. That was once my name.”
“It’s okay, sweetheart. You helped me to get my revenge on them. It was so easy for them to break me back then. And there are some breaks from which there’s no coming back. So I still need to forgive myself. You have no need to ask for forgiveness.”
“There was nothing else you could have done. They threatened to take your daughter.”
“I don’t know . . .”
They sat there together in silence for a short while and the sun warmed their bodies. Ya’ara closed her eyes and allowed the sea breeze to caress her. After what had happened, she knew that even if she wanted to, she would never work for the organization again. Aharon would have made sure she’d been marked as an unstable element. Someone who despite her talents couldn’t be trusted. She didn’t want to go back to film school. Even the script she had written for her final graduation project had lost its appeal. The future looked remarkably empty to her.
“What are your plans now?” she asked Katrina Geifman. “Do you have enough money? I can help you.”
“I don’t know yet. I want to stay here for a few months. To wait for the winter. And then I’ll see.”
“Do you have a phone?” Ya’ara asked. “I want you to have my number. This doesn’t end here, on a bench overlooking the sea.”
“I know already that Cobra is dead,” Katrina said after they had exchanged phone numbers. “I saw a picture of him on an Internet news site while I was still in Ukraine. I wanted to know what was happening in Israel and I searched every day. Killed in a car accident. That’s what the report said. He looked just like he did when I used to provide security for the meetings with him. A little older, but exactly the same. I didn’t know back then who he was, only that he was someone important. Now I know just how important. I don’t know who had a hand in the accident. God, perhaps. I’ve seen more than enough through the years to learn not to believe in Him, but I don’t see any other way of explaining it.” She looked at Ya’ara, allowing the silence to ask what she hadn’t dared to voice out loud.
Ya’ara didn’t say a word. Katrina’s question remained unanswered. They sat there on the bench, gazing at the sea. The sun had climbed to a higher point in the sky, its heat more concentrated now, radiating orange. Anyone observing them from the side would have assumed perhaps that they were mother and daughter. But there was no one there to look at them. The promenade was deserted. Strange, Ya’ara thought to herself, as if someone had evacuated the area for the purpose of shooting a movie scene. “I’ll call,” she said to Katrina as she stood and regathered her hair, which shone in the glare of the sun. She picked up the black helmet that had been resting on the bench next to her and started walking. She could still feel the soft touch of Katrina’s hand as she got onto the large motorcycle and headed south with a low growl, which gradually intensified. The wind swept over her face, the blue sea appeared to flash by on her right, and the urban landscape gave way to sand dunes. The sky opened wider, her heart did the same, and she rode on, sucking clean air deep into her lungs. She was on the move.
69
MOSCOW, SVR HEADQUARTERS, JUNE 2013
By nine in the evening most of the workers had already left the facility. The warm light of the long summer day streamed diagonally through the wooden shutters of the SVR chief’s expansive bureau. Dust danced on the rays of sunlight, broken up by the straight lines of shade. Sitting as comfortably as their chairs would allow them in the conference area at the far end of the room were the commander of the SVR and the head of the Tenth Directorate. The commander’s bureau chief, who had just carefully placed a frosted bottle of vodka and two chilled glasses on the table in front of them, exited quietly to leave the two men on their own. The SVR commander’s fine gray jacket was hanging over the backrest of the chair across from his desk, where he had placed it earlier. His severe back pain, the result of a gunshot wound sustained during a shootout in a coastal city in southern England, back at some point during the Cold War, dictated that his bureau be furnished with simple, stiff wooden chairs. Sometimes he’d suggest to a guest in the office that those were the kind of chairs that had stood in his childhood home, in a small and meager village in the heart of the wilderness that lay hundreds of kilometers east of Moscow. But that was simply one of the proletarian cloaks in which he liked to drape his image. He had grown up in fact as the only child of educated and well-to-do parents in Leningrad, his father a professor of Semitic languages and his mother an electrical engineer, both loyal party members, both fierce fighters, albeit painfully young, during the Great Patriotic War. They were the ones who had instilled in him his values and his dedication to the greater cause, which from his perspective had never waned. His steely character wasn’t the product of financial hardship and an arduous life in the wilderness, but of a zealous love for the motherland and a constant desire to excel and earn the attention of his parents, and their praise, too, on rare occasions. He opened the top button of his impeccably clean white shirt and loosened the tie knot around his neck. Sitting across from him, on a rudimentary chair, was the head of the directorate, who stretched his legs out in front of him and emitted a sigh of weariness and contentment to mark the passing of a long day.
“We did it,” said the SVR commander. “We pulled it off in the end.”
“But we took a hard knock,” the head of the directorate re
sponded soberly.
“We managed to make the most out of adverse circumstances,” the commander said. “Remember our history, it’s not the first time we’ve sacrificed a rook to save the king. And the queen sometimes, too. We can’t be greedy, Alexander. It’s impossible to win on all fronts all the time. We were facing a catastrophe and we came through. And that’s our true advantage. The ability to survive long-term campaigns despite the losses. That’s the main thing, don’t forget—to always be one step ahead of your opponent. To hang in just one minute longer than he does. To take what you can. To sacrifice what needs to be sacrificed. To know your capabilities and what’s beyond them. And to get back on your feet as soon as possible.”
Alexander, the head of the Tenth Directorate, gazed at his commander in admiration. He wasn’t simply a darling of the party who had been appointed to his position thanks to political loyalty. Although he was indeed blessed with political aptitude of the highest order. It was a prerequisite for all secret service chiefs, unless they wanted to be eaten alive. But his commander was first and foremost a covert fighter, daring, ruthless, cool-headed, who could see several moves ahead, like a seasoned chess player. He recalled how several months ago—as dusk was falling just as it was around them right now, after they had concluded the arrangements concerning Cobra—he had been summoned back to the commander’s bureau to review together, in private, the file of a second high-level agent they had in Israel. Although the Israelis were on the hunt for Cobra, there was something else troubling the commander. Something had led him to request the highly classified file pertaining to Viper. And only then was the real operation set into motion. That evening they sealed, for better or worse, the fates of Viper and of Cobra. The one was spared, without ever knowing at all just how close he had come to his end. The other, like the light from a distant star, continued to shine, but was long since dead.
“Let’s reconstruct what they know about Cobra,” the commander had said to him then. And without the assistance of anyone else, they sat down together and recorded in detail everything that Katrina had told the young Israeli woman who had questioned her at her home in Dimitrovgrad. It wasn’t much. A general physical description, an estimated date of birth, the handler’s cover name, a round of meetings in Geneva. “Something’s troubling me,” the commander had said at the time, “and when I’m troubled, I usually have good reason to be so. It’s easy to push feelings of uneasiness aside. But I’ve already paid a very heavy price to learn that those elusive feelings are actually the ones you have to pursue. They usually count for something. Look here. Katrina told them that Cobra’s birthday fell in late January or early February. Let’s see now,” he said quietly, as if he were talking to himself, “let’s see.” He opened the dossier on Viper, smoothing down the cover with the palm of his hand even though it didn’t show a single crease, and focused on a greenish piece of paper, the document that listed the agent’s personal particulars.
“Here,” the commander said quietly. “Look. Viper’s date of birth. February 3, 1961. And there’s something else you should see.” He began paging through the heart of the dossier, the part that contained the operational reports. “Look—1989. Viper was still a kid in terms of running an agent. Just starting out. We summoned him to a round of meetings in Lausanne, but we cut corners. We used the same logistics team for both rounds of meetings, both the one with Cobra and the one with him, so that we wouldn’t have to fly in a second team. Look, the directive from headquarters: ‘For purposes of efficiency, the two rounds of meetings should be held one after the other, while ensuring they are kept completely separate and conducted under different field conditions.’ Do you get it, Alexander? We brought Cobra to Geneva and then went on to meet with Viper in Lausanne. Take note, we even made sure that they’d pass through different airports. Viper received explicit instructions to arrive in Zurich and continue from there by train. Cobra’s file contains an instruction to fly directly into Geneva. And truthfully, it all seems just fine. Reasonable planning. Legitimate considerations. Professional decisions—different arenas, separate arrival routes, a staggered timetable. All good. But the picture the Israelis see is of a different resolution. They know too little. Only a few general details. And that actually puts us even more at risk. You see: They’re looking for Cobra and they could accidentally get their hands on Viper.”
“Do you really think so?”
“You never know. But they’re on the hunt. They know they have a spy somewhere high up in the government establishment and they won’t rest until they find him. They don’t know they have two. They could accidentally stumble upon our man whom they don’t even know about yet. We had no way of knowing in 1989 how things would turn out some twenty-four years down the line. You can put it down either to substandard operational planning or simply bad luck. I don’t know. But their hunt can’t be allowed to lead them to Viper. He is not expendable. That is not an option as far as I’m concerned.”
Alexander looked at his commander. He could see his thoughts taking form in the shape of a plan of action. How out of the murkiness of the details a decision was forming in his mind. “Are you going to sacrifice Cobra?” he asked, his tone a mixture of admiration and awe.
“Not sacrifice him. We’ll get him out and offer him VIP resettling. But we’ll give them something that points definitively in his direction. And thus keep Viper safe. Even if we extract Cobra and he’s not in their hands, they’ll have evidence that incriminates him. They may also be onto Hexagon, our field operative in Providence. I have no idea how, but they’re keeping close to him. Aharon Levin met in Virginia with William Pemberton, that son of a bitch, and then went straight on from there to Rhode Island. Hexagon lives in Providence. That’s not a coincidence. There are no such things.”
“How do we know where Levin went?”
“SIGINT. We intercepted Levin’s call to Pemberton and then tracked his cell phone. Virginia, Providence, Boston, New York.”
“So if they’re keeping tabs on Hexagon . . .”
“Exactly. We can use him to provide the clue that leads them to Cobra. Instruct Hexagon to arrange for an image of himself and Cobra to be caught on the security camera footage of some antiquities store and to expose the name and location of the store by means of an item sent from there to his home. If they’re onto Hexagon, they’ll also find their way to the place from where he sent the package, and it won’t be long before they have their hands on the security footage. Aharon Levin thinks fast and has excellent contacts. He’ll get his hands on the security footage and have all the proof he needs. And even if it doesn’t go down that way, the fact that Cobra has fled Israel will serve, of course, as the damning proof. We’ll both incriminate and rescue him. But people in the intelligence game like hard evidence. And certainly when it comes to such sensitive matters. So we’ll make sure they get the evidence. And most important, Viper can remain unscathed.”
Alexander sighed. “Believe me, sir,” he said, “with all my experience and despite all the senior positions I’ve held, I have to confess that I wouldn’t have been able to choose between Cobra and Viper. Who to save and who to sacrifice in this game of bloody chess we play.”
The SVR commander sat back in his chair. It was the right time for an important lesson, and he was going to take advantage of the time in comfort. Who knows, perhaps Alexander would be sitting in this very chair one day. “Look, Alexander,” he said, “as tough a dilemma as it may seem, the solution is actually a pretty simple one. Cobra is the agent whose cover’s been blown. They have yet to reveal his true identity, but his story is the story they’re pursuing. The clues are starting to appear, and they have to catch him. They have to get their hands on someone. They aren’t going to let it slide in this case, just as we wouldn’t. We simply don’t want them to make any mistakes along the way. Look, you could have said: To protect Cobra, even at the last minute, let’s give them Viper. After all, they don’t know there are two. We’ll give them one and they’ll ease
off. They aren’t going to and won’t want to believe that they have more than one traitor at such levels. But when push comes to shove, both you and I clearly know who is more important and who is expendable.” He took a sip of his ice-cold vodka and continued with the lecture he was giving, a lecture to an audience of one, a beloved friend and valued colleague.
“As an offensive-minded intelligence organization, your greatest enemy is the one whose task it is to catch you. Therefore, if you’ve made the right moves and have also been blessed with a great deal of good fortune that has allowed you to run a high-level agent at the very top of your enemy’s counterintelligence service, the last person you’re going to forsake as an agent is the counterintelligence service chief himself. The person you are up against and who poses a threat to you all the time, every second. All the others are expendable—military sources, sources high up in the political establishment, financial sector sources. But in order to survive, we have to begin by preserving the assets we have in our rivals’ intelligence services. We, after all, are the shield and sword of the Revolution. Even if everyone believes that the Revolution ended years ago, you and I know that it isn’t over yet. Blood still flows through the veins of this magnificent body. If we crumble, everything around us will come crashing down, too. If we are strong, we can safeguard everyone. And therefore, my dear friend, if we are in control of an asset the likes of Viper, if we were fortunate enough to recruit as a spy the person who now holds sway over the covert campaign against us in a specific arena, an important arena, we will safeguard him at all costs. All costs. I’m sure that’s as clear to you as it is to me.”
The head of the directorate regarded his commander with admiration. The ability to cut straight through to the heart of the matter, to make brutal decisions that would also prove to be the correct ones, that’s what lifted him a notch above his colleagues. Anyone could be ruthless and tough, but only a few were blessed with that kind of foresight, that kind of ability to separate the wheat from the chaff. Alexander himself, like every talented and ambitious senior officer, also wanted to rise to the position of SVR chief in due time. But he wasn’t in a hurry. And he was pleased to have his old and highly capable friend, who had served alongside him in the past as an operations officer in Turkey and South America, as his current commander. He would step into his shoes one day, and until then he was going to learn all his friend could teach him.
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