"I don't recall seeing you there," she said, a questioning look darkening her expression. "No, wait. You had long curly hair, didn't you?"
"Yep. I did. Sam pulled me out before the end. When I go in the field I always shave my head. We need to work together on this. I'm not sure what I did to spark you the way I did, but I apologize. Okay?"
"Maybe it was just the drive here with that maniac behind the wheel. Where did you get her, anyway?"
His warm laugh filled the night air followed by hers and both of the agents, at least temporarily, reconciled their differences.
"I have a lead. It's Mac–" said Kefira, as Zak interrupted her saying, "Yochana told me, MacAuley. I took the liberty of looking his name up on all of the Mossad databases. He's a nasty number. I know someone who worked with him before. The guy I know's a double for Mossad now. We can go see him in Edinburgh. We know exactly where he is. I already booked two vans, one with full surveillance equipment."
Zak's presumption of the value of his authority surprised her, though, despite the implied slight to her command, she appreciated his efficiency. She was about to start sparring with him again when Sarah, the round-faced rally driver, stepped out of the billiard room onto the balcony.
"Okay, you two. Let's put the games behind us and get to work."
"I don't know what you're talking about," blurted both Zak and Kefira at the same time.
Sarah continued, "We all respect your rank Kefira, Colonel, but don't forget Zak, Aden and I have been working undercover for years together and sometimes experience trumps rank, especially in the field. Your little spat let me approach the balcony and overhear you. That's bad tradecraft. I may be just the equivalent of an IDF Sergeant, but I want to live. Got it?"
Zak started to speak, but became tongue-tied and a little overwhelmed. Not like me to let emotions run wild. His personal feelings could have endangered the whole team. Yet, something was opening up inside him. He wanted to recount the feelings that had been bubbling up inside him for the first time since his first wife's sudden death five years earlier, but he knew better.
Zak was smitten that day, some months earlier, when he had first seen Kefira. Sarah went on speaking to him, but he was drifting back in time in his mind's eye. His behavior was totally out of character and it surprised Sarah.
She knew Zak bottled up his emotions and had never really accepted the death of his parents. Then, years later, his wife's murder had almost crippled him emotionally. He was far from even contemplating closure, and all of his relationships over the last five years and for much of his life had been governed by these two poignant sore spots. Kefira's arrival on the scene somehow gave him no options. Her presence near him made him face up to reality, but their shared operation obliged him to control himself.
SOME MONTHS EARLIER
November 2011
Orphaned at a young age, Kefira involuntarily became an instrument, Mossad's contrivance. Yochana, a Mossad Director, orchestrated Kefira's indoctrination into HaMossad as part of a program for the development of deep-cover agents, sleepers. The Director's incentive for her actions was a childhood friendship with the orphaned girl's mother. Yochana's HaMossad Department, which was responsible for intelligence collection and covert operations that allegedly included targeted killings and paramilitary activities beyond Israel's borders, devised the spear or 'Vanguard' agent development program. In its role as the protector of Jewish communities worldwide, HaMossad is tasked with bringing Jews to Israel from countries where official Aliyah or Zionist agencies are forbidden. It is one of the main entities in the Israeli Intelligence Community, along with Aman (Military Intelligence) and Shin Bet (Internal Security).
Yochana, who reported directly to the Prime Minister, investigated the premature death of Kefira's parents at the Israeli Embassy in Argentina when the child was fourteen. When Yochana concluded that Kefira was, in fact, the daughter of her best friend from Yochana's early days, she acted on her legal responsibilities by rescuing Kefira from the tragedy of her parent's untimely death at the hands of a terrorist bomber. Yochana's control of the young girl included enrolling Kefira in a program of clandestine agent development. This act was the beginning of a long-term plan to make Kefira the next Director of all of Mossad. It was the vicarious recognition of Yochana's unrealized personal ambition.
Sam and Zak, who behaved as though they were stepfather and stepson, were standing in the open doorway at the back of a large amphitheatre, looking at the stage at the bottom of the room. They were focused on a stunning, young woman who was herself positioned on the stage, staring up at the two men. Remarking on the intensity of energy unexplainably connecting Zak and Kefira, even over the 20 meters between them, Sam, also a Director of HaMossad, spoke up. Kefira exuded a hint of Botticelli, and a presence reminiscent of Brigitte Bardot. She was exquisitely wrapped in olive skin, but her soft flesh disguised underlying muscle tension.
"Zak, have you ever read Aesop?"
"Fables. You know better Sam," answered Zak.
"Anyway, take your eyes off her and remember Aesop: He goes to great lengths to prove that appearances can be deceiving."
"I have to know her name. How old is she?"
"Your age, same background, but she's a goy."
"Impossible, not in HaMossad. There're no goyim here. You must be misinformed."
"Remember in the desert when we were training … remember what we did with cigarette ends?"
"Of course, we shredded them and let the wind take them as it pleased."
"All comes to he who waits. I'm talking too much. I care for you. She's an exception to the rule."
"Didn't you used to say all is lost to he who hesitates? Turning melodramatic in andropause – you've spent too much time in Washington. Is it true you cry during films now? You like to eat too much, Samuel, and we both know all about unasked-for advice."
"You are like a son to me, but, even to my son I have spoken too much. Oleh, Olah and Olim."
"Why use that expression and talk of being one? I see no sure signs of death here. I see only beauty."
"Let us say, she came to Israel and it is almost impossible for one to avoid hitting their head on a few clouds on the way up. She will hit many more.″
"Why the riddles, Sam. Her name?"
"Kefira."
"The lioness, how appropriate."
"Do you purposefully choose the less common interpretation of her name?"
"More enigmas?"
"The more common meaning is heresy. Now I have to go," said Sam, the thickness of his chin betraying the years since he had worked in the field. He nodded at someone nearby. As Sam turned to leave, the young man at whom he'd nodded bumped Zak, spilling coffee on his crisp olive uniform. Anger flared in Zak's eyes as he prepared to demonstrate the chutzpah that so many unknowing visitors to Israel find difficult to deal with.
"You," he said, looking his oldest friend in the eyes.
Zak shook his head rolling his long, thick, curly locks around the etched angular lines of his face. His dark eyes flitted around uncontrollably. Where's she gone? he thought, as his eyes caught movement in the back of the room. Sam let Kefira out ahead of him, partially blocking her from the side of the room, but Zak caught the unmistakable honey-colored calf in low red heels, surrounded by gladiator-style red leather straps.
Sam, Sam. What are you up to? he thought as he turned back to his friend. "Since when are you playing games for Sam?"
"Sam, who's Sam?" asked Zak's friend.
"Forget I ever asked," replied Zak, shaking his head.
"Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. Come my friend, the seminars 're starting," said the other young man, while he threw his wiry right arm around his friend's neck, whispering under his breath: Sam has a sixth sense. ″It's all water under the bridge," said the friend.
Their seminar started and worked them dutifully on their mastery of English, especially idiomatic expressions. They were the last of a previously much larger clan
destine agent development training school. The purpose of the program was to insert its graduates anywhere that the state of Israel might be threatened. All were in an ongoing indoctrination curriculum that had started years ago. Most of the students shared one common background: suicide bombers or terrorists had killed their parents. There were twenty-one of them.
When Kefira walked past Sam in the doorway, he took in her perfume, made from musky spices. Around her neck, she wore beads from Saharan Africa, necklaces worn by the Berber women of the Blue Men, the Tuareg of southern Libya. The beads absorbed and enhanced the natural scent of the body and were used by nomadic tribal women in their preparations while waiting for their men to return to the marriage bed. The women would rub oil scented with cinnamon, clove, and sometimes cardamom into their skin while sitting in a tent warmed by a small burning stove. Sam's eyelids lifted as she passed, her aroma creating a mixture of arousal and therapy in the older man.
"We must go the auditorium now," said Sam.
"Why were you talking of me to him?" she asked.
"Who are you talking about?" replied Sam.
"As if you didn't know that one of my strongest abilities is lip reading at a distance–″
"He is like my son and he asked about your name. I tried to discourage him. You two have no time for distractions. Something is brewing. I can feel it."
"Was he trained like me?"
"Not really. He has been working for Mossad under my direct tutelage. Like you, he is being groomed, but by a more traditional approach, up through the ranks and in the field. There is one more thing. You must not tell Yochana that you have seen him or me. This is 'need to know′. I am ordering you as your superior outside your chain of command. Rest assured she will know of this soon enough."
"It's all good," Kefira replied, raising a dark eyebrow, removing her military shirt, and exposing her exercise practice suit as she started to move in preparation for her Capoeira demonstration.
She stood in the center of the auditorium as the twenty filed in from other seminars. Though much older, she was the twenty-first, the one they knew of only as the spear. However, this group did not yet know of her identity, as she had been a distant leader. This was the first time she would admit her previously clandestine leadership role. Their training had centered on protecting Israel since childhood. They were undercover warriors. Mossad would use them in any country in the world where Israel was threatened. When the room was full, the African drums started. Someone in the back whistled, but Sam hushed that reaction.
The drums beat. She moved, arching and twisting as if in competition with someone in front of her. A mirror at the back of the stage reflected her movements. The faster the drums rolled, the more fluid her movements. It stopped as quickly as it started. Kefira's skin shone, but she had not broken a sweat despite twenty solid minutes of workout.
The lights went up. "So, what do you think?" asked Sam to the twenty.
There were no takers. No one answered, but three young men in the back row snickered and the young woman to the left of them joined in.
"Unlike you people to mock," admonished Sam. "The four of you in the back, please come down to the stage."
They looked at each other, got up, and strutted down the middle aisle.
"Perhaps we should start with introductions: Kefira, would you care to introduce the topic of the day?"
"Today is an object lesson in appearance. For your information, I am the spear."
"Impossible, you are a goy and a woman," spurted the most vocal of the group on the stage with her.
Kefira motioned to him and the others with an extended finger. The music started again. She flexed, bent, arched, jumped, and made gestures at her opponents, but they had not yet realized her disguised threatening pose. Three flips head over heels landed her at the feet of the most aggressive young man. A second turn, at blinding speed, executed into an arch that caught him unawares and knocked him to the ground, unconscious. The other three now grew more uncertain. She continued to spin in arching upper and lower movements. The other three spread out and all took on defensive poses. Now they understood. All three attacked at once. Her body now glistening, Kefira took down the three attackers in under thirty seconds. The drums stopped.
"Their arrogance defeated them. Appearances can be deceiving," stated Kefira to the astonished group.
Sam doused the young people on the floor with water.
"Capoeira holds the day. Brazilians developed it to use against the Portuguese Conquistadors. It is a survivalist martial art. At that time, groups of African slaves escaped to the jungle. After some time fending for themselves, the freedmen discovered the advantage of getting together to establish quilombos, primitive settlements, in far and hard to reach places. Starting humbly, some quilombos eventually developed, attracting more runaway slaves, Brazilian natives, and even Europeans escaping the law or Catholic extremism. In some instances, quilombos became independent, multi-ethnic states. Everyday life in a quilombo offered freedom and the opportunity to rescue traditional cultures lost due to colonial oppression. In this kind of multi-ethnic community, constantly threatened by Portuguese colonial troops, Capoeira evolved from a survival tool to a martial art focused on war. You will start to learn Capoeira today," said Sam.
VISIT IN SCOTLAND
February 12, 2012
"Hey, you there, Zak? I really don't recognize you. We have to move forward here," urged Sarah, as she looked from Zak to Kefira and back to Zak on the balcony in Redditch.
"Life is sometimes a harsh mistress," said Zak, snapping out of his keenly felt revelations.
"Bro' I've never seen you like this. While you were off there in la-la land, the Colonel and I made a pact," said Sarah, as the three of them stepped back into the billiard room.
"So, it was you that day, taking to Sam when I gave the Capoeira demo. We have a lot in common I think," said Kefira, taking a deep breath and removing the photos that Sam had given her from her purse.
"Get ready … I have a surprise to drop on you. Here we go. Yochana raised me and Sam brought you up. Both of us were adopted after our parents had been killed in tragic accidents, bombings," she added.
"Whoa. You mean you're my half sister," said Zak.
"Only insofar as that Sam and Yochana were looking out for both of us, each of them responsible for one of us. I just found out about how Sam was like a father to me without ever making himself apparent in person. It was the same for you, only it was Yochana that was the absent parent," added Kefira.
"It really is too much, sometimes, anyway. Let me see those pictures. Funny, I thought I knew you from when I was a kid. It's just that so much has happened in between," said Zak.
"We were in the kibbutz together, but they kept us apart from each other most of the time. Did you know that we have been competing within the context of the 'Vanguard'?" said Kefira.
"What about?" asked Zak.
"Pretend you never heard this, Sarah, okay? We were both struggling to become the spear," said Kefira.
"Jesus, I always knew that Sam had ambitions for me, but I never knew it went that far," said Zak.
"It gets better. I am the spear, while your disposition and preparation makes you more inclined to move into the administrative role of Mossad command that should rightfully be my legacy as the holder of the spear," said Kefira.
"Now I remember one of the times we met," said Zak.
"Yes, I know. The day they showed us the spear," said Kefira.
"Hey, you two, let's get back to reality. Enough fairy tales," interrupted Sarah.
"Ok. Ok. Let's just get one thing clear: chain of command. I am the ranking officer and you all will listen to my decisions, like it or not, but I am not a fool. I won't counter any ideas stemming from your greater field experience. When you're planning, I'll comment, but your collective experience gives you the upper hand. I'll play second fiddle unless I believe you're doing something to jeopardize the overall mission: to catch MacAuley a
nd close down his operation, but not to close our eyes to other developments that we come across."
"Thanks for the vote of confidence. I promise I won't let my emotions get in the way again. We leave for Edinburgh tomorrow morning at 5 a.m. sharp, if that's alright with you, Ma'am."
Kefira wondered just what emotions he was talking about, but she had to be honest. She knew there was some chemistry between Zak and her. Her career, her clandestine role as a sleeper, her dance school, and life in general had not left her any time to develop close relationships. It was just that it always seemed to be 'not the right time′. Success of the mission relegated her personal life to a minor role and demanded her full attention.
"You can brief me in the morning, Captain, and that's the last time we use rank. I will get up to speed in the field in time. In the meantime, your expertise dictates that you take the lead until I extend my familiarity with the field."
The next day was typical Midlands dreary. Sarah and Aden had made lunches and the two vehicles left way before their bleary-eyed, none the wiser, host awoke. Sarah motioned to Kefira as Aden and Amiz took the lead van. The first van was fully equipped with state-of-the-art surveillance equipment, including sniffers to uncover and display nearby Wi-Fi networks, scanners for telephone communications, night vision thermal cameras and directional microphones for listening through windows from up to a mile away.
"How long's the drive?"
"Basically five and a half hours on the M6 from Birmingham to Edinburgh. In the city, we will have to set up some surveillance just to be sure of our status with Amir, who now calls himself Tony. He's using an identity that Mossad gave him as an Italian born journeyman electrician working in Scotland on a European Union contract. It was difficult to set up, but his info gave us the lead on several members of Hezbollah responsible for Katyusha rockets going nightly into Israel."
The van turned at the third exit after a roundabout on the A38 and merged onto the M5. Kefira opened the laptop that was sitting on the mini-table between the front swivel bucket seats. She asked Sarah where the briefing was.
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