The English Teacher

by Yiftach Reicher Atir

  “She finished showering and wrapped herself in a towel. The light of the smoke detector winked at her. When she was in training the security officer explained there were hotels with rooms fitted out with peepholes, cameras, and listening gear, so anything going on in there could be observed. But she reminded herself there was no reason to think hers was like that. Why would they bother? It’s expensive, it consumes resources. There would need to be some suspicion.

  “Rachel released the towel, placed her leg on the bed, and rubbed herself with a fragrant body cream. She knew this was absurd, but all the same she turned her back to the flashing light. Why give them any freebies? she was thinking. She got dressed and sat by the phone and took a deep breath. She knew no one was going to answer at the number she was dialing. And after hearing the voice-mail message we had devised together, she left a short and reassuring message for her friend in Paris. She knew I would check the recording from another machine, and she also knew by heart the emergency hotline number. It was all in the manual. We had gone through everything, there was no reason to use any of the emergency measures we had devised, and she left the room and went for a walk in the streets around the hotel.

  “And in the night, exhausted from her tour of the city and saturated with the smells and the tastes that were all new and exciting, she heard the footsteps. By the small light she had left on in the bathroom she could make out the time. Three in the morning, and she hears them clearly, passing by the door of her room and disappearing at the other end of the corridor. The smoke detector in the corner of the room continued to wink at her, and for a moment she wanted to believe that whoever was watching her with a hidden camera was there for her protection. And again she heard them coming back, heavy and rhythmic like the pacing of the guardsmen at Buckingham Palace. They sounded loud, as if the thin door would be no barrier to them. And then they receded and faded away, and came back again.

  “She pulled the blanket over her head and huddled down in the bed, as if she could find refuge in the darkness. The unknown walker continued his pacing, and she wondered whether to call reception and report a stalker outside her room. The thought that they were coming for her did not subside.

  “They know about me. They know about me and they’re coming to get me. Any moment now there will be a light knock on the door, and then a squeeze of the handle. The heavy key was in the lock. They couldn’t open the door without breaking it down, but the chain and the flimsy woodwork wouldn’t stop them. Rachel peered at the window, which was covered by a curtain, and remembered how earlier that evening, before going down to the dreary dining room, having showered and put on a simple dress, she checked the window and found it couldn’t be opened, and she looked for something heavy, to break the glass in case of need. This won’t work either, she thought. She tried to calm herself down by concentrating on the rules that I repeated over and over again: ‘Not everything is related to you. Always ask yourself: Did I do anything wrong? What reason have I given them to look for me? Whatever happens, always look for the simple answer.’

  “I’m not made for all of this—the thought passed through her head and refused to move on. Logic told her everything was okay, her papers were in order and her story was good, and crossing the border and registering at the hotel had gone smoothly. Tomorrow she goes to the school for an interview and then she’ll walk the streets of the city again, like any tourist. Everything’s fine. But for the fear, it was business as usual. What did they do with the passport if they photographed it? Can they check it and find out what’s wrong with it? What if they contact Canada to verify my identity? And if tomorrow, in the heart of the city, I meet someone who knows me, an innocent tourist, who was in Tel Aviv before and is now on the next leg of a Middle Eastern tour? And what happens if I fail?

  “She tried to ignore the sounds she heard from the air-conditioning, the clicking of the smoke detector, and what seemed to her like footsteps in the corridor, and to concentrate on the mission ahead of her. What happens if I don’t get the job and I can’t obtain a residence permit or rent an apartment in the area assigned to me? How will I feel if I go back empty-handed and Ehud debriefs me and says in his quiet way that I could have done more? And then the Unit commander will send for me, and shake his head and tell me how much my operation has cost the State of Israel so far, and he’ll talk about all the months of training that they invested in me and all the people who fussed over me, and I’m not even capable of landing a job in a crappy school? I expected more of you, Rachel, he’ll say, and I’ll be thinking, My father would say the same thing. My father who is so remote from me, Ehud who is so close, and I’m in the middle, wanting to prove to both of them that I can do it, I can fly.

  “Again she heard footsteps. Passing in the corridor, heavy and rhythmic, stopping from time to time, and continuing. If they were coming to take me, like in the exercise in Haifa, they would already be stopping and knocking on the door. They would have posted someone outside the emergency exit, cutting off my escape. But I don’t need to escape, because I have nothing to hide, and there are no secrets they can uncover. It’s all with me, and it depends on me. Slowly, feeling a strange blend of diffidence and bravado, she lowered the sheet that covered her eyes and looked at the small red light flashing on and off. This flickering now gave a little boost to her confidence, as if the light were winking at her, telling her it would be all right. She got up and tiptoed to the door.

  “Rachel put her eye to the peephole and waited. She heard her heart beating so hard she was afraid the person on the other side must be hearing it too. A moment passed, and she saw the old hotel security man moving at a steady pace along the corridor and passing by her, and then she remembered the chair. She had wondered why it was there at the end of the corridor, and now she wanted to open the door and thank him for watching over her.”

  “AND YOU’RE ASKING ME IF SHE was suitable for the job? If someone who’s so scared can ignore the thought that any moment they might come and arrest her? Then I have to tell you that I don’t know. I don’t know how they do this. How they can live the identity that we’ve designed for them, lead an apparently normal life, even fall in love with someone, and at the same time think about the job that has to be done, about the real reason they are there, about the dangers that surround them and what is forbidden and what is permitted. In the movies they go on dangerous missions, fall into the traps set by beautiful women, and come home crowned in glory. In books we read about their spectacular adventures, and in the autobiographies that we allow them to publish, they write only what they want us to know. No one tells us what happens in hotel rooms and in the chambers of the heart in the days and nights that they spend there, and about the effects that remain when they return home after years of assuming that the world revolved around them.

  “They don’t tell us what they really feel. From their point of view they are always on duty. This is what they were found suitable for, what they were trained for. Just as they know how to project their identity in the field, so they learn over time to show us only the angle that they choose. They believe we have their interests at heart, but they know very well what we want, and they try to deliver the goods.

  “And Rachel? She was openhearted, especially with me. She trusted me and she had a logical grasp of the world. She said that whenever she’s afraid to tell, or afraid she may be harmed by the things she’s going to say, she speaks out and copes with the consequences. ‘If I dare not expose my feelings, it means that I’m ashamed of them,’ she said. And there was something else. She shared things with me because I was no threat to her. Because she knew I was in love with her, because she didn’t love me. You don’t need to make an impression on people you don’t love.

  “When she came back from her first time out there, I was as pleased as she was that everything had gone smoothly and she was accepted for the job. After the fact I learned that she didn’t say anything then about the first night, and I didn�
�t ask, though I knew how hard it must have been. There were other things we had to go through together. It’s just as well she didn’t tell me straightaway about the knocking of the knees and standing at the peephole. I admit, I’d have thought she wasn’t ready and needed to go back into training.

  “And you know what? There’s no harm in fear. Fear sharpens the senses; it makes you more careful and helps prevent foolish mistakes. The question isn’t the fear but the ability to control it and continue to function. Although it wraps around you and ties you to the ground, fear also nourishes strength. Just as pain after an injury forces you to pay attention to the wound and treat it, so fear makes you more alert to danger. Not being able to be afraid is a kind of mental illness, and we need people with healthy minds. Not disturbed, not suicidal. We’re looking for well-adjusted operatives who can feel the fear and know how to cope with it rationally.”

  In the neighboring house the lights had gone out hours ago. He looked at his watch and was astonished when he realized how long they had been sitting together, since he decided to tell all that he knew, all that was needed to bring her home. Joe got up and went to the bathroom. Ehud was left with his thoughts. What else is there to tell? What else is there to hide? Joe apparently isn’t going to make it to eighty, and I’m a widower retiree and my grandchildren are far away. Rachel was right. What have I to be afraid of? Shame is our enemy in this business. Pretending that everything is fine and that we’re working like a well-oiled machine is a perversion of reality. Hence the problems begin, the way is open to self-deception and the cracks that it brings with it.

  He saw Joe approaching. His body, clearly racked by disease, moved cautiously on the rough paving stones that someone laid there in the days when they could all walk nimbly and didn’t need to pay attention to each step.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The Operation

  “CARRY ON,” SAID JOE AFTER LOWERING himself cautiously into the armchair. “I’ve spoken to the war room. They’re checking every airport in Europe, and soon they’ll start searching in hospitals. It’s a Herculean task, but there is a point to it. But I’m also thinking about something else, something that might have to do with the gulf between living under a borrowed identity and the real life she knew after she came back.”

  Ehud listened to him and sipped his tea. Rachel had been embedded in enemy territory for nearly four years, he reflected. There are people who marry and have children in that span of time, people start and finish their studies, others build up their careers. Those people are not working undercover, living two parallel lives. He tried to remember what he knew about the daily purchases she made, about her work in the school, about the tiresome days between special operations, and realized that he remembered very little.

  “We’ll start with the operations,” he told Joe. “We’ll talk about the mundane side of her life later, maybe, after we’ve touched on the flash points that nearly burnt her out along the way.”

  He paused for a moment as if checking a diary, and continued: “It started in North Africa. We canceled her assignment at that time and put her on a liquidation operation. We teamed her up with someone, because we assumed she was the only one capable of doing what the operational plan demanded. It was hard persuading the intelligence community that was dependent on her reports to suspend her surveillance activities for a few weeks, but we had no choice.

  “When she arrived at the safe house that we’d rented for the operation, I called her out to the balcony and told her she would need to share a room with Stefan. She glanced at me, and it seemed she was looking for something that hadn’t been said. ‘You’re supposed to act like a couple,’ I explained, and felt myself blushing. My voice shook and I was glad she didn’t say anything. I knew there was no choice, and this was the way it was done. A requirement of the mission, an operational necessity. We don’t have married couples for jobs like this, and what they do behind closed doors is their business. I envied Stefan the opportunity he had been given, and wanted to think this was no big deal, and the operation was the only thing that mattered to me. This wasn’t true, because I knew Stefan and all the stories about him. I’d worked with him too on a joint assignment, and I knew how hard it is, waiting together for days and hours, waiting for the moment of climax.

  “We went back to the sitting room and I showed them the passports chosen for the mission. Angie and Stephen Brown. We decided on Kenyan passports and identified them as British expats with dual nationality. Their mission, in a sentence: check into the hotel, identify the target, liquidate him, come home safely. When it was all over, Rachel Brooks would return to the flat in her adopted city, and Stefan to his kibbutz. Stefan lounged in an armchair. He looked very cool and he inspected Rachel as if assessing her both as a colleague and as a woman. Perhaps he was already wondering if sleeping with her was part of the deal.

  “Stefan was our ‘liquidator’ at that time. The ‘operator’ is what this function was called when you headed the Unit. There were some who said his courage bordered on the psychotic; others said he had no feelings, no blood, with only ice flowing in his veins. He was the one who fired his weapon at point-blank range, two shots in rapid succession, straight into the heart. No chance of missing. Behind his back they said he killed a lot of blacks in South Africa before he came to this country. That’s what he was like. The cowboy from the kibbutz who could doze in the saddle, sleep in a gully between rocks, tend his herd like a devoted nanny, and handle weapons as if nursing a baby.

  “I once accompanied him on an expedition to Europe. He knew how to shoot, but had no idea how to behave like a tourist or a businessman. ‘I’m not an actor,’ he used to say, and every time they tried to teach him how to pretend, he lost his temper and threatened to leave. We needed him, and so he was always paired up with an experienced operative who took him in hand and spoke on his behalf and transported him from place to place like a ticking bomb. I traveled with him by train to Sofia and we slipped into an apartment overlooking the square. The guy who had rented the place handed me the keys and left Bulgaria. We knew that even if they went after him, they’d come up with a fake passport that would lead them nowhere. We stayed in the apartment for a week before the target arrived. We hardly exchanged a word between us. Stefan slept and ate and did his exercises, and it seemed that if he had to stay there till the end of time, that would be fine with him. He tended to sit by the window, watching the square and estimating wind strength, then go back to the bed and lie on his back and stare at the ceiling. I tried to read a book, I cooked for both of us, and the waiting was driving me crazy. When the alert came through, he got up calmly, took the rifle out of its case, fitted the silencer, and took up his position by the window with the chair-back in front of him.

  “He sat there for three hours. I watched him. Sitting calmly and looking out as if he had all the time in the world, and if the victim didn’t show up and we had to wait another day, it wouldn’t bother him in the slightest. As if he were on his horse out on the prairie, watching his herd with a bored look but not missing a detail. When the lookout told us the car was arriving, Stefan raised the rifle and checked the telescopic sights. He was breathing like an artificial lung in open-heart surgery: slow and measured. Besides this, he was like a statue. The Angel of Death. We knew this would be difficult, and there was room for only one shot because the terrorist tended not to leave the car until his bodyguards had scoured the terrain. It was hard to identify him, and in the run-through we found it would take him five seconds to reach the door of the office building. Someone suggested blowing up the car along with its occupants, but we couldn’t find a way of planting explosives at the entrance to the building. Someone else suggested the assassin should go on foot and arrive alongside the target, but we couldn’t synchronize this to the degree required, and we knew the chances of getting our man out of there alive were slim. A drive-by with a couple on a motorbike was normal practice, and therefore too predictable. Only snip
ing was left, and it was clear we had to bring Stefan in. The Unit commander went to the kibbutz in person, to persuade the powers that be that he needed their cowboy in the middle of the calving season. They were skeptical about his made-up reason, but even if he had told them Stefan was his number one hit man, they would have stared in disbelief. Stefan? they would say. He sheds a tear when a calf dies. A sentimental song makes him cry.

  “‘Tell me what’s happening,’ said Stefan softly, and he went on staring at the front of the building through the telescopic sights. The narrow field of vision meant that he couldn’t see the car approaching, or the reception committee waiting for it. This was my job. I held the binoculars close to my eyes, straining with the effort not to miss a single movement. The car stopped and the bodyguards stepped down to check the surroundings. ‘Get ready,’ I said to Stefan, who didn’t respond. Another minute passed, and I thought my heart was going to burst. This was the moment I was supposed to freeze and avoid any movement that might distract him. The door of the car opened and nothing happened. I felt myself breathing heavily, and my hands shook. Then I heard the shot and saw the target fall. When he got out of the car, and how Stefan had time to aim and fire, to this day I don’t know.”

  “RACHEL EXAMINED THE PASSPORT. I KNEW she didn’t like it. Every operative has a particular angle, a sensitive and personal point that he’ll argue over as if it’s the most important detail in the world. I knew operatives who refused to be parted from their watches, from their medallions, from things that brought them luck. For her it was the name. She wanted to be Rachel and she hated the fictitious names. She wanted her own name; as if it allowed her to be herself in spite of the image she needed to project.