“And if it had been allowed, which of the beds would you have chosen to get into?”
She was amazed that he was capable of asking such a question, amazed that he was listening to her at all. Something soft, which she didn’t recognize, crept into his voice, and his English, usually so stiff and formal, suddenly sounded accessible and melodious. “My mother’s, I think. But I would have liked it to be my father’s.”
Stefan held out a hand and touched her. She was surprised. The hand was warm and soft to the touch. She wanted to tell him more. She wanted to tell him about arriving in Israel, her days of loneliness until they approached her, until they offered her something else to do, but she knew this was off-limits. Even just between them, in this closed room.
“I was twelve years old, not a woman and not a girl.” She didn’t know why she was telling him this. “Our house was always dark. My father was a miser and my mother didn’t dare argue with him. When I’d come home from school, Mom was usually in the kitchen and Dad was sitting at his desk. I loved running to Mom and hugging her. There was such a feeling of safety about it. Mama, in the kitchen, preparing supper, which was served at ten to six precisely, so Dad would have time to watch the news. Then to the pub for one drink, then back home and into the bathroom, and no one dared disturb him there. Then to bed, and listening to the BBC news and then a concert, every night, until he fell asleep. A man of fixed habits.
“I had my habits too. After hugging my Mom, I used to go into his study. He’d look up from his papers, turning his chair in my direction, and I’d sit on his knees and look at what he was doing.
“I loved sitting on his lap or leaning against him and I liked the feel of his jacket. All this before I began maturing, all this before I thought about anything at all.
“Then one day he said, ‘That’s enough,’ and pushed me off. I remember this as if it were happening now. He just pushed me off. ‘That’s enough,’ he said, ‘girls of your age don’t do things like this.’ I didn’t understand him. I only knew that he didn’t want me. Something about me wasn’t right. I didn’t try anymore. I’d go to his study and stand beside him and he’d take a sweet from the drawer. I’d stand there and eat it, and it seemed he didn’t care about crumbs falling on the desk. That was the compensation he chose for me.”
A FEW HOURS LATER SHE WAS still stunned by the shooting in the lift and utterly absorbed in the rapid action afterward. Things had gone according to plan, except for the part with the bodyguard. Instead of reaching for his gun he grabbed her from behind and held her tight with both arms. After shooting the terrorist, Stefan walked into the elevator, and before Rachel realized what he intended to do he jammed the end of the silencer between the bodyguard’s eyes and fired a single shot. They got out before the doors closed and made it to their room without anyone seeing them. Stefan said there was no time, but he waited a minute while Rachel changed her trousers, which were wet. He didn’t mention this in his report, and Ehud, who questioned her at length and had all the details from her, didn’t reveal it to anyone. The car that was waiting for them behind the hotel took them to the yacht, which was ready to set sail, and by the time a popular TV program was interrupted to announce the murder of one of the chief freedom fighters, they were already at sea.
“AND THAT’S IT?” ASKED JOE. “THAT’S everything you’ve learned from the report and from the conversations you had with her after the operation? From your story it seems like there really was some chemistry between them. They had a reason to continue with each other.” “There was no chance of that,” said Ehud. “It seemed strange to me too, but the Unit commander wouldn’t let them come back here together, or receive the plaudits due to them. He insisted that Rachel must return to her covert life right away, and she’d have other opportunities to celebrate. She just did as she was told. I spoke to him from the yacht on an old radiophone and we knew the line wasn’t secure, and I couldn’t argue with him without revealing details that shouldn’t be disclosed, so I let it go. In hindsight, I think he was right. This operation was routine for Stefan, it was the way he worked, and he was ready to go back to the farm. For Rachel this was a one-off experience that could have done her some damage and distracted her from her central objective. We were on the yacht for a few days. It was crowded and noisy, and I made sure she shared a cabin with the girl who drove the getaway car. Stefan had a roommate too, and he and Rachel had no opportunity to talk, at least not as far as I know. When we got to Sicily we sent the rest of the team on its way and Rachel and I flew to France to buy her a car and prepare her for the next assignment. She was no longer Angie Brown, or even Rachel Goldschmitt. Rachel Brooks didn’t know anyone called Stefan and had never even visited North Africa. Rachel Brooks was on her way to Paris, after her holiday in Sicily, to buy an old Volvo in reasonable condition. She intended to park it in the reserved space at her apartment building belonging to her flat and use it for travel and recreation.”
CHAPTER SIX
Out There
“‘YOU KNOW I HAVE NO REASON to go there,’ she said to me after I outlined the next mission we had planned for her. I knew she was right. Why would a foreign national just happen to be on a side road leading to a string of military bases? What is she looking for? How would she know about a road that is marked on the map as a dust track? There were other things I knew but didn’t tell her: If she falls into their hands and reveals everything she knows, other networks will be compromised, and that must never happen. Keeping things compartmentalized is what it’s all about, and this is for her protection too. No one other than us knows she’s in the field, and all the information she transmits we camouflage before passing it on to the analysts. I explained to her once how we obscured her image in photographs, and I saw a trace of disappointment in her eyes, as if I were taking away something that belonged to her and denying her existence. When I showed her the blurred pictures she winced as if feeling it physically. ‘You’re erasing me,’ she said. ‘If one day I really disappear, no one will notice.’
“The operation was dangerous, but she was a combatant, and this is what combatants do. It isn’t just rhetorical to say they’re working in the service of the state in times of peace and in times of war. Soldiers go into battle and risk their lives in pursuit of the objective, and there was no reason why her case should be different. Why wouldn’t we endanger one person to get the information that could save many lives?
“We all knew her. We knew where she was born and who her friends were, and it was hard to imagine a situation of her being captured, suddenly not being there anymore. But that didn’t make her blood any redder than the blood of the soldiers on patrol in Nablus, in action in the Gaza Strip, preparing for war.
“‘This is a risk we can take,’ I said. ‘Oh, we can, can we?’ was her sardonic response, and I knew she was right. We’ll devise a reason for her to go there, and rehearse it with her beforehand, but when all is said and done she’ll be out there on her own, while the rest of us sit at home, drink coffee, and wait for her to report.
“I can see you’re dying to ask what actually happened there, and what she did, and all I can tell you is that I don’t know. How is it possible to know exactly what’s happening when the facts are so few and simple? She stopped the car outside the gate and did the job, and more than that. A whole lot more. ‘A few pictures, and as much as you can remember,’ the operations officer told her in the briefing, and that’s what we were training her for. We didn’t ask for more, and she didn’t tell us what she understood from the training and the ops officer’s remarks. I saw the results in the pictures and heard them in the conversations we held during debrief. I saw a picture of her hugging the sentry and some shots of the entrance to the base, and in another, the climax of the operation—she’s shaking hands with the base commander, in front of the sentry’s booth. ‘That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?’ she said to me, and I saw in her eyes the anger that was germinating, as if she wante
d me to praise her and reprimand her at the same time, tell her she’d brought back premium information but she shouldn’t have taken such a risk. But there was something else in this remark of hers and in her posture, sitting bolt upright in the chair. You’re to blame, she was telling me silently. You’re pushing me to the limit. You’re always drumming it into me that I’m not made of sugar and I won’t melt and I have to take risks too, not just sit in a nice apartment at the state’s expense, counting my pension credits. So there you have it.
“The debriefing after the operation shocked me. I wasn’t prepared for it. The report was full of details. There were no pictures taken inside the base, but we compared the report with other fragments of information that we had and we knew it was accurate. The ops officer was licking his chops, in the Intelligence Corps they were singing the Mossad’s praises, but I gave her a black mark and wrote a memo to the Unit commander: this wasn’t a good sign; she threw off the yoke and acted outside of what she was supposed to be doing. More than we asked for and way beyond the instructions she received. We agreed beforehand that she would stop the car by the main gate to check the rear tires. We also said she should get out of the car so she could see more and memorize the details. We didn’t ask her to approach the sentry, or point to her stomach and explain to him in her rudimentary Arabic that she needed the bathroom urgently. Until the face-to-face debriefing I didn’t know she spoke to the sentry and memorized the entry procedures for access to the camp before he handed her the phone to talk to his boss. Imagine it, our Rachel sitting there on the john in the middle of a missile base, doing her thing and all the time thinking about what’s missing, about opportunities that won’t be repeated. Then she drank coffee with the commander in his office, memorized the map on the wall behind him, complimented him on his excellent English, and found out where he studied chemistry and who his classmates had been at Moscow University.
“I listened to her report and wondered what was going through her head when she took such colossal risks. Did she think about her car, parked outside the base? The danger that an agent of the Mukhabarat might want to know what a car with foreign license plates was doing there? I wanted to know more than that, but she didn’t tell me how she felt when she was talking to the base commander, and if she was afraid he would notice how inquisitive she was about him, and how shy when asked about herself.”
FROM A DISTANCE, EVEN BEFORE SHE passed the last bend, Rachel felt the tension constricting her stomach and tightening her grip on the wheel. She reviewed once more the details of the plan: identify the base, pass by it, take a look, and continue driving. Verify that this is the base, if it’s like the picture that I was shown. Where did they get it from? Why are they sending me if they already have a picture? Then I continue on to my tourist destination. I go for a walk around the church. I come out, buy an exorbitantly priced souvenir, chat with the vendor so he’ll remember me and confirm that I was there, I’m a nice person, there’s nothing bad about me. That’s the way I look to him, at least. And then I wait until the sun is behind me. I check the camera, put in new film, take a few pictures. Put the camera in my handbag, align it with the small hole in the bag, check the mechanism to operate the shutter. Here is where it starts.
Rachel passed the bend and slowed down. From a distance she saw fences and buildings. Must be “her” base. She went on a kilometer farther and saw there was more than one base. There were several bases. She slowed down again, and a truck behind her tooted. She stepped on the gas pedal but the truck stayed close behind. The road was crowded and she couldn’t pass the car in front or get rid of the truck behind her. Besides, if she overtakes she’s liable to miss the gate. Now she needed to find the right base and also pay attention to the truck that seemed stuck to the rear of her car. For a moment she thought of dispensing with accurate measuring and precise identification, but she knew this was a mistake. For the purposes of the mission she had to stop, as if by chance, close by the gate, located on the other side of the narrow road, and to do this she needed to identify it now and measure the precise distance to the filling station. Having recorded this detail she will turn the trip odometer back to zero, so she won’t be caught measuring distances to and from the base. A lot of details to deal with, and she needs to drive and watch both sides of the road, with the truck pushing her from behind. She was coming close to the first base and knew that if she stopped now and let the truck overtake her, she risked having the truck stop beside her, and somebody else might also stop and later recall the car that stopped twice in this area. A light nudge from behind, just a touch. He’s playing with me, fancies his chances because I’m a woman alone in a Volvo and my hair is loose; he thinks I’m fair game. Rachel accelerated slightly and moved away from the truck, which hooted at her as if saying farewell. She was approaching the camp. The picture they showed her had been taken from the side and there was no way of knowing if this was the base she was supposed to be heading for. The gauge showed that the distance from the last intersection was approximately what the ops officer had told her. He said it wasn’t exact, and the difference could be two hundred meters—the margin of error in taking measurements from the maps at their disposal and from aerial photographs. Also the mechanic they brought especially from Israel in order to prepare the car she “bought” from an operative who brought it to France said that’s all there is and with that she has to just do it.
“From the bend in the road onward you’ll need to rely on the photograph and on your own judgment,” the ops officer said, and in training this had seemed simple. She came closer to the base, but behind it there was another, and behind that another, and the truck was closing in on her again. It was too late to stop, and impossible to pick up speed; she needed to keep watching both sides of the road and turn the trip odometer back to zero in time. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, imagining herself squeezing the trigger of a sniper’s rifle, and inhaled again. Tall fences, barbed wire, sentry booth, pull-off area. It didn’t match what she remembered from the photograph the ops officer showed her, but it was a month since she saw it, and he wouldn’t let her make a sketch of it. “You have to commit it to memory,” he said. She obviously didn’t want to get caught with a sketch of a secure location. She passed by the gate and looked to her right. No, this wasn’t the base she was looking for. Go on. The second base. Floodlights around the perimeter. A low wall topped by a wire fence. Another guard post. Again she turned her head to the right, and hoped the driver of the truck behind her would think she was checking her rearview mirror. That’s it, that’s the base. She pressed the distance gauge and stole a glance at the sentry beside the yellow barrier. The truck tooted at her again and she resisted the temptation to show the driver the finger. Instead she laughed and thumped the steering wheel and kept on driving. When she passed the third base she checked it out carefully to be sure she hadn’t made a mistake. This time there was no one from headquarters following her, as in the exercise on a side road outside Rome. She was alone now. Only she could do this for them (“for us, Rachel, for us”—Ehud never tired of stressing that she wasn’t a hired hand, they were working together, a team). She accelerated and pulled away from the truck, but was careful not to get too far ahead, so the pattern of her driving wouldn’t arouse suspicion, and thought about the operation. Why do they need to know the width of the gate and what it’s made of? Are there obstacles in the roadway? Is there a telephone link between the sentry and the command center, and where is the command center? “Look for a nice house flying a flag,” the ops officer briefed her. Rachel started to tell him it would be useful to have the purpose of all this information explained to her, so she could look for other things that hadn’t been specifically mentioned, but the ops officer invoked the need-to-know principle and she let it go.
When she reached the filling station she jotted down the distance to the base on a piece of paper and put a dot between the figures. Ehud had wanted her to memorize the numbers and she ag
reed, but she thought that she might forget, and she decided that if asked about the note she’ll say it’s the price of a statuette that she saw in an antique shop in the market. No, I don’t remember which shop, she’ll say. No one will ask, and yet there needs to be an answer ready, as with everything that she’s planned to do, with the exception of the photography. “The photograph we have is blurred and no use at all. Impossible to see the gate and the security post. That’s why you need to stop the car and get out. Activate the camera in the handbag, the way they showed you, and take pictures while you’re moving from one side of the car to the other,” said the ops officer, and added that he thought this was a risk worth taking. “Why would I get out of the car with my handbag if I’m just checking one of the tires?” she asked, and saw all eyes turning to her. “We’ll need to find an answer to that,” said Ehud, and he suggested discussing it later. “We simply can’t do without these photographs.”
TO HER SURPRISE, THE TOUR OF the local church was interesting. Rachel gave credit to the priest who taught her in training how to act like a devout Christian, and she remembered the church she found in Montreal when she went there to work on her new identity. She had no difficulty presenting herself to the parish priest as the daughter of strictly secular parents and asking him to teach her all that was required for a baptism. The priest was very kind and also curious, but his kindness prevailed over his curiosity, and he stopped asking questions about her past, which remained wrapped in silence. Rachel was an avid pupil, joined in all the prayers and rituals, and they were both genuinely sorry when she had to leave sometime before the scheduled ceremony, as she was offered a job in another town. The case officer who accompanied her in Canada had been opposed to the idea of her going through with it, on the grounds that she couldn’t possibly give the priest her real name, and therefore it wouldn’t be valid anyway. Rachel yielded, and afterward told Ehud she assumed the skullcap that the case officer made a point of removing before every meeting with her might be the real reason. “Don’t worry,” Ehud reassured her when she told him there was no substitute for imbibing other religious traditions along with mother’s milk. “No one’s going to test you. No one strips you to check you’re a woman, and casual acquaintances don’t insist on seeing your passport. People believe what they see and what they hear until they’re given a reason to think otherwise. Just wear a small crucifix, inherited from your grandma, and make sure you mumble something about Christian holidays from time to time. Be grateful you don’t need to explain away a circumcision.”
The English Teacher Page 10