“I want to see the letter,” he said. The commander took a piece of paper from the file and handed it to Ehud. It was a document from the Prime Minister’s office. The terms were clear—she must return, be interrogated, take a polygraph test, and if it is concluded that she has disclosed no sensitive information, she may resume her former life. Even her pension will not be affected. Ehud had laid down these conditions, and they had been accepted.
On the way out he and Joe passed by the operations room. On the door was a sign: ENTRY FOR AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. Ehud was no longer in that category. Now he’s on a mission. There are things he needs to know, and things that he doesn’t. He told the commander he remembers some secrets too, and the commander replied as he closed the files, “Her secrets are more important. They go beyond the range of our normal activities. We can only regret that they decided to employ her then without thorough vetting and a proper psychological assessment. But I’m not criticizing my predecessor in this post; the past is the past. We’re relying on you, Ehud, and we’re sure that if the worst should happen to you, you’ll know how to use what we’re giving you. One strong bite, and you’ll be the best-dressed guy in the morgue.” He wasn’t smiling.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The Capital City, Two Days Earlier
THE PLANE DESCENDED, DIPPING BELOW THE thin layer of cloud. She gazed down at the city, reflexively looking for the Presidential Palace and the large buildings of the Defense Ministry. Rachel remembered the first time Rashid took her for a drive on the switchback road, and their desperate search for a secluded spot. “Stop here,” she said, and couldn’t help thinking that their budding romance would provide a good excuse for coming back here with a camera—and getting shots of the fences and the perimeter walls. Rashid slowed and stopped the car by the roadside. A thin dust cloud rose behind them, and the lights of passing cars cast a murky radiance and left them in darkness. He cut the engine and doused the lights, and she knew this was unprofessional; at any moment a police patrol car might pull up alongside, or another vehicle could run into them. But she repressed these thoughts, sat with her hands between her knees, and waited for him to make the first move. She knew perfectly well this was against the rules, this wasn’t what Ehud meant when he talked about cultivating friendly relations with the locals, but a moment later she wasn’t thinking, because Rashid was leaning toward her, holding her head and giving her a long kiss, and she closed her eyes and let him unfasten the buttons of her blouse.
The pilot told the cabin crew to take their seats for landing, and she fingered her passport, which she made a point of keeping in the front pocket of the denim skirt. Rachel glanced at her picture; it seemed to her she was looking at someone else. She knew she had beautiful eyes. Suitors often told her this but still lost the battle since Rashid whispered to her, after the first time, that he could see her heart through them. The eyes in the passport photograph smiled at her and kept a secret. And her eyes now? She took the miniature makeup kit from her handbag and looked at them in the mirror—sad and tired.
Long live old habits and hurrah for convention, she thought as she fixed her makeup and filled in her landing card. This time it was all true, and there was no need to remember what her name was supposed to be on this assignment. Rachel Goldschmitt, born in London, April 10, 1965. Mother’s name: Eva. Father’s name: Michael. Profession: Teacher. Nationality: British. So far it was all correct. She came to the box marked purpose of visit, and wrote: Expedition. If they don’t understand, she’ll explain it. And while writing slowly and in big letters, she told herself she had come to restore something that had been lost. And then came marital status: Single. That was true too. What could I have done differently? she was thinking as the wheels hit the runway with a loud thump. Did I not know what to expect when I abandoned Oren, my safe haven? “I’m like one of those offshore oil rigs,” he said. “Big and stable, and people can tie their boats up to it and land their helicopters on it. But in a few years from now I’ll be moving on. Like the oil rig. I won’t be here forever.”
“Old soldiers never die, they just fade away,” someone or other said, and she thought of Rachel Brooks, Canadian citizen born in England, who one day disappeared without a trace. Where is that Rachel, and what about the scars she left on the woman who took on her identity and did her duty until it was time for her to fade away? There are those who believe that the soul leaves the dead body and moves to a different place, but what about someone forced to leave behind a living personality, a woman who had a name and work and friends, even a lover, and one day she faded away but didn’t die? I was like a snake, she thought, I shed my old skin and moved on.
The plane came to a stop and she stood and retrieved her luggage from the overhead compartment. One small case, as always, that’s all she needs. Anyway, she isn’t staying here long. How much time does it take to check into a hotel, wash her face, which had aged with the passage of time, pick up the phone, and tell him she’s back? Rashid speaking, he’ll say, and she’ll want to erase the years, the lie—that unbearable weight—and tell him she still loves him.
Rachel handed her passport to the immigration officer sitting in his cubicle and smiled at him, the way she had been trained and her standard technique whenever she needed to cross a border or smuggle illicit goods. All about gaining trust. He smiled back at her and focused on the passport in front of him. No chance of anyone remembering her. Eighteen years ago she was someone else.
A moment passed. The official looked again at the passport and at her face, and she felt her heart beating steadily, as if she had nothing to reveal, as if she had nothing to hide.
“First time here?”
“Yes, and I hope it won’t be the last,” she said, and it occurred to her she was actually telling the truth. Rachel Goldschmitt, British subject, is visiting this place for the first time. And that other woman? Rachel Brooks? She doesn’t know her. “Welcome home,” the official said, and she forgave his mistake.
From the start she knew she would be going to that hotel, she would try to travel step by step the way she had traveled before, and when she reaches the intersection this time, perhaps she’ll choose another option. “If you lose your way,” Ehud told her once, when she had trouble finding him in the streets of Rome, “always go back to the point where we separated.”
The Arabic she remembered was enough for her to charm the driver, and he was sure that at long last a tourist had arrived who understood him, and he talked incessantly. She didn’t understand what he was saying, but to her his nonstop patter was like fresh water cascading over rocks, a cataract of meaningless words in a language she had learned to love. Now and then she picked up a word she remembered, and she had no doubt he was talking about politics, the economic situation, and other things that taxi drivers the world over talk about when they’re taking tourists to their hotels, and she agreed with him, saying, “Naam, naam”—yes, yes—so he wouldn’t stop.
The scenery on the way to the city had changed little; it was just the trees that were taller, and the neon advertising signs were more prolific than before. She leaned back in the seat and looked up at the cloudy sky. In training they had taught her how to land a helicopter, how to check the cloud cover and the air temperature, how to choose the landing site, measure the wind speed, and ignore anything not germane to the mission. “A course in the destruction of romance,” she wrote once on the blackboard in the lecture room, and when the bewildered lecturer asked her what she meant, she said you would need to be a woman to understand. And now, she reflected, it was impossible to see the sky and the clouds without thinking of helicopters, just as it was impossible to sit on a beach without estimating the height of the waves, and deciding whether rubber dinghies could come ashore. You even look at people differently, listen to them in another way, assessing every word and inflection. This is the punishment of the liar—the one who lies habitually can’t trust anyone.
THE BELLB
OY PUT THE SUITCASE DOWN on a worn divan, insisted on explaining how the air-conditioning worked, and pointed to the view from the window and seemed quite willing to carry on and on until she gave him the dollar he was expecting and sent him on his way. Rachel slumped on the bed, stared at the ceiling, remembered the fear she felt the first time she came here, and wondered how much of it remained—just a vague apprehension that everything would be as it was, a new lie replacing the old one, and she would be unable to tell the truth.
Through the closed window she heard the familiar noises of the street. She had grown accustomed to listening to the muffled clamor of the teeming city, the rustling from the room next door, footsteps in the corridor. Old habits die hard, and she was a veteran and experienced combatant, once described by the head of the Mossad as a sophisticated war machine. Rachel listened, searching for the exceptional sounds, the siren of a police car, heavy footsteps outside her door, and especially the silence. The ominous silence that falls after a black car has squealed to a stop at the entrance to the hotel and men in suits have emerged. The sound of the silence in the lobby as they go up in the lift or take the stairs, and then the waiting for the knock on the door. Because even today, when she’s probably a tourist like all the rest of them, she still has something to hide. A secret has an odd quality. It doesn’t grow old. It doesn’t lose its value. It just becomes harder—harder to reveal, harder to confess, harder to receive absolution for it.
And suddenly something that has been on her mind for a long time becomes clearer to her. What is the difference between this time and previous times? What thought has been with her from the moment she boarded the plane in Brussels? This time she’s on her own. No one sent her, Ehud isn’t waiting for her call, and the command center, with all its clever gadgetry, isn’t tracking her movements on a computer-generated map and checking her contact codes. Who cares that she took the train from London to Brussels so the British wouldn’t know which way their citizen was heading? Who wants to know that she got a visa from the consulate in a few hours? Who will know that she spent the night in a transit hotel where they don’t check the names of guests?
She felt the isolation touching her and spreading through her limbs, and she resisted the silly urge to say something in Hebrew into the void of the room. Nobody knows I’m here, she was thinking, no one can listen to me, tell me I’m valuable to them. Rachel stood up and sighed. Her joints ached, a migraine was threatening to kick in, and she calculated the number of pills she had brought with her. She stripped slowly, put the clothes on the bed, and again the first time came to mind. The fear of hidden cameras, microphones, feeling exposed. And what has changed since then? Perhaps the confidence that age and experience bring, or perhaps it’s down to fatigue, or the fact that now she’s here to reveal, not to hide.
The stream of hot water washes over her, and she closes her eyes and wonders who she will see when she stands in front of the mirror. Who will promise her that everything will be okay? Ehud said nothing good just comes on its own, good things have to be made to happen. And she’s ready for anything, but nothing will happen until she begins to act. Thoughts don’t move anything. She has wrapped herself in a towel before going into the cool of the bedroom, even though the curtains are closed. Modesty? Perhaps. Habit? Definitely. But she has no one to hide her body from. She lets the towel fall to the floor. There are women more beautiful than she is, there always were, but her body is long and lithe and her skin soft to the touch, and her breasts, which never suckled a child, are still as firm as they were then, when she waited for Rashid.
The lobby was empty. Late afternoon is always dead time, the right time to talk to the concierge, to survey the place at leisure and understand that the differences are in the heart, not in the structure. Not much has changed. They’ve made some improvements, added an outdoor pool, but they haven’t succeeded in getting rid of the smell, or wiping the bored expressions from the faces of the hotel employees.
A YOUNG WOMAN IN TRADITIONAL GARB sat at the desk and busied herself with the endless sorting of invisible paperwork. Rachel sat down facing her and waited. The girl looked at her with gloomy eyes. A faint mustache adorned her upper lip, and she fiddled affectedly with the thick wedding ring on her finger. “What can I do for you?” she asked in heavily accented English. “Anything that’s interesting,” Rachel said, and asked if there was a list of recommended tours. The girl pulled out a few brochures and Rachel picked out one of the guided tours. A short day, not too tiring, suitable for a tourist like her. “There are some nice churches here,” said the receptionist, and she asked, with the courtesy typical of hotel workers, how long she was staying.
“A week,” said Rachel, and she wasn’t sure. “Do you happen to have a phone directory of the city?” The girl looked surprised, and Rachel knew she had made a mistake. She was getting rusty. She should have given the receptionist a reason to offer her the directory. Occasional tourists don’t make such requests. She is not in Europe and even an innocent question can arouse suspicion. She didn’t know what the security officer had said to the woman sitting opposite her, or if someone came to the hotel from time to time to ask if there was anything unusual and how the foreigners were behaving.
The clerk pulled out a tattered phone book from a drawer in her desk and asked what she was looking for. This time she had an answer ready, and she wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. And why not tell her she’s looking for Rashid? Why not let her into this little secret? she’s thinking as she and the clerk are going through the phone numbers of English language schools. “I don’t want to bother you anymore,” she said to the clerk with a smile, and was secretly grateful to the French tourist couple who stood behind her, waiting patiently for their turn. “Give me the book, and I’ll take it over there and return it when I’ve finished.” The clerk handed her the book, the tourists smiled at her, and she felt she was back in business, she could still cut it.
When she knew no one was paying attention to her, she took a tourist guidebook from her handbag, along with the conversion chart from the Latin to the Arabic alphabet, and turned to the Arabic directory. Her heart was beating faster, and a wave of anxiety threatened to swamp her. Rashid Kanafi, or Kanafani, or Raashid, God only knows how they spell this, and perhaps his name doesn’t appear in the book and his number is unlisted. She jotted down some likely looking numbers, disguised with a simple code, and went out into the street. Years of training and experience had taught her not to call from hotel rooms, and not to use the cell phone she bought at the airport in Brussels.
The old, dirty, shabby street was now a thoroughfare paved with artificial stone, and instead of the little shops where corpulent traders swathed in broad sashes used to sit in the doorways, there were now department stores, all display windows and illuminated signs. Everything had changed, but everything looked familiar. And the smell remained. It was a smell that was hard to define and impossible to ignore. That thing that you could swallow with every step, with every breath. It was born aloft on the thick air. Smoke and dust. A mixture of the two, far from the desert and close to it, everywhere, like the smell of garlic in Korea, like the London fog, like the faint vapor of drains in Tokyo, and the stench of the canals in Amsterdam. Dust and smoke carried the smell of this city, the city that was hers.
She walked slowly down the street, and the flat soles of her shoes slapped the paving stones. She had no clear idea of where she was going, besides the knowledge that she wants to see, wants to smell, wants the city to give her what is missing, the strength she needs to summon. She wants it to lead her to him, as it did before. Because then everything was clear. She’s come for the experience, and to save some money, so she can start living a life without her father in it, far from the love she left behind her.
And why did you come here, Rachel?
To work.
And how long will you stay here, Rachel?
That depends.
Depe
nds on what, Rachel?
On what I find here and how much money I can save.
That’s all. Simple questions, simple answers. One clear line that has a reason behind it, which has a beginning, a middle, and an end. A life that can and must stand up to daily examination. A life that has a reason, a logic that has no time for the mania of loneliness, or the mania of love.
ON THE WAY TO THE MAIN bazaar she passed by what had been the school. It was gone, replaced by an office building. She remembered the little classrooms, the lessons, and the achievements of her students. She loved teaching, and she was a good teacher despite all the other things she had to do. Rachel tried to remember names, but could remember only his name, and she was searching only for him among the passersby when she entered the square, which was surprisingly clean. The carpet-seller, a short, squat man, looked at her curiously, as if assessing his chances, and she was comfortable with that. So it was and so it will be. He’s a man and she’s a woman. She went inside his shop. Obviously he wanted a sale, but there was always something else and she could use it. Rachel let these thoughts go, accepted the cup of tea that he offered, sat down in a wicker armchair, and modestly arranged her skirt. She was silent, and he talked incessantly. “What are you looking for, madam? Here, take a look, at this,” and he unrolled a carpet from the end of the pile on the floor and passed a flashlight over it to illuminate the intricate weave. “Not this one, of course,” he said to her as she shook her head, and asked her where she was from. She was ready with her answer. “Can’t you tell?” she asked him, and he said she was from London and she didn’t deny it, and she knew that although she couldn’t remember all the prices in the supermarket or who won a football match last week, she was still adept at dodging much harder questions.
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