The English Teacher

by Yiftach Reicher Atir

  Ehud nodded. He didn’t remember all the details, but the principles hadn’t changed. They were so clear it was painful: He goes into the room and talks to her. If she agrees to return with him the team will keep its distance and continue monitoring. If she refuses, she will be the responsibility of the team, leaving Ehud with nothing more to do than sit quietly and hope. Stefan was sitting behind him, and Ehud knew why they had picked two old-timers like them to send on this mission.

  JOE WANTED STEFAN. THE UNIT COMMANDER told him times had changed, and there was a special team for this kind of assignment. “He’s old, he doesn’t even ride horses anymore.” Joe insisted. His gut feeling was that the veteran Stefan was the best man for the job. “There’s no choice,” said Joe. “If Ehud doesn’t succeed, she won’t let anyone else get close to her. And if we need a quiet operation leaving no traces behind, something in her hotel room that will look like suicide, or a sexually motivated murder, or a robbery—only Stefan can do that. She knows him, she remembers him, he’s cold and steady, and he’ll succeed.” So the summons went out to the kibbutz. It wasn’t hard to locate him; even cowboys have cell phones these days.

  “She’s one of ours, Joe,” said Stefan when the two of them were waiting for the Mossad chief, and with this he was saying it all. That it’s inconceivable, that we don’t kill one of our own. He stood up and went to stand by the window. Below, the city seethed, but the double-glazing shut out the sounds. Joe wanted the meeting to take place in the office of the Mossad chief and not in the training facility. “It will make the right impression on him.”

  The Mossad chief came in when Joe pressed a hidden button. Stefan stiffly stood at attention and blushed. He was a veteran, decorated combatant, but it had been a long time since he saw the Mossad chief. The chief was once a cadet in one of the courses he used to give and Stefan was never impressed by him.

  “A loose cannon,” said Joe. “She has to be stopped before it’s too late.” Then they brought in lunch, served on little trays from the local, and stringently vetted, Japanese takeout. The Mossad chief asked Stefan about his kids and the latest developments in kibbutz politics.

  “So, I understand we have to do this,” said Stefan. The Mossad chief just nodded. They carried on eating, the chopsticks disappearing in Stefan’s large hands. The chief looked at his watch and Joe and Stefan went out into the blazing sunlight. The plants that the gardeners placed opposite the door so it could remain ajar were wilting, testifying that the saving of water was democratically assigned. The parking lot was almost empty. They crossed the broad open space and arrived at the armory. Stefan chose an automatic pistol with a silencer and signed for a box of bullets. From there they went to the range and Joe put on ear protectors and was amazed once again by the speed and accuracy of Stefan’s target shooting.

  “You know I slept with her once?” Stefan said to Joe as he methodically cleaned and reassembled his weapon.

  “And . . . ?” asked Joe.

  Stefan stared down at his boots and inspected his toe caps, as if about to kick a recalcitrant calf. “Nothing. That’s all it was,” he muttered, as if spitting out watermelon seeds. “Strange. I never thought anything like this would happen to me. But there is no choice, right?” He turned to Joe, who saw a look of entreaty in his eyes.

  “No choice,” said Joe, trying to sound confident.

  RACHEL FASTENED HER DRESSING GOWN AND went to the door. “Oh, it’s you,” she said, and let Ehud in. “I wasn’t expecting you, but now it’s obvious you were going to turn up here.” Ehud sat down heavily and she went back to sorting through her clothes, which were piled up on the bed. Through the gap between the curtains he could see the van and the command vehicle, out there in the dark. “I’ve come to talk to you,” he said, “just to talk.”

  “About what, Ehud, about what? What do you want from me?” He said nothing and she carried on packing her case with her back turned to him. Her legs were more lovely than ever, and Ehud imagined the other contours of her body under the thick fabric. The commander whispered to him through the earphone, telling him to get moving. “There’s no time for a heart-to-heart,” he pressed him. “The morning flight leaves in a few hours, and there are other arrangements to be made.”

  Ehud assumed that Joe would have handled things differently. Joe would tell her to shape up and to stop acting like a crybaby, she’s still a combatant and that’s something you never get away from. There’s no meaning to all the years that have passed, the sterile isolation that reality forced on you, love that went wrong. That’s all garbage, he would say. You did what you had to do, you served the state, you didn’t betray your friends, you did your job like we all did, and now it’s time to come home. Carry on with your life without him. But he isn’t Joe, and they sent him on this mission, as if he’s the father of a wayward daughter and all he needs to do to bring her home is turn up in person and tell her he loves her.

  And there was another thing. Of course there was. In this profession, and in the heart of the Arab capital, nothing could be left to chance. He knew her paths were blocked, and the other option of leaving her here was the worst of all. They had no problem locating Rashid and getting his address from his office. They would happily help anyone who wants to send him flowers. The two combatants who waited for him on the steps looked like any other Arab youths, loitering idly around the town. They saw him parking his car, and followed him into the elevator for the ride up to his apartment. “Make sure it looks like a botched robbery,” the commander told them in the preliminary briefing, and they practiced both their knife skills and the art of ransacking a flat while leaving no trace. Rashid was trapped between them. They pinioned his arms and told him to stay quiet. Five minutes later they left the building by the stairs and crossed the street to the getaway car that awaited them. Ehud didn’t know all the details. The commander, who was supervising both operations simultaneously, simply informed him that the secondary target had been neutralized, and it was up to him to decide whether to use this information.

  “I came to ask you to come back with me. It isn’t too late,” said Ehud briefly, as if wrapping up the conversation, and she, without turning to him, said, “No,” and went on folding her clothes together in the suitcase. “You know I can’t allow you to stay here. It’s impossible. It just isn’t going to happen.”

  “What do you want?” she seethed. “That I just finish packing and come with you to the airport? And once again fly off on a little excursion, me and my uncle, and then we get to Israel and talk to whoever we need to talk to and I promise to be a good girl, is that it? Then I’ll go back to my apartment and wait for the end that refuses to come, and forever know that it could have been different?” She turned her back to him again and considered the other possibilities. On the closet beside the bed there was a heavy ashtray. She examined it. She’s forty-five, and Ehud twenty years older. She’s stronger than he is, there’s nothing he can do to stop her from escaping. “I’m not a businesswoman,” she said, and to Ehud it seemed she was trying to stall for time, “but this doesn’t look like a good deal to me. Think of something else, Ehud, something matching your talents.” They were now on opposite sides of the barricade, and Ehud remembered the cuff link he had brought with him from the flat in Rehovot, and knew there was nothing to be gained by showing it to her now, and explaining to her it wasn’t only the shirt that no longer existed.

  In the war room they were getting impatient, and the team commander ordered Ehud to tell her about Rashid. He knew this wouldn’t help, and Rachel would lose whatever faith in him she still had, realizing she had nothing left to bargain with, and so he remained silent. The war room was concerned about the silence and the team commander sent one of the combatants to the hotel lobby, to stand by and await developments that were getting more complicated due to the delay.

  Ehud heard the change of plan in his earpiece, and had to struggle to control his reaction. He didn’
t know if Rachel noticed the clenching of his jaws. Back at the WR it was agreed there was now no prospect of Rachel returning willingly, and the commander told Ehud to go downstairs with her, and they would take care of the rest. “Get her outside, that’s all you need to do. Suggest a walk, a breath of fresh air, anything; from the moment we have visual contact, it is our operation.”

  Rachel didn’t say anything; neither did he. He wanted the voices prompting him to shut up, he wanted to tell Rachel things irrelevant to the war room, things that had built up in him over the years. He took out the earpiece. Rachel saw it. He threw it on the floor and crushed it with his heel. In the war room they knew something had happened and decided to wait a little longer before sending in Stefan and the team.

  “Now it’s just us.” He tried to smile at her. “Just us?” she said, and reminded him of the team waiting downstairs, with their weapons, poised for a final showdown. She made no attempt to hide her bitterness. “We don’t have much time,” Ehud retorted, “you know the procedure as well as I do. There are some things that don’t change over the years; it’s just the technology that’s more sophisticated. In a few minutes they’ll be moving in, and there’ll be no time for talking then.” The urgency in his voice was genuine. Rachel, standing there facing him, she was genuine too. A few flecks of gray in her hair, a few more wrinkles on her cheeks, and weariness in her eyes, but it was still the same Rachel, the Rachel he had always loved. She gave him an appraising look too. He had aged and his back was stooped a bit, the bald patch had strengthened its hold, and the suit he picked from his closet for the operation was too small for him. But he was the same Ehud, the one she knew, the one who wanted what was best for her, on his own terms and according to the instructions he received. As always, a loyal soldier serving the state. She knew he couldn’t give in to her. He could talk about his love, about things he’d kept hidden from her for years, but his loyalty was not to her. “I love you,” he said into the silence that had widened between them. “Since the very beginning.”

  “But you lied to me,” she said.

  “Only when I had to.”

  “You all destroyed my life.”

  “Anything that can be destroyed can be rebuilt.”

  “Really?” She gave him a critical look, as if assessing him for the last time. “You’re going to bring my father back to me? Give me the words I never said to him?”

  “No,” said Ehud.

  “I found the letters,” she said.

  Ehud said nothing.

  “I found other things too.” Rachel was speaking in a low voice, in Hebrew, and Ehud could barely hear her. “He knew everything. I don’t know how, but he knew everything. I found press clippings about our operations, even interviews with the chief of the Mossad, the Strauss investigation, and the leaks. You wrote to him and you didn’t tell me.”

  “I wanted to protect you.”

  “Protect me? Who from? From my father? You wrote to him and told him the truth, and you told me to lie. You forced me to lie to my father, and you forced him to pretend he didn’t know anything.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “I understand perfectly. You exploited me, and you made him turn his back on me and think he was doing me a favor. He knew I wasn’t teaching English somewhere in Africa, and I was so angry with him all the time. He was looking out for me, and all those years I thought he wanted nothing to do with me.”

  “All this was before.” Ehud was sure that if he let her carry on, he might yet succeed in changing her mind, as before. “So I came here for what is still possible, for what still remains.”

  She adjusted her robe and picked up the clothes she had prepared. “Give me a moment,” she said, and turned toward the bathroom, with a sidelong glance at the ancient key, still there in the hotel door lock.

  SHE WAS QUICKER AND MORE DETERMINED than him, that was all. When she came out, in baggy pants and a soft buttoned blouse, he was watching her and not her left hand. She whipped the key from the lock and before he had time to move from his chair, she was out of the door and locking it from the outside, leaving him trapped inside.

  What was she planning? Where was she going? The questions were overshadowed by the urgent practical need to get out of there, at once. He moved to the window, discovered it was impossible to open, and was panicked to see the lights of the parked vehicles switching on, and the middle-aged couple hurriedly leaving the balcony of the adjacent hotel. Again he tried to open the door, without success. He pulled out his phone, and when the team commander answered, told him there was no choice and they must take the next step.

  He phoned the concierge, promised him money if he came immediately, and had to wait two precious minutes before the door was opened from outside. The concierge took his twenty dollars and disappeared. Ehud didn’t wait for the elevator but raced down the stairs from the third floor, gasping for breath.

  He didn’t hear the commander giving the final order, nor did he see the doctor in the backseat preparing the injection that would incapacitate Rachel. “An overdose, I’m afraid,” the doctor will say when he stands with Rachel at the airport check-in, and the local authorities will be glad to have this problem off their hands and will let them board. A few hours later she’ll be in Europe, and from there to home, for interrogation and whatever else awaits her.

  The hour was late and the street almost empty. Rachel walked briskly. Even when it was all over Ehud didn’t know what she was thinking. Perhaps she’d decided to go to Rashid’s apartment, perhaps she just wanted to get away from Ehud and from any more conversation with him, or transfer to another hotel and cover her traces, or perhaps she had something completely different in mind. The team commander, ordering his driver to hit the road, wasn’t interested in the possibilities. The phone conversation with Ehud was enough for him, and in front of him was a moving target who needed to be overtaken, grabbed quickly before she had time to react, bundled into the car, overpowered with the help of the combatant sitting in the backseat—and then the doctor could do his job. One injection, and she’s theirs.

  He knew it was too late to drive slowly to approach her, and it would be dangerous to get out and pursue her on foot. She’s on the run, and if she spots them she could dodge into one of the hotels on the avenue, and there will be nothing they can do about it. All that’s left is the fast and aggressive option. He unfastened his seat belt, as did the combatant behind him. The driver engaged a lower gear and picked up speed to catch up with Rachel, then stopped with full brakes to startle her so that the commander and the combatant could get out and overpower her.

  The driver said later, in the course of the inquiry, he saw Rachel turn back toward them, as if she heard the sound of the engine. He also said that although his attention was focused on the road and the light traffic and the single vehicle he needed to overtake, he saw her quickening her pace, and then for some obscure reason she went off the sidewalk and into the street and broke into a run. The team commander said the same thing. As for the other details, there was no difference of opinion.

  The driver accelerated, passed the vehicle that was holding him up, and bore down on Rachel at speed, engine roaring under the strain, as she ran down the road with a lightness they all remembered. She didn’t stop, and someone said she even ran faster. When she suddenly veered into the middle of the road and started crossing to the other side, it was too late to stop. The heavy Toyota Land Cruiser hit Rachel and tossed her to the side of the road like a rag doll (in the words of the driver, subsequently cleared of any blame), and her head struck a lamppost. They stopped beside her only for a moment, as they did in exercises back home, just long enough for the doctor to put two fingers to her carotid artery and return to the car without a word. They weren’t allowed any association with bodies, and there was no point anyway. Corpses can’t talk. The car roared off. Another hit-and-run. Who cares if a tourist gets killed crossing a da
ngerous road?

  Ehud arrived too late. The text that he received was unequivocal: Get out at once. He didn’t do this, and he refused to explain his motives when he was back at home, after making arrangements—breaking every rule in the book—to have Rachel flown to Europe and buried beside her mother, in London.

  All this came later.

  Now he was just in time to see the vehicle receding as per the operational instructions and the backup car doing a U-turn. They signaled to him to climb aboard and he waved them on. Knowing the chain of command and knowing they weren’t allowed to wait around, they drove away.

  Ehud stopped running; there was no need to hurry now, Rachel lay inert in the road like a knife whose blade is almost returned to its place. A small crowd began to gather and he heard the sound of an ambulance approaching.

  He knelt down beside Rachel and took her body in his arms. He looked into her face and into her eyes, green and wide open. Suddenly she moved (later they told him this was a common phenomenon) and the expression on her face changed, as if she were waiting for something. And he saw a smile, or perhaps he only imagined it.

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