I looked questioningly at Emily, wondering if it was appropriate to clap, which is what I felt like. She understood and nodded, and she joined me in applauding the combatants.
Only after leaving the dojo did Yoshima embrace his daughter, and she kissed him.
“You’re in great shape, my daughter,” he said in what sounded to me like a Japanese style of address.
“And you’re still as strong as ever, father,” she replied in the same manner. They looked at each other lovingly.
“They like you,” Niki told me as we left, her parents waving goodbye from the door. “That makes me even happier.”
But a fine mesh of sadness that I could discern in her eyes told me she was already contemplating her separation from them, a separation that would be very difficult for her. I loved her enough to understand that she had no reason at all to prefer my life in my country and close to my parents, over her own life in her country and close to her parents.
When I wanted to express this, she put her finger on my lips.
There was something else that I wanted to do before returning to Israel. I fully grasped its implications. I also fully grasped that it would elicit great ire and that it was liable to block my way back to the Mossad, both because I’d be considered someone who wilfully harmed the organization, and because I would remain without the cover that Ron Friedlich had given me thus far. They would have to treat me as any other operative, without the added value of my resemblance to the dead Canadian. Mickey, as is, or Mickey and Niki, as a package deal.
Because it was a drastic, possibly life-changing step, for her as well as me, I decided to let my final decision hang fire. No one was pressurising me. The month of March had brought with it the first faint signs of the end of winter and I was free and happy, more than I’d ever been before. Niki and I were a couple madly in love.
Udi’s phone call came when I was resolved. “I’m coming back,” I said, “but naked and with a dowry.”
“Translation, please.”
“Without Ron and with Niki.”
Udi was silent for a while. Then he said: “Hold your decisions. I may be able to be there next week.”
“These two things are not up for discussion.”
Again he remained silent, weighing my words.
“Nevertheless, wait. I’ll try to get there and we’ll talk.”
I was glad that I had a few more blissful days with Niki, reaffirming each day and each night how essential it was for her to be the woman in my life, for the rest of my days.
Before a week had gone by, Udi called again.
“I don’t know if you’ve heard what happened in Ashdod. In any case, I can’t come but I need you.”
“But only the way I said; with Niki, without Ron.”
“I’ve already begun rolling the idea along the corridors. Anyway, if you don’t come back, neither will Ron. I’d rather have you at peace with yourself, and without the rock that’s weighing down your conscience. But you do not know the whole picture, and you mustn’t make mistakes. And about your dowry – that’s interesting. Interesting. Once I suggested something to you about her. You’re apparently one of those people who, when they’re asked for a glass of water, bring the whole well. And don’t be offended now – I didn’t say a glass of milk. Do what’s good for you, and then we’ll work something out. I hope you’ll be here when I get back.” I went to the TV and flicked through the news channels, but there was nothing about Ashdod. I went online, to Y-Net, and there found a full report about the double terror attack at the port. One suicide bomber from Fatah and the other from Hamas, both from the Jebaliya refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. Ten Israelis dead, thirteen wounded. In response the Air Force had attacked the metal workshops in Gaza, where the bombs had been made. The Jewish settlers were blaming the recent “disengagement” – the withdrawal of Israeli forces and removal of settlements from the Gaza Strip.
Once again, I was surprised at the extent to which I felt detached. The words on the screen and the few pictures had almost no effect on me, on the emotional level. Could I carry on here, with Niki, growing accustomed to the distance and the break with everything that had been close to me, living my life as an artist, with a beloved wife, living the present as if there had been no past, and building myself a totally different future?
I debated with myself for one more day, and asked Niki if she wanted to join me on a mission which I reckoned would be tougher than any of the missions I’d been on so far.
“Going to see Ron Friedlich’s parents?” said my very smart sweetheart. “Ever since you asked about them after I told you I’d spoken to them, I’ve been waiting for you to suggest it.” She hugged and kissed me. “Have I ever told you I love you?”
Then she sat me down at the table and took a chair facing me.
“You really don’t remember anything of your first night back here, do you? I decided back then to tell you about it and I did, but when I saw you didn’t mention it again in the morning, I didn’t repeat the full version.”
I had no idea what she was talking about.
“Remember I told you I had a friend who looked like you?”
I remembered.
“I saw him soon after I began working at the university. He simply walked right past me, and I was in shock. It was a year or two after we met in Japan.”
“Ron Friedlich …?” I stammered.
“Yes. I didn’t think it was you for one moment, but the resemblance was amazing. I asked myself what I should do about it, and I decided to let the wind take me wherever it took me.”
“Meaning?”
“To see what would happen.”
“And?”
“I arranged for someone to introduce us. We went out a few times. It wasn’t right.”
“Which means?”
“You look alike, but that’s all.”
“You’ll forgive me for wanting to hear more?”
“I knew I shouldn’t have told you. But I don’t want to leave any secrets between us. He was the pretty boy on the football team, who’d never made an effort to achieve anything, and when we met he’d already decided to give up sports, after he wasn’t signed up by any pro team. And he’d begun taking the drugs that screwed him up in the end. The girls he was after were cheerleaders with nothing but their blonde hair. It was pretty clear from the first date that it wouldn’t go anywhere, but I gave it a second chance. I even agreed to meet his lovely parents, but that was it.”
I was supposed to be relieved, but I couldn’t accept the idea that that was all there was to my Ron, my Canadian double. I asked her to tell me more.
“He was an easygoing guy, very self-confident, but I missed that combination of bashfulness and strength that I recognized in you back there, in Tokyo. I also didn’t see a capability for dedicating himself, for fighting for something, like you had there. For him, everything was clear and simple. There was something shadowy about you that attracted me more.”
“Shadowy?”
“Yes. It’s something I love in you. Waiting in the rain outside the club in Asakusa, that was shadowy. Heavy. Hard. Even a little scary, don’t you think? To get drunk at the bar and draw me was shadowy but equally attractive and charming, no? So is the fact that you can suddenly break away and disappear. Every day with you is a surprise – if I find you here when I come home in the evening, and it’s a party if you stay the night, and I’m kept in suspense as to whether you’ll still be here in the morning.”
“That’s how you feel, my darling?” I held her tight and my heart contracted. But then I asked her to go on telling me about Ron: “After that there was no contact between you?”
“We bumped into each other on campus. But nothing beyond that.”
Our reunion in the registrar’s office came into my mind. I asked her what had happened there, what she’d thought.
“When I saw you through my office door, I jumped. At first I thought you were Ron, but when I heard your voice and you mention
ing the name Ron Friedlich, I wondered what was going on, so I came to take a look.”
“And why …”
“Why did I help you? Somehow I knew you were involved in something that was not quite kosher and as I’ve told you, I had in my head the story about the Canadian passports the Israelis used in Jordan. I wouldn’t have paid attention if I didn’t know you from before. I thought that perhaps you were trying to appropriate Ron’s identity due to your resemblance. I didn’t give it too much thought right then, I simply thought you might get into trouble and I wanted to help.”
“And then?”
“I was straight away in love again but I tried to suppress my feelings. But the way that you wanted to see a different part of the city each time we went out, and then that encounter with the stranger in the restaurant that you denied, convinced me of what was really going on.”
“And then, when I vanished …”
“Somehow I expected it to happen. I saw you weren’t altogether wholeheartedly here, that part of you was somewhere else. I was also worried of course and I tried to find you but after I realized that you hadn’t been hurt, and the message you left confirmed it, I gave up. With a broken heart.”
I thought about telling her how I had debated with myself before I left, about the times that I had raised the matter with my superiors, but that would have been trying to justify something that in truth wasn’t justifiable, and I left it for another time. Instead I decided to bring up something that had bothered me ever since leaving her that message.
“I know I don’t have the right to ask you this, but it bothers me. When I called you then, and you didn’t pick up, it was two a.m. here …”
Niki’s expression hardened and an angry frown appeared between her eyebrows. “I’m sorry that you asked and this must be the last time that you ask and I answer. I was brought up with the belief that loyalty is the supreme value. But you left, and the moment you did that, the moment I realized that was what had happened, I owed you nothing. And don’t ever expect me to be loyal if you walk away from me. Yes, with a broken heart I went to someone else. And that night I was with him. Exactly like the song you sang for me, about the candle that went out in the sailor’s sweetheart’s window.”
My insides constricted from the intensity of the blow she had just dealt me but there was nothing I could say and nothing I had the right to say. But I knew I had to break the silence, before it led us to a bad place.
“If so, what happened when you got that call from Jordan? Why did you help me?”
Niki was also relieved that I’d changed the subject.
“At first, I thought it really was Ron Friedlich on the line. It seemed weird. Years had gone by, why should he be calling me out of the blue, and in the middle of the night too? I thought I wasn’t hearing right. Luckily you reminded me about the transcripts and you mentioned the date, and I put two and two together. As soon as I came to, I realized you were using Ron’s documents, and you were in trouble.”
“I think you’ll make a first class secret agent,” I said, and pulled her close.
“We’ll make a great couple of agents,” she said, a very serious expression on her face.
“As for Ron’s parents,” she said, “I’d better go alone. It would be a pity to get Israel mixed up in this. When they see your resemblance to him it would only make them sadder and complicate things. I’ll tell them I heard from a common friend that Ron was in Sinai with the Bedouin and he’d died there. It will be a lot easier for them to hear it from me and they also won’t be able to ask any questions, because I can say I don’t know anything else. By the way, this will not be coming at them like a bolt from the blue. There’ll be pain, but when I spoke to them they told me he’d been hospitalized because of drugs, in India I think. My impression was that they’d given up on the hope that he’d ever recover and come home.”
Niki, my love, my own samurai.
Part Two
Ruth and Boaz
1.
A Samurai in Tel Aviv
FALLING IN LOVE with an Israeli may be sexy, but deciding to go and live in Israel? Niki’s family and friends could not fathom this move of hers. Her parents were trying to sway her against it, and I no longer felt comfortable visiting them.
Despite his busy schedule, Udi came to Toronto to hear directly from Niki that this was indeed what she wanted and to conduct an initial appraisal of her suitability. I remembered that he’d warned me not to bring him “some new immigrant”, and here I was bringing him a complete foreigner, something that was considered an even greater security risk. Udi apparently received a favourable impression, as he stayed in town to oversee our preparations for departure and make sure we didn’t do something dumb that would prevent us from coming back. He told me to keep up the lease on my rented apartment so that if required it could continue to serve as part of my cover down the road. We were still a long way from Niki’s acceptance into our ranks.
Udi managed to talk me out of confessing to Ron’s parents. “It makes no sense to lose this passport and the cover you’ve constructed, especially now when Niki may be joining us. So what if those Bedouin said that he was dead? Bedouin are natural liars, even polygraphs don’t work on them. I wouldn’t go and drop an atom bomb on Ron’s parents just because some Bedouin said something, perhaps only to get a better price for the passport. Who knows?” It sounded convincing, so I conceded for the time being, and Niki was relieved.
Niki and I went to take our leave from her parents only on the day of our flight. Emily was distraught, and Yoshima was cold and restrained. This time, Niki’s sister Mila was there. She’d come especially from Vancouver, where she was studying, to say goodbye. Unlike Niki, Mila was a replica of their father. She greeted me warmly, backed Niki’s daring decision, and lightened the gloomy mood. She joined us on the drive back to Niki’s place.
“Your parents may be right,” I said to a glum Niki in the car, and I tried to cheer her up by cracking an old joke: “Moses stuttered, and when he said the People of Israel should go to Ca … Ca … Ca … – his brother Aaron misinterpreted him – and told them that their destination was Canaan. But Moses meant to say Canada.”
They both giggled a little, but then Niki burst into a protracted bout of sobbing. We stopped at the roadside and I hugged her, almost regretting my decision to go back to Israel. But she took control of herself, dried her eyes and insisted on driving home. Then it was Mila who was weeping softly, in the backseat.
We had sent most of Niki’s things on a few days before, and all we had now were two big suitcases. Niki, practical and reserved, gave her sister instructions about the apartment and the car, handed over the keys to both, and we went down to the waiting cab. To make it easier for Niki, Mila stayed behind in the apartment.
Avi, our case officer, was waiting as we came off the plane at Ben Gurion Airport. He leaned over and kissed Niki and then gave me a long handshake, as if he was rounding off our exchange of glances last time we met, in the hotel in Amman. He told us that an Office van was waiting to take us to a hotel.
“We didn’t think you’d want to take her to your place. Perhaps you need a bit of time to fix it up.”
I was grateful for the consideration. My apartment must have been pretty mouldy with dead plants, columns of ants feasting on particles of food and dirty items of clothing all over the place, not to mention the pictures of Dolly.
“Where’s Udi?” I asked.
“With the crew, at work,” he answered in Hebrew, and he whispered in my ear, “Yesterday in Athens we settled scores with some bad guys connected to the recent terror attacks.” Then he said out loud, “It’s beginning to get them down, what’s going on around here. The prime minister, I mean. Soon you boys will start going to some more interesting places.”
He walked with us to border control, and asked Niki for her passport. “Pity to contaminate it with an Israeli entry stamp,” he told me. He showed the guard a document and led us through a side door. “
Welcome to Israel,” he said to Niki, and I thought it was also welcome to the Mossad. Operational thinking on the matter of Niki had already begun. They were taking it seriously.
Niki was in a state of shock during our tour of Tel Aviv. In the spring of 2004, the big city was celebrating almost a complete year of freedom from terror attacks since the bombing at Mike’s Place, a pub on the beachfront promenade. Not very far away, places like Rosh Ha’Ayin, the Geha intersection and the hitchhiking stop outside the Tzrifin army base were in the metropolitan periphery but far enough away for the bombs there not to be heard in the city. Jerusalem, Haifa and Ashdod, which sustained heavy casualties during this period, also didn’t really register on Tel Aviv’s radar. The promenade was crowded and on sunny days people went down to the beach, and the brave few even went into the sea. Niki was captivated.
“You know, I’ve read a lot about Israel, but nothing described it as it really is,” she said, thrilled and already in love with the place.
We travelled to Haifa to meet my folks. I thought it was better to get it over as soon as possible.
“Is a half-Japanese also a ‘shiksa’?” I had asked my mother, preparing her for the upcoming encounter. “Oh, don’t talk nonsense,” she replied, taking a liking to Niki from the first moment. My father was also more friendly than usual. I didn’t think that they realized that “this was it”, that I loved Niki and that she was here to stay. They were disappointed when I told them we were heading back to Tel Aviv that same evening, but we said we’d come for Friday night dinner, with the whole family.
When we left, Niki mentioned that I hadn’t said anything about what I’d been through in Jordan. “Odd, isn’t it? I’m not supposed to tell them anything. That they don’t know what I do is taken for granted. But it’s strange I can go through such a momentous experience, and the people who are the most important in the world for me know nothing about it.”
After a short silence, during which Niki was perhaps trying to work out the significance of this matter for her own relationship with my parents, she said, “But we’ll know everything about each other, won’t we?”
Final Stop, Algiers: A Thriller Page 25