The Quisling Orchid

by Dominic Ossiah

  ‘I have no idea what “this” is.’

  ‘True,’ he said, and that was it. He seemed to fall asleep, so I took the chance to watch him carefully. Not a twitch or murmur. His eyelids didn’t flutter and he didn’t appear to breathe. After fifteen minutes I reached forward to shake him and his eyes snapped open.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I thought—’ To be honest, I didn’t know what I’d thought.

  ‘Hmph.’ He looked out the window, shielding his eyes from the sun. ‘We’re almost there,’ he said, more to himself than to me. He reached down the side of his seat and picked up a small brown folder. ‘We will be landing at Tel Aviv. From there you will take a bus to a kibbutz called Ein Geidi, a few miles west of the Dead Sea.’ He handed me the folder. ‘There is your bus ticket, and some money. Do not spend it all on cigarettes.’

  I asked him, ’How do you do it?’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Kill people. How do you kill people?’

  He scratched his nose and gathered his thoughts. ‘Well, there’s quite a few different ways. I suppose we can split them into three basic groups: close-quarters, distance, deferred, though I suppose the deferred methods, such as poisoning and car bombs, are really just distance methods which—’

  ‘I meant, how can you bring yourself to kill people?’

  ‘Ah.’ Clearly this was the first time he’d been asked. Still, to his credit he didn’t have to think too long. He leaned forward and looked earnestly into my eyes. ‘When you have decided you must kill someone – I mean really decided – then do not dwell on it. Do not spend days thinking whether or not you are doing the right thing, or if there is another course of action you should take. Put it out of your mind until the moment arrives and then…’ He smiled, pleased to be on familiar ground.

  ‘And then what?’

  ‘Commitment. Remind yourself of the righteousness in what you are doing. Celebrate the sacrifice you are making of yourself, the sliver of your soul you give to the devil so that justice be done.’

  He poured us both a drink. I hadn’t the heart to tell him I hated vodka.

  ‘What am I supposed to do when I reach this place?’

  ‘You are going to pay a visit to an Israeli national hero.’

  ‘Freya Dorfmann.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘And what am I to say to Freya Dorfmann?’

  ‘Whatever you want to say.’

  I dropped the envelope on the floor. ‘No.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘You heard me. No.’

  He leaned back in his seat and tapped his fingertips together. His eyes sharpened and his nostrils flared. He was thinking of breaking something off me.

  ‘Did you just… refuse?’

  He could just lean across and snap my neck.

  ‘Just tell me what the fuck this is all about. You have all the answers; you always have. Why are you making me do this?’

  Or he could just shoot me, though I’d read firearms on a plane tend to end badly for everyone onboard.

  ‘Look, I’ve done everything you’ve asked. You’ve dragged me across Europe, killed people in front of me, threatened me, my mother, my mother’s doctor who also happens to be the only friend I have in the world’ – he looked hurt – ‘and now you’re taking me to meet the woman who betrayed Norway and fucked up my whole life! Don’t you think I at least deserve—’

  ‘Politics,’ he said. ‘It’s just politics. Let’s leave it that. And I killed one person in front of you.’ He held up a single crooked finger as though the number was really that important. ‘Just one!’

  I sat back and folded my arms. He quietly smoked a cigarette.

  The sea below us became a desert, bright and barren. Small pockets of life began appearing as we flew east. Ancient monuments sprang from the sands and soon gave way to small cities.

  ‘The less you know, the better you play your part.’ He fastened his seatbelt.

  ‘That’s not good enough,’ I said. ‘I’ve trusted you not to kill me. The least you can do is tell me what I’m doing here.’

  ‘No,’ he said, and closed his eyes.

  A few minutes later he opened them to find me still staring at him. ‘Knowing will do you little good,’ he said, closing his eyes again.

  He wasn’t going to tell me; I certainly couldn’t make him. I looked out the window and wondered how Monica’s battle was going, and how much time we’d have left together once this was all over. ‘I shouldn’t be here,’ I whispered. ‘I should be with my mother.’ I looked back at him and said, ‘Did you hear me? I want to go home. I won’t do this anymore.’

  Bergström stared into space with his lips screwed tightly together. He was seething, but not at me. He unfastened his seatbelt and took four folders from the wallet next to him. He leaned forward, spreading them out.

  ‘Iscariot left four survivors,’ he said. ‘Four from twelve who made their way to Israel soon after the war.’ He pushed the first folder towards me.

  ‘Aliza Dantzig was taken in by a legal clerk and his wife. In spite of her ordeal, she excelled at school and studied Law at the University of Jerusalem. She became a barrister specialising in human rights, and later a judge. She left the legal profession five years ago and entered politics. She is now a minister in the Department of Justice. She is married and has two children, one adopted.’

  He slid the second folder next to the first.

  ‘Irwin Gantz entered politics straight out of university. A doctor who has never practised medicine, if you can believe that. He is currently leader of one of our smaller opposition parties, and is an outspoken critic of settlement policy and security operations abroad.’

  A mouthful of vodka and then Bergström moved on to folder number three.

  ‘Chaim Schultz,’ he said, wiping his mouth. ‘Ex-MOSSAD.’

  I choked on a cashew nut.

  ‘Yes, I thought that would surprise you. Mr Shultz is a close friend of Irwin Gantz, and is currently serving as the Minister for Defence.’

  He didn’t move the last folder; he just stared at it.

  ‘Freya Ilana Dorfmann,’ he paused and took a deep breath, ‘came to Israel from England in 1954, having aided in the resettlement of refugees during and after the war. She studied Agriculture at Jerusalem, becoming firm friends with Aliza Dantzig.’ He stopped and looked down to his right, his eyes narrowing as though something had just occurred to him. ‘Hmm, anyway, she started a network of orchid farms and a flower delivery business, sold both companies and went to live at the fledgling Ein Geidi kibbutz. She is using her wealth to launch a new political party which aims to curb Israel’s expansion at home and abroad.’ He sat back in his chair and finished his drink. ‘Our sources tell us that Aliza Dantzig will defect from the government and join her as soon as the party’s formation is announced.’ He lit another cigarette. ‘So you see our dilemma.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘You have four people who may or not be victims of a failed Nazi experiment, and who may or may not be spies for an enemy that doesn’t exist.’

  ‘The enemy still exists, Miss Fossen. It is alive and thriving.’

  ‘Then why don’t you just kill them? It’s not like MOSSAD to be squeamish all of a sudden.’

  ‘Had we discovered Iscariot several years ago, before the four had amassed popularity and influence, then that may have been an option, but now…’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘As I said. Politics.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘We are not animals, Miss Fossen. We have approached them, told them what we know. We have offered them the opportunity to step away from public life and slip into anonymity.’

  ‘Under MOSSAD’s watchful eye of course.’

  ‘Of course, and wouldn’t you agree that is far better than the alternative? If we were to dispatch such outspoken opponents of our operations, no one would believe they were accidents. The fallout would tear Israel apart. We know it; the four of them know it.’ He lea
ned forward and frightened the life out of me simply by taking my hands.

  ‘MOSSAD cannot be seen harassing its political enemies, neither can the police or any other branch of the security services, especially when all we have as evidence is a memo written by a man I recently dissolved in a bath.’

  The plane’s wheels touched down and rumbled across the tarmac.

  I asked him what any of this had to do with me.

  ‘If I told you that, Miss Fossen,’ he said, ‘then you really would run.’

  * * *

  I wasn’t surprised when he abandoned me at Lod International. At passport control, he pushed through to the front of a very angry queue and showed his passport to the immigration officer. The officer looked him up and down and then made a phone call, switching his eyes between Bergström and me. Finally, he nodded and waved us through.

  The airport was hot and crowded, a glasshouse that caught the heat of the sun on all sides. The locals didn’t seem to mind. They fanned themselves with their newspapers, lying back in their seats with their eyes shut, thankful their God had drawn a home for them in the sand. The rest of us drank water and perspired in equal measures. I turned to ask Bergström if we could find some place cooler and he’d disappeared. I didn’t panic, though I think I would have done a few months before. I’d picked up a few words of Hebrew during my time in Dresden, enough to find a bathroom and the nearest bus station. I asked one of the dozen soldiers keeping watch inside the terminal building. He didn’t say anything. He just pointed to a sign showing a bus and an arrow.

  It was cooler outside; the sun still baked the earth and the people under it, but at least there was air, hot and dry as it was. The airport was just a terminal and a runway; it had a thin, doll’s house feel about it, as though it would disappear inside a sandstorm one day. It certainly didn’t appear as robust as the Israelis who went about their day while keeping a wary eye on foreigners. Israel was a young country, born of a people in perpetual flight. It showed.

  I found a bus heading out towards the Black Sea, paid the driver and took a seat near the back. The windows were tinted to screen out the worst of the light, but it didn’t help too much with the heat. The bus sat on the tarmac for another twenty minutes before we moved away, the seats only half-full.

  We skirted the edge of Tel Aviv, rows of white stone houses and markets that gave way to the desert. The road, such as it was, stretched out ahead of us, disappearing where the earth curved, swallowed by the low sun.

  I tried to stay small, curled up in my seat with my arms folded and my knees pressed high against my chest. It was supposed to be a cocoon of invisibility, but I was surrounded by a people who looked for the invisible, for enemies in the light.

  The woman a few seats in front had been stealing glances at me since the journey began. An hour later she moved, rocking and bouncing her way to the back so she could get a better look. She dropped into the seat on the other side of the aisle and positioned her knees under her chin so she could wrap her arms around her legs. She was mimicking me while trying to look as though she wasn’t. I smiled graciously, at least I hope I did. She didn’t smile back; instead she just asked me where I was travelling to.

  I asked her something in return. ‘Are you the police?’

  She smiled, finally, and asked me if it would bother me if she was. I said that would depend on what, as a police officer, she would do next.

  She laughed, a little too loudly for my liking. ‘I’m not the police,’ she said, leaning back and pressing her head against the window, ‘so maybe we can both relax and have a conversation.’

  ‘What if I don’t want a conversation?’

  ‘Then we’ll both sit here, very quietly, for a long and boring ride on a very hot coach.’

  She looked familiar: middle-aged, slim with ringlets of silver hair and shining eyes to match. Perhaps in her forties, or a little older, and dressed for the heat in a white linen trouser suit and a large-brimmed hat thatched from lacquered straw. She had no hand luggage with her, and when I dropped my eyes to her arms I could see they were clear.

  ‘If you’re looking for a tattoo,’ she said, ‘I don’t have one. I grew up in England during the war.’

  Her accent agreed with her. She was still smiling, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d seen her before.

  ‘You’re not from here, I can tell,’ she said. ‘Me neither, in a way.’

  ‘You’re not Jewish?’

  ‘Oh, I’m Jewish, just not Jewish enough, not for the new homeland anyway.’ She drew her knees up further, pulling herself away while inviting me in. She was flirting with me; when I didn’t respond she unfolded, moved across and extended a slender hand. ‘Pasha,’ she said. I looked at her hand as if it were loaded.

  ‘Go on; I won’t bite.’

  Her hand seemed much cooler than it should have been, but the handshake was strong and self-assured. She let go and launched into a life-story that I only half listened to. She was a nurse, she told me, working with the terminally ill in some place called Coventry. She had no husband. ‘Which is almost unheard of for a Jew of my age. But I love my work, and the men I’ve known never seem to understand that. They all seem to think it’s all rather ghoulish.’ She stopped and smiled at me as though I was supposed to say something. ‘Anyway, it was important to me, and I wasn’t about to give it up just to spit out children for the rest of my days.’

  She took two cigarettes from a silver case, lit them and offered one to me.

  ‘So is this a vacation?’ I said, taking the cigarette from her.

  ‘No.’ she said, shaking her head. ‘I left my job.’

  ‘Why? I thought you said you—’

  ‘Cancer.’ She blew a ring of smoke into the air. ‘Talk about life’s irony.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, because that’s what you say when someone tells you they’ve got cancer.

  ‘I think I took my diagnosis pretty well. The doctor said that most people just cry and never stop; others just thank him and leave the office and he never sees them again. Me? I just lit my cigarette and asked him how long.’ She seemed fairly pleased with herself.

  ‘So,’ I said, ‘how long?’

  ‘About twelve months. That’s not a hard and fast number, mind you. Depends on a lot of things they’re not really sure about yet, but what they do know is that at some point, in the very near future, I am going back to the ground.’

  She shivered and closed her eyes, savouring a long draw on her cigarette that almost burned it down to a stub. It was the first time I’d seen the mask slip. She wiped her eyes and forced a smile to her face. ‘I went back to work the next day, but I knew I didn’t want to wait this out. So I went home, told my sister the house was hers, and left.’

  I tried to think of something to say and I was grateful she didn’t let me struggle for too long.

  ‘I’m just venting. You don’t have to join in unless you want to.’

  I didn’t, not really. ‘I’m sorry, I’m just not very good with—’

  ‘Death? You’re not supposed to be. You’re supposed to shuffle through your days as though it’ll never come to you. You’re supposed to believe that if you live a good life, another life will be your reward. That’s bollocks. My shot’s been cut short, so I’m going to burn through the rest of it.’ She lit another cigarette, more as a statement than a need.

  ‘That doesn’t sound very Jewish.’

  ‘Then the plan is coming together.’

  I wondered if this was a genuine belief or just anger that she wasn’t ready to admit to. I wasn’t about to ask her. It wasn’t any of my business, and though she was talking at me like an old friend, I didn’t know her.

  And then I realised why she seemed so familiar.

  ‘I reckon you’ve got about ten minutes to tell me all about yourself.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Oh, I do. You see, I think you could be the most fascinating person I’ve ever met.’

&n
bsp; ‘I haven’t said two words to you.’

  ‘And you don’t think that makes you fascinating?’

  I felt myself blush. She was wearing me down, grinding my defences into the sand. I swallowed and stepped out from behind what was left of them.

  ‘My name is Brigit Fossen. Well, it’s really Brigit Brenna. My father is Norway’s most notorious traitor, and my mother has been driven half-mad trying to run from that.’

  She didn’t even blink, just sucked on her cigarette and narrowed her eyes.

  ‘And for my whole life, I’ve run with her, until I got mixed up with a Nazi hunter working for MOSSAD who’s dragged me halfway around the world to expose a blind war criminal. Your country is too hot and too dry. I stand out here, and I don’t like to stand out. I hate it; I hate all of this. I want to go home and that’s something I never thought I’d say because “home” hates me too.’

  She looked at me thoughtfully for a moment, and then went for broke. ‘All you’re missing is company. Here’s an idea; you and me hook up for a while. I can show you—’

  ‘And if things weren’t bad enough, there’s a MOSSAD agent trying to be the two people in the world who mean anything to me. A repressed lesbian working in medicine who also just happens to be suffering from cancer? For God’s sake, it’s like you stitched my mother and her doctor together and left a big ugly seam.’

  She stubbed out her cigarette and blew the last of the smoke out through her nostrils. She regarded me coolly, but did me the courtesy of telling the truth. ‘I told him we were overcooking it. “Let me be myself,” I said. “I’ll have her on a leash by the time we reach the Dead Sea.”’

  I wanted to hit her, but she’d probably kill me. She looked like she could. ‘Where is he? Where’s Bergström?’

  ‘On his way. I’m just the babysitter.’

  After all this time he still didn’t trust me. ‘I have done everything he’s asked.’

  ‘Reluctantly.’

  ‘I don’t remember anyone saying I had to like it.’

  ‘None of us “like it”, these things we have to do. But we do them.’ Her eyes hardened, staring at something locked away in her past. Whatever it was wanted to consume her, but she wouldn’t allow it, not yet. ‘Look around you, Brigit. What do you see?’