by Allan Topol
David didn’t see anything suspicious. Still, he would make certain they kept their voices down. You could never be sure who understood Hebrew.
He had thought long and hard about the best way to explain the situation. Daphna was worldly and yet she was young and fragile. He wasn’t sure there was a good way.
After they each had a glass of champagne and ordered dinner, he began. “You were in the Israeli air force,” he said awkwardly. “You flew helicopters. You learned to live with danger.”
She cringed. “Please I don’t want to talk about that. Not now. Not ever.”
He wanted to kick himself for beginning the discussion so poorly. So he decided to dive in, speaking softly, almost in a whisper. “Listen, Daphna, we were followed to the restaurant. We’re in danger. Now. Both of us.”
Stunned, she said, “What are you talking about, David?”
“Please keep your voice down. There are things in my past life that have caught up with me.”
“You mean, when you lived in Moscow?”
“No, I mean when I was an American.”
She nearly choked on her champagne. “But I thought... What do you mean?... You told me you came from Moscow. My mother said you were a Russian.”
“Sometimes, things aren’t the way they seem.”
As they worked their way through first courses of salmon and mushrooms, and entrees of veal and quail, David told her about his job as CIA station chief in Saudi Arabia, about his hasty exodus from that country after his fight with General Chambers, his entry into Israel and the events of recent days.
Once the waiter had left them with large dessert menus and departed, David pursed his lips and looked at her. “They know that I care for you. So they’re trying to use the threat to you to get me to comply. You see now why you’re in danger?”
She nodded.
“So, I have to get you back to Israel for a couple of months, but you can’t say a word to anyone until you’re back home. Not even to your closest friends here in Paris. When you’re safely back on the kibbutz, call the people at the Sorbonne and tell them that you had to rush home for a family emergency.”
“But if these people are watching me, and they’re even outside the restaurant tonight, won’t they stop me from going home?”
“Oh, they’ll try. You can be sure of that, but I’m working with the Mossad. We have a plan to deal with them.”
“Tell me,” she said anxiously.
“Tomorrow morning at exactly seven-thirty,” he said. “I want you to go to a bakery called Bonte, located on rue Amelie, which is about six blocks from your apartment—”
She interrupted, “I know it well.”
“As you know,” he continued, “the bakery will be crowded then. I want you, quickly and unobtrusively, to go into the back of the bakery, where the ovens are, and ask for Guy. That’s all you have to do. We’ll take it from there.”
She looked at him wide-eyed. She ran her fingers over the white linen tablecloth. “Why can’t I stay here and help you?”
He wanted to be gentle with her. “Not now,” he replied. “Trust me on that. Maybe later. The main thing now is to give me room to maneuver. I can’t do that if they’ve got you at the end of a gun scope.”
Reluctantly, she seemed persuaded. “How did you ever get into this spy business?” she asked.
“It’s late,” he said. “We’ve covered a lot of ground tonight. I’ll tell you another time.”
She refused to be put off. “I want to know. Besides, we still have dessert.”
So as a decadent dacquoise sat untouched in front of Daphna, David began talking again.
“I was born in a place called Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, a small steel mill town in northwest Pennsylvania. My parents immigrated to the United States from Denmark when they were first married. My father operated a small restaurant across from a steel mill. They were good people, decent people. They went to church every Sunday. They taught me to love my country. I was a good athlete in high school, and I thought I could get an athletic scholarship to college because my parents didn’t have much money. But I injured my leg in a game of American football in high school, and that was the end of my athletic career.
“Fortunately, I was also a good student, particularly in science and engineering. Carnegie Tech awarded me a scholarship in chemical engineering. But I almost didn’t go.”
“What happened?”
“My senior year in high school a couple of kids, a couple of punks from the next town, got drunk and robbed my dad’s store. He was a man of principle, and he wouldn’t give them the money in the cash register—the grand sum of twenty-one dollars.” David swallowed hard. “They shot and killed him.”
He paused to look at her. There were tears in the corners of her eyes. She was shaking her head in disbelief. “I’m so sorry. First your father and then last year my mother.”
“Life can be unfair,” he said sadly. His eyes were fixed on the wood-paneled wall across the room. She had lost him. His mind was back in Aliquippa and the awful day he had heard about his father. She squeezed her hands together, waiting for him to continue.
Finally, he began again. “I didn’t want to take that college scholarship, because I was the oldest of three children, two boys and a girl, but my mother insisted. She buried my father, and she did what she had to do. She went into that restaurant and ran it as well as my father had. She made me admire strong, self-reliant women.”
Daphna thought of her mother. Yael had been a strong self-reliant woman. “What did you do?”
“What she told me to do. I spent the next four years studying hard to be a chemical engineer at Carnegie Tech. Meantime, my younger brother refused to follow her orders and go to college. He left Aliquippa after high school graduation, went down to Oklahoma and made his first million in six months wildcatting for oil. So I didn’t have to worry about my family’s finances any longer.
“My senior year of college, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I figured I’d like to travel and see the world because I’d never been anywhere in my life, outside of western Pennsylvania. I wasn’t tied to the area emotionally. I had a girlfriend from high school whom I’d outgrown. So when I saw a notice on the college placement bulletin board that said, ‘Company engaged in international operations seeks chemical engineer for oil-related projects,’ I signed up.
“The CIA recruiter snowed me, but he didn’t have to try hard. I knew from my brother that defending America’s sources of foreign oil was strongly in the country’s interest, and we had already had the 1973 oil embargo. Besides, I wanted to serve my country in the worst way. I had volunteered for the Marines during the Vietnam War, when I was still in high school, before my dad was killed, but they wouldn’t take me because of my bad leg. I cried about that. All through college I felt guilty that I was stuck in school while my friends had a chance to serve.”
Daphna was on the edge of her seat, mesmerized by his story. “But I thought American kids of your generation hated the war in Vietnam?”
David shook his head. He understood how Daphna had gotten that impression from the media. How could she understand the patriotism that so many first-generation Americans instilled in their children? “Not all of them. Just the vocal ones, and maybe in hindsight the smarter ones, but that’s not how it looked then.”
“So you signed up with the CIA and became a spy?”
“We don’t like to use that word. I became a representative of the Company, as we called it. They sent me down to Texas to learn everything about the oil business, working for Spartan Oil, a large oil corporation. After that they gave me various postings through the Middle East, which gets us to five years ago and what happened in Saudi Arabia with General Chambers.” David signaled to the waiter for the check. “And it’s also time to get you home to sleep. We both have a busy day tomorrow.”
As they left the restaurant, he handed her a package of matches which contained the Hotel Bristol telephone number. “Tuck it
into your purse,” he said. “If anything suspicious happens tonight, call me immediately.”
* * *
Sagit was squatting down behind a second-floor window above the Bonte Bakery with her eyes riveted on the street below, continually scanning from the right—in the direction she thought they would come—to the left, just in case she was wrong.
Last night, she had arranged to have a Parisian taxi driver sympathetic to the Israeli cause, who did jobs for the Mossad from time to time, wait on boulevard Haussman as David waved for a cab after dinner, first to drop off Daphna and then to take him back to the Bristol. David had given the driver a report on the surveillance—one man on foot in a green soldier’s coat, who had a large scar that ran the length of his right cheek; and another in a midnight blue Citroën sedan, license number PCG1095. As soon as he got home, the taxi driver had called Sagit with the information.
Suddenly, Sagit saw Daphna, dressed in a tan raincoat, rounding the corner. A man in a long green coat was about ten yards behind her. Sagit picked up the binoculars. It was Scarface, all right. A midnight blue Citroën then rounded the corner, following another ten yards behind.
Ready for action, Sagit felt a surge of adrenaline. She picked up the cell phone on the floor and called Avi in an old, battered green Renault parked on the rue Amelie beyond.
“It’s time,” she snapped into the phone.
“Position okay?” replied Avi.
“Precisely. Stay where you are until you hear from me.”
As Daphna prepared to enter the bakery, Sagit scrambled down the staircase that led to a driveway running along one side of the building. A beige bakery van with the name bonte printed was parked in the back.
* * *
Scarface stood outside, but kept his eyes on the tall girl with blond hair as she walked into the bakery—mobbed with people as it was every morning. This wasn’t London, and there was no orderly queue. Instead, there was lots of pushing and shoving as those in the rear tried to force their way to the front, where the clerks—all young women—tried to maintain their composure while frantically filling orders.
Scarface heard Robert in the Citroën call to him, and he looked away from the shop to see what Robert wanted. “Hey, get me a chocolate croissant.”
“Not here,” he replied. “It’s too crowded.”
Scarface looked back into the bakery. For a second he thought he had lost her, and he panicked. But then he spotted the back of a tall girl with blond hair and a tan raincoat almost up to the counter, ready to place her order. He breathed a sigh of relief.
His gaze remained on the girl as the clerk handed her a bag, and she placed several coins on the counter. When she turned around, though he was horrified. She wasn’t Daphna! As she walked toward the front door of the bakery, beads of sweat popped out on his forehead. There had to be another tall blond girl in a tan raincoat in the bakery. His eyes frantically searched the crowd.
She wasn’t there!
“Oh god dammit,” he cursed. He’d lost her. Somehow, they tricked him. They must have gotten her out through the back. Suddenly he saw a beige bakery van move along the driveway, stop for an instant and turn to the left onto rue Amelie.
She had to be in that truck, he decided. He ran back to the Citroën, shouting, “Quick, Robert. Start the engine.”
* * *
Daphna was lying on the floor of the bakery van, between trays of pastries and baskets of baguettes, just as Sagit had directed. In her hand she tightly clutched an Israeli passport that identified her as Leora Feldman and an El Al plane ticket for a flight this afternoon from Paris to Israel. The instructions that Sagit had barked to Daphna were still echoing in her head.
At the next corner, the van turned left and continued along for another minute. Suddenly the driver slammed on the brakes. From the front seat, Sagit shouted to Daphna in Hebrew, “Now move. Fast.”
With that cue, Daphna sprang to her feet, opened the back door of the van and scrambled out, trying not to step on a tray of croissants in the process. Outside on the street, she saw a navy blue Opel sedan parked across the wide boulevard, facing in the other way, just as Sagit had promised. The rear door of the Opel was ajar on the street side. Threading her way among fast-moving cars, Daphna ran across the street and threw herself into the back of the Opel and down on the floor, just as Sagit had directed. She felt a blanked descend over her body. The door slammed, and the car started moving.
* * *
Back on rue Amelie, there was pandemonium in front of the bakery. Scarface and Robert had gotten only about twenty yards in the Citroën when they encountered a battered old green Renault, stopped dead between two parked cars in the one-lane narrow street. The Renault appeared to have engine trouble, and it was coughing and sputtering as the driver tried to start the engine, which was obviously flooded.
Scarface ran over to the driver who was cursing in Arabic while repeatedly pressing down on the accelerator and feeding still more gasoline into the flooded engine.
“Fucking stupid Arab,” Scarface shouted.
Pedestrians stopped to watch. Ignoring them, Scarface yanked the idiot driver out of the Renault and signaled to Robert in the Citroën. Together, they pushed the Renault down the street until there was an opening between cars. Then they ran back to their own car.
At the corner, they turned left just as they had seen the bakery van do. They drove fast down the boulevard, looking straight ahead for the beige vehicle oblivious to the navy blue Opel that passed them in the other direction.
When they caught up with the van a few minutes later, it was parked in front of a brasserie. The driver was climbing out of the van and walking to the back. He opened the rear doors and pulled out a basket of baguettes.
The Citroën braked to a halt right behind the van, and Scarface jumped out first. He pushed the driver aside and looked into the back of the van. There were only bread and pastries. He ran around to the seats in the front. Both were empty.
Frustrated, he shouted at the driver, “Where the fuck is she?”
The driver shook his head in bewilderment. “Who, monsieur, is she? You think I keep a tart in the back? Only fruit tarts, that’s all.” The driver laughed loudly at his own joke.
“Oh, go to hell,” Scarface shouted and stormed away from the van.
At her seat in another brasserie across the boulevard, Sagit sipped an espresso and watched the scene unfold. Far from being relaxed and relieved, Sagit was now tense and worried. The plan, up to this point, had been her own, and it had gone like clockwork. The rest of it, though, bothered her. She would have had the Opel drive Daphna north and east across the French border into Belgium, where she would get a plane from Brussels to Tel-Aviv. But David had talked her out of it, arguing that a plane from Charles De Gaulle was better because they could get Daphna on it sooner—before Victor Foch and his people had a chance to react. The drive to the Belgium border would take hours, and border crossing guards could be alerted by then. In the end, she had yielded to him because he said it was his stepdaughter—Yael’s child—involved, he should be able to make the decision. Now she was sorry.
* * *
Furious, Madame Blanc hung up the phone. He was smart, this Greg Nielsen, and he couldn’t be underestimated. Their plan to get the girl out of the country had been very clever, but it wouldn’t succeed. Madame Blanc had one more card to play.
The minister of transportation in the current government had been a protégé of Monsieur Claude Dissault, her mentor. Relationships like these had facilitated her rise to the top of the French business world, and she never hesitated to use them.
“Henri,” she said to the busy minister when her call was put right through, “I need a small favor.”
* * *
As the Opel approached Charles De Gaulle Airport, Daphna tried to calm her nerves. She was almost free. Within an hour she would be on a plane heading back to Israel.
Check-in at the El Al ticket counter went quickly. Leora Fel
dman’s papers were in order, and a clerk handed her a business-class boarding pass.
Daphna knew the routine at Charles De Gaulle well. As she rode the motorized walkway up to the second level, she reminded herself that the only serious checkpoint occurred at passport control. Approaching the four lines that each led up to a heavy plate glass window, she glanced at the four clerks—all men—on the desks behind those windows. The bald-headed man-second from the right-appeared to be the most bored, and he was stamping passports with barely a glance. She picked his line.
Eight or ten people were ahead of her. Her knees were knocking, and she could feel perspiration forming under her arms. She trembled thinking how much international travelers were at the mercy of a government clerk who could detain them by simply lifting a phone.
Without appearing to do so, she glanced around the passport control waiting area. In the corner of her eye she could see two men dressed in dark suits with earphones in their ears, surveying the crowd. She could sense them boring in on her with beady black eyes. She looked away, hoping she was imagining their attention.
Only one person was ahead of her in line now, a gray-haired woman carrying a large straw bag. Daphna tightly clutched the Leora Feldman passport in her moist hand.
Suddenly, the telephone rang on the table in front of the bald man. He stopped processing passports to answer it, looking at his computer screen all the while. He glanced up, and in an awful instant, his eyes locked on Daphna. She looked away, but she knew they had targeted her. She considered running, but the two dark suits were watching her, moving in closer to her line.
Without any choice, she decided to press ahead. The woman in front of her was processed, and it was her turn now. As she placed her passport in front of the bald-headed man, the two blue suits closed in on her like bookends. “Please come with us Mademoiselle,” one of them said to her.
* * *
David walked into Victor Foch’s office with a great feeling of relief. Sagit had called him from the brasserie to say that Daphna’s escape had gone according to plan. By now Daphna should be on a plane back to Israel.
