by Allan Topol
“Please, Mrs. Cohen,” Daphna said. “If I wanted to rob and beat you, I would have done it when you walked into the room. Yes?”
That made Evelyn Cohen stop and think.
“Why don’t you go to the French police?” Ben Cohen asked Daphna.
“I’m afraid they’ll help the terrorist.” He nodded slowly, weighing what she said. “Please, Mr. Cohen, you remember the bomb on Bus eighteen in Jerusalem last year?”
“Evelyn and I were in Jerusalem on that same street one week earlier.”
“Well, my mother was on Bus eighteen. She was killed in the explosion.”
With those words, Daphna had won over Mrs. Cohen. “What do you want us to do to help you?”
“Please let me hide until the Israeli comes for me.”
“We’ll do that,” she said. “In the meantime, do you want something to eat? We can order from room service.”
Daphna suddenly realized how long it had been since she had last eaten. “Yes, please,” she said. “But I have no money. When I’m home, I’ll mail you money.”
Ben Cohen laughed. “I don’t think that’ll be necessary.”
For the next hour, while she ate, Evelyn and Ben Cohen peppered Daphna with questions about her kibbutz, her mother and her air force duty. They sought her views about the political situation, the Palestinians and Syria. She quickly concluded that, while they were critical of the Israeli government in some respects, still they cared deeply about the Jewish state, where a number of their relatives lived. Their questions pushed her English to its limit, and Daphna found the session exhausted her already weary body.
Finally, the telephone rang, and Daphna was relieved, hoping it was Shimon.
“I’ll get it,” Ben said.
She watched him apprehensively as he picked up the phone and listened for several long seconds. Then he cupped his hand over the speaker part of the phone. “It’s someone named Shimon. He says the word is water, and he wants to speak to a young woman friend of his.”
Daphna was ecstatic. She ran across the room and eagerly picked up the phone.
“It’s Daphna,” she said in Hebrew.
“Are you okay?”
“Right now I’m great.”
“Good, I’m on the way up.”
When he got to the room, Shimon entered carrying a shopping bag. In Hebrew, he asked Daphna, “Do they speak Hebrew?”
“No,” she replied.
“Good, then we can talk. Go in the bathroom and change fast,” he said, handing her the shopping bag. “There’s a black wig, a ski cap and men’s clothes inside.”
While she was in the bathroom, he whispered to her through an opening in the door. “The people who grabbed you are very well connected. St. Tropez is swarming with cops, and there are roadblocks leading out of the city.”
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“East by car. We have Italian plates and Italian ID. Even fake Italian passports. My job is to get you safely to Genoa.”
“You think we’ll be okay?”
“Well, they’re looking for a young blond Israeli woman. So use the charcoal to give yourself a beard.”
When she emerged from the bathroom, even the Cohens barely recognized her. Shimon checked to make sure the corridor was deserted. Then he turned to the Cohens and said in a matter-of-fact tone, “If you tell anyone about us, I’ll personally come to New York and kill both of you.”
Daphna winced. When they left the room, she whispered to Shimon, “You didn’t have to say that. They’re nice people. We can trust them.”
“They had to know it’s not a game. Our lives are on the line, and we’re still a long way from safety. If police or the kidnappers come to their room, what would they do without my threat?”
* * *
Their flight from Paris to Genoa had been uneventful. Now Sagit and David waited for Daphna and Shimon in a coffee shop, deserted because of the late hour, in the terminal building of Genoa airport. Their eyes were riveted on the front door of the building, visible through the open door of the coffee shop. Out on the airfield, a small unmarked jet waited on the runway to whisk Daphna, Sagit and David back to Israel.
The problem was that there was no sign of Daphna.
David took a sip of lukewarm coffee, glanced at the clock on the wall for the thousandth time and said, “They should have been here by now. Something happened.”
Sagit was tired of providing him with possible explanations. He had been in the business. He knew what it was like waiting for people you were trying to get out of enemy hands. “They could have hit traffic. You know what those roads are like.”
“Well, why didn’t he call?”
“I know Shimon. He’d play it safe. He wouldn’t run the risk of having the call picked up.”
Grimly David shook his head. “Your plan was too obvious. All Madame Blanc had to do was get her friends to cover the border crossing point where the road from Nice runs into Italy. That’s the first thing she would have done. It was a no-brainer. And they probably never even made it that far. There are so few roads out of St. Tropez. A couple of well-placed roadblocks in the town would have done it.”
He got up from the table and paced the room nervously like a caged animal. An olive-skinned woman mopping the floor looked at him apprehensively.
“For God’s sake,” Sagit said to him, “can’t you stop pacing? You’re driving me crazy. What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing’s wrong with me,” he snarled. “I want to get Daphna out of France.”
“So do I. You were a professional. You know what these situations are like. I can’t believe you behaved so emotionally when you were with the CIA. They would have bounced you out of the Agency in a minute.”
David came back to the table and sat down. “You’re right,” he replied. “I didn’t behave like this. But this situation is different.”
“You mean because it’s Yael’s daughter?”
“That’s some of it.”
“And the rest?”
He took a deep breath and sighed. “There was one part of the story I didn’t tell you that Friday night back at the kibbutz.”
“Why is it that I’m not surprised?
Feeling the tension as much as he was, she fished around in her purse, hoping that she had left a pack of cigarettes there when she had quit smoking, but her hand came up empty. “Since we have nothing to do here but wait, you want to tell me now?”
He hesitated.
She looked at him angrily. “I think you owe me that much after the deal I got for you in Washington.”
“I’m sorry. You’re right.” He stopped talking while two policemen on patrol passed by their table and nodded. “That Friday night I told you what happened in Saudi Arabia. But before that Greg Nielsen was a young CIA agent working in Iran, when the Shah of Iran was still in power. Let me tell you what happened.”
* * *
Greg had become convinced that the Shah was seriously at risk because of the Moslem fundamentalists. He was certain that the supporters of Ayatollah Khomeini were being grossly underestimated by the American government, as well as by SAVAK, the Shah’s secret police. His difficulty was that his information came from sources that couldn’t be identified, and was often uncorroborated. He needed a smoking gun—a tape recording or copies of critical documents that would be persuasive to the Shah and to CIA headquarters in Langley.
One night, following a meeting of supporters of the Ayatollah in a rural area about a hundred miles north of Tehran, he broke into their headquarters and stole the documents he needed. As he was running through the woods to get back to the closest large village, about five miles away, where he had left his car, he suddenly heard footsteps and people chasing him. He ran as fast as he could, but his lame right leg slowed him down. Then he heard the unmistakable sound of a gun firing, and a bullet whizzed over his head. He had a Beretta holstered to his chest. So he stopped, hid behind a tree and took out a pair of night-scope gl
asses. Then he began firing.
He couldn’t tell how many were pursuing him. He kept still and waited. A couple of minutes later one of them made a frontal assault on Greg. He waited until the man was twenty yards away before firing into his chest. The man screamed and fell to the ground. Greg heard a movement on his left. Before he could fire, a bullet tore into his left shoulder. His assailant was screaming as he ran at Greg. Meantime, Greg knew he had only one bullet left, and he caught the man right in his heart. Now he was in trouble. From the shouts, he knew there were two more, but he had no chance of stopping them without ammunition. He dropped his gun, and with blood oozing from his shoulder, he began running again.
They were gaining on him, and he thought his situation was hopeless. Suddenly, to the right, he heard more gunshots, and the last two pursuers screamed as they were hit.
Weak and dazed, he looked around to see his savior. He thought he had died or was dreaming when, like an apparition, a beautiful tall blond woman approached with a gun in each hand.
Without even bothering to introduce herself, she ripped off his shirt and tied it tightly around his left shoulder to halt the flow of blood. Then she said in English, “Let’s get the hell out of here before they send backup.”
Together, they jogged toward the village, but after a mile he was too weak from the loss of blood. He was on the verge of passing out. She half carried and half supported him the rest of the way, while he still clutched his briefcase.
It was nearly midnight, and the village was dark and quiet. The blond woman knew the village, and she headed straight to the house of a Jewish doctor who supported the Shah. Without asking any questions, he treated Greg’s wound and then hid the couple behind boxes of medical supplies in a supply shed in the back.
For the next two days the couple hid in the shed, with the doctor bringing in food while the Ayatollah’s people combed the countryside for them. During those two days, Greg learned that the blond was an Israeli and a member of the Mossad. From her own intelligence sources, she, too, had learned about the meeting of the Ayatollah’s supporters, and she had been conducting her own surveillance. Greg, of course, agreed to share the documents in the briefcase with her. But something else happened in those days and nights alone in the doctor’s shed. Contrary to the regulations of both of their employers, the two of them fell in love.
* * *
David stopped talking and looked up. Sagit shook her head slowly.
“So Daphna’s your child as well as Yael’s. I should have guessed. That’s the reason Moshe refused to tell me why Yael left the Mossad. He must have forced her out when he learned that one of his protégées had become pregnant with the child of an agent of another country’s intelligence service. It still pains him to talk about it.”
David’s eyes narrowed. “She told me that she had had enough of life in the Mossad, and she was quitting. She wanted to have our child and a normal life back in Israel.”
“So you didn’t see her again until you came to Israel from Russia five years ago?”
“We were too much in love for that.” She looked sharply at him. “Over the years we developed a way of corresponding. We would arrange clandestine meetings in Europe about twice a year when she was on a fur-buying trip. In fact, that was the reason she started the kibbutz fur business. Anyone who picked up one of my letters would have thought I was Danish. I was a fur trader, and we were discussing a transaction. Once Yael even brought Daphna to Copenhagen, when she was three. The rest of the time I had to settle for pictures.”
“Does Daphna know that you’re her father?”
Sadly, he shook his head. “I should have told her, but I was afraid it would put her too much at risk. Obviously, I’ll tell her as soon as I see her again—if I see her again.”
Sagit didn’t respond. The hour was growing late. She was beginning to worry herself.
She decided to keep talking to him to pass the time. “What happened to you in Iran after Yael left?”
“I stayed in the country, serving the United States, as I had been trained. Repeatedly, I kept trying to warn my government about the threat posed by Ayatollah Khomeini and his fundamentalist crowd, but they wouldn’t listen to me in Washington. After that I became CIA station chief in Saudi Arabia.”
“Can I ask you one more question?”
“Sure, go ahead.”
“It’s kind of personal.”
“C’mon, Sagit, I’ve already told you things no one else knows. At this point, you’ve fully opened me up. I have no more secrets from you. Ask whatever you want.”
“Did you ever consider quitting the CIA and starting a normal life with Yael once you knew she was pregnant?”
He gave a long, low sigh of resignation—the sigh of a man who had made a serious mistake long ago in his life and would regret it for the rest of his days. “I constantly thought about it,” he said ruefully. “But I was a professional soldier. My top priority was serving my country. Other things had to find their place. In essence, I kept saying, I’ll quit next year. I’ll quit next year. I’ll join Yael in Israel. Or I’ll go to the United States with her, and we’ll live there! But things always kept coming up. First, the situation got really dicey with the Shah. And after that I became the station chief in Saudi Arabia. I could never pull myself away from the job. I thought I loved my country more than I loved Yael, and more than I loved Daphna.”
He looked melancholy. “I would have had twenty years with her instead of five—or a lifetime, because if we had been together she would never have started the fur business, and she would never have been on Bus eighteen that day.” He took a deep breath. “Amazing that I could have been so stupid, isn’t it?”
Sagit didn’t hear his final words. She closed her eyes, deep in thought herself, remembering two relationships she had had with perfectly wonderful men, whose offers of marriage she had rejected because married life wouldn’t be compatible with her Mossad career. For the first time she wondered if she’d made the right decision. She and David were more alike than she cared to admit—a couple of old, tired warriors.
When she opened her eyes, he was staring at her. “Seems to me as if I’ve struck a nerve. You want to tell me how you got into this business and why you stuck with it all these years?”
Sagit never had a chance to respond. There was a commotion at the entrance of the terminal building as a burly, unshaven man burst inside followed by what looked like an effeminate man wearing a ski cap.
“Quick,” Sagit shouted to Shimon, “follow us.”
With David in tow, she raced toward the airfield and the waiting Israeli jet. Shimon and Daphna were only a few steps behind .
In a matter of seconds, the airplane door slammed shut, the engines were revved up, and the sleek jet headed for the runway. Only then did Daphna rip off the ski cap and black wig, letting her long blond hair cascade down to her shoulders.
As Sagit took Shimon to the front of the plane for a debriefing, David led Daphna to the rear cabin, where they could be alone. There in the dim cabin light over northern Italy, he told Daphna that he was her biological father, and he described the long-term relationship he and Yael had. Initially she was angry that he hadn’t told her before. “We could have been a family. Now it’s too late.”
“Please, Daphna, you have to understand I was an exile and a fugitive. People were trying to kill me. If you knew, you’d be at risk. Your mother and I talked about it. We decided we had to protect you.”
Gradually, his words sank in, and her anger softened. Finally, when the shock of what she had learned passed, all that she could think about was that she now had a father. After all of these years she had a father. She hugged him tightly. Tears ran down her cheeks. They were tears of joy.
* * *
There was no joy in Paris as Victor finally got up the courage to make the phone call that he had been dreading.
“Well?” a furious Madame Blanc demanded when she answered.
Victor’s voice
was quavering. “They haven’t been able to find her.”
“And you never will. By now she’s no doubt in hiding and in touch with her embassy.”
“I’m not…not sure,” he stammered.
“Well, I am. Why did you hire a bunch of fucking incompetents?”
“Jean has always been efficient in the past. I’ve never had a problem with him before,” he said, thinking about the man with the scar on his face. “These people are very good.”
“Oh, horse shit! First the bakery. Now this. After two mistakes, he belongs on the bottom of the Mediterranean.”
“But...”
“No buts.” Her sentence had been passed. Her firm voice communicated that there could be no chance for reconsideration. The message would not be lost on Victor. “I want you to make it happen. I want people to know that I won’t tolerate failure.”
Victor paused to wipe the perspiration from his forehead. “What about the operation in Saudi Arabia?” he asked.
“We continue as planned,” she replied emphatically.
“Shouldn’t we reconsider after what David did?”
“From the story you told me earlier, she escaped on her own.” She paused to think about David, and Victor’s animosity toward the former CIA agent. “The information he’s given me so far has panned out. He’s been more helpful than some other people I thought were dependable.”
Victor’s hand was trembling so badly he almost dropped the phone. Still he responded, “But with the girl gone, he’ll never show up in Paris before the attack. We’ll never get those codes from him.”
“It’s irrelevant. With the information I’ve gotten from him, I can have Khalid make adjustments in his attack. Besides, the money in Nielsen’s bank account makes him vulnerable as a co-conspirator and will keep him silent. I’ll have the bank tip me off if he tries to show for the money. After the attack, I know how to deal with him. I’ve got connections with some high-ranking people at BMW. We’ll use them to lure him out of Israel to Germany to discuss his automotive computer system. We’ll kill him there.”
