by Dan Sehlberg
He ordered a bistecca Fiorentina to share — not a whole cow, but well over a kilo of meat — and, on the side, a salad and two portions of white asparagus with truffle aioli. There was no point in taking a chance on the wine, so he ordered a Barolo, 2004. And a bottle of San Pellegrino. When the waiter had gone, he leaned back.
‘Now it’s your turn to tell me. What do you do all day?’
‘I work at the Israeli embassy in London.’
‘Ah! A spy.’
She smiled broadly.
‘James Bond himself. No, no. I’m an interpreter. Maybe not quite as exciting, but challenging enough.’
‘Why an interpreter?’
‘I love languages. All sorts. I was interested in them even when I was little, and when I discovered that it was easy for me to learn them, my interest grew into a passion.’
‘How many languages do you speak?’
‘Six. But I understand at least twice that many — mostly Arabic and Romance languages, but I’ve also studied Slavic and Germanic ones.’
‘Impressive. It must be wonderful to be able to move through all those cultures, and understand their languages. It gives you a whole different kind of proximity. Authenticity.’
‘It is wonderful. Unfortunately, I don’t travel all that much. There are several countries whose languages I speak fluently but that I’ve never been to.’
The table was filled with plates. The waiter didn’t bother to offer Eric a taste of the wine; he just poured them generous glasses, before squeezing the bottle between a platter of asparagus and a bowl of salad. Eric studied the large pieces of meat.
‘Have you ever been to Argentina?’
She shook her head.
‘They have the best meat in the world.’
She took a sip of wine. She held the glass with her hand cupping the globe. As she drank, her elbow stuck out from her body at a right angle. There was something unpolished about the motion — something rough. It was a strange contrast to her otherwise very graceful mannerisms.
‘Did you know that Israel could just as easily have ended up in Argentina?’
He shook his head in surprise.
‘Theodor Herzl, the father of Zionism, suggested two potential locations for the Jewish state: Palestine and Argentina. The fact is, he argued for Argentina because he thought the conditions there would be better for settlers.’
Eric looked at her sceptically.
‘Did he think you would get all of Argentina?’
‘Of course not. He hoped that Argentina would offer us a territory.’
Eric thought about what she’d just said.
‘If you’d ended up there, you would have avoided all the conflicts with angry neighbours. And the war with Lebanon. But I suppose you might have ended up at war with Chile or Brazil instead?’
Her eyes narrowed.
‘As you know, religion is at the forefront of most conflicts in the world, and the tension in this region is all its own.’
She pointed at her portion of meat with her knife.
‘But, in any case, the meat would have been better.’
Eric took a bite of his beef and nodded thoughtfully.
‘But this isn’t bad.’
Rachel put down her silverware, drank some wine, and looked at the notebook that Eric had left lying on the table.
‘Is that your interview book?’
He instinctively placed his hand on the book, as though to shield it from her gaze.
‘Well … I guess you could say that.’
He hesitated. His thoughts were running along two parallel tracks. One was prompting him not to show the book to anyone. The other, the more intense one, was focussing on what she’d said: she was an expert at languages — Arabic languages. She cocked her head.
‘What do you mean by that?’
He made a decision.
‘It’s not my interview book. It’s actually not even my book. Or, well, now it’s mine. I bought it. But I’m not the one who wrote in it.’
She frowned.
‘Who did you buy it from?’
‘I can’t tell you. Confidentiality, protecting sources, and all that. But I think its contents have to do with the virus attack.’
Her head was still tilted, and her eyes locked onto his.
‘And what does it say?’
‘A lot. But nothing I understand, unfortunately. It seems to be written in some sort of code.’
She straightened up.
‘May I see?’
He handed over the book. She put down her glass, wiped her hands on her napkin, and opened it to the first page. He studied her face. Her curly black hair fell across her eyes. She pushed it away and looked up, smiling.
‘Well, you must be curious now.’
‘Do you mean you know what it says?’ He couldn’t hide his eagerness.
She calmly cut a bite of meat and chewed it in silence. He extended a hand.
‘Come on.’
‘The Ottoman Empire arose in Anatolia in the late-13th century, and lasted until the beginning of the 1920s. At its peak, it included large parts of the Middle East, south-eastern Europe, and northern Africa.’
He looked at her in confusion.
‘Interesting. But what about the code?’
She took out a pen.
‘Ottoman is a form of Turkish that was influenced by Persian and Arabic. Its written form is based on an extended form of the Arabic alphabet.’
‘But it doesn’t look like Turkish. Or Arabic.’
‘Correct. If it had been Ottoman, the similarities would have been clear.’
She took a napkin, placed it beside the notebook, and slowly began to write down Hebrew letters.
‘This is a military code. The Ottoman army was sophisticated. They used a code in order to transfer sensitive information.’
‘And you just happen to know it?’
‘Well, as I said, I’ve always been interested in languages. But this, in particular, was one of my teacher’s side interests. He taught me the code just because it was interesting. It’s actually really simple once you’ve learned the key.’
She had already written three lines of text on the napkin.
‘I’m rusty. Here’s a bit I can’t make out. The fact is, I don’t understand any of what I’ve just translated, but maybe you will.’
She turned the napkin around and pushed it over to him. He looked at the text.
‘Sorry. I don’t know Hebrew.’
At first she looked at him in confusion, but then she laughed.
‘Oh, sorry. I just assumed you did. Let me translate it into English.’
She leaned over the napkin and wrote another line parallel to the Hebrew.
‘It’s not a normal language. There are lots of special characters. Does it mean anything to you?’
He nodded.
‘Absolutely. It’s a programming language. What you’ve written so far seems to be log-in information for some sort of database or chat room.’
She nodded curtly and kept writing. He followed each new letter intently.
‘Yes. That’s definitely log-in information for a database. And what comes after seems to be a memo. Something to do with authentication.’
‘Do you want me to keep going?’
‘If you can. You don’t have to translate everything — the first and second pages, maybe. That will give me something to work with.’
She looked up.
‘Work with? What are you going to do? Are you a computer genius now, too?’
He had forgotten that he was a journalist, and not a professor at KTH.
‘I’ve done quite a bit of programming, too, mostly as a hobby.’
She looked at him a bit too long. She’d seen through the lie. He cleared his throat.
‘Would you like some coffee?’
She nodded and went back to her writing. The wine was gone. He caught the waiter’s attention.
‘Two espressos.’
When the waiter returned with the coffee cups, Rachel leaned back and ran her hands across her face.
‘I can’t do any more right now. Here.’
She handed over three napkins, all full of writing.
‘These are the first four pages. I’ve translated them from a language I understand to one I don’t.’
What he wanted most of all was to rush back to his hotel room and throw himself into the cracked code. But she had worked for a long time, and had finally turned the invisible lens and brought everything into focus. He couldn’t just run off. And he liked being with her. He raised his coffee cup at her.
‘Cheers to your fantastic gift for languages.’
She smiled. ‘To the Ottomans.’
Rachel swallowed the bitter coffee. The notebook lay in the middle of the table; he had folded the napkins with the translation and had stuck them between the pages. What she really wanted to do was take the notebook and make sure that Unit 8200 got it for a complete analysis. That might be a breakthrough. But she couldn’t just run off. She was surprised that he’d so readily accepted the transparent lie about the language teacher who’d taught her the code. It was so completely implausible. But he was probably so eager to learn what it said in the notebook that he’d forgotten his good sense. In actuality, it had taken them several days to crack the code. They had only had the notes from the raid in Nice to go on, but those notes hadn’t given them much. They just contained incomplete code, and revealed nothing about the terrorists or the virus. But this was something totally different. Eric had a whole notebook, and an address to a database. How had he gotten it?
She studied him. Thick, brown hair. Kind, brown eyes. There was something anguished about him. He never looked happy, not even when he was laughing. He had a narrow, pointy nose. Thick eyebrows. Narrow lips. He looked weak. There’d been no physical training for that body. But there was something attractive about him — a naïve and unconscious charm. He felt genuine. Not in the nervous lies he threw out about being a journalist and programming for a hobby, but deep inside. He seemed like the opposite of a terrorist. But she knew they came in all shapes and sizes. The harmless ones were the dangerous ones. There was a red slip out for him — that made him a sanctioned target, but not before he’d been questioned. They needed to understand who he was, because he was a piece of the puzzle that didn’t fit with any of the other ones. She looked at his hands. Hands were important — they were the first thing she noticed in a man. He had nice hands. Office hands. And a small silver wedding ring.
Rachel wanted to smoke, but at the same time she didn’t want to appear weak or nervous. She would have to wait. But a drink was different. She smiled gently.
‘I’d like another martini.’
He interrupted a monologue about Italian wines, and nodded in agreement. There was something uncertain and almost childish about him, as though he were trying to seem sophisticated but was really just lost. She had a sudden urge to kiss him.
There was something in her gaze that made him nervous. It was impossible to read her intentions. She had been drinking, but she didn’t seem affected in the least. For his part, he could feel the alcohol, and decided not to drink any more. When the waiter placed two martinis on their table, he took the opportunity to hand him his credit card. Rachel sipped the drink without saying anything. She had cracked the code. It was fantastic — possibly the biggest thing to happen yet. How was this possible? How could he have gotten so lucky? At the same time, it was scary. What if the code didn’t lead anywhere? What if the notebook was just a dead end? He wanted to go to his computer and get it over with. But at the same time he wanted to drag it out, to keep the dream alive. He recalled the feeling he’d had before he tested Mind Surf: the desire to leave the lottery ticket unscratched as long as possible. But this time it was totally different. This time everything was at stake.
She ran her finger around the edge of the glass and said, without looking up, ‘What are you thinking about?’
‘Oh … everything and nothing. How life happens around us. How we’re sitting here in Tel Aviv.’
‘Does that bother you?’
‘No. But it’s … unexpected.’
‘Will your wife be worried?’
‘She has nothing to worry about.’
‘If you say so.’
Perhaps she sounded a bit wounded. She swallowed her drink in one gulp. He signed the credit-card slip and met her gaze.
‘Shall we go?’
She nodded, picked up her handbag, and stood up.
‘Don’t forget the notebook.’
The night was warm and sultry; footsteps echoed between the buildings. They were alone on Montefiore Street, and the buildings kept the traffic to a distant hum. They said nothing during the short walk back to the hotel. Rachel was walking a bit ahead of him, and she stopped at the entryway stairs to wait for him. The lobby was full of a large group that was checking in. Rachel nodded at the bar.
‘Nightcap? My treat.’
She pushed her way toward the bar. He caught sight of a black corner sofa that seemed to be free, and sat down on it and leaned back. The air was heavy and close; the room was packed with people and some sort of house music. He yearned for Chopin.
‘Let’s drink to Israel!’
She sat close to him on the sofa and placed two shots before them.
‘Sabra.’
He picked up the glass suspiciously and sniffed the brownish liquid.
‘What is it?’
‘The national liqueur of Israel. Chocolate, with oranges from Jaffa. I prefer whisky, but I didn’t want anything too strong.’
‘Thanks.’
The drink was thick and cloying. He made a face.
‘Not really my thing. I’d rather have chocolate cake and oranges on their own.’
‘Me, too. But now you’ve tried it.’
The sat in silence for a while. Rachel fingered her glass.
‘Where’s your wife?’
‘In Sweden.’
‘Didn’t she want to come along?’
‘She’s sick.’
She looked him in the eye.
‘Nothing serious, I hope?’
‘She got sick just before I left. I don’t actually know what’s wrong with her. But I’m sure it will be fine.’ There was a lump in his stomach. ‘And you?’
‘What?’
‘Do you have anyone?’
She looked over toward the lobby.
‘I’m still looking.’
They were quiet again. He took the silence as a signal to leave.
‘Thanks so much for your pleasant company. And for helping with the code.’
She smiled faintly and they stood up. She was staying on the second floor; he was on the third. He followed her to her room. When they arrived at the black wooden door, she turned around and pressed up close to him. He felt her breath against his neck, and could smell a faint scent of jasmine from her perfume. He felt the contours of her body. With her lips against his neck, she whispered, ‘I know more than Ottoman codes.’
She played teasingly with his shirt buttons. He hesitated, and then she pushed him away.
‘I’m sure we’ll see each other tomorrow.’
Then she pulled her key card through the reader and slunk in without looking around. He remained standing outside the closed door.
Herzliya, Israel
As one of the highest-ranking statesmen in the country and a personal friend of Ben Shavit’s, he had every
right to be there. And yet the building made him nervous. Sinon felt vulnerable, as though he were being watched. If there was anywhere his identity might be revealed, it was here, in the very heart of the Mossad, the intelligence unit’s centre for strategy and analysis in the small suburb of Herzliya, just outside Tel Aviv, in this enormous complex of black glass and shiny steel. As always, his errand seemed weak and transparent. Everyone he met seemed to see right through him and to know exactly what he was really up to. And yet they let him in, typed his requests into their terminals, and politely followed him past rows of filing cabinets and server halls to retrieve anything he asked for. He must have been here at least ten times in the years he’d worked for Ben Shavit, retrieving important information that he’d smuggled out to the organisation in Palestine.
This evening was special, like the calm before the storm. A lot of things would change tomorrow. There would be another dimension to the virus threat; the damage would move from messing with ones and zeroes to actually killing. Tomorrow, Ahmad Waizy’s martyrs would carry out their heroic actions in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. The men were already in the country, and the equipment would arrive early tomorrow morning. Soon the time would come for him to use his position and trust in earnest to convince Ben Shavit to go along with Hezbollah’s demands. After that, his task would be done and he would finally leave the infidels and return to his own people. He would return as a hero, full of knowledge about the inner workings of the enemy. But before he was finished he, too, had a minor task to accomplish — a task that he had added himself, without checking with anyone. Maybe it was unnecessarily risky, even foolhardy. But deep down he was a soldier, and he wanted to feel that he personally had caused harm. This time, he himself would be an operative, and it was worth the risk. He would avenge his brothers, and kill the Jews’ executioner.
He had created a false inquiry into the Dubai assignment. The papers he carried to Herzliya bore the forged signatures of defence minister Ehud Peretz, and stamps from military intelligence. Dubai had gone wrong, and what was meant to look like a natural death had turned into a sensational murder. The investigation would find out where mistakes had been made. He was the only one who knew that the investigation was fake, and he truly hoped he wouldn’t run into David Yassur, or, even worse, Meir Pardo. But it was just past eleven at night, and the likelihood that either of them was out and about in Herzliya was small.
