The Reykjavik Assignment

by Adam LeBor

  “Eli,” she said, her voice soft now, the undercurrent of sadness tangible. “Leave it. It’s over. You, me. Israel. Everything. It’s over.”

  Eli sat back and exhaled slowly. “Yael, let me put aside my personal feelings here. We spent thousands of man-hours training you. You were one of the best ever. Top of your class. You remember your nickname? The Magician. Then you left, making everyone very pissed, at least until we placed you.”

  She sat up. “Placed me? What does that mean? I got my job on my own.”

  Eli laughed and put his left hand on Yael’s arm, still holding the Beretta against her with his right. “Of course you did. With just a tiny bit of help. You have had your adventures. But now it’s payback time.”

  Yael shook his arm off hers. “Listen to me, Eli, and listen hard. I am not coming back to Tel Aviv.”

  “Not even for a couple of days?”

  “I am done with that life.”

  “But that life is not done with you.”

  “Meaning?”

  “I’ll give you a couple of days to think about things. Meanwhile, I have some photographs and a little film that might help you make up your mind.” Eli gestured to the operative sitting at the end of the long curved bench. He stood up, walked over, and handed Eli an iPhone.

  Eli passed the phone to Yael with his left hand. A video clip played, featuring a woman wearing the long sleeved blouse and ankle-length skirt of the religiously observant. She was darker and younger than Yael, but they shared the same physique and fine-boned beauty. Standing in the courtyard of a red-roofed villa, under harsh, bright sunlight, she was surrounded by children laughing and shouting.

  Yael’s stomach turned to ice.

  Eli said, “Brave woman, living on an isolated settlement. Especially when her husband is away so often.”

  She looked at the side of Eli’s head. Her heart was racing, her muscles tensed and ready for action. His scalp was covered with a faint black stubble. She clenched her right hand, feeling the nails push into her palm as her thumb locked the fingers into place. One swift jab, just above his ear, and Eli would topple sideways. Her left hand following instantly, a sideways hammer smashing into his nose. Or his throat. His thorax would crack and swell. Without an emergency tracheotomy he would die. A single second, that was all she needed. And a single second was about all she would have until the bodyguards, the fake lesbians, and the woman with the phone rushed her.

  She controlled her breathing and let her hand slacken. “You just crossed a line, Eli.”

  “Good. Because if anything happens to her, it will be your fault.”

  “No, Eli. It will be your fault. And the whole world will know it.”

  Eli frowned. “Meaning?”

  Yael was outnumbered and outgunned. But she had other weapons. The one thing that Eli feared was publicity. In the age of social media, a single photograph linking him to the deaths of his enemies would be all that was needed to end his career in the shadows, which was the only place where he knew how to operate. “I want to show you something. It’s in my purse. Don’t worry, I’m not armed. Can I get it?”

  Eli nodded. “Slowly.”

  She reached inside her bag, took out her phone, and pressed several icons, one after another. “Before you try and grab this you should know that it will be a waste of your time. I have uploaded this file to a secure website. I need to log on to the website every day by midnight, with a coded password that changes every day, or this file gets sent out on Twitter.” Showing Eli the phone screen, his face peering out, she swiped and a list of names, dates, and places appeared.

  He tried to grab the phone, but Yael pulled it away. The website and the password were a bluff, but the information in the file was real and, she knew, enough to unnerve him.

  ““Your world is shrinking, Eli. I don’t think you will be returning to London, Paris, Manila, São Paulo, or Berlin for some time. But nowadays everyone leaves a data trail. Even you. People are getting interested in you, Eli. Clever people who can put two and two together.”

  Eli’s eyes glittered with fury. “I already told you in Zone, Yael. Your fantasies are dangerous. Very dangerous.”

  She turned to face him again. “They are not fantasies, Eli. They are facts. These people died. You were there. And then you left, went somewhere else. Where more people died. When did you turn into a killer, Eli? Did it start that day in Gaza?”

  *

  She stands next to the boy, holding his hand, stroking his hair, calming him, as the bomb-disposal expert disconnects the vest. He places it to one side and orders the boy to undress. The boy looks at Yael; she nods, squeezes his hand.

  The bomb-disposal expert swiftly checks the boy all over.

  Sweat runs down her back and into her eyes. The previous month two soldiers had been killed here. The explosives had been inserted into the bomber’s rectum. By the time they had stripped him and seen the wire, it was too late.

  The bomb-disposal expert stands back. He signals to the second man in the Jeep: The boy is clear.

  *

  Eli’s voice was cold. “That boy was wired. He would have blown us all to pieces. Or taken out a bus. Or a playground full of schoolchildren. Or a café. You remember Café Mizrahi on Shenken? We used to go there with Ilona. They reopened it. We can go back together. I’ll bring flowers and spread them around where they picked up what was left of her.”

  Yael felt the anger and guilt rise up inside her. She dropped the phone back in her purse. “Do you think this is what she wanted, Eli? The boy didn’t kill anyone. He was a child. A mentally handicapped child who had no idea what he was doing. And his bomb did not go off. Because I did my job,” she said, her hands white as she gripped the slats of the park bench. “And then you did yours. Whatever that is.”

  Eli slipped the gun back into his shoulder holster. “Today is Thursday. We are reasonable people. We understand that you need to clear your desk at work. Pack up your things. Say your good-byes.” He reached inside his jacket pocket and handed a piece of paper to Yael. She unfolded the printed sheet. “You are lucky. Business class. Monday afternoon. Direct to Tel Aviv from JFK. I have to travel economy.”

  Yael slowly tore the ticket into shreds, and let the breeze carry the scraps of paper away. Eli said nothing, only looked across the park and scratched the right side of his nose. She followed his gaze, watched the blond woman nod then press down on her phone screen.

  “I’m sorry about your date.” He did not sound very sorry at all. “Especially after you made so much effort.” Eli stood up and retrieved another folded piece of paper and handed it to her. “This just arrived in Sami Boustani’s e-mail in-box.”

  7

  “Yael? Is that really you, Sis?” Noa’s voice was thick with sleep. “It’s four o’clock in the morning here. Are you OK?”

  Yael glanced at her watch: it was just after nine. Israel was seven hours ahead. She pulled a face. “I’m so sorry. I completely forgot. I just wanted to hear your voice.” The voice of someone who simply loves me and isn’t trying to use, manipulate, or threaten me, she almost added.

  Noa asked, “Has something happened?”

  “No, nothing unusual,” said Yael. Nowadays, that was true enough.

  “I miss you, Sis. We all do. Amichai is twelve now. Next year will be his bar mitzvah. You will be here for that?”

  Yael stared at the photograph on the sideboard of Noa, surrounded by her eight children. Amichai, the oldest, stood in the middle. Noa had her hands on his shoulders, as if showcasing him.

  “Of course. What a question.”

  Noa lived on Har HaZion, an isolated settlement deep in the occupied West Bank, with her husband, Avi, and their family. Noa had discovered religion on a visit to Jerusalem, just after she graduated from Cornell, when she met an emissary from the Lubavitch sect of Judaism who had invited her to come for Shabbat dinner. She became captivated by the warmth and stability of the Lubavitch lifestyle—and its contrast to the turbul
ent childhood she and Yael had shared. Now married to a full-time student of the Torah, with no apparent income, she was blissfully fulfilled.

  The two sisters chatted for a couple more minutes, before Noa said goodbye. Yael put her phone on the coffee table and sat back on the sofa, hugging her knees, trying to make sense of the evening. She had phoned Sami to cancel their date as soon as Eli and his team had left Tompkins Square Park. Sami had been polite and understanding, if somewhat cool, which was understandable. He was a journalist, he knew about the sudden demands of work, he said. Neither of them had nine-to-five jobs. They would get together soon, another time. An accomplished liar, by both training and instinct, she thought Sami had believed her. Unless, of course, he had already checked his e-mail.

  After that conversation, she had taken a taxi straight home. Once back, she changed out of her dress, scrubbed off her makeup and put on an old Columbia University T-shirt and faded gray sweatpants. Then she had called her sister, experiencing an urgent need to hear her voice.

  Was Noa in danger? Not yet. At least, no more than usual. The settlement was heavily guarded and Noa rarely left its confines. Eli knew very well that if anything happened to her, Yael would wreak a terrible revenge. She would release the file on him, spreading his name and photograph all over the Internet, but that would only be the beginning. She knew enough about Mossad’s inner workings, and the operations in which she had been involved, to cause serious damage if she went public.

  Meanwhile, a lot could happen by Monday afternoon. Yael switched on the television. CNN was showing a studio discussion about the UN’s Reykjavik Sustainability Conference. One pundit, a youthful liberal blogger with a goatee, argued President Freshwater was showing strength, that she was determined to follow her own agenda, by attending. Shireen Kermanzade, Iran’s new reformist president, would also be there. They might even meet, he speculated. The other guest, a middle-aged female conservative in a tight pink sweater, guffawed and said that Reykjavik was a complete irrelevance to American voters, and proved how out of touch Freshwater was with people’s everyday concerns. Yael was inclined to agree. The UN organized conferences almost every day of the week. It was a mystery to her why Freshwater was bothering to spend presidential time on new methods of recycling.

  Yael heard a gurgling noise. She looked around then realized it was her stomach. She picked up a small packet of crackers, marked with the Air France logo, from her coffee table and ripped it open. The contents flew out, spilling over the coffee table and onto the floor of her apartment. She sighed and picked them up piece by piece and placed them on the table. This really was not her night.

  She upended the packet of crackers into her hand, tipped what remained into her mouth, and slowly chewed as she stared at the printout of the photograph that Eli had given her. Had he really e-mailed it to Sami? There was no way she could have spent the evening at Sami’s apartment on a date, all the while wondering what was in his e-mail and what his reaction might be. There was a limit to even her powers of performance.

  Imagine if the date had gone well. She might have stayed over, only to find Sami checking his e-mail in the morning, staring at the image, then at her. He would have felt betrayed. She would have been mortified. Yael imagined Sami printing the e-mail out before deciding what to do. He would not rush to action, she thought. This was more than just another story. This was personal, family business that had ended very badly indeed. Sami would probably approach her sometime in the next couple of days. He would be brisk and businesslike, or maybe he would try and charm more information out of her. Or he might wait for a while, as he dug deeper into her past. There was nothing she could do about it for now. Either way, tonight was a win-win for Eli.

  The bottle of Puligny-Montrachet stood on the coffee table, three-quarters full, still glistening with condensation. Michael the doorman had handed it back to Yael on her return. She picked up her glass of wine, and tasted it. It was very good, as it should be for the price: lemony-crisp with an aftertaste of almonds. It was a waste to drink it on her own. She thought about calling Joe-Don. He was a bourbon man and she had a bottle tucked away somewhere. He would certainly be there very quickly indeed once he heard about her encounter with Eli in the park. At which point he would admonish her for not summoning him as soon as Eli appeared, to escort her home and stand guard at her door. But she was safe in her apartment now, and anyway, they were due to have breakfast tomorrow morning.

  Who else could she call to keep her company? There were not many candidates. She took another sip of wine. In fact, there weren’t any.

  *

  Sami Boustani stared at the feast cooling on the kitchen table. Lamb kebabs, both shish and kofte; three types of salads; a rice pilaf; tiny herbed falafel balls; homemade yogurt and mint sauce; and his favorite dish, his sister Leila’s specialty, kubbeh, deep-fried crispy buckwheat, stuffed with minced lamb and pine nuts.

  He checked the clock: it was just after eight thirty. By now most of the food should have been eaten, and they should be moving on to dessert, a retreat to the sofa, sliding closer, some gentle kissing, and then, perhaps … he glanced at his bedroom. But the food was still here, untouched. As was he. The kebabs were starting to congeal, the salads were wilting, and the rice was tepid. A bottle of unopened Lebanese rosé wine stood in the ice-bucket. He put his hand inside the container. The ice had melted and the bottle stood in a pool of water.

  Sami reached into the fridge and pulled out a bottle of Brooklyn Lager. He wasn’t much of a wine guy anyway. At least he hadn’t opened the bottle. He could keep it in the unlikely event that he ever persuaded another woman to come round for dinner. He took a long swallow of the beer, picked up a kubbeh, and bit off the top half. It tasted dry in his mouth; the buckwheat like sawdust, the meat too rich. He forced himself to swallow it then sat down on the lumpy sofa.

  Sami was thirty-five. Almost all of his friends and relatives of his age, both in the United States and in Gaza or Israel, were married with children. He still lived alone in a dark one-bedroom apartment in the basement of a brownstone on East Ninth Street that belonged to his uncle. The orange acrylic carpet was dotted with stains, and the walls, once cream, were now various shades of brown. The pipes banged and rattled, and the hot water in the bathroom spurted brown for at least a minute. There was a damp patch in the center of the lounge wall in the shape of Italy. The ramshackle furniture, including a twin bed, dated from the Reagan era but with no hint of eighties retro-chic. It was just old. Sami had lived there for more than two years but still had not got around to properly unpacking. Whenever he made time to sort out his possessions he ended up changing his mind, telling himself that this was only temporary accommodation. But each time he looked at rental websites he realized that, despite the gloom, at $1,500 a month the apartment was a bargain.

  The Boustanis were Christian Palestinians who had emigrated to the United States twenty years ago from Gaza. Sami’s father, Ahmad, had relatives in Manhattan, so the family settled there. Seven years later, Ahmad died of lung cancer after a lifetime of heavy smoking. Maryam, Sami’s mother, had moved to Brooklyn to live with his sister Leila, her husband, and their five children. The pressure was on, if not to match Leila, then to at least enter the race.

  Sami could handle pressure. He was a skilled and experienced reporter: nuanced and intuitive, yet dogged and aggressive when necessary. The UN beat demanded a subtle grasp of geopolitics and US policy: he had previously covered Congress, and had been posted to London to cover Parliament. He was now widely acknowledged to be one of the best journalists in the UN building. Navigating the complex world of competing interests with confidence and flair, he produced a stream of scoops for his newspaper and became a confidant of ambassadors and senior State Department officials. His only real rival was Jonathan Beaufort, the veteran correspondent for his newspaper’s almost namesake, the Times of London.

  But there was one thing Sami had never mastered: the rules of Manhattan’s ruthless dating s
cene. The choreography of when to show interest, when to retreat, when to advance, and when to wait for the call—it was beyond him. He had not had a relationship of note since his return from London, although he’d enjoyed a few flings. He was regularly invited for drinks, even dinner, by female UN officials. At first he had accepted readily, then he realized that usually they were not interested in him as a person, only as a means of access to the pages of the world’s most influential newspaper.

  Yael was not like that. She didn’t want to talk about the UN at all. Sami could not quite believe that she might be attracted to him. His mother and sister could barely contain their excitement about him having a dinner date at home, and had spent the previous day cooking for him. There was, of course, the considerable issue: he was Palestinian and she was Israeli. Or half Israeli. He had not shared this with his relatives. But he would, he thought, cross that bridge when he came to it.

  Sami drank some more beer, put the bottle down on the coffee table, and sat back with his hands behind his head. Now, of course, there was no bridge to cross. He replayed his brief conversation with Yael in his head, her excuse that the secretary-general had called her in to the Secretariat Building for an emergency meeting on the Syria crisis, her apologies, the embarrassed future promises to “get together soon.” It was possible, he supposed, that there was such a meeting. Yet he didn’t believe her. There was something in her voice that made him think she was lying. He sat up straight. And there was an easy way to find out.

  His iPhone beeped. An e-mail had arrived. He checked the header: “Story for you” from afriend99@gmail.com. Sami’s e-mail address was not public, but like that of most reporters it was easy to guess, being a combination of his surname and his news organization. He frequently received e-mails from unknown people promising great revelations that rarely proved newsworthy. He would check it later. But first he would have a quick look at the news channels and see what was happening in the world outside Apartment 1G, 45 East Ninth Street.