When Shadows Collide (An Arik Bar Nathan Novel Book 1)

by Nathan Ronen

  He hugged Barbara warmly, shook the admiral’s hand, and went out to the taxi waiting to take him to the Westin Hotel in Georgetown, a half hour’s drive away on the other side of the river.

  When he got to his hotel room, he found himself intensely missing Eva and his children, Leo and Ethel-Hannelore. He looked at his watch. It was a bit after midnight, meaning it was already six a.m. in Heidelberg. He believed Eva would already be awake at this hour, because of the kids. He waited another hour then called.

  Eva was glad to hear from him.

  “Hi, love. I’ve decided I’m relatively okay, I miss you, and I want to come back to Israel. Will you get the house in Palmachim Airbase ready for us?”

  “I’ll be done in Washington day after tomorrow,” Arik replied, “and then at the end of the week I’ll stop by to see you in Heidelberg. We’ll talk about it when I arrive.”

  “I love you, and I miss you!” she declared. “And you won’t even recognize the little one. She’s become a beauty and has grown spectacularly.”

  A wave of happiness swept through him. Soon, they would be together as a family again. He felt that he had the three main ingredients required for happiness: something to do, someone to love, and something to aspire to. What else did a person need?

  Chapter 36

  On Intimacy and Love

  During Arik’s stay in the United States and his time with CIA management, he heard elucidating reviews regarding the organizational changes that the American intelligence agency had undergone. Meanwhile, his administrative assistant, Claire, was busy arranging the house in Palmachim so that it would provide a proper environment for Eva and the two little children. She was communicating directly with Eva to decide which additions were required for the house in which Arik had always lived alone as a bachelor.

  The weekend Arik spent with his family in Heidelberg was wonderful. He was happy to reunite with his family and updated Eva on all the Office news, his promotion, and the implications of the reorganization that was keeping him busy for many hours. Eva was not pleased to hear he would have to take short trips to England and France in order to complete his preparations for submitting his recommendations to the new Mossad director.

  Arik thought it might be best if Eva took some more time to recuperate and grow stronger in Heidelberg before she joined him, but she believed her place was beside him in Israel. Therefore, they agreed he would return to Israel first and prepare the familial nest for his family’s arrival.

  When Arik returned to his home in Palmachim Base, he found it odd to discover all of Claire’s changes, but he was pleased with them and also trusted Claire. He was not aware of the fact that she had directly contacted Eva in Germany and asked her opinion about the colors and the type of furniture she would like for the residence. Eva wanted to fine-tune the design herself the moment she moved in. He began to feel impatient once he was awaiting the return of Eva and his children. And indeed, much to his joy, they arrived several days later.

  However, hopes were one thing, reality quite another.

  For post-fall Eva, the transition to Israel was a difficult one. The hot, moist climate, the slow process of recovery after her depression and the fall, the tiny baby, and Leo, who was a very active child, all drained her strength.

  With a melancholy expression, she observed how difficult it was for Arik to stay home and tend to what he viewed as “trivial matters,” in contrast to what he thought of as weighty affairs. Most of his energy was dedicated to his interactions with his new, tough boss and the process of organizational change he was responsible for at the Office.

  Eva’s Spartan German upbringing made it difficult for her to fall apart and ask for help or complain. She suffered in silence. Arik did employ the services of a nanny, who came to the house every day, but Eva felt uncomfortable turning into an invalid of sorts. She didn’t like having a stranger present in her home, assuming an attitude of control over her. However, following the accident, she knew she simply had no choice. The nanny’s help made things much easier for her. She could now sleep more and recuperate.

  Eva invited a couple of her university friends to their home, coordinating a convenient time for the shared dinner with Arik. However, Arik forgot and returned home late after a bad day at the office, where he was once again subject to displays of power from the “Iron Lady,” Raya Ron. Ron was playing control games with the Office old-timers, who reacted with a contrarian, passive-aggressive attitude. He was feeling like a lightning rod between her and his colleagues.

  He showered and joined their guests but did not take part in the conversation; he merely smiled with weary politeness. When the guests left, Eva attacked him, equating his forgetfulness with apathy. She asked him when he had last forgotten to show up to a work meeting, or to an operational briefing.

  He admitted he had never forgotten anything that was important to his work.

  This was something he had recently noted about her with sufficient frequency to make him think he understood what was going on. Apparently, the two of them had different interpretations of how the balance between work and family was supposed to work out. He felt that recently she was beginning to feel resentful, but he was too tired and exhausted, both physically and mentally, to appease her. His brain sealed up. He did not have the energy to argue.

  If once, the atmosphere in their home had been full of laughter and joy, now they were like two strangers sharing a house. Her behavior and body language produced an oppressive sense of emptiness within him. He was stricken with a feeling of discomfort, which made him retreat inward, as was his habit. He found himself wondering if he had returned to work too early. Could the feelings of vindictiveness and ego that had motivated him to return to the Office have stemmed from a selfish desire to seek revenge against the political echelon, causing him to forget Eva along the way? He didn’t want to appear aloof and superior as she often accused him of being when he retreated into himself. On the other hand, he liked being emotionally detached. Emotions meant trouble. But most of all, he hated being helpless. Arik liked to think that the difference between him and Eva was simple and that he understood it. He thought that they were quite different types when it came to their personality classifications, but that they also complemented each other.

  He kept many things to himself and never brought home his work frustrations. He didn’t talk about his tense relationship with the Mossad director, a tough, uncompromising woman. He didn’t share his guilt over the decision to fire longtime employees, some of whom were older than he was. He had doubts about laying them off or shuffling them off to an early retirement in light of the fact that they were divorced or single, since, as far as they were concerned, their work at the Mossad was not just another place of employment. Raya Ron told him venomously that it was better to cut things off quickly and abruptly than to prolong the pains of dying. She had a reputation as a ruthless ‘butcher.’

  He felt Eva scowling at him. “I feel so messed up lately. I’m nothing, ich bin ein scheisse—I’m just shit,” she told him in a mournful voice in German. “I’m a shitty mother, a shitty wife, a shitty lover, I’m nothing…” She burst out in tears of self-pity.

  He cast his eyes down to the floor in embarrassment. Her fragility and vulnerability touched him deeply, and he couldn’t help but think there was something he was missing about her. Something she hadn’t told him but wanted him to discover on his own. The answer was inside him, hovering like a moth by a flame, but every time he moved in to catch it, it fluttered away from him. She had already accused him in the past of suffering from a kind of emotional disability.

  “Arik Bar-Nathan,” Eva said with slow emphasis, as if reading out his name during a ceremony, “you’re a good fair-weather friend, but a lousy friend when things get tough. So long as I was at my best and gave you plenty of freedom to go out and do what you like best at work, you were happy and available to me, too. But the mom
ent I’m not at my best, you turn right toward the door and want to run off? Is that why you brought me and the kids back from Germany?”

  Arik looked at her, flustered. He wanted to tell her it had been her idea to come back earlier and be with him, and that he had stayed by her side in Paris and Heidelberg after her fall, but kept his silence.

  She, too, grew silent as large tears rolled down her cheeks. When she resumed speaking, her tone was different. “At this moment, I’m in pain. I’ve got nothing to give you, but I need you more than I ever have before. Please, come here and hug me. You don’t have to say anything, just hug me. I just want to feel your big bear hug. Can you give me that little bit at least?”

  She had the amazing ability to know what he really felt. As a skilled handler of agents, Arik Bar-Nathan had the ability to maintain a neutral expression. But what was most important to him right now was not to lie to her or retreat into himself.

  He felt like such an idiot. Extending a long arm, he pulled her to him and embraced her without saying a word. She wept in his arms, whispering words of love and thanks in his ear for not disengaging and leaving, as was his habit every time they fought, heading for the basement, his refuge, where his collection of old Harley Davidson motorcycles was waiting for him.

  He had no idea how much Eva had needed him since her accident. His preoccupations at the Office had sucked him in to such an extent that he hadn’t noticed. Realization struck him instantly. At that moment, he understood, perhaps for the first time, what love truly meant. Unconditional love. He had always thought he was a loving person; however, Eva was right. Apparently, he was an excellent partner when things were going well: so long as she was happy and nice to him, he returned her love. But when she was lonely or in pain or distraught, Arik felt she was blaming him for her feeling of loneliness.

  He lay down beside her, wondering to himself whether everyone wore masks intended to conceal inner pain.

  Both of them were lying on the large living-room couch with Eva curled up in his arms. It had been a while since they’d experienced such intimacy. He felt wonderful. He had managed to give Eva what she really needed. He felt good about taking care of another person, someone he loved marveling at how simple and easy it was to be there for her with no demands. He was surprised at himself as a man, who had plenty of experience with women, for not knowing or realizing how important touch, an embrace, and listening, with no sex, were to her.

  The little one’s shriek of hunger startled them.

  “You stay here, I’ll feed her,” Arik whispered. He went into the nursery, gazing at little Leo’s face as he slept like an angel, picked up little Ethel-Hannelore, and went down to the kitchen. The little girl had grown quite a lot since her premature traumatic birth on Paris’s Boulevard Périphérique. Her eyes were gray-blue, like Eva’s, and her blond hair had light brown highlights, like her mother’s.

  Baby Ethel sucked down the bottle of formula her father had prepared for her with great appetite, and he carried her around the house until she let out a burp and fell asleep in his arms.

  He returned to the living room and found it empty. The lights were out, and he heard a noise from the direction of their bedroom. Eva was taking a shower. He opened the door of the shower stall and peered at her body, and she laughed and approached him with a teasing dance, covering herself with a large towel. He pulled the towel out of her hands.

  Her breasts were handsome once more, and he felt himself suddenly desiring her body. He leaned in and kissed her breasts and heard her moaning with pleasure. He rose to plant warm, moist kisses at the point between her neck and shoulder. A shiver ran through her, and he kept climbing up her neck and began to gently nibble on her earlobe, his hand reaching out between her thighs. She extended her hand to stop him.

  “Lieblich, I really want you too, but we need a little more patience, darling. I’m not ready yet, I’m still achy down there and the stitches haven’t entirely healed yet,” she whispered to him, instantly cooling his lust.

  He lay there in their queen bed, distraught, trying to calm down, like a race car whose acceleration had come to an abrupt stop. He rested her head on his shoulder and she stroked his head and gently scratched his back the way he liked her to do. She stroked his lower belly and gently massaged his member, acknowledging his need while also soothing his urge and libido.

  Love filled his heart and he lay beside her and quietly said, “I’m sorry I’m such a dummy sometimes. Sometimes, love hurts.”

  Eva opened her eyes and turned to him.

  “We all say that love hurts, but it’s not true,” she said. “Loneliness hurts, jealousy hurts, rejection hurts, losing someone beloved hurts. Actually, I think love is the only thing that heals pain. It allows people to recover and feel good about themselves again. Love is the only thing in this world that doesn’t hurt. And I’m happy with my lot that I have you, my love. Are you happy?”

  “My father, Leon Rechtman, may he rest in peace, would say that there’s no such thing as ‘happiness’ as an ongoing process,” he replied. “Happiness is like pearls strewn across your path, and you have to pick them up.”

  She smiled to herself. “Your father was a smart man.”

  He turned around in bed, arching his back against her the way she liked. She wrapped her leg and arm around him, and they fell asleep with their bodies against each other like they used to, spooning in a close hug.

  Eva fell asleep immediately, but he lay there in the dark next to her, briefly relaxed in the consoling arms of his beloved. His mind began the slow process of landing in preparation for sleep, but his analytical brain continued scanning the options before him and his future steps.

  In his dream, he remembered what he had forgotten and that he had to update her, telling her that their current state of bliss would not last long. Very soon, he would have to travel again, to England and France, and would once again be very busy with the Office and the various stages of the reorganization. He had to present his recommendations to Raya Ron in less than a month.

  He consoled himself with the thought that immediately when it was all over, they would take a long vacation somewhere nice where they could renew their love.

  Chapter 37

  London Heathrow International Airport, Terminal 5

  In early November, Lufthansa flight 9227 from Washington Dulles International Airport in Virginia landed in London Heathrow Airport at eight p.m. A tall, slender man disembarked and stretched, after a nearly twenty-one-hour flight from Simón Bolívar International Airport in Caracas, Venezuela, with an additional layover in Panama City.

  The man’s black, shiny hair was pulled back, his short black beard well-groomed. In his black business suit, he strode along the moving walkway, pulling a rigid wheeled travel bag containing another business suit. A fashionable raincoat was casually draped across his shoulders and he carried an elegant leather laptop case. His entire demeanor projected the self-confidence of a successful businessman. The delicate stitches behind his ears concealed major plastic surgery. They were still itchy and were obscured by a line of facial hair dyed black in order to hide the color of his original beard, which was a coppery red. Silicone implants were inserted in his new cheeks and chin in order to permanently alter his facial structure. His formerly flat nose was now a small pug nose, and his face was still slightly swollen following the surgery. The internal sutures formed lumps in his mouth that bothered him, and he was constantly licking them with his tongue.

  London Heathrow’s Terminal 5 was immense in size. The Border Force inspection stations were divided between arriving passengers who were members of the European Union, diplomats or disabled people, and everyone else.

  He looked at the signs and walked over to the short line of people possessing a diplomatic passport and handed the officer a service passport from the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

  “Ambassador Alí Rodríguez
Araque?” the officer asked politely, pressing the button on the facial recognition system, in accordance with the regular procedure with visitors from countries that were hostile to the West. The system remained silent, not recognizing the visitor within the terrorist database, or among those prohibited from entering the country.

  “Yes, sir,” the visitor replied, hoping his strange voice would not raise suspicion. He was still not used to his own new nasal voice, a result of the change in the shape of his nose and face.

  “Are you part of Venezuela’s diplomatic delegation to the United Kingdom, sir?” the officer asked, leafing through the passport’s pages while scanning its information into the database of people entering England.

  “No, I’m a special ambassador, here on behalf of the UN’s Economic and Social Council (ECOSEC), convening here in London tomorrow.”

  “How long will you be staying this time, sir?” the officer asked, spotting stamps from previous entries into England, Europe, and the United States.

  “I’ll be here for about a week,” the visitor said in his nasal voice.

  “Well then, I wish you a pleasant stay and good luck at the conference. You’re in for somewhat rainy weather,” the officer said, marking the diplomatic passport with a large stamp.

  Iman al-Uzbeki, an arch-terrorist wanted in most Western countries, had arrived in London, masquerading as a diplomat from President Nicolás Maduro’s surreal Bolivarian Republic. The latter was a former bus driver and the successor to Hugo Chávez, a populist president who had brought about the financial collapse of one of the wealthiest countries in the world.

  Hugo Chávez, the revolutionary president, had been the one to forge connections with the Islamic Republic of Iran, intending for the two countries to act together within OPEC50 against the American hegemony while using oil as a political tool. This path characterized the leaders of both countries. Promoting high oil prices, they fought together against what they referred to as “American imperialism and capitalism.”