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

by Nathan Ronen

  Arik was surprised by her strident tone. He found himself thinking back to traumatic memories from his own past.

  “My love, I immigrated to Israel with my parents when I was Leo’s age, and they didn’t circumcise me in Poland, where I was born. After the trauma of the Holocaust, they wanted to conceal my Judaism,” he told her. “But when I was going to elementary school in the Halisa neighborhood in Haifa, the big kids would pull down my pants in front of everyone, calling out, ‘Goy! Goy!’”

  Eva looked at him, touched. It was rare for Arik to expose his weaknesses in this manner.

  “I don’t want Leo to experience that humiliation, and I’m not willing to have us cause him to be different than his friends. He doesn’t deserve to feel like a misfit or ashamed of himself, and in Israel, if you’re Jewish, the expectation is that you’ll conduct yourself in accordance with the rules of the Torah.”

  “I’m sorry to hear what you experienced as a child. I didn’t know that,” Eva said. “Children can be terribly cruel. If it’s really important to you, I agree to a circumcision, as long as it takes place under full anesthesia, and is performed by a urologist.”

  “Have I already told you that I love you?” Arik gushed, atypically sentimental.

  It was no minor matter for an assertive, opinionated woman like Eva to succumb to his wishes without a battle, but she did it for him, solely out of true love. He understood her need to rehabilitate, to return to herself after a period of severe depression, and he, too, missed Jerusalem’s special atmosphere.

  “And maybe it’s also time that I told you how proud I am of you,” Eva said, caressing his face.

  “Proud of me? Why?” Arik asked in disbelief.

  “I chose you not because you were rich, or famous, like all those pompous posers who were always sniffing around me in Germany, but because you’re a real person, with values, who doesn’t pretend. And I liked that.”

  Arik maintained an embarrassed silence.

  “I was born to a German aristocratic family, the von Kesselrings. I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth and had everything handed to me on a silver platter. I had all the advantages, all the connections, and I rebelled against it. I had to find my own way by myself. But you came from a family of Holocaust survivors, broken parents who rose from the ashes and started a second family, establishing a new home in a state fighting for its existence. You, who came from a blue-collar family, warm, loving people who instilled within you the ambition to succeed, with the will and the energy; a fat, asthmatic boy who actually decided to join a combat unit in the army in order to prove to yourself that you could, and look where it’s taken you.”

  Arik was unsettled. In a few sentences, she had summed up his essence.

  “It’s not that everything’s perfect, that you don’t have flaws and idiosyncrasies, but I wouldn’t trade you for anyone else.”

  Chapter 64

  Mount Scopus Campus, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

  After they returned from their wonderful vacation in Eilat, Arik decided to visit his son Michael, who was a student of economics and international relations living in the dorms of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Mount Scopus campus. He also planned to take the opportunity to go visit his daughter Nathalie and his grandson in Jerusalem’s ultra-Orthodox Mea She’arim neighborhood. He was thinking of popping over to see his friend Elinka Wasserman, a senior official in the Shin Bet who owned property in Jerusalem, in order to ask him to look for a larger rental apartment for Nathalie and her family in their neighborhood.

  Michael greeted him with a sour expression. “You finally remembered you had kids?”

  Arik reached out to give him a paternal hug but was ignored. The accusation pierced him like a sword.

  “Would you make me some coffee and listen to me?” he asked.

  Michael complied. They then sat across from each other, sipped the strong, tasty coffee and said nothing. Both father and son tended to retreat into themselves in order to cover up embarrassment or anger.

  “I know I’m not Father of the Year, but I’ve had a crazy year,” Arik began. “You know how busy I am, and how much it takes out of me. And I’m really sorry that I’m not in touch with you on a daily basis. This year began with me receiving the Legion of Honor medal from the president of France, Eva taking a fall while nine months pregnant, your baby sister Ethel-Hannelore being born via emergency surgery, a period of post-partum depression that Eva experienced, the unexpected and tragic murder of my boss Cornfield, and then the prime minister told me I was going to be appointed as director of the Mossad.”

  “I know; you left a message about it on my answering machine. I got back to you and you never answered me,” Michael said in complaint. “But later, I heard on the radio that someone else had been appointed as Mossad director, and I tried to talk to you, but your secretary Claire said you were overseas involved in operational activity and you couldn’t be bothered.”

  “I’m sorry,” his father replied quietly. “I’ve never been good at combining family life with the kind of work I do. People like me live on the outskirts of society, in a world of secrets. We pay a steep price for it with the people we love.”

  “It’s always all about you,” Michael attacked. “And we kids are always supposed to suck it up and understand?”

  Arik did not reply.

  “Well, it doesn’t hurt anymore,” his son sighed. “But it cost me lots of money to go through therapy and deal with this saga of living with an absent father, or, like my therapist put it, living beside a father who’s not present and a mother busy with matters of the spirit and self-fulfillment. As far as I’m concerned, keep living your life as usual. It’s a good thing your secretary Claire or your sister Naomi occasionally update me about what’s going on with you, and as usual, they cover up and make excuses for your absence or lie for you.”

  “Really? I didn’t know…” Arik mumbled in embarrassment. He really had not been aware of the fact that Claire and Naomi maintained ongoing contact with his children.

  “So, what have I done to deserve the honor of His Excellency Arik Bar-Nathan, Israel’s greatest spy, deciding to come over and visit me in Jerusalem?” the son asked in mockery, concealing pain and yearning. “I assume that if you’re taking the trouble to come here, you’ll go see Nathalie in Mea Shearim too, right?”

  Arik took this in with pain, but with love as well. Oddly, his son’s harsh statements actually evoked tender emotions within him.

  The discovery that he was ill with myeloma had not only nearly killed him but had also forced him to directly confront his failures as a husband and as a father. In the sobering clarity of his terrible experiences at the hospital, he had understood the meaning of love and family.

  “My dear son, ever since I came down with myeloma five years ago and recovered, my approach is softer and more accepting,” he explained. “My favorite pronoun is now ‘we’ rather than ‘I.’ We’re talking about the weaknesses, fears and limitations shared by all of us, parents or children. We’re not singling anyone out or blaming anyone. I believe accusations only tend to reinforce the walls of denial, rather than shattering them.”

  His appeal did not have an effect on Michael, whose face still displayed a mask of anger.

  Arik suddenly realized that the accusation Michael had leveled at him of being a father who worked constantly and retreated into himself was, in fact, the summary of an entire life. This statement described his behavior, just as it described his own father’s behavior toward him. Arik’s father had also worked very hard, justifying his constant work with his desire to make a good living for the sake of his children. He was a hard, rigid man, who might have escaped into exhausting manual labor in order to flee the nightmares of the Holocaust and the pain of the terrible memory of losing his wife and two daughters. It was a cruel reflection to face. Apparently, the dams Arik had once built u
p in order to avoid acknowledging the similarities had begun to crack and leak. The meaning of his life, as it emerged from this statement, was so small and chilling. How humiliating to realize that a large part of a person’s life on earth could be summed up in such a brief sentence. The mirror Michael had placed before him made him wonder what kind of a father and husband he was, if his function as a father was indeed so limited. The truth seared his soul, and he resorted to something that had always helped him. He escaped into himself, into his silences.

  From the depths of some alter ego, Arik heard himself saying words to his son that he had not even said to his partner Eva.

  “Michael, I’m scared… I’m afraid my illness is back. I’m experiencing intense pain in my bones again, and lately, I’ve also been having nosebleeds.”

  Michael’s angry expression was replaced with worry, mingled with empathy. Arik hated himself at that moment. As far as he was concerned, this was a sort of emotional blackmail. But he couldn’t control himself. He didn’t know if the morbid mood that had taken over him was to blame. But mostly, he did not want to dwell on the battles of the past, but to move on to future reconciliation.

  “Have you gone to see Dr. Alice Ben David, head of the oncological unit at Sheba Hospital?” Michael demanded.

  “Not yet,” Arik said, surprised by the role reversal that had turned him into a child while his son took over his role as the concerned parent.

  “Promise me you’ll do it, today!” His son’s tone changed and softened.

  “Does Eva know?” he went on to ask.

  Arik shook his head. “I don’t want anyone to know, including Nathalie and my sister Naomi.”

  “Okay, well, before you croak for good,” Michael clumsily tried to raise his spirits, “you still owe me that mountain-climbing trip you promised to take with me in the spring. For a long time now, I’ve been planning to go to the Dolomites in northern Italy with you. My Italian friend has a cabin in the mountains, above the city of Cortina.”

  “I promised, it’s true, but I didn’t promise when I’d do it…” Arik tried to joke back, his voice imbued with worry. Following the betrayal of his body, he had lost confidence that he could withstand a journey requiring plenty of physical stamina.

  Epilogue

  Arik Bar-Nathan was invited to join the weekly work meeting between the prime minister and the Mossad director.

  “I’ve discussed the topic of General Qasem Soleimani with the American president,” Ehud Tzur said, “and for the moment, we’ve decided to freeze the entire plan to assassinate him.”

  “I don’t believe it!” Arik burst out. “After all that man has done against the Americans in Iraq. The attempt to assassinate the American ambassador in Saudi Arabia, the attacks on Norwegian oil tankers in international waters in the Strait of Hormuz, the story with the Jewish community in Argentina, the establishment of the Eastern Shiite Crescent, and the attack on our submarine in international waters, and you’re just absolving him of all responsibility?”

  He directed an angry look at Raya. But she gazed down at the metallic tip of her high-heeled shoe, as if checking whether it was shiny enough.

  Ehud Tzur was not intimidated. “There are some considerations that even a man in your position is not party to, and I can’t share them with you,” he said firmly.

  Various thoughts raced through Arik’s mind. He wondered if Raya was staying silent because she did not want to expose the fact that the Mossad preferred a known, familiar enemy over one who might turn out to be much more dangerous and extreme. She had once mentioned the concept of a hydra, whose snake heads multiply the moment one is chopped off. He contemplated the question of whether someone up there in the top ranks of Iranian leadership was an Israeli agent, and he was the only one excluded from those in the know. Or could there be a dark secret in Raya Ron’s past that was known to the Iranians, who were blackmailing her?

  In any case, his contribution to the discussion was no longer necessary. Arik decided there was no further reason for him to be in the room. He rose to his feet, declaring, “I get it, you’re the policymaker and I’m just the executor, and that’s fine. In which case I have nothing to contribute to the discussion, and I’d rather leave.”

  “Sit down!” Ehud Tzur commanded, pointing at the chair.

  Arik looked in Raya Ron’s eyes, seeking her support. But she kept her silence, merely looking at him with a strange smile, both ingratiating and abashed.

  Arik dropped into the chair like a scolded child.

  “We’ve got a sensitive situation going on here, and I’m asking you to overcome your feelings of anger and resentment toward me,” Tzur softened his tone.

  “Raya has informed me that she wants to take a year’s unpaid leave, per her doctors’ orders. For bed rest due to a high-risk pregnancy.”

  Arik felt his jaw drop. Raya had kept her secret admirably. He thought back to her throwing up, and the fact that he had noticed her breasts growing. Lately, she had also seemed much more relaxed and less aggressive. He examined her. She looked back at him sympathetically, as she had never done before, as if trying to wordlessly convey a personal appeal.

  “Starting when?” he finally asked.

  “As of today,” Raya replied.

  “Raya told me you were the only person she trusts to take her place,” the prime minister explained. “You have the maturity, the capability, and the experience. I know you’re angry at me and rightfully so, since you saw my decision a year ago as kind of betrayal of trust. But that was my decision as a policymaker, based on the minister of defense’s recommendation, to do what was best for the system at the time.”

  Arik was stunned, feeling speechless. He was appalled by the ease with which this politician lied, twisting every fact to best serve himself as if he were speaking the truth. He wanted to cynically tell Ehud Tzur that he knew exactly how Raya Ron had been appointed to lead the agency. But the fact that during her time in office she had been a professional manager, a leader who delegated authority to him and supported him throughout the painful process of implementing organizational change, effectively took the sting out of his claims.

  “Thanks for the expression of trust,” Arik said, hesitating, his eyes bouncing between Ehud Tzur and Raya Ron, “but I have to consult my wife Eva about this. As you probably remember, we went through a difficult time with her health, and now that we’ve finally re-established a happy routine, I need to get her blessing before I take on such a demanding role, especially since we have two tiny kids at home and she’s resuming her job as a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.”

  “You have twenty-four hours,” Ehud Tzur said dryly. “In the meantime, you’ll be appointed as interim director, and if Raya decides she isn’t coming back, the role is yours. Agreed?”

  Tzur extended his hand to seal the verbal contract.

  Arik did not extend his hand in return.

  He already had firsthand experience of Ehud Tzur’s disrespect for promises, whether oral or written. Instead, he chose to remain in his seat, silently cursing to himself.

  Ehud Tzur and Raya left the room, leaving him alone. He felt a wave of rage cresting within him, and it wasn’t due to the promise of a future appointment as Mossad director. His mind was still pondering several unanswered questions, primarily wondering whether the prime minister’s decision to call off the planned hit on Qasem Soleimani had anything to do with Cornfield’s murder. Was there someone else involved whose identity was being concealed from him?

  Suddenly, he remembered that soon he must visit the hospital’s hematological-oncological unit and see Dr. Alice Ben-David. He had to find out what his condition was before he could take on a heavy responsibility such as being appointed Mossad director.

  As Eva had taken the kids for a holiday vacation with her family in Heidelberg, he decided to go consult with his old friend Gideon Perry a
t his home near the city of Herzliya. He had a feeling he knew what Perry’s recommendation would be.

  End

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