Promised Land

by Martin Fletcher

  “You mean they could have saved her?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t want to say that. What time is it?” He took his watch from the side table. “Six o’clock. You slept eight hours.”

  “Why are you in my bed, anyway?”

  “In case the boys came in and you didn’t know they didn’t know.”

  The brothers fell silent. Peter tried to void his mind, but Diana filled him. Everything in the room held her. Light streaming through the curtains lit her bottles and brushes on the night stand, her dress draped over the chair, white with a blue trim, her glasses on an open book, a pile of shoes. He could never get her to put them away.

  They had only been in this bedroom for a couple of months, but already it was soaked with her presence. He felt small and alone. He should stay in bed. He should get up. And then: “The baby. Where’s the baby?”

  “In the hospital. It’s all been so quick.”

  Peter stood slowly. “You undressed me?”

  “Of course. We put you to bed. How do you feel?”

  Peter looked at him and shook his head.

  “Sorry,” Arie said.

  “I want to see her. Diana. Where is she? I want to see Diana.” A sob welled into his throat and his eyes filled.

  There was a commotion and running footsteps and the door flew open. “Daddy, let’s go and get Mummy and the baby. Are they coming home today?” Noah and Ezra fell onto the bed, pulling Peter down with them, already fighting. Noah had Ezra around the neck and Ezra was kicking and squirming and pulling Peter by the arm. “Come on, Dad, you’re on my side.”

  “Uncle Arie, you’re with me!” Noah shouted.

  “No, I have to go downstairs.” Arie gently closed the door.

  In the kitchen, Tamara looked at him. He shrugged. Their children came in and sat silently, without touching their orange juice. Her mother, Rachel, came in, disheveled and bent. “Moshe had to go to the paper,” she said. They had stayed over since the news.

  Upstairs the bedroom had gone silent.

  They heard the door open, slow light steps, and the boys’ door closed after them. They looked upstairs, and at each other.

  If they were two lines on a graph, this was where time and emptiness crossed.

  Ten minutes later they heard Peter go into the boys’ room, and after a few minutes more the three of them came down the stairs, holding hands.

  Carmel and Daniel didn’t know where to look, or what to do. The adults couldn’t meet each other’s eyes. They all stood in the living room, looking lost, as if they needed an introduction. Carmel moved first. She went to Noah, whispered in his ear, and put her arms around him, and Daniel followed with Ezra. They moved closer until the cousins were all embracing, one body with many arms.

  Peter had to look away: my parents and sisters were murdered, my cousins, aunts and uncles too, and now my wife is gone. He rubbed at his eyes as Arie put an arm around his shoulder.

  Peter broke the silence. “We’d like to go to the hospital. To collect our baby.” His voice trailed off. “And see Diana one more time.”

  Tamara and Arie exchanged glances. The boys too? They’re only eight years old. “Of course,” Tamara said. “We’ll take you there.”

  “I’ll drive,” Arie said.

  At Ichilov hospital Arie took care of the formalities until an orderly appeared in the waiting room and took Peter and his sons, accompanied by Arie and Tamara, to the morgue. It was only as their hollow steps echoed in the long basement corridor that Peter had second thoughts. Should the boys really see their mother laid out on a slab? He could hardly bear it, how could they? What was best? He didn’t know. What would Diana have said? That, he did know.

  He stopped, putting his hands on the boys’ shoulders. “I know,” he said. “Do you want to see the baby? Before me?”

  “Yes, yes.”

  “All right, lucky you! Arie, would you and Tamara mind taking the boys to the ward, and I’ll be up there very soon? I think that’s probably best.”

  “I think so too,” Tamara said. “Much better. Come on, boys, let’s go find your little sister. I think we can take her home today.”

  Home. The word was a wound. Peter put his hand to his heart, and Tamara understood: How empty had that word become.

  “Thank you. I’ll be right along.” Peter tried to keep it light, for the boys’ sake. “Think of a name for your sister,” he called after them as their footsteps faded.

  “All right, let’s go,” he said to the orderly, and turned away from his children, to find his wife in the bare white room.

  Her eyes and mouth were closed, her skin was pale as alabaster, her chest was still. She looked composed, arranged, as if waiting for the kiss of life. Her hair glowed copper beneath the dim bulb. A green hospital sheet covered her from ankles to shoulders, which were bare: a delicate marble carving with cold white feet. On her throat lay her silver name chain: Diana, the Roman goddess of childbirth. From her big toe hung a paper disc with the number b274.

  Peter gazed at the frozen features of his beautiful wife, his rapid breathing the only sound, until finally he kissed Diana’s icy lips and sank to his knees in despair.

  BABY

  TEL AVIV, ISRAEL

  October 1962

  Three days later, on Friday the twenty-sixth, Arie’s twins Daniel and Carmel were twelve years old, but there was no party. Two days after that Noah and Ezra were nine, and they missed out too. The family came together not to celebrate but to sit shiva, the seven days of mourning.

  Peter’s baby entered a silent house. Tamara held her whenever she was awake, fed her milk from a bottle, and did everything but surround her with joy. She worried about that. Would the poor little child have enough love? Who would look after her when she went back to work? Tamara’s law firm had allowed her a month to help at home, but then what? She worried about Peter, who slept most of the time. Would he have to change his job? His Mossad boss, Isser Harel, had visited the shiva twice and told Peter to take all the time he needed, but what else could he say? She didn’t know exactly what work Peter did, but he couldn’t leave the country for months at a time anymore. He was a widower now with three small children; his life would have to change. But could he do that? He was a man of contradictions. Peter was gentle and considerate but he was intimidating too; hard and calculating. What had Harel meant when he said Israel was a safer place because of Peter. Why? What did he really do at Mossad?

  Anyway, his work would have to change.

  When Arie had offered him a job Peter had scoffed. “What can I do for you?” he had said. “I’m no businessman.”

  “You’ll learn,” Arie replied. “It’s time you made some real money.”

  “But what could I do? I’m not a lawyer or an accountant. What do I know?”

  “That’s not the point. I buy lawyers and accountants. What I need most are smart people I can trust. You can join me in the head office, I’ll put you at the top of one of my companies. You bring integrity, I know how much they value you at the Office, you earned that. You have no idea how much I need you.”

  “It’s too soon to talk about it, Arie. But thanks, I’ll think about it.”

  That evening, the day after the shiva ended, the four twins wanted to make a joint announcement. While Hadassah, the maid, cleared away the dinner dishes, Daniel asked for silence, and waited for everyone to settle down. Peter sat on a sofa with Tamara and Arie, Moshe and Rachel sat on the other one, Ido and Estie sat on cushions on the floor, and the baby slept in her bassinet, which Tamara carried with her everywhere.

  “Shut up,” Noah said to Ezra, “stop pushing.”

  “You shut up,” Ezra replied.

  Carmel pushed them both. “Sssshh.”

  Daniel stood by the crib, looking down at the infant girl and played with her hand. He’s looking more and more like his father, Peter thought. He’s got Arie’s broad shoulders. He’s twelve, bar mitzvah next year, he’ll be a strong young man.

 
While the baby yawned and stretched, Daniel said, “Everybody, it’s time the baby had a name, and we have decided what it is.” He looked around as if expecting applause.

  “What?” Peter said with his first smile in eight days. “You decided?”

  “Yes, all of us together. Noah said that at the hospital you told him and Ezra to think of a name for the baby. So we did.”

  “That’s true,” Peter said, nodding at everyone. “I did. But that doesn’t mean I’ll agree.”

  “You have to,” Noah said. “Whose baby is it?”

  “Mine.”

  “Ours,” Ezra said.

  “The parents decide,” Tamara said, and flushed at her blunder. “I mean … do you have a name, Peter?”

  “No. We didn’t talk about it.”

  “Well, we have a name, don’t we?” Daniel said, and the cousins said in a chorus, “Yes.”

  “All right,” Peter said. This was so sweet of them. “What is it?”

  “Diana.”

  The air seemed to suck out from the room. “Diana,” Peter murmured. Diana. His eyes stung, he told himself, Do not cry. But still a tear escaped.

  Little Diana’s deep brown eyes, wide and unwavering, were fixed on his, and he could have sworn they were smiling.

  PETER

  TEL AVIV, ISRAEL

  April 1963

  Far out, a sheet of rain dappled the sea. Clouds were thinning, announcing another glorious spring day, releasing the sweet jasmine Peter loved so much. On his balcony, as leaves rustled in the breeze, he breathed in deeply, holding little Diana tightly to his chest. Snug inside her pink blanket, she breathed quietly, her lips forming a perfect heart. Peter drew the bottle from her mouth and went back inside, lost in thought.

  There was an eruption from the kitchen, running, yelling, doors slamming, and the boys were gone for the day.

  The bell rang. He sipped his coffee, gathered up Diana’s bags, and went to the door. “Good morning, Rachel,” he greeted Tamara’s mother. “Here she is. She has eaten, I just changed her diaper, she’ll probably sleep for an hour. She likes the new toy.” It was a red wooden ball on the end of a stick and something inside made the noise of shaken rice. He rattled it by Diana’s head, but Rachel grabbed his hand. “Don’t wake her! What time, four o’clock? Will you collect her or shall I bring her?”

  “I don’t know, I’ll let you know. Today is decision day.”

  Peter locked the door, and fell on the sofa. He looked at his watch and stared out the window. He had to leave in an hour. A bird fluttered onto the flower box, strutted along the edge, jutted its head to and fro, and lifted off. He went to the bathroom and ran the shower. The water was cold but he hardly noticed. What to do?

  He’d been working with Arie for two months and was bored out of his mind. He just couldn’t get excited about flowcharts, asset and debit columns, and union negotiations. His instinct with a whining clerk was a two-knuckle stab in the throat and if that didn’t shut him up, then an elbow to the temple. Still, it kept him at home with the children and paid exactly double his government salary. Now Arie had said his apprenticeship was over and he should take the reins of the new plastics company, a sector set to explode, using techniques developed in West German laboratories adapted to Middle Eastern conditions. There wasn’t a single thing we use, Arie said, that couldn’t be manufactured in plastic. Cheaper, more durable, easier to clean, available in any color, flexible, waterproof, doesn’t corrode, strong; in short, the miracle product of our age. Plastic outdoor furniture, plastic indoor everything, Arie said, there’s the future. Israel’s economy is booming. Per capita income is 820 dollars, the highest in this part of the Middle East. Grow with it! One in twenty-five owns a car. “You’ll get a company Peugeot. A 404 sedan!”

  But set against that was a bizarre twist at the Office. His tragedy at home had saved him from the catastrophe at work.

  The operation he had been set to take over in Freiburg had turned into one of Mossad’s greatest fiascoes, and ended Isser Harel’s career. Ben-Gurion had forced him to resign.

  Instead of collapsing with fear, the German scientist’s daughter they had threatened had gone straight to the police, who arrested the Mossad spies. Harel’s entire black program of threats and murder buttressed by lies to the media had been blown wide open, to the fury of the prime minister, who was most concerned with maintaining West Germany’s secret flow of weapons to Israel, and cementing relations with the German government. Try doing that while Mossad was murdering German civilians.

  Harel’s replacement, General Meir Amit, who doubled as the head of military intelligence, wanted a Mossad veteran to take over a key new unit, someone he already knew and everyone trusted: Peter Nesher.

  But was he playing hard to get? The idea that he preferred to run a plastics company and look after his daughter had to be a negotiating ploy.

  “What does he really want?” Amit asked his new colleagues. “Ask him,” Yehuda Shur, the muscleman analyst turned field agent turned head of training, said. “He’ll tell you, you won’t find a straighter arrow than Nesher, or smarter. But remember, his wife just died. One of ours. In her time she was an excellent field agent. She died after giving birth. Six months ago.”

  “And since then he’s been working with his brother?”

  “It took him a couple of months to get back on his feet. But since then, yes.”

  “I know him, Arie Nesher. A piece of work. He’ll throw money at Peter to keep him.”

  “Yes,” Yehuda said. “But if there’s one person that money can’t buy, it’s Peter Nesher.”

  “All right. Get him in here.”

  * * *

  Major-General Amit still had to get used to the idea that outside the army people didn’t salute every order. So by the time Peter arrived, three days later, Amit’s first words were, “Where were you?”

  “At home with my daughter. And at work.” He felt no need to apologize. But no need to be rude either. “And how are you settling in?”

  Amit stared at him. Settling in? Who cared? In the army it wasn’t relevant. All that mattered was the job you did. These prima donnas needed their feathers trimmed.

  “How do you think I settled in? The first thing I found on my desk was a letter signed by the top Mossad agents in Europe complaining about everything, especially me. Then four of the senior people here resign because Harel’s gone. And now I hear you’re selling plastic garden chairs while we’re fighting for Israel’s survival.”

  “It’s tough, but someone has to do it. Sell garden chairs, I mean.”

  Amit had to smile. He had read Peter’s file and it confirmed everything he had already heard. Nesher was an intelligence man through and through, with a brief but successful military background; a meticulous planner who, in the field, improvised brilliantly; thorough, imaginative, and reliable; admired by his colleagues, recommended by Ben-Gurion himself. He needed this man. He changed his tack.

  “You liked Harel?”

  “We all did. I admired him. He was good to me.”

  “But?”

  “Is there a but?”

  “Don’t be cagey with me, Nesher.”

  “So be specific. What do you want to know?”

  “I want to know what the next move is with the German scientists you were involved with. You’re the expert on Nazis, what should we do? Killing them is out.”

  “Personally, sir, I never thought it was in. That was the policy, so we did it, but now that it’s been abandoned, I do think there is another way, which I always thought was the better one…”

  “Carry on.”

  They were sitting now in the corner suite around the coffee table, drinking Botz, the thick Israeli coffee that translates as “mud.” The new director general of Mossad had told his secretary to hold all non-urgent calls except from the prime minister’s office, and had suppressed a smile while Nesher phoned Rachel to say he’d be late picking up Diana.

  Morality didn’t concern Am
it, so they moved past that controversy with an acknowledgment that Nazi vermin could be useful too. Peter’s elimination of two of them was described and welcomed. The tradecraft, the running of the agents, was routine. The role of Veronique and Karla interested Amit as precursors of the honey trap. He knew that the agent Diana Greenberg had become Peter’s wife, and now had died. Peter’s disagreement with, but ultimate acceptance of, Harel’s intimidation and murder program was understood and the program’s effectiveness assessed, and the prime minister’s anger explained.

  “Harel tried to scare the German scientists into leaving, but there’s another way, which I argued in the beginning. For most of them it isn’t about being Nazis or fighting Jews or helping Nasser, most of them were simply enticed with high salaries to do work they loved and couldn’t do anywhere else. As simple as that. So they moved to Cairo. They’re more like high-level economic migrants. All we need to do is find a way to offer them even more money, but above all challenging and interesting work, and they’ll come home. That’s all. The German government should help with funds and projects.”

  “That would free up a lot of our resources too,” Amit added as he made notes. “We need to focus on new areas, and that’s what I want to talk to you about. But first I have to know if you’re in or out.”

  Peter laughed. The phrase rang a bell. “The last time someone said that to me was Rafi Eitan, when I finished my studies in the U.S. What, eight months ago? He wanted to know whether I’d come back to the Office. And that’s where I am again today.”

  He fell silent. He was wrong. That was not where he was today.

  Then, he and Diana had had to decide what kind of a life they would lead together. Now he had to decide what kind of a life he would live alone.

  Everything was different. He was forty years old and lonely. The best part of his life was over. What woman wants a morose man with three children and no money? He physically ached for Diana, he became nauseous when he dwelt on her. When he lay awake at night he felt like going to the hospital with a pistol. The doctors had denied all responsibility, they had hidden together behind a smokescreen of jargon, but he had rejected Arie’s offer of a lawyer. Would it bring her back? It was over. Move on. That’s what Diana would have wanted: a loving home for her children, not a bitter, unhappy father torturing himself over how to make those bastards pay.