He tried to remember who she was when she was the real Rachel, the one sitting in her apartment in the evening, turning off the television set, looking out through the little window, and thinking about herself, not about being an operative on a mission and not about the image that she needed to project. Ehud realized that in fact he didn’t know, he’d never taken an interest, never asked her what she was reading, what she was doing, what she liked, what she was interested in. Everything relating to Rachel the operative he was well acquainted with, but about the real woman he knew nothing. A troublesome thought nagged at him—perhaps this Rachel no longer existed. Maybe he and his colleagues had destroyed her, and the one who once lived here was no more. She was stuck in an in-between state, in the limbo that he himself created for her, waiting for an assignment, waiting for time to pass, waiting for some savior like the one who came to her in the end. He remembered this wasn’t the first time she left, but he was overwhelmed by the painful feeling that this was evidently the last time.
Ehud continued searching. What did she want to bring on her journey? What was missing here of all the things normally found in a house? He shifted his attention to the bookshelves. They were in order. He opened the drawer. Old pens and pencil sharpeners, all kinds of things that no one bothers to sort out. He took the drawer out from its place and bent down to see if there was anything underneath it, something that had been stuck, or some little cache that she improvised. Nothing. He emptied the drawer on the table and sorted through the few objects, until he saw a strange kind of button. “From a jacket sleeve,” said Joe, suddenly standing beside him. Ehud picked up the silver object and examined it intently. There was no insignia on it, and it seemed it was there arbitrarily. But that wasn’t the way it was, because she had kept it. Ehud put it in his wallet, in the compartment reserved for small change. When they meet, he’ll ask her.
“Anything else?” The voice of the team commander roused him from his reverie. “The smell,” said Ehud. “The smell is different.” He sniffed, and the team commander did the same. “There is no smell,” said the commander, disappointed. “Exactly,” said Ehud. “Every place has a smell. There should be something here too, and there isn’t.” He moved again around the little apartment until he was sure he’d found what he was looking for: nothing. Rachel didn’t take anything. She walked out of here as if she were leaving a hotel room, although the apartment of course was full of personal items. All these items belonged to a world that Rachel didn’t need anymore. Rachel didn’t want to come back.
THEY SAT IN A STYLISH RESTAURANT in Rehovot. In the evening it would be filled with the high-tech crowd and students who could afford it, but now it was almost empty. Joe didn’t want to go to the Office and join the mob in the war room. He told Ehud that computers weren’t for him and it was a waste of their time. The war room gang didn’t need them there, and it wasn’t for this that they had recalled Ehud to the service. “Tell me about her,” he suggested, explaining that they needed to look for her in another way.
“It’s been a long time since I saw her, and in spite of the picture I showed you, she’s the same Rachel as she was then. A young woman with green eyes, round mouth, hair with a part, and an innocent cast of features that made you want to help her. I think her phone call to me was a cry for help. In a certain sense, she wants me to look after her as I once did, so she’ll again be the little girl who came to work for us.
“After I was appointed her case officer, I sat and read everything that was written in her personal file. I searched for her motivation in wanting to join us. I knew it wasn’t some epiphany she had. Such things only happen rarely and usually in movies, although in recruitment interviews some of the candidates talk about the juncture at which they chose this path. I’m a skeptic about those stories, and when I was on the interviewing panel I would ask a candidate who tried to sell me this line what it would take to make him or her change his mind again and leave us. There was nothing exceptional with Rachel, and I was satisfied. A reasonable student. A mother who died young and a stern father who it was difficult to love up close.
“The relationship with the father was never smooth. When she was already an operative I asked her to contact him every time she came off an assignment, to reassure him that all was well and promise to visit him. I pleaded with her to write to him and she refused that as well, said he wasn’t interested and he didn’t care. I reminded her of the checks that he was sending her, and she said the little notes he enclosed with the checks were prepared a year in advance. I had no option but to write to him myself after he went to the embassy to report that she’d disappeared. I wrote the first letter so he’d stop interfering. I stressed how important she was to the security of the nation of Israel and insisted he not talk to anyone about this. I had to write him the second letter after she left the Unit because he asked about her as if she were still working for us. As if we needed to explain to him why she was reluctant to write letters and never got in touch. Then I wrote to him exactly what I was told to write, the truth, that she was no longer a part of our organization.
“But all of this came later. What drew my attention was her ability to get up and go to another place. She certainly studied exactly as her father wanted, but at the age of seventeen she left and came here as a volunteer for a few months. Then she went away to a university in the north of England, and after her mother died it was as if she divorced him and came to this country as an immigrant. A girl alone, nineteen years old. I saw energy in this, I saw in this a quest for something more than a profession. I also read the other reports about her, though I didn’t attach much importance to them, unless I knew the assessor. What was conspicuous was her ability to adapt, to be one of the group, and also to get what she wanted. The only thing that disturbed me was the fact that she spent only about a year in each place, and I wondered how she would cope with a long stay in an Arab city, living undercover.
“I asked her why she joined. Why after finishing university and already having a job she preferred to leave everything behind, including the boyfriend, and put her life on hold with a kind of extended intermission that would put her back, years later, at square one. She said we approached her and she was curious, and she always wanted to do more to further the Zionist project, and one thing led to another. I didn’t believe a word of it. I knew she only wanted to put my mind at rest and give me a standard and predictable response, the kind they give in entrance exams. That isn’t what we’re looking for, and you know that as well as I do. No one volunteers to go through what a solitary operative goes through only because he’s a Zionist. In this country there are millions of Zionists, many among them are multilingual, but someone who’s prepared to volunteer is exceptional. There’s something special in him besides the ability to assume another persona and undertake operations. He needs us. That’s the point. He needs us the way we need him. Sometimes he doesn’t even know he’s looking for us, and how well suited he is to us. Such people have difficulty identifying what it is they’re looking for, they only know there’s another reality that they can belong to, that it’s possible to go to distant places and do what’s forbidden to others, things you only dream about. There’s something intoxicating in our work; suddenly it’s permissible to lie, you can put on an act, and everything is sanctioned by the state. The operative is licensed to commit crimes. He steals, sometimes he even kills, and instead of going to prison he gets a commendation.
“And something else. Many of them aren’t content with their lives, and they’re ready for a change, and this is what happened with Rachel. We diverted her from a path that was leading her nowhere, and gave her a new world. She trusted us, trusted the respect that we felt for her, the faith we invested in her, and I daresay she saw in us an extended family. From her point of view she was an only child, as in the family she left behind. And for this reason she had a terrible crisis when it all came to an end and she was cut off all at once. In hindsight, I realize she w
as really just a child and we let her play some very dangerous games. We did something that wasn’t right, Joe, we didn’t succeed in rehabilitating her after she came back from there, and something in her life was fucked up. This is what we need to clarify.”
“You’re exaggerating,” said Joe, and Ehud felt rebuked when he heard what was to follow: “You’re giving me a lecture on operatives as if I hadn’t been there when you still knew almost nothing about what goes on inside the Mossad.”
“I feel this is important, to start from the beginning. To understand from where—”
But Joe interrupted him: “Okay, okay, I agree it’s necessary to go back and retrace her steps.” He chewed his food slowly. His hand trembled and he tried to control it. “But it seems to me you’re taking this too personally. As if you’re still the case officer and she’s your operative. What happened to her after she left is not your problem.” Ehud listened and didn’t dare tell him how he felt. “The secrets that she has tucked away inside her are the problem.” Joe’s face was grim, and despite the years that had passed they both knew who was in charge. “You heard them in the Office just as I did. This can’t be allowed to happen. These secrets, which even we are not privy to, must not be allowed to fall into their hands.”
“But—” Ehud began, and wanted to say that for him it was all about Rachel, but Joe didn’t let him interrupt.
“We need to find her and bring her back before there’s any damage. This isn’t the time to indulge in a guilt trip, and we won’t win any bonus points if we admit that she meant the world to us all the time she was with us and afterwards we forgot her.”
A waitress in black passed between the tables and asked if they were enjoying their meal. Her jeans were too tight, her T-shirt too short to cover a white and endearing midriff. Ehud’s eyes wandered in that direction, and she noticed and pulled the hem of the T-shirt down with a bashful hand. “She’s younger than my son,” said Ehud, blushing, when he realized Joe had also noticed the look. “So what?” said Joe, and admitted he had been staring too. “What do you think, with age it goes away? You don’t need to tell me what passed through your mind the first moment you heard from Rachel.” Ehud didn’t say a word. His steak was cold by now and the red fibers lacing the meat stood out like roads leading nowhere.
WHEN THEY ARRIVED AT JOE’S HOUSE, evening had already settled in. A light breeze stirred the tops of the trees and the roar of a passing train drowned their voices and helped them to hold their silence. They had known each other for many years and knew that not everything needs to be talked about. Not everything needs to be known, and knowledge, although it may be power, is also a burden. When you know, you need to do something. When you don’t know, you are free.
“So what now?” Ehud asked. The traces of the long day weren’t perceptible in him. Something new was happening. Energy he didn’t know he had started to bubble inside him. Memories wanted to come out, and he wanted to put them in order, because left inside they were liable to fester. He wanted to talk, that was clear. Not about everything, at least not now. He used Joe like a tennis player practices against a wall. “You’re my sounding board,” he told him, and Joe just nodded and said that was all right, he might as well carry on. Ehud asked what was going on with the war room, and when did they need to report their findings. “What they do in the WR is not our problem, we’re not their backup team,” said Joe, and again he spoke in the steely and authoritative tone that Ehud thought he had lost: “Our advantage over the team in the WR consists of two things only. You know her, and I know you. That’s all. Out of this we need to build the picture, and when we sense something floating up or thickening in what we’re cooking, we’ll pull it out and attend to it. And we’re not going to construct fancy theories either, or get fixated on anything except Rachel’s story. You know there are people at HQ who think maybe she’s doing as Vanunu, hiding somewhere and confiding her memories to some journalist. And there are other possibilities, including the ashrams and monasteries that people run away to. There in the WR they’ll take care of those issues. And we’ll talk. We must observe one rule—tell the truth and be as honest as you can. You will talk, and I’ll listen. I know you’ll want to hide things from me. We’re all ashamed of some of the things we’ve done. But only the truth. It’s worth it. You might even enjoy it.”
Joe stretched out on the deck chair in the garden and lit a cigar. He looked content, and Ehud told him he’d never heard him say so much. “Agreed,” Ehud said, and waited while Joe’s wife put a tray down on the little table between them. Then he yielded to temptation and added two extra spoonfuls of sugar to the teacup that he held in his hand. “This is no time to be fighting on two fronts,” he said to Joe, who had noticed. “You can always start a new diet.”
CHAPTER THREE
Milan
“‘YOU’LL SEE,’ I TOLD HER, ‘YOU’LL fly there, and it will be easier than you think, and different from the training you’ve gone through, because the sense of danger isn’t something that can be simulated. I know you’re afraid, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Fears are good. Don’t be ashamed of them, they’ll help you to be cautious and prepared. Someone who doesn’t admit to being afraid—he isn’t suitable. We’re not looking for people like that. We need the ones who know the dangers, are afraid of them, and know how to overcome the fear. This is your baptism by fire, and the first time is always the hardest.’
“And that’s the way it was, but I’m getting ahead of myself. We were at the end of one road and at the start of another.” Ehud interrupted the flow of his speech for a moment and waited until Joe nodded that he was waiting for the rest. “Three months before that they sent her to me from Israel so I could prepare her for the assignment. ‘She’ll be your operative, and from now on she’s your responsibility,’ the Unit commander told me, and he showed me her file. I remember sitting with him in an empty café in a grubby little piazza in Rome at the height of a stifling summer, and I felt the setting didn’t suit this kind of operation. I imagined being summoned to headquarters in Israel, going into the commander’s office late at night to be told there’s something only I could do; I was supposed to size up the matter carefully, solemnly, and the commander was supposed to persuade me, and then I would agree, of course. That wasn’t how things worked out, but I forgave him because I was glad to have an operation of my own again, something that would be my responsibility from A to Z, the way we teach it on the operational course.
“I was a veteran case officer then and a perpetual candidate for the post of department head. ‘He’s better suited to work in the field,’ they wrote in my file every time they bypassed me in the round of appointments, and you too said something similar when you sent me away on a three-year exile to Africa. And you know what? I adapted to it and I admit it suited me. I enjoyed being abroad and working with the operatives. There’s a kind of enchantment that’s hard to explain to anyone who hasn’t experienced it himself. You’re master of your fate and everything depends on you, and at the same time you really feel that the nation of Israel is behind you. I became used to this way of life, and I always agreed to long assignments in Europe. Rina was at home then with the children. They were young and our parents helped her. I know it was harder for her than it was for me, and telling her that the state was calling me must have seemed to her inadequate compensation.
“I asked the commander about Rachel and wondered why he decided to take me off the boring assignment I was on at the time. He told me that after two months of working on a Canadian cover with her case officer, it seemed she was falling in love with him, so they decided to replace him. Just like that, all at once. ‘She’ll have no problems with you,’ the commander said. I was offended, of course: What kind of a man, however old he may be, doesn’t want to be fancied and flirted with? I envied the case officer who left her and I admired his professionalism. He knew it wasn’t healthy, and of course it was forbidden. So he separated from
her, using the excuse of another urgent mission, and they passed her on to me.
“I met her in Brussels. I told her to rent a small room on a short-term basis and we would meet in cafés and museums. She told the family she rented from that she was taking a long vacation in Europe, and I devised a story about being a bachelor businessman courting an attractive young woman. No one checked us out or asked what someone like me was doing with her. Brussels is an ideal place for romances like this. The city is overflowing with diplomats wasting their time in the various international organizations, and after hours they’re looking for someone on the side. I gave her a few days to get settled and then took her for dinner at a very expensive restaurant. She turned up wearing an odd outfit—some kind of overalls—and she stood out with her beauty and the sense of unease that she projected. I was disappointed that she wasn’t professional enough to check what kind of a restaurant we were going to and wear appropriate clothing, and I had the impression that despite the high marks she scored in training, she was still like a plant uprooted from its garden and put in a strange place. I waited until the coffee came and then asked her if she was prepared to go there. She said yes in a tone expressing all the discipline and readiness for everything that the instructors try to inculcate. We finished the meal, I told her to carry on with her sightseeing and job-seeking, and when I escorted her to the taxi that I ordered for her, she shook my hand, as if we were parting. The next day I informed HQ that she wasn’t ready yet, and we should delay her placement in the target zone for a few months; they argued with me a little, as always, and reminded me we weren’t a travel agency. I told them that they should stop hassling me, that I didn’t ask for their opinion.
The English Teacher Page 4
