by Y. I. Latz
I didn’t react.
I didn’t move.
She reached out for the remote I was holding, intending to turn off the TV.
I took a step back, my eyes magnetized to the screen.
The images continued to flow. The prisoner transport vehicle stopped at the front entrance to the court, on a busy central street, rather than at the rear entrance, as was customary, the reporter emphasized maliciously. The officer and his wife had to cross the significant distance in tiny steps, limited by the range of the short, heavy chain, like a pair of dancers in a Chinese circus. Sometimes, they were not sufficiently coordinated, and one of them tripped. It was actually the man who tripped more often, dragging his wife down as he fell and causing her to land upon him. It appeared to be an amusing spectacle, like a theatrical comedy. On their way, they were surrounded by television photographers and curious spectators. Someone raised a fist and cursed at them. Two young women spit at them. They climbed slowly up the thirty to forty stairs between the sidewalk and the doorway, one step at a time, with the prison guards and security personnel around them assailing them with brief orders delivered in bloodcurdling screams.
The reporter declared self-importantly, “The two spies from Israel were not alone in their recent humiliation on the courthouse steps. Their entire country, the State of Israel, was humiliated along with them.” She added sanctimoniously that U.S. Navy sources claimed that the severity of the deeds attributed to the couple is equivalent to those committed by Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard, thirty-some years earlier. If tried and convicted, each of them faced a significant sentence of fifteen to thirty years.
The reporter concluded by quoting another senior, anonymous American official. “Ungrateful Jerusalem has stabbed Washington, its best friend, in the back. Betrayed it without batting an eyelash. It should expect no mercy now.”
Smadar was muttering.
I’ll never forget what she said—
“Good lord, if something like that happened to the two of us, I’d die on the spot.”
And noticing the dismayed expression on my face, hastily added, “If not from the fear of jail, then the shame would kill me. Don’t you think so?”
She turned to look at me, gazing at me at length.
I didn’t meet her eyes.
The broadcast returned to the Tel Aviv studio. The two morning show anchors were joined by a military reporter. Energetically, he decreed, “What should currently be occupying the heads of Israeli intelligence is not the humiliating arrest of the couple in the United States, but a much more important issue: How were the two exposed? How did the FBI manage to track them down? Assuming the Israeli couple was professional enough not to make any stupid mistakes, the key question is, could American intelligence agencies have a covert agent among the ranks of Israeli Mossad leadership? Could the American CIA have embedded a mole in the operational decision center of IDF’s general staff at HaKirya base in Tel Aviv?”
Smadar grasped my chin with two fingers of her right hand, examining my face, like a mother who has noticed a bruise forming on her little son’s face, and in a gesture similar to that of the elderly barber who cuts my hair.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
I tried to free myself from her fingers’ grip.
She continued. “Look at you. You’re all red. What is this? Is your forehead dripping? You’re sweating! You never sweat, and it’s only seven fifteen in the morning. Why are you sweating?”
I took care not to meet her gaze.
She continued. “Are you…scared? Is that what you are, scared? Why are you scared? What do you care what happens over there in Maryland, even if the idiot officer does happen to be from your Navy? One more moron who decided to save the country all on his own, and cooked up a mess so stinky we can smell it all the way here.”
I had a hard time pretending. The images on TV had caught me unprepared. Smadar noticed how upset I was. She had no intention of backing off.
“Look at you. Hey, man, calm down! This isn’t the Sanitation Department inspecting your kitchen. Why are you taking their arrest so hard? What are you afraid of, that these two chocolate-cream soldiers will snitch to the Americans that your food doesn’t have the proper kosher certification? That you’ve been serving day-old food? That your tomatoes aren’t sweet enough? That your pots haven’t been scrubbed and shined? I still don’t understand what all this has to do with you, my darling chef.”
These last words were accompanied by a loud burst of laughter.
“Who says it does?!” I replied, my voice strained.
Her amused expression became more pensive. “I guess it does after all,” she said knowingly.
“No!”
“Your accent.”
“My accent?!”
“Your British accent is back,” she determined.
“So?”
“It only comes back when you’re scared or tense.”
“Nonsense.”
“And you’re also shaking.”
“I! Am! Not! Shaking!” I pushed her back slightly. “This officer, idiot or not, is from ‘my’ Navy, and anyone else in my position would have reacted the exact same way.”
“No,” she stated quietly. “Not everyone would have reacted like you. Not everyone would be shaking.”
◊◊◊
Nighttime. I couldn’t sleep a wink. I was brooding over the computer. There was not a single bad thought that hadn’t gone through my mind. I plowed through the Internet in an attempt to extract more details about the arrest of the two Israelis in the United States. I couldn’t find information beyond what had already been established and published.
As morning approached, I came to a decision.
“Where are you going?” Smadar asked in a sleepy voice.
“To the base,” I replied, and finished putting on my shoes.
She sat up in our bed, frightened. “Now? What time is it?! Did something happen? Are we at war again?”
“No, go back to sleep. They just called me from there. There’s some problem with the main refrigerator in the kitchen. I’ll try to come back quickly.”
I raced my car to Haifa down the empty northern roads. An hour later, I passed by the security post at the entrance to the base. The base looked empty. No one was outside at this hour. A salty smell was drifting in from the sea, causing my lungs to expand and my confidence to increase. I went into the kitchen. It looked messy. This hadn’t been the case when I was around. I ignored my anger at the disorder and the food scraps visible everywhere. I altered my original plan and decided to skip frying. I attacked the baking oven and within an hour, produced fragrant filo-dough pastries filled with spinach, mincemeat with pine nuts and raisins, and a potato filling with fried golden onion.
I placed them on elongated plates designed in a style unique to me and unseen in any other military kitchen. I loaded the plates on a big serving tray, along with a pitcher of Turkish-style coffee with touches of cardamom and various Yemenite spices, and carried it all toward the submarine fleet’s operations center, which was manned around the clock.
I couldn’t think clearly.
Too bad—
If only I had been thinking clearly—
As I had estimated, at this hour, there was no guard at the door. My self-confidence returned. I was separated from the operations center I was trying to reach by a door with an electronic lock. It opened via a simple buzzer from within. I called from my cell phone and was answered by an officer on duty with a childish voice.
“I have a tasty surprise,” I called out cheerfully. He sounded surprised but responded enthusiastically, as I’d expected.
“Henry? Wow! We’re really starving here! I’m opening the door! Thanks!”
A wave of joy broke over me.
I did it!
Beyond the locked door, I heard
steps. More than one set. The door opened. The officer’s head appeared.
Surprise. He wasn’t alone.
There were two soldiers on security duty with him, looking sleepy, equipped with weapons and tactical vests, as well as two Shin Bet security personnel in civilian clothing.
I hastily placed the tray on a chair and got out of there.
I had failed again.
I was standing on an exposed pier, looking out at the sea.
For a long time, I stood there facing the quiet sea. I gazed out at the lights shining from the direction of the towns around Haifa Bay, and from Acre and Nahariya. The sea breezes caressed my face, somewhat cooling my burning body. Oddly, I’d worked at this base for many years and yet had never visited this charming corner.
Dawn would be rising soon. My thoughts were diffused. I couldn’t focus. I knew one thing beyond a doubt.
Something bad was going on—
I looked up instinctively.
I had been right—
Security cameras had been affixed to streetlights on both sides of the desolate pier.
All of my actions were being documented—
I panicked.
I hurried to return to my kitchen.
My heart beating wildly, I entered the adjacent pantry.
For the umpteenth time, I examined the rear shelves, familiar only to me, in an attempt to discover any suspicious objects I might have accidently left behind.
Throughout this entire time, one troubling thought never ceased to gnaw at my mind.
London—
How would London react?
◊◊◊
Dawn broke. The morning shift workers began to arrive at the kitchen. They greeted me with cheers.
They were disappointed when I didn’t linger.
I rushed to leave.
I was too hasty.
I almost bumped into the base’s security officer, who appeared in front of me. A major by rank. He, too, had been one of my enthusiastic diners. Untypically, he didn’t joke around this time. In a hollow voice, he reported to me that as of this moment, my ability to move around the base was restricted, and I could no longer travel freely within it, as I once had. I was allowed to spend time within my kitchen and in most public areas, but the operational control rooms were now “out of bounds” for me.
“Sure, sure,” I told him in a pleasant tone that might also have been interpreted as patronizing, clapping him on the shoulder.
I was in a hurry. I couldn’t afford to lose any time.
“I’m serious!” he responded in reproach. “Oh, and one more thing. It’s a good thing I remembered. Here’s an official change of policy: from now on, staff meetings will no longer take place in your dining hall. That’s a win-win for you,” he added amiably. “You won’t have to prepare any more decadent feasts once the meetings are over.”
I wondered if he didn’t know that I’d been laid off, and that my remaining time at the base was limited.
“Who made the decision?” I asked impatiently.
“That’s what was decided,” he answered meaninglessly.
“By whom? The Navy commander?” I gestured as if intending to stride off toward the major general’s office at that very moment. He was another enthusiastic fan of my cooking.
He grabbed my arm. “I wouldn’t do that. The command came from way higher.”
“How much higher?” I smirked. “The chief of general staff? The minister of defense? The prime minister? Who?”
“The Shin Bet,” he replied seriously. “You want to mess with them?”
◊◊◊
I invited him inside.
I made him a “special breakfast,” the kind usually reserved solely for the Navy commander, his deputy, and the commanders of the submarines.
He felt flattered. His toughness evaporated. With his mouth full and his tongue dripping praise, he told me how harsh the atmosphere had become at the naval base. Everyone couldn’t stop talking about the arrest of the officer and his wife in the American espionage plot.
And the highlight—
A large group of Shin Bet and Military Police investigators had invaded the base. Their presence was conspicuous, and they weren’t concealing their actions. They’d commandeered a floor of offices, summoned officers and soldiers and questioned them for many hours. No soldier had been spared the summons, the base’s security officer told me, including HQ soldiers and staff administrative assistants.
I concluded from his report that they had skipped me and my kitchen workers.
I heaved a sigh of relief.
Idiots.
“What are they looking for?” I asked innocently.
“A spy.”
It wasn’t the security officer’s voice, and he had not been the one to answer.
It was the voice of an old friend.
Singer—
The deputy director of the Mossad had popped up in my kitchen unannounced, in a scene that seemed to be taken straight from a Hollywood movie.
He had never visited me at my base before.
The kettle full of coffee shook in my hand. Boiling coffee spilled on my pants and my shoes. I leaped up in horror.
Liar, liar, pants on fire.
Chapter Twelve
When Your Friend is Deputy Director of the Mossad
Singer was an old friend. Our acquaintance first began thirty years earlier. We were young soldiers, serving together as fighters in the Naval Commando. Same team, same tent, same wavelength. A true friendship grew between two young soldiers with different backgrounds. One a kibbutz member who had recently emigrated from England, the other a member of a large family of Middle Eastern heritage, from a small town in northern Israel.
We carried each other through exhausting endurance trials, pushed and encouraged each other in moments of crisis, told each other everything we knew about ourselves, including secret, intimate matters.
There were no secrets between us.
Except for one.
The secret—
Behind it was a balance of terror—
We were both good at keeping quiet. I didn’t expose his secret. He didn’t expose my secret.
My silence helped him achieve a meteoric career.
His silence bought me my freedom.
The key event in our lives took place in the mid-eighties. A young officer and four select fighters from the Naval Commando were sent on a daring intelligence mission deep in enemy territory. The port of the city of Aden in Yemen, about 1,250 miles away from the borders of Israel. Aden was considered to be an exit port for ships bearing weapons intended for terrorists in Gaza and the West Bank, as well as an exit port for pirate ships preying on Israeli merchant marine ships on their way to the Far East or to the countries of East Africa.
Our assignment was to take photos of the Port of Aden, as well as leave behind sophisticated surveillance and monitoring equipment. British warships were moored at the harbor, and it was often utilized by the British Merchant Navy, starting with the days when Aden was still a British colony and on into 1963.
Singer and I were two of the more inexperienced fighters in the group. We had just finished our training. In contrast, the officer and the other two team members were veterans with plenty of combat experience. Singer was chosen for the mission due to his utter fluency in Arabic and his “authentic” Middle Eastern look. I was chosen for the mission due to my fluent English, my perfect British accent and my European looks.
We understood that our commanders had picked both of us in case the team got in trouble and we found ourselves required to blend into our environment.
The five of us were dressed in broad, sweeping jellabiyas, traditional Arab robes, over our IDF uniforms. We became IDF’s first undercover Arab impersonators, before this method began to be wid
ely used as part of the fight against the Palestinians in the West Bank. Under the jellabiyas, we hid our weapons and communication devices, as well as a thousand pounds divided between us, in case we got in trouble and needed to bribe someone.
One clear warning was constantly repeated to us: In case we were caught, we must take off the traditional outfits as quickly as possible. If we were caught wearing them, we would be judged as spies, and would face the death penalty. Whereas if we were soldiers, the Geneva Convention would apply to us, and we would be considered prisoners of war.
We were young and enthusiastic, and saw the strange costume as a fun challenge.
After sailing for several days aboard a civilian Israeli merchant ship, we went past the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, separating the Red Sea from the Port of Aden. At night, we left the ship in two rubber boats and made a beeline for the coast. Once there, we hid the boats and positioned ourselves on the roof of an abandoned house that had been chosen in advance and which overlooked the harbor. Using a special night-vision camera, we photographed the vessels and the security arrangements at the port, as well as concealing monitoring equipment and a small satellite dish under the metal awning.
Our mission was completed just before dawn. We had to clear out quietly, return to a desolate corner of the beach in which we had hidden the rubber boats, and from there, make our way quickly toward the heart of the sea, where the merchant ship was waiting for us.
However, things went wrong, and from an unexpected direction. The immense pressure we were under as well as the major mental stress got to our officer and mission commander, of all people, the most experienced among the five of us in missions of this sort.
The officer was stricken with anxiety, stopped functioning, and began blurting out a stream of meaningless words while shaking all over.
Even worse, he refused to leave his current location. He simply lay down on the filthy ground on the roof, clung to the drainpipe and stomped his feet. He was big and heavy and it was impossible to carry him on our backs against his will.
It was embarrassing. We admired him. To us, he was downright Godlike in stature, or at least His representative on Earth.
