Sally welcomed them in English. They answered politely and then stormed the refreshments, chatting away in an African language. Sally sat down on one of the couches and watched them, amazed. Does the king starve his wives? Judging by their full figures, he didn’t. One of the women, who caught her glance, said, “The king was in meetings, and we spent the day shopping. The guards wouldn’t agree for us to sit in a restaurant.”
One after the other, the women left the table and collapsed on the couches, removing their shoes with a sigh of relief. An uneasy silence ensued. “What have you bought?” Sally asked in English. The woman who spoke earlier answered again. “Everything,” she said, adding that the other women didn’t speak English.
Silence again. Sally examined the tired women. More than anything, they wished to lie down and fall asleep. She suddenly had an idea. She opened the closet and took out the sheets used to cover the couches. She then pushed the chairs and couches away from the soft carpet, spreading the sheets over it. “Here you go,” she said, gesturing to the white expanse and lying down on its corner. They slipped down to the floor and were soon fast asleep.
At night, Jerry told her, “The king’s wives were very pleased and refreshed after your hospitality. The king is pleased. I think he’ll give us what we ask for.”
4.
“Ma,” said Roy, and ran to Sally with open arms. “Ma!”
Sally knelt and held him in her arms. “Ima, say Ima.” She took him by the hand and led him to the kitchen. Dinner was waiting on the table, and as he ate a slice of tomato with his fingers, she switched on the electric kettle to make a cup of strong English tea.
Two years had passed since they had returned to Israel from England, but her habit of drinking tea instead of coffee lingered on. During the pregnancy with Roy and following his birth, she had tried to cut down on the amount of caffeine she drank, and substituted the tea bag with mint leaves. But as soon as she finished breast-feeding she returned to her old habit—very strong tea with two teaspoons of sugar, a few times a day, both at home and at work.
She heard the door open and close, and then Jerry’s footsteps looking for them in Roy’s room and then in the living room. “There you are,” he said as he entered the kitchen. He kissed them both and sat at the table. “I’ve received a ridiculous proposal today,” he said.
“From one of your female employees?”
Jerry laughed. “No, from my boss. He offered me a three-year mission to a Muslim country, fully under cover.”
Sally was experienced enough to know what full cover meant: A different identity and life story, which must be memorized perfectly over months. “And what did you tell him?”
“I said no, of course. I wouldn’t last three years without you and Roy.”
“And what if we went with you?”
“What?” he almost shouted. It was one of those rare occasions when he lost his cool, and Sally explained quietly, “I mean, I took the basic course in London, and have even proven myself a number of times.”
“This time it’s completely different,” Jerry insisted.
“What must you do there?”
“Forge connections with the regime, especially with the president and administration officials, to thwart an arms deal with a hostile partner, and also—” his voice dropped to a whisper, “—follow the development of their capacity to produce nuclear weapons.”
Sally was unimpressed. “It doesn’t sound too difficult. You know how good I am at making connections. What’s the salary like?”
“Much higher than the one I have now, but—”
“And the living conditions?”
“The population is poor, but the elite and the foreigners have servants, maids, drivers. But don’t even think about it. It’s unprecedented in the Mossad. An entire family never traveled to a target country.”
“I’ve done many unprecedented things, including marrying you.”
Jerry didn’t even smile. “We can’t go. Full stop. You don’t realize how secret the whole thing is. I shouldn’t have even told you about the mission,” he said, his face turning gloomy.
She kissed him. “Don’t worry. You know how good I am at keeping secrets. I know all about my girlfriends’ affairs, about my father’s business dealings, and I’ve never told anyone, not even you, right?”
“Your girlfriends have affairs?”
“Not a word,” she said. “So are we going?”
“No. It’s madness,” he said. “You want another child. You’ll need a doctor, milk, all sorts of things. It’s a primitive country.”
“Tell me, don’t Bedouin women in the Negev Desert have children raised in tents?” she put her arm on his shoulder. “Look how much it will benefit us: We’ll make more money, save for an apartment, we’ll have a nanny and be able to have another child, you’ll be professionally promoted, and we’ll be doing something for our country. I’ll help you make connections and we’ll have us an adventure.”
“You love adventures.” Jerry groaned. “I really don’t.”
“You have no choice. The moment you met me you began an adventure.” Sally laughed.
5.
A British Airways aircraft began its descent for landing at Benazir Bhutto Airport. Sally looked out the window at the two cities spread out beneath her: modern Islamabad with its straight streets and skyscrapers glistening in the morning sun, and Rawalpindi, which seemed to have sprung up on its own with no discernible order. Sally’s face was pale, her hands tightly grasping the seat handles. She stared at Jerry, who seemed calm and secure. Even in him, she knew, uncertainty was lurking. Young Roy, who received a passport with his new name, Roy Travers, was mumbling meaningless syllables of pre-speech. Would he be able to turn those mumbles into English words? Sally wondered for the umpteenth time. For the past six months, only English was spoken around him, and he was never exposed to Hebrew. In any event, could his subconscious be tainted with a few Hebrew words he had picked up?
Queuing at passport control, they were watched by a man with a mustache and gray suit, who stood to the side. “Domestic security,” Jerry explained with a whisper. At the counter, a rigid officer wearing khakis examined their passports. “What purpose have you come for, tourism or business?” he asked.
“Business,” said Jerry.
“And where’s the child’s passport?”
“He’s registered in my passport,” she answered. Her accent was different than her husband’s, perhaps because she was born in Vardø, a small town in Norway, as her passport indicated.
The officer flipped a few pages, stamped both passports, and signaled the Travers family through. Roy waved to him with his little hand and said, “Bye bye.” The officer’s stern face cracked a smile.
Outside the terminal, a car awaited them with a uniformed driver. “Good morning,” he said as he opened the door. “I’m Aziz, your driver.”
The drive on the highway left Sally very nervous. Jerry was silent as usual. She too, atypically, didn’t utter a word. All the doubts and fears she had suppressed suddenly emerged. Pakistan has no Jews, and certainly no Israelis, and yet—so she heard—covert business transactions take place between the countries. What if an Israeli she knew bumped into her here? What if she accidently spoke a word of Hebrew? What if Jerry talked in his sleep, as he sometimes did?
The driver spoke into a walkie-talkie he held in his hand. She recognized a few words in Urdu, which she had begun to study ahead of the trip. She thought he was reporting their arrival, saying he was taking them home. Suddenly she was fearful. What were the chances he was speaking to assassins waiting for them at home? Did the Mossad officials who chose him verify his identity?
The road stretched along a lake. “We have three of these in Islamabad,” the driver suddenly said in English. “The government dug them when it established the city. They cool the air in summer. Before, t
here was nothing here. Just desert.”
“Very interesting,” Jerry said in the British inflection he’d adopted.
“You can drive there. I know a very nice beach. It’s meant for diplomats and foreigners—and only there can you swim in a bikini.”
His light-hearted chatter made Sally uneasy. She let Jerry handle the conversation, focusing her gaze on the pinkish hills in the distance. After twenty minutes of a bumpy ride, the car entered the city. It reminded Sally of a huge collection of Lego structures. Everything was well-planned but sterile, featureless. The blue lakes glistened at the edge of every boulevard, and trees were planted along the sidewalks. The car drove into a neighborhood of plush villas and pulled up next to one. A team of eight servants stood at the entrance. Jerry and Sally walked passed them, warmly shaking their hands, as the driver parked the car in the large garage.
Life in Islamabad was comfortable, and the cover designed for the family proved itself. Jerry began his job as the manager of a profitable British import-export company. Sally began developing a social circle to help Jerry accomplish his objective, easily befriending the women of the expatriate community, who socialized with the wives of the country’s political leaders. Sally would sleep for only two or three hours a night, listening in bed to the sounds emitted by the house. One night she found a baseball bat in the gym in the basement, and placed it next to her bed. She trusted no one but Jerry, especially not the servants, the food, the laundry deliverymen, or the handymen busy with the air conditioner, swimming pool, or fish pond—Jerry’s new hobby.
Roy forgot the little Hebrew he’d learned. Just in case, Sally decided to enroll him at the local nursery, not the international one, fearful that one of the foreigners would pick up any Hebrew words the boy may utter. He was exposed to the local culture, learned the tenets of Islam, and would wake at dawn with the servants, watching them pray, and even reciting the prayers aloud in his high-pitched voice. The love he received from the servants was a guarantee that he would come to no harm, Sally believed. Once, she froze in terror when Roy—waving at her as he rode his little tricycle on the patio—shouted “Shalom, shalom.” His nanny and the gardener, standing nearby, burst out laughing. “Salaam,” they replied, and he called back “Salaam, salaam.”
Sally wouldn’t allow her anxieties to run her life. A few weeks after arriving in Islamabad, she returned to her old hobby—tennis—and joined an exclusive club founded back in the days of the British. The young Englishwoman with the strange accent was soon the club favorite. Rumors of her fierce serve made waves, and she found herself invited to many matches, including with men who wished to test their strength against her.
In one of these matches she met Angela, the wife of the Spanish ambassador to Pakistan. The Mediterranean temperament they shared brought the two women together, and soon they became close friends. Angela was the second person, after Jerry, to learn that Sally was pregnant with her second child. Sally, for her part, became Angela’s confidante, listening to her perpetual suspicion over her husband’s infidelity. The Spanish diplomat would inform his wife of trips he must take across Pakistan on a weekly basis, while rumor had it that he would meet his secretary in lavish Karachi hotels.
Rumors were the fuel that kept the small, diverse elite of Islamabad going. Many of them were revealed to Sally by Angela. Most rumors concerned the husbands’ love affairs, but some touched on political or commercial matters. Sally conveyed every shred of information she gleaned from her conversations to Jerry, as she found herself listening to countless tales of pain and misery by women who felt physically and emotionally abandoned. Soon, she realized that these women did not seek clear-cut answers but rather solace. Sally would tell the women that she heard from Jerry that the men spoke tenderly of their wives, were loyal to them, and were engaged in no extramarital affairs. Their gratefulness touched Sally and made her pity them for their loneliness.
Sally too was lonely, but it was different; a couple’s loneliness. She shared it with Jerry, who, unlike her, did not join friends for dinners or tennis matches, but traveled only to his office or to social functions where his presence was necessary. His introverted nature only intensified. Unlike Sally, he found it difficult to make new friends, and preferred spending his free time at home, reading, or watching international news channels. At social events, he would usually remain silent as she spoke, sometimes too much. Once, she found herself defending Israel in conversation, and being gently kicked by Jerry under the table. Sometimes, conversation drifted to the Mossad, which people often considered the best intelligence service in the world. Sally would stare at her plate, trying to hide her pride. Often they were served non-kosher food. Sally and Jerry would move the food from one side of the plate to the other, cut it into small pieces as though to eat it, but not taste a bite. They would hide the frog legs in the lettuce salad, or declare they were allergic to clams and other seafood.
In the few times that she got in trouble, Sally’s quick thinking rescued her. Once, at a high society fashion show, she sat next to a man who spoke English with a foreign accent. “Where are you from?” he asked.
“England,” Sally replied.
“But you have an odd accent.”
Her heart beat quickly. She said with confidence, “I’m originally from Norway.”
“Norway?” said the man joyously, “I’m from there too. What city?”
“A small town, you’ve probably never heard of it. Vardø.”
“I know Vardø,” said the man, and began speaking Norwegian, a language Sally didn’t speak a word of. She had to suppress her urge to escape the scene on the spot. Tears of distress welled up in her eyes, and she used them to her advantage. “My parents were killed in a car accident,” she said, reciting the main elements of her cover story. “I was given to an aunt in England at a young age. If you speak Norwegian—I’ll cry.”
The man apologized, but to dismiss any suspicion that may have arisen in him, Sally used a tactic that had always proved itself: “Tell me about yourself,” she asked, and indeed he recounted his life story for the rest of the evening.
Once, Angela warned Sally away from one of the society ladies, saying, “She’s a quarter Jewish, and you can tell in her personality.” Sally held herself back from retorting, “I’m entirely Jewish, and you’ve chosen me as your best friend.” Angela continued her confession. “I hate Jews. I can smell them from a distance.”
How she wanted to prove to her, the best friend she had in that distant land, that her hatred of Jews was baseless! She overcame her desire, of course, as she had done many times before. At nights, when she reclaimed her identity as Jewish and Israeli, she despised the senseless hatred some harbored for her people. Her national identity was enhanced more than ever before, and every insult against Israel or Judaism was like a stab in her heart. She couldn’t fathom how people could simply hate for no reason. For the first time in her life, she realized that anti-Semitism didn’t stem from some kind of flaw in Judaism, but from a sense of fear and inferiority in its enemies. In any event, when she took part in the Christmas celebrations of her Christian friends, or joined Iftar dinners on the nights of Ramadan with her Muslim friends, she felt the commonality between them and the Jews, which strengthened her belief that believers are ultimately similar.
At these festivities, she missed her childhood home. She yearned for the Rosh Hashanah, Passover and Sabbath meals, the ideological arguments that accompanied them, the hymns they would sing afterward, and the quiet that enveloped the village throughout the entire Sabbath. She missed her family so much it hurt.
Roy also sensed the lack of family. When Mossad emissaries would arrive at meetings undercover, Sally and Jerry would present them as “uncles,” and he would complain time and again, “Why do all my friends in kindergarten have so many uncles, and only I have uncles that come once and never return?”
Sally was allowed to contact her rel
atives only every few months, when she would leave the country with Jerry and Roy under the pretext of a ski or safari holiday. They would arrive at the Israeli embassy in a European capital and rush for the telephones. Her parents knew that their daughter and son-in-law were on mission in a faraway land with bad communications, but could never imagine their real living conditions. Sometimes Sally would allow Roy to greet her parents in English, constantly wary of him uttering a word in Urdu. At times she wouldn’t risk it, lying to her parents that Roy had stayed behind and was being cared for by a loving nanny. To herself, she thought she could never leave him alone in Islamabad.
Nevertheless, she was forced to do so. When she was due to give birth, Jerry was busy finalizing a big business deal and she traveled alone to the United Kingdom, where she delivered their second son alone in a cold, private hospital. The only person to visit her was a strange, solemn character who asked her what she was planning to call her son. “Michael,” she answered.
The next day, the man reappeared and placed an envelope on the night table next to her bed containing a birth certificate and passport for Michael Travers. “Mazel Tov,” he said, before asking if she planned to circumcise the baby.
“Of course,” she said.
“In that case, we’ll do it here in the hospital, and if someone—a doctor or nurse—notices the circumcision when you return to Islamabad, tell them that many upper-class English people circumcise their children.”
She left the hospital three days after the delivery and moved to a fancy hotel, waiting for Michael to heal from his circumcision. Her only connection to the outside world was her phone calls to Jerry, in which she was never herself but Sally Travers. She regarded that period as a time to examine and hone her skills as a Mossad employee. She wondered how long she could remain in a hiding place without succumbing to the urge to break out for one moment.
Married to the Mossad Page 2
