Married to the Mossad

by Hessel, Shalva

  Sally smiled again. “And what exactly do they say?”

  “That Mrs. Marin fled her husband to somewhere in Europe. She isn’t interested in staying in touch with him—”

  “Or with her children?”

  Ovadia hesitated for a moment. “That’s an issue we weren’t asked to look into,” he replied, “but I assume that there are problems on that issue too. In any case, the matter has nothing to do with Rabbi Ben David, so there’s no option of filing a complaint, as Mr. Darmond requested. Even you can understand that.”

  Sally nodded. “Even I understand,” she said.

  “And since you were appointed by Mr. Marin to deal with this, I must remind you that I’m still owed fifty-four thousand dollars for the work I did, plus expenses.”

  “You deserve what you deserve,” said Sally.

  Ovadia smiled contently.

  “And I would also recommend that Mr. Marin pay immediately.”

  Ovadia nodded.

  “That is, if Mrs. Marin were really in Europe.”

  “What?” Ovadia jumped up. “What do you mean?”

  Sally turned to Darmond. “You haven’t told him?”

  “He did,” Ovadia interrupted, “but I proved to him that it’s nonsense.” He walked to the table and pulled out a file from one of the folders. “Hermes, a company active in Switzerland and across the EU, with a reputation since 1898, claims that Mrs. Marin lives in Portugal in a village called—”

  “Please hand me the report.” Sally’s voice turned severe. She examined the document for a long while, even though she understood nothing written in it. “Where are the photographs?” she asked.

  Ovadia handed her a series of photographs of a fair-haired woman taken from a distance behind a house window. Sally examined them one after the other. Then she pulled out her mobile phone. “Here I have photos that were taken in Beersheba ten days ago. Mr. Marin confirmed beyond all doubt that the woman in them is his wife. When are your photos from?”

  The shadow of a doubt crossed Ovadia’s face. He hesitated for a moment, a hesitation picked up by Darmond. “You gave them to me a month ago.”

  “Yes, a month,” confirmed Ovadia, “maybe a bit more. She may have come to Beersheba later.”

  The expression on Darmond’s face turned stern. “Before Madame Sally entered, I asked you and you said—”

  “Yes, I said there was no chance Mrs. Marin was in Beersheba. But if Mr. Marin says it’s definitely his wife…” Small beads of sweat began appearing on Ovadia’s forehead. “Maybe she went there after her picture was taken in Portugal.”

  “And the investigation company didn’t report this?” Darmond insisted.

  Ovadia squirmed. “It may have. I need to check at the office. I have a number of employees.”

  Sally reexamined the document. “There’s a number here for the Geneva office.” She tapped it into her mobile phone and put it to her ear. “There’s no reply,” she said.

  “Maybe the operator is busy,” suggested Ovadia.

  Sally smiled, hung up, and dialed again. This time she didn’t even wait to put the loudspeaker on.

  “The number is disconnected,” a pleasant voice said in French. “The number is disconnected. The number is disconnected…” She looked at the two men with an expression of bewilderment on her face.

  “Maybe they’re on vacation?” proposed Ovadia. “A holiday or something?”

  “I come from Geneva,” Darmond reminded him. “We have no holidays now. If you’re out of excuses,” he added venomously, “maybe you should tell the truth.”

  “They must have changed the number,” stated Ovadia. “I’ll find out the new number and call them today.”

  “Enough already.” Darmond’s voice was cold and hostile. “It’s all fake, isn’t it? The reports, the photos. I assume that during the forgery process you changed the telephone number and maybe even the address so that I wouldn’t be able to check, and indeed I didn’t. That’s how much I trusted you and the person who recommended you.” His face was flushed in a mixture of rage and shame. He walked over to the door and locked it. “Please Madame. Sally,” he said, and for the first time she could feel his appreciation for her, “call the police. Until it arrives Mr. Ovadia isn’t leaving this room.”

  Sally started dialing.

  “This is illegal imprisonment,” the lawyer wailed.

  “You can complain when the police arrive,” Darmond said.

  “That’s exactly what I’ll do,” answered Ovadia confidently. Sally glared at him. “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? A man in distress, his wife is sick, crazy with concern, and you forge an investigation, cheat everyone, and have the nerve to ask for money? Once the police are done with you, not only will you never practice law, you won’t even be employed as a table cleaner at McDonald’s.” She switched the call to speaker. After three rings a voice answered. “Police. Hello?”

  Ovadia suddenly seemed like a trapped animal. “Please,” he said. He got down on his knees. “Maybe I was wrong. I’ve been misled. One of the employees in my office conducted the communication with Hermes, and I fired him a month ago after catching him stealing. He may have involved me in this too.”

  “Police. Hello?” the voice sounded again.

  “I’m sorry, wrong number,” Sally said and hung up. “What’s your connection to Ben David?” she asked Ovadia.

  “No connection, I swear. Nothing. I ordered an investigation and—”

  “You have one last chance to confess,” Sally said. “Tell the truth and I’ll ask Mr. Marin to forgive you for cheating him.”

  Ovadia glanced from Darmond to Sally and back again.. “You’re right,” he said, his lower lip quivering. “I was going through a tough time. I have a heart condition and need a transplant. Hospitals and medication sucked all of my money.” He fell to the floor, grasping his chest. “I feel bad.”

  Sally and Darmond exchanged looks. Darmond was fuming.

  “Please,” begged Ovadia, “let me out. I need to take my medicine.”

  Darmond shook his head. Sally felt sorry for the man lying beneath them, useless. “I’ll forget about the police complaint on one condition.”

  “Anything you say,” replied Ovadia.

  “Do what you were paid for. Persuade Muriel to return to her husband and children.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “Why?” asked Sally. “Because Ben David doesn’t want her to?”

  “He’s a difficult man. Difficult and stubborn. You have no idea how much. He won’t let her go.”

  “Schedule a meeting for me with him.”

  “He won’t want to. He’s already angry at Marin for stopping the donations.”

  Sally took her mobile. “Then there’s no other choice,” she said.

  “No, don’t call. I’ll arrange a meeting.”

  “For tomorrow,” Sally demanded.

  “For tomorrow, for tomorrow.” Ovadia collected his hat and fled the room. Sally turned to the table and picked up the documents and files he left behind. “I want to go over them,” she explained. “They may be fraudulent, but I might find something in them.”

  To her surprise, she heard the sound of sobbing behind her. She turned and met Darmond’s eyes, which were red and teary. “How can I face that wonderful man, Pierre Marin, and tell him I didn’t protect him? He maintains a semblance of stability, but I know he’s devastated. His wife went crazy and ran away, the children are completely destabilized. What will I tell him? That another Jew tried to trick him out of money? What kind of people are you—a people of swindlers, liars, thieves? Pierre Marin’s only crime is being rich. In Switzerland nobody dreams of cheating him, but his Jewish brothers tear the flesh off him. Ben David, Ovadia, and honestly Madame. Sally, I’m not sure where you fit in. Why did you give up on the police? You know th
at Ovadia won’t make the appointment, he will do nothing, maybe even flee the country.”

  “I’ve given up on the police because I don’t think Mr. Marin would want such publicity,” Sally replied. “And as for Ovadia, I don’t need him to set up a meeting with Ben David. I want him to tell Ben David about our encounter and cause him to act.”

  “Why would you want him to act?”

  “Because we’re stuck. There is nothing we can do to make Muriel to return to her husband. She just doesn’t want to. As soon as Ben David acts, he will expose his connection to the story and perhaps also incriminating details.”

  Darmond shrugged. “I would have filed a complaint against Ben David with the police and ended the matter.”

  “By doing so you might have fulfilled your obligation to Marin, but not advanced the investigation or brought Muriel home.” She sat across from him. “Let’s pretend I’m the investigator who received the complaint. What would you like to tell me? An adult woman, legally in Israel, doesn’t want to return to her husband and children.”

  “I want to report that a man named Ben David impersonated a rabbi and extorted huge sums of money from a Swiss billionaire.”

  “Do you have any proof of extortion?”

  “I will sit with Monsieur. Pierre, hear the story from him, go over every document he has, and provide proof. I believe Ben David can be thrown into prison for many years.”

  “Convicting Ben David isn’t our goal at the moment, but bringing back Muriel and maybe retrieving funds that were stolen under false pretenses is. If you want to help your boss, you have no choice but to let me act in my way.” She stood up and went back to organizing the documents on the table. “By the way, how did you find Ovadia?”

  “A woman, a good friend, connected us. She will also have to answer to me.”

  Sally could only think of one name. “Vivian Moyal?”

  Darmond was taken aback. “How did you know?”

  She suddenly realized something else. “Is she the one who picked you up from the airport yesterday?”

  Darmond didn’t answer.

  “She must have told you not to trust me, and probably said I was planning to extort Marin. That’s why you had us tailed in Geneva.”

  Darmond remained silent.

  “You must decide what side you’re on, Monsieur Darmond. If you want us to work together, you have to trust me. None of what we’ve said can be passed on to Vivian.” She collected the folders and Ovadia’s business card from the table.

  “What now?” asked Darmond. “What’s the plan?”

  “We wait,” Sally replied. “I’m curious to see what happens.”

  She didn’t have to wait long. Arriving at her car in the dirt parking lot, she found all four tires punctured. Piles of earth were thrown onto her hood; the sharp stones scratched the fancy white veneer.

  26.

  The waiter at the café was no less angry than Sally. “You should be grateful it’s only tires,” he said. “I had my car broken into and my multimedia system stolen.” He placed a cup of cappuccino and two tiny cookies on her table. Sally looked through the window at the large dirt parking lot. “But this was just vandalism. They didn’t try to steal anything.” The waiter went to clean a nearby table. “Someone was probably annoyed by your beautiful BMW. There are plenty of those.” Sally looked at her car with sadness. She had bought it as a birthday gift for herself just this year, and always kept it polished and shiny. Now the car seemed flawed, violated. She had a childish impulse to abandon the car in the lot and buy a new, unscathed one.

  The phone rang. Sally quickly looked at the screen. If the caller was Ovadia, she wouldn’t answer but let him try again a few times. But it was Darmond. “Madame Sally,” he began without a hello, “I must return to Geneva today. The next flight leaves at four and I’ve already booked a ticket.”

  “What?” Sally let out a shout. “I need you here!”

  “I’ve just received a few phone calls, Madame Sally. They threatened my family. They knew exactly where my wife works, where my children study. They placed a condition on me: If I don’t let this go, my children will be harmed and my wife murdered. They even explained in detail how it would happen, but I’ll spare you that. I just wanted to let you know I’m leaving.”

  “I’m not far from the hotel,” Sally said. She decided not to tell him of the vandalism to her car. “I’ll come right back and we’ll talk.”

  “No!” Darmond replied with determination and alarm. “I want nothing to do with this. I will tell Marin this too. They know my address, they described my house, and named my daughters’ school.”

  “And Marin? This ‘wonderful man’ as you called him? You’ll just leave him helpless?”

  “I will continue to accompany the case from Geneva. There’s a good, large, law firm I will approach for this. Some of its associates specialize in family law. They will be able to help Pierre better than I will.”

  “And how would you feel if they backed out after being threatened?”

  “Madame Sally, I don’t have answers to all of your questions,” said Darmond, sounding defeated.

  “All right,” Sally replied, and hung up without saying goodbye.

  The attack on her car and the threats to Darmond left her angry and frustrated. She tried to assess the tools at her disposal. At this point, Ben David was uninvolved and protected from the law, but a complaint could still be filed with the police against Ovadia, and the fake documents he left could lead her forward. Was there something else? She scanned her mind, trying to find a way that would lead her to the immediate goal: Bringing Muriel back to her children, and perhaps to the more distant goal of removing Ben David from the Marin family. No ideas emerged.

  The tow truck arrived, sending a cloud of dust into the air. Sally left a money note on the table to cover the coffee and maybe partially console the waiter for the damage caused to his car, and left. “Do you need to get somewhere?” the driver asked her after fastening her car to the towing platform.

  “I’ll call a taxi,” she said calmly.

  The driver looked her up and down. “I’ll drive you home.”

  “Thanks, I’ll manage.” She pulled the phone out of the chaos in her handbag to call a taxi, but at that moment it rang. “Yes,” she answered.

  “How are you?” Marin’s pleasant voice was on the other end of the line.

  “Could be better,” she admitted. “I assume Darmond already spoke to you.”

  “He did. I relieved him of his duties. Another lawyer from the same firm will pick it up from here. Do you want to back off as well?”

  “Not at all.” Sally sat on the edge of a bench. “I don’t know how to act yet, but desertion is out of the question.”

  “I really appreciate that. I trust you to deliver Muriel to Geneva soon.” From his mouth, the words sounded like an order.

  In the taxi en route to Tel Aviv, Sally reflected on the conversation. The sentence “I trust you to deliver Muriel to Geneva soon” echoed in her mind. “I trust you to deliver Muriel to Geneva soon.” The telephone rang again. She put it to her ear. “If you want to see your children grow up, keep your filthy hands off the saint Ben David.”

  “Is this Ben David speaking, or is he too scared to call and prefers to send one of his lackeys?”

  “We know where you live and what—”

  “Yes, yes, I know. You’ll do this and do that and you’ve already flattened my tires and poured sand onto my car. You don’t expect me to be scared of a toy criminal posing as a rabbi, do you?”

  The call disconnected.

  Never in her life had Sally felt so exposed to evilness and criminality. She had stumbled across them here and there, but never at the level of sophistication and audacity that Ben David, Ovadia and Moyal were engaged in. She was reminded of Darmond’s accusation: “What kind of peo
ple are you? A people of cheats, liars and thieves.” Was he right? Once again, she felt the urge to prove him wrong. After all, the Jewish people had millions of honest, wonderful members, including many righteous rabbis. It saddened her that one imposter, joined by a conniving woman and a greedy lawyer, could tarnish the reputation of an entire nation.

  She recalled a verse from the Second Book of Samuel that her father would quote when she was a child every time he came across an act of wickedness: “The wicked are made speechless in the darkness, for it is not by one’s own strength that one prevails.” He had his own personal interpretation of the verse. He would hold her little hand and explain, “You can’t act against the wicked with power, only with cunning. The wicked are confident of their strength, but the just must trust their minds.”

  Suddenly Sally knew what she must do. She blew her wise father an imaginary kiss and pulled Ovadia’s business card out of her handbag. “This is Sally Amir,” she said when he answered.

  “I haven’t spoken to him yet,” he squealed. “We only parted an hour ago.”

  “I know you already have. He’s already threatened me and Darmond and damaged my car. But that’s not what this is about. I have an offer for you.”

  “Yeees?” he responded with suspicion.

  “I want to tell you something that must remain between us. I didn’t mention it in the hotel because I didn’t want Darmond to hear, and if you know what’s good for you, you’ll tell no one, only Ben David.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “There’s another rabbi, greater than him and well known in the rabbinic world. A real certified rabbi and with a clean past—”

  “You’re denouncing a saint and Torah scholar,” Ovadia interrupted her.

  “I know. I’ll be punished in heaven. In any event, I want Mr. Marin to meet that rabbi and be impressed with him. Unlike Ben David, he’s not interested in money and doesn’t get involved in the lives of the people he supports. He only advises. There’s no reason why he shouldn’t become Marin’s spiritual adviser.”

  “But Rabbi Ben David is also a Kabbalist and a holy man. There are testimonies. He’s made miracles, cured bedridden patients. Mr. Marin himself was cured of cancer thanks to him.”