Married to the Mossad

by Hessel, Shalva

  Jacob, pessimistic as usual, agreed with her. “We have nothing. I assume that Ben David, his wife, his children and Muriel agreed to meet somewhere, and we don’t even have a lead. Any ideas?”

  Sally felt extremely tired and could only think of one thing: To disconnect, to sail far away from the war on Ben David that now ended in utter defeat, far away from the family crisis and the heavy burdens on her shoulders. “No,” she said, “I have no ideas. If something comes up, I’ll get back to you.”

  She went down to the dining room. Marin and Rubi were back in their seats, and the Seder had reached an advanced point. Her father said the words, “He raises the poor from the dirt, and lifts up the needy from the garbage pile, that he might seat them with princes, with the princes of his people. He makes the barren woman of the family a happy mother of children,” and he sent a loving glance to his wife, as he did every year. Her mother smiled calmly, and Sally felt grateful for having at least one constant in her life: Her parents.

  Then she thought of the idea. She held it inside until the start of the meal, then ran upstairs to her room. “Her parents,” she said, out of breath, into the phone. “We need to find Muriel’s parents.”

  “They live in some remote farm in Canada and are unhappy that she converted to Judaism. What could we find there?” Jacob asked.

  “The same thing I find with my parents when I feel life is overwhelming me—support. Robert Frost once wrote, ‘Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.’”

  “Who is this Frost?”

  “An American poet. Never mind, let’s focus on Muriel. Think about the state she’s in: Ben David has become a fugitive and he needs money. He won’t turn to his admirers, because he has none left. The entire world knows he’s a con man. He only has one admirer left: Muriel. And she only has her parents.”

  Jacob reacted with skeptical silence. “I know you hate losing, but now you’re expressing wishful thinking, not logic, and what’s worse, you’re going to invest lots of money in this pipe dream. You need to send someone to track down her parents in Canada, which is a huge country. Assuming we find them, send more people there, settle in, stake out the house…all based on your hunch that she’s back in her childhood home.”

  “An informed hunch,” Sally corrected him. “A combination of logic and life experience, and finding Muriel won’t be that difficult. Do we have her profile? Education, hobbies, CV?”

  “No, we never needed all that.”

  “I’ll prepare it tonight and send it over, along with more specific guidelines for our search.”

  Jacob laughed. “Your optimism is endless.”

  “It’s better than despair, isn’t it?” she replied and hung up. Sally went online and tapped in Muriel’s name. Her phone displayed headlines linking her to Marin, to upscale fashion houses, and to a Paris modeling agency. She called Jacob again and gave him the name and address of the agency. “Try to get her portfolio, or at least early photos from before she became famous. That’s where the authentic Muriel is, and perhaps also clues to where she came from.”

  When she returned to the table, the Seder was almost over. Her father and the other guests were singing “Had Gadia” and the atmosphere seemed slightly happier. Sally sat at the table and Natalia rushed to serve her. “You haven’t eaten dinner, Madame Sally,” she whispered.

  “Thanks, but I’m not hungry. Only coffee, please,” Sally replied in a low voice. Her eyes met Marin’s and his face was inquisitive. Sally mouthed the word “later.” The thought of having disappointing, perhaps disheartening, news and not conveying it to Marin immediately made her uneasy. She became less and less comfortable the longer her father took conducting the Shabbat songs they used to sing at home when she was young. This time, she couldn’t enjoy them or join in. Ben David’s flight erased all her achievements in one go, and she was terribly frustrated. She desperately wondered whether there was something she could have done and didn’t do to prevent his escape, and what she now needed to do to find him.

  She impatiently waited for the last of the guests to retire to their rooms in the guesthouse, and for the two children to go to bed. Marin sat in the wide lounge and poured himself a glass of his favorite cognac. “Did something happen?” he asked when she appeared, still buzzing from the singing.

  “Ben David escaped,” Sally said, unloading the stone on her heart in one fell swoop.

  Marin’s eyes expanded with astonishment. He didn’t say a word, just slowly drank from his glass. Sally told him of the two uniformed men who entered the apartment and left, the electronic bracelet left inside, and the stripper found in the closet. “What torments me most is knowing I’ve disappointed you. I failed. I managed an operation costing hundreds of thousands of dollars that came to nothing.”

  Marin struggled to smile. “You did your best.”

  Sally frowned. “Thanks, but I know you don’t mean it. You’ve been in business your entire life, where you don’t reward people for doing their best but for the result. I promised you Ben David would be punished, but he got away at the last minute. I failed.”

  His eyes looked into hers, and she saw in them a glint of honesty. “Not only haven’t you failed, but you’ve greatly succeeded. You’ve given me faith that some people have a kernel of good that only needs to be exposed.” He put his hand on her arm. “No one has ever worked for me so caringly.”

  Sally placed her hand on his. “That doesn’t comfort me.”

  Marin looked at her with pity. “Sally the perfectionist,” he said, pouring her a glass of cognac. “You won’t have anything but a big, heroic triumph.”

  Sally stood up, tears in her eyes, and went out to the garden. The fragrant spring breeze enveloped her. She shivered as she walked to the guesthouse. On the bench at the entrance sat her father, as he did every evening. She collapsed on the bench next to him. Without saying a word, he stretched out his hand and caressed her hair. “Dad,” she said.

  “I know.” He stopped her. “It’s already in the news.”

  “Everything is destroyed. Everything I’ve done, all I’ve worked for in the last few months, sacrificing my time and my relationship with Jerry…”

  “I don’t think so,” her father said peacefully. “Ben David can run, but he can’t hide. He has no profession but imposter rabbi, he has no money, and the criminal organization you told me about will demand results.”

  “He can just disappear. Change his name; find a menial job that requires no professionalism. Clerk, vendor…”

  “Do you think he can hold a job? Come every morning at nine o’clock and work seriously until five in the afternoon? He’ll have to return to crime in order to maintain the lifestyle he’s used to.”

  “So, you’re saying he has to be caught?”

  “Yes,” he said confidently, “he’ll be caught.” After a few silent moments, he added, “But it will be accompanied with tragedy, and there’s nothing you can do to prevent it.”

  57.

  The information trickled in like Chinese water torture. A month after Ben David’s disappearance, a diplomat from the Canadian embassy in Bern called Marin’s home in Gstaad and then to the offices of Cosmos Holdings in Geneva, presenting himself as Herbert Zucker, and asked to speak with Mr. Marin.

  Marin was in Africa negotiating the purchase of a mine, and Marie Calderon, the office manager who just a few months earlier refused to transfer Sally’s first call, now naturally gave her the man’s contact details.

  When Sally called him, he began by inquiring about her identity and position, and after she faxed him her letter of appointment signed by Marin, he bombarded her with questions about Marin’s ties with Muriel, asking for their wedding certificate to be faxed to them.

  Sally refused. She didn’t have the wedding certificate, and also feared he was a nosy journalist. After checking the phone number and g
oing over the employee directory at the embassy, she discovered that he was indeed an overzealous civil servant. After consulting Marin’s new lawyers, an international Israeli firm she hired following Darmond’s arrest, she threatened Zucker to turn to the court and force Canada to respect her appointment. A day later, he called back and agreed to tell Sally that Muriel’s condition was critical, and she was hospitalized in a hospital in Regina, Saskatchewan. He didn’t want to answer Sally’s questions about how she got there, or perhaps he didn’t have the answers. “I’ve received clear instructions: To find Mrs. Marin’s family and tell them she’s hospitalized. I can also add that part of the problem stems from the fact that we had to identify her based on her Canadian identity number, and then check that there was no identity theft. She didn’t register as Muriel Marin, nor did she use her maiden name, but rather a new pseudonym she invented.”

  “What name?”

  “Miriaam,” he said, drawing out the last vowel. He could hardly pronounce the last part; “Bat Avraham.”

  Ben David’s fingerprints were clearly visible here too. Sally asked Zucker for more details, but when she didn’t receive those, insisted on speaking to his superior. She was transferred to the consul, and from him to the deputy ambassador, who slowly explained to her as though she were an idiot that “Canada is a large country, and every province in it is also an independent entity, so information travels slowly between government agencies.” If Sally wanted, she could send her questions to the foreign ministry in Ottawa, where they would check with the authorities in Saskatchewan and get back to him.

  There was, of course, a faster way of getting information—turning to Jerry. His men in the Mossad could obtain the information within hours, but she felt it unfair to ask such a thing of him. She called Jacob, who was somewhere in the world, after the team he assembled for Switzerland was dismantled following Ben David’s flight. After a number of failed phone calls, she found him at a wedding celebration. “I have no information on Muriel or Ben David yet,” he shouted, trying to overcome the sound of the orchestra.

  “I do. Go somewhere more quiet where we can talk.”

  She heard the sounds grow distant. Jacob’s speech could be heard more clearly. “What information do you have?”

  “Find Muriel at the hospital in Regina, Saskatchewan. She’s admitted under the name Miriam Bat Avraham. Check how she’s doing, how she became sick or injured, and whether Ben David is around.”

  There was silence on the other end of the line.

  “Are you there?”

  “I’m surprised, that’s all. You were right. She returned to her parents.”

  “I wish I were wrong. She has children here who need her.”

  The band’s music grew louder. “All right, I have to get back. They’ll deal with it immediately.”

  Sally spent a nervous night in front of the television. When dawn broke, her computer made a sound. She ran to it, drowsy, and banged her foot on a chair. A long e-mail from Jacob explained that Miriam Bat Avraham fell off a horse in a farm 150 miles north of Regina. The injury wasn’t severe, but it caused a hemorrhage in her brain stem, which turned lethal for the lack of immediate care. According to the doctor who admitted her, the injury was three days old. The medical team tried to get more information from the man who brought her, but he disappeared.

  Muriel’s hospital forms were attached to the e-mail, mentioning injuries all over her body. Sally wrote to Jacob: “It looks like she’s been beaten.”

  Half an hour later, a reply arrived. “They claim here that these are typical injures for someone who fell off a horse. They assume she was caught in the stirrup trying to climb up, and the horse dragged her a few hundred feet. They say it happens a lot here, and we’re still investigating. One of my men left for the farm where her parents live.”

  At noon, when she arrived at her Geneva office, one of the employees was able to connect her to Marin, who was, it turned out, visiting a mine in Sierra Leone. “I don’t understand,” he said. “What happened to Muriel?”

  “She’s in a hospital in Canada,” Sally explained, but wind or other interruptions on the line distorted her speech. She repeated herself, and this time he understood. “Do the children know?” he asked.

  “Not yet.”

  “Very good,” he said, sounding as businesslike as ever. “I’m going to finish up here and return tomorrow evening. Until then, collect all the information you can find, and I’ll explain it to them.”

  The conversation ended. Sally walked to the window and looked at the street and the Geneva residents walking carelessly through it. Her computer sounded an incoming message, and she hurried to her desk, where she saw it was from Jacob. The headline read: The True Story.

  “Muriel arrived at her parents’ farm not far from Nipawin, Saskatchewan. While still in Switzerland, she sent her parents money, with which they hired two assistants and built a new stable for three horses that Muriel bought (it’s possible that the time when she escaped us with Diana’s help has to do with this money transfer). Muriel lived in a small apartment above the stable with a dark-skinned man they called ‘the Arab.’ He spoke a bit of English, relatively good French, and what sounded to them like Arabic. At first they didn’t like the romance between him and their daughter, especially since he was married and had a family in nearby Nipawin. But Muriel told them he made her happy, and indeed she seemed calm and contented as she never had since marrying Marin (whom, by the way, they really don’t like, and consider a vindictive, moneygrubbing Jew—or so at least their daughter portrayed him). Every day, Muriel went on a long ride with the two assistants on the three horses. ‘The Arab’ opposed this. She heeded his plea, stopped riding, and only had the horses gallop in the field near the house. But that came with a price. Muriel went back to drinking. Her sister, who lives in a different farm in the area, told us that ‘the Arab’ encouraged her drinking habit, and would regularly bring her alcohol from Nipawin.

  “Nine days ago, shouts were heard from the riding field. Muriel’s father, who rushed to the scene, found her being dragged by the horse on the ground. The two assistants had disappeared and ‘the Arab’ was standing there, helpless. The father stopped the horse and discovered that his daughter’s foot was tied to the stirrup with a thin metal wire. She was injured all over, but worse: drunk. He asked ‘the Arab’ why she’d tied herself, why she got on the horse drunk, and where her two assistants were. ‘The Arab’ claimed they mounted her on the horse, tied her, and then made the horse gallop, all out of spite against Jews. He volunteered to drive her to Nipawin in the family van, and from there pay to fly her out to Regina. The father agreed since his wife was very ill, and he didn’t want to leave her alone. But Muriel was not flown to Regina, but rather driven to the hospital there over two days by ‘the Arab,’ where she was admitted as Miriam Bat Avraham. The van was never returned, and ‘the Arab’s’ family also vanished from the apartment they were living in.”

  “What’s Muriel’s condition?” Sally typed.

  “I have no idea. I’ll have them check.”

  Sally forwarded the e-mail to Marin’s address, and to that of their new lawyer. Then she forced herself to go back to work, and by the time she managed to focus again, her phone rang. “I didn’t want to inform you by e-mail. Muriel is dead,” Jacob said.

  Sally felt a wave of sorrow come over her. “And Ben David?”

  “No sign of him for now.”

  “And the two assistants?”

  “Just drifters. I assume he paid them to disappear, and they’re probably hundreds of miles away from the scene.”

  “You must find them. Sift through all of Canada, find them, and scare them with indictment as accomplices to murder. I’m sure Ben David got her drunk and tied her foot to the stirrup with some excuse. They’ll testify against him.”

  Jacob was scornful. “It’s useless. We’ll never meet Ben
David again.”

  “Oh yes we will, and I think I even know where. Think. Ben David doesn’t do anything without a reason. He’ll have a plan.” She looked at her watch. “I have to get going. Leave Ben David and focus on the two workers. I’ll explain everything later.”

  “I’m still not sure what you’re planning to do, but good luck,” Jacob said.

  “You will in a few hours,” Sally said and sighed. “If only you were here now with two of your men.”

  58.

  The police officer was polite and cordial, but completely skeptical about her request. “You’re asking us to place undercover detectives at Banque Alimentaire because someone dressed as Mrs. Marin will come to withdraw money?”

  “Exactly,” Sally confirmed.

  “And why would Mrs. Marin send a disguised woman to withdraw money when she can withdraw it herself?”

  “Because Mrs. Marin is dead.”

  “In that case, you have nothing to worry about. The account will be blocked and no one can make a withdrawal.”

  “She died only an hour ago. The bank doesn’t know about it yet, and the murderer will try to withdraw the money.”

  The officer examined her suspiciously. “How are you connected to her death?”

  “I’m not,” Sally said. “I’ve only just found out.”

  “How?”

  “A mutual friend told me.”

  “Madame,” the officer said, turning impatiently to his keyboard. “Do you want to give us a testimony or a deposition?”

  “No, I want to help you catch the murderer. All you need to do is place undercover policemen at the branch of Banque Alimentaire. The murderer will send over a woman who resembles Mrs. Marin with her passport.” She looked at her watch. “The bank opens in half an hour. You shouldn’t waste a minute.”

  “Madame, we don’t work on demand. You can give us the information, and if we believe officers must be sent to the bank, we’ll do so. It’s not me who decides, but the investigations officer of the district.”