“Almost everything,” I said to her. and explained that even within a small team there had to be compart-mentalization and that things were conducted on a “need to know” basis.
The Office gave me a week to get organized and, because I didn’t want us to begin our life together in the shadow of my memories with Dolly, we rented an apartment on Rehov Ruppin, a quiet street a minute from the promenade. The three-roomed apartment with basic furniture on the top floor of a four-storey building had a balcony facing the sea. I removed everything out of my apartment and we bought what we still needed on two jolly shopping sprees at the IKEA store in Netanya. We were a typical young couple.
We drove to Jerusalem in a car the Office put at my disposal and, for the first time, I discovered the Christian side of Niki. She didn’t define herself as belonging to any specific religion, as the daughter of a Shinto adherent and a Christian, but her excitement was evident at the various Christian sites we visited. I took her to the Holy Sepulchre, at the end of the Via Dolorosa, before we went to the Western Wall and other places of Jewish interest. Just as she had been in Tel Aviv, Niki was impressed by the cafés and bars in the narrow streets of the Nahalat Shiv’a area, places where her playgirl instincts came out.
Then we took a three-day trip around the Galilee: Niki yelped with delight when Lake Kinneret, the Sea of Galilee, came into view on the way down from the Galilee hills, against the background of the fields and pasturelands spread out around it. Here too we visited Christian sites, starting with the Mount of Beatitudes, where Jesus preached the Sermon on the Mount, and the pretty church built out of black basalt rock and limestone and with its copper dome. From there we hiked down to the Tabgha valley with its seven springs and visited the Church of the Multiplication of the Loaves and the Fishes and the Church of the Primacy of Peter. Niki was visibly moved, and I was worried that her connection to the country, as someone who was meant to be a Mossad operative, was beginning to be built on the wrong foundations. But I decided to leave it up to Udi to handle this. Our meeting with him had been set for the start of the next week and, for the time being, it was only Niki and me, the Kinneret, the Golan Heights and the Galilee, and all the love in the world.
In our cosy bed and breakfast room at Neveh Ativ, on Mount Hermon, I realized how much I loved her when even the little “plop” that I heard from the bathroom sounded really cute to me.
At the foot of Mt Hermon and along the border with Lebanon, Niki listened with interest and retrospective concern when I told her about my military activities there. It seemed to me that things only began to be real for her when we saw the fortified positions along the northern frontier road and the Hezbollah flags on the other side of the fence, the Humvees and armoured cars bristling with weaponry and soldiers in their combat vests all smeared with mud. “Samurais in camouflage uniforms,” I said as we drove past a battle crew preparing for night activity, and she said, “Those very words were on the tip of my tongue.”
After reaching Rosh Hanikra and its pretty rocky reefs on the Mediterranean shore, we headed south for the Friday night dinner at my parents’ home. My sisters kissed Niki, and after a moment of embarrassment when Lital, Tzippi’s eldest daughter, blurted out “But she hasn’t got Japanese eyes,” and pulled her own eyes to show what she meant, Niki burst out laughing and everyone relaxed. She was accepted into my family, and she accepted my family. That hurdle, at least, had been overcome.
Niki fell in love with Haifa. In my parents’ apartment she said that the view of the port reminded her of the view from her apartment in Toronto, but when we drove along the Carmel ridge, stopping at the customary vantage points next to Stella Maris in one direction and the Louis Promenade on the other, she admitted that it was a long time since she’d been in such a lovely place and she couldn’t understand why I’d left it.
After Saturday’s day of rest in Tel Aviv, our meeting with Udi was awaiting us.
I’d been told to bring Niki to the small house in the Kirya but didn’t know if I would be expected to stay or not. Because there was only one chair facing Udi at his desk, I gestured to Niki to sit and remained standing next to her. Udi didn’t suggest that I draw up another chair so I understood that my presence wasn’t wanted but, nevertheless, I stayed while Udi asked her what she thought of the country so far and how we’d settled into the apartment. After she gave an enthusiastic reply and I answered about the apartment, I asked if I was free to go. The reply was in the affirmative and I went downstairs to Orit the receptionist but all she could offer me was instant coffee, so I walked to the corner and came back with a large latte in a paper cup.
I waited for hours. This was probably the longest getting-to-know meeting in Mossad history, or at least in the history of Udi, the man of few words. For a time I was irritated at Udi for not giving me some kind of timetable and leaving me to dry out in tense anticipation. Then I got it: Udi had said he wanted to meet Niki on Sunday at ten. He hadn’t said he wanted to meet Niki and me. He was creating a barrier between us, one that I would feel strongly further down the road, and perhaps he was doing the right thing. Just as a couple may be useful in an operation, an intimate connection outside the working framework was liable to be a nuisance and to do damage. Udi wanted to build Niki as an independent operative and not as my mate.
I remained tense until I heard the door upstairs creaking. What would happen if he’d decided she wasn’t suitable? Would Niki be willing and able to live her life in Israel? Particularly if I remained in the Mossad and was travelling all the time. Or would we perhaps go back to Toronto and begin our lives as a normal couple, an artist and a book editor?
I finally heard Niki’s sweet voice saying, “Thank you, I’ll find my way out,” and her legs, still pretty but not so crooked now, appeared at the top of the stairs. She glided nimbly down, with a smile on her lips and a gleam in her eyes, said goodbye quickly and warmly to Orit and pulled me outside, unable to suppress what she wanted to tell me.
“What a great guy,” she gushed the moment we were through the gate. And between then and when we sat down in a nearby restaurant, she didn’t stop speaking about the way he had managed to get into what she called “the depths of my being” and fathomed what made her tick – “what I want to be when I’m grown up” – and mainly, how much she wanted to be with me and how much she was ready to sacrifice for just that. Almost without taking a breath, she went on to express her amazement at the lively street with all its many restaurant, and, as soon as she saw the Cinémathèque, she wanted to find out if there was something interesting to see.
In turn, Niki had also made a good impression on Udi: her mobile phone rang while we were still in the restaurant, and she was asked to report the next day to undergo a series of tests.
“At least you’ll be exempt from English lessons.” I tried to smile, but in the pit of my stomach I felt a twinge, without really knowing where it came from or where it was leading. Here was Niki, finding her way into the Mossad without any help from me, and perhaps even without any connection to her relationship with me. Very quickly, without either of us noticing it, Udi had become the axis around which her life would now revolve as a trainee and later as an operative. Almost imperceptibly I had been cast aside. Udi, the old fox. There was no knowing now what was really hiding behind his paternal manner but Niki’s enthusiasm for Udi shed new light on him. He was indeed someone who could make plans for us that would never cross my mind. His large head seemed to me to be full of schemes and thoughts compared to which my own seemed linear, binary, yes or no, clear and simple.
I felt strange during Niki’s training period when I was in Israel, and it was intolerable when I was abroad. Most of my time was spent at the squad’s base, training and preparing for upcoming missions. Udi was away a lot; I didn’t know if he was with Niki or with other trainees and even when he came to the base he never gave me the slightest hint what was happening with her, not even whether I should hurry home in the evening because she was throu
gh for the day, or that there was no point in hurrying because she was on an exercise that would take all night. For him, I was the operative Boaz, and not Niki’s boyfriend, and she was Niki the trainee: there was nothing to connect us.
The hours I spent waiting for Niki in our apartment were infuriating and, when she eventually arrived, full of adrenalin and happiness, I had to summon all of my very small acting talent to participate in her enjoyment. She felt free to tell me about everything she was doing and from her stories I grasped that she was an outstanding student. I knew of course that she was athletic and an expert at martial arts, and I wasn’t surprised to hear that she was also a crack shot. She performed the exercises – in which I’d had to strain my brain for a suitable cover story – easily and naturally, almost casually. Where I’d had to think up all kinds of pretexts and exert myself to get into any site – be it a cinema or an industrial plant – Niki did it with a simple smile. She was so nice and natural that nobody ever suspected her when she was on lookout duty by day or break-ins by night. She was as transparent as the wind. Even her foreign-looking features didn’t make people think they should keep an eye on her.
Throughout her training period, which was much shorter than mine, I took part in six or seven short operations abroad and each one involved a week of preparation, a week of travel and a week of debriefings, during which there was a distance between us that I didn’t like. It was difficult for me to be without her when I was abroad, and coming home to the empty apartment was difficult for her. Niki was concerned about me and interested in what I was doing but Udi had ordered me to tell her nothing, because until she completed her training and was officially inducted, she “wasn’t one of us”, and this too was difficult.
My first mission came at the same time as Niki was on her first intelligence-gathering course. I had really wanted to be there, to hear about it and perhaps give her advice, but some Iranian nuclear scientists were due in New Delhi, on their way back to Tehran from a secret visit to North Korea, and we were tasked with photographing them and the materials they had with them, and copying everything on their laptops, if they had any. Their trip had been kept totally under wraps, and we didn’t know what it was all about.
Because of the short notice, Jerry, Ronen and I flew directly from Israel to New Delhi and Udi was supposed to be joining us there later. Unlike the shock on my first landing in India, in Mumbai, arriving in New Delhi was easier: a modern airport, the imperial buildings and broad streets of the new city that the British had left behind, and a friendly atmosphere. At least that’s what I felt, but not Ronen and Jerry. The ride from the airport to the city centre was like a roller coaster for them, with the insane overtaking, sudden stops, and incessant horn tooting. And when we arrived, the beggars caught their eyes, and the stench filled their nostrils. “Wait till you see Old Delhi,” I told them. “The alleys and the slums – then you’ll really have something to complain about.”
We checked into three different hotels where the Iranians were likely to stay: Jerry at the Crowne Plaza, Ronen at the Hyatt Regency and I at the Hilton. If they surprised us and went to a different hotel, Udi would be following them and check in there as well. We were to meet the group at the airport and tail them but, before their arrival, we had a few hours to get to know the city. We began at Connaught Place, a park surrounded by a ring of shops named after Rajiv Gandhi, somewhat reminiscent of Tel Aviv in the 1970s, and then an outer ring named after Indira Gandhi. All the main roads led into this square, making it a convenient point of departure for familiarizing oneself with the city.
Jerry, the courteous former aircrew man, would rather have stayed inside the Crowne Plaza. He kept on complaining about the stench, the exhaust fumes and the atrocious racket made by the three-wheel auto rickshaws that filled the streets and he bemoaned the criminal neglect of what had once been handsome buildings. The ever-practical Ronen quickly located an optician’s shop and stocked up with contact lens fluid at “a quarter of the price in Israel”. Of the streets forking out of the square, I chose the one that would take us to the Main Bazaar, and gave my friends their first taste of being a pedestrian in India: narrow alleys, beggars who never give up, sharp-eyed pedlars and an abundance of colourful and amazingly cheap goods – shirts for a dollar that wouldn’t survive the first wash, and knapsacks for five that would fall apart on your first hike.
To me, it was all a feast for the eyes, ears and nose, and I also knew how to use the word chalo, which means “let’s go”, but is actually used as a polite way of telling beggars and pestering kids to scram. Ronen also enjoyed the outing, but not Jerry. I could understand him; that was how I had felt on my first day in Mumbai a decade before. Happily for him, the time soon came when we had to head for the airport to meet our guests.
There was no prior intelligence about the number of members in the Iranian delegation, but the last message that we’d received from Israel said there were four people with Persian-sounding names on the passenger list of the North Korean airline flight. We were given the names but there was nothing we could do with them at the time. We got to Terminal B, where the flight was due to land, in a rented car which I drove. Jerry and Ronen had little bags, so they’d look like passengers who had just arrived. Our plan was for the two of them to join the Iranians if they took a train or airport shuttle to town, and for me to follow them in the car. If they took a cab, we’d have no choice but to tail them in the car.
It wasn’t difficult to spot the Iranians from a distance, among the handful of Koreans and others from Southeast Asia and zero Europeans who came out of customs into the arrivals hall. They headed for the taxi rank, with Jerry after them hoping to hear the destination they’d give their driver. He heard “Hyatt Regency” clearly and reported this to us over our radio network. We agreed that he’d take the next cab to the hotel, while I’d try to get Ronen there in the car before the Iranians, so he could be at the reception desk when they checked in.
It was beginning to get dark and if driving in India in the daytime is a perilous affair, at night it is a true defiance of fate. For some unknown reason, in addition to all the other ills, the Indians don’t use their vehicle lights and you have to guess, in the dark, what’s moving ahead of you and what’s coming towards you. I drove as fast as I could without causing an accident and reached the hotel two minutes after the Iranians and one minute after Jerry. Looking like any tourist, he stood behind them at the reception desk and managed to hear one of their room numbers. Ronen went straight to the elevators at the end of the hallway and waited for them there.
By the time Udi arrived later that night, we were able to give him the numbers of their rooms and also report that they’d booked a half-day tour, starting at seven a.m. the next morning. Udi took a room on the same floor as the Iranians. “They’re likely to take the interesting stuff with them on the tour. I want to get organized for a break-in when they go down for breakfast,” he told us.
Our plan was for Ronen to go to breakfast at the same time as the Iranians and to report to us when they left the dining room, for Jerry to guard the staircase and the housekeeping room next to it, with Udi and I executing the break-in and copying the material on the computers, first one room and, if there was time, the others afterwards. Using his room key and Ronen’s, Udi made a master key to the Iranians’ rooms, based on the identical teeth of the two in his possession.
It seemed that I had only just fallen asleep when the alarm went off and woke me from an especially deep slumber. I immediately inserted my earphone: Udi was already conducting a communications check. Without having breakfast, I drove to the Hyatt and went straight to Ronen’s room, which was the departure point. We didn’t want to bump into the Iranians needlessly, and only when we received a signal from Udi, who was watching the corridor with a miniature periscope that he’d slipped under his door, did we set out: Ronen, in a track suit, to the dining room, Jerry to the staircase and I to the elevator.
Udi was waiting for me in t
he corridor, and as soon as he got the all clear from Jerry, he opened the first door. In the room all we found was a suitcase full of clothes.
“Moving on to two,” Udi said into his lapel mike, and moments after getting Jerry’s OK we were in the next room. Here there was a locked briefcase and it took Udi a minute to pick the lock. Inside, there were dozens of sheets of paper in Persian and Korean.
“Photograph them. I’ll go to the next room,” Udi told me and, after checking with Jerry and Ronen, he was gone.
I snapped the pages rapidly, one after the other, taking into account that because of my haste I might miss a line at the edges and that they may not be returned to the case in the same order as they were before. Each one took a couple of seconds and a few minutes had gone by when I heard Ronen say, “They’re getting ready to leave the dining room.” Immediately afterwards Udi ordered, “Wrap it up, now.”
I put the documents back in the briefcase, as tidily as I could, closed it and replaced it where we’d found it, next to the suitcase. “Coming out,” I reported and, once more, Jerry gave the OK. I pressed the inside button, closed the door behind me, and saw Udi leaving the room at the end of the corridor.
“They’re in the elevator,” I heard Ronen saying. Udi went into his room on the same floor. Jerry signalled that the coast was clear, and I went to the emergency stairs at the other end of the corridor.
A few minutes later we were all in Ronen’s room. My photographs looked quite good and we transmitted them to HQ in Israel on an encrypted phone call. Udi had managed to get into both of the remaining rooms. There was nothing of interest in the first, but in the second there was a laptop and he had downloaded all the material that appeared to be relevant. He encrypted it and relayed it to Israel.
Final Stop, Algiers: A Thriller Page 26
