“Because we do not know,” Udi answered, not exactly aptly. “And if we cancel operations or erase operatives because they may be recognized, we may as well shut down the business and emigrate to Canada.”
Clearly, the mention of Canada had been a rebuke, and I’d dropped the subject, but now, in the arrivals hall in Algiers, it surfaced again in my thoughts. Our pictures could be right here, with the border control officer, on a “wanted” list. The moustache might deceive the officer, if he didn’t closely examine the “wanted” picture or Ron Friedlich’s passport photo. The chances that Niki had been caught by the CCTV camera as she sat in the car seemed slim to me, and the possibility that she’d be recognized from a shot like that was small indeed, especially with her new hairdo. It dawned on me that Niki had a clear advantage over me, and not only because of the photographs. She could be coming here as an innocent Canadian tourist, and the authorities would have no reason at all to suspect her. And just as she could serve as my life line, I could be her handicap. Despite all the preparations, the well-established cover, the authentic documentation, I was an Israeli. Someone who was born in Israel and had lived there some thirty years, a Jew, and it was impossible to gloss over that. I was relieved that, unlike Udi, I didn’t have to cope with smuggling in a double-bottomed suitcase, with the dismantled pistol and night vision device hidden there: a slight compensation for having my demand to be armed turned down by the chief.
Niki went up to the border control booth just ahead of me. I’d decided it would be better not to be a stumbling block in this situation, so I dropped back a little. Her passport was stamped and returned to her. I stepped forward and gave the officer my passport. Would he check it against a wanted list? Would the moustache raise questions in his mind? He opened it casually, and gave Ron’s picture and then me cursory glances, and stamped it. I exhaled in relief.
I told the taxi driver to take us to the Sofitel Hotel. A quite modern overpass at the exit from the airport put us on the N5 highway and we sped towards the sea until we reached the outskirts of the city itself, where the road ran along the shoreline and bore the impressive name of the Boulevard of the Army of National Liberation.
As we drove by the seashore, I was strongly reminded of the Arab part of Haifa, with the hills rising to our left and the old buildings covering them. Close to the port, the cab turned onto a narrow street and stopped at the entrance to the Sofitel.
Like most of the city, the Sofitel was white. It was an impressive, although not very large, building, four or five storeys high, with tall pillars at the front, and the floors above them presenting a uniform façade with blue-tinted windows. Nimble and polite bellboys took our luggage. The receptionist, backed by a wall of striking mosaics, was expecting our arrival and check-in was rapid. He asked us to leave our passports to be photographed and inspected, a routine procedure that nevertheless made me nervous. The elevator boy showed us to our room which was large and gleaming, with a parquet floor and gilt decorations on the walls and, as promised, it overlooked the port. As soon as I drew the curtains and saw the view I felt a slight relief – at least I was spared the need to ask for a room change.
If the planners at HQ had intended Niki and me to jump onto the bed immediately while the Mukhabarat agents on the hotel staff watched via cameras secreted in the mirrors, the lamps, the radio, wherever, that was not going to happen. We unpacked in almost total silence and, to relieve the uncomfortable tension between us, we went out to take a first look at the city.
In front of the hotel was a manicured garden and beyond that the imposing Martyrs’ Memorial, honouring the vast numbers of Algerians who died in the country’s bloody war to achieve liberation from French rule. The huge concrete monument was made up of what appeared to be three giant palm fronds forming a triangular structure, with an eternal flame at its centre.
If the Algerians could overcome their incalculable losses and the atrocities of the French colonial regime which dwarfed the injustices of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories, perhaps there was a chance for peace, sometime, between us and the Palestinians, I thought, and I even mentioned it to Niki. The expression on her face clearly meant, that’s not something to talk about here, and of course she was right.
From the memorial, we took a short cab ride to some of the other sights of the lower, French-built part of the city. Only a minute’s drive away was the National Museum of Antiquities, where Niki enjoyed the beautiful Ottoman mansion which housed it, more than the artefacts. We saw the National Library and stopped to look at the presidential palace, a single-storey structure, painted brown and white and ornamented with pointed arches in the Moorish style, splendid in its simplicity.
The two main mosques of the city were the Jama’a al-Kebir, or the Great Mosque, which was almost a thousand years old, and what is known as the New Mosque, although it is some 300 years old. They are both situated in the Casbah which Niki and I could now visit like any other tourists.
Both buildings were impressive – the former because of its enormous size and because of the way its ancient component parts were preserved over a millennium: major renovation work a century ago had been sensitively carried out – and the second for the Ottoman architecture that gave it its four minarets.
The Casbah on the hill overlooking the Bay of Algiers was a city in itself and it was clear to me that I’d have to go back there to scout out the home of Bassam al-Sultan, my own private target.
I took photographs of Niki from all possible angles and I asked another tourist to take a picture of us together. I hugged her as any lovers would. We held hands as we walked along but the tiny hand in mine was cold, and when she enthused about various items in a souk we came across, I did not sense genuine joy or interest.
The combination of the old upper city and the lower city with its modern design and architecture and large numbers of French automobiles, created a cosmopolitan atmosphere that surprised us both. One site in the centre intrigued us in particular. A kind of rectangular plaza sloped up towards a hill, with the sea below on one side and a well-tended park with giant palm trees in the middle. It was fringed by gleaming white five- to seven-storey buildings in a style which I thought could be called colonial. They reminded me of the large, attractive Arab buildings in Jaffa. All had balconies with balustrades painted blue and, at pavement level, there were cafés and restaurants with colourful parasols. The central post office, five storeys tall with three gigantic Moorish arches, dominated the square. Like all the other buildings, it too was white.
“What a lovely place,” said Niki. “Let’s sit down in one of the cafés.”
For the first time, I felt a little like a tourist. The Parisian atmosphere, the well-cared-for old buildings and everything else that wasn’t Parisian but typically Algerian, gave the place a special touch that captivated us. We smiled at each other and for a moment, one brief moment, the old intimacy was back. But when Niki saw hummus on the menu, one of the few words she recognized, and wanted to order it, I signalled to her to drop it. As Canadians, we had no reason for ordering it. The spark that had lit up in her eyes a moment before went out.
Instead, I ordered a croque monsieur and a croque madame and as dessert, French toast that came swamped in a sickening amount of syrup and was topped by banana rings.
When I thought we’d done enough to bolster our cover, we returned to the hotel in silence. In the remaining hours of daylight I decided to conduct some preliminary recon up in the Casbah. Niki’s eyes showed disbelief when I said I wanted “to walk around alone for a while in the main street,” but she saw in my eyes that there was no point in arguing.
“Just like a pair of lovers would do,” she said with sarcasm and pain, and I responded in a similar vein, saying, “So he can surprise her with an Algerian bracelet engraved with her name in Arabic.”
The expression on her face softened. How much she needs me to show affection, I thought, and I also felt a light tremor of love, diluted by sorrow and
helplessness, rising inside me. What a pity that I was lying. That I’d order a bracelet, yes, but in the jewellery centre in the Casbah as part of a cover plan and intelligence gathering for an operation that was likely to separate us forever.
Steep streets led up to the Casbah, some paved and some loose gravel, lined by houses of one to four storeys with tidy courtyards adorned with colourful bougainvillea. Here too the dominant colour was white. As in many Arab towns, sewage ran through the streets, and there were hosts of children, pedlars, bicycle and tricycle riders and donkey-drawn carts. I remembered exactly where al-Sultan lived but I directed my cab driver to the pottery centre, at one end of his street. After buying a set of six coffee cups and a jug, I walked cautiously down the narrow alley and soon spotted the house. It was relatively large, surrounded by a high wall, with a broad gate. The Palestinian Islamic Jihad apparently took good care of its top activists.
As I stood in the entrance of the jewellery centre, waiting for Niki’s name to be engraved on the gold bracelet that I’d bought without bargaining over the price, a black Pajero SUV drove by, entered the alley, and stopped at the entrance to al-Sultan’s house. The driver got out of the vehicle, opened the gate, got back in and manoeuvred the Pajero into the property. I didn’t see his face, and I wasn’t sure if this was my target or not. I calculated that his action had left me enough time to cover the twenty-odd yards that had separated us, to enter the yard behind him, to make sure he was al-Sultan and to pump bullets into him. Bullets from a gun I didn’t have. But I could stick a knife into him, I thought.
I glanced at my watch and looked around me. The man had probably come home after a day’s work at the Islamic Jihad office. He was likely to do the same the next day and the one after. Then I’d be waiting for him right here, in the car that I was going to rent in any case, with the shabriyeh, the ornate Arab dagger that I’d buy in a shop in the main street, as no doubt many tourists did. As soon as he drove his car home, I’d close the gap between us and, perhaps, as I drove the curved blade into his heart I’d tell him, “This is for Dolly, No. 4 bus, Allenby Street, September 19, 2002.” Or perhaps I’d say nothing, because this wasn’t a Hollywood film, and I’d leave the shabriyeh in his body and hurry to my car and clear out, tossing the gloves that I’d buy for the occasion into a rubbish bin.
And because this really wasn’t a Hollywood movie, I’d have to plan how to get out of Algeria before security at the airport was tightened. In the haste with which we’d left Israel, I had not managed to plan either the means of eliminating al-Sultan or the getaway. Killing him and then swinging at the end of a rope in the city square was not what I had in mind. Only now did it occur to me that if I did not want to endanger Niki and Udi, I’d have to stay behind after they left and then do the job. And to prevent them from interfering with my plan, I’d have to go to the airport with them, and disappear at the last moment, after they had checked in and couldn’t come looking for me.
My head was bursting with ideas and plans. The voice of the jeweller presenting me with the engraved bracelet brought me back to reality.
On the way back to the hotel I went into a souvenir shop and bought a handsome shabriyeh with a slight curve to its blade, a decorative sheath and a handle studded with cheap white stones, like many of the ornaments for sale in the shop. It was undoubtedly a tourist souvenir, but also an effective weapon.
Niki was thrilled with the bracelet and immediately clasped it around her thin wrist. She kissed me and pressed her body against mine in a way that could have easily led to love making. I shuddered. My woman was indeed thirsty for a simple demonstration of her mate’s love. With what cold practicality I had brought her what she saw as a lover’s gift, but was in fact nothing more than a way of creating cover, cover for an act that was liable to lead to the end of our relationship. How wide the rift between us had become.
At first, I couldn’t understand why I was not thawing out, not responding to Niki’s small demonstrations of affection. Udi and HQ expected us, as hinted at in our operational orders, to make love that night, in case the Algerian intelligence services were secretly observing us. But this wasn’t the right thing to do. I could not sleep with her at the same time as I was planning this deed that would in all likelihood terminate our relationship, and when it was my deceitful present that had aroused her.
We did cuddle and kiss each other when we got into bed although Niki was a little put off by my moustache. I kissed her on the neck, and she stroked my lower abdomen, but for the first time in my life, my organ did not respond, not even slightly.
I switched the lights off and we lay there in each other’s arms. Enough time for whoever may have been watching us – I thought this was being done through the open jaws of a pair of lions that adorned the dresser – to surmise that something was happening. But nothing was. Niki’s body trembled in my embrace with what could have been sobs, but I didn’t ask. When she rolled off my chest and turned her back to me, she trembled again, but differently, and then I heard the moan of her orgasm, a deep sigh and then silence.
Why doesn’t this stupid assignment, which Niki was taking so literally, come to an end, I thought to myself. Then I would be free to achieve my own personal closure.
And then what?
Would my great commitment be over and done with, and if I survived, would I be able to go back to Niki, body and soul? That large and solid obstacle in the form of Udi would still be there waiting for me. And Niki, even if she overcame my deception, and the hours of anxiety after it turned out that I’d vanished at the airport and imperilled myself in a pointless act of vengeance, would she still want me at all, after my manhood had wilted in her hands? Like any normal man, no matter how good looking or successful, I felt that my ultimate test was my performance in bed. It wasn’t reason that determined the supremacy of this test, but millions of years of evolution. And that same evolutionary consideration stirred in Niki’s genes too, as well as in those of every other female who wants the best genes for her children. We’d had some fantastic sex in the past, but now I’d shown she couldn’t rely on that in the future.
Niki’s shivering and groans did not mean I could assume she was merely carrying out the operational orders. She had really wanted me. And I, as a man, had crumbled away right next to her. The preplanned love that Udi had tried to tailor for us in Canada led me to clear out of there, and the preplanned sex act that he had tried to tailor for us in the orders for Algiers had destroyed our love completely.
Udi arrived the next day and checked into the El Aurassi Hotel, on the way to Mont Plaisant, the mountain from which we would have a view of the military airfield. On the way there Niki reminded me that this was also the name of the hill in northern Toronto where her parents lived. The hotel was built like Hyatt hotels, with all the floors overlooking the lobby atrium and, as we entered, she couldn’t help whispering to me, “Just like the Office in Tel Aviv.”
We met in the lobby, and this was the first time that the sight of Udi, with his silver goatee, didn’t evoke the warmth and confidence that, in the past, I’d absorbed from him, but rather a sourness. That only increased when he kissed Niki and shook my hand. He led us to one of the seating clusters and ordered Arabic coffee, so we’d “get a taste of Algeria”, he stressed for the benefit of the microphone that was likely to be secreted in one of the armchairs. He asked us a few pointless questions, such as how did the flight go, and also a more pointed “How was the night in the hotel”, to which we both replied with a rather reserved, “All right.”
Later on, we took a drive in his car. In order to put the Mukhabarat, which almost certainly had us under surveillance, off its guard, he drove into town past the parks with brief stops at the Bardo museum, the university campus and the enormous Notre Dame d’Afrique basilica in the north of the city. This massive brown structure, topped by a tower with a large silver dome, stood on a cliff overlooking the bay. I was surprised to see so prominent a Catholic site in this Muslim city, until
Udi, who drove around with such confidence that I realized this wasn’t his first visit here, reminded me that the French had annexed Algeria, and the basilica was built under French rule.
He took photographs of us outside the basilica and inside, with the blue mosaic walls behind us and the central dome with its vivid colours soaring above. Then he left us alone there and it occurred to me that from Niki’s half-Christian point of view, this must be a peculiar situation: being inside such a magnificent Catholic church in an Arab country, as part of an Israeli-Jewish team operating against Iran and extremist Islam.
I let her be on her own for a while with the statue of the Virgin of Africa, and on the way out hugged her lightly and she responded with a thoughtful silence. We climbed into Udi’s car and he drove off in the direction of Mont Plaisant. After a few minutes he stopped at an unexpected place: the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, on the outskirts of the military city built on the mountainside. “We have to pay tribute to our hosts,” he said, without even the ghost of a smile, and we went out into the cold wind to honour the memory of the nameless soldiers who had died in the bloody war against the French. Udi wanted us to make several stops before the place where he would brief us, and to take a few photos just in case, and this also enabled us to check the cars behind us. I noticed one that I thought I’d seen at the basilica, and Udi suspected another that had drawn closer when we began climbing the mountain road.
After we returned to our car, Udi headed for the western slopes of the mountain and stopped at the side of the road. One of the two cars that we’d noticed stopped a few hundred yards from us.
Spring had arrived, but a chilly wind was blowing on the mountainside. Despite this, Udi told us to leave our coats in the car. “I assume your clothing is clean but I don’t know who shoved what into one of your coat pockets,” he said without apologizing, and launched into concrete explanations of what we had to do. He indicated with a movement of his head where the airfield lay, mostly concealed from our view, with only one end of the landing strip visible, about three kilometres to the north west of where we stood. “From Djebel Koukou there’ll be a better angle, but with this tail that we’ve picked up, I’d rather not go there now. We’ll wait until just before the actual operation.”
Final Stop, Algiers: A Thriller Page 36
