“How’s the relationship with Mana progressing?” he asked.
“Satisfactory.” He could hear an icy chill in her voice. When Shoshana chose, she could freeze a person with her haughty, reserved manner. But Habish was no ordinary person.
“Out with it,” he demanded, cutting right to the heart of the matter.
“I don’t like being watched by voyeurs,” she replied, turning the temperature down a few more degrees. “You are nothing but a frustrated—” She cut the words off. “I do not like what I am doing to Is’al and prefer not to be gawked at when I must … must seduce him.”
“Say it like it is,” he snapped. “When you must ‘fuck’ him.”
Her anger flared. “We haven’t gone that far yet. He has a problem.”
“Yes, we know. Premature ejaculation.”
“Must you do this to him?” A pleading had crept into her voice.
“My God! You’ve fallen for one of the clients.”
“No. But I do like him. He is so vulnerable and unsure of himself.”
Habish motioned for her to sit down while he checked the hall for security. Only Zeev Avidar was there. He sat next to her and spoke in a soft voice, explaining the ‘'drill” to her.
“Yes, we do watch you. You are under constant surveillance, twenty-four hours a day. It is not easy but it is necessary.” She started to protest that it wasn’t necessary, that she was perfectly safe with Mana. Again he anticipated her. “Believe me, you are in constant danger. This is the only way we can guarantee your safety. Did you know Mana has bodyguards and they have taken pictures of you and him together? Including that tender scene in the hall where you had him twanging at E above high C.” Shoshana was shocked.
Habish pressed his advantage. “Is’al Mana is an Iraqi chemical engineer who right now, as we speak, is negotiating with WisserChemFabrik for highly specialized machinery that could be used to manufacture a new nerve gas. You know the most likely target of nerve gas — Israel.” He stood up, his words now filled with emotion. “Shoshana, we are protecting our people, making sure that nothing like the Holocaust will ever happen again. No one likes what we do, least of all me. But there is no choice between the Manas of Iraq and the safety of our families. I wish there was another way.”
His words had stirred memories deep inside and she remembered that Sunday long ago when she had cut her hair and visited Yad Vashem with her grandmother and aunt and uncle. “You’re right.” Her voice was her apology. ‘ ‘I had let my personal feelings cloud my judgment. It won’t happen again.”
“In our work,” Habish said, “you must put your personal feelings away. But always remember where you hid them. You will need them when you’re done with this filthy work. That is the way you remain a human being.” He let her digest his words, judging her about ready for the purpose of his hurried visit back to Israel. She nodded and he knew she could continue.
“An agent reported the Iraqis are constructing a plant to make a new and much more deadly gas — one that we have no defenses for. He paid for that information with his life.” He paused. “Shoshana, there is a connection between Mana and that plant. We want you to go inside, into Iraq, and find out what that nerve gas is.”
Satiated, saturation, disgust. The three words rolled around in Matt’s head, much like a tune that wouldn’t go away. “Damn,” he muttered, not knowing why he was so discontented. He was lying naked on the deck of a thirty-six-foot sailboat, another one of the many Wisser possessions, off the Greek island of Santorin. He rolled over, careful not to put any pressure on his crotch, and searched the beach for Lisl. He didn’t have any trouble finding her. She was the nude, golden-haired nymph running through the surf. “Exhibitionist,” he grunted.
Lisl’s brother, Hellmut, had sensed that Matt’s growing attraction for Shoshana might complicate the negotiations with the Iraqis if the pilot stole her away from Mana. Rather than take any chances, Hellmut had suggested that the two of them leave Marbella and fly to Mykonos to pick up the boat for a few days’ sail around the Aegean. Matt had readily agreed, seeing an easy way to end the games he was playing over Shoshana. He didn’t like being aced out by an Arab.
Gingerly, he stood up and climbed down the companion-way to find something to eat. He was standing in the galley when the boat rocked as Lisl climbed up the boarding ladder. “Not again.” He made a promise to stop talking to himself. Rather than let Lisl trap him below for another round of love-making, he went back on deck. She was waving at another sailboat that was mooring beside them. Two couples waved back and they started an animated conversation in German.
“They’ll be coming over when they finish mooring,” Lisl told him. The two women on the other boat had already shed their clothes.
What in the hell is the matter with you, he thought. I’m in a teenager’s paradise, screwing my eyeballs out and I’ve had it. For the first time in his life, he understood the difference between fucking and making love. And he knew whatever he and Lisl had been doing, it wasn’t making love.
“Lisl, what’s the date today?” She shrugged and called across the water, asking the new arrivals. He knew enough German to understand the answer. “Scheise. ” The German obscenity got her attention. “I’m AWOL. Got to get going.” He explained that he had overstayed his leave and would be in a barrel of Scheise if he didn’t get back to his unit. The news didn’t bother Lisl, her four new friends would keep her occupied for a while. Her father would send someone to pick up the boat.
Two hours later, Matt was at Santorin’s small airport. When he reached the counter, he almost booked a flight through Málaga, but decided against that. He couldn’t waste two more days looking for Shoshana and had to get to his new base at Stonewood. He wished he hadn’t gone sailing with Lisl and lost track of time — and Shoshana. He tried to write her off as just another passing fancy. But her face kept appearing like a beautiful melody that kept playing in his mind.
A light dew gave a freshness to the early morning as Habish started the car. Zeev Avidar, who specialized in forged documents, was packing his unique equipment into the trunk for the trip to the airport at Malaga. “I’m getting tired of this drive,” Habish told Avidar. But there was no choice, his other agent was watching Shoshana and Avidar had to start the circuitous route that would take him to Baghdad.
Once inside Iraq, Avidar would keep the team supplied with all the fake documents a team needed to survive in that hostile country. It was no easy task, for he could not take the documents with him and would have to make them on the spot. During his journey, he would pick up the cover of a computer salesman and repairman trying to hawk his product inside Iraq. Like any good salesman, he would have samples of his product and, like a competent repairman, he would take his tools and spare parts with him. Avidar would go through the motions of setting up a computer business, taking his time as he worked through the masses of paperwork and the bureaucratic maze of the Iraqi government to get a business license.
Another agent, posing as an artist, had already smuggled in the unique types of paper and ink they would need. They would join up and Avidar would write a detailed program to load into a computer that would turn his laser printer into a most unique printing press. Their documents were so good that when experts compared Avidar’s forgeries with the real thing, they always picked out the legitimate documents as the fake. But setting up the operation took time.