“Is it much further?”
“A half an hour, no more. We are going to Beersheba. He is waiting for you there.”
“Who?”
Her silence was an answer, and they drove on in the same silence after that. On a paved road now, through small, dusty villages and irrigated fields. Suddenly the desert was gone and everything was green. Across a valley a small city appeared ahead, but they turned off before they reached it. Up a narrow winding road to a solitary villa surrounded by jacaranda trees.
“Leave your bags,” Dvora said, climbing down and stretching. “They’ll be taken care of. But bring the metal box. He’s expecting that.”
Two young men came out as they entered, waving to Dvora as they passed. Jan followed her through the cool house to a balcony overlooking the valley and the city beyond. An old man, gray-haired and rail thin, easily in his eighties, came forward to meet them.
“Shalom, Jan Kulozik,” he said in a strong voice, its richness unexpected in a man his age. “I am Amri Ben-Haim. Please sit down.”
“Then sending Dvora to meet me was no coincidence?”
“No, of course not.”
“Then some explanations are in order,” Jan said. Still standing.
“Yes they are. And I imagine you would like to discuss that part of the affair first.”
“I want Dvora to hear it.”
“That is understood, the why she is here. Now we sit down?”
Jan relented and dropped into one of the cane chairs. There was cold lemonade in a jug on the table and he gratefully accepted a large glass of it. He drained it quickly and it was refilled for him. He sat tensely, the bomb-protected metal box on his lap. He would turn it over to them, but he wanted to hear what Ben-Haim had to say first.
“Do you know who Thurgood-Smythe is?” Jan asked.
Amri Ben-Haim nodded. “The former head of British Security. He has climbed still higher in the last few years and is now perhaps the top Security officer in the world. His position might even be stronger than that. We know that he is directly involved with military liaison with the United Nations.”
“Did you know that he is my brother-in-law? That he is the one who trapped me and Sara — and saw her shot?”
“I am aware of all those things, yes.”
And now the important question. Jan carefully set his glass on the table and tried to relax. Nevertheless his next words had a sharp edge to them.
“Thurgood-Smythe was apparently aware of the London resistance movement from the very beginning. He had it penetrated and watched, and arrested its members when it suited him. He also knew that Sara was an Israeli, a secret she died to keep because she was sure this country would suffer if her nationality was known. Her sacrifice was needless because not only did he know about her, but he claimed to be working with your government here. He said that you identified any Israelis who tried to work on their own outside this country. Is that true?”
“Yes and no,” Amri Ben-Haim said.
“That’s not much of an answer.”
“I will attempt to explain. This nation has a dubious relationship with the large power blocs who operate under the name of the United Nations. During the Retrocession they completely forgot the Near East. Once the oil wells ran dry they were happy to turn their backs on this troublesome part of the world. Free of outside interference, Israel finally could make peace here. There was war, of course, as soon as the major countries went away. We died by the thousands, but we survived. The Arab governments very quickly used up their imported weapons and were naturally enough not resupplied. Defeated here, they fell back upon tradition and squabbled and fought among themselves as they had always done. A jehad, a holy war, spread from Iran and swept up to our borders. We survived that as well. Hunger finally replaced their consuming interest in religion and people began to starve and die of disease. That is where we helped. Unlike the world powers we have never attempted to impose a western-oriented, machine-intensive and high-consumption society on this part of the world. It does not suit the local conditions. What we have done is to develop and improve on the ancient agricultural techniques, while introducing suitable technological processes, such as desalination of water, that have important applications in the area.”
“Aren’t you straying from my question?”
“Please indulge me a moment longer, Jan Kulozik. Everything that I say is relevant. We cultivated our back garden you might say. Encouraged food and light manufacturing suitable to this part of the world, cured disease and built hospitals, trained doctors. Nor did we forget our own defense. We made peace on all sides, since peace is the best form of security. I don’t think you realize what that means, historically speaking. The oldest written records, including the Old Testament of the Bible, are records of warfare. Unending warfare. It is over now. So when a measure of stability returned and other nations once again became aware of the Near East it was settled and peaceful and ready to supply them with year-round supplies of agricultural products. I won’t say that they exactly fell into our arms with happiness, in fact a few overtures were made for more direct control. This was when our atomic missiles, most of them located outside of Israel, became important. We will never start an atomic war, if for no other reason other than the inescapable fact that we are small enough to be eliminated by a few well-placed hydrogen bombs. But the others know that even when dead we would fight back. The price for an atomic war then became such a high one that no country in the world was willing to pay it. So an arrangement was worked out, which has continued happily for hundreds of years. We stay in and they stay out. It means that we Jews, at one time the most cosmopolitan people in the world, have become the most insular. Of course in order to maintain this carefully balanced relationship we do have governmental liaison at a high level. We also rely a good deal on intelligence agents.”
“Spies?”
“Another word for them. The other countries have theirs, too. We know because we capture them regularly. Unfortunately they capture some of ours as well. To return to your question. By the time we discovered that Sara’s cover had been penetrated it was effectively too late to do anything to help her…”
“Excuse my interrupting again, Mr. Ben-Haim, but I think you are just waffling. That may be taken as an insult to a man of your age and position, but it’s true. You have yet to answer my question.”
“Patience, young man,” Ben-Haim said, raising his hand palm outward. “I am almost there. Thurgood-Smythe told us he was going to capture Sara and wanted to exchange her for three of his own agents that we had in custody. I of course agreed. So we did know that Sara was in danger of capture, and yes, I was in contact with Thurgood-Smythe.”
“He told me that you had informed on Sara and told him as well of the presence of all your younger agents in Britain who were working on their own.”
“He lied to you. We never had any such arrangement. None of our agents work on their own, no matter what Thurgood-Smythe or the agents themselves have told you.”
Jan sat back, exasperated.
“Then one of you is lying,” he said.
“Exactly. Now you see why I forced you to listen to a boring history of our country’s problems. So you might be able to judge who is the biggest liar. Myself, or Thurgood-Smythe.”
“You both could be. He from the most selfish of motives, you from the most noble. All I know is that Sara is dead.”
“She is,” Ben-Haim said, and the words were a sigh. “I did not know it was going to happen and I would have done anything to prevent it. Anything else is a lie, a filthy, filthy lie.”