Aharon, as always, was a few minutes late, his coat disheveled and all his attention on the umbrella in his hand, which had again, diabolically, collapsed inside out. He, too, scanned the café, nodding his head almost imperceptibly on spotting Michael. “You’re getting thinner and thinner all the time,” he said to him, “you need to eat something. A double espresso?”
He returned carrying a somewhat shaky tray, a cup of espresso and a mug of tea perched precariously on its surface. “We’re still waiting for a croissant,” he said. “They’ll call us.”
“Yaakov!” the guy behind the bar called out two or three minutes later. “Yaakov, that’s me,” Aharon said with a smile, and returned a moment later with a warm almond croissant, his face aglow in triumph. “Eat something, eat. I need you healthy and strong. At your best!” And that’s when the former Mossad chief suddenly turned serious and stern-faced, businesslike and focused, the semblance of the absentminded professor disappearing in a flash.
Aharon told him about his meeting with the former head of the German intelligence agency and of his meeting with the president. Not for a moment, according to him, did he consider failing to comply with the president’s instructions. “How could I say no to him? And I need you, Michael, as the leader of the team we’re going to set up. I know,” he continued, not letting up for a second and not allowing Michael to get even a single word in, “that you’ve just opened your own law practice, but don’t fret, you’re only in the initial stages after all and nothing’s going to happen to you if you put things on hold for a short while. You weren’t a lawyer for some twenty-five years, so it can wait a little longer. Avigdor Feldman will go on handling civil rights cases. You’ll join the fray in a few months’ time, no harm done. Civil rights are important, but let’s first get our hands on this awful man. I know he exists, my old bones tell me that he’s out there plotting and sowing the seeds of evil. Like a venomous snake. I can hear his scales scratching along the ground, I can feel his venom burning and spreading. We’ll take him out!” he declared abruptly, and Michael could feel how the image of the reptile, with its cold blood and the deadly venom in its fangs, became etched in his mind, too. And still he remained silent.
“Tell me,” Aharon continued, “how many rooms do you have in that apartment you’ve leased as an office? Three? Yes, that should suffice. On Nahmani Street? Excellent, excellent. There we go, we have a team leader and a safe house from which to conduct operations. Tell me, has anyone come to mind? Who else should we bring in?”
And thus, without giving his consent, and without actually being asked at all to do so, Michael Turgeman saw his life take another small twist, saw himself being shoved down a new path, the road not taken, he thought to himself with a touch of irony, like in that poem by Robert Frost that he still remembered from his school days. But he didn’t say a word to Aharon. There wouldn’t be much point in doing so.
And perhaps he had already made his choice some twenty-six years ago, when he first began the Mossad’s screening process, his very participation in which offered him a taste of secrecy and sense of vocation that warmed his heart, truly so, and led him to see himself as special in relation to all his friends, other fourth-year law students. While they were planning their integration into Israel’s leading law firms or postgraduate studies at the finest American universities, he was at the start of a long road that would end with him joining that world-renowned yet elusive and mysterious organization—the Mossad, the Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations.
A long time had passed since then. A lengthy screening and recruitment process followed by twenty-five years of service. Years and years of dealing with the recruitment and handling of agents. When Michael started out as a young intelligence-gathering officer, a case officer, as the profession was known in intelligence organizations around the world, Aharon Levin was the commander of the Mossad’s operations in Europe. There they would occasionally meet and spend time together, long hours and days on end, no less, waiting for an object to fall into their clutches, waiting for an agent to show up for a face-to-face rendezvous for the first time in several months. As a senior commander, Aharon wouldn’t of course accompany him on all his operations, but when it came to an interesting one, something different from the other operations, when a particularly high-value and important agent was coming, Aharon would then tag along, taking charge of events with the aid of his experience, wisdom, and profound understanding of the human psyche, and the soul of the enemy they were facing. Some ten years later, after the prolonged hunting season the length and breadth of Europe, Aharon was appointed to the post of Mossad chief. He asked Michael to serve as his senior personal assistant, and as always he said, “Yes, at your command.” They worked together for three years, with an intimacy born out of sixteen and sometimes eighteen hours of close collaboration a day, every day. The trust between them was forged from secrets that very few knew, from times of rage and of weakness, from crises as much so as from moments of undisclosed glory. It wasn’t a partnership between equals. In terms of responsibility, authority, age, and life experience, there was a distinct gap between the two. And Michael knew that in his own amiable, educated, and highly charming manner, Aharon was using him, just as he had used everyone who had accompanied him on his meteoric path.
When he summoned him now, shaking him without hesitation from the law office he had just started to get off the ground, as if it meant nothing, Aharon was banking on his absolute loyalty. That in addition to his reliability, the high level of intelligence he possessed, and his practical skills. Michael had an uncommonly honest perception of his own qualities, just as they were undoubtedly worded and summarized in the confidential psychological evaluation documents in his personal file. Weaknesses were listed there, too—not few and not to be dismissed. “We’re all human,” he’d always quote his commander. In any event, the brilliance, the profound understanding, and the leaps of faith they’d need further down the road would stem only from Aharon himself. Such was Aharon’s way, and Michael knew so, too. That was the way he had worked throughout the years, and that’s how he was going into battle now. Michael was simply his lackey, a loyal and courageous servant, a vital yet somewhat technical component in the compact and efficient machine that Aharon was starting to piece together for the purpose of conquering the objective.
14
Michael called Amir and told him he’d like to see him that same day, preferably in the afternoon, before the eve of the Sabbath. He’d come to his place, to the moshav. He asked Ya’ara to meet him at Café Bueno, just off the highway, on the way from Tel Aviv to Netanya. Now. He’d be there in an hour. Yes, it was very important.
He hadn’t seen Ya’ara for several years. Strange, yet the thing that stood out in his memory from their last meeting was the muted sheen of the pearls around her neck. Ya’ara was a combat-trained field operative and part of a special ops squad. She was blessed with courage and composure, and in her own restrained manner was always up for a fight, always came to life when a complex and dangerous mission came her way. She was smart and sensible, dressed in clothing he viewed as conservative and mature for her young age, her light hair meticulously arranged, boasting jewelry that alluded to a refined taste and understated wealth. They had worked together on three or four operations over the years, and she had always performed flawlessly, fulfilling her tasks to perfection. When they needed someone to get his or her hands on this or the other piece of information about the object they were dealing with, when they needed someone to get into places where others wouldn’t even make it past the doorman in the lobby, when they needed someone to spend hours on end through a long cold night on stakeout, Ya’ara was just the right person for the job. She was extraordinary, special. Nobody had ever once suspected that she, an attractive and composed young woman, so meticulous about her attire and behavior, could be a Mossad combatant. Michael had never witnessed a display of intense emotion from her—excitement, fear, or elation. Even on one oppressively humid and fragrance-filled night in Shanghai, as he waited for her in an expensive dark car, its lights off and its powerful engine humming softly, even then, when she slid into the seat next to him and slipped the small pistol into the elegant bag in her hand, even then, just thirty seconds after firing three .22 slugs into the head of a North Korean arms dealer, she hadn’t shown any emotion at all. Her breathing was easy and regular, her light hair pulled back. “Everything’s okay,” she said in a deep and quiet voice. “Drive.”