With the details already settled, they continued to talk, and Ya’ara ordered another tea. She told him about her studies and how she had met Hagai and the house they were renting on the moshav, not far from here—but you already know that. And she was still on her endless leave of absence, but she thought it really was time to decide now, and it was pretty clear to her that she wanted out, that this long holiday was going to turn into a permanent break. She was not going to go back now to a life of endless traveling, and there was Hagai, and Hollywood awaited her, too. There it was, a hint of her charming smile, she was already trying to decide which evening gown she would wear when she’s called up to accept the Oscar for Best Foreign Film, and her smile was now a glowing one, the smile of someone who was busy making student films but dreamed of international acclaim. “Do you know that that smile, that’s something new, you never used to smile like that,” Michael said to her. “Yes, I’m not really the same person you once knew,” she responded.
16
The avenue of casuarina trees loomed against the backdrop of the darkening sky. Dabs of purple and gold appeared on the edges of the heavy clouds. It never fails to surprise me how quickly evening falls here, Michael thought to himself, and not for the first time. He turned off to the moshav, the wheels of his Audi skidding over the dirt and stones that filled the numerous potholes along the rough road. Solitary heavy drops of rain fell on the windshield, and he imagined them falling softly on the fertile earth around him, too, giving rise to the smell of winter in the countryside.
Amir was waiting for him just outside the door, shielded by the pergola that hung over the porch at the entrance to his home. A smile, a manly embrace, accompanied by firm slaps on the shoulder, twice, three times. Michael took a step back and said, “So this is what a student looks like, does it? You do look a little too smart!”
Amir smiled sheepishly, his light-skinned face turning a little red. “Just so you know, it’s not so easy for someone my age,” he said. “I’m not like all you Ashkenazim, who went to study straight after the army, with your parents paying for everything, including a students’ apartment in Talbieh. I had to provide for my parents, too. My father, God rest his soul, was still recovering from the work accident and my mother was still taking care of my two younger brothers.”
“I know, I know; have you forgotten who I am? What’s up with you?” Michael responded, wondering how with the name Turgeman, he could still be seen as “all you Ashkenazim.” The two of them, he and Amir, were still standing on the porch, water dripping down around them and the fragrance of mandarins filling the darkness. “And for the record,” he continued, “note that I worked all through university. Doing whatever came my way. I worked my ass off. That’s why you do it when you’re young, not when you’re already a middle-aged old man, like some of us here.”
“Come, come inside. Smadar and the children are already at her parents’; I told her I’d join them a little later because my commander’s coming to check up on me before the Shabbat comes in. Something to drink? We’ll make some nice tea, and we have marzipan cookies baked by Smadar’s mother.”
The aroma of strong sweet tea. And like the tea, the marzipan cookies also reminded him of the sweet and heart-warming foods his mother used to make. He looked Amir in the eyes and got straight to the point. “Listen. I need you. Yes. Like when we were in Marseille that time. A special task assigned to Aharon Levin directly by the president himself. No one is in on it aside from us, from the team we are currently putting together. Ya’ara Stein is already in. Do you remember her? And I’m also bringing in Aslan, the guy who was a part of the security team, and someone else, a young woman you don’t know, Adi, who’ll be our intelligence officer. I haven’t spoken to her yet, but you can take my word for it. She’s on the team, too. That’s everyone. An elite squad.” He told Amir the little he knew, and he could see that Amir already felt offended, angry, and personally hurt by the betrayal of that long-ago young upstart, who was now at the very least a senior director-general or high-ranking commander in one of the security establishments. Amir wasn’t one to outwardly display emotion, and his face remained calm now, too, aside from a resoluteness of sorts that clouded his blue eyes. But Michael had known him for years and had been with him in more than enough complex situations to know that Amir always took things to heart, and that he made no distinction between the personal and the public, which were essentially one and the same for him. If this traitor was screwing the state, then he was also fucking him, Amir, personally, and there were many things Amir could take, but not something like that.
“But,” Amir hesitated, “my studies…”
“Don’t worry. We’ll wrap this thing up within three months at most. You’ll write up the makeup exams. You’ll take another semester. We can discuss it after we catch this son of a bitch, and the office will approve whatever you need. Trust me. I’m looking out for you. I’ll do the degree with you if you like. But I have to have you with us now. You’re responsible for all the logistics and everything else that only you can do. Watching our backs. Making sure everything is functioning properly, working smoothly and quickly, as it should. When the moment of truth arrives, I want you at my side. I don’t want anyone else in your stead. Deal, Amir?”
“I said to you already back then, at the airport in Marseille, that I’ll do anything you ask of me. Always. I don’t say such things lightly and I don’t say them to just anyone. I mean what I say. If not, I keep quiet, you know that. So if you’re here to ask something of me, it’s clearly something serious and I’m in. I’m just going to have to smooth things over with Smadar. She’s grown accustomed to having me at home by now.”
“Believe me, she’ll thank me. She’s used to being on her own, you’re probably driving her crazy already. Besides, you know what kind of a girl she is. Charming, charming. Don’t buy a lottery ticket, bro, you used up all your luck when you found her. Tell her I was sorry she wasn’t home when I came by.”
17
“Tell me something,” Michael panted, “do you think you could run a little slower perhaps?”
“If I were to slow down anymore, man, I’d be dead.” Aslan laughed, but came to a halt nevertheless, to allow Michael to catch his breath a little. The sea’s high waves were washing up over the beach, leaving just a narrow strip of soft wet sand on which to run.
“This was a particularly bad idea, meeting you here,” Michael grumbled. “It’s six-thirty in the morning, freezing cold, and we’re alone on the beach. Aliens could abduct us in their spaceship and no one would even know.
“In short,” he continued after his breathing eased off a little, a sharp pain still piercing his side and dark waves still threatening to wash over both of them, “in short, I need you. Like in the good old days. Like in the cold of Warsaw and Berlin. This time it looks like we’re gonna be freezing our butts off in Russia, if we do actually manage to get on the trail of this son of a bitch. I need you for three months straight, without any kayaking down the Amazon or climbing volcanoes in the Philippines in the middle.”
Aslan smiled. He lived his life in keeping with a single guiding principle—a lot, of everything, for as long as possible. After serving in the Shin Bet’s and Mossad’s special ops units for thirty years, he decided upon retirement to make a point of traveling for six months out of every year. At the age of fifty-three, he was still lean and muscular, in excellent physical condition for his age, his hair gray and his skin tanned. And when he smiled, a set of remarkably white teeth lit up his face. Michael knew that Aslan didn’t need much for his subsistence, and that every shekel that he didn’t spend on the day-to-day bare essentials was put aside to pay for top-quality travel gear, first-class local guides, and air tickets to the farthest edges of the globe. Aslan, for his part, liked working with Michael and appreciated the serious and thorough manner in which he operated. He had once told one of the case officers that he could spot the tenacity and iron will lurking behind their commander’s amiable façade. Truth be told, they shared that same tenacity. Aslan had accompanied him for years to meetings with agents of all kinds, some of them scumbags, some profoundly psychologically scarred, some tough, unpredictable, and thus dangerous. Aslan made sure that the agents turned up to the meetings clean, unaccompanied, and with no one following them. He sat in on the meetings himself when the need arose, and always as Michael’s “personal secretary”—a personal secretary who didn’t say a word and simply sat there with watchful eyes, bulging muscles, and the unmistakable hint of a weapon under his jacket. Over the years, with Michael no longer simply handling the agents himself but overseeing complex operations involving large numbers of people, Aslan learned to appreciate his calm and authoritative conduct, his composure, the trust he placed in his people, and the freedom he allowed them. He saw how Michael managed to get people to display qualities that even they didn’t believe they possessed. They were more alike than met the eye. So how could he say no to him?