“We’ve already started, Adi. We’ve started.”
19
ASHDOD, JANUARY 2013
“Have you spoken to her?”
“Yes, I called her yesterday, after Shabbat. She was happy to hear from me. We worked together many years ago on a Soviet defector, a colonel from their Arctic-based submarine fleet. Quite some gift at the time for our friends in Langley. She’s an amazing woman, believe me. As tenacious as a bulldog. In fact, she looks a little like a bulldog, too,” Aharon added meanly.
They were heading toward Ashdod in Michael’s silver Audi A1, the well-known Sayarim roadside diner flashing by on the right, the oncoming traffic to their left heavy and slow.
“Couldn’t you have bought a bigger car?” Aharon grumbled, trying to maneuver himself into a more comfortable position.
“It’s the parking in Tel Aviv. It drives me crazy sometimes even with a small car.”
The remainder of the drive to Hagar Beit-Hallahmi passed in silence. Aharon had already briefed Michael in general terms on the woman they were about to meet. Hagar had served for almost two decades as head of the Shin Bet’s Soviet Espionage Research Department. She joined the Shin Bet immediately after completing a master’s degree in Sovietology at the Hebrew University. One of the faculty professors, so she learned many years later, had singled her out and passed on her name. She enlisted in 1960 and went on from there to dedicate her heart and soul to the tough and demanding organization that invited her into its ranks. She retired from the Shin Bet only in the late 1990s, at the age of sixty-seven. Her eyes had filled with tears when she left Shin Bet headquarters for the last time. She returned the car given to her as a department head that same day, and according to Aharon, when the division chief offered her a ride home with one of the car pool drivers, she said, “Thanks, but no need. I may as well get used to it already.” She then rented out her small apartment in Maoz Aviv and went to live in Ashdod with the family of her niece. Hagar was a difficult and tough woman, and Aharon could only hazard a guess at why she decided to move in with the daughter of her only brother, who had passed away several years earlier.
Had he asked her straightforwardly, they might have come up with the answer together, but Aharon Levin and Hagar Beit-Hallahmi weren’t in the habit of discussing personal matters. “The children are so fond of you, Hagar,” her niece had said to her at the time, “you’re their favorite aunt. And I’d be happy too, because you’re my favorite aunt.” That’s rather a liberal use of the term aunt, Hagar thought to herself, but cynicism wasn’t going to come in the way of the joy that washed over her, joy and relief to know that she wouldn’t have to live alone, without family, without children and grandchildren, just her all alone in a public housing apartment filled with thousands of books in Russian and without her Shin Bet job, which she had revered, a job that had long since become a vocation and way of life for her. The Soviet Union and the Shin Bet security service were the loves of her life. Being the descendant of a family of Subbotniks may have been one possible explanation, she had thought to herself on more than one occasion; after all, she had been attracted since a young girl to anything and everything related to Russia, to the Russian language that she learned from her grandfather, who had fought on the Crimean Peninsula, to the greats of Russian literature, Chekhov, Bulgakov, Bunin, and even to the wonderful and terrible Soviet Union, which occupied her dreams. The big dream, the brutal revolution, the huge and awe-inspiring mobilization against the Nazis became her reality. Despite her great love for the nation and its people, she was aware of the terrible catastrophe Stalin had inflicted on his country. And after the dust of the Great Patriotic War settled, the world became polarized, the West versus the East, and because of the Cold War, the Soviet giant was suddenly pitted against the young Israel, the state that had just risen from the ashes of the Holocaust. No wonder Hagar Beit-Hallahmi decided to play a part in the war, on her Middle Eastern front. And she enlisted wholeheartedly in the struggle in the shadows and the intelligence battle that took place in the streets of both Leningrad and Ramat Gan.
She immersed herself in the secret world of the Shin Bet, diligently reading through the dusty cardboard dossiers. Every small piece of information, every hint of Soviet espionage activity landed on her desk, and she, with infinite patience and much love, studied every detail, filed and marked every document, carefully piecing together the big picture, the one that would never be completed. When the Shin Bet got its first computers, she learned to use one slowly but surely, her progress accompanied by suspicion and bouts of hostility. At the same time, she continued to maintain her own personal archive, amassing the thousands of reports and bulletins, jotting down remarks in the margins, drawing arrows to other reports and photographs that had collected in the albums of suspects. Hagar, Hagar. Her unique name, certainly for someone born in the 1930s, was whispered with admiration and respect in the corridors of the Shin Bet. No one knew the true scope of her extensive knowledge. A walking and talking encyclopedia of secrets, they used to call her. Her passion for her work, the manhunts she oversaw from behind her desk for Soviet spies and agents and moles, the tenacious, almost personal, war she waged against the KGB’s dark empire, her absolute devotion to the Shin Bet security service that left no time or place in her heart for anything else, all inspired admiration and sometimes even fear among those who worked with her, from the desk clerks in her department, the trackers and eavesdroppers of the Operations Division and through to the Shin Bet chief himself—or more precisely, a line of Shin Bet chiefs, who were frequently required to come to grips with her clear, sharp mind, her unshakable memory, and her fiery tongue.
Now, old and seemingly at peace with herself, Hagar eagerly awaited Aharon Levin’s arrival. Very few friends visited her in Ashdod. The people she had worked with at the Shin Bet for forty years, she discovered to her surprise, were work friends, colleagues and nothing more. They hadn’t kept in touch when they retired, and she chose to distance herself from those who remained when she took her leave. Time and the distance from Tel Aviv played their part, too. She was happy to be living with Alona and her family. She loved Alona’s kids, whom she viewed as her own grandchildren, young and mischievous. Her room was cozy and comfortable. She had given away most of her books, but the hundreds that still remained, which were close to her heart like old friends, filled the room to the brim, spilling over from the bookcase onto her small desk, piled up on the floor, threatening to occupy the spectacular Afghan rug she brought with her from the apartment in Maoz Aviv.
She was sitting on a bench in the concrete square of the shopping center, soaking up the winter sunshine, her eyes closed in bliss. Her purse rested on her knees and she didn’t feel comfortable in the light-colored dress that peeked out from under her thick coat. She had decided to wear the elegant dress only in honor of Aharon Levin, despite the fact that it didn’t suit her or the windswept square in which she now waited with a sense of expectation and longing, not only for him but also for the world he represented. She listened out of habit to the conversations around her in Russian between new and old immigrants—or at least the bits and pieces she could catch. She knew he’d be there soon. And when they approached, Aharon and the tall man by his side, her face wrinkled into a smile, her eyes opened wide, her arms reached out, and her body swung to its feet with a concerted effort. “Aharon, Aharon, good of you to come to visit an old friend.” Aharon clutched both her hands, backed off a little, and lied without balking: “You haven’t changed! We all age, even Michael—meet Michael—isn’t a kid any longer. Only you, still like a young woman.”