“It’s been twenty years since we last saw each other, Aharon, and I was already sixty years old at the time. Your smooth tongue never worked on me. You can’t fool an old bulldog, my dear. No one fools me,” Hagar said. “And don’t be shocked, I know I was called bulldog behind my back,” she added, taking pleasure in the look of surprise on Aharon’s face. “Come, come, let’s have a look at you.” She narrowed her eyes, tilted her head back a little, her two hands still holding on to his, and then she tugged him gently toward her and buried her head for a moment, just a moment, against his chest.
They sat at the shopping center’s only café, which was more of a bourekas bakery than a coffee bar. The closest store was a haberdashery, of the kind that no longer graced the streets of Tel Aviv. Next to that was a Russian deli, where dried sausages hung in the window alongside smoked fish, their skin golden and gray, small hooks pierced through their gaping mouths.
Aharon and Hagar sat outside on white plastic chairs on either side of an old Formica table. Michael went inside, to order tea for them and a double espresso for himself, as well as a plate of selected small pastries whose warm odor went straight to his heart and reminded him of colorful, winding markets in remote cities in the Caucasus and secret meetings in crowded, smoke-filled teahouses, steaming cups of sweet tea, with savory cheese pastries on the side.
The two old-timers sat facing each other, leaning over the table, Aharon talking, Hagar silent, his eyes fixed on hers.
“We’re chasing a shadow, Hagar. We hardly know anything. We don’t know when it started, but it was definitely before 1989, before the fall of the Berlin Wall. In ’89, or a little earlier, the Russians took charge of the East German agent. Already then they viewed him as an asset worth killing for.
“I want you to try to remember something that may have happened since then and through to the time of your retirement from the Shin Bet, something that appeared important enough, insufficiently explained, something that bothered you at the time, something that may still be bothering you now, that you never managed to decipher, but noticed nevertheless. Anything, a hint of something that could be relevant.”
“Oh, Aharon, there were so many things that defied explanation. Strange phenomena. People disappearing. Leaked information that we were never able to verify. Phone calls we couldn’t understand. You know how it goes, that’s how the game is played. We always said it’s like riding a Ferris wheel. Sometimes you’re down and sometimes you’re up, on top of the world. And then you drop again. That’s just the way it is.”
“Everything you say is true,” Aharon responded. “But I can see a flash of something in your eyes, Hagar, something you recall, maybe a flicker of memory that seems marginal or insignificant, and yet, it’s the very thing that’s come to your mind right now. Something I said sparked that particular memory. What is it, Hagar? What are you thinking about?”
Hagar looked at the familiar square as if she was seeing it for the first time, as if the scene being played out in the open expanse was entirely in her honor: Two children, large and colorful backpacks slung over their shoulders, ran past their table, a flock of pigeons took to the wing all at once and rose from the square and onto the roof of one of the stores. Low-hanging clouds moved rapidly northward across the sky, casting a shadow over the white tenement buildings across the way.
“Listen, Aharon. There is something, there is something that lit up momentarily in my thoughts when you were talking. It flashed before my eyes, like a dark fish that you see in a pond, or perhaps it’s only its shadow that you see, and then it’s gone. I have something in mind, but it’s floundering and slipping away, and I need to reflect on it some more, to allow it to return to my thoughts effortlessly. I’m an old woman, Aharon,” she sighed, “and I need to rest. How about coming back tomorrow?” she asked ingratiatingly, like a little girl. “I need a little time.”
Aharon concealed his impatience. He wanted to move forward, all his senses told him that Hagar could help them, but he knew he had to let her be and allow her the time she needed. He hadn’t seen her for many years. He couldn’t tell how hard she could be pressed. She was no spring chicken, he thought to himself. He wasn’t sure how much of that tough and ruthless bulldog she once was still remained. They were all getting old.
“Need some company on the way home?” he asked.
“No, no, my apartment is very close, it’s okay. I’m just a little tired. Old people tire easily, didn’t you know? Call me tomorrow morning, and I hope to have remembered by then.” She smiled hesitantly at Aharon, and Michael thought about time’s ability to have its way with even the toughest people. He watched Hagar as she struggled to rise from her chair before tightening her coat around her body and moving toward Aharon for a farewell kiss. Aharon gazed warmly into her blue eyes; his hands tightened the scarf around her neck as if he were preparing her for a harsh winter. And indeed, just then a cold wind blew through the exposed square, and the gray pigeons retreated as one from the man in the casquette who was feeding them bits of bread, beating their wings and flying toward the tenement buildings. Hagar began moving away from them in small, slow steps. Aharon paced impatiently. “Dealing with that woman requires nerves of steel,” he mumbled, perhaps to himself, or perhaps to Michael. “Don’t be fooled by her performance—she’s as tough as ever,” he said, and Michael couldn’t tell if he truly believed so or had simply said it in an effort to convince himself. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go.”
20
Hagar walked into Alona’s apartment and took off her coat. A familiar thrill of excitement coursed through her body. She was in a hurry now. She could hear the children playing in their room but went straight to hers, a small and foreign realm in the handsome apartment. She closed the door behind her and turned the key and then bent over with a groan to remove a number of books from the bottom shelf. Concealed behind the books was the small cardboard box she was looking for. She lifted it with both hands and placed it carefully on the small table next to the deep-seated and worn armchair over which a richly colored and decorated stretch of fabric lay carelessly strewn. Hagar liked her room and she was particularly fond of that corner, of the old and comfortable armchair, the beautiful rug, the antique reading lamp, her books, and her secrets. The secrets.
She retrieved a pile of notebooks from the box. School notebooks with brown covers. Just like at elementary school, she thought to herself with a smile. There should be seven or eight notebooks in the box, she couldn’t remember exactly, and didn’t want to count them just then. She wanted to find what she was looking for, the thing that Aharon Levin had asked her about. The notebooks were filled with her handwriting, small and cramped, in green ink, the same ink she had used for decades in her Caran d’Ache pen to jot down remarks and footnotes and reminders and ideas to be checked out. She also always used to add generalizations and conclusions, abridged versions of cases and summaries of investigations. Her summaries were succinct and purposeful, and included long lists of enemies and suspects. Enemies who might have been forgotten by now by everyone but her. My entire life is in these notebooks, she thought to herself. A complicated and convoluted riddle that makes sense to no one but me. And although the rules and regulations of the Shin Bet required that she destroy her notes ahead of her retirement, her heart wouldn’t allow her to do so, she couldn’t part with them. And thus, with just a touch of hesitation coupled with adamant assertiveness, Hagar Beit-Hallahmi, a long-serving and loyal soldier in the shadow war, violated the regulations of the all-powerful organization she so loved. She did it knowingly, incapable of letting go, unwilling and unable to shred the code, the cipher of her life. She took the notebooks with her the day she walked out through the fortified gates of Shin Bet headquarters for the last time, without a glance at the young security guards, knowing they wouldn’t dare check her large bag, a bag that itself had inspired myths, too, much the same as those told about her. Tales spun together like spiders’ webs, silvery strands, slender and sticky, layer upon layer, until they became a veneer of words that offered only a small hint of her character, while she herself, the true woman, gradually faded away and disappeared behind it.