“We need to find her, this Katrina Geifman,” Aharon said. “She’s the only lead we have, even if it’s only to rule out the possibility that she’s connected to the affair we’re looking into. We have to find out if the bloodhound from Ashdod is on the right scent,” Aharon added in reference to Hagar Beit-Hallahmi, the “bulldog” who had rarely erred in the past. Rarely. “How do we locate her?”
“I’m working on it,” Adi said. “Using the Internet to begin with. Ya’ara is helping me with the Russian, and Michael gave me the go-ahead to seek the assistance of a young Russian guy who’s working now with my brother at Amdocs, a boy wonder of sorts, who served in the IDF’s SIGINT unit, Unit 8200. I told him to find her for me, that she’s someone I need to locate for my master’s thesis. Taking into account that our Katrina is now sixty years old or so, we’ve narrowed down our search to around ten potential women. Let’s hope that the woman we’re looking for is one of them.”
“Igor will be the key,” Aharon said. “If we find her, we’ll make contact with her on his behalf. We obviously won’t be able to hide the fact that he’s dead. But we can approach her with a final letter that he wrote to her before he died. And Galina, his daughter, will be the one to take it to her. Meet Galina,” Aharon continued, turning to look at the entire team. “Hi there, Galina,” he said, gesturing toward Ya’ara.
“But I don’t look like her at all, and she’s older than me, and I’m sure her Russian is better than mine.”
“She’ll want to see Igor’s daughter. She’s all that remains of something that was apparently very deep and meaningful for her, that caused her to violate all the rules that secret organizations impose on their people. Don’t forget, she barely saw Galina, her visits to Israel were very brief, and twenty years have gone by since. She won’t expect her Russian to be perfect, there’s no reason it should be, and she’ll see what she wants to see, particularly if some of the things we show to her are indeed genuine, or we present them as genuine to her. The letter, and maybe a sketch of her, which he did at the time. And something personal from among the items that Galina collected from his drawers and packed into boxes.
“Compose a letter written by Igor on his deathbed, and show it to me. Michael will then get one of our forgers to put it into Igor’s handwriting, based on samples you’ll give to him.
“So let’s get on with it.
“Adi, you’re finding Katrina. Ya’ara, you’re coming up with a letter and you’re also choosing a sketch and one of Igor’s personal items to give to her. After Adi finds her, Aslan, it’ll be up to you to plan the trip. You’ll be responsible for ensuring that you and Ya’ara enter and leave Russia safely. Yes, you’ll be traveling with genuine documentation, we don’t have a choice. We don’t have access to the Mossad’s capabilities. Remember, unless explicitly authorized by either me or Michael, no one else, no one at all, can know of our mission.”
“Come, Ya’ara,” Adi said, stretching her back, “let’s get a little work done.”
28
“It was easier than I thought it would be,” Dima, her brother’s friend, said, beginning the conversation without any preamble. He really has become so Israeli, Adi thought, and her heart seemed to skip a beat. “The picture you gave me helped a lot, despite you telling me it’s from twenty years ago. My search led me to a young woman by the name of Anna Geifman. On Facebook. Obviously. Where else?” The “Where else?” rolled around in Dima’s mouth like a piece of candy, with the faint hint of a Russian accent. “She has her entire family tree on Facebook, down to the very roots. Her mother, Natalya, is a chemist at an oil company in a relatively small city, not far from Moscow. South of Moscow, to be precise. Anna, herself, is studying animation at the Academy of Fine Arts in Moscow. She sees her sweet grandmother, Katrina—that’s how she describes her, sweet, I’m simply quoting—very infrequently, because she lives in Dimitrovgrad. I checked, it’s about a thousand kilometers east of Moscow. A real dump, check out its website, really pathetic.” There’s that accent again, Adi thought to herself, flavoring Dima’s words with a heart-warming spice. “Pathetic,” like a tiny melody. “There’s a picture of the three of them, Anna and her mother and her grandmother. From last Christmas, a little less than a year ago. The grandmother caught my eye right away. She looks young, not like some old woman of sixty, and she—how should I put it—isn’t simply beautiful, impressive would be a better word, as if she’s emerging from the picture.”
“You said the picture I gave you helped.” Adi had scanned and e-mailed him a photograph of Katrina that she had found in one of Igor’s boxes.
“Yes, for sure. From the outset, she, Anna’s grandmother, looked like the picture you sent me. And then I played around a little with Picasa. It’s a program that among other things also offers facial recognition capabilities.” Dima paused for a moment, to make sure Adi knew what he was talking about.
“Tell me, Dima, how old do you think I am? Am I also an old woman of sixty?”
Dima laughed sheepishly. “You’re Yair’s big sister nevertheless. I have no idea how old you are. Oldish. Relatively so. You already have two daughters, right? They’re Yair’s screen saver. He’s a sentimental guy, you know.”
“You’re digging a hole for yourself, Dima. Didn’t you study Tact 101 at the Technion?”
“Okay,” Dima said, choosing to ignore her remark and change the subject. He learned, too, at that very moment, that speaking about a woman’s age is like walking through a minefield, and actually stepping on the mines themselves, not in the spaces between them. “So I enlarged the faces in the two pictures, ran them through Picasa, and, believe it or not, got a very high degree of likeness, particularly if you take into account the fact that there’s a twenty-year gap between the photographs, and they’re not the optimal quality for the purpose of comparing faces.”
“You’re a sweetheart, Dima. And that’s coming from an old and mature woman. Mail me everything. With the pictures and all.”
“If you’d checked, you’d have seen you already have it all,” Dima said slightly condescendingly, and Adi smiled, admitted defeat, and said, “You’ve done a great job. You’ve helped me. I’m truly grateful. Regards to Yair and remind him that he’s at our place this evening at eight. And not to be late.”
29
Ya’ara could hear the hesitation in her voice. After saying, in Russian, of course, “Hello, my name is Galina Abramovich, may I speak to Katrina Geifman,” she heard nothing but silence, and then, a slow, deep voice said, “Could you repeat that, please?” And she did. And silence again. Ya’ara proceeded cautiously.
“We met only once, or twice, in our apartment in Bat Yam, in Israel, but my father spoke about you often. I mean, he didn’t say very much, but you were clearly very important to him. Dear to his heart,” she added, lowering her voice slightly, like someone who felt embarrassed by her invasion into her father’s intimate, foreign, space. A sigh came from the other end of the line. “Oh, Igor. It was so long ago.”