They moved to the room in which Adi was working. Michael settled into the armchair in the corner of the room, closed his eyes, and tried to figure out how instead of working on the law office he wanted to open he was now caught up in this Aharon Levin–orchestrated adventure. As always.
Adi worked diligently and quickly. Michael marveled at her skills. He could see the serious look on her face, her focused eyes. An almost imperceptible bluish vein throbbed in her forehead.
“Let’s see,” she said to herself and him, some twenty minutes later. “Let’s see what we’ve come up with.”
Michael got up from the armchair and stood behind her.
“It’ll be easier if you sit next to me,” Adi said. “Pull up a chair. There you go, here. I’m cross-referencing based on the few particulars we have on Cobra,” she explained. “Remember—and it’s important—that Cobra may not appear in the table at all. He could be someone we haven’t even thought of but, insofar as the Russians are concerned, who still warrants the title of top-level agent in terms of his access to information. It’s their definition, after all, not ours. In any event, based on the way this country works, there could very well be people with access to the most important secrets even if they’re not official cogs in the system.”
Michael was familiar with Adi’s prudence and remained silent. And as she typed he saw the tables changing before his eyes.
“Here we go,” she said. “Look! We have five results!”
Michael moved closer and looked at the monitor. Staring back at him were five names, and five role descriptions: the industry and trade minister, the deputy director of the Defense Ministry’s political-security division, the prime minister’s political strategy advisor, the head of the Shin Bet’s counterintelligence wing, and the chief of the IDF’s Northern Command headquarters. Those were the five, out of a pool of hundreds of officeholders with access to sensitive state secrets, who matched the criteria Adi had determined for the purpose of cross-checking the data—date of birth between 1/15 and 2/15, between the years 1950 and 1960, and a trip abroad in 1989 at some point between 3/20 and 4/5.
Michael reminded himself to heed Adi’s words of caution. Yes, there was a good chance Cobra wasn’t even on the list of names that were included in the database. But a thrill of excitement coursed through him nevertheless. He affectionately caressed Adi’s head, as if he was ruffling the hair of a small child, and said, “Wow, Adi. This is wonderful. We’re close, sweetheart, we’re close. I can feel it!”
He then called Amir. He heard the sound of passionate conversation and Amir yelling, “Hello, hello!” Amir must have stepped away from the group because suddenly he could hear him. “Hi, sorry. We’re on a break. You know what these youngsters are like, savages. What’s going on?”
“Listen, I need something urgently. Take a short break from your doctorate and call your friend at the Interior Ministry. By the way, the two of you have done a great job. Well done. Now give him these five names, and ask him to check if any one of them has left the country recently, in the last seven days. Okay?”
“Aye, aye, sir,” Amir said, and he started writing down the names and ID numbers of the five suspects offered up by Adi’s table.
A wave of energy washed through Michael. And just as if he were traveling in a particularly fast car, he saw the road flash by under his feet, leaving a blurry trail in its wake, and a bright horizon up ahead.
51
Michael left the apartment and headed for the bar at Hotel Montefiore. It was early afternoon and the sun still caressed the street. On display at the entrance to the hotel stood a broad-rimmed ceramic bowl filled with pale lemons. Pieces of silverware gleamed in the pleasant dimness of the place. He ordered a double shot of Lagavulin. The drink’s strong, smoky aroma burned his nostrils and, as always, gave rise to a yearning for foreign and faraway lands. His thoughts carried him back two years. To AnaÏs. She had remained a constant fixture in his subconscious from the moment they met. As if she had taken up permanent residence there, just below the surface, rising to the top from time to time, flashing an enigmatic smile, disappearing for long stretches, her underlying presence accompanying him nevertheless, like music that only he could hear. To say he knew her would be a bit much, he told himself. He knew only what she chose to show him, after all. Highly professional. The best in the business. They met for the first time in Hamburg. It was a cold and gloomy evening, and he had sought refuge in the bar of the Hotel Atlantic. She was already sitting at the bar, a dark beauty, her skin a velvety deep brown, her eyes black, huge, her hair cropped very short. In her mid-thirties, he guessed. The ring on her right hand drew his attention. A large green stone, an emerald, perhaps, in an unpolished yellow gold setting. “That’s a beautiful ring,” he said to her, unable to restrain himself, and she responded, absentmindedly twisting the ring around her finger: “Thanks; a keepsake from the Old World. The Austro-Hungarian Empire, no less.” She spoke American English, he was sure of that, but he thought he detected a hint of a foreign accent, too.
From that moment onward he broke every rule in the book. He was on operational assignment at the time, a series of meetings with an agent who was in Hamburg as the chief mate of a Finnish ship that sailed regularly along the Europe–Eastern Mediterranean line. He had few opportunities to meet with the agent during the three days when the ship was docked at the city’s enormous port. And those meetings were devoted to final briefings ahead of a mission in Tripoli, to a tiresome evening at a shady nightclub on the Reeperbahn, Hamburg’s infamous red-light district, and to further instruction on the photographic equipment the agent would be using. The instruction itself was superfluous in light of the agent’s obvious high level of proficiency, but doing things methodically and by the book was an absolute must. And instead of remaining focused on his agent, Michael’s head was constantly elsewhere. AnaÏs. AnaÏs. The lawyer from Chicago. He fell in love even with the unique name her father had insisted on giving her when she was born, in honor of the French writer he loved. By now Michael had identified the hint of a Czech accent that accompanied her sultry voice. Yes, she was born in Prague. She told him quite a lot about herself during those sweet, lazy hours they spent lying sleepily in the oversized bed in her room, between one bout of sex and the next, drinking black-red Barolo wine he purchased and smuggled into the hotel room. He told her about himself, too. About his work as a personal and discreet consultant to several business tycoons. He was a troubleshooter when necessary, a friend when needed, and he also told them the truth to their faces, that’s what they paid him to do. He didn’t tell her about the Mossad, of course. He didn’t tell her about his family, who were waiting for him back in Tel Aviv. But despite all the masks, he spoke about himself in a way he hadn’t with any other woman in a very long time. They both traveled frequently and arranged to meet again, if and when they happened to be going to the same part of the world at the same time. No, she said, Chicago wasn’t a good place to meet. Yes, she was still involved in a relationship that should have ended long ago, but it was complicated, and they’d just met, after all, so they should bide their time and allow various other things to run their course. If they ran into each other again, if fate brought them together once more, that would surely be a sign. Don’t look so serious, honey, she had said. Come, come here a minute.