“Good on you for thinking,” Alon retorted cynically.
“It’s best if you come with us. We’ll give you a ride back later. It’s not far. Aharon Levin is waiting for you at the Dan Accadia.”
Aslan opened the door of the rented car with exaggerated courteousness. Alon slipped quietly into the backseat.
Aharon and Alon were sitting opposite each other in the living room of the hotel suite. Between them stood a low table boasting an ostentatious fruit bowl. The large window offered a view of a shimmering blue sea. Michael, Ya’ara, and Adi were in one of the nearby rooms. Ya’ara had come straight from Ben Gurion International Airport. Adi had managed to stop off at home on the way, to kiss her girls and convey instructions to the nanny. They were sitting in front of a large monitor and could hear and see what was happening in the suite, thanks to the admirable handiwork of Aslan, who had rigged the rooms ahead of time. A laptop was recording everything.
“Alon Regev,” Aharon Levin said with a grave expression on his face, “let me begin in fact with the bottom line: For thirty years now you’ve been a spy in the service of the KGB, which following the fall of the Soviet Union became an organization known as the SVR. Your current handler, who’s been running you for quite some time already, goes by the name of Julian Hart, and you know him as Brian. He may look and talk and behave like a bona fide American, but he’s a born-and-bred Russian. He was probably christened with a different name at birth. You and Brian met less than a week ago in Zurich. There hasn’t been a single state secret to which you’ve been privy that you haven’t passed on to your handlers. We’re talking about an alarmingly large number of secrets that people have guarded with their lives. And you have placed them in foreign hands without giving it a second thought. This betrayal,” Aharon sternly said, “ends here and now.”
Alon remained silent. Michael thought he saw the color drain from his face, but it could have been the monitor playing tricks on him. Alon was sitting stiff and upright in his armchair, fixing Aharon with a cold, sharp stare.
“Do you have even a shred of evidence to support the utter nonsense that just came out your mouth?” he finally asked.
Aharon turned toward the laptop that lay open on the table. “Come have a look at something,” he said, and Alon leaned forward to glance at the screen. It displayed an image of himself and Brian in conversation in that damn antiquities store in Zurich.
“What am I supposed to be looking at?”
“You’re supposed to be looking at a picture of you and your handler, Brian, in an antiquities store in Zurich six days ago. That’s what you’re supposed to be looking at.”
“I don’t know that man. I think I may remember him from the store, but I don’t know him from Adam. He wanted to purchase some antique statue and asked for my opinion on the piece.”
“And what were you doing in Zurich?”
“Aharon, my friend, I don’t think I should be answering your questions, not that one and not any at all. You aren’t here in any official capacity, and I agreed to come here only out of respect for you. And here you are hurling the most awful and unfounded accusations at me. Under the law, if there was someone else here to bear witness to what you’ve just said, you’d be guilty of slander.”
“I spoke the substantial truth,” Aharon replied, using the wording of the law to which Regev had alluded.
“You don’t have even a single piece of evidence. If the best thing you can show me is an image of me and a stranger in some shop in Zurich, you aren’t exactly excelling, to say the least. And I, so it seems, can sleep easy. My conscience is clear.”
“From this moment onward you will never sleep easy again,” Aharon said, unknowingly echoing Brian’s sentiments. “And as for your conscience, you, the traitor that you are, lost that a long time ago. I have no idea what drives you. Greed, a sense of frustration, megalomania, loneliness. I used to handle people like you myself. And when push came to shove, regardless of their rank and no matter how high they had climbed, they were nothing more than wimps. People who sought to find in me the things they lacked in themselves. You’re just the same.”
“Your insults, Aharon, are pretty pathetic. They’re simply an expression of your frustration. Perhaps your retirement is the reason? Has it caused you to lose touch with reality?”
“You know that if the Shin Bet were to interrogate you, instead of this pleasant chat we are having, things would be looking a whole lot different right now.”
Alon thought for a split second that Aharon and Brian must have spoken beforehand to coordinate their positions.
“Is that the worst thing you can threaten me with? A Shin Bet interrogation? And you think a veteran KGB spy couldn’t handle that?”
Aharon tried a different approach. “Perhaps you can tell me how it all started?” he asked. “How did you end up in the hands of those Russians? How did they fool you so?”
“As I said, I have no idea what you’re talking about at all. But I want you to know something. For almost thirty years now I’ve been sanctioned to maintain secret ties with official representatives of the United States.”
“Sanctioned by whom?”
“Daniel Shalev. Are you familiar with him? He was once the prime minister of Israel. A well-schooled and crafty individual. No less a tactician than a strategist. He initiated the ties for me, told me where to go and what to do, and all through my years with him, when we wanted to pass on confidential messages, when we wanted to reveal our true positions to the Americans in an unofficial yet trustworthy manner, the plans we’ve made for this or the other development in the region, or the positions and plans we wanted them to believe were genuine, we did so by means of the ties I maintained with them. We pieced together an irreplaceable shunt the significance of which can’t be overstated. If anything, I deserve the Israel Defense Prize, for the double life I’ve led for the sake of this country, the Israel Defense Prize,” he raised his voice, “and not the insults of the former Mossad chief, an old and frustrated man.”
“Are you trying to tell me that you spied for the Americans at the behest of Daniel Shalev, and that in practice it wasn’t espionage but a private initiative by a man who went on to serve as prime minister?”
“You can ask him yourself!”
They both knew that wasn’t an option. A stroke he had suffered some four years ago had left Daniel Shalev in a vegetative state, or something like one.
“And how did the Russians come into the picture?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Do you know that as we speak, Brian, despite himself, his hands cuffed, is our guest in the cabin of a merchant ship currently making its way from northern Italy to Tel Aviv? He needed some persuasion to join us on the trip, but after the doctor administered the shot, he became a far more agreeable individual. And by the way, when he cursed, he did so in fluent Russian. Not in the English of a professor from the East Coast. It’s going to be interesting to hear his version regarding his ties with you, and how he fits in to the fantasy you’ve just now tried to sell me.”
To the people sitting transfixed in the other room, Alon Regev appeared to have had the wind knocked out of him by a punch to the gut. But he held firm, didn’t fall to the canvas, and his breath returned, albeit short and rapid.
“Aharon, my friend.” That Aharon, my friend, again, Ya’ara thought to herself in anger.
“Aharon, my friend. I’m getting up and leaving now. And I’ll pass on the ride your goons offered me. I’ll take a taxi. I thank you for your time and am sure you now realize what an embarrassing mistake you have made. I’m not vindictive when it comes to aging spies, but you should know that you’ve crossed the line. Stay away from me. Touch me again, you or your people, and the best attorneys in Israel will come down on you like a ton of bricks. You’re walking a parapet. Be careful, Aharon. That’s the advice of a friend.”