The English Teacher (17 page)

“And after that there will be the operation. She would pack her belongings and fly back to her adopted country and her apartment. From there she would drive across the border and arrive in the other country. There was no longer any need to check her clothes and go to a restaurant the night before to reassure her. She seemed to know what she was doing, and there was no point in giving her pep talks. At the age of twenty-nine she was already an experienced operative and knew the countries surrounding us better than any of the staffers who stayed behind in Israel. She packed the substances in her toiletries bag, and when I asked her if she was afraid, she smiled at me dryly and said there would be time for that yet. We returned together by train to Milan and I said goodbye to her at the door of the taxi that was taking her to the airport. I felt that in spite of all the training and the briefings and the meeting with the Unit commander, who brought her a letter signed by the Prime Minister authorizing the mission, she still had reservations about the task we had assigned her. It's not always easy to explain what's to be gained by the elimination of one individual. Harder still to impose a mission like this on someone else
and not do it yourself. And hardest of all is when the one you are sending out there is the love of your life.

“I try to relive the moments before. To think how I would feel and what I would do. She packed her gear in the hotel very slowly, the way you might at the end of a vacation. Everything so normal. I did this myself innumerable times. I put my clothes in the case, wrapped the presents I'd bought in newspaper, checked under the bed, threw wrappers and envelopes in the bin, left a tip for the maid, and made sure I'd filled out the chits for the minibar. I did the trivial tasks and went on my way, but I ask myself, and I ask you too, what would you be feeling if you were in hostile territory, in a room overlooking Strauss's hotel? If it were you that goes into the bathroom, having first made sure the chain is in place on the door, putting on two pairs of disposable gloves, mixing the substances the way you were shown? The hands do the work they have been trained to do, the eyes watch as the solution is applied to the back of the glove and the fingers too. You are keyed up and ready to go, while the mind processes all kinds of thoughts at manic speed. And what if he doesn't come, and what if he doesn't come out, and what if I get nervous, and what if he doesn't kiss my hand? And on top of all this is the surreal sense that she's watching herself from the sidelines.

“And then I know she's thinking again about the exercises in Berlin, and the letter the Unit commander showed her, proving it was necessary, there was no choice, she was doing the right thing—killing an old man on his vacation. Beyond the window overlooking the street, she can see the ornate entrance doors of the hotel, the concierge standing outside in the cold wind. And she wonders, Will he remember me when they investigate the man's death? And she knows she still has the option of retreat. There's no one else around, and if she says she saw a police patrol, or Strauss arrive with an escort,
or she simply took fright, we'll believe her because we have no alternative.

“The rest she summed up in a brief cable, sent after she returned to her apartment. ‘I went into the hotel,' she wrote, ‘I drank coffee, paid, waited for one hour. I got up. I knew he could arrive at any moment. I put my gloves on, ready to leave. He came in. I bumped into him and dropped my paper. He picked it up for me and apologized. He introduced himself, I mumbled my name, not a name he was likely to remember. He said he was glad to have been of service and kissed my hand and shook it with his own gloved hand. Everything exactly as planned, just like the last exercise.'

“I kept for her the modest obituary notice that appeared in the city of his birth. I didn't show her a transcript of the secret report we intercepted, an assessment of the damage caused by the untimely death of their eminent scientist. Nor did I tell her it was suspected he had been poisoned but that postmortem tests had revealed nothing. I couldn't resist sending her the message: ‘How are you feeling?' And she replied, ‘I have done the deed,' and I imagined a smile of quiet satisfaction. It's happening to her. She's playing with the grown-ups now, making a difference to the world, a difference achieved through a sudden death. ‘Did he suffer?' she wrote to me a few days later. I said no, and I knew I was lying. But for the right reason, lying is permissible. Permissible to help Rachel bear the heavy burden of a human life taken.”

Ehud looked at his friend and asked, “Have you ever killed anyone who wasn't a direct threat to you, who came into a hotel and wanted to help you, who smiled at you affably, who could have been your own father, whose English was ponderous and formal, who kissed your hand? In exercises it was always this part. A typical mannerism of polite Germans. When they kiss hands they lower their
heads, but still manage to look directly into your eyes. That's how she saw him when they parted company.

“I collected the letters of congratulation and put them into her file, also the small feature that was run by Haaretz after the Reuters agency noticed the modest funeral in Germany. The correspondent was floundering in the dark and he could only report that back in the sixties Israel had targeted German scientists working in Egypt and mention other notorious poisonings. The subject was closed, and only from surveillance data and random reports from local agents could we gauge the scale of the success, also the delays and the cancellations, the desperate search for a replacement.

“And I? I enjoyed the praise on her behalf. She went back to the capital city the same day, and the day after she was in school again as usual. Another two months were to pass before her next furlough, and when we met there was already another assignment on the agenda. And in the meantime we had a successful operation, and when the Prime Minister wanted to meet who had carried it out, and it was explained to him that bringing her in on such short notice was not feasible, the chief of the Mossad asked me and the Unit commander to accompany him to the meeting and represent her.”

“‘H
OW DID SHE DO IT?' THE
Prime Minister asked, and the Unit commander was generous to me and didn't demand the right to speak for himself. I took out a map and showed the route of travel and the border she needed to cross. ‘Driving was preferable to an international flight, and it also meant she could come and go at times of her own choosing,' I said, and he nodded; it seemed he understood the intricacies and the mechanics of arriving at the objective and departure from it. Then I explained the location of the hotel where the target
was in residence, and also pointed out the small hotel where our operative was based, watching Strauss go through his daily routine, with the regularity that only an elderly German is capable of. I explained to him how the poison worked and showed him the formulas the scientists had provided. ‘Even if they found the poison in a postmortem examination, the likelihood of working out when it was administered would be extremely remote, and there would be nothing to link her to it.' I was very sure of myself, and the Unit commander and the Mossad chief were backing me up. I haven't told you yet what happened much later, and we'll come to that too. As always, in retrospect everything seems clear now, but we were all in postoperative euphoria.

“I was prepared to go on and explain how we trained her for the operation and the precise synchronization that was needed, so she could identify Strauss in the hotel lobby and go out to meet him precisely on time, without observers to tell her when he arrived, without backup and a getaway vehicle in case either he or the bodyguard assigned to him should realize that the elegant young woman did not collide with him by chance, that she was carrying out a death sentence approved by the Prime Minister himself six months ago. I also wanted to tell him about the misgivings Rachel had before the operation, and the authorization we needed to get from his office, but the Mossad chief gave me a look and the Unit commander put a hand on my arm, and I realized as well that the Prime Minister wasn't interested and in fact he wanted to say something himself.

“He leaned back in his unpretentious armchair. His expression, which always appeared angry and harassed on TV, was calm and engaged and you could tell he was in a congenial mood. In his youth he too served in a special unit, and concepts like teamwork and strategic planning and other military codes were well known to him. On the
way to Jerusalem the Unit commander told me the Prime Minister loved hobnobbing with men of action in small gatherings such as this, and he always took the stage himself as a way of indulging in his past.

“He spoke, and we all listened. My bosses listened out of politeness, having heard all these stories before, and I was fascinated. I don't remember all of it, and that isn't important, and I'll tell you only what leapt out at me straightaway, it was all so different from what she was going through out there. The Prime Minister talked of his days in the army and described in particular the return from operations, the last few paces before crossing the fence and his commander standing there and shaking hands with every soldier individually, and then to the canteen, which was open whatever the hour, where a feast had been prepared.

“I was sure he meant to go on and on, but there was a knock at the door and the Military Secretary looked in and gestured to the Prime Minister, pointing to the clock, to tell him time was pressing and there were other things to be done besides telling heroic tales. The Prime Minister nodded impatiently and signaled to the chagrined secretary to go away and close the door behind him. I had insisted the man be kept out of the room.

“‘H
E KN
OWS
R
ACHEL.
S
HE GAVE
HIS
son private lessons before we recruited her,' I told the Unit commander on our way to Jerusalem.

“‘So what? You don't trust him?'

“‘I don't know. And I don't want to put him to the test. He doesn't need to know that the teacher who came to his house is living in a place he's only seen in newsreels.'”

“‘You're exaggerating,' the commander said, but he knew I was right. In the Prime Minister's inner sanctum there are no secrets, but
the Military Secretary does his job and moves on elsewhere when the next PM is voted into office. Better he doesn't know.”

“‘A
ND
F
AIRY?' THE
P
RIME
M
INISTER ASKED.
‘Is she there now? Going on living there after poisoning that lowlife? Unbelievable. It takes a lot of character to do something like that and carry on as if nothing has happened. I want to meet her when she comes to Israel and, in the meantime, find some way of passing on my appreciation to her.' I felt he meant more than this. He admired her because she did something that he himself, and the former officers who made up his personal staff, would be incapable of doing.