The English Teacher (21 page)

“But I didn't go and I stayed at home, sitting beside the phone like an idiot and checking every few minutes that it was working. If she's been caught, I was thinking, the cases of Eli Cohen and Moshe Marzouk would pale in comparison with the catastrophe we'd be facing. A young woman who assassinated one of their top scientists with her own hands. I felt I was going out of my mind just thinking about the torture chambers and the interrogation methods. I remember I lay on my bed and I was close to tears. Rina listened to me and didn't probe too deeply. She sensed, as only a woman can, that my concern wasn't only professional. In the meantime the search for her in Israel was already on. The operations officer who coordinated the search made sure the war room was manned and chaired interminable meetings and updated me in brief cables. Someone suggested sending in one of our locally recruited agents, but this was vetoed; revealing to an Arab civilian, however good an agent he might be, that an Israeli civilian, a woman, was living in his country on a fake passport, was not possible. It would violate all the rules of compartmentalization and need-to-know. Then it was suggested that a veteran operative could be sent to check out her apartment. This was a good idea, but dangerous. The chief security officer opposed it, assuming that if they had caught her, they might catch the veteran too.

“After two days I couldn't restrain myself any longer and I went into the city. I walked the streets, checked no one was following me, and found a public phone. I dialed the number of her apartment. If they asked Rachel who was calling her from Italy, she could talk about
her friends who were traveling in Europe, and if they caught me red-handed, I would tell them I was in love with her. Sometimes it pays to tell the truth. No one answered and I didn't leave a message.”

E
HUD KNEW TH
AT TO EXPLAIN WHAT
happened in Portugal and what happened afterward he would need to tell Joe everything and hold nothing back. It took him only a moment to decide. His concern for Rachel reminded him of those days, and, as then, he was prepared to pay any price. Personal exposure didn't bother him. On the contrary, he reveled in it; Rina was no longer alive, he had turned sixty-five, and he knew he could rely on Joe's legendary discretion. And there was something else, which he tried to play down. He was enjoying himself. It was pleasurable talking about Rachel and about himself with the freedom that these circumstances allowed. He felt he was putting things in order, describing his relationship in a form of words that would clarify what had hitherto been hazy. He heard a voice in him, telling him to carry on searching his heart for the true sound, that she would answer.

The red phone rang. Joe walked to the kitchen slowly, knowing the caller would wait. He listened calmly to the speaker at the other end, said everything was all right, and put the receiver down. “When did you know she was ill?” he asked, and wanted to know how that episode had been resolved. “She wasn't big on details,” Ehud replied, wondering what Joe had been told over the phone. Joe told him to ignore the war room and carry on. Ehud leaned forward and put his hands on his knees. “She didn't make the mistake that a sick and lonely person is liable to make. She didn't give Rashid even one of the phone numbers she had in reserve for occasions like this, and she told me she exercised the right to act dumb. The school didn't do anything
either. Nothing happened until she contacted us via the usual channels, with one word: ‘appendicitis.' It took us some time to figure out what she meant. Our experts checked the cable again and again and scoured the codebooks, and we came to the conclusion this was the truth, she was in the hospital and she was anesthetized there. Immediately we made sure her aunt would contact her, urging her to come and stay, for a vacation and a rest.

“‘H
OW DO YOU KNOW YOU
DIDN'T
give away anything classified and you didn't put yourself in danger?' I was very concerned. She had been gathering information in advance of the mission, and the pressure was immense. I brought the Mossad doctor with me to the hotel in Portugal, to take the stitches out and give an opinion on her readiness to return to active service. He said she was recovering well, and ruled out any connection between the appendicitis and the work she had been doing. But I still had my suspicions. I knew from experience that few coincidences are really coincidental.

“‘Because nothing happened. Because everything is okay.' She smiled. I knew she was hiding the pains and the anxieties from me, the kind of things she might have told a good friend. I considered calling in the shrink as well, someone professional and objective who could be trusted with secrets, but the Unit commander vetoed it and reminded me of what I knew only too well—this was all my responsibility. I wanted the operation to go ahead, but I did not want to pressure her. ‘You know it's possible to call it a day,' I said, and secretly feared she might agree. There was no way she could be sent back there if she didn't want it. The decision had to be hers. ‘Stay here for a long vacation,' I said, ‘and then don't go back. You're just a teacher, nothing will happen if you break your contract. And as for us? You've
done enough for the people of Israel, and thank God there are peace negotiations going on. And maybe one day there'll be no need for people like us.' That's how naive I was back then. And then I reviewed one more time, as if she didn't remember, all the operations she'd been involved in, and said if she wasn't going to kill that terrorist, we'd find an alternative solution. ‘Every dog has his day.'

“She wasn't the same Rachel that I inducted three years before. She was pale, with her hair in a bob, which gave her a matronly appearance. She was thin, and the tight jeans and T-shirt she allowed herself to wear when on vacation with her uncle made her seem even thinner. And there was the look, which couldn't be concealed behind the dark glasses she wore throughout our conversation. The confidence that emanated from her was different. There was a depth to it that told me there was nothing new I could teach her. Something different was happening between us. I give her the job and she does it. That's all. And when I spoke to her I knew she was smiling inside, concealing the smile.

“She picked up the book that was on her lap. The sunshine was pleasant and the shade of the parasol we were sitting under moved slowly with the hours. A young woman convalescing after a serious illness in a smart hotel. Her uncle is looking after her. No one would believe it, no one can prove otherwise, no one cares. We took separate rooms and spent our time together. ‘A good book,' she said, and showed me the cover of
The Human Factor
, by Graham Greene. I hadn't read it, and books usually didn't interest me much. People write only what they want you to know. Rachel wiped away a bead of sweat that appeared on her forehead, and there was something childlike about the gesture, the motion of the hand. She was thirty years old, I was fifty and almost a grandfather. I wondered how much she knew about me, and if she cared. More than three years had
passed since I met her in Brussels, a young woman who wouldn't hurt a fly, who wouldn't dare smuggle even a single excess bottle through customs.

“She took a sip of juice, licked her upper lip like a contented cat, and leaned back in the cane chair. We were some distance from the other guests, who were older than her and younger than me. With her lacquered toenails and fashionable sandals she looked like a model on vacation. Too thin and too pale. Only her tight lips expressed something else. It was impossible to know what she was thinking, perhaps she really was considering going back to Ramat Gan, earning a pittance as a teacher. Or perhaps she would join us in the department, coming in at nine, leaving at five, standing in the queue for the cafeteria with the other secretaries, other agents, other people who will treat her with respect at first, and then say, behind her back, she doesn't deserve special treatment. At the end of the day she did what she was required to do. We all have our own talents.

“She sat there, and it seemed she was waiting. If I'd known then what I know now, of course I would have acted differently. But she was my operative, and if she were to come home, I'd be heading for a boring desk job too. No more urgent calls from the chief of the Mossad, no more cozy chats with the Prime Minister. So of course I didn't mention the conversation I had with the Unit commander before setting out.

“‘It all depends on you,' he told me, as if this were right, as if I were the one out there in the field. ‘You're her case officer. You have the authority to bring her home, you have the authority to send her back to her operational duties.' I didn't need more than this. And he didn't need to remind me of the prospect of never seeing Rachel again. Her eyes, her smooth cheeks, her delicately parted lips, and her small breasts, protruding cheekily from under the T-shirt.

“‘I want to go back,' she said into the calm void that separated us, ‘and what do you want?' The question surprised me. What do I want? Who cares? I'm just the handler; I take my instructions from HQ. I knew what I wanted, besides sleeping with her, that is. I wanted the situation to go on as it was and so I smiled at her. I told her she had made the right decision. Everything would be fine.

“The waiter arrived, and Rachel chose a big steak. ‘Doctor's orders,' she said, and smiled at me as she probed the juicy meat with her fork. I watched her eating. Like a princess. Elbows tight to her body, back straight. No drips or spills. The napkin on her knees remained folded and clean throughout. Her light makeup and lipstick remained intact as well. It was a pleasure to see her eating, a pleasure to see her doing the simple things that everyone does. I wondered how she took off her clothes. I imagined her standing opposite a mirror, looking at herself, running her hands over her hips and undressing in one motion. I imagined her bending in to the mirror and examining something that looked to her like a wrinkle and for me was a never-ending source of longing.

“Rachel smiled and her hands touched her lower stomach as if she was checking that everything belonged to her. ‘They did a good job,' the doctor said when he came out of the room, and I thought of his hands caressing her abdomen, the sights and the intimacy that he was allowed and I was not. I wanted her to be mine. It crossed my mind to talk to her about forbidden things. I thought perhaps it might be possible to get away for a few minutes from the codes that we imposed on ourselves, from the English language that separated us, from the decision that we talk only about work. I wanted to ask her if she wanted children, if she wanted to marry. What will she do when she grows up, when she returns home.

“This was the moment I knew I was in love with her, that my
feelings for her went far beyond what was permitted. To me she was so beautiful, so vulnerable, so contained in herself and in the world she had out there in a foreign land, and I felt a longing to be with her. Not just to sleep with her, not just to hold her hand. But to be with her. To defend her. To serve her and be her helper.”