The English Teacher (30 page)

“I hated you. I felt you'd betrayed me and made a fool of me. And at the same time I believed you loved me, some element inside you was doing that messy and inefficient thing called loving somebody.

“Of course, I could have taken everything I found and handed it over to my friends. I knew what would happen to me. No one would believe you succeeded in duping me. I'd be sitting in jail now, a kind of slow execution. I tried to forget all about it, and in the meantime my father died, and with him our connections with the powers that
be. That's the way it is with us. Connections are what it's all about. If you don't have them, nothing will help you. The business is all right, I'm not complaining, but it isn't what it once was.”

Rachel urgently wanted to explain to him in detail that it was possible to deceive your heart's love and also love him, to use him and lead him astray and yet want what is best for him. That's too complicated. It's impossible to convince him now, not when everything is so new to us. There will be time for this afterward, one day, when he sits in the kitchen as I slice the vegetables with my back to him and watch our son playing in the garden. Then I'll tell him everything, and he'll forgive me. He'll understand I had no choice.

“I never asked myself why you were doing this,” he continued, his face turned away from her, “but I wondered where you were. Now and then I even searched for ‘Rachel' on the Internet. Millions of possibilities. I don't know you, Rachel. I thought I knew you then, but I didn't realize there were two of you. Two Rachels talking to each other and nourishing each other. And one of them isn't on my side. Don't ask me what would have happened if you'd told me who you are.”

“And now, when you know?”

He went on looking straight ahead, not at her. Her hand reached out for his hand, but he pulled it away.

“You deceived me,” he said.

“I didn't deceive you in the most important thing of all,” she said. “I loved you. I love you.”

How is it possible to believe someone who has deceived you once? How can you be sure this time it's the truth? Only if you want to believe. That's the only way, and it's your responsibility. They sat in silence and they both knew that if they didn't touch at that moment, they would part forever.

“Come to me,” she whispered. “Come to me now.”

Rashid folded his arms on his chest.

“What are you afraid of? They'll see us? Let them. They'll arrest us? Let them. I want you.”

“I don't want you, Rachel.” His style of English suddenly sounded stilted, strange, and repellent, perhaps because she sensed what he was about to say. “It won't work. You're beautiful and free and you came here because it was what you wanted. But you forgot me. You never gave me a moment's thought. You do whatever you feel like doing. You never contacted me and asked me if this arrangement suited me. You didn't want to know how I was and what I was doing. You didn't even ask about my children. You're so sure that I'll fall in love with you again, that I'll leave everything behind just to be with you. That isn't the way it goes.”

She wanted to say something, but he continued. “I've built myself another life. Not as good as I'd like it to be, but it's life. I have a family, Rachel. You want me to go to the village, sit my wife and children down, and tell them? What shall I tell them? I once had a love affair with a foreign woman, and she dumped me, and by the way, she was a spy?”

“But you have a new opportunity,” she said, and her voice sounded hollow.

“I don't need any new opportunities. The time for that has gone. I didn't come to you. I'm not the one who's jumping back in time, to return to what used to be. I haven't forgotten anything, Rachel. I haven't forgotten, but I'm over it. And I want to carry on with my life. Fifteen years have passed. It's only in your mind that time has stopped moving. Before you arrived at the café I was thinking about a delivery that needs to clear customs, and about next year's school curriculum. I was living a normal life, Rachel, and that's fine by me. Sometimes I remember you. Angry with you, loving you, but it's all in the past.
And you turn up here and you want to take me to a place that doesn't exist anymore. A place I came out of, that I extinguished, buried, and turned into memory.”

“And what's to become of me?” she asked. “Are you going to turn me in? Celebrate your exoneration? Get a medal for unmasking a spy? So they give you back your special rights?”

“No, Rachel. None of those things is going to happen. But for me this is over. It was over long ago.”

She wanted to touch him. She thought if she touched him now as she had in the past, and he felt the warmth of her body, it would all come back to him. But he was so far away from her, although they were sitting side by side.

“And if we go to bed?” she asked.

“And if we go to bed?” he repeated her words, and there was no way of knowing what he was thinking. “Like a first love. Do you think that if we make love everything will be resolved?”

“So why did you bring me here with you?”

“Because I wanted to prove to myself that I'm capable of standing up to you,” he replied, and she heard the triumphant tone in his voice. “Now I feel our account is settled. I hope I've been cured, and this is behind me.”

“I know what I want,” she said when the silence threatened to engulf her.

“I'm listening,” he said.

“I want you to give us both another chance.”

He didn't respond.

“Let's get out of here, Rashid. I'll go back to my hotel and you go back to your apartment, and I'll wait for you.” She took the hotel's card from her handbag and pushed it into his hand, feeling his cold fingers. Her mind was racing ahead. The words didn't come out the
way she intended. She knew she wanted to preserve these moments a little longer before it was too late, because the way back is always short and violent. These were just words, she knew, and she only had the power of words to persuade him, and the fact that she is sitting beside him, that he remembers her, that he told her he loved her once.

“I must get back,” he said, and turned on the ignition and looked at her. In that fleeting moment it seemed to her that if she found the right thing to say or leaned her head toward him, the clock could still be turned back, but the moment passed and his body language was eloquent. Both hands clamped on the wheel, and eyes looking straight ahead. She didn't respond, and he put the car in gear and accelerated, leaving behind them a light dusty cloud.

S
HE WAS BUSY PACKING HER S
UITCASE
and did not hear the light knock on the door. Ehud knocked again, this time louder. He knew she was in there, and he only entered the building after the spotters had seen her car driving past the entrance of the hotel and parking down the road, at which point she walked up the hill and checked that none of the pedestrians or drivers heading her way was hiding his face from her. “She's still the professional she always was,” the team commander whispered to Ehud before ordering him out of the van. Ehud tucked the earpiece in place, and asked the team commander if he hears him. “Don't worry,” said the commander. “It's a brilliant system, the kind of thing television correspondents use. We hear everything that's said in the room, and we can relay instructions to you via a separate channel.” He went through the operating instructions again and concluded: “Talk to her as if you're alone. We won't interfere, but if you need us, if something isn't right and you want us to go into emergency mode, say something about your father. And try not to forget to use the other codes.”

Ehud nodded. He didn't remember all the details, but the principles hadn't changed. They were so clear it was painful: He goes into the room and talks to her. If she agrees to return with him the team will keep its distance and continue monitoring. If she refuses, she will be the responsibility of the team, leaving Ehud with nothing more to do than sit quietly and hope. Stefan was sitting behind him, and Ehud knew why they had picked two old-timers like them to send on this mission.

J
OE WANTED
S
TEFAN.
T
HE
U
NIT CO
MMANDER
told him times had changed, and there was a special team for this kind of assignment. “He's old, he doesn't even ride horses anymore.” Joe insisted. His gut feeling was that the veteran Stefan was the best man for the job. “There'
s no choice,
” said Joe. “If Ehud doesn't succeed, she won't let anyone else get close to her. And if we need a quiet operation leaving no traces behind, something in her hotel room that will look like suicide, or a sexually motivated murder, or a robbery—only Stefan can do that. She knows him, she remembers him, he's cold and steady, and he'll succeed.” So the summons went out to the kibbutz. It wasn't hard to locate him; even cowboys have cell phones these days.

“She's one of ours, Joe,” said Stefan when the two of them were waiting for the Mossad chief, and with this he was saying it all. That it's inconceivable, that we don't kill one of our own. He stood up and went to stand by the window. Below, the city seethed, but the double-glazing shut out the sounds. Joe wanted the meeting to take place in the office of the Mossad chief and not in the training facility. “It will make the right impression on him.”

The Mossad chief came in when Joe pressed a hidden button. Stefan stiffly stood at attention and blushed. He was a veteran, decorated combatant, but it had been a long time since he saw the Mossad
chief. The chief was once a cadet in one of the courses he used to give and Stefan was never impressed by him.

“A loose cannon,” said Joe. “She has to be stopped before it's too late.” Then they brought in lunch, served on little trays from the local, and stringently vetted, Japanese takeout. The Mossad chief asked Stefan about his kids and the latest developments in kibbutz politics.

“So, I understand we have to do this,” said Stefan. The Mossad chief just nodded. They carried on eating, the chopsticks disappearing in Stefan's large hands. The chief looked at his watch and Joe and Stefan went out into the blazing sunlight. The plants that the gardeners placed opposite the door so it could remain ajar were wilting, testifying that the saving of water was democratically assigned. The parking lot was almost empty. They crossed the broad open space and arrived at the armory. Stefan chose an automatic pistol with a silencer and signed for a box of bullets. From there they went to the range and Joe put on ear protectors and was amazed once again by the speed and accuracy of Stefan's target shooting.

“You know I slept with her once?” Stefan said to Joe as he methodically cleaned and reassembled his weapon.

“And . . . ?” asked Joe.

Stefan stared down at his boots and inspected his toe caps, as if about to kick a recalcitrant calf. “Nothing. That's all it was,” he muttered, as if spitting out watermelon seeds. “Strange. I never thought anything like this would happen to me. But there is no choice, right?” He turned to Joe, who saw a look of entreaty in his eyes.

“
No choice,
” said Joe, trying to sound confident.

R
ACHEL FASTENED HER DRE
SSING GOWN AND
went to the door. “Oh, it's you,” she said, and let Ehud in. “I wasn't expecting you, but now it's
obvious you were going to turn up here.” Ehud sat down heavily and she went back to sorting through her clothes, which were piled up on the bed. Through the gap between the curtains he could see the van and the command vehicle, out there in the dark. “I've come to talk to you,” he said, “just to talk.”

“About what, Ehud, about what? What do you want from me?” He said nothing and she carried on packing her case with her back turned to him. Her legs were more lovely than ever, and Ehud imagined the other contours of her body under the thick fabric. The commander whispered to him through the earphone, telling him to get moving. “There's no time for a heart-to-heart,” he pressed him. “The morning flight leaves in a few hours, and there are other arrangements to be made.”

Ehud assumed that Joe would have handled things differently. Joe would tell her to shape up and to stop acting like a crybaby, she's still a combatant and that's something you never get away from. There's no meaning to all the years that have passed, the sterile isolation that reality forced on you, love that went wrong. That's all garbage, he would say. You did what you had to do, you served the state, you didn't betray your friends, you did your job like we all did, and now it's time to come home. Carry on with your life without him. But he isn't Joe, and they sent him on this mission, as if he's the father of a wayward daughter and all he needs to do to bring her home is turn up in person and tell her he loves her.

And there was another thing. Of course there was. In this profession, and in the heart of the Arab capital, nothing could be left to chance. He knew her paths were blocked, and the other option of leaving her here was the worst of all. They had no problem locating Rashid and getting his address from his office. They would happily help anyone who wants to send him flowers. The two combatants
who waited for him on the steps looked like any other Arab youths, loitering idly around the town. They saw him parking his car, and followed him into the elevator for the ride up to his apartment. “Make sure it looks like a botched robbery,” the commander told them in the preliminary briefing, and they practiced both their knife skills and the art of ransacking a flat while leaving no trace. Rashid was trapped between them. They pinioned his arms and told him to stay quiet. Five minutes later they left the building by the stairs and crossed the street to the getaway car that awaited them. Ehud didn't know all the details. The commander, who was supervising both operations simultaneously, simply informed him that the secondary target had been neutralized, and it was up to him to decide whether to use this information.

“I came to ask you to come back with me. It isn't too late,” said Ehud briefly, as if wrapping up the conversation, and she, without turning to him, said, “No,” and went on folding her clothes together in the suitcase. “You know I can't allow you to stay here. It's impossible. It just isn't going to happen.”

“What do you want?” she seethed. “That I just finish packing and come with you to the airport? And once again fly off on a little excursion, me and my uncle, and then we get to Israel and talk to whoever we need to talk to and I promise to be a good girl, is that it? Then I'll go back to my apartment and wait for the end that refuses to come, and forever know that it could have been different?” She turned her back to him again and considered the other possibilities. On the closet beside the bed there was a heavy ashtray. She examined it. She's forty-five, and Ehud twenty years older. She's stronger than he is, there's nothing he can do to stop her from escaping. “I'm not a businesswoman,” she said, and to Ehud it seemed she was trying to stall for time, “but this doesn't look like a good deal to me. Think of
something else, Ehud, something matching your talents.” They were now on opposite sides of the barricade, and Ehud remembered the cuff link he had brought with him from the flat in Rehovot, and knew there was nothing to be gained by showing it to her now, and explaining to her it wasn't only the shirt that no longer existed.

In the war room they were getting impatient, and the team commander ordered Ehud to tell her about Rashid. He knew this wouldn't help, and Rachel would lose whatever faith in him she still had, realizing she had nothing left to bargain with, and so he remained silent. The war room was concerned about the silence and the team commander sent one of the combatants to the hotel lobby, to stand by and await developments that were getting more complicated due to the delay.

Ehud heard the change of plan in his earpiece, and had to struggle to control his reaction. He didn't know if Rachel noticed the clenching of his jaws. Back at the WR it was agreed there was now no prospect of Rachel returning willingly, and the commander told Ehud to go downstairs with her, and they would take care of the rest. “Get her outside, that's all you need to do. Suggest a walk, a breath of fresh air, anything; from the moment we have visual contact, it is our operation.”

Rachel didn't say anything; neither did he. He wanted the voices prompting him to shut up, he wanted to tell Rachel things irrelevant to the war room, things that had built up in him over the years. He took out the earpiece. Rachel saw it. He threw it on the floor and crushed it with his heel. In the war room they knew something had happened and decided to wait a little longer before sending in Stefan and the team.

“Now it's just us.” He tried to smile at her. “Just us?” she said, and reminded him of the team waiting downstairs, with their weapons,
poised for a final showdown. She made no attempt to hide her bitterness. “We don't have much time,” Ehud retorted, “you know the procedure as well as I do. There are some things that don't change over the years; it's just the technology that's more sophisticated. In a few minutes they'll be moving in, and there'll be no time for talking then.” The urgency in his voice was genuine. Rachel, standing there facing him, she was genuine too. A few flecks of gray in her hair, a few more wrinkles on her cheeks, and weariness in her eyes, but it was still the same Rachel, the Rachel he had always loved. She gave him an appraising look too. He had aged and his back was stooped a bit, the bald patch had strengthened its hold, and the suit he picked from his closet for the operation was too small for him. But he was the same Ehud, the one she knew, the one who wanted what was best for her, on his own terms and according to the instructions he received. As always, a loyal soldier serving the state. She knew he couldn't give in to her. He could talk about his love, about things he'd kept hidden from her for years, but his loyalty was not to her. “I love you,” he said into the silence that had widened between them. “Since the very beginning.”

“But you lied to me,” she said.

“Only when I had to.”

“You all destroyed my life.”

“Anything that can be destroyed can be rebuilt.”

“Really?” She gave him a critical look, as if assessing him for the last time. “You're going to bring my father back to me? Give me the words I never said to him?”