The English Teacher (5 page)

T
HEY SAT I
N A STYLISH RESTAURA
NT
in Rehovot. In the evening it would be filled with the high-tech crowd and students who could afford it, but now it was almost empty. Joe didn't want to go to the Office and join the mob in the war room. He told Ehud that computers weren't for him and it was a waste of their time. The war room gang didn't
need them there, and it wasn't for this that they had recalled Ehud to the service. “Tell me about her,” he suggested, explaining that they needed to look for her in another way.

“It's been a long time since I saw her, and in spite of the picture I showed you, she's the same Rachel as she was then. A young woman with green eyes, round mouth, hair with a part, and an innocent cast of features that made you want to help her. I think her phone call to me was a cry for help. In a certain sense, she wants me to look after her as I once did, so she'll again be the little girl who came to work for us.

“After I was appointed her case officer, I sat and read everything that was written in her personal file. I searched for her motivation in wanting to join us. I knew it wasn't some epiphany she had. Such things only happen rarely and usually in movies, although in recruitment interviews some of the candidates talk about the juncture at which they chose this path. I'm a skeptic about those stories, and when I was on the interviewing panel I would ask a candidate who tried to sell me this line what it would take to make him or her change his mind again and leave us. There was nothing exceptional with Rachel, and I was satisfied. A reasonable student. A mother who died young and a stern father who it was difficult to love up close.

“The relationship with the father was never smooth. When she was already an operative I asked her to contact him every time she came off an assignment, to reassure him that all was well and promise to visit him. I pleaded with her to write to him and she refused that as well, said he wasn't interested and he didn't care. I reminded her of the checks that he was sending her, and she said the little notes he enclosed with the checks were prepared a year in advance. I had no option but to write to him myself after he went to the embassy to report that she'd disappeared. I wrote the first letter so he'd stop interfering.
I stressed how important she was to the security of the nation of Israel and insisted he not talk to anyone about this. I had to write him the second letter after she left the Unit because he asked about her as if she were still working for us. As if we needed to explain to him why she was reluctant to write letters and never got in touch. Then I wrote to him exactly what I was told to write, the truth, that she was no longer a part of our organization.

“But all of this came later. What drew my attention was her ability to get up and go to another place. She certainly studied exactly as her father wanted, but at the age of seventeen she left and came here as a volunteer for a few months. Then she went away to a university in the north of England, and after her mother died it was as if she divorced him and came to this country as an immigrant. A girl alone, nineteen years old. I saw energy in this, I saw in this a quest for something more than a profession. I also read the other reports about her, though I didn't attach much importance to them, unless I knew the assessor. What was conspicuous was her ability to adapt, to be one of the group, and also to get what she wanted. The only thing that disturbed me was the fact that she spent only about a year in each place, and I wondered how she would cope with a long stay in an Arab city, living undercover.

“I asked her why she joined. Why after finishing university and already having a job she preferred to leave everything behind, including the boyfriend, and put her life on hold with a kind of extended intermission that would put her back, years later, at square one. She said we approached her and she was curious, and she always wanted to do more to further the Zionist project, and one thing led to another. I didn't believe a word of it. I knew she only wanted to put my mind at rest and give me a standard and predictable response, the kind they give in entrance exams. That isn't what we're looking for,
and you know that as well as I do. No one volunteers to go through what a solitary operative goes through only because he's a Zionist. In this country there are millions of Zionists, many among them are multilingual, but someone who's prepared to volunteer is exceptional. There's something special in him besides the ability to assume another persona and undertake operations. He needs us. That's the point. He needs us the way we need him. Sometimes he doesn't even know he's looking for us, and how well suited he is to us. Such people have difficulty identifying what it is they're looking for, they only know there's another reality that they can belong to, that it's possible to go to distant places and do what's forbidden to others, things you only dream about. There's something intoxicating in our work; suddenly it's permissible to lie, you can put on an act, and everything is sanctioned by the state. The operative is licensed to commit crimes. He steals, sometimes he even kills, and instead of going to prison he gets a commendation.

“And something else. Many of them aren't content with their lives, and they're ready for a change, and this is what happened with Rachel. We diverted her from a path that was leading her nowhere, and gave her a new world. She trusted us, trusted the respect that we felt for her, the faith we invested in her, and I daresay she saw in us an extended family. From her point of view she was an only child, as in the family she left behind. And for this reason she had a terrible crisis when it all came to an end and she was cut off all at once. In hindsight, I realize she was really just a child and we let her play some very dangerous games. We did something that wasn't right, Joe, we didn't succeed in rehabilitating her after she came back from there, and something in her life was fucked up. This is what we need to clarify.”

“You're exaggerating,” said Joe, and Ehud felt rebuked when he heard what was to follow: “You're giving me a lecture on operatives
as if I hadn't been there when you still knew almost nothing about what goes on inside the Mossad.”

“I feel this is important, to start from the beginning. To understand from where—”

But Joe interrupted him: “Okay, okay, I agree it's necessary to go back and retrace her steps.” He chewed his food slowly. His hand trembled and he tried to control it. “But it seems to me you're taking this too personally. As if you're still the case officer and she's your operative. What happened to her after she left is not your problem.” Ehud listened and didn't dare tell him how he felt. “The secrets that she has tucked away inside her are the problem.” Joe's face was grim, and despite the years that had passed they both knew who was in charge. “You heard them in the Office just as I did. This can't be allowed to happen. These secrets, which even we are not privy to, must not be allowed to fall into their hands.”

“But—” Ehud began, and wanted to say that for him it was all about Rachel, but Joe didn't let him interrupt.

“We need to find her and bring her back before there's any damage. This isn't the time to indulge in a guilt trip, and we won't win any bonus points if we admit that she meant the world to us all the time she was with us and afterwards we forgot her.”

A waitress in black passed between the tables and asked if they were enjoying their meal. Her jeans were too tight, her T-shirt too short to cover a white and endearing midriff. Ehud's eyes wandered in that direction, and she noticed and pulled the hem of the T-shirt down with a bashful hand. “She's younger than my son,” said Ehud, blushing, when he realized Joe had also noticed the look. “So what?” said Joe, and admitted he had been staring too. “What do you think, with age it goes away? You don't need to tell me what passed through your mind the first moment you heard from Rachel.” Ehud didn't say
a word. His steak was cold by now and the red fibers lacing the meat stood out like roads leading nowhere.

W
HEN THEY ARRIVE
D AT
J
OE'S HOUSE,
evening had already settled in. A light breeze stirred the tops of the trees and the roar of a passing train drowned their voices and helped them to hold their silence. They had known each other for many years and knew that not everything needs to be talked about. Not everything needs to be known, and knowledge, although it may be power, is also a burden. When you know, you need to do something. When you don't know, you are free.

“So what now?” Ehud asked. The traces of the long day weren't perceptible in him. Something new was happening. Energy he didn't know he had started to bubble inside him. Memories wanted to come out, and he wanted to put them in order, because left inside they were liable to fester. He wanted to talk, that was clear. Not about everything, at least not now. He used Joe like a tennis player practices against a wall. “You're my sounding board,” he told him, and Joe just nodded and said that was all right, he might as well carry on. Ehud asked what was going on with the war room, and when did they need to report their findings. “What they do in the WR is not our problem, we're not their backup team,” said Joe, and again he spoke in the steely and authoritative tone that Ehud thought he had lost: “Our advantage over the team in the WR consists of two things only. You know her, and I know you. That's all. Out of this we need to build the picture, and when we sense something floating up or thickening in what we're cooking, we'll pull it out and attend to it. And we're not going to construct fancy theories either, or get fixated on anything except Rachel's story. You know there are people at HQ who think maybe she's doing as Vanunu, hiding somewhere and confiding her
memories to some journalist. And there are other possibilities, including the ashrams and monasteries that people run away to. There in the WR they'll take care of those issues. And we'll talk. We must observe one rule—tell the truth and be as honest as you can. You will talk, and I'll listen. I know you'll want to hide things from me. We're all ashamed of some of the things we've done. But only the truth. It's worth it. You might even enjoy it.”

Joe stretched out on the deck chair in the garden and lit a cigar. He looked content, and Ehud told him he'd never heard him say so much. “Agreed,” Ehud said, and waited while Joe's wife put a tray down on the little table between them. Then he yielded to temptation and added two extra spoonfuls of sugar to the teacup that he held in his hand. “This is no time to be fighting on two fronts,” he said to Joe, who had noticed. “You can always start a new diet.”

“‘Y
OU'LL SEE,'
I
TOLD HE
R, ‘YOU'LL
fly there, and it will be easier than you think, and different from the training you've gone through, because the sense of danger isn't something that can be simulated. I know you're afraid, and there's nothing wrong with that. Fears are good. Don't be ashamed of them, they'll help you to be cautious and prepared. Someone who doesn't admit to being afraid—he isn't suitable. We're not looking for people like that. We need the ones who know the dangers, are afraid of them, and know how to overcome the fear. This is your baptism by fire, and the first time is always the hardest.'

“And that's the way it was, but I'm getting ahead of myself. We were at the end of one road and at the start of another.” Ehud interrupted the flow of his speech for a moment and waited until Joe nodded that he was waiting for the rest. “Three months before that they sent her to me from Israel so I could prepare her for the assignment. ‘She'll be your operative, and from now on she's your responsibility,'
the Unit commander told me, and he showed me her file. I remember sitting with him in an empty café in a grubby little piazza in Rome at the height of a stifling summer, and I felt the setting didn't suit this kind of operation. I imagined being summoned to headquarters in Israel, going into the commander's office late at night to be told there's something only I could do; I was supposed to size up the matter carefully, solemnly, and the commander was supposed to persuade me, and then I would agree, of course. That wasn't how things worked out, but I forgave him because I was glad to have an operation of my own again, something that would be my responsibility from A to Z, the way we teach it on the operational course.

“I was a veteran case officer then and a perpetual candidate for the post of department head. ‘He's better suited to work in the field,' they wrote in my file every time they bypassed me in the round of appointments, and you too said something similar when you sent me away on a three-year exile to Africa. And you know what? I adapted to it and I admit it suited me. I enjoyed being abroad and working with the operatives. There's a kind of enchantment that's hard to explain to anyone who hasn't experienced it himself. You're master of your fate and everything depends on you, and at the same time you really feel that the nation of Israel is behind you. I became used to this way of life, and I always agreed to long assignments in Europe. Rina was at home then with the children. They were young and our parents helped her. I know it was harder for her than it was for me, and telling her that the state was calling me must have seemed to her inadequate compensation.

“I asked the commander about Rachel and wondered why he decided to take me off the boring assignment I was on at the time. He told me that after two months of working on a Canadian cover with her case officer, it seemed she was falling in love with him, so they
decided to replace him. Just like that, all at once. ‘She'll have no problems with you,' the commander said. I was offended, of course: What kind of a man, however old he may be, doesn't want to be fancied and flirted with? I envied the case officer who left her and I admired his professionalism. He knew it wasn't healthy, and of course it was forbidden. So he separated from her, using the excuse of another urgent mission, and they passed her on to me.

“I met her in Brussels. I told her to rent a small room on a short-term basis and we would meet in cafés and museums. She told the family she rented from that she was taking a long vacation in Europe, and I devised a story about being a bachelor businessman courting an attractive young woman. No one checked us out or asked what someone like me was doing with her. Brussels is an ideal place for romances like this. The city is overflowing with diplomats wasting their time in the various international organizations, and after hours they're looking for someone on the side. I gave her a few days to get settled and then took her for dinner at a very expensive restaurant. She turned up wearing an odd outfit—some kind of overalls—and she stood out with her beauty and the sense of unease that she projected. I was disappointed that she wasn't professional enough to check what kind of a restaurant we were going to and wear appropriate clothing, and I had the impression that despite the high marks she scored in training, she was still like a plant uprooted from its garden and put in a strange place. I waited until the coffee came and then asked her if she was prepared to go there. She said yes in a tone expressing all the discipline and readiness for everything that the instructors try to inculcate. We finished the meal, I told her to carry on with her sightseeing and job-seeking, and when I escorted her to the taxi that I ordered for her, she shook my hand, as if we were parting. The next day I informed HQ that she wasn't ready yet, and we should delay her
placement in the target zone for a few months; they argued with me a little, as always, and reminded me we weren't a travel agency. I told them that they should stop hassling me, that I didn't ask for their opinion.

“It turned out I was right. She was highly motivated and an outstanding pupil, but there was a big difference between a course under laboratory conditions and a long stay in Rome, playing the tourist and working as an English teacher. We were together for three months and traveled all around Europe. She established her cover and practiced again and again all the tricks she had learned in training, and I stayed in the background. At a distance, but close enough to see how she was performing, to question her afterwards and make evaluations, and then send her off for further practice until she was satisfied. She and I both knew this was her last opportunity to get feedback from someone standing right behind her and being able to see how she was coping. In the Arab country she would be alone and we would know of her only from her reports. I made a point of involving myself in everything she did. I explained to her that she didn't only need to know everything about the personality she was adopting, she had to project it too, to create a situation where some questions won't need to be asked, where someone looking at her will automatically understand who she is.

“So what did I do? I'll give you an example. I sent her to get her hair styled because I thought that with a straight cut she would look more stern and assertive, the kind of woman not many men would want to have an affair with. I told her to give up the murderous diet she had imposed on herself after all the cookies and sandwiches that they ate during the training period, and she looked at me as if I was intruding on matters that were not my concern, but she did as I asked. And once she realized I wasn't threatening her, and I realized she wasn't falling in love with me, I dared to ask about her menstrual
cycle. At first she blushed, and then her face went blank and turned a new color, as if she were putting on armor. I suppose that today no one would dare to have such a conversation with a subordinate, for fear of being accused of sexual harassment, but then things were different, and I explained that her health wasn't just a personal matter; it could affect her work and her ability to function. She had a way of talking about intimate things, which gave me the impression that she was exposing the facts to me but not her feelings. This worried me, and I asked her again and again what she was feeling, and, in her particular way, she tried to reassure me while continuing to be evasive.

“And so we came to the evening before the flight. We were in Milan, in her hotel room facing the towers of the Duomo. In the morning I had sent her there to pray for the last time, which amused her. We were speaking English. I insisted on that, and of course for her it was no problem. French is my mother tongue, so speaking English was more of an effort for me. I knew the next day she would be going there for the first time, and she must not, simply must not, even think in Hebrew. She laughed at my accent, and this was good. It's important to laugh. A year later, when she was already coming and going from the Arab capital the way you fly to London, she told me all these precautions seemed stupid to her, but she wanted so much for me to be satisfied with her and to be sure she was ready, so she didn't try to stop me from struggling in English.

“Rachel sat and looked at the clothes piled on her bed. The television was switched on so we wouldn't be overheard and I checked everything she had and threw on the floor anything that looked to me too new, or too old, or not right for what she was supposed to be: a young Canadian woman who was born in England and who went back with her father to a remote place in Canada where he could spend his retirement years fishing and she could be bored to death.
And now she's twenty-six and she's on her way to the Arab capital city to teach the natives English, to save enough money to travel the world and to defer her postgraduate studies a little longer. ‘Don't turn up there as if you've been out shopping,' I said to her. ‘You're the one who sent me out shopping,' she said and smiled one of her tired smiles. ‘You implied this was my opportunity to upgrade my wardrobe.'

“I had no choice but to give her the kind of send-off that soldiers get when they set out on operations. According to her story she didn't leave Canada until she decided she had to make changes in her life, and then she spent half a year in Europe before taking on the teaching job. But in reality, she arrived here from Israel after a vacation that I opposed. ‘I have to say a final goodbye to my boyfriend,' she said, and explained in very few words that he found hard to understand why she was about to go away on such a long-term assignment to Russia. Why it will be impossible to contact her by phone, and why all this secrecy she was wrapping herself in. I tried to explain to her that she was breaking the continuity of the operation and could lose focus, but she screwed up her nose and shed a few tears and got what she wanted. I was glad they were separating. I thought she needed isolation and the awareness that no one was waiting for her in Israel. Her friends were going to be
there
, and
there
would be where she must feel at home. I didn't know then even one percent of the things I know today. It seems that age has positive aspects after all. She flew to Israel, broke up with her boyfriend, said goodbye to her few acquaintances, and came back to me after collecting her old things from the baggage repository at the railway station. It was terrible, and I wondered again whether I should postpone the flight once more. But now it was already too complicated. She had the invitation from the language school, but they wouldn't hold the job for her indefinitely, and she had a plane reservation the next morning.

“I looked at the pile of things she had scattered on the bed. Rachel was disorganized almost on purpose. I think she thought this was an asset, it was hard to suspect someone so slovenly, someone who lost things and missed appointments and forgot people's faces. But there, in the hotel, before traveling, lack of order was a hindrance, because a few moments after she arrived in the room all the items were mixed up together and I had to check that nothing from Israel had infiltrated her gear and that everything looked exactly as it should.

“And there were some who said this wasn't important, and there was no likelihood of anyone in the capital city checking every detail, and if despite this they took the trouble to do a meticulous check, they would always start with simpler things than these, like passports and the references that we prepared for her. I insisted that the preparations she was making were part of her transformation, vital for her sense of security, and they were as important as anything else. She has to feel that everything will be in order, and then everything will be in order. She mustn't hesitate to show everything she's bringing with her, she mustn't hesitate when she's explaining where she bought everything and where she was yesterday and where she's going tomorrow. Just like anyone else.

“Her eyes narrowed when I opened her toiletries bag and when I examined the labels on her bras and panties. I asked her if she was offended. She said she was embarrassed but she understood why I was doing this, and she reminded me that at Ben Gurion Airport they do exactly the same checks, and if a customs officer at an Arab airport were to examine her possessions and find something inappropriate, the problem would be a lot bigger.

“When the suitcase was packed I opened her hand luggage and saw the book on top. ‘Why are you taking a book by John le Carré?' ‘Why not?' she asked, and explained she was actually reading it for the
second time. The first time was before we recruited her, and reading it now it's hard for her not to make comparisons between herself and the heroine. I didn't want to get into an argument with her. This wasn't the time to explain to her, again, that she's an Israeli combatant going to an Arab country undercover, whereas the eponymous little drummer girl was a British woman recruited as an agent and deceived by her handlers all along the way. I remembered the time when le Carré was going around Israel and interviewing anyone who could tell him about the working methods of the Mossad, and I almost told her about the discussions in the department whether to cooperate with him and come out of it as the invincible good guys. I felt I wanted to tell her about my own experiences in my operational past, and my ambition to write a book myself someday. There was a real temptation to sit her down facing me and say to her, Come on, listen to me, and hear about some real operations, not the fictional ones. You should listen to me not only because I've been appointed your case officer but also because I too have done things in my life, and I can be trusted. And at the same time I knew this would be too much of a distraction from the assignment facing her; she was the operative here and I was just the bag-carrier, and I forced myself back to reality. ‘And what will you say when they ask why you're interested in the book?' ‘No problem,' she said to me, sitting on the end of the bed and flicking through the poetry book that I hadn't commented on. ‘It's about the Middle East and about the interminable war between the Israelis and the Palestinians, and it will be useful for comparative purposes when I get around to writing my postgraduate thesis.' ‘And what will you feel when you give them this answer?' Rachel put the book down and looked at me. I knew what she was seeing. I was older than her and she knew I was the boss. Bosses don't ask about feelings, and bosses aren't told about feelings. You have to make an impression
on them and never hesitate. ‘I'll know that I'm lying,' she said, and I saw something stirring in her face. ‘But I'm used to it, and besides, it's impossible to check. Perhaps I really will use my latest job as thesis material.' ‘What did they tell you in training, Rachel?' I asked, and she could see I was angry. ‘Why tell a lie unless you have to? Why invite trouble if it's possible to avoid it? You want to read the book? Fine, I'll keep it for you until your next vacation. You don't do things like that, just as you don't take the translated poems of Yehuda Amichai with you, even though it's allowed, even though it's possible, even though an innocent Canadian tourist can take along anything she likes.'