The English Teacher (18 page)

“He apparently pressed a hidden button, and a fan on the ceiling began to circulate the air in the room. Cigars were handed out and the Prime Minister made a point of telling us these had been bought at his personal expense. I knew this was the ritual that followed a successful operation, but I had never been a participant before. The four of us sat around a low coffee table that I remembered from television news stories. Just imagine it, there I was, Ehud, who grew up in some hole in Morocco, sent from there straight to the transit camp, worked for the Mossad all my life, and now I'm sitting beside the Prime Minister and he's offering me a cigar. Of course, I refused.

“‘How does she feel? What does she do with the knowledge that every moment she has to be in control? That the danger never diminishes? That operations will never be behind her?' The Prime Minister shot the questions out in sync with the perfect smoke rings he was blowing toward the fan, and it wasn't clear if he was waiting for an answer. ‘Ask Ehud,' said the Unit commander. ‘He's her handler, he knows her better than anyone else.'

“‘Isolation,' I said, ‘that's what you feel, and the need to trust, to
know that what you're doing is important. That someone is thinking about you all the time. That although you're far away, you're not forgotten. Like an artist in a garret—you sit and work and sleep and eat and move, all by yourself, and just occasionally you meet one of your friends, someone who gives you the chance to speak your language, who gives you the chance to reveal your true identity, your real problems and real joys. And then you want everything from him, as from a lover or a parent. You want him to listen to you, make sympathetic noises in the right places, show empathy and solidarity. And you pay attention to every nuance, every hint of impatience, and you forget, as a child forgets, that your handler has problems too, that he has a family and a timetable and a function that he needs to fulfill. You don't care about any of this and you feel deprived if he doesn't satisfy all your needs.'

“I could have gone further and expanded on this theme, but the Mossad chief glanced at his watch and the Prime Minister, who was listening to me with rapt attention, noticed this and said that regretfully he must ask us to excuse him, since party business was calling him. We left the building, and I knew that what I really wanted to tell him was how she obtained the first picture of Strauss. Believe me, it would take nerves of steel to do what she did to Rashid, while loving him with all her heart.”

E
HUD FELT GREAT WHEN THEY LEFT
the Prime Minister's house. The operation had succeeded, and he hadn't been shunted aside when others were congratulated. He had no second thoughts about Strauss. The man was helping to develop the enemy's war machine and he knew the risks. About Rachel too he had no doubts. This was what she was recruited for. She did her job like a true professional, and she would receive her certificate of merit at a drink-fueled celebration in her honor the next time she came back on vacation. Meanwhile, there's more work to be done, no time to wonder what's happening between her and Rashid, who was the source of the picture and the key to the start of the operation. Ehud thought of Rashid as an instrument, and privately he admitted this made it easier for him to accept their relationship. She doesn't love him, he told himself again and again, and in his reports to Unit Headquarters he made a point of stressing that Rachel was exploiting Rashid, and was apparently sleeping with him for the same purpose. Nothing more than that.

And if Ehud wanted to know more about what was going on between them, he wouldn't get far, because Rachel didn't inform him about what she was thinking on the way back and what she was preoccupied with instead of focusing on the operation that wasn't yet over. She did report that the journey had gone smoothly, but she said nothing at all about what she had gone through on that journey. “There were no hitches,” she reported tersely.

And indeed there were not. She was supposed to drive carefully and cautiously toward the border crossing. If she succeeds in crossing it without checks, as on the way to the operation, it's likely no one will know she was there. True, she was registered at the hotel, but the ops officer said that to the best of his knowledge, hotels don't submit lists of their guests to the security services on a regular basis, and anyway, cross-checking would be very difficult. In the school she didn't tell them about the trip, and even Barbara didn't know. But Rashid knew. She had to tell him, her friend, her lover.

So instead of looking in the mirror to see if anyone was following her, and instead of opening a button of her blouse as she approached the barrier—usually a useful ploy—she was thinking about him. She thought about their conversation before the journey, and the disappointment she heard in his voice when she told him she was going alone, she needed time to herself to review what was going on between them, everything was so stifling and so new and so intense, she needed a short break away from it all.

“Take your time,” he said. It was obvious he was hurt, but there was something else. The expression in English made it sound as if she really were the mistress of her time and as though she didn't have to turn up for a final observation of Strauss's hotel a few hours from now.

She felt her stomach tightening and the tears threatening to break out. Why did I choose this terrible cover story? She resisted the urge
to hug him. Why didn't I invent something else? And then the thought occurred to her that perhaps this was right after all. Perhaps she really was feeling that everything was becoming too loaded and too confusing, and sacrosanct rules were being broken, and the reason for the journey loomed up before her like an iceberg—threatening to sink everything around it. It's thanks to you I'm going, Rashid, she wanted to tell him. You made it possible for me to copy the documents and the picture of Strauss. You were careless and you trusted me and you don't know who I really am. And I'm exploiting you and I'm going to kill the man you were embracing at the factory gate.

Rashid opposed the unexpected journey, also her intention to drive to a strange city in the middle of winter and find herself a hotel at the last moment, because she didn't tell him the hotel was booked and she even knew the number of the room, overlooking Strauss's hotel. He wanted to contact his friends and ask them to look after her. It took all her powers of persuasion, and a tsunami of kisses, to reassure him and make him tell her that he loves her, in the accent of a Levantine Lothario out of central casting. In fact his English had improved a great deal and they both loved to remind each other that when it came to learning a language, there was no substitute for time shared in bed. She liked to hear his deep voice, the mistakes he was unable to get rid of, and the heavy accent, which always made her feel he belonged only to her.

I really love him, she told herself. It's true that I need to lie to him, true that I'm using him, but I love him, and that is no lie. I want him, and I won't do anything to harm him. Her fingers played with his curly hair. He mumbled something she didn't understand, and she knew she must not fool herself or be led astray by dreams. She's risking her heart's greatest love for the sake of the mission she's been sent on. She cried, and Rashid woke up when she reached out for the
tissues on the shelf beside her. Still drowsy, he licked her tears and told her everything would be all right, he loves her and he'll wait for her.

I need to talk to him, she told herself on the winding road from the border crossing to the city. Her mind was made up, she's going to spend a whole night with him. He won't be going back to his parents' house, as he always does, and she'll get up with him in the morning, hair mussed and the smell of sleep in her mouth, and she'll kiss him before brushing her teeth. She'll curl up with him and indulge with him in delights, a picture of their future life together, before she even thinks about the next step.

So instead of checking out the army camps alongside the road and making sure she wasn't being followed, she was busy making plans for their night's reunion, and she tried, in vain, to convince herself that even a woman who doesn't have to hide the fact that she's a spy has to tread carefully where love is concerned.

S
HE REACHED HER APART
MENT EARLY THAT
evening and called his office before even taking off her shoes. The driver answered her and said Rashid was busy. She didn't like the driver and the driver didn't like her from the beginning, and she guessed he disapproved that the young Muslim who employed him was spending time with a Christian infidel. Sometimes it occurred to her he might be informing on her to the security services, but there was nothing she could do about this and she remembered the ops officer saying, “Half the population are informers and the other half are intelligence targets who have to be watched.”

She asked the driver to tell Rashid she was home, and after checking that no one had tampered with her cache of communications gear, she went out to retrieve her pets. The little old lady in the
impoverished neighborhood opened the door, and with difficulty restrained Gracie from leaping on Rachel and licking her joyfully. “It's hard for me to part from them,” said the woman, a Christian like Rachel and every inch an Arab. And Rachel was thinking, What would you say if you knew that for me they were just tools, backing up my cover story? and yet she wouldn't deny she was touched by the emotional reception. She put a small envelope on the table and said it was a present from her, as if the widow who barely survived on her pension was doing her a favor and not getting money in return for her service. Mango the cat was put in the traveling cage, Gracie leapt into the backseat, the old woman waved goodbye to her, and Rachel drove back to her apartment with her operational accessories.

The red light of the answering machine was flashing, and when she played the message she was disappointed to hear the voice of Ehud, pretending to be the director of the course she had attended at the Open University in Florence, congratulating her on her success on the examination. She wanted to hear Rashid's voice. This is because of me, she concluded, I sold him the story about needing a break and he took it seriously, and now he's wondering about the connection between us.

Rachel gave Mango a saucer of milk and let Gracie off the lead, and the bitch sniffed her way around the apartment. She needed to write and encode an operation report and send it at the stipulated time, but her thoughts were somewhere else. She showered quickly, sat beside the phone, and called his office. Again the driver answered, and again he said in basic English that his boss was busy. She had to struggle to explain to him why she needed to talk to Rashid urgently, shouted at him in the loudest voice she could muster, and he, not used to hearing such high-pitched and insistent tones from her, said, “One moment,” and left the receiver on the desk. She could hear the babble
of voices, a door opening, someone talking loudly, and someone she assumed was Rashid answering him curtly. Then there was silence, and she heard the sound of footsteps approaching, also the sound of her heartbeat, which had speeded up and was now beyond her control.

The “Yes” with which he opened told her everything and her stomach turned over. “Rashid,” she said, and inserted in his name all the pathos she was capable of expressing. “Yes”—he repeated the word as if he didn't understand. “I'm back,” she said, and knew this sounded stupid. “Yes,” he said for the third time, like a switchboard operator taking a report. “I want to see you,” she said, and felt she was mustering her last strength: the poisoning at the hotel, the slow walk to Strauss's hotel, the tense wait, the moment of action, and the return to the city—all paled in comparison to what her lover was going to say to her.

After he'd finished the short sermon that he probably rehearsed during the two days of her absence, she told him she understood and put the telephone down. She didn't understand anything. She wanted to take a sheet of paper and record from memory everything he said to her just now and everything she said to him before the mission. She was the one who told him she wanted to think. He was the one who said he would wait for her. And now she hears the hesitation in his voice, leading her to the unequivocal conclusion that he too wants a break. It's important for him too to examine their relationship from a distance. Because of his English and the quality of the line, it all sounded to her so dismal and unreal, and when he told her he would make it easy for her and from now on take only private lessons in his office, she knew it was over.

Not a word of all this appeared in the cable she sent that evening, and even Ehud, who thought he knew how to read her between the
lines, didn't notice the storm that was brewing. And why should he notice? This belonged to another world, a world the sophisticated operational apparatus wanted to ignore. The Unit commander said that male operatives should keep their pricks in their pants, and more than that he didn't want to know, and as for female operatives, no one dared say anything; they were just warned of the dangers.

In the coming weeks too she didn't write about Rashid, nor was there any need, because the reports dealt only with operational and intelligence issues, and her moods she could keep to herself. Rashid didn't call and didn't turn up at school. She heard from the secretary that one of the veteran teachers was going to his office to give him lessons once a week, and she didn't dare go to the teacher and ask after the student.

Rachel arrived at the school on time and taught her assigned classes. She drove past the government offices at the times prescribed, took walks with Gracie on the familiar paths, and transmitted reports on schedule. She heard and didn't hear what they said to her, she saw and didn't see who was coming toward her. It seemed to her that she needed to chart a course through this murky environment and make an effort to breathe. After a few weeks she invited Barbara for a heart-to-heart and told her best friend it was over, she had ruined everything. Barbara wasn't letting her give up that easily. She asked Rachel what happened, how could it be that after all she told her, Rashid had left her just like that. Rachel didn't tell Barbara about the trip that started it all, and she was prepared to explain that lie, if it should come up, on the basis of her need not to tell everything that happened between her and Rashid. Barbara didn't ask. She was busy with her new temporary steady boyfriend, when she wasn't delving into Rachel's psyche.