Jonathan de Shalit: Traitor

Aharon remained silent and nodded his head. He was a good listener. A log caught alight in the fireplace, casting a sudden glow over his wrinkle-grooved face. Walter continued:

“I was contacted on the very eve of Christmas by a source I used to handle, an East German priest, who also worked at the time with the Stasi, like everyone almost, because let’s face it, who had a choice back then? He didn’t know if it was important or not, but he wanted to share it with me. Anyway, it’s a secret that got someone killed. He doesn’t know much, and all he does know he heard from a dying and bitter old woman. And like I said, she did in fact die a few days after speaking with him. I’m giving you the gist of what he told me, and believe me, Aharon, I sat with the priest for hours to listen to the story again and again, from every possible angle. The old woman who told him the story was an archivist for the Special Ops Unit of the Stasi’s Main Directorate for Reconnaissance. Listen carefully, Aharon. According to her, the East Germans recruited and operated a high-ranking Israeli asset. They called him Cobra. The KGB was aware of the asset and the Stasi passed on all the intelligence he delivered to them. By the end of the 1980s, Cobra was already a parliamentary aide or perhaps even a ministerial aide, with further advancement apparently to come. The East Germans believed in him. Expected him to go very far. When the ground in East Germany began to shake, the KGB demanded full control over the asset. All the material pertaining to him was handed over to two KGB officers who were sent to collect the dossiers from the Special Ops Archives in Dresden. The archivist, by the name of Marlene, said that she did indeed hand over all the material to them. The order to do so was handed down by the then-director of the foreign espionage division, General Heinrich Krueger, and relayed to her personally by the officer in charge of the operation, who went by the name of Gunther. Gunther dryly told her that the operation was being handed over to their comrades in Moscow, and she said he was left furious and despondent. In any event, Gunther was hit by a truck and killed on the side of a highway north of Berlin less than two months later. The poor driver said he hadn’t even seen him before he was thrown under the wheels of the vehicle. According to Marlene, Gunther was assassinated. Cobra was such a high-value asset that the KGB took action to ensure that no one who knew his real identity was left behind. As I understand things, the Stasi handled Cobra under the guise of being Americans, for reasons I’m not aware of and can only speculate on.

“And as you know,” Walter quietly continued, “Markus Hertz, the serving division chief when Operation Cobra came into being and moved ahead, died a few months after the unification of the two Germanys, while under house arrest imposed by us. He had more than enough crimes for which to pay, but more so than anything he wasn’t a well man, and despite our grave suspicions, we weren’t able to prove that he didn’t die of natural causes.”

“Why didn’t the KGB assassinate Marlene, too?” Aharon asked. “Did the priest ask her? Was she able to explain that?”

“Marlene wasn’t aware of Cobra’s real identity. A fact, according to her, that was plain to see in the dossiers the KGB took from the Archives. That was the explanation she offered for being spared. The priest did indeed ask her that same question. But it’s possible, too, that they believed that Marlene would never talk. Or that they simply screwed up. We all make mistakes, right? Even the KGB isn’t perfect, and it doesn’t kill unnecessarily either. Whatever the case may be, Marlene went on living for many years after the Cobra file was handed over to the Russians, keeping her secrets to herself. Truth be told, even when she chose to tell someone—even when she sensed that her days were numbered, even when she needed someone, anyone, even a priest who knew her as no one but a worshipper in his church, to understand that she had known love for a man in her arid life—even then she was hardly able to say anything at all.”

“Tell me, Walter, why have you come to me with this? Why haven’t you notified someone currently in office in the BND? Why haven’t you approached someone serving today in the Mossad? After all, you’re acquainted with our people. I’m retired now, whereas your ties still remain intact, at least as far as I understood things…”

“I thought it best to approach you. Honestly, I don’t know if the information is important or of no significance at all, but my gut tells me it’s important, that we’re onto something big here. Marlene was speaking on her deathbed. People don’t make up such stories. Not at a time like that. And if Gunther really was murdered, there was a reason for it. If the Russians were intent on shielding Cobra against any risk of exposure, the comrades in Moscow must have viewed Cobra as a particularly high-value asset, an agent to be safeguarded at all costs. Who knows how many more Stasi officers they assassinated in order to safeguard their secrets when everything came crashing down? And if this story about Cobra turns out to be true, that means that no one has a clue regarding his whereabouts today, the material to which he is privy, and the information he is passing on to Moscow, perhaps even to this day. I couldn’t risk approaching just anyone; Cobra, after all, mustn’t know that someone may be on his trail. Besides, I have the privileges of the elderly now, I don’t have to speak to anyone and everyone, only to those I love. And you, my dear, I love. A love shared by old spies, right?”

And thus, in the dimming light of the large fireplace, with the night’s dark shadows filtering through the bar’s windows, they continued to sit there, fighting back the chill within themselves with another drink, appalled by the thought that they’d soon have to step out again into the street’s petrifying cold, into the loneliness that always lies in wait for people like them.

JERUSALEM, PRESIDENT’S RESIDENCE, JANUARY 2013

A silver Toyota Avensis pulled up outside the heavy ornate iron gate of the President’s Residence. It was five-twenty in the afternoon, yet winter’s darkness had already settled over the homes of the Talbieh neighborhood, just beyond the tops of the pine trees swaying in Jerusalem’s icy wind. Aharon Levin himself was behind the wheel. One would be hard-pressed, very hard-pressed indeed, to say he was a good driver, and as always, it seemed that only a miracle prevented him from crashing into the gate. A security guard armed with an M-16 approached the vehicle, and the electric window slid down silently. “Shalom, sir, I recognize you, and we know you are expected, but I need to see some ID anyway. Thank you, sir,” he said on returning the pensioner’s card Levin chose to produce. “Straight on and immediately to the right. Park next to the black Volvo.”

The president was waiting for him on his own in the main reception room, in the large hall adorned with the ceiling mural by Naftali Bezem. It was strange for him to see the reception room empty and dark, and the figure of the president appeared as a silhouette. Light coming through one of the doors that opened into the hall shone around his host, as if his entire person was aglow. “Mr. President,” Levin said by way of greeting. “Aharon, Aharon, good to see you. Come, come, let’s go sit down in here, we can talk in peace.”

The two men sat down together in a small meeting room, sinking into gold-colored armchairs. An elderly server came in quietly and placed two cups of tea and a small plate of cookies and dates stuffed with walnuts on the small table.

“Mr. President,” Levin began, “I’ve come to you because I don’t know who I should take this to.”