Jonathan de Shalit: Traitor

Adi didn’t respond. She gathered herself and wiped her hand over her face, which looked suddenly to Michael like that of a young girl. All the members of the small team stood up and weren’t quite sure how to bid one another farewell.

Amir busied himself with tidying the apartment. There wasn’t really much to tidy, so he simply moved chairs from one place to another, adjusted the angle of the table slightly, and then returned it to its original spot, picked up a few pieces of paper he managed to find and vigorously put them through the shredder he had purchased at the start of the operation. “Darling,” he said to Adi, somewhat embarrassed by her outburst, which had echoed his own sentiments, “I’m taking your computer now. There’s nothing personal on it, nothing that you need, right?”

Adi nodded.

He removed the computer’s hard disk and smashed it to pieces with a hammer he found in the toolbox in the kitchenette.

“Careful, bro,” Michael said. “Don’t destroy the apartment. I still have to open a law firm here, unless Aharon decides that we’re going to continue working for him.”

“I heard that just fine,” Aharon called out from the other room. He was struggling with his raincoat, and trying with all his might to remember if he had brought an umbrella with him or had forgotten it elsewhere. The fact that it was a pleasant spring day, bathed in soft sunlight, didn’t seem very relevant to him.

“Okay, guys, we’re locking up,” Michael said. “Get out of my office already. If you have nothing to do, don’t do it here.” He looked at Adi tenderly and said, “Come, let’s go for a coffee on the boulevard. And then I’ll take you home.” Adi smiled at him gratefully.

Through the window Michael saw Aslan putting on his helmet and starting up his huge BMW motorcycle. Aslan hadn’t said good-bye when he left, but he caught Michael’s gaze now and waved to him.

“I’m closing, Aharon,” Michael called out, and Aharon hurried toward the door. He stood there for a second, looked Michael straight in the eyes, nodded to Adi, who managed to bring a faint smile to her face, and left the apartment. He appeared to Michael to be talking to himself, or making an important point in an argument. He then saw him stop for a moment alongside Aslan and say something to him, but Michael of course couldn’t hear.

“She worked her magic on you,” Aharon said to Aslan, who was sitting on his motorcycle. “She worked her magic on you.”

Without waiting for Aslan’s response, Aharon continued walking and disappeared around the corner. Michael heard the roar of Aslan’s motorcycle, which accelerated powerfully, pulled into the traffic with another mighty roar, and disappeared in seconds.

“Amir?”

“Right here, sir. I’m just making sure that everything is closed.”

“They asked about you at the university, you know.”

“Don’t you start with me now, too.”

A pleasant breeze caressed their faces as they headed off in the direction of the boulevard.

“You know,” Adi said to Michael, “I’m sure I’m going to enjoy being with my girls a little. To read them stories about rabbits and balloons. They say that childhood goes by so quickly. I have to go back to work in a month and a half. To start anew.”

“Yes, new beginnings await us all. What we did here wasn’t easy. If it was up to me, everyone here would be getting a medal, you know.”

“Yes.” She went quiet. “I trust all of you, Michael. I want you to know. But it’s hard for me.”

He clasped her hand briefly. “I know, Adi. I know.”

PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND, MAY 2013

Julian Hart saw them from the bedroom window, on the second floor of his home. The black van with the tinted windows stopped right on the corner of the street. A second and third car continued slowly toward the house. He knew exactly what he’d see next, in just a few seconds. Two or three men in suits, shiny badges fixed to their belts, would soon be stepping out of each vehicle.

He was right, but only partially. Because two police cars, their lights flashing blue and red, joined the scene unfolding before his eyes, playing out in a strange silence and seemingly in slow motion. The police cars pulled up at an angle in front of his home, and the officers who emerged drew their weapons and took cover behind the doors of their respective vehicles. Men in suits did indeed step out of the unmarked cars, but over the jackets they were also wearing dark windbreakers. He knew that emblazoned on their backs, large and luminous, were the letters FBI. Two of the FBI agents were carrying shotguns. The others moved forward with their right hands resting on the handles of the weapons tucked into their belts.

They’re heading into battle, he thought. Advancing in silence, inching forward, with evidently way too much firepower. No, he was not going down that Via Dolorosa that awaited him. He was not going to be dragged from his home cuffed and shamed. They were not going to take Professor Julian Hart and turn him into a media circus, for all to see and shame, a miserable Soviet spy, fighting wars long since irrelevant. They were not going to tear apart the life he had so diligently and painstakingly built for himself. He couldn’t do that to Frances and the kids. That he certainly wasn’t willing to do. The thought of himself dressed in orange prison overalls, his wrists and ankles cuffed and shackled, day after day after day in the dock, with Frances among the public, sitting there in the courtroom, elegantly dressed, heavily made up, showing her support for her man, the man who betrayed her and deceived her—that thought, those images, were too much to bear. He felt a sharp pain in the side of his stomach, and gastric acid burned its way up into his esophagus. He wanted to throw up, but managed to suppress the feeling. He retrieved his SIG Sauer P226 from its hiding place in his closet. A nine millimeter. Seventeen rounds. He cocked the weapon and went down the stairs leading to the front door. He could hear Frances busy with something on the back porch of the house. She was completely unaware of the scene that was unfolding in the front of her home. He was thankful for that. He glanced through the window next to the front door to see the FBI agents reach the grass line, at the edge of the driveway to the house. He opened the heavy wooden door, gripped the SIG Sauer just as his instructor in Moscow had taught him, got into position, and opened fire at a slow and uniform rate. Round by round by round. He watched one of the FBI agents drop to the ground, like in a dream, and immediately thereafter he felt something slam hard into his torso. The shotgun rounds threw him violently backward, exiting his back in a wide spray of blood and pieces of bone. Then two rounds from a .38 Smith & Wesson slammed into his head, splattering his brains on the wall behind him.

ASHDOD, MAY 2013

Alona was standing in the dining room and sorting through the mail she had just removed from the mailbox. Hiding among the flyers, bills, and bank statements was a cream-colored envelope. “Hagar,” she called out to her aunt, “you have mail. It looks like a wedding invitation.” Hagar Beit-Hallahmi emerged from her room holding the book she’d been reading, her finger marking the page she was at. She grasped the envelope with a shaky hand and turned it over, immediately noticing the absence of a sender’s address but spotting the small illustration, a German shepherd in black ink. Another one of Aharon Levin’s quirks, she fondly thought. Back in the day he’d sometimes send her memos accompanied by that same odd signature, and she could never quite figure out if the drawing alluded to him or to her. “Thank you, my dear,” she said to Alona, and returned to her room. After settling back into her armchair, she put the book aside and opened the thick envelope. An expensive envelope from high-quality paper, she said to herself. He was never short on style. From it she retrieved an old postcard, a photograph of a giant statue of Lenin in a dusty city, somewhere on the outskirts of the empire. If he was willing to part ways with a postcard from his famous collection, she thought to herself, he really was giving it all he had. She pursed her lips. “My dearest,” he had written. “You were right. Like always, you were right. You sent me down the right path. But remember, sometimes an accident is simply an accident. Comrade Vladimir Ilyich sends you his warm regards. An old friend is giving you a hug.” She returned the postcard to the envelope, stood up from the armchair with a groan, slipped the letter into one of the desk drawers that already contained so many secrets, and made sure to lock it with a small key. She sat down again, the book still by her side. Closing her eyes, she lost herself in her thoughts. She remembered hearing the report about the accident north of Ashkelon. Everything was falling clearly into place now.