Mishka Ben-David - Forbidden Love in St. Petersburg

At HQ it was decided that we would be the team for special missions in East Asia. Who commanded the team depended on the nature of the mission: sometimes it was the chief recruiter; on other occasions the break-in team’s leader; from time to time it was me–the businessman who knew the region–or the leader of the surveillance team when the case involved more complex monitoring than usual. After dozens of operations led by me, I was relieved to hand over the baton to someone else every now and then. Wherever we happened to be, we picked out the restaurants we most fancied, taking care to wear suits and ties, like young businessmen. In hotels, we preferred to be in groups of two or three to relieve the loneliness. The results were good and we felt we could accomplish any mission.

But there was one mission in which I failed.

I stopped taking the pill this week, Orit announced to my surprise. I wanted us to decide this together, she said, noticing my look of displeasure, but your return was delayed again and again. I had my period and I didn’t want to postpone it for another month. I had to decide on my own.

But my love, we spoke on the phone almost every evening.

Yes, that’s true, she replied, looking straight at me, and for the first time I noticed how penetrating her eyes could be. ‘Everything all right? Here too. Going to bed? Me too.’ That’s how our conversations usually went. Do you really think I can talk to you on the phone about it being time we had a baby together?

So just now, this week, is the right time? My pique refused to be tamed and I began to conjure up various accusations about the impulsive decisions that Orit makes on her own. But then I remembered that I’d been the main beneficiary of those decisions, from the date plantation on my birthday, to the garden where we’d been married.

This has been eating me up for quite a while, she said. Even when you’re in the country you get home dead tired and your thoughts are miles away. But then I thought that you might not want to have a baby. In any case we can use something other than the pill, which is a health risk if you keep on using it for too long.

And you–do you want a baby?

Two, she replied, and after a moment of silence, with an impish look in her eyes, she burst into that rolling laughter of hers that at once dissolved my anger. I mean it, two, she said, trying to be serious, but only one at a time.

My frequent trips abroad, and all the preparations that preceded them, had pushed Orit to the margins of my life. Now my love for this woman of mine, so mischievous yet so adult, so girlish but at the same time so feminine, once again consumed the whole of my being. Suddenly, more than anything else in the world, I wanted to please her.

I wasn’t yet ready for a baby. Operational activities took up all of my days and the desire for Orit filled my nights. In my mind I was still the same young paratroop officer and even, as Orit used to say, a kid playing cowboys. Not a father. But someone who spends their evenings and nights alone at home has different thoughts and other wants. I realized, as I had done way back then on the date plantation, that Orit was maturing faster than I was, and didn’t want her to have to wait for me to ‘grow up’–especially since I didn’t even know when that would be. That very night I tried to make her wish come true and did so with great love.

She caressed me and kissed my skin. What a smooth, soft baby we’ll have, she said, reminding me of how skillfully she’d banished my regret that I wasn’t hairy like some of my friends.

You’ll have to be home more with Ar junior, she said, taking me back to our days of Gi and Go, Ar and Or. But that was a commitment I couldn’t make. Across her face I saw that familiar shadow appear and stay. I haven’t the strength to raise a child on my own, she said, and certainly not two.

Feeling pressured, I promised that before the birth I’d ask for a job at HQ for a few years.

That’s the way it works anyway, isn’t it? said Orit, somewhat tetchily. After something like four years in the field you do a stint at HQ, no?

That was true of operatives who’d been abroad full-time, not of home-based people like me. But there was no point telling her this because Orit didn’t listen to such explanations.

We tried and tried, but without success. The pregnancy, it seems, had a mind of its own.

Every second ovulation you’re overseas, Orit said bitterly, and the fact that we fuck all night when there’s no available egg achieves nothing.

MY NOW PROVEN ability to accomplish any mission ultimately led to a most unwanted outcome.

I was summoned to the office of the head of the operations division, a man by the name of Hezi. Also in attendance were the division’s intelligence officer and the head of its planning department. Hezi, a thin, grey-haired man with a five o’clock shadow, came straight to the point: a meeting is expected to take place in Hong Kong in three days’ time between Muhammad Zaif, the head of the institute developing chemical weapons in Syria, and a senior official from the North Korean ministry of defence. We’ve been following their contacts for a number of years and at a certain stage you were also involved in that surveillance. They’ve signed multiple deals during this period but on the table now is a contract for the delivery of a chemical weapons production line. That is something we simply can’t allow the Syrians to have. Both sides are so nervous that news of the deal will leak, they’ve even decided to halt the planned arrival of a high-level Syrian delegation to North Korea. Instead, the deal is to be closed in Hong Kong in such secrecy that the parties will arrive there undercover. As far as we are concerned, there’s no way this contract can be signed and it’s important for us that they know that we know what they’re up to and that we are determined to stop it.

So the mission is to scare them? I asked.

It’s more than that, was the immediate reply.

Burn their documents? I joked.

Utter silence in the room.

Hezi looked me straight in the eye: We’ve spent hours talking about possible plans of action. We’ve looked at a large number of options and the likely consequences of each one of them. We’ve decided that the head of the institute simply won’t get to the meeting.

A kidnapping? I asked.

We’ve checked that out as well, said Udi, head of the planning department, a big balding man with a comb-over. It’s almost impossible to organize in three days, and we were only informed yesterday morning of the meeting in Hong Kong.

A red briefing document has been compiled on this man, the intelligence officer added. I knew that ‘red’ meant a recommendation to liquidate. Zaif is behind most of the non-conventional weapons development programs in Syria, the intelligence officer continued. There was a meeting yesterday of the heads of the intelligence agencies. They decided to recommend to the prime minister that Zaif be taken out.

Why are you telling me this? I asked, impulsively. I had spent four years gathering intelligence in the Far East, filling a role tailor-made for my humble skills in that field and covering a part of the globe for HQ which, though not central, was also not insignificant. As a result, I had become almost completely detached from the Mossad’s other areas of activity. I found the prospect of my being involved in an assassination difficult to digest and distressing. What about the Kidon unit? I asked trying to break the silence in the room. They have people who deal with this kind of thing, don’t they?

No one responded. That’s according to foreign reports, of course, I added, trying to inject a little humour to lighten the mood in the room and relieve my own feelings of anxiety. The existence of Kidon has never been acknowledged by Israeli authorities.