Mishka Ben-David - Forbidden Love in St. Petersburg

And if I was always to be here, with you, before, during, and after the ovulation? I asked. Always, always, here when you need me?

Orit’s blue eyes peered at me in the dim light.

Your good intentions are sweet, she said, but you are a prisoner of the work you do. Of the state, of the Mossad. Not of mine.

How much better than I was this wise but woeful woman who was able to read me and the world.

She turned her head away and curled herself around me, covering her body more fully with the quilt that wrapped us both. When I stroked her cheeks they were wet and my eyes misted up. What was I doing to this woman who I so loved? It was I who took control over her life when she first came to the Arava, and now, instead of being her protector, I’ve become the one who is stifling her happiness. She doesn’t ask for much. Not even of me. All she wants is what practically every woman wants.

I was no longer willing to risk our love on account of a job that in any case I was doing as if in a trance.

That’s how it will be Or, I said. They’ll agree to this. And if not, I’ll take a job at HQ. I’ve already been globetrotting for five years. They can’t go on insisting I do this work against my will. They’ve already met some of my demands, now they’ll go that extra mile.

Orit’s moist eyes expressed a mix of disbelief and hope. I owe her this, owe it to both of us, and owe it to myself. You can’t save the homeland at the expense of your home.

As soon as I asked his bureau chief for a personal meeting, Hezi agreed to see me. He listened intently to things he already knew and then said: I’m one hundred per cent behind you. We have to find a way for you to be with Orit whenever she needs you. I can’t imagine what you are going through and all I can do is refer you to the contacts we have in the hospitals. They will do everything for you. To ensure that you are with Orit whenever necessary, there are two options. One is for you to be posted abroad. I don’t want to transfer you to the Tevel Division, which cooperates with foreign intelligence services, and expose you to them. But I can visualize a situation in which you settle in a particular part of the world, with Orit of course, and use this base as a springboard for activity in the area. From my point of view, and for many reasons, the preferred place would be Beijing. China is beginning to open up for us and you, as a Chinese speaker, are naturally the most suitable person for the job.

I took a deep breath. That wasn’t what I was after. And, of course, to say that I could speak Chinese was an exaggeration. My division head understood what the deep intake of air meant, and carried on: the second option is for you to become Kidon’s permanent number one. For all sorts of reasons you were the one who carried out the two latest Mossad liquidations. The squad’s mythological number one has retired and not one of the up-and-coming youngsters seems to us to be good enough to replace him. As I’m sure you know, there are things that you too need to improve on, but we think that you possess the requisite qualities.

It was clear that Levanon had said nothing.

I didn’t see myself as Kidon’s ‘operator’ and didn’t want to take on the role. The two liquidations I had participated in accounted for only a tiny fraction of all the operations in which I had taken part, dozens every year. I couldn’t deny their importance or their efficacy, but I felt that this simply wasn’t me. Even to lie and frame wasn’t me. So to kill? And to do that as my avowed and principal pursuit? Certainly not. I wasn’t blind to the ‘changed priorities’ in the work I did and the time devoted to firearms training and other drills connected to liquidations. But this was only for the purpose of an emergency in my territory, the Far East. That was entirely different from being ‘Kidon’s number one’.

Up till now Orit had no real reason to think that I had been involved in activities that were quite unlike the dozens of operations I did tell her about; breaking into an Arab diplomat’s vehicle in Bangkok and stealing a file of documents; puncturing the tyres of a car from which a Malaysian intelligence agent had been observing us and so preventing him from tailing us as we went after an Al-Qaida cell; or slipping a sleeping pill into the beer of a Chinese scientist in a hotel bar, allowing us to work quietly in his room. These were nice and fairly innocent stories. She was less happy to hear the tale about fitting up cameras in the hotel room of a target, filming him as he undressed and got into bed, and then filming a female agent of ours in an identical room, enabling us to make a composite of the pictures, present the target with the photomontage and quickly get him to cooperate. She wasn’t happy but accepted it. And I could tell that this was more or less as far as she was willing to go. She wouldn’t listen to an explanation of a necessary one-off killing that saved the homeland and certainly wouldn’t stomach two such operations. As for it being my ‘vocation’ there was simply no point in talking to her about that.

What about a job in Israel? I asked.

A desk job? That would be a shame both for you and for us, Hezi answered. You are not built for it and you have qualities that we are not prepared to lose.

What about training? Recruitment? There are, after all, other jobs at HQ.

A shame for you and for us, Hezi repeated.

So I have to accept this as a ‘no’?

Things are not always black and white. But as you know every decision has its price, Hezi replied. From his gesturing I understood the meeting was over. The ball was in my court.

Orit surprised me: I don’t mind giving Beijing a try. I didn’t tell you but I’m also trying acupuncture and medicinal herbs and perhaps that’s better done in their country of origin.

And you didn’t tell me? I blurted out and then shut my mouth. Who was I to complain about her concealing things from me? Orit noticed that something had been left unsaid. I didn’t think that you would believe in or support such things, she said. Did you know that according to Western research traditional Chinese medicine has a high success rate? And besides, a change of place, a change of luck.

The sparkle that I hadn’t seen for a very long time stole into the blue rims of her eyes. And when she hugged and kissed me while we were still standing at the entrance to the house, images and feelings flooded into my mind taking me back a good few years to her soldier’s lodgings and our student apartment and to the love that had been so charged with undefined but tangible and absolute optimism.

Her optimism overwhelmed me. Who knows, she could be right.

OUR STAY IN Beijing began well but ended badly and earlier than planned. This is not what I expected, Orit said as we left the airport northeast of the city and drove to our hotel in its centre. We travelled on a wide and straight highway, four lanes in each direction, which cut diagonally across the urban expanse to the first of the ring roads that circled the city’s mid-town area. To our right and left, box-shaped multi-storeyed residential structures soared above us, a gilded or red ideogram at the top of each the only sign that we were in China. The huge cluster of skyscrapers was matched by the number of giant tower cranes raising the skeletal frames of new constructions ever higher on every possible vacant plot. I’d already got to know the place from previous visits but for Orit the sight was perplexing, even a disappointment.

When we got off the highway and on to the ring road that took us closer to the centre, the two-to four-storey buildings of the China Orit had imagined came into view. Restaurants identified by red paper lanterns, small grocery stores, and food stalls were on the ground floor. Above them all a display of Chinese ideograms.