Mishka Ben-David - Forbidden Love in St. Petersburg

Ayala made contact. She had been standing next to Schultz as he checked in to the hotel and was now able to give us his room number. A short while later the team tailing the woman messaged her address to us and there I went in order to check out the area. The quiet neighbourhood of two-storey homes with small, well-kept gardens was a place where the neighbours probably knew each other and where strangers didn’t visit. We’ll work here only at night, if at all, I decided.

The woman picked Schultz up from his hotel at seven that evening. To our utter astonishment the couple seemed to be taking the road back to the airport. Along the short route I tried to figure out where we’d gone wrong. What was it that had so alarmed him? Frenzied plans for mounting an operation before the target managed to slip away from us raced through my mind. I turned to consult Levanon who was sitting in the back of the car behind the driver. Neither of us could come up with an idea that wouldn’t expose us to more risk than we could afford. Then, to our great relief, we noticed that they were heading to a highly regarded restaurant by the name of Ikarus which was located in one of the hangars in Salzburg’s luxurious airport. We waited.

After the meal the pair drove back to her house, and we followed closely behind. The woman drew up in front of her garden gate, opened it, drove her car into a small parking bay and returned to close the gate. This left Schultz alone in the vehicle for about thirty seconds. That should be enough, I whispered to Levanon.

We parked two houses along, all the while waiting for a suspicious neighbour to approach us or even call the police. But only a very few cars went by, and in the bitter cold sweeping down from the Dolomites, not a single pedestrian was to be seen.

It was nearly eleven by the time the pair came out of the house and the woman re-opened the gate. I instructed our driver to turn on the ignition. Schultz’s friend reversed her car out of the parking bay and braked at the very edge of the pavement almost parallel to the road. Then she stepped out of the car to close the gate. Schultz, sitting in the front passenger seat, was now alone.

Get going and open the window, I told my driver. The woman was standing with her back to us, shutting the gate, as we came to a halt alongside her car. Because the driver’s door had been left open, the vehicle’s interior light was on and I could see Schultz looking towards us as I fired. His window shattered, his head drooped to one side. I fired again. Once more his massive head shook. Drive on, I said, and heard Levanon winding up his window behind me. This time he didn’t have to shoot. I reckoned that we had disappeared round the first curve by the time the woman had turned to her car and found her friend’s body slumped across the seat.

I’d been away from Israel for about a day and a night. Just hours after the shooting I was already across the Austrian border in Bratislava. Levanon crossed into the Czech Republic and made his way to Prague while Ayala travelled on the night train to Munich. We’d got rid of our weapons and the communications system which the European team took back with them. In the morning I flew from Budapest to Israel, Levanon left from Prague, and Ayala continued on to Frankfurt and flew home from there in the evening.

On the morning of my arrival it turned out that Orit’s ovulation was imminent. Because the ad-hoc squad recently attached to me was under my command, I was given the rank of ‘Station Head Abroad’ which afforded me the right to a service car. The driver came to the airport where I gave him my equipment and documents in return for my genuine ID and set off for home. Later that afternoon, Orit and I were to present ourselves at the hospital. This time I feel confident in a way I haven’t before, she said on the way. I remembered harbouring such hopes in the past but this time I too felt particularly optimistic. As a result of our virtually nonexistent sex-life my body was less needy and produced less sperm. But on this occasion, despite my concerns about the mission and with adrenalin still coursing through my veins, I felt like a boxer forced into abstinence until after the fight and now I could barely wait. Orit told the doctor that this was the last time.

As if to etch this last throw of the dice in her memory, Orit asked for only a local anaesthetic, and felt no pain during the procedure. Her bleariness turned into a deep sleep while we were on our way home. I carried her from the car into our bed, saddened by the sight of how thin and frail she had become. The next day I returned to HQ to be debriefed.

The Austrians were sure that this was murder, but fortunately for us Schultz was travelling with forged documents and for two whole days the police thought that there was a romantic background to the killing. The woman strenuously guarded her lover’s real identity and insisted that this was a ‘politically motivated murder’. Only when Schultz’s son called from Vienna and complained that his father was not answering the phone at his hotel and that there had been no contact with him for several days did the police make the crucial connections. Then the whole story broke in the media.

How journalists got to know every detail about our target was beyond me. It was as if they had access to our intelligence files. I suspected that despite the Mossad’s objection to any publicity, they had unofficial channels to the media that carefully leaked details to the press when it suited them. And this time, too, they knew exactly how to publicize the story of who the man was, of the damage he had wrought, and of previous attempts made to warn him. Also published were fairly accurate details of the assassination. It turned out that neighbours had, in fact, noticed a waiting car with three men in it and that at the sound of gunfire Schultz’s friend had turned round and seen us making our getaway. It also transpired that the police followed the footsteps of a mysterious Israeli woman who had booked into Schultz’s hotel ‘at the very same time as he did’ and disappeared immediately after he was killed.

On the morning of the fourth day after my return home, the story was all over page one of the paper delivered to our house with a banner headline above a large photo of Schultz, a picture of the shattered car window, and detailed descriptions, including an identikit picture of Ayala and three silhouettes of the ‘killers’.

We sat around the kitchen table drinking our morning coffee. The phone call from the hospital was due at any moment. Orit was smoking, tensed up. Then she saw the headline. She turned the newspaper towards her and went over the main points of the story.

On Monday evening, which is to say when you weren’t here, she muttered without lifting her eyes from the newspaper. Were you there?

I always knew that if Orit asked me directly, I wouldn’t lie to her. And I said, ‘yes’.

Her expression became threatening and frightened at one and the same time.

You took part in the shooting?

Yes, I answered, lowering my eyes.

Orit stubbed out her cigarette and stood up.

Son of a bitch, she said quietly, you promised me.

Orit, look at who he was.

I see who he was. An arms dealer. And who are you, God? God’s executioner? Who do you people think you are?

Orit…

None of that Orit stuff! now raising her voice. I don’t want to hear any excuses. I was suspicious of you when the story about the Arabs on those islands and the plane broke. I didn’t want to know because I understand that when somebody’s pointing a missile at an aircraft and is about to fire it, there is no option but to shoot them. But an arms dealer? Are you crazy? Don’t you realize that is murder? Not self-defence, not foiling terror, not nothing. It’s simply murder!