Mishka Ben-David - Forbidden Love in St. Petersburg

Why are you so quiet, Anna asked as she brushed her hand against my cheek and the lump in my throat melted away as if it had never been. I only had to be sure that it wasn’t draining into my eyes and turned my head away from her in case, despite my strenuous effort, an unwanted tear should surface. But Anna held my chin and redirected my gaze towards her.

Our eyes locked. She looked very earnest, and a glimmer of anxiety appeared in her beautiful, penetrating and, for once, lustreless eyes, which were peering straight into me. The laughter lines in the corners of her mouth had also vanished.

Paul, I don’t know how to tell you this, she began after a while. I didn’t think that anyone new would come into my life after Mikhail. I was prepared to live out the rest of my days alone. It didn’t occur to me to go looking, and I certainly didn’t think that I would find someone who could occupy a place in my heart. She clutched my hand and waited for a moment as if trying to calm herself down.

I don’t really understand what happened between us yesterday. I didn’t plan to take you home with me after the concert. It happened, it seems, because we both needed it to happen. I’m glad it did. I’ve had the first hours of happiness since my husband died. But it’s not part of where I’m heading. I don’t know what your hopes are for the future, and perhaps it’s important for us to talk about it.

She’s had hours of happiness? With me?

I don’t think I’m ready to talk about it, I said. You do something to me that I don’t yet know how to describe. I know it mustn’t be a fleeting romance. I feel it can’t be a fleeting romance. But I don’t even know how much time, from a business point of view, I will want to stay here. It never crossed my mind to link my future to a Russian woman.

And what are you ready to talk about? Anna asked quietly.

I really don’t know. And perhaps it’s too early to know.

Indeed I didn’t know. An attachment to a woman here would be a millstone around my neck so far as my operational capability was concerned; it would put the cover story at risk, infuriate HQ and would, inevitably, be severed when I returned to Israel. And yet, I wanted her.

We had a lovely evening, I said, which, to my regret, didn’t end in a particularly successful way and I’ll be happy if it doesn’t mark the end of our relationship.

Stop being childish about our night together. I’m a grown woman, Paul. I’m not searching for what a young girl would look for. I was happy with you yesterday. And I also don’t want it to end, but it’s important to me that you understand that I, too, don’t know where it could lead.

So we’re on the same page, I smiled ruefully.

Vashkirova served our meals, adding a bottle of house wine without even bothering to ask.

I poured the wine into the two glasses. Let’s drink to uncertainty? I proposed.

We’ll drink to our friendship wherever it may lead, Anna responded. Once more wiser and more sensitive than me.

As we sipped our wine my heart ached. Friendship? I don’t just want the friendship of this beautiful woman. I want her love. But there was no point in my saying so.

You are morose again, Anna said and looked at me with compassion. I want to hug you, she whispered, stroked the palm of my hand and clutched it tightly.

We ate in silence. Suddenly we were in such a different place from where we had been just the day before, at this very time. But the path on which we had taken our first cautious steps appeared to be a dead end. Hopeless.

Is your office closed this weekend? Anna suddenly asked.

Yes, I answered, intrigued.

How about us going to visit the graves of Dostoyevsky and Tchaikovsky?

She saw the look of hesitation on my face.

Or we could just wander around the city; there must be plenty of beautiful places that you still haven’t seen.

I’m flying out tomorrow morning, and it looks like I won’t be back until the beginning of next week.

Again? What a pity!

The business world makes its own demands, I said and thought I sounded like an absolute phony as I said it. What am I trying to do, impress her as a hustling businessman?

Where to this time? she asked.

Tajikistan, I said, and her almond eyes became almost round at hearing my answer.

Tajikistan! And what did you lose there?

I didn’t lose, I found. Another big customer who wants me to be there when my equipment arrives.

Shame, but it will at least be warmer there. Didn’t you catch a cold yesterday?

I was shivering all the way, but nothing more than that.

I didn’t think Anna would invite me to her apartment again that night and indeed she didn’t. I knew it would be untactful to invite her to mine after she’d explained how she wanted to avoid speeding up our relations and had toasted our ‘friendship’.

And so we parted at the entrance to the restaurant with a kiss to both cheeks, each going our separate ways. I felt that her heart, like mine, was heavy.

With great difficulty I returned to being a spy. A twin engine Tupolev plane belonging to Pulkovo Airlines flew me to the small airfield on the outskirts of Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan. As we came down to land I took a series of photos through the plane’s window of the buildings to the right of the landing strip. From the gangway, with only the camera’s lens peeping out of my coat pocket, I took a number of wide panoramic shots of the entire terminal area. Then, from the window of a vintage bus that took me and the few other passengers to the arrivals building, I sneaked a few more pictures of the area where the executive jets were parked. That’s where the distinguished Iranians would be landing were they to arrive in a private plane.

At the front of the airport’s central terminal was a statue of an astronaut, with the control tower rising skywards from the building’s upper floor. Once in the arrivals hall I continued with my covert filming, while trying, also at the same time, to memorize the details and find the VIP lounge. If HQ decides it doesn’t want to hit the aircraft itself, it may be possible to get at the senior Revolutionary Guards in the VIP area. But I couldn’t find such a place. I left the terminal building and asked for a taxi that would take me to the In-Tourist Hotel in the city centre.

Dushanbe turned out to be a not very large city with its older neighbourhoods built in a way that made them resemble a series of small family encampments with a courtyard at the centre, an idea I’d come across in the hutongs of Beijing. The post-World War II Soviet influence could be seen in the clusters of four-five- and six-floor residential buildings dotted across the town. There wasn’t a proper ‘downtown’ and most businesses were conducted from offices in Dunaki Street which is where my hotel was also located.

The company that had bought the canning production line from me was in the Industrial Area, a little out of town, and there I headed in the afternoon. I set aside the following day to continue the gathering of intelligence data and planned to get to the governmental buildings, the parliament, and every other site the Iranians were likely to visit.

Within two days I had practically all the intelligence information that would be of interest to HQ, including data relating to the extent of Iran’s penetration of the country and the activities of the security services. Iranians were everywhere, taking control of businesses, buying real estate, signing contracts with governmental agencies and with leading private companies. Dushanbe–itself a Farsi name meaning Monday, named after the Monday market held there when it was still a village–was turning day by day into an Iranian satellite. The owners of the canning plant, who thought it appropriate to exhibit a pro-Russian position in their conversations with me, were happy to enlarge on this trend, and on the helplessness of the authorities and the security services to halt it.