Mishka Ben-David - Forbidden Love in St. Petersburg

My impression is that this is a genuine literary woman and a skilled and learned bookseller. I allow myself to add, Roman concluded, that she is also very pleasant.

I warned you, the chief told Udi on the phone when he’d read out Roman’s report. Don’t let the guy anywhere near her, I don’t need another love sick adolescent on my hands.

But just a minute, what about what the report actually says. It sounds pretty convincing, doesn’t it? Udi tried to assert himself. But the chief wasn’t persuaded.

The Russian educational system is possibly less screwed up than ours and the lady may be very knowledgeable. And may be, by chance, she might have studied literature and philosophy before enlisting in the KGB. None of that must be allowed to delay Levanon’s travel plans.

Meanwhile, in response to the clarifications passed on to him, ‘Cotton Field’ reported from his sources in the FSB that Anna Petrovna Starzava, an employee of the organization, had opened a shop with a man suspected of being a spy.

I hope that puts to bed any doubts you may still have, Netzach said to Udi. And stop operating like someone suffering from heartburn. Change gear and hit the accelerator. We have to cut short all these interim steps and produce results. I want to see him here in two weeks, tops. We are playing with fire.

For over a week I didn’t see any of the Mossad people anywhere near me. I’d almost managed to suppress the memory of my traumatic encounter with Yoav, and after I’d convinced myself that a mistake had been made in the Mossad, I returned almost completely to my routine. The temperature in the second half of January plummeted to minus twenty. Even those who dressed in the warmest clothes felt stabs of freezing air piercing their eyes, threatening to remove them from their sockets. Every bit of exposed skin ached and only those who absolutely had to came into the shop. Over the previous two days the weather had also been very stormy and Anna and I brought food from the house so that we wouldn’t have to go out to a restaurant. We took advantage of a time when no one was in the shop to eat. It gave us a new sense of intimacy and we considered making it a regular habit during especially cold winter days. But on that particular day Anna fancied a hot soup and went out to a nearby restaurant. I sat at my desk eating the sandwich we’d made at home.

Immediately after Anna left, in came a tall man wearing a woollen coat that went down to below his knees, fur overshoes, and a fur hat with ear muffs. His mouth and nose were covered by a scarf and a pair of shades protected his eyes. He looked around and then slowly unwrapped the scarf. As he ambled towards me he removed his glasses and then his hat. Only at that moment did I recognize him. I felt a breach opening in my heart.

Levanon smiled. A smile that communicated such closeness and warmth that it could have made me lose control of my senses altogether. I felt the empathy and fondness slipping through the breach, diving down into my gut, and my stomach muscles tightening to fend off the sudden and disarming invasion of my being. From his expression it was clear that he’d noticed the look on my face tighten.

I’m here in friendship, he said in Hebrew tinged with a French accent that mimicked a well-known Israeli TV comedian and would have got an automatic response from virtually every Israeli. I was almost seduced, just a second away from responding in a similar accent and then regained my composure.

I beg your pardon, sir?

Levanon smiled and sat on the edge of my desk, towering over me. Hi Paul, he said, stretching out his hand.

My hands kept holding on to the sandwich. There was no offer of a handshake from me.

Yogev, after half a year of not seeing one another you don’t even shake my hand?

Sir, I don’t understand a word you’re saying. Do you mind getting off my desk?

As he told me later, this particular sentence prompted a great many laughs when Levanon repeated it at HQ on his return. He said that momentarily he’d even asked himself whether this wasn’t a case of mistaken identity and that perhaps there was simply an extraordinary resemblance between me and an innocent bookseller in St Petersburg that had misled everybody.

The desk, from which Levanon did indeed elegantly remove himself, was my last defence, if not the actual battlefield on which my future would be determined.

Levanon decided to take maximum advantage of the lull in the shop. He came through the gap between my desk and Anna’s, sat in her chair, and pulled it towards me.

What do you think you’re doing? I asked, raising my voice. But Levanon was quick to silence me.

Cut the bullshit Paul, he said, now raising his voice in turn and then switching back to Hebrew. You don’t want to return to Israel, you insist on staying here, you want to claim that Anna isn’t a spy catcher–OK, but let’s talk about it. Stop evading the issue because if you do the next stage will be much more painful.

I shook my head. I wasn’t about to give in and yet he’d managed to take the wind out of my sails. Sorry, sorry but you have to leave, I said.

I knew that Levanon was right. I knew he’d come ‘in friendship’, that talking things over with him was the correct thing to do and that, if the Mossad was indeed determined, then the next stage would be twice as painful. It was also right for me to hear what he had to say about Anna. But I wasn’t capable of conducting this dialogue. I felt I had to hold on to Paul’s persona, the Canadian businessman who’d opened a bookstore in St Petersburg with his sweetheart. If I allowed the smallest of cracks to open in the wrapping around this persona it would crumble completely.

Levanon’s handsome face now had an expression of real pain on it. Even of empathy.

Enough of these games, Yogev, he quite literally pleaded. You’re up to your neck in it. We have reliable sources who’ve told us that Anna Petrovna Starzava is employed by the FSB as a spy catcher. They have information that you are a spy. She was assigned to you and I don’t know what happened after that.

I said nothing and Levanon took advantage of my attentiveness. It’s possible that she was convinced by your cover story and stopped spying on you. It’s also possible that she’s still spying on you. She may have already exposed you and the only reason you’re not in jail is because they’re trying to recruit you. And perhaps she’s really fallen in love with you independently of her assignment. Perhaps you both think you can spend the rest of your lives here. But that’s not going to happen, Paul, Yogev, whichever you prefer. We are determined to bring you back home, because we can’t allow ourselves to let you fall into their hands. I hope you believe me. I haven’t dived fifty degrees –from plus thirty in the Gulf to minus twenty here–just to trick you. And it would be a thousand times better if you leave of your own accord. You can regard the last sentence as friendly advice, even a friendly pleading.

There was silence. I knew I didn’t have much time. Customers could come in at any moment. Anna could come back. I neither wanted to, nor could I, respond to his appeal, however sincerely meant. The transition back and forth between my two worlds seemed impossible to me. At that moment the only chance I saw was to entrench myself behind my cover story. I knew that this was something that happens even during the training course when a trainee is told not to drop his cover under any circumstances. He’s arrested and interrogated but then, when he’s released from the police station, he fails to realize that the exercise is over and refuses to abandon his cover. Like the Japanese soldiers who emerged from their holes in the ground thirty years after the war had ended. I also knew of a case in which this phenomenon required psychiatric intervention. To say nothing of operatives who fell in love with their new identity and who, when they returned home and had to give up their cover, suffered serious mental problems.