Mishka Ben-David - Forbidden Love in St. Petersburg

French was once the language of the intelligentsia in Russia and there are remnants of that in the educational system, my sweetheart told me. In high school, as well as at university, that was the first foreign language I studied. Before English and German. But I knew it was a language you weren’t fond of so I didn’t think it right to flaunt it.

You have any other skills I should know about? I asked.

I know a bit of German, and I was a ballet dancer when I weighed twenty kilos less. And you wouldn’t believe it but I once trained in judo. If you want I’ll show you some exercises at home tonight.

And at home Anna did indeed show me some throws from the hip and shoulder exercises as well as a number of pinning moves on the carpet. It turned into one of the wildest lovemaking episodes we ever had, the only one during which I literally ripped her clothes off as we wrestled with one another, both screaming as we twisted and turned and when I came into her. Behind our screams, and behind our grappling and throttling and the pain we inflicted on each other, was the vague understanding that neither of us wanted to allow into our consciousness. My realization that something in what Yoav and Levanon had told me was right, and her recognition that someone was snooping around us, that there was something bad in the air. The feeling of an approaching end that hovered over our love proved to be a highly intoxicating aphrodisiac. We made love again and again. We moaned in a mixture of pain and pleasure and we cried, our screams and weeping preventing us from voicing what deep deep down in our gut we could already feel.

LEVANON WANTS TO know if you have a message for him, asked the young man who came up to me in the street the following morning. In a fit of anger and frustration I punched him in the shoulder and shouted, fuck off you bastard. The surprised lad stumbled backwards and nearly lost his balance. He stopped following me. My answer had been clear.

Levanon watched the spat from a slow moving car behind me. Having understood my response he took off for home. Late that night he presented himself at Udi’s house and in the morning both were summoned to see the head of the Mossad.

As far as I’m concerned, our patience with him has run out, Netzach said when he’d heard Levanon’s account. There is a limit to everything, and I don’t know what price we’ll have to pay for the fact that he already knows we are onto him and are determined to get him back to Israel. It’s clear that to kidnap him will now be much more complicated. Have you a plan to show me?

Udi and Levanon glanced at each other in embarrassment. We began to work on one, assigned an intelligence officer and a project manager to the job, but the plan wasn’t completed because Levanon left for the Gulf, Udi said.

That’s not good enough, the chief responded. Before the end of the evening I want you to present an outline plan to me summarizing every step, I want a team that will begin to train by tomorrow morning, and I want to see a dry run the day after tomorrow. The team must be ready to leave within three days at most. If you need infrastructure personnel in Russia to get apartments, vehicles, a plane, a yacht, whatever–I want them to be ready to leave tomorrow after I approve the plan tonight in principle.

Levanon cleared his throat. I know that we’ve tried and so far failed to convince him, but I still don’t think we need to kidnap him.

And do what? Your powers of persuasion haven’t exactly proved themselves, the chief said tetchily.

That’s right, but it did something to him. I saw it on his face when I spoke to him about Anna and when I showed him the pictures.

I heard the same thing from that young chap, what’s his name? said the chief.

Yoav, said Udi.

Exactly, from Yoav. He also saw all sorts of signs of a response on Paul’s face. But the bottom line is that he threw you out of there and saw your guy off by pushing him away, isn’t that right?

Nonetheless, I’m asking for permission, in parallel with the preparations we’re making for a kidnapping, to also propose some additional options and then you’ll decide between them.

What additional options? I won’t accept anything that means postponing Paul’s arrival here, which as far as I’m concerned has to happen within a week from today at the outside.

Levanon and I spent half the night fine-tuning the various options, Udi said. We both think that what Paul needs to be convinced is some sort of proof that Anna really is a KGB woman and then he’ll leave.

What do you want to do, show him the records of the meetings with Cotton Field?

No, we thought of cooking up proof that Anna is what we think she is and not what he thinks, Udi said somewhat uneasily.

In conjunction with the psychological warfare department?

We wanted to do it with our people on the ground.

Let me have a plan tonight for that as well, the chief concluded.

In the evening the head of the Mossad approved the two plans of action presented to him by Udi, Levanon, and the division’s head of intelligence. The plan to kidnap Paul, and the plan to incriminate Anna.

I intend to present these to the prime minister at our weekly meeting tomorrow, Netzach said. Prepare a one-page summary for me of the operational order for kidnapping and on another page the operational order for incrimination. To include a paragraph on possible risks and a summary of the known intelligence. And start training, he said in parting.

Udi wavered for a while about who should be the team’s commander. Boaz had accumulated experience and knew the territory, but was dark-skinned and wouldn’t blend in well with the locals of St Petersburg. In the end, however, Udi decided to rely on the icy cold weather that required people to wrap themselves up from head to toe, and assigned Boaz to the job.

Early in the morning, eight operatives reported to the operational squad’s training facility. Also present in the briefing room were HQ personnel involved in the operation. Members of the team sat on chairs facing a big screen with Udi standing in front of them.

I want, first of all, to emphasize the sensitivity of the operation and its highly classified nature, Udi began. We are dealing with an Israeli citizen, and not just any Israeli, but one of us and not only one of us but a skilled operative whom most of you know. He is suspected of crossing the line and is now in some sort of contact with the FSB–the KGB in a new guise–and particularly with one of the female workers there. On the face of it, this is a romantic relationship, but we don’t know what lies beneath the surface.

His audience listened attentively and Udi went on to present the background to the operation and its objectives.

I don’t yet know what we will and what we won’t be authorized to do. In the meantime we’re preparing for two possibilities, one decidedly less attractive than the other. Kidnapping is in all circumstances a complicated action and in this case five times more so. Firstly, because it involves one of our own whom we don’t want to harm. So he’s not to be drugged with any fast-acting substances, nor is he to be subjected to violence of the sort that might injure him. Secondly, it’s highly complicated because this is a skilled man, at least as skilled as any one of you. Even if he’s slightly out of shape it will be difficult to overpower him. Thirdly, because he’s expecting us. He knows that we’ve followed him and that we’re determined to get him back home. So it will be much more difficult to sneak up on him, or lead him into a trap. Fourthly, there’s the arena itself. Russia is not a target country but you must not treat it as a friendly country. St Petersburg may be as beautiful as Paris or London, but it is neither Paris nor London and there are drunks and Mafiosi who run the city from sunset till dawn. Russia is a police state and that will make every move of ours there difficult–from the renting of a car and an apartment all the way to crossing borders. And fifthly, there is the complication of the female involved being a KGB woman, obviously alert and aware, and our man is liable to be under some sort of surveillance.