Mishka Ben-David - Forbidden Love in St. Petersburg

Before Anna returned, Udi came into the shop for the second time. Now there were no customers present.

Listen carefully, he said, leaning towards me. Alex, from the Russian department, is at this very moment sitting close to Anna and her controller in a restaurant. He’s sent me an urgent SMS. Our activity has been exposed, and revealed as being connected to you. You understand what that means as far as you’re concerned?

From the expression on my face Udi saw that I didn’t understand.

He again pulled out his mobile phone which was vibrating.

Look, Alex is SMSing me again. They’ve decided to arrest you, he read out from the screen, and Anna will also be investigated. It’s possible that the arrest will be immediate. Various thoughts ran through my mind threatening to pierce holes in it.

But Udi interrupted my ruminations. He put an envelope from a travel company with an airline ticket and a passport on my desk.

This is a ticket for a flight to Copenhagen in three hours’ time. It’s possible that in the next three hours they won’t realize that you’ve gone and won’t look for you at the airport. Just in case they do look for you there, you also have a new passport here with a different name and an entry stamp. Leave now. It’s your only hope.

I got up and looked at him. I’ll leave if you also get Anna out of here.

We’ve thought about that, and we are making plans to do it. Get in touch with her from the airport and explain that to her.

Shocked and confused I yielded to Udi’s hand on my shoulder pushing me gently towards the coat hanger.

Come, we’ll continue to talk in the car, he said. Let’s go now.

As we came out, I looked up and down the length of the street but saw no sign of Anna. A car stopped at the end of the pedestrianised street and its doors were flung open. Udi lowered my head as, with mixed feelings, I entered the car. He closed the door, got into the front seat and the car sped off.

Boaz drove and Hagai sat in the back beside me.

Perhaps we should stop by my apartment so I can take a few things from there, I said to Udi.

You have things there that are worth risking your freedom for? he replied.

It’s a bit suspicious appearing like this for a flight, without anything, I said.

In fact, I simply wanted a bit more time to shed some light on the fast-moving developments, to try and understand what was happening before deciding what my next step should be.

We’ll buy you a travel case, so you won’t look any different from any other businessman, Udi said, knowing perfectly well that stopping at the apartment could lead me to change my mind.

Boaz drew up to the entrance to the international departures terminal. To my surprise Udi and Hagai got out of the car with me.

We’re also flying, Udi informed me.

Of course. He wasn’t going to allow his prey to escape. The two took me directly to the counter of the Danish airline company.

I’m going to call Anna, I announced when we’d gone through check-in, but before reaching border control.

I’m sorry I have to show you this, Udi said, and handed me his mobile. I don’t think there’s any point in you calling.

On the screen was a new message from Alex: Paul’s arrest is planned for this evening, when the two come out of Eugene Onegin . Anna will make out she’s being arrested against her will. They parted amicably and she’s on her way back to the shop.

It arrived while we were on our way here, Udi said, and I was hoping not to have to show it to you. I don’t think there’s any point in you calling her. It will merely reveal your whereabouts. They will be sitting on the line and will trace the telephone you’re calling from. But even if they don’t, she’ll hear the airport’s public announcements in the background.

The few words on the screen hit me like a succession of hammer blows. Arrest. She’ll make out. Amicably. But more than anything else Eugene Onegin. How could they know?

I stood there, at a loss what to do. Based on everything Udi had shown me and told me, could I really cut and run like this, leaving Anna behind? The voices and pictures were convincing and so too were the words on the screen. Collectively, the efforts made by Yoav, Levanon, Udi and their teams were impressive. But deep down I didn’t believe all of that. My eyes saw what they saw, my ears heard what they heard. My head says that yes, Anna is reporting on me to Russian intelligence–as has everybody who’s been approached by them since the days of the Cheka, the NKVD, the KGB, up to this very day. But my heart does not believe it. My heart knows that Anna truly loves me and that I love her with every fibre of my being, and that our six months together have been the most exciting, most profound and most real I had ever lived through.

But how could they have known about Eugene Onegin this evening, if not from her? I couldn’t think of any other explanation. This giant wave crashed into the breakwater with overpowering ferocity and destroyed it. Udi saw my slumped shoulders and put his arm around them. Yogev, he said, calling me by my real name, I know what you’re going through. I think I know what’s going through your mind. Think about your options and go with the worst-case scenario. We haven’t made a mistake. But if Anna has a good explanation you’ll invite her to Tel Aviv or Canada or Jamaica. In a few hours’ time you’ll be a free man, you’ll be able to do whatever you want. However, if you make a mistake now, then in a few hours’ time you’ll be a prisoner and you’ll spend the next ten or twenty years in the Lubyanka without Anna. And if you ever get out of there you’ll be a mere shadow of the man you once were.

Udi helped me get things into focus. I still didn’t completely believe him and felt that there was something fishy about the pictures and the recordings. Even in that terrible and confusing moment I understood that all of this could have been a ploy taken straight from the movies–to get me back home without kidnapping me on Russian soil. Nonetheless, he was right in saying that I had to decide on the basis of the worst possible outcome. So, if there was even a kernel of truth in what I’d been shown, the right thing for me to do was to get out of Russia. After that I’d be able to decide what to do next.

I’m coming, but on one condition, I said. As I told you before, I want you to extricate Anna from there. In an hour or two she’ll understand that something has happened to me and will begin to take some action. Perhaps she herself will run off. I want somebody to go to the shop in the next hour, two hours tops, give her a ticket and say or write that I’m waiting for her in Tel Aviv. If you can issue a passport for her, all the better. I have passport pictures of her in my wallet.

We’ll give her a plane ticket, Udi said. I’m already instructing Boaz to get going with this. We won’t write Tel Aviv but we’ll leave her with an international telephone number which she can call and which will reach us. I’m willing to issue a passport for her, but that’s not a matter of a few hours, and it will be done in Israel.

I had no more serious arguments for delaying my departure. Nonetheless, I went up to a nearby kiosk and asked for a cup of coffee. The obstinacy I felt deep inside me turned my legs to lead. Udi and Hagai exchanged glances.

Paul, we’re going to miss the flight, Udi said. He picked up the case which Hagai had bought for me in one of the airport shops, and with his arm around me we walked towards the border control booth.

By the time the plane took off I was emotionally dead. Udi tapped me gently on the shoulder. Just like an era ago, at the end of the Hong Kong operation, I flinched at his touch. I gazed out of the window until the snow-covered buildings of St Petersburg disappeared behind me. We flew over the frozen Gulf of Finland and in the swirling fog inside me were sharp and painful needles of sadness and regret surrounded by a sea of confusion and uncertainty of a kind I had never ever felt.