"We're there now. That might also be an appropriate target for you. Nothing will happen if you carefully peel a few ornaments off the plaster. The main thing is that none of our people get hurt."
"And what about the local people?"
"They always get hurt, don't they?" He looked straight at me. "At any rate, our man there will help you decide. Don't do anything before consulting him."
"Our man?" I asked in surprise.
"He's been there for many years, completely independent and experienced. You can rely on him. He'll make contact with you." He smiled. "Presumably, he'll notice you before you identify him."
"Maybe he will and maybe he won't."
He gave me another of his long looks. "The main thing is that you should be careful. He's been there a very long time and has an important position there. In fact, he's one of the two most important people in the village."
I stood up to go.
"There's one more thing..."
"I know," I said with the weariness of an old hand. "We never had this conversation."
He grimaced in displeasure. "Tomorrow you'll receive the usual briefing. The Briefing Officer will tell you only some of the things: how to go there, to wait to be contacted and to be the man's operator. That's your mission in official terms. Try not to reveal that there's anything more..."
If that was the case, I would have to start getting used to things. "What will my cover be?" I asked.
"There won't be any cover. A small army unit is posted there and you'll be attached to it under your real name. Your instructions will also reach you in a way which won't arouse suspicion: telegrams, maybe a messenger..."
When I went out into the corridor it was already evening. Only a few lights were on, and I stood for a while in the darkness and thought about the fact that something had been taken away from me: the atmosphere of conspiracy associated with the mission at Dura lacked the dignity which distinguishes a mere plot from a secret associated with the good of the country.
At home Hannah welcomed me with a smile. There was a rabbit-like crease at the base of her nose, our conciliatory signal. I forced myself to smile back. She brought her cold face, smelling of dishwater and the kitchen, close to mine. I kissed her and escaped to bed.
Later, when the lights went out, I heard her invade the bed with a swish of sheets. I stretched my legs and clenched my teeth so that I would not talk in my sleep. Towards morning her hand wandered over my body and pulled me to her. The light was dim and the erection was not full either. After we had finished I went out onto the balcony. A man was standing in one of the yards showering under a hosepipe. He looked at my nakedness as if it was quite usual. Hungry birds came from the dawn. I went to the kitchen and returned with my hands full of yesterday's bread. Then I retreated into the room and watched as the birds pecked noisily. I knew they would come back the next day and all the following days too. I regarded that as a tiny investment, a kind of gift I was leaving behind for Jonathan.
On my way to the office, after I had set Hannah down at the usual spot, I went to a bookshop. When I emerged I was carrying a bag containing eight books which managed to give me a slight sense of confidence and optimism. I assumed that they would last through the first few days at Dura, until the action began.
At noon I was summoned for one more briefing, this time in the usual format. The various operations officers shook my hand, taking their leave. In their eyes were the astonishment and pity reserved for fools; the war was already considered a folly. Only I saw it as the best opportunity I could hope for.
CHAPTER TWO
In the past, borders have been my fun and games. They excite me. All the bureaucratic arrangements, delays involving currency exchange, customs declarations, passport control - they're the toys I play with. The game is called: 'Forget the Name.' The rules are always the same: I look straight at the officials holding my documents and in my mind mix up all the names I've had in my lifetime. After a few seconds I am no longer sure who I am. Lacking any identity, I look down at the passport handed to me beneath the glass partition or grill and turn away from the control counter. After two or three paces, I open the binding carefully: on the first page is the picture of a man. Beneath it is his name. I read the letters one by one, clasping them to my consciousness. A great sense of relief floods through me, the relief of someone who has been liberated from a fateful forgetfulness. I push the passport into the inner pocket of my jacket and stride gently out into the foreign country, aware of the warm contact of the new identity resting on my heart.
Crossing into Lebanon was different, hasty, devoid of ceremony, like forcing a shaky back door. A military policeman with the face of a boy glanced at my documents. There was no time for games. Soon afterwards, as we were driving east up into the mountains, I looked back at the vanishing border fence. I felt cheated: there was no border, no false name.
The trip took a long time. Most of the time I dozed, thereby escaping the driver's chatter. Every time I opened my eyes we still seemed to be in the same spot, the sky the same color, the same shades of earth, the same gray road which wound around the mountainous, summer-scorched terrain. After midday we reached a military base, too late for lunch. In the back of a field kitchen we were treated to egg sandwiches and bitter coffee. Soldiers had queued up nearby and were waiting for a mobile telephone to open. I was seized by a powerful urge to phone home. That hardly ever happens on my trips. This time it was essential.
Jonathan picked up the receiver. He said, "Hallo" once, then again. I called his name and he answered, "Hallo" I spoke to him: "We didn't manage to talk, but I wanted you to know I miss you..."
"Hallo."
"I'll write to you straight away, as soon as I arrive."
Jonathan called "hallo" for the last time, then put the phone down.
When we returned to the road the sun was already behind us, casting shadows in front of us. We were not alone. Once or twice we overtook a convoy, laden with clusters of people and household effects. Refugees. In one of the wadis we saw a group of armed men. As we drew near they seemed to disappear into the cool, afternoon air. Barricades, set up at mountain passes and manned by silent men, opened as we approached and were closed behind us. From the courtyards of houses by the roadside, hastily armed vehicles emerged, accompanied us for a while, then turned back on their tracks.
"They want to make sure we don't stay in the area," the driver explained. "When evening falls they'll start shooting at one another."
We arrived as the last light was fading. As we climbed, the slopes were already dark, but high above us the serrated peak of a cliff was still rosy. As we rounded a bend we could discern houses. They were ranged along the ridge of the abyss as if along the quay of a port. Their windows looked out over the expanse with the same expectancy you see in coastal towns. The car groaned as we rushed up the road, which was now narrowing. Figures in dark clothing stopped to look at us. We passed beneath an arch and hooted in front of a chain stretched across a gateway. It dropped down and we came to a stop in the enclosed courtyard of an imposing house. In the distance a church tower chimed. The valleys, even further away, replied with a volley of firing.
I went through two glass doors, dragging my kitbag up pockmarked stairs to the top floor of the building. A rat-faced young man wearing an undershirt was sitting behind an enormous desk.
"My name is Simon," I said.
He looked at me in surprise. "Scheckler. I'm the staff sergeant and the person in charge here. Who do you belong to?"
"Intelligence."
He looked around, fixing his gaze on a row of locked cupboards. "They did tell us something a week ago..." His small, searching eyes lingered on my kitbag, assessing its weight. "All right," he decided, "we'll find you somewhere to sleep."
We went out into the corridor and he accompanied me along the faded carpet. Two or three dusty bulbs shone from a crystal chandelier. I wondered what load the electricity system here could take. Scheckler opened the door t
o a small room which was occupied primarily by a camp bed and a cupboard.
"When this place was a hotel," he explained, "this was the linen store."
After he had gone I threw my kitbag onto the bed, inspected the empty cupboard and went over to the window; there was a vehicle repair shop in the back yard. The car which had brought me had been jacked up and its engine hood was open. Further on there was a wire fence with a garden behind it, where beds of daisies and roses had been overrun with tents and tin huts. Banners of laundry hanging on a washing line shone in the darkness, giving me a sense of satisfaction: there were many witnesses here whom I could impress with my achievement. Suddenly, a brick dislodged from the window ledge and landed on the floor of the courtyard. Dust and the smell of mold rose up from the hollow left in the wall. I closed the blind with a bang. After a moment I opened it again. The man who was supposed to contact me might be watching me at this very moment. I lit a cigarette and stood in the room, until I finished it, at a slight distance from the window. Then I went down to the entrance, where several drivers were arguing around a backgammon board, an upturned flowerpot serving as their table. They fell silent and watched me as I went out of the door. I peered up at the lintel over the main entrance, where 'Villa Athenaeum' was engraved. A thick layer of military whitewash covered the inscription, as if to emphasize the difference between that improvised barracks and the beautiful building in the photograph I had seen in Tel Aviv.
Scheckler, still wearing only an undershirt, appeared from nowhere and circled me as if ready to strike.
"What exactly will your job here be?”
I asked about the tents in the garden.
"Refugees," he replied and opened his mouth to repeat his question.
"Why with us, of all people?"
"They feel protected here."
I escaped up the stairs. He came after me. His armpits smelt foul. There was a heat rash on his chest.
"Have you been here long?" I asked uncomfortably.
"Since the first day."
"And what's this place like?"
"A hole, like the others: a church, a few houses, refugees. Boring."
"And the inhabitants?"
"They're alright. At the beginning they threw rice and flowers at us. They've calmed down now."
I went into the room and thumped the bed. Dust rose up from the mattress. Scheckler lingered in the doorway: "If you're interested in a watch or transistor radio, I can get it for you cheap, without taxes..."
"Thanks, maybe some other time." Gently I edged him across the doorstep and closed the door.
That night I couldn't sleep. I took the books out of my kitbag and arranged them on the marble windowsill. There was an old novel by Graham Greene, some new books in French and the collected short stories of an Israeli author which I had bought because of the blurb on the back cover which promised 'an encounter with a mature and many faceted writer.'
What should I begin with? Which of the books was powerful enough to take me out of the strange sense of oppression that this place cast? In the end I lay on my back in the dark, so tense it hurt. I listened to the noises of the walls, the firing in the distance and the steady murmur of the refugees in the garden. At the third watch I took a pen and paper out of my kitbag. 'Jonathan, my son,' I wrote at the top of the first page and crossed it out immediately, 'Dear Jonathan,' I wrote on the next page and fell asleep.
***
Morning found me fully dressed. I got up slowly and went over to the window. The houses of the village were enclosed in the silence of Sunday. Between the tents of the refugees some children were standing in a long row organized by a tall, thin man in a suit. Their little behinds were turned to the Athenaeum, as if in a strange ceremony of humiliation.
I went to the bathroom and bent under a stream of water. Why did I sense whatever was strange and worrying about every place? I was dying for some coffee. When I went downstairs, to a large, gloomy room which was the dining room, someone shouted at me from the kitchen window, "It's closed now, come at twelve." Four small, hard apples had been left on one of the tables. I stuffed them into my pocket and went back to the corridor, where someone emerged from a room with a notice on the door saying, 'Communications. No entry.' on the door. I opened the door nevertheless. The duty officer, behind a high counter, was dialing an endless number.
"I'm from Intelligence," I said. "If cables come..."
"Whatever comes I give to Scheckler," he replied without looking at me.
Through the arched window the line of children wound around the grounds until it reached the barbed-wire fence separating the garden from the Athenaeum. The duty officer glanced at it and began speaking into the mouthpiece. A command was given and all the children opened and closed their mouths soundlessly.
I went outside. By daylight the Villa Athenaeum made me feel uncomfortable. It was impossible: buttressed at the front and wide open at the back, splendid wherever the army had not yet reached and heartbreakingly shabby where it had. No object bore any relation to another, just as no event bore any relation to the next. I wandered around the walls of the building somewhat mistrustingly. Somewhere in this mélange someone would try to contact me, and I would not know until the moment he actually touched my shoulder.
At the back of the courtyard, in a nook meant for lovers, I found a cracked stone bench. With my hand I brushed off a layer of dust and dry leaves and sat down. Beyond the fence the man in the suit was calling out words and the children were responding. They were of almost every age and fervently enthusiastic. I wondered if Jonathan had ever stood on parade like that and responded to someone, shouting at the top of his voice without doubting. For a moment I nearly memorized the details of the incident, to tell him or, better, to write. Then something sane and sensible reminded me how difficult, almost impossible, it was for a father who had voluntarily missed his son's childhood years to gain his love when he becomes a young man.
I took an apple out of my pocket and bit into it. The child nearest to me turned his head and squinted at me. Then he detached himself from the row and came over to the fence. One by one several others joined him, their little feet trampling over grass run wild. The older ones waved and called out in Hebrew, "Shalom, shalom." The younger ones were more practical and pointed at the apple. The man in the suit stopped handing to open mouths whatever he was carrying in a small cardboard suitcase and also came over to the fence.
"What's the matter with you?" he asked the children in a rural Arabic which did not fit his respectable appearance. "Are you trying to run away from my vitamins?"
He persuaded the children to return to the row, stroking their heads affectionately, with the complicity of the helpless. One by one they left the fence, their gazes fixed on my mouth, which was full of unchewed food. Embarrassed, I felt the apples in my pocket. How could I divide three and a half apples between twenty children? I looked at the man. Our glances met and lingered on one another for a long moment, in a flash of communication.
It was too early to draw conclusions. I looked down. My ears picked up the murmuring and background noises of children being put in line and responding unwillingly. When I looked around once more they had all joined the long row again and, when the order was given, opened their mouths wide. Now I could also see the big, round tablets the man was placing on their tongues. He did it mechanically, his gaze fixed on some distant point above their heads. Now I had no doubt: he was trying to catch my eye.
I got up and strode over to the fence. The man approached too, walking along the row of pink tongues. I allowed myself to smile. Not really, not openly, just a miniscule relaxation of the face muscles. His face remained impassive.
That could be expected, too. The relations between an agent and his operator are so delicate and problematic as to be nearly as fragile as those between homosexual lovers. And just as in a partnership of that kind each can identify the other man's love beyond his distress, the agent and his operator have a sixth sense for one anot
her which is nourished by the secret they share. I bent a few barbs in the fence, the rusty wire breaking between my fingers. The man's face bore a worried look although his hands continued doling out the pills at the usual rate. I drew back. He also retreated along the row of children.
From past experience I could imagine a note left in the dead of night in the guard's hut at the entrance; a phrase whispered in my ear as I walked along the street or an innocent messenger, perhaps a child, who would stand in the doorway of my room. All further thought gave the incident additional dimensions of logic. Something in the glances we had exchanged was proof of a connection, and ranging the children in a row near the fence had been intended to provide an opportunity.
I went back into the building. From the kitchen came the smells of dinner. In the dining room Scheckler waved to me from a table close to the kitchen. The way he gestured to the chair beside him hinted, like everything he said or did, at a possible profit.
"This is the new Intelligence man," he announced. A few of the people sitting with him nodded while continuing to chew.
The garage supervisor, a man with gray hair and a faded face, smiled and said, "Nice to meet you."
In the middle of the table, in a space clear of plates, some telexes were piled. Scheckler read through them as he spooned up his soup. His eyes flickered rapidly from the paper to the face of the garage head and back. He spat out details about spare parts that had been removed from stock and vehicles due to arrive for repairs. For a moment I envied him for the simple, accessible materials of which his life consisted.
"Here," he said, as if reading my mind. "One for you."
I smoothed the edge of the paper with two fingers, wondering how the details of the mission had been concealed and whether they had left me enough time to prepare the explosive before I had to act. But the cable was not even coded and merely instructed me openly and drily to trace someone by the name of Anton Khamis who lived in the area and transfer him immediately to a detention camp.