The Marsh Angel by Hagai Dagan (ebooks online reader .TXT) 📗

even less so. She would have ended up in some filthy Revolutionary Guard interrogation facility in Tehran. Eventually, we decided to go for something creative and a bit dangerous. We set her up in an apartment in Paris and told her to contact Rajai. Her cover story was that we offered her to work for us but that she wanted to stay loyal to him and provide him with information about us. She was to make him believe that she was a double agent working for him.

What if that was her actual intention?

Of course, we knew that was always a possibility, but keep in mind— the knife hanging over her sister’s head was still very much there. We told her that we were going to scrutinize and verify every bit of intelligence she provided us, so she’d better not try and pull a fast one. We didn’t tell her we were going to bug her apartment in Paris, but she’s a smart enough girl to have figured it out by herself.

I see. And did you bug the apartment?

Yes. But she only met him in hotel rooms. He never agreed to meet her at her place. He suspected her. It was unwise of him to continue seeing her regardless, but I guess she really had him under her spell.

Tamir sat in silence. That’s understandable, he thought to himself.

The man lives on the edge, Oz remarked.

On our part, we had very little at stake, because we told her practically nothing, Musa said. The only thing she knew was how we operated, that is, what she learned simply by the way we conducted our relationship with her. But there’s no way around that. She knows our faces, which of course is less than ideal, but she doesn’t know our names.

I see. So, what happened?

She was in Paris for about a year. We knew for a fact that she did indeed renew her ties with him, but her reports remained pretty vague, and didn’t contain enough solid intelligence. They always met in hotel rooms on short notice, and we never had a chance to get a bug or a camera in there.

You could’ve put a wire on her.

Too risky, Musa said, especially if she was going to take her clothes off. Besides, if we had put something on her, it would’ve been like saying we don’t trust her. That’s not healthy for a relationship. So, we stuck with what she reported from the meetings. A few things she told us were actually verified, but they weren’t of any real consequence. That’s not necessarily her fault, though. It’s reasonable to believe that he suspected her throughout, so he didn’t reveal a lot of information.

Musa lit a cigarette. Tamir wasn’t used to people smoking in offices anymore. You can smoke in here? he asked, almost instinctively.

I can, Musa said. He took a long drag and put out his cigarette. About a year or so in, we started to get the feeling that she might be too shaky an asset, or even that her allegiance might be called into question. In the beginning, we thought she would turn out to be a real gem, but she had enough opportunities to prove herself, which she never did. It’s true that you can retain such an asset for years without getting anything from them, and then all of a sudden they pick up on something priceless. But in her case, as time passed, we felt it was getting too dangerous to leave her there in this kind of limbo. And besides, we needed some kind of solid proof she was truly with us, but never got it. We held a meeting to assess the situation, and decided to give her six more months.

Were you then going to kill her?

There were several options on the table, Musa closed the lid on that question.

Leaving her there in Paris, Oz said, would have been like stepping out of your car to take a piss by a Bedouin village and leaving the keys in the ignition.

Tamir turned his head to look at him. He was surprised to hear such an elaborate metaphor by the Mossad man, and decided to not even think about its social and political meaning.

But about a month later, she went off the radar, Musa said.

She left Paris?

Probably.

Weren’t you tracking her?

Just sampling. She wasn’t under tight surveillance. There’s a limit to our resources. Obviously, her cellphone was tapped, but she left it in her apartment, which she probably left in disguise, and never returned again. We checked every airport, seaport, hospital, and car rental agency. Nothing. Maybe someone rented a car for her, maybe someone from the Palestinian community in Paris drove her somewhere. Or maybe she just took the train. It’s easy to avoid the cameras on a train, and you don’t have to identify yourself when you buy a ticket. We didn’t know where she went. Believe me, it’s not easy to go truly off the grid— be she did just that. The project failed. It was disappointing, but nothing more than that. A lot of projects fail. It’s part of the job.

Okay, but I guess that’s not the end of it, Tamir said, and thought to himself: boy, what a story…

No, Musa said. He got up from his seat and walked over to the window. There was nothing outside but a gloomy Tel-Aviv evening, and some faded lights in the distance. Oz, take it from here, he said and lit another cigarette.

We track all the Iranian embassies in the world, or at least we try to, Oz said in quiet, dry voice which Tamir couldn’t quite decipher. Amir Rajai arrived about a month ago in Vienna. He was stationed in Europe before, but only briefly. Now, he popped up in Vienna as the economic attaché of the embassy. Obviously, that sparked our interest. Two weeks after he arrives, we see his car leaving the embassy. After a while, he steps out of the car, walks a couple