A Spy in Exile

OXFORDSHIRE, FEBRUARY 2015

Ya’ara stopped about a kilometer and a half from the boundary of the estate and parked the rental car so that it couldn’t be seen from the road, at the start of a countryside hiking trail alongside a cold and fast-flowing stream. Someone seeing and taking an interest in the car would assume its occupants were avid nature enthusiasts who had gone out for a winter stroll. Even in the throes of the icy season, the landscape was still beautiful in its own harsh and bleak way, and the air was clear and painfully crisp.

Two days had gone by since she said good-bye to Lady Sarah Strong. She promised to be in touch and thanked her for opening her heart and home to her. As she was walking down the driveway toward Michael, who waved from the car, Ya’ara turned around and ran back to her host. She reached into her bag to retrieve a tiny bottle boasting a precisely simple design. “I want you to have this, to remember me by,” she said to Sarah. “It’s my favorite perfume, made in a very special store in Paris. Here, it’s yours, I think it suits you.” She hugged her and kissed her on the cheeks. Sarah remained standing at the door to her home, her brown eyes warmly following the car as it moved off into the distance.

Ya’ara told Michael that they had come up empty-handed. Sarah had indeed passed on the message and envelope she was asked to convey, but curiosity obviously wasn’t one of her attributes. She didn’t look inside the envelope and couldn’t say what had happened to it. “That’s the way it goes in our line of work,” she said, with an air of flippancy that seemed put on to him. “Always chasing ghosts. Never mind,” she continued, the tone of her voice cheerful and uplifting, “we had a lovely trip, we met a fascinating woman, and most important, you managed to take care of me. I’m okay now.” Michael gave her a dubious look. “Yes, I’m just fine now. I needed a friend, and you came, just like an angel.” She grasped his hand and squeezed it. “Promise you’ll always be by my side when I need you, okay?” she said, before adding after a moment’s thought: “And call for me when you need someone like me by your side. No matter where I am, I’ll come. Promise.”

Michael didn’t like what he was hearing. He didn’t like her promising him things as if he were a little boy, and he didn’t like her cheerful tone, which he believed was a mask for a complex, dark, and violent soul.

“And reassure Aharon, and the Mossad, that there are no grounds for their suspicions. There’s a war going on in the world. People are being killed. It’s madness to point a finger at me.” She told Michael she was going to remain in London for a few more days. Alone. He could go back to his law firm with his heart at ease. Could go on with his life. And shouldn’t allow Aharon to keep calling on him whenever he needed someone to do his dirty work for him. And yes, of course, she would call when she was next in Israel and they would get together. Coffee on a warm and sunny winter’s day in Tel Aviv.

Michael knew that Ya’ara was involved, in one way or another, in the targeted killings in Brussels and London. He couldn’t figure out whom she was working for, what her next moves would be. But he was good when it came to knowing things. He had seen her crash momentarily, and then saw her bounce back. The signs were already coming together to form a picture of reality that didn’t bode well. But what choice did he have but to leave when she asked him to do so? He had no authority with her, and apparently his influence over her wasn’t as strong as he had thought. And he didn’t like the place she left him in even during those moments in which she sought his closeness and support. It’s not a relationship that serves me well, he admitted to himself, there’ll always be a power struggle between us, and she will always come out on top in the end. It isn’t love, he thought, trying to convince himself. Addiction perhaps, but not love. She doesn’t make me a better man. And even as the large Boeing 777 accelerated and its wheels disengaged from the thawed runway at Heathrow Airport, and London’s western suburbs appeared before him in their full winter’s gloom, he could still sense the sour taste of his self-loathing. The unease and disquiet, the bitter longing for Ya’ara’s daffodil scent.

• • •

Ya’ara had no trouble scaling the property’s wooden fence. She knew that the large estate was empty. When Lady Sarah decided to move to Scotland, she asked her lawyers to arrange for the estate to be transferred to English Heritage, an organization with the goal of preserving palaces and country estates and opening them to the public, as reminders of Britain in all its glory and greatness. In keeping with her vision, the main building would house workshops for artists and an exhibition hall displaying the magnificent collection of sculptures and antiquities that Alfred had built up through the years. But the process was a long and exhausting one, and in the end, due to funding difficulties, the estate was open to visitors and guest artists only during the summer months. But it was winter now, and Ya’ara wanted to get a look at the cabin that had served as Yosef Raphael’s studio. She couldn’t explain why, but sensed nevertheless that she needed to see it, that the place in which the spectacular sculpture of Absalom was shaped and polished would tell her something she had yet to learn.

The ease with which she picked the lock of the cabin’s heavy wooden door was almost embarrassing, but Ya’ara was pleased with herself nevertheless. The excitement and illegal act heightened her alertness and focus. She explored both floors of the small cabin, as well as the hollow of the stylish turret that adorned the roof. She then returned to the room that had served, undoubtedly, as Yosef Raphael’s studio. Sarah had told her that since Raphael’s departure, the cabin had remained empty. And indeed, the stone floor was worn and shiny, giving off an intense chill. Several logs and large pieces of wood were piled up in the corner of the room, a large, heavy table was positioned alongside one of the walls, an easel covered with a length of thick, dusty fabric stood by the window. Ya’ara looked around and took stock—an old and cracked leather armchair, an empty bookcase, a small AGA stove, an aluminum kettle, an iron stove heater that still contained a heap of crumbling newspapers. The newspaper at the top of the pile displayed the front page of the Daily Telegraph from October 12, 1954. The room was ice cold, and Ya’ara wrapped herself up in her coat and sat down on the leather armchair. She tried to imagine what the room had looked like when Raphael had worked there, particles of dust swirling in the rays of sunlight streaming in at an angle through the window, the blows of the chisel on the block of marble, steam rising from the kettle, warmth radiating from the stove heater, a length of colorful fabric tossed carelessly on the leather armchair, a young Sarah sitting in the armchair, her large brown eyes keenly following the dancing muscles of the handsome sculptor. Ya’ara sat there like that for a very long time. She then walked around the room, alongside the cold walls, running her hand over them, a thoughtful look in her eyes. She went over to the large wooden table, examined it from all sides, and bent down to inspect it from underneath, too. And after that, she began rolling the logs of wood toward the center of the room. She arranged them side by side, studied them intently, gently felt them with her hands. She then returned to the armchair, her eyes still focused on the lengths of wood. When she got up again, she went over to one of the thick logs made distinctive by its light-colored, peeling bark, which was covered with greenish blotches. She felt it thoroughly with her hands before revolving it slowly and carefully examining every centimeter of the bark. She then retrieved a set of precision screwdrivers from her backpack, selected one of them, and gently inserted its tip into a tiny round hole she had found in the bark, no more than a millimeter or two in diameter. The shaft of the screwdriver slid in to a depth of about five centimeters, disappearing almost entirely into the log. She pushed down hard on the screwdriver and heard a click. The log split into two before her eyes, as if it were a book just waiting for its faithful reader. A small space had been hewn into the center of the log, and in it was a yellow envelope. Without a moment’s hesitation, she removed the envelope and placed it in her backpack, closed the log with a click, and rolled it along with the others back to their place in the corner of the room. She then left the hunting cabin without looking back. She was a trespasser, and it was never a good idea to feel too comfortable in that capacity. After scaling the fence again and setting out quickly back to her car on foot, she could feel the blood pumping through her veins. She didn’t stop along the way to open the envelope, and didn’t do so when she got into the car either. She opened the yellow envelope only in the room she had booked for herself at a country inn, some fifteen kilometers from Lion’s Slope Estate. From the envelope she carefully removed a thick paperback booklet, bearing the seal of the realm. Printed across the top of the cover were the words “Top Secret, for the eyes of classified H.E.R. associates only,” and in the center of the page, in thick black letters, the title read: “Operation Hurricane.”

• • •

The thick booklet was in surprisingly good condition. It was numbered and contained 227 pages, most of them filled with what appeared to her to be long, complex mathematical formulae in clear, precise handwriting. She didn’t understand the formulae at all, and could only partially decipher the segments of text in English. But the brief, businesslike introduction offered her a general understanding of what she had in her hands. And after a brief check on the internet, she knew she was holding a bomb. Operation Hurricane was the code name the British gave to their first-ever detonation of an atomic bomb. The test was conducted on October 3, 1952, in a lagoon off the coast of Western Australia. The British nuclear program, so she learned, kicked off during World War II. Two exiled German scientists, Otto Frisch and Rudolf Peierls, prepared a preliminary memorandum on the subject for the British Ministry of Aircraft Production, which went on to establish a secret committee tasked with the ultimate goal of producing a weapon never before seen by humanity. After the war, and after the United States declined to continue its cooperation in the field of nuclear research, Britain decided to resume its independent development efforts. The project earned the code name, H.E.R.—High Explosive Research. Britain’s first nuclear device was detonated in the Monte Bello Islands, inside the hull of an abandoned frigate, the HMS Plym. A second test was conducted a little more than a year later, in November 1953, when a nuclear device known as Blue Danube was dropped from the air in the same region. The booklet she was holding in her hands, Ya’ara realized, was a detailed scientific summary of those tests.