A Spy in Exile

NEWCASTLE, ENGLAND, FEBRUARY 14, 2015

Aslan had been waiting at the café near the cathedral in Newcastle since the early hours of the morning. His face was pale and drawn, and he was drinking from a cup of already cold coffee. When he saw her get out of the taxi, dragging a small suitcase on wheels behind her, something in him moved. She smiled at him and hugged him as he rose to greet her. He appeared stiff and tired to her.

“Big shit, huh?” she said, taking off her coat and hanging it on a wooden stand near the table.

“Yes. Awful.” He went silent. “I didn’t see her at all. I have no idea where she came from. She wasn’t there. And then that bloodstain appeared on her coat, growing ever larger, like some kind of a possessed flower. There was a girl there, Ya’ara, her name was Yasmin. I have no idea how it happened. What happened. I have no idea.”

Ya’ara had read the BBC News website report about Badawi’s assassination—and the fact that a seven-year-old girl had also been killed in the targeted killing operation—even before the telephone update from Aslan. Aslan made contact only after he had disengaged completely from Bethnal Green, dumped his clothing in a church collection bin for the needy in Hackney, and checked that no one was following him. When he finally got to King’s Cross train station, he turned on his cellphone and reported to Ya’ara. She could hear death in his voice and knew she had to see him face-to-face. She asked him to make his way to Newcastle, while she boarded the first flight out of Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, where she had spent the previous few days keeping track of the cadets.

The operation in Brussels had ended successfully, Yael Ziv’s killer was dead, and her team had dispersed, with Nufar and Assaf taking a train to Cologne and Batsheva heading to Paris. She had followed Aslan’s operation anxiously. She knew that the rules of the ops world didn’t allow for successes only. The seed of failure lies in every course of action, and when it comes to targeted killing operations, the risk curve rises steeply. And still, every operation is carried out in the hope that if the gods of operational statistics choose to make something go wrong, it’ll befall someone else. When pitted against the statistics, optimism wins the day. Because if one were to act in keeping with a sober assessment of one’s chances, one wouldn’t do a thing. Nevertheless, when a disaster occurs, it hits one hard, even if in theory it was expected.

“It’s not good for you to be here, you know. To knowingly enter a crime scene when you can avoid doing so is a mistake. Or rash.” Aslan spoke with obvious exhaustion in his voice. “This entire country is on the hunt now,” he said. “Not only did terrorists kill a Muslim leader, thus sparking intense rage among the entire Muslim community in Britain, they also murdered an innocent young girl. A girl who was on her way home from school, who collected Barbie dolls, who wanted to be a doctor. No one is going to pardon that. And here you are, stepping knowingly into this entire mess. You’re pushing your luck, aren’t you?”

Ya’ara realized that Aslan had busied himself in the interim with gathering particulars about the dead girl. It couldn’t have been very difficult. Her image adorned every newspaper in England. “I wanted to see you,” she said. “And more important, I need to see Sayid. He can’t be left alone after witnessing such a thing with his own eyes.”

Aslan recognized the criticism implicit in Ya’ara’s words. But he was dead tired and didn’t say a word. He could picture the girl he had killed, her hands drenched in blood and reaching out to him. Ya’ara saw his eyes lose focus. The skin of his face appeared to be graying right there and then. He was the strong man, the experienced man, some twenty years her senior. He needed her now, and she didn’t know how to help him. She rested her hand on his. It was ice cold.

“You couldn’t see her, Aslan. She must have been hiding behind her father.”

Aslan groaned.

“Look, you eliminated Badawi, that despicable man, whose incitement led to hatred and terror attacks and the murder of innocent people. We’re at war, Aslan. Remember that.”

“I murdered a little girl.”

“Aslan . . .”

“That’s what I did. You can spin the story however you like, but you can’t justify that.”

“You’re right, it’s terrible. But that’s war. War exacts civilian casualties, too.”

“Maybe. Whatever you say. I’m not even sure it’s our war.”

For a long while she looked at him without saying a word. And then she gathered herself and said, “You’re not yourself, Aslan. You’re going to regret the things you’ve just said.” Her eyes were frozen and hard as granite.

“Yes, you’re right there. I’m not thinking clearly right now. A few days in the countryside will do me good. I’ll walk and walk and focus on the cold and my aching muscles and maybe it’ll pass. You can tell me about Brussels when I get back.”

“I’ll tell you now.” Her report was concise and precise and devoid of emotion. She spoke as if she was undergoing a debriefing in the operations room.

“You’re crazy,” he said to her. “Taking on an unreasonable risk.”

“I couldn’t put the cadets in the ring. They’re too inexperienced.”

“Under such circumstances, you don’t go through with the operation. You were right not to put them up against armed guards in such close quarters, but crazy to do it yourself.”

“It was a calculated risk, Aslan. Look, here I am. I did it right.”

“Risk management. That’s a phrase that may suit a business administration course at Harvard, but not a targeted killing operation. You were outnumbered, facing professional security personnel, in an arena under their control. You played Russian roulette, that’s what you did.”

“I had the element of surprise on my side.” Ya’ara was taken aback by the anger she felt creeping into her heart. “I knew what I was going to do. They didn’t understand what was happening to them. I wanted to kill Hamdan. All they wanted was not to be killed. I scared them. I must have looked like an alien with that gas mask.”

“You played Russian roulette,” Aslan reiterated. “You took a gamble and won. But the statistics even themselves out. If you keep flying off the track, you’ll get yourself killed. And then you won’t have a unit, and won’t be waging a war, or doing anything at all. It’ll all end before it’s even started. Is that what you want? For it to end in nothing? In defeat?”

Her anger bubbled inside her. Her mission had ended in success. She was running the operation. In the unit they had set up, she outranked him. “Come on,” she said, caressing his hand without real feeling. “Let’s not argue now. We need to rest and process what happened to us.

“We managed to carry out two important operations in a very short time. If we continue at this rate, with the same intensity, we’ll make an impact. They’ll start to run scared. They’ll lose people, get into a panic, turn on themselves. And the European security services, too, will see that this war can be won, and they will also begin to take the initiative and mount operations. They’ll be a lot more focused and aggressive, even if it means having to amend the laws in the framework of which they’re required to operate.

“Aslan, we’re doing something right. And we’re good at it because we’re doing it a little differently. We think differently. We’re a little more daring. A little out of the box. And yet we’re still working properly. Intelligently, with planning. That’s why the unit was established. So that we can defeat these monsters. And that’s what we’ve started doing.”

Aslan stood up and placed a five-pound note on the table. “Walk with me to the bus stop. There are only two buses a day to the remote location I need to get to. Maybe you’re right. But you have to look after yourself. Look, you can see that I’m okay. Just a little pensive and extremely tired. But it’ll work out fine. It always turns out fine in the end.”

Ya’ara wasn’t convinced that Aslan was okay. But she knew him, and knew that the only thing he wanted right then was to be alone, in nature, his body warming from the physical exertion, the demons that had been troubling him pushed into a dark corner of his soul. She was relying on his inner strength, but knew that those reserves would run dry at some point, too—though probably not now. She thought about Sayid and mentally plotted the quickest route to get to him. She planned to see him no later than tonight.

Nufar and Assaf were in Cologne. Batsheva was in Paris. Ann and Helena were in Liverpool. Sayid was in Oxford. Aslan was here, by her side, the ice-cold air of Newcastle watching their breath turn into distinct clouds of vapor. She could picture the faces of all of them. They were her people, her unit. They were at war. This was what her war looked like.