Sarah had spoken with a quiet urgency in that hotel room, taking control as she always did.
“Nat, listen to me. Look at me, Nat. You’re in huge danger but I can protect you. But we have to go now, this instant, do you understand? We have to go right now. Let me take you somewhere safe.”
She threw a rug from somewhere around my shoulders and she loped as I stumbled with the big men out of the hotel, like I was some kind of protected celebrity. Down the corridor and through a fire door and down a metal staircase. Through a backyard belching steam from kitchens. I heard someone say in Arabic that I was ill. Outside there was a huge silver 4x4 with black windows.
More men. One of them tried to help me in by guiding my head.
“No!” I shouted and kicked out.
“It’s OK,” said Sarah, who had swung in the other side. “It’s OK.”
I collapsed into her side and gave in to the shakes and sweat. My arm was lifting up and down of its own will. Sarah reached around my shoulder and held it firmly.
“I’ve done terrible things, Sar. I’ve done such terrible things,” I gibbered.
“It’s OK, we’re safe now,” said Sarah and kissed the top of my head.
“I’m going out of my mind.”
“No, you’re not.”
We drove out west from Jerusalem on the 386, apparently, in to the hills and glades and out beyond the moshav Even Sapir, one of the Israeli agricultural cooperative experiments, then up through woodland on some kind of private road and eventually through guarded gates.
There were tended lawns and views out across the plain. The house was dazzling white with a Palladian portico into whose shade we drove. And Sarah took my hand and led me to the sanctuary of pillows and cool sheets. They gave me something and I slept.
When I was stronger, I left my recliner and the intravenous drip, and was shown to a guest bedroom on the first floor. A small balcony and a wet room. It was like a Dubai hotel. Then I looked for Sarah outside, where I could hear calm voices in the still air. The colonnaded terrace had huge, throne-like wicker chairs, and beyond there were steps to the lawn. It swept down with palm trees to a lake. There were swans. A classical statue of a goddess.
Sarah walked up the lawn with her available arm outstretched. The other held a light wooden stick, not the big metal one with a forearm-support that she used in town.
“Look at you,” she said.
“Yeah, look at me.”
We sat on the terrace and avoided questions. I ate the mezze that the staff brought, and when a bottle of white Burgundy shedding chilled tears of condensation hovered over my glass, I instinctively looked to Sarah. She nodded and we sipped.
Emboldened by the hummus and wine, the time had come for questions. The elephant on the terrace could no longer be ignored.
“Where are we, Sar?”
“It belongs to the Russia Centre,” she said without a pause, as though rehearsed.
“Does that mean it’s a safe house?”
This time she did pause.
“Well, you’re certainly safe here.”
“What happens next?”
“We need to get you safely home.”
We walked and talked in the sunshine some more, resuming the avoidance strategy. We spoke of Israeli agricultural policy, of rush plants and the expense of tending a grass lawn in the desert.
At early evening, we went through different French windows off the terrace into a library, or perhaps a large study. There was dark wood here as well as marble, bookcases with Russian titles on the spines, between them paintings that may have been by Impressionists.
“This is where a lot of the networking is done for the Centre’s investment in the peace process,” said Sarah, as if she was a tour guide.
I picked up a small vase with an Egyptian frieze.
“By that I take it you mean that this is where your boss manipulates the Zionists,” I said.
“Damn,” said Sarah. “I suppose you were never going to be an easy house guest.”
I didn’t wait and spoke firmly without looking at her.
“Thank you, Sar. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. I know you’ve saved my life. Thank you and I love you.”
But I didn’t move closer to her.
“’sOK,” she said eventually with a girly little shrug from a perch on the end of a chaise longue.
“This is Sarapov’s home in Israel, isn’t it,” I said, looking at the vase again.
“If you like.”
“I do like. Very much.” And I laughed a little to release the tension.
“I married him, Nat.”
Now I looked at her.
“I married Sergei,” she added, as if I’d asked for clarification.
“That’s not the sort of thing to tell me when I’m holding a three-million-dollar vase,” I said and put it down.
“It’s not worth anything like that,” she said.
“Whatever—”
“He’s not the enemy, Nat. We’re not the enemy.”
“Whatever it takes,” I said. “When’s supper?”
We sat on the terrace, listening to cicadas grinding their legs in the gloaming, while kufta kebabs were brought to us from a barbecue.
“Don’t you want to know what happened to me?” I asked when we’d eaten.
“I figured you’d tell me when you were ready.”
I sat back. Go for it, girl.
“I was taken to a settlement north of Nazareth where I was a prisoner. They beat me and made a hostage video, which they never showed. I murdered my two guards to escape.”
“I’m so sorry, Nat.”
“Do you believe me?”
“It doesn’t matter what I believe. And it doesn’t matter what happened. What matters is what happens from here.”
“No. I need to know what happened, Sarah. I need to know who did this to me, and I need to know what made me do what I did. Or I’ll go mad.”
“We had nothing to do with it, Nat.”
“Nothing to do with what?”
“You being taken, your disappearance, or whatever happened to you.”
“But you knew about my job, right? You knew what I had to do over here?”
“The intelligence exchange. Yes.”
“So you set up the envelope switch.
