Then it hit him. It had to be Rose Temple, the Canadian he had met at Marbella and had lost to that Arab engineer. The coincidence was too much and he slowed, lost deep in memory. Then he buttonhooked and ran back down the beach until he was opposite her. She was swimming parallel to the shore, maybe fifty meters off shore. He kept pace with her, surprised at how powerful a swimmer she was. When she turned shoreward, he sat down on the sandy berm and waited. Any doubts vanished when she waded through the shallow water. The traffic-stopping figure, black hair, wide yet very feminine shoulders, the magnificent breasts and narrow waist could only belong to one person. But it was her eyes that he remembered best. Those dark pools of promise and beauty. It was Rose Temple.
She ignored him and started to jog back down the beach. He pushed himself up and ran after her. “Rose,” he called. “Matt Pontowski. We met at Marbella in Spain.” There was no response at first and she kept running. He stopped, afraid that it might be a case of mistaken identity. “No way,” he mumbled to himself and started after her again. “Rose,” he called at her back, “please stop.”
The woman halted and turned to face him and all his doubts vanished. She stood there in her black tank suit, not the flashy, half-naked come-on she had worn to entice Is’al Mana, but the same suit he remembered from the yacht party. Her skin was wet and glowing and her thick plait of hair shimmered in the morning sun as she stood there, waiting for him. “My name is Shoshana and I’m an Israeli, not a Canadian.” She turned and ran down the beach, leaving him dumbfounded.
He headed back to the hotel, confused by the feeling of loss that held him tight. “What the hell,” he said, twisting to look back down the beach. Then he ran as fast as he could after her. It was not a case of mistaken identity. It had to be her. Who else would tell him that she was not a Canadian? But the beach was empty. He had lost her. Slowly he walked back to the hotel. Well, you know how you’re going to spend this weekend, he told himself. He was going to find the woman who now called herself Shoshana.
Shoshana leaned against the back wall of a beach house, waiting for Matt to run by. She clenched her towel tightly, fighting back the tears that were threatening her. You have no reason to cry, she berated herself. He means nothing to you. That’s a lie and I’m finished with lies. Once I was attracted to him but now he’s part of a past that has nothing to do with my future. Again, she chastised herself for being so weak as to cry. She vowed never to cry again.
When her breathing had slowed, she found her car and drove home to the safety of her family’s apartment on the hillside. She let herself in and called, “Father, I’m back,” surprised that her voice sounded normal. Avi Tamir came out of die kitchen, a worried look on his face. He nodded in the direction of the balcony and disappeared back into the kitchen. She walked through the French doors.
Gad Habish was standing there, waiting.
14
“He wants to see you immediately,” the secretary said to Habish without looking up from her work. The “he” was the wizened curmudgeon who headed Mossad’s operations — the Ganef. Habish walked directly into the thief’s office.
“Will she do it?” the Ganef asked.
“I don’t know. Shoshana hates me and everything we do.” Habish waited for a reply. There wasn’t any. “Do we need her?”
The Ganef gave a little snort. “Pontowski is the grandson of the President of the United States. Have you forgotten that?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “This is a chance to establish a liaison we might turn to our advantage later. We don’t pass up opportunities like this.” He paused. The Ganef had carefully meshed the reports of Matt’s morning runs on the base with Shoshana’s morning swim. It was simply a matter of bringing them together. “Especially when it only cost us a phone call to Harkabi to bring him to Haifa for a weekend.
“What about the hotel?”
A line crossed the Ganef’s lips that Habish took for a smile. “The Americans are paying for their rooms, not Mossad.”
Why am I doing this? Shoshana berated herself as she swam by die same part of the beach as the day before. She had been pulled and turned a dozen different ways by her emotions after Habish had left the apartment and still wasn’t sure what to do. A warm tugging feeling kept pulling at her, urging her to go to the beach. It was the same sensation she had experienced at Marbella when they had first met. Be honest, she told herself, you want to see him again. But a revulsion at the thought of working for Mossad turned her down dark corridors of self-loathing and disgust. She wasn’t the same person.
Matt sat on the berm in the same spot where he had waited the day before and watched Shoshana swim in to shore. He caught his breath as she walked toward him and he remembered the Greek legend of Aphrodite, the goddess of love, who rose naked from the sea. Now I know what the Greeks were thinking about, he thought as he watched her wade the last few feet toward him. “I’d always thought Aphrodite was a blonde,” he said, loud enough for her to hear.
Shoshana said nothing and sat down beside him. “My name is Shoshana Tamir and when we met I was an agent for Mossad.” She forced herself to look out to sea and not to him. It was an effort that cost her dearly but she was determined to tell him the truth. “Do you know what Mossad is?” Nothing from Matt. “It’s our version of the CIA,” she continued. “My objective was to seduce and exploit Is’al Mana. And I did. He was my only assignment and I quit Mossad when I was finished. I’m training as a medic in Zahal and start nursing school next month.”
“Zahal?”
“A word we use for Zvah Haganah Le Israel — Israel Defense Forces.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Confusion and pain caught at his words.
Silence. Then a slight shake of her head. “I don’t know. After you saw me yesterday, a Mossad case officer came to my home and asked me to make contact with you. They arranged for you to stay at your hotel, hoping we would meet.”
“Why would they do that?”
She stood, ready to leave. Matt reached up and touched her arm, not wanting her to go.
For the first time, she turned and looked him fully in the face. She was on the verge of tears. “Don’t be naive. They didn’t tell me why. Your grandfather … They’re looking for a connection … the Israeli connection. I don’t know.” Despair ate at every word but there were no tears.
“Why are you telling me all this?” She still wouldn’t answer the most important question. She couldn’t, for she didn’t know the answer.
Shoshana pulled away from his touch and walked away, not understanding herself and the driving need to be free of lies and deceit. He followed her and grabbed her arm, forcing her to stop and turn around. “Why?” he demanded. Like her he did not understand what was driving him on and why he didn’t leave and get her out of his life.
“Look at me!” Self-hate drove her words. “I’m a whore. I used my body to get what I wanted.” Her body trembled as she fought to control her ragged breathing. Then, almost a gasp: “I had to kill Is’al to escape.”
He dropped his hand and freed her. Every rational instinct he possessed was shouting for him to disengage and run for cover. But this was not combat. “Doesn’t that mean anything to you?” she demanded to know. “I murdered a man and there is no punishment for me. Nothing.”
“I was in a crash with another jet where three men were killed,” Matt said, choosing his words carefully. “They say it wasn’t my fault, but I was involved. If I had been a better pilot, maybe less aggressive — who knows? One was a good friend and another, well, after my grandfather, Jack Locke was the finest man I ever met. He had a beautiful wife and two small kids.” They stood inches apart, not touching, silent. His hurt matched hers. “Remembering is the punishment.”