The Spy

Chapter 2. The Farewell

I had not yet reached thirty, when one of the strangest events of my life happened. I remember it perfectly, because that year we had to work non-stop for the most relevant historical event that has happened to the American people, the arrival of man on the Moon.

An event that changed the conception of what until then we knew about the universe, now seemed to be all closer, accessible, so that in a few years time we could colonize that neighboring star.

How naive on our behalf! So many hours of television broadcasting debates between journalists and intellectuals about what we should do there, what it meant to be the first step in the colonization of other planets, both talking and making plans, for nothing.

There were even those who sold moon plots, so that when colonized one could have their place there, and now, after a few decade, What about all that?, nothing, because nothing was real, not even the technicians of that time believed in everything that was said, now it seems that there is no interest in colonizing the moon anymore.

At that time I was very far from my country, in an undercover mission, but instead of being in the field of the enemy, it was within the territory of our allies.

My mission was to discover, copy and forward technological advances, referring to the encoding and decoding of messages, that is, the art of encryption, for which I was authorized to use any method within my reach.

I will not say that I did not do it, because my bosses wanted results, but it was always justified, so some scientists disappeared during their vacations, or had to suffer the kidnapping of a relative to get them to cooperate. Nothing nice, but work is work!

I was not in charge of that part, just of asking the questions and validating the knowledge that these scientists gave me.

And then they were released, because once we have discovered their keys, it didn't matter what they did.

Although more than one had to be visited again, because they developed different keys after being trapped, to continue hiding their messages....

In the meantime and in order to remain undercover, I had a second life as a university professor, which allowed me to access libraries and approach other professors, being updated with them latest work and informed of what they knew about other scientists have discovered, anything of interest to me.

Without knowing the rest of the faculty served as my ears, in case they found any scientist had made any type of discovery, then without anyone knowing, I visited them in order to get the information out of them.

At that time, I had even acquired a certain reputation in the world of chess, but only in friendly games, since I tried not to appear in public events that could discover my identity, in case I had to change my destination, so that nobody could recognize me.

Despite that, some universities they used to call me to give a lecture from time to time, and after this, I used to play two chess games with those who were supposed to be the best in that institution.

To tell the truth, I used to win the first game without a problem, and the second one, I would not say I let them win, but I did not want to leave the institution that had invited me in a bad position.

And when no one saw me, I sent the corresponding report of my progress weekly, as well as the information I had obtained from those scientists who managed to cooperate.

Everything seemed simple, and one could already say that I was an expert in it, when a new destination arrived, Israel.

At first I was surprised, I had no previous idea, at no time they had suggested or asked me anything, so I asked to confirm the instructions, it was not the first time I had received false instructions, due to my position and handling of the delicate information that I always had in my hands.

I had to learn to be cautious just in case, as they say, since on more than one occasion I had fallen into someone's trap, as it happened in Spain, and that despite the time elapsed, I couldn’t find out who wanted to make damage me so bad back then.

After confirming the instructions, I got rid of the support team, the one that was in charge of doing the dirty work, kidnapping and extortion, and I took my suitcase to an uncertain destination, a British colony that had few signs of progress.

At first I thought that it was some kind of punishment, although I did not understand the reason, it did not seem to me that I had done a bad job at any time, although it was not the first time that those who bothered or did not perform their function well were sent to an inhospitable destiny from which they almost never returned.

I did not know where I was going, I only knew it was desert, quite the opposite of what I had enjoyed so far, with mild summers and rainy winters, but in any case a pleasant temperature, but the desert!

I had left my professorship at the university, my privileged position, that kind of comfortable life I had, and everything to go to a desert, I did not understand! But orders are orders! And you always have to be willing to meet them.

It would be like coming home, well, at the origin of my military training, there in Arizona … in Arizona ?, yes, there it was, then it had not been in Pennsylvania!, that was surely the place where I found my first love.

This memory makes me change dates or places, and the worst thing is that I don't even realize it, until someone tells me, and not even with that.

I still remember once I was talking to someone, about an upcoming appointment, I don't know what, I think, about the doctor, and I was telling him that on the sixth day of next month.

– Of course! – the voice on the other side of the phone told me -See you next Thursday .

– Thursday ?, I have said on the sixth, and it is Tuesday.

– No sir! I have it here, next day, the sixth is a Thursday -. -What? not, miss !, next Thursday is the ninth -.

– Are we talking about March?

– Sure, Miss! What! Do you think I don't know what month I live in? -

– But …– she hesitated. -Which year?-

–Well, what will it be ?, from 1984 – I answered surprised of her

question.

– No sir, it is not that year! We live in 1990, surely you are looking at an old calendar- she replied.

–In 1990 ?, what are you talking about ?, we live in 1984, or am I not going to know

in what year do I live? – I asked annoyed.

–I don't want to contradict you, sir, but it's 1990.-

– Well, I don't believe it, let's see! Who is the president …?

–Sir, I don't think this conversation leads to anything." I would be grateful if you could contact me with another person with whom I could resolve this issue to end it.

Then my wife put on and solved everything, apologizing about my bad head.

Actually, despite everything, and after cutting, I was still convinced that I was right and not her, thankfully my wife reassured me by saying:

– Nothing happened, she is new! Do not worry that I will take you to the doctor on the day of the appointment.

They are things of the memory! which, over time, you know, it is normal that there is some failure from time to time, but it always put me in a very bad mood when someone made evident my forgetfulness.

Sometimes I spent hours thinking about what I had forgotten, trying to understand how or why it happened.

Although my anger almost did not last, because after a few minutes I had forgotten the reason for the anger and left it.

How much time wasted trying to remember …!, On some occasions I was able to find out what it was and I was surprised that I was angry at that insignificant thing, but I was not able to control my emotions.

Over time, I was increasingly uncompromising, it bothered me above all, that others did not fulfill what they had said or what I expected them to do.

On the other hand, when I was wrong or something happened to me, I always found some justification for it, minimizing that mistake by telling myself that it was a matter of age.

How different it was now from when I was young! Then I was a faithful achiever and without allowing myself to fail for any reason, and of course, I had no memory failure, moreover, thanks to my work and chess, I had a memory that some even compared me to a walking encyclopedia.

To anyone, the mitzvot, the six hundred and thirteen precepts of the Torah, might seem like many, but for me it was the natural way of life, everything was planned, what should or should not be done, and there was no possibility of error, which gave me some peace of mind knowing how to respond when a new situation arose in life.

Although I do not consider myself a religious extremist, I do believe that I am a good Jew, at least that was what I said to my captain, whom I accompanied to Israel, from the British base.

They had taken me as an interpreter, since my boss did not know Hebrew, because although it was an British colony, that language was not spoken and known by all, being Hebrew the most used among those arriving from different parts of Europe.

My captain had asked for my references , because he was not sure of my loyalty, since they had had some other problem with the collaborators, as they called the civilians who generously lent themselves to acting as interpreters.

But my orders were OK, and although my origin was not listed as personnel of the American army, my report left no room for any doubt, because from the intelligence service of my country they do not leave any loose ends.

I had spent so much time infiltrated in different countries, in each of which I had a different name, profession and past, that sometimes I had trouble remembering who I was that day.

To avoid mistakes, as for the language or customs that I should use in that country, I tried to have a picture of me with the most typical costume or attire possible, so that with a simple glance at that photo I knew exactly where I was, what it was my mission and what identity I was with.

I was meticulous in my work, because although everything was appearance, I did not want to ruin the work of so many others who were looking for the destiny, the identity, a convincing story … on one occasion, when it was required, I was a family man, in others a newly married or single, the most convenient way to avoid suspicion in the place where I was.

Likewise, I had to use the accents of the place of origin, sometimes forcing the tone to be clear, something that did not cost me too much, due to my ease for the languages and that they trained us with natives who helped us to get rid of the accent.

Hardly anybody knew anything about my true self or my past, since we changed partners in each mission and one of the rules was not to provide personal information about it, that, sometimes generated a great feeling of loneliness, but it was necessary for the work I was doing.

I was born in Poland, from an Orthodox Jewish family, that had allowed me to have ease in languages, because several were spoken in my house. Since childhood my mother insisted that I learn, British and French.

Although I did not understand why they wanted me to learn those languages from places I had not even heard of, that allowed me at ten years of age to master four languages, the previous two, plus Hebrew and of course Polish.

Later I became interested in Russian and Spanish, the truth is that possibly having started from a very young age to study different languages has made it easier for me to expand my knowledge.

Sometimes they have asked me if I don't get confused with so many languages and I tell them that for me it is something natural, that I do not have to do anything, when in a conversation in British someone asks me something in French, for example, I understand and I can answer without problems. An advantage in my life that opened many doors for me, and that allowed me to arrive to Israel.

My orders were always the same, to discover new coding codes and to send them to the command, and for the shipment to be safe I had developed a particular code, it was a family code, or rather referred to the family.

I was supposed to write home, commenting on my trip and asking for a relative, and according to who I was asking for, they could tell if I had found something or not. It was a very simple key, but thanks to that difficult to decipher, because for anyone who could see it, it was nothing more than a letter to a relative, of the many sent by the soldiers.

When I managed to get someone's code, then I did a special shipment, a small tourist gift wrapped in newspaper, and in it, indicated with invisible ink, the characters that formed the decoding key of the message discovered.

At the beginning the untraceable ink seemed complicated to transport, because it needed to be carried in a small bottle, which wasn't always easy, but then, and following old methods I learned how to do it with lemon juice. One spot on the paper, you couldn’t see it or smell it, but when you hold it against the light, in front of a candle or a lamp it leaves an unequivocal signal of where the acid has been poured.

The intelligence training included a multitude of methods to receive and send all kinds of information, either together with objects or within them, of course I always expected that the one to whom it was sent to knew what to do when receiving it in order to interpret it correctly, and thus avoid misunderstandings or that the information submitted was lost, a method I used wherever they sent me to.

In England they had welcomed me, surprised at my problems in Spain, and surprised at my abilities to get there, so they told me.

After communicating with my command and waiting for a response for days, I was commissioned to be an assistant to a captain who should check the troops in one of the colonies near Egypt.

At first the idea seemed good to me, assuming I would have little work, because I did not know Arabic as a language, but when they told me that I was going to Israel, even my legs shook.

It's not that I am a radical, but I was raised as orthodox, and for us, it's like … I don't know, like the Lincoln Memorial to the American people.

It is something so desired, that I couldn’t imagine it, besides that would give me the opportunity to dust off my Hebrew, that since I had left my parents in America, I had not used it again, well, neither that language nor the Polish. I had not found myself in any situation to practice it.

A few days later we were in Israel, the captain, although a little insistent, took me from here to there, examining each checkpoint, and questioning every Jew who crossed the street.

I didn't know very well what he wanted or what he was looking for, but sometimes it became a tense situation, especially when I was questioned in Hebrew why I served these gentlemen.

I limited myself to being a translator, and asking them to answer the questions, even when one seemed out of place.

My captain sometimes wanted to intimidate those people, prove that he was the boss, or at least he gave me that impression.

But in the afternoon, I was free, my captain barely left the base, if it was not with an escort, he almost always spent resting as he liked, he couldn’t stand the weather, so in his rooms it was where he better was.

On the other hand, whenever I had the opportunity, I left that place to be with the people and to walk through those lands, it seemed so strange to be there!

I was once in my thoughts when I suddenly heard by my side:

– What?!, aren't you coming with your escort?

– What escort? – I asked a little surprised by his words.

– How do you work for them?

I turned around and found an older man with a long beard dressed in black from head to toe, he was certainly a rabbi or at least he seemed so.

– Excuse me sir, it's my job!

– And why do you do this job? There are others more worthy! – Excuse me, but that's how I feed my family, I've been working for years to be able to feed them.

– A noble purpose, although I believe that with inadequate forms,

You should think who you serve, men or your Creator!

I didn't know what to say at that time, because it has been a long time since I haven't practice Hebrew or Polish, same time without practicing my religion, regardless the big importance that my mother has always given to be scrupulous with the law and complying with it no matter what happened.

Looking up, I could see that the man had left without giving me the opportunity to respond, perhaps because he already knew the answer.

I was thoughtful wandering the streets aimlessly, I just wanted to clarify some ideas, that man had raised a single question, but for me it wasn't an easy matter.

After walking for a while I sat in a chair under the shade of a canvas that served as a sunshade in a cafeteria.

– What's it gonna be! – That young man told me.

– A tea, very cold, please! – I answered.

Soon he brought it to me and I was stirring the sugar with the spoon that he had added to sweeten it, while thinking about the words of that stranger.

If someone saw me with these military looks, they wouldn't recognize me. The first thing I had to do to when I entered the army was to shave my hair, especially symbolic was when they cut my Payot, those ringlets that following the Mitzvah, had never been cut off, thus losing my distinctive identity, thankfully my parents never saw me like this! They thought I would become someone important, not for men but for the Creator.

My mother always talked to me about how essential it was to fulfill our duties at all times, that they were always watching us, and that whatever happened, I should never lose the protection from above.

So many stories she had told me, how far in the past they seemed now! It could almost be the life of another person, where all those hours of study and discussion with other classmates or with a rabbi about the Talmud remained?, yes, that was one of my favorite things to do, to question everything and try to refute the rest with arguments.

Since I had entered the army everything had been different, my past life had been so far behind, always trying to fit in, not showing that I had a family and an origin so different from the rest, and instead now in Jerusalem, everything seemed that made some kind of sense.

Who knew I would be in these lands ?, treading where our ancestors did, where the history of our people was written, and instead, how unknown everything was to me, and how strange I felt!

I ran the palm of my hand over my face, and I was shaved, as the ordinances commanded, but that face did not show my true image, the one I had been educated to have, instead I now saw other Jews pass by respecting the Mishnah, Jewish laws, with the essential kippa, while those who come from Europe distinguished themselves by also wearing black caftan and steimel (a fur cap), and me, wearing only that military uniform of British regular.

I was absorbed in those thoughts when two women passed in front of me, one of them, I think after looking at me, she smiled.

I did not give more importance, but coming out of that moment of my self-absorption I got up and following an inexplicable internal impulse, I greeted them:

– Good afternoon ladies! Can you tell me what time it is?

–Ladies? They said laughing. What is the watch on the wrist for?

I just said the first thing that passed my mind and looked at it saying at the same time:

–Well, it is not working!

One of them took my hand and raising it to have a look at it said:

–Looks like is working now!

–But… thanks! –I managed to say, before they both left laughing.

I felt so strange, I didn't quite understand why I had stood up in front of them, and with an excuse as bad as that.

So many years of service and I had forgotten a part of me, the family man, my family. We all have the obligation to form one, in order to pass our knowledge and the lessons received to the new generations.

But the army had absorbed me so much and for so long, I barely limited myself to doing my job and nothing else.

But those women, I don't know! That incident had awakened something inside me, or maybe it was tea, or maybe that city.