A Woman of Valor Read online

  "But you like the army."

  "What choice do I have?" Leora said, staring into her mother's eyes.

  Hannah looked down at the ground, avoiding her daughter's gaze.

  Chapter 5

  Twenty-four hours after Leora submitted her request for a military discharge, she was summoned to the divisional headquarters building.

  She was directed by the officer on duty to an empty office and abruptly told, "Wait here. Someone wants to talk with you."

  A few minutes later a tall somber-looking man in civilian clothes entered.

  "My name is Motti Elon," the man said.

  Leora didn't know it then, but by the time she met him in early 1958, Motti was on his way to being a legendary figure.

  At that time he was the director of personnel of Shai. He had watched carefully the exodus of Jews from the Arab countries that began after the creation of the state of Israel. They came from every country in the Arab world—from Morocco and Tunisia on the west to Iraq on the east. They were people who were indistinguishable from the Arabs in whose countries they had lived for hundreds of years. Their language was fluent Arabic; their skin and hair were dark; they suffered from the same diseases that afflicted the Arab masses.

  As Motti watched them arrive at Lod Airport and the port in Haifa month in and month out, he soon realized that he had a great opportunity that maybe no other country in the world ever had. These arriving immigrants had come from nations at war with Israel. Yet they were indistinguishable from the people in the lands from which they came. Through careful screening, Shai could recruit a large force among these immigrants, train them, and send them back to the countries from which they came as valuable agents to transmit intelligence information back to Israel. He nicknamed the recruitment program Operation Tashuvah, a Hebrew word meaning both return and redemption. There were many in the Israeli government who credited Operation Tashuvah with being the basis for the extraordinarily good intelligence service that Israel developed.

  "I am very sorry about your father," Motti said to Leora.

  She stared at him, wondering what he wanted.

  "I understand you'll be leaving the army."

  She nodded weakly.

  "What will you do now?"

  "What do you think I'll do? I'll get a job."

  "I want to help."

  She got up and started to leave.

  "I turned down one good offer for charity about a year ago. I can do it myself."

  Motti was amused by her indignation, her show of independence.

  He had gathered all of the biographical information he could find out about Leora, but none of it did justice to the strength that he saw in those dark brown eyes blazing at him.

  "I wasn't talking about charity. I mean a job."

  Leora sat down.

  "A job with whom?"

  "The Israeli government."

  She thought back to the derogatory comments her father always made about government bureaucrats in Egypt. "The dregs of human existence," he used to call them.

  "No, I don't think I want to be on the public dole."

  "At least listen to what I have to offer."

  She was silent.

  "I'm the personnel director of Shai, an agency that gathers intelligence for the government in military and defense matters."

  "And?"

  "And I want to recruit you."

  "To man a desk in some dreary and decaying government building left over from the British administration."

  "I wouldn't put it that way. What I had in mind is that with your knowledge of Arabic and English, you could be of great value in translating newspapers and other documents for us."

  She looked skeptical. Motti knew that he wasn't getting through to the girl.

  "Listen, things are bad. But not that bad. I'm not ready to settle for that dreary an existence."

  "You'll be contributing to the national struggle. There's satisfaction in it."

  "You've got the wrong person. This one's apolitical, and don't talk to me about ideals. I've been suffering since I got here."

  Motti looked frustrated.

  "We pay well. You'll be able to support your family."

  "So do London call girls."

  He was beginning to lose his patience.

  "What do you expect to do?"

  "I don't know. I want to look around."

  He started to laugh.

  "This isn't London. You can't get a job as an actress here in the theater. I'll tell you what you'll find. They need orange pickers in the north, or maybe you want to grow pears in the south. Look, I'm doing you a favor."

  "Keep your favor."

  She got up and stormed out of the office.

  As Motti watched her leave, he realized that he had misjudged the girl. He had underestimated her. She could do much more than translate papers. She had an inner strength that he had never seen before. Suddenly he wanted to recruit her more than he had ever wanted to get anyone else.

  * * *

  For the next month, Leora walked the streets of Haifa, taking interview after interview. Everywhere she went the results bore out Motti's prediction. The huge immigration of Jews from Arab countries in the years since the creation of the state and, most dramatically, since the 1956 war, had swelled Israel's labor force. For the trained and skilled, such as mechanics and engineers, there were abundant opportunities. But for the unskilled and inexperienced such as Leora, the city promised only unemployment—at least in the short run until the new labor force was absorbed.

  Agriculture was where the demand for labor was with new kibbutzim (collective farms) being formed by immigrants from Morocco, Egypt, and Iraq. A score of people offered Leora the same advice: resettle with your family in an agricultural kibbutz in the north. But Leora quickly rejected that idea. The collective life was inconsistent with her notions of independence, and in any event she didn't want to spend the rest of her life picking oranges.

  After a month of unsuccessful job hunting, Leora began to worry about how she would make the next month's rental payment. She wasn't aware that Motti had been carefully following her progress, or lack thereof, in the job market.

  Bitter and frustrated, she sat in the living room of her house one evening when there was a firm rapping on the front door.

  "It's open. Come on in," she shouted.

  Motti walked in slowly, looking at Leora's worn and haggard face.

  "Well, well, what are you selling now," she said sarcastically.

  This time Motti was ready for her.

  "My dear friend. You can sit around this house and feel bitter and sorry for yourself all the rest of your life. Or you can do something about it."

  "Yeh. I can go feel bitter and frustrated behind a desk in some government cell."

  "Wrong. This time I'm offering more than that. I'm offering you a chance to gain some of that revenge you're looking for, to go to battle with the people who put you here."

  She perked up. Now she was listening carefully.

  "Here's what I'm offering. A six-month training program. Then one year at Shai headquarters translating high-grade intelligence papers and teaching us what we don't know about Egypt. If both of those programs work out, we'll put you out into the field—in an Arab country, maybe even Egypt."

  "To spy?"

  "We prefer to call it gathering intelligence. But there are risks involved."

  "I can figure as much."

  "I'm serious. We lose people from time to time—mostly the headstrong, like you."

  She smiled.

  "What about money?"

  "There will be enough for your family. We'll see to that, and your father will get what treatment he needs. If anything happens to you, they'll still be taken care of."

  "And you're not kidding me? There will be a chance for revenge?"

  "That I promise you."

  * * *

  Leora never regretted the decision. The first eighteen months with Shai gave her more than she a
nticipated. It wasn't the large impersonal bureaucracy she expected. It was small, close knit, almost like a family. Staff meetings frequently degenerated into open discussion. Late-afternoon coffee breaks became the vehicle for formulating policy. In the analysis of documents, Leora quickly became a valuable asset. Her total fluency in Hebrew, Arabic, and English made her unique in the agency.

  As the end of the first eighteen months approached, the director general of Shai came to talk with her.

  "I want to keep you here at headquarters in Tel Aviv and not send you into the field."

  Leora looked distraught.

  "I made my deal with Motti when I came with the agency."

  "I know that, but I'm asking you to change it. You're too good to send out. Here, you'll move up fast into a policy-making role."

  Leora thought about it for a minute. The director general waited in silence, slightly intimidating behind heavy black-frame glasses.

  "No, I won't change my mind. I've got to go back into their world, the world that they tossed me out of. I want to destroy it from inside. You can't deny me that chance. I've worked too hard for it the last eighteen months."

  He gave a sigh of resignation.

  "Motti told me I wouldn't be able to persuade you. I won't go back on his promise. You'll have your go at it."

  "Where?"

  "Cairo. We've arranged a cover for you with the French Embassy there. You'll be installed as the personal assistant to a member of the embassy staff, Jacques Barot, who happens to be a member of the French Intelligence Service. You'll be a listening post, our ears and eyes in Cairo. Anything worthwhile you pick up, you pass to Barot. He forwards it to Paris, and then a copy comes to us."

  She looked puzzled.

  "I don't understand how you got me in the French Embassy."

  "It's one of our cooperative projects, under our alliance with France. We're doing it in arms development, nuclear research, and scientific development. We decided to try it in intelligence. Oh, they're not doing it out of idealism or because they love the Jews. The whole alliance is a great mutual benefit. They're still at war with the Arabs in Algeria. They need us as much as we need them."

  A secretary entered with two cups of coffee.

  Leora sipped the coffee slowly, thinking about how good the job sounded. It would be strange being back in Egypt.

  "Don't worry too much about being recognized," the director said. "I don't think that will be a problem. We'll rework some of your facial features just enough to change your looks and, of course, you'll be in Cairo rather than Alexandria. Naturally, we'll give you a French name and papers."

  "I wasn't worried about that," Leora said. "When do I leave?"

  "In about six months you'll fly to Paris, and from there, Cairo. We want to take the time on the physical changes, for a special training course, and also to polish up your French. You should be out of here by the first of March."

  "Just in time for my twenty-first birthday."

  The director drained the rest of his coffee. Then he started to leave. He paused by the door, intensely serious.

  "Leora, there are two bits of caution I want to give you. First, this is a deadly serious business. You no doubt realize that. If your identity becomes known, we might not be able to get you out under a French diplomatic immunity. We have had other agents captured in Cairo, and their fate was unpleasant."

  She nodded, showing acceptance.

  "And the second note of caution?"

  He hesitated.

  "The second is that this fellow Barot is a bit of a rake, even for a Frenchman. He's married, but he chases everything in sight."

  "So?"

  "I just thought I'd warn you."

  "I can take care of myself."

  "I don't doubt that for a minute."

  Chapter 6

  Cairo, January 1967

  Leora gradually taught herself to tell time by watching the movement of the sun through the narrow openings between the bars in her jail window. It wasn't that she was interested in nature or even that it mattered to her what time it was. It was simply something to do to pass the time that never moved.

  One of her other frequent activities was going back again and again over the same facts in her mind: What had led to her arrest two years earlier? She was still as mystified about that now as she had been then.

  She had had almost five good years in Cairo, gathering information about Egyptian military installations and equipment. In fact, near the end, she had a liaison with an Egyptian general that was producing pearls of information about Egyptian long-term preparations for war. Oh, it had been glorious, feeling that she was actually repaying them for what they had done to Abba. Then they closed down her operation. The Egyptians simply picked her up one evening without any advance notice.

  She got up and walked around the cell. She tried to exercise her arm by swinging it, however painful it was. Gradually the life was coming back into that arm. She was happy that there was no mirror in the cell. By the time the Egyptians finished working on her body with those hot coals, a trick they had learned from the Germans, it wasn't much to look at. She felt her face; most of the puffiness under her right eye had receded.

  It couldn't have been the Egyptian general who blew the whistle, she decided. He was too dumb to pick up any signals. And she really hadn't made any enemies in Cairo. There had been those run-ins with Barot early in the operation when she had refused to sleep with him, but he seemed to forget it before too long, becoming preoccupied with chasing other women.

  When she had been first arrested, she thought that Shai would find a way to get her out. By the end of the first year, however, she lost hope. They've probably destroyed my file in Tel Aviv, she thought.

  Day passed to evening and she waited eagerly for the guard to bring her the usual evening mess that passed for dinner. She didn't wait for it because she wanted to eat it; most nights she could do little but take a couple of spoonfuls. She waited because it was a symbolic event. It represented the passing of still another day.

  She glanced down the hall. There was nothing in sight. Her cell was all alone in a special wing of the prison. As one of the guards once put it, "We don't want you poisoning the minds of our local criminals."

  As the sun set, it became chilly in the cell. She moved her toes to keep them warm.

  Suddenly she heard a clinking at the end of the corridor as the metal door opened. She saw a solitary figure carrying a dish and a cup on a tray. From the distance, he looked taller, more muscular, than the usual evening guard. Perhaps her eyes were playing tricks on her? Perhaps the regular guard was sick?

  Once inside the metal door at the end of the corridor, the man suddenly dropped the tray on the floor and raced toward her cell, shouting in Hebrew.

  "Let's go. We're getting you out of here."

  He tried half a dozen keys on the ring until he found the one that opened her cell.

  "How did you get in?" she shouted with joy.

  "No time to talk. Let's go."

  He took two small .22 caliber pistols from his pocket and handed one to her.

  "Careful. It's loaded and ready to fire."

  Quickly he led the way down a dark staircase at the back of the building. When they reached the ground floor, he paused in front of the thick metal door leading to the outside. Slowly, cautiously, he nudged it open with his foot, his finger poised on the trigger of the gun. She stood behind him, watching him, covering him.

  Everything was deathly quiet outside of the door. When the door was fully opened, he signaled her with a wave of his hand to follow him. They raced twenty yards to a dark-gray van marked Cairo Laundry Company. He opened the back door, and she followed him inside. Once the door slammed, the van started to move. "Let's bury ourselves," he said, picking up a big bundle of dirty sheets and throwing them over her head.

  She lay that way in the sheets for maybe half an hour, nearly suffocating in the foul odor of dirty linen. It smelled from men. The odors were u
nmistakable—urine and semen. Finally, he picked the sheets off her body and pulled her to a sitting position.

  "I'm Dan Yaacobi from Shai," he said.

  She nodded recognition. She had never met Yaacobi before, but she had heard the name when she was in Tel Aviv.

  Yaacobi had been the head of Shai's Eastern European operation. As she looked into his eyes, she saw something that she had never seen before: a strength, a fierce determination, and yet a warmth that she imagined a man might have. She suddenly felt a deep stirring and a great hunger. Her whole body ached.

  She was frightened by what she felt and she dropped her eyes from Yaacobi, looking around the van. The windows were covered with dark curtains. They were traveling at a fast speed.

  "Freedom is marvelous," she said. "Even if it stinks."

  "We'll have you in Tel Aviv by morning," he said. "We have a rendezvous scheduled with a fishing vessel off the coast at Alexandria. I have a small two-way radio in my shirt pocket. Within the next few minutes, I should get a signal that they're on schedule."

  "How did you manage to get me out?"

  "Two weeks ago, one of our border units picked up an Egyptian soldier who strayed across the border. They were interrogating him to see if it was an accident or part of an attack. In the interrogation, they learned that his brother was the warden at your prison. You can imagine the rest. We struck a bargain."

  "Is he one of ours?" Leora said, pointing to the driver.

  "No, but he's a cousin of the warden, which is how he got the contract for the prison's laundry in the first place. He's also being well paid."

  Dan pulled the radio out of his pocket, checked to make certain it was working, and then put it back. If he was concerned by the lack of a signal, he kept it to himself.

  He reached under the pile of dirty linen and pulled out a small plastic bag.

  "Some Arab civilian clothes for you. Take off that monkey suit and put these on."

  He handed her the bag and looked away from her toward the side of the van.

  "I'm flattered that you think I have any modesty left," she said bitterly, "after what those bastards did to my body."