The Black Widow

Natalie explained all this to the team of physicians and therapists who checked in on her every few days. They prescribed sleeping pills, which she refused to take, and anti-anxiety medication, which left her feeling dull and listless. To aid in her recovery, she led herself on punishing training runs on the farm roads of the valley. As before, she covered her arms and legs, not out of piety, but because it was late autumn and quite cold. The security guards kept watch over her always, as did the other residents of Nahalal. It was a tight-knit community, with many veterans of the IDF and the security services. They came to regard Natalie as their responsibility. They also came to believe she was the one they had read about in the newspapers. The one who had infiltrated the most vicious terrorist group the world had ever known. The one who had gone to the caliphate and lived to tell about it.

The doctors were not her only visitors. Her parents came often, sometimes spending the night, and early each afternoon she had a session with her old trainers. This time, their task was to undo what they had done before, to flush Natalie’s system of Palestinian enmity and Islamic zeal, to turn her into an Israeli again. “But not too Israeli,” Gabriel cautioned the trainers. He had invested a great deal of time and effort transforming Natalie into one of his enemies. He did not want to lose her because of a few terrifying minutes in a Virginia cottage.

She was visited, too, by Dina Sarid. During six interminable sessions, all recorded, she debriefed Natalie in far greater detail than before — her time in Raqqa and the camp at Palmyra, her initial interrogation at the hands of Abu Ahmed al-Tikriti, the many hours she had spent alone with the former Iraqi intelligence officer who called himself Saladin. All the material would eventually find its way into Dina’s voluminous files, for she was already preparing for the next round. Saladin, she had warned the Office, was not finished. One day soon he would come for Jerusalem.

At the end of the last session, after Dina had switched off her computer and packed away her notes, the two women sat in silence for a long time as night fell heavily over the valley.

“I owe you an apology,” said Dina at last.

“For what?”

“For talking you into it. I shouldn’t have. I was wrong.”

“If not me,” said Natalie, “then who?”

“Someone else.”

“Would you have done it?”

“No,” answered Dina, to her everlasting credit. “I don’t think I would have. In the end it wasn’t worth it. He beat us.”

“This time,” said Natalie.

Yes, thought Dina. This time. .

Mikhail waited nearly a week before making his first appearance at the farm. The delay was not his idea; the doctors feared his presence might further complicate Natalie’s already complicated recovery. His initial visit was brief, a little more than an hour, and entirely professional, save for an intimate exchange in the moonlit garden that escaped the sharp ears of the microphones.

The next night they watched a film — French, Hebrew subtitles — and the night after that, with the approval of Uzi Navot, they went for a pizza in Caesarea. Afterward, while walking in the Roman ruins, Mikhail told Natalie about the worst few minutes of his life. They had occurred, oddly enough, in his homeland, at a dacha many miles east of Moscow. A hostage rescue operation had gone awry, he and two other operatives were about to be killed. But another man had traded his life for theirs, and they all three had survived. One of the operatives had recently given birth to a set of twins. And the other, he said portentously, would soon be the chief of the Office.

“Gabriel?”

He nodded slowly.

“And the woman?”

“It was his wife.”

“My God.” They walked in silence for a moment. “So what is the moral of this awful story?”

“There is no moral,” answered Mikhail. “It’s just what we do. And then we try to forget.”

“Have you managed to forget?”

“No.”

“How often do you think about it?”

“Every night.”

“I suppose you were right after all,” said Natalie after a moment.

“About what?”

“I’m more like you than I realized.”

“You are now.”

She took his hand. “When?” she whispered into his ear.

“That,” said Mikhail, smiling, “is entirely up to you.”

The following afternoon, when Natalie returned from her training run in the valley, she found Gabriel waiting in the sitting room of the farmhouse. He was dressed in a gray suit and a white open-neck dress shirt; he looked very professional. On the coffee table before him were three files. The first, he said, was the final report of Natalie’s team of doctors.

“What does it say?”

“It says,” answered Gabriel evenly, “that you are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, which, given what you went through in Syria and America, is entirely understandable.”

“And my prognosis?”

“Quite good, actually. With proper medication and counseling, you will eventually make a full recovery. In fact,” Gabriel added, “we are all of the opinion you can leave here whenever you like.”