The Black Widow

It came off in a flourish, as though she were a prized object to be unveiled to a waiting audience. She blinked several times while growing accustomed to the harsh light. Then her eyes settled upon the man seated on the opposite side of the table. He was dressed entirely in black, and a black keffiyeh obscured everything of his face except his eyes, which were black, too. The figure to his right was identically attired, as was the one to his left.

“Tell me your name,” commanded the figure opposite in Arabic.

“My name is Leila Hadawi.”

“Not the name the Zionists gave you!” he snapped. “Your real name. Your Jewish name.”

“It is my real name. I’m Leila Hadawi. I grew up in France, but I am from Sumayriyya.”

But he would have none of it — not her name, not her professed ethnicity, not her faith, not the story of her childhood in France, at least not all of it. He had in his possession a file, which he said had been prepared by the security department of his organization, though he did not say precisely what organization that was, only that its members emulated the original followers of Muhammad, peace be upon him. The file purported to prove that her real name was Natalie Mizrahi, that she was obviously Jewish, that she was an agent of the Israeli secret intelligence service who had been trained at a farmhouse in the Valley of Jezreel. She told him that she had never, nor would she ever, set foot in Israel — and the only training she had received was at the Université Paris-Sud, where she had studied medicine.

“Lies,” said the man in black.

Which left no option, he added, but to start from the beginning. Under his relentless interrogation, Natalie’s sense of time deserted her. For all she knew a week had passed since her sleep had been interrupted. Her head ached for want of caffeine, the bright lights were intolerable. Even so, her answers flowed from her effortlessly, as water flows downhill. She was not remembering something she had been taught, she was remembering something she already knew. She was Natalie no more. She was Leila. Leila from Sumayriyya. Leila who loved Ziad. Leila who wanted vengeance.

Finally, the man on the other side of the table closed his file. He looked toward the figure on his right, then the left. Then he unwound the headscarf to reveal his face. He was the one with pockmarked cheeks. The other two men removed their keffiyehs, too. The one on the left was the forgettable wispy-haired man. The one on the right was the one with pale bloodless skin and eyes like ice. All three of the men were smiling, but Natalie was suddenly weeping. Gabriel approached her quietly from behind and placed a hand on her shoulder as it convulsed. “It’s all right, Leila,” he said softly. “It’s all over now.”

But it wasn’t over, she thought. It was only beginning.

There exists in Tel Aviv and its suburbs a series of Office safe flats known as jump sites. They are places where, by doctrine and tradition, operatives spend their final night before departing Israel for missions abroad. Three days after Natalie’s mock interrogation, she drove with Dina to a luxury apartment overlooking the sea in Tel Aviv. Her new clothing, all of it purchased in France, lay neatly folded atop the bed. Next to it was a French passport, a French driver’s permit, French credit cards, bank cards, and various medical certificates and accreditations in the name of Leila Hadawi. There were also several photographs of the apartment she would inhabit in the heavily immigrant Paris banlieue of Aubervilliers.

“I was hoping for a cozy little garret on the Left Bank.”

“I understand. But when one is fishing,” said Dina, “it is best to go where the fish are.”

Natalie made only one request; she wanted to spend the night with her mother and father. The request was denied. Much time and effort had been expended transforming her into Leila Hadawi. To expose her, even briefly, to her previous life was deemed far too risky. An experienced field officer could move freely between the thin membrane separating his real life from the life he led in service of his country. But newly trained recruits such as Natalie were often fragile flowers that wilted when exposed to direct sunlight.