The English Teacher by Yiftach Reicher Atir Page A

took a deep breath and began to unpack. Later she told Ehud that the situation reminded her of the interrogation that she went through at the end of the course, but at the time she did not know why.

    T HE “OPERATION” THAT SHE UNDERTOOK ON that occasion wasn’t a simple one, and her second visit to the Haifa Port Authority didn’t go well. She was supposed to make contact with the public relations department, and con her way into a guided tour of the bay and the docks. The instructor who prepared her for the exercise asked her to gather information about the naval base and security provisions against potential seaborne assault. Rachel studied the documentation given to her and wondered how a young Canadian who came to Israel just for one week was supposed to gain access to secure installations. The instructor said that was her problem, that was what the training was for, and he left her in the modest hotel room that she’d been assigned for the duration of the course to prepare her cover story. She decided to pose as a zoology student making a comparative survey of marine pollution levels in different ports, and after a few days spent in the university library researching the subject she printed up an ornate business card and letters of recommendation from some institutions in Canada and told the instructor she was ready. It soon became clear to her that obtaining authorization for a guided tour was going to be a lengthy process and her explanation of the urgency, the need to send the results to her tutor in Montreal, made no impression on the clerk, who gave her a hostile look and said to her colleague in Hebrew, This tourist thinks she’s entitled to everything just because she’s young and beautiful.
    Rachel returned to the small hotel; from its window the port was visible. She took a few pictures and made a point of including the Bahai Temple in the frame. From this room a lookout could make contact with an assault team out at sea, she thought, and wondered why this hadn’t been included in the critical information she was meant to bring from this exercise. Then she checked again that the door was locked and the chain in place and sat down to write thecoded telegram summarizing the fifth day of the operation. And then there was a knock at the door. Through the peephole she saw a workman in hotel uniform, and it was only when she opened the door that she noticed two men standing in the corridor, a policeman in uniform and beside him a muscular young man who showed her a document and asked in Hebrew if he could come in. Rachel put a hand to the collar of her blouse with an instinctive movement and asked in English what they wanted. In halting English the policeman asked her name. For a moment a list of names flashed through her head, the names she had used in various exercises and also her real name, but she gave the name on her passport. Again, the young man asked politely, in English this time, if they could come in. She made space for them and saw they were looking at the table, which was laden with the tourist brochures and publicity she had gathered in the course of the days spent in Haifa. There was nothing about the exercise that could incriminate her, no hidden gun or secret cache of explosives. Her papers were perfectly in order, and she was prepared to explain to anyone who asked what flight she had arrived on and how she had been careless and lost her ticket. “We want you to come with us to the police station. We have some questions to ask you,” said the young man, who was obviously the one running the show. “Ask your questions here,” she said to them, and wondered if the women in the Port Authority had suspected her. The crumpled bed and scattered clothes testified to what she was, a young student staying in a two-star hotel on the Carmel. “It’s for your own good,” he insisted, and at her request he took from his pocket a short document written