Forbidden Love in St. Petersburg by Mishka Ben-David

Author:Mishka Ben-David [BEN-DAVID, MISHKA]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC006000
ISBN: e9781468313475
Publisher: ABRAMS, Inc. (Ignition)
Published: 2016-05-17T00:00:00+00:00

28

THERE WAS A dispatch from the Mossad. The front company was asking me to check price quotation number 2007, meaning that I had to activate the secret communication system because HQ wanted to relay something to me in code.

After the previous evening and night, this was a saddening return to reality. I wasn’t my own master after all. I typed in the password and up came a regular commercial letter. I locked the door and typed in an additional password which reversed the message’s lettering.

HQ informed me that the intelligence I had gathered formed the basis for two planned operations for which I would have to return to Makhachkala and Dushanbe. They also wanted me to open up for them two additional locations in Caucasia and along the shores of the Caspian Sea. The outline of these operations had already been prepared and I would have a role to play in them–at the very least as the one who receives, briefs, accompanies and assists the operatives. But some important pieces of intelligence were still missing, principally in relation to the conduct of the security forces, the locations where there were permanent roadblocks, and I had to hurry.

A feeling of rebelliousness welled up inside me. What about the long period of rehabilitation which they had talked about? I asked myself, my mood defiant. And what, all of a sudden, was this idea of me taking part in the operation? Hadn’t it been agreed that I would no longer take part in that kind of activity?

Before sitting down to write my reply, I remembered that I was supposed to give an account of the night Anna spent in my apartment. Strictly speaking my report should also mention the few moments she was alone while I was taking a shower, explain who she was, what she meant to me, how we’d met, and who’d initiated the relations. In other words, all the information that the security people would want to know to be convinced that this wasn’t some kind of a trap. These were sensible, set procedures, yet at the same time very irksome so far as I was concerned.

While thinking about this, terrified by the prospect of a possible intrusion into my life and my love, I reconstructed in my mind the story of our liaison and answered my own questions–the sort of questions they would undoubtedly be asking me. I don’t know if she was a customer at Vashkirova’s before I started going there, but it would seem that she was. We ate there many times without approaching one another. She was brought to my table by Vashkirova, almost against her wishes, because the restaurant was packed and while sitting with me was uncommunicative and embarrassed. Then came the conversation about Dostoyevsky’s Demons all of which was perfectly reasonable given the nature of her work. Then she went back to being alone and didn’t attempt to establish any form of contact with me. She brought me a copy of Demons with the additional chapter, but that was entirely predictable seeing as she owned a bookshop.

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