Authors: Michael Ridpath
‘Zivah!’ she called across to the Israeli student, who was typing on her own new netbook. ‘Can I have a minute?’
Erika led her into their bedroom and shut the door. She sat on the bed, and Zivah took one of the chairs. Zivah managed to project a mixture of earnestness and innocence that Erika found appealing. She had short light brown hair and a thin, intelligent face. She looked nervous.
‘Sorry to be so direct, Zivah, but I need to know. Can you think of any way that the Israeli government could have found out what we are up to?’
Zivah shook her head. ‘Not from me, if that is what you are asking. I have no idea about the rest of the team, I don’t know them at all.’
‘Didn’t you do military service?’
‘Yes, everyone does it, but I had nothing to do with the security services,’ Zivah said. ‘Do you think it was Mossad who killed Nico?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Erika. ‘But it could be. We are messing with the Israeli government and that’s always a dangerous thing to do.’
Zivah nodded and swallowed. ‘I was thinking that.’
‘Nico brought you on board here, right?’
‘That’s right,’ said Zivah. ‘I’ve been following Freeflow almost since you started – putting posts up on your message boards. Six months ago, Nico asked me to translate some stuff he’d been sent in Hebrew by an Israeli civil servant. It was about Israeli plans to attack Iranian nuclear facilities, but it wasn’t really concrete enough to be interesting. And then he contacted me on Friday night about the video.’
‘So you’d never met him before Sunday?’
‘No,’ said Zivah. ‘Not in person. But I’ve been commenting online for years.’
‘Yes, I recognize your name,’ Erika frowned. Volunteers were managed by Dieter or Nico, depending on their role. Usually they were set unimportant tasks over a period of months, and then if they performed these well they were given more sensitive duties. In Zivah’s case Nico had hardly done a thorough background check, but then he hadn’t had time. If she was a plant the Israeli government would have had to have been very forward thinking to have tried to infiltrate Freeflow that early on.
‘Are you studying?’
‘I’m doing my masters in International Relations at Tel Aviv University.’
‘Did you tell any of your friends where you were going?’ Erika asked.
‘No. I said I was doing something for Amnesty International in London and I would be out of contact for a few days. I said it was secret and I couldn’t talk about it. Everyone knows I am heavily involved with Amnesty, so I think they believed me. And I did fly to Reykjavík via London.’
‘You know that this video will seriously undermine your country’s standing in the world?’ Erika asked.
‘I know that,’ said Zivah.
‘Yet you are happy to be a part of promoting it?’ Erika allowed a hint of contempt in her voice to change the question into an accusation.
‘I am,’ Zivah said, her voice gaining in strength. ‘I believe in my country passionately. I believe that Israel has a future, but only if we can live in peace with the Palestinians. And I believe that we of all people should recognize basic human rights. By and large I think we do. My brother is in the army; lots of my friends are. They are decent people who have shown great restraint in really difficult situations. They have told me about the fighting in Gaza, about how they didn’t shoot back when they were attacked from schools or hospitals, about how they warned civilians before bombing buildings. A lot of these guys are now members of Combatants for Peace.’
‘That’s not what we saw in the video,’ said Erika.
‘Precisely!’ said Zivah. Her cheeks were flushed now. ‘And that’s what the Israeli government needs to understand. We should be rooting out that kind of behaviour ourselves. And if the government won’t do it, then I will. What about you?’
‘Me?’
‘Aren’t you Jewish?’
‘Yes, I am,’ said Erika. ‘And my family are passionate supporters of the state of Israel. I guess I agree with them: Israel should exist as a homeland for the Jews. I think that there are a lot of unscrupulous Arab terrorists who would like to destroy it. Releasing this video might help those terrorists.’
‘So why didn’t you bury it?’ Zivah asked.
Erika took a deep breath. ‘I believe that transparency of information is more important than my views or your views or the views of anyone out there. If governments are transparent, the bad stuff will come to light and a lot less of it will happen in the first place. And this video is bad stuff.’
‘Very bad stuff.’
Erika stared hard at Zivah. She saw a lot of herself in the Israeli student; she didn’t believe she was a Mossad agent. Erika’s instinct was to trust her. And in Rwanda, in Darfur, during the frequent crises that beset Freeflow, Erika had learned to trust her own instincts. She was just smarter than other people; her intuition was more reliable.
Besides, she didn’t have the time to do otherwise. They needed a Hebrew speaker, if not Zivah then someone else, and anyone else they found at short notice would be no less likely to be a spy.
‘All right,’ Erika said. ‘One last question: if it turns out the Israelis are on to us, are you willing to stick it out?’
Zivah swallowed. Looked Erika straight in the eye. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I believe in this. I’ll stay.’
Erika smiled. ‘Good. Now, back to work.’
She returned to her computer on a makeshift table and typed a simple message to Dieter:
zivah stays.
She stared at her screen. Why had she brought up her own family? Her father she didn’t care about. A cosmetic surgeon at a prestigious Manhattan clinic, he had disapproved of almost all of Erika’s choices in life. Going to Rwanda as a student, returning with a husband, quitting med school to go to Darfur, divorcing the husband and finally publishing rumours and gossip on the Internet. He had given her all the opportunities she could possibly want and she had thrown them back in his face.
Erika’s grandmother was of course very proud of her son, the doctor. But she was also proud of her granddaughter for standing up to him. She understood what Erika was doing and why she was doing it and Erika loved her for it.
A widow, nearly ninety now, she had left Poland for the United States as a girl in the 1930s and had met Erika’s grandfather, a young émigré from Berlin, in Queens during the war. Her husband had worked hard and prospered; a passionate supporter of the state of Israel, he had been a regular giver to Zionist causes all his life.
Since his death twenty years before, his widow would occasionally criticize the more extremist right-wing factions in Israel, but never the state itself. Her husband and her ancestors had given up too much, fought too hard for her to betray their dream.
She would be dismayed at what Erika was doing. She might never forgive her. That would be difficult for Erika to bear.
The doorbell rang. The house froze.
‘That’s not the police, is it?’ said Erika.
‘If it is, I’ll tell them to go away,’ said Viktor. ‘The agreement was they would leave us alone.’
‘I’ll answer it,’ said Ásta.
She went to the door and opened it. Erika heard insistent questions asked in Icelandic and English. She recognized her own name.
Ásta came back inside and closed the door. ‘It’s RÚV. Icelandic TV. They want to speak to you, Erika.’
‘Tell them to go away,’ said Viktor. ‘We have no comment.’
‘No,’ said Erika. She took a deep breath. Nico’s murder was a big deal in the Icelandic news. Of course the press would want to speak to her. It wasn’t surprising that they would find out where she was eventually. ‘No, I’ll talk to them. Otherwise they’ll never go away.’
She took a moment to compose herself and then went to the door. A reporter was waiting for her – a young blonde woman who looked as if she was just out of high school – and a cameraman in a woolly hat. Behind them she could see a police car parked on the other side of the street, its occupant watching them with interest.
‘Good afternoon,’ Erika said. ‘I am Erika Zinn. Can I help you?’
‘How are you feeling after the attack?’ the reporter asked.
Erika answered as blandly as she could, and dealt similarly with a couple of follow-ups. The questions were hesitant; it was like talking to the cub reporter on the
Chappaqua Journal.
Erika was preparing an emotional appeal for people to come forward for information that might help the police when she was surprised by a new tack.
‘Do you think that the attack had anything to do with Freeflow?’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ Erika said, stalling.
‘You are the leader of Freeflow, aren’t you? The website that channels leaks? The organization that leaked details of Ódinsbanki’s loan book? We saw you here in Iceland last fall.’
‘That’s right,’ Erika admitted.
‘So do you believe that the murder of your colleague was related?’
Erika’s instinctive response was to blame the CIA; that was usually a useful diversionary tactic. But she was afraid that would raise questions she didn’t want raised.
‘Freeflow has made a number of enemies over the years, so we cannot rule that out,’ she said.
‘Why have you come back to Iceland?’ The reporter was beginning to irritate Erika. She had suddenly developed an aggressive, blunt manner.
‘It has nothing to do with any Icelandic issues,’ Erika said.
‘Then what issues does it have to do with?’ the reporter asked.
‘As you may know, Freeflow has no headquarters,’ Erika replied with a smile. ‘But every now and then we need to get together. We admire Iceland’s Modern Media Initiative, so Reykjavík seemed a good place to choose. But we are not working on anything in particular.’
‘We have information that the leak you are working on is related to Israel.’
Erika felt a spark of anger flash inside her. ‘What part of “we are not working on anything in particular” do you not understand?’ she said. ‘That’s all I have time for. Goodbye.’
With that she turned on her heel and strode back into the house, ignoring the shouted questions following her.
She clapped her hands. ‘OK, people, let’s get to it! Quit messing about. Let’s get this video downloaded.’
CHAPTER TWELVE
‘I
DIOT MACHINE!’ ÁSTA
swore. That wasn’t really good enough, so she switched to English. ‘Fucking thing!’
It still didn’t fix her all-in-one printer and scanner. A blinking light demanded that the red cartridge be changed even though she was only scanning something in black and white. Why did the stupid machine care?
She sat back at her desk in her tiny studio apartment and took a couple of breaths. She had scurried home after the Freeflow team had got down to work on the video. She had her own affairs to attend to. If her damned scanner would let her.
She looked over towards the familiar church opposite. It was new, Iceland’s newest. It was named after Gudrídur the Wanderer, who not only had travelled to Iceland, Greenland, America and Rome in the eleventh century, but was also one of the earliest female Icelandic scholars. It was a rectangular block of concrete, and instead of a tower or spire at the eastern end, it had a walled garden with a reflective pond, visible through a glass wall behind the altar. Ásta loved it. Her ambition was one day to be its vicar.
No chance of that in the foreseeable future. Like just about every other institution in Iceland, the Church was short of money, and finding a job if you didn’t already have one was hard. Very hard.
It had been a long day, a mix of horror and excitement. She couldn’t get Nico’s cold pale face out of her mind, his eyes staring meaninglessly into the snow under frosted lashes. The image would never leave her, she knew. But she was impressed by the Freeflow team and their dedication to what they were doing. She was particularly impressed by Erika. Clearly Nico’s murder had hit her badly, but she was brave enough and strong enough to continue with Project Meltwater.
Or was she just so driven by her own obsessions that she wouldn’t let anything knock her off her chosen path, even the death of a colleague?
Perhaps both were true. Ásta was convinced that publishing the Gaza video was right, as Nico had been, she was sure. Did his death make it more or less right that Freeflow should go ahead?
Her instinct was that Erika was doing the right thing. And she couldn’t deny that the danger and the secrecy made the whole experience exhilarating.
Unlike the document she was scanning.
It was a journal. She had read and reread it at least three times, and each time it made her sad and it made her angry. The handwriting was small and spiky. Ásta remembered the girl who had written it. Soffía was the daughter of a neighbour, several years older than Ásta, who used to babysit her sometimes. Ásta remembered her as a pious girl; Ásta herself had had little interest in religion when she was a child. But it was Soffía’s mother, Berglind, who was a good friend of Ásta’s own mother, who had given Ásta the journal.
Berglind had discovered it among Soffía’s things after Soffía had died. She thought its contents should be made public.