10 – Marbella, Spain
Chaim Levi’s plans to return to Israel were cut short when he saw more Egyptian naval ships in Israeli waters than he thought were floating on all the world’s oceans. Instead, he came up with a new plan to sail “Swift” west “into the sunset,” he thought with a grin. Or “To America and freedom.” Maybe the Caribbean, maybe New York, maybe Miami Beach, all places he’d heard about from American tourists but had never been to.
He knew his time in Marbella, on the southern Spanish coast, was limited. Eventually an inquisitive police officer or port guard would wonder about the American boat tied to the pier and would realize that it had not always been there and that he should look into it. His paranoia notched upward when he’d returned to the boat from a grocery expedition the previous day and found the cabin subtly rearranged, as if somebody had been on board.
The sail from Greece to Spain was easy enough, stocked with cans of Greek provisions and the water tanks topped off. The boat had charts covering the entire Mediterranean and, while Levi’s navigation was rudimentary, he knew that if he sailed far enough west he would reach Spain and he was not too particular as to where in Spain he wound up. Besides, with the Global Positioning System equipment on the boat, navigating did not involve much more than moving a cursor across the screen to set his course.
Tied to the pier in Marbella, sitting in the boat’s cockpit, sipping a vodka and orange juice and studying a World Book Atlas he’d found in a second hand book store, Levi suddenly looked up when he became aware of a woman standing on the pier, blocking the sunlight from him.
The sun behind her head turned her red hair into a blazing halo and obscured her face completely.
Levi looked up and smiled tentatively.
“Shalom,” she said.
“Shalom,” he answered automatically, then realized what he’d said. Heart beating rapidly, he considered diving overboard and swimming for his life, or leaping to the pier and running.
She was alone, he observed, or at least he did not see anybody with her. Play it cool, he thought. Lifting his glass, Levi said, “Would you like to come aboard? For a drink? Or a chat? Or whatever?”
As she climbed over the stern railing into the cockpit he saw her face for the first time.
I’ve seen her before, Levi thought with relief. The hair is different, but the face is familiar. He watched her hop down from the dock onto the boat’s deck. He smiled. And the body. I should remember that. She knows me, we’ve met before and that’s why she stopped here. What he’d first seen as a threatening situation was a familiar problem he’d lived with as long as he could remember.
Chaim Levi, tourist guide extraordinary, rugged Sabra hero for scores of lovely young Americans, couldn’t remember faces, not even his own. Shopping for clothes he was startled to see himself in the full length mirrors. Not tall, not short, he’d think. Thick, dark curly hair. Always tan from being on the water. Good build. Big Jewish nose. Not a bad looking guy. Then he’d look again and wonder, is that really what I look like? That guy looks like a stranger.
This handsome redhead, speaking Hebrew easily yet obviously with an American accent, was probably in Spain on a two-week vacation from Chicago or someplace and she’d probably taken an earlier vacation in Israel where she learned to sail at a certain resort with very private lessons from a certain Israeli sailing instructor. Her name will come to me, he thought. Levi was comfortable easing into conversation without showing that he had no idea who he was talking to. He’d been in this situation enough times that he was resigned to repeating it for the rest of his life.
Funny, he thought, my country is gone, I’m alone in the world, and here I am, sitting in the sun, offering a drink to a beautiful woman who knows me but I have no recollection of, just as I have done a dozen times on the beach in Eretz Yisrael. Things change yet remain the same.
This problem, this situation, made Levi more comfortable than he’d been since before he saw the mushroom cloud rising above Tel Aviv.
Changing gears, deploying his best disarming smile, he felt his body relax in a way he’d almost forgotten about, knowing that he would eventually be able to place her in his memory.
“Imagine us meeting again here,” he said, smiling, pouring orange juice into a second glass. “It seems like such a long, long time.”
“We’ve never met,” she said, the smile dropping from her face, her eyes narrowing. “Save the charm for someone else. We have business to discuss. Does this boat of yours,” and she looked at him with eyebrows raised to let him know how much she knew about “his” boat, “have a cabin, some place private?” she asked.
Sitting facing each other on the cushioned berths inside the boat’s cabin, surrounded by New England craftsmen’s woodworking, the teak and holly cabin floor, the white pine cabin walls, the sturdy tiled fireplace designed to drain the chill from a Maine fog, Levi waited anxiously for her to speak first.
She looked around the cabin slowly and spoke for the first time in English, rather than Hebrew.
“You’ve done well for yourself since the death of Eretz Yisrael, haven’t you Lt. Chaim Levi,” she said slowly as her eyes swung to meet his. She noticed the shock in his face, all pretense of suave confidence evaporated.
Her right hand came out of her pants pocket and she swung his gold-colored dog tags on their chain in front of his face.
“Lt. Chaim Levi of the Israeli Navy. Do you call this vessel a motor torpedo boat, or is it a submarine? I’m afraid I have not kept up with the state of the art of Israel’s warship industry.”
“OK, OK,” he muttered, avoiding her eyes, realizing that the shift from Hebrew, his language, to English, obviously her language, signaled the shift of who was in control of this conversation. “Who are you? What do you want?
“You’re an American, so what are you, a private detective, is that what you are, the American wants his boat back. Fine. Take it. Its in better condition now than when I borrowed it,” Levi said.
“Lt. Levi, I’m not a detective and I’m not, or at least not any longer, an American. I am, in fact,” and here she tossed the dog tags into his lap and laughed and switched back to Hebrew, “I am your commanding officer, lieutenant. Just when do you think you were discharged from the Navy?”
She fixed her eyes on his, watching for the man’s reaction. “Certain people” – from the way she emphasized the two words invisible quotation marks surrounded them in the air – “Certain people working with me have had their eyes on you here. They searched this boat of yours. If you want to get rid of your identification tags you’ll have to find a better place to hide them than under your mattress. Lieutenant, your country still needs you.” For the first time she smiled and leaned back on the berth, “and you seem to be captain of the entire Israeli naval war fleet.
“By the way, my name is Debra Reuben.”
“Do I salute you or kiss you?” Levi asked. He looked at her closely. “Reuben? I know you. The one from the television who went into the government. I thought you did things with artists or tourists or something like that, not with the Navy.”
“Today,” she said, “we do what we can.”
“With what we have,” he added, looking around the comfortable cabin, the most warlike object in sight was the carving knife he’d used to slice cheese that afternoon. “With what we have.”
“With what we have,” she said slowly, looking him squarely in the eyes, “we could start World War Three, and we might have to do that to get our land back.”
As she explained about Dimona and what was stored in the warehouse ten miles up the Spanish coast, Levi realized with a stunning certainty that his plans for drinking pina colladas on Caribbean beaches would be put on hold for a while, a long while.