The Betrayers Read Online Free

them as they presented their documents at the ticket counter. It had been taken from a distance, furtively, by another traveler, Kotler presumed, as the professionals never suffered from such scruples. Still, there could be no mistaking their identities, particularly his—though he supposed Leora had now attained a level of notoriety to match his own.
Haaretz
also provided a companion photo of his wife shopping for Shabbat at a market near their Jerusalem home. In the photo, Miriam looked every bit the aggrieved, steadfast spouse, the victim of her husband’s treachery. For the article, she said only that she refused to discuss “a private family matter.” Kotler could imagine the scene at the market, the pestering, beseeching journalists. But with Miriam they stood no chance. At this thought Kotler permitted himself a fond smile. Miriam was a rock. In her time she had undergone a harsh apprenticeship and was as canny about the press as any image consultant. The reporters could flatter themselves that they had caught her in an unguarded moment, but Kotler would have been surprised—and, frankly, disappointed—if Miriam hadn’t orchestrated the whole thing, down to the potato in her hand when they took her picture.
    In both newspapers, “the
scandale
Kotler” shared the front page with news of the Knesset’s vote in favor of the withdrawal from the settlement bloc. It had gone as predicted, with the prime minister’s coalition eking out a narrow majority. Kotler, not wanting to be on record as merely abstaining, had cast his vote the previous day, shortly before his ignominious escape. The
Haaretz
article listed his name among the notableopponents, prominent among the defectors from the prime minister’s cabinet. Then there were the obligatory quotes from the various factions. The same choir singing the same song. The prime minister cited defensible borders and the welfare of the Israeli state. The chief of staff spoke of the army’s inviolable discipline. The Left rejoiced. The Right seethed. The Americans applauded. The settlers pledged bloody insurrection. And the Palestinians complained.
    The din would continue until the operation was executed. What happened then, nobody knew.
Nothing good,
was Kotler’s opinion. The only question was just how bad.
    He felt Leora’s hand on his arm. On her computer screen was displayed a column from an Israeli Russian newspaper. There again was the same grainy photograph from the airport.
    —At least here someone bothered to add one plus one, Leora said.
    That someone was Chava Margolis, his old friend turned foe, once the mother superior of the Moscow Zionists, the strict, ascetic Krupskaya of their movement. As one of the witnesses against him in his Jerusalem trial, she had later wished to undo him, but here she was saying what any reasonable person should have said: That it was cynical and vindictive of the prime minister to destroy a man’s family simply because that man wouldn’t bend to his political will. That such an act tarnished the prime minister far more than it did Kotler, particularly as, in the end, it achieved no political goal. And that even people like herself, who had long since grown disenchanted with Kotler, should, instead of gloating over his humiliation, take a moment to reflect upon the reptilian soul of the man who was leading their country. She then added, as professional journalistic practice demanded,that her accusations against the prime minister were speculative, given that no evidence had yet been found to connect him to the incriminating photographs that had been leaked, anonymously, to the press. But she felt that only a child of extraordinary naïveté would believe that the prime minister wasn’t involved. And she hadn’t met any such children in the entire state of Israel.
    Kotler knew that no evidence would ever be found. The prime minister was many things, but he was no amateur. Kotler doubted the press would ever even trace the