The Betrayers Read Online Free Page A

man who had contacted him. Kotler had known more than his share of security agents and spies, and, as in any walk of life, there were the addle and the adept. But the man he had met, who had introduced himself as Amnon, was a seasoned operator.
    Two days earlier, this Amnon had called Kotler on his private cell phone, thus bypassing his staff. How he got the number, Amnon didn’t bother to explain. He asked that Kotler meet him that evening in the park behind the Israel Museum to discuss a matter of great consequence not only to the state but also to Kotler’s personal life. He instructed Kotler to come alone.
    —You should not fear, the man said. There is no threat to your physical safety.
    The threat, Kotler was made to understand, was of a different nature.
    He rather suspected what the matter was about. For weeks he had criticized the prime minister’s decision to unilaterally withdraw from the settlement bloc. At first Kotler had done so strictly
in camera.
They were mostly allies of political expediency, he and the prime minister. Kotler had pledged the eightmandates his Russian immigrant party had won in the previous election to allow the prime minister to patch together his ruling coalition. For this, he had received his ministerial portfolio and, presumably, the stature and influence that went with it. He also had the residual respect afforded to an old Zionist hero, although politics, that indiscriminate blade, eventually cut everyone down to size. So when the prime minister ignored his objections, Kotler voiced his opposition first in the Knesset and then on the op-ed page of the
New York Times,
where he vowed to resign from the cabinet if the prime minister pursued his plan. After that, the usual pressures were brought to bear. His office was inundated with angry phone calls and letters. The prime minister sent his lackeys, first with carrots, then with sticks. All of this was in keeping with what passed for normal political discourse in Israel—at the best of times, no place for gentle souls. But involving a man like Amnon exceeded all bounds.
    Still, Kotler agreed, unflinchingly, to the meeting. Not out of curiosity or apprehension, but because he had learned that there was only one way to deal with people like Amnon. You had to stand before them and look them in the eye. Otherwise they started thinking that they could exert power over you.
    Kotler went to meet Amnon at eight in the evening, at the very onset of dusk. The trees cast long crisp shadows. A smattering of people filtered through the park—ordinary Jerusalemites glad for a respite from the summer heat, as well as the day’s last visitors to the museum. Kotler walked along the footpath, drawing only the occasional glance. His manner betrayed no distress. He, in fact, felt none. He felt, if anything, a familiar sense of contentment. A purposefulness. Fifteen minutes earlier, he hadgotten up from his dinner table, kissed his wife and daughter, and calmly walked out the door.
    At the appointed place, Kotler saw a burly man in his late forties. His hair was shaved down to dark stubble, sunglasses perched atop his head. He wore a yellow short-sleeved polo shirt whose fabric was stretched by his broad shoulders and thick arms. To complete the image, with his blue jeans he sported a pair of modern athletic sandals, a kind meant for hiking. He looked like certain other sabras of his generation who cultivated the air of retired colonels and regarded the world with the relaxed leer of the habituated military man. In his left hand, held leisurely against his thigh, he had a letter-size manila envelope. As Kotler approached, the man smiled exuberantly and extended his right hand like an old schoolmate or favored cousin. Kotler played along and allowed the man to shepherd him to a vacant bench under a gnarled carob tree.
    There they sat in relative privacy, engaging in a conversation that, to a casual observer, would have seemed perfectly congenial. There