Meltwater (Fire and Ice)

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