The Messenger

Miss Bancroft, there isn’t time.” His voice contained an edge that had been absent before. “So I suppose what I need now is a straight answer. Do you still feel like helping us? Do you want to fight the terrorists, or would you prefer to go on with your life and hope it never happens again?”
    “Fight?” she asked. “I’m sure you can find people better suited for that than me.”
    “There are different ways to fight them, Sarah.”
    She hesitated. Carter filled the sudden silence by engaging in a prolonged study of his own hands. He wasn’t the kind of man who asked things twice. In that regard he was very much like her father. “Yes,” she said finally. “I’d be willing.”
    “And what if it involved working with an intelligence service other than the Central Intelligence Agency?” he asked, as though discussing an abstract theory. “An intelligence service that is closely allied with us in this fight against the Islamic terrorists?”
    “And who might that be?”
    Carter was good at evading questions. He proved it again now.
    “There’s someone I’d like you to meet. He’s a serious chap. A little rough around the edges. He’s going to ask you a few questions. Actually, he’s going to put you under the lights for the next few hours. It’s going to get rather personal at times. If he likes what he sees, he’s going to ask you to help us in a very important endeavor. This endeavor is not without risk, but it is critical to the security of the United States, and it has the Agency’s full support. If you’re interested, remain where you are. If not, walk out the door, and we’ll pretend you stumbled in here by mistake.”

    S ARAH WOULD NEVER be sure how Carter had summoned him or from where he came. He was small and spare, with short-cropped hair and gray temples. His eyes were the greenest Sarah had ever seen. His handshake, like Carter’s, was fleeting but probing as a doctor’s touch. His English was fluent but heavily accented. If he had a name, it wasn’t yet relevant.
    They settled at the long table in the formal dining room, Carter and his nameless collaborator on one side and Sarah on the other like a suspect in an interrogation room. The collaborator was now in possession of her CIA file. He was leafing slowly through the pages as if seeing them for the first time, which she doubted was the case. His first question was put to her as a mild accusation.
    “You wrote your doctoral dissertation at Harvard on the German Expressionists.”
    It seemed a peculiar place to begin. She was tempted to ask why he was interested in the topic of her dissertation, but instead she simply nodded her head and said, “Yes, that’s correct.”
    “In your research did you ever come across a man named Viktor Frankel?”
    “He was a disciple of Max Beckmann,” she said. “Frankel is little known today, but at the time he was considered extremely influential and was highly regarded by his contemporaries. In 1936 the Nazis declared his work degenerate, and he was forbidden to continue painting. Unfortunately, he decided to remain in Germany. By the time he decided to leave, it was too late. He was deported to Auschwitz in 1942, along with his wife and teenaged daughter, Irene. Only Irene survived. She went to Israel after the war and was one of the country’s most influential artists in the fifties and sixties. I believe she died several years ago.”
    “That’s correct,” said Carter’s collaborator, his eyes still on Sarah’s file.
    “Why are you interested in whether I knew about Viktor Frankel?”
    “Because he was my grandfather.”
    “You’re Irene’s son?”
    “Yes,” he said. “Irene was my mother.”
    She looked at Carter, who was gazing at his own hands. “I guess I know who’s running this endeavor of yours.” She looked back at the man with gray temples and green eyes. “You’re Israeli.”
    “Guilty as charged. Shall we continue, Sarah, or would you like me to leave now?”
    She hesitated a moment, then nodded. “Do I get a name, or are names forbidden?”
    He gave her one. It was vaguely familiar. And then she remembered where she had seen it before. The Israeli agent who was involved in the bombing of the Gare de Lyon in Paris…
    “You’re the one who—”
    “Yes,” he said. “I’m the one.”
    He looked down at the open file again and turned to a new page. “But let’s get back to you, shall we? We have a lot of ground to cover and very little