They’d darkened the bar for the fireworks, so at first I had a hard time recognizing the woman behind me. But when she said, “Happy New Year, Thomas Selfridge,” her accent was one I’d thought about often over the last three years. I turned and embraced her without hesitation. “Happy New Year to you too, Esther.”
After a minute we separated and I was able to look at her. The sleeveless black cotton sweater and the skin-tight jeans she was wearing made it clear that she was still as fit as the last time I’d seen her. I could even make out the thin scar on her right shoulder. But this time her dark hair was tucked under a baseball cap with a long brim pulled low. When she raised her head to look at a big explosion over the harbour, I saw the black patch that covered her right eye.
The bar crowd was cheering and growing rowdier, so I smiled at Esther and leaned near her ear. “Would you like to go some place quieter so we can catch up?”
She smiled. “I’d like that very much.”
We got in my car and I drove her away from the downtown west to Herne Bay. When I pulled into my driveway, she gave a low whistle. “You must really be doing well, Thomas. I’m happy for you.”
I poured us another drink and led her out onto the deck. From there we had a view of a different part of the harbour, but we could see the fireworks in the distance. It was still warm despite the sea breeze. Even after three years, it seemed strange for the New Year to arrive in summer.
After a few minutes she turned to me and pulled off her cap. “Well, aren’t you going to ask me about my eye?”
Without the cap I could see a diagonal scar that started below the patch and ran all the way up through her eyebrow. It had carved a white line deep in her olive-colored skin. “Tell me what happened,” I said.
She put her cap back on and took a seat on one of my deck chairs. “Actually it was my own damned fault. After I got back to Israel, I managed to find one of the ISIS leaders who had planned the Al Andalus attack. Unfortunately, I didn’t find the knife he had hidden before it was too late.” Then she gave me that wolfish grin of hers. “But I can promise you that he’ll never hatch another plot.”
I remembered how she’d withstood my fumbling attempt to stitch up her arm, and I could easily believe that she could take such a devastating wound like the one to her eye and still be able to strike a fatal blow at her enemy.
“Couldn’t the doctors . . .?” I asked, gesturing at the patch.
She shook her head. “The wound was too severe, and besides, it was eighteen hours before I was able to get back to my team and be airlifted to a hospital. By then . . .” She shrugged.
I thought maybe I should change the subject, so I asked, “Are you still in Mossad?”
By the expression on her face I knew immediately that I’d asked the wrong question. “They kicked me out,” she said in clipped, bitter tones. “With this face there was no way I could ever go undercover again. And since I’m right-handed, my marksmanship has gone all to hell. They offered to try to find me a desk job elsewhere in the government, but I wanted no part of that.”
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