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the empty spaces left behind. And suddenly he had an intuition that this placewas waiting for someone to gather up the objects, sort them, pack them in cardboard cartons, and take them somewhere else. That although this apartment belonged to Rachel, it would now be the property of the chief security officer, at the disposal of those who had the power to break into it, handle her personal possessions, and do with them as they pleased. That Rachel had no further interest in what was left here, in fact she never had. That like the apartment in the Arab country, this apartment was always just a place to lay one’s head. That Rachel Ravid lived here on borrowed time, knowing that one day she would suddenly leave, and so she imprinted no personal stamp on the place.
    He tried to remember who she was when she was the real Rachel, the one sitting in her apartment in the evening, turning off the television set, looking out through the little window, and thinking about herself, not about being an operative on a mission and not about the image that she needed to project. Ehud realized that in fact he didn’t know, he’d never taken an interest, never asked her what she was reading, what she was doing, what she liked, what she was interested in. Everything relating to Rachel the operative he was well acquainted with, but about the real woman he knew nothing. A troublesome thought nagged at him—perhaps this Rachel no longer existed. Maybe he and his colleagues had destroyed her, and the one who once lived here was no more. She was stuck in an in-between state, in the limbo that he himself created for her, waiting for an assignment, waiting for time to pass, waiting for some savior like the one who came to her in the end. He remembered this wasn’t the first time she left, but he was overwhelmed by the painful feeling that this was evidently the last time.
    Ehud continued searching. What did she want to bring on her journey? What was missing here of all the things normally found in ahouse? He shifted his attention to the bookshelves. They were in order. He opened the drawer. Old pens and pencil sharpeners, all kinds of things that no one bothers to sort out. He took the drawer out from its place and bent down to see if there was anything underneath it, something that had been stuck, or some little cache that she improvised. Nothing. He emptied the drawer on the table and sorted through the few objects, until he saw a strange kind of button. “From a jacket sleeve,” said Joe, suddenly standing beside him. Ehud picked up the silver object and examined it intently. There was no insignia on it, and it seemed it was there arbitrarily. But that wasn’t the way it was, because she had kept it. Ehud put it in his wallet, in the compartment reserved for small change. When they meet, he’ll ask her.
    â€œAnything else?” The voice of the team commander roused him from his reverie. “The smell,” said Ehud. “The smell is different.” He sniffed, and the team commander did the same. “There is no smell,” said the commander, disappointed. “Exactly,” said Ehud. “Every place has a smell. There should be something here too, and there isn’t.” He moved again around the little apartment until he was sure he’d found what he was looking for: nothing. Rachel didn’t take anything. She walked out of here as if she were leaving a hotel room, although the apartment of course was full of personal items. All these items belonged to a world that Rachel didn’t need anymore. Rachel didn’t want to come back.

    T HEY SAT I N A STYLISH RESTAURA NT in Rehovot. In the evening it would be filled with the high-tech crowd and students who could afford it, but now it was almost empty. Joe didn’t want to go to the Office and join the mob in the war room. He told Ehud that computers weren’t for him and it was a waste of their time. The war room gang