Mossad training facility, Negev Desert, Israel
Rachel fell in love with Scorpion’s Ascent the first day Mossad sent her there.
She fell out of love with Scorpion’s Ascent the very next day.
The Mossad special operations training center was deep in the Negev Desert in southern Israel. The landscape was stark. Long reaches of bare mountains and ancient wadis, carved by millennia of wind and water into fantastic shapes. A few kilometers to the west, tourists climbed the famed Scorpion’s Ascent, unaware that some of the deadliest killers in the world trained within their sight.
The setting was beautiful, the trainers were top-notch, the facilities were outstanding, and it was unbelievably boring.
The routine of the facility was ironclad. Early mornings were spent with physical training, followed by breakfast. The rest of the morning hours were spent in the classroom on language training. In addition to Hebrew, Rachel already had decent Arabic, strong English and Portuguese, native fluency in Amharic from her Ethiopian heritage, and conversational Somali. Her new course of study had her learning a Sudanese dialect of Arabic as well as branching out into French.
After lunch, they trained with small arms, a different handgun or rifle each day, so they were familiar with whatever weapon was available on a mission. On alternate afternoons, they trained with knives or hand-to-hand combat techniques.
Rachel liked to take a long swim before dinner or get a massage. After-dinner hours were filled with intel briefings.
The days passed like carbon copies of one another. The schedule varied not at all. Even the intelligence briefings began to sound the same.
And that was the problem. All Rachel really wanted was another assignment, something far from this contained existence. Someplace where she knew no one. Someplace where she was forced to expend her entire intellectual and physical capacity to stay alive.
Rachel never intended to pursue a career as an Israeli agent. She had been studying for a doctorate in African languages and literature when Mossad first approached her. She was under no illusion why they had come to her and they did not do her the disservice of pretending otherwise. They were looking for officers of color, operatives who could blend into the population on the African continent.
She accepted their invitation for a weekend seminar on a lark, thinking it might make good fodder for a book one day. In the space of those two days, she met her future husband and found her vocation in life.
Her relationship with Levi lasted less than two years, ending when her husband’s remains came home in a container the size of a shoebox. Her relationship with Mossad lasted for the rest of her life. The staff psychologists told Rachel she had an addiction to adrenaline, to action, to running away from her problems.
They were right, but she didn’t care. She was good at her job. For her, that was reason enough to keep going.
One psychologist, after hearing about Levi’s death, wrote in her consultation notes that Rachel was searching for her own shoebox. Rachel had a hard time disagreeing with the woman.
But until then, she lived for the next mission. The next opportunity to suspend her existence as Rachel Jaeger and become someone else.
On a mission, there was no past, no future, only the now. Constant movement, constant awareness. On a mission, no one had time for regrets.
After dinner, she often took a short hike into the desert just as the sun was setting. The brutal heat of the day waned in these moments and she loved the way the setting sun turned the barren landscape into a rich palette of deep reds, purples, and blues. This was her meditation, her one moment of the day when she stilled her mind and tried to be at peace.
After a few days at Scorpion’s Ascent, there was no peace for Rachel.
At the end of each day, before she went to bed, Rachel sent a message to her kidon leader. A reminder that she was still waiting.
What do you have for me? she would text Noam.
Be patient, he would always text back.
But patience was the one quality Rachel Jaeger lacked.