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two photographs that Yaniv supplied and studied them with Joe, who pulled up at the roadside. The Shabak, the Israeli Security Agency, required a photograph of Rachel before her visit to the Prime Minister’s house sixteen years ago.
    â€œThere’s no choice,” the man on the phone had told him, “we need an up-to-date photograph for identification and confirmation. We too have rules that we need to comply with.”
    Ehud was adamant that he didn’t want a photograph of his operative going to another organization. Even the Shabak could make mistakes. “I trust you,” he said in a final attempt at persuasion, “and I know you’re incomparable when it comes to keeping your secrets.” He stressed the word your. “But even you don’t know where this picture might end up.” Ehud went on without waiting for the expected promise that everything would be kept in a secure file: “Think of the people in the archive. They travel abroad too sometimes, don’t they? Imagine that one of them sees her somewhere; who can promise me that he won’t point her out or approach her just for a moment, to say job well done?”
    â€œYou don’t trust us?” He heard the rising resentment. But she was his responsibility and he had no intention of backing down, and the secure line enabled him to say what he wanted: “She’s working undercover. She has a foreign passport.”
    â€œWithout a picture there’s no entry,” said the voice, and the line went dead. Ehud knew he was being overprotective. The Shabak had rules of its own, and the head of the Mossad wouldn’t want to become embroiled in another petty dispute with his colleague.
    Rachel, sixteen years younger, looks at the camera. Her eyes were brown from the contact lenses she wears when she has to get her picture taken, and the wig flatters her face, lending it an enigmatic beauty.
    Ehud started to tell Joe about her meeting with the Prime Minister, but Joe cut him off, said there would be time for that, and asked to see the other picture. The chief security officer brought it from her apartment, and Ehud wondered why she had kept it, and whether her operational skills were forgotten. Rachel stares with narrowed eyes in a mug shot inserted into a ski pass. A tag attached to the plastic card gave the name of the resort, and Ehud realized that he didn’t knowshe had learned to ski. In training they taught her how to avoid the camera and how to leave behind her as few pictures as possible, and yet here, many years later, apparently this no longer mattered to her. Or apparently so she thought, and she was wrong. This picture would help them to track her down, would be useful to the search and surveillance teams in the field.
    And there were also other pictures that had been filed in the department. There were only a few, since Rachel knew how not to appear in the center of the picture. And when photographs arrived showing her on tourist beaches or against the background of some ancient site, with a clear view of the military installation behind her, the security officer blotted out her figure with black ink. Only a very few are allowed to know the identity of the one gathering the information that will give renown to others while she remains in obscurity, in the shadows.
    â€œWe all change,” said Joe, and he pointed to the differences between the pictures. Ehud nodded. He had never thought he was handsome, he battled weight gain with both determination and frequent frustration. But he too was young once. His hair, already thinning, was combed back in those days, and Rina told him that his face reflected an intriguing inner strength. And now? Now he’s sixty-five, with little hair remaining on his head. He peered at Joe, who was back on the road and driving slowly and cautiously. Ehud had heard about the onset of Parkinson’s, but he didn’t offer to take over the driving. They