The Marsh Angel by Hagai Dagan (ebooks online reader .TXT) 📗

Sasson’s shoulder as delicately as he possibly could. Sasson straightened his hunched, skinny back, clad in a shiny dress uniform shirt, and cast a cloudy gaze over at Tamir, like he was surprised at his very existence, unsure where to place him. He removed the headset from his head.

What do you want? he asked in a hoarse, smoky voice.

What are you working on? Tamir asked. There wasn’t any time to pay lip service to seniority.

What I need to be working on! Sasson snarled.

Didn’t they send over an HTA summary to be urgently transcribed?

Someone brought over something, and she might’ve said something. But I’ve got something I need to finish here.

There’s an attack in progress! Tamir blurted out. He wasn’t sure of it, but this was no time for nuance.

Everything’s ‘in progress’ with you guys, Sasson answered in the voice of someone who’s seen it all and was not about to get caught up in someone else’s hysteria.

Sasson, come on, the whole world’s on my back over this, Tamir resorted to begging. I have to know what they said there. It’s a one-minute call!

Did the Syrian IAO approve this?

Tamir rushed over to the officer’s desk and urgently explained the situation.

Sasson, put that down for a minute and do his summary for him! The Syrian IAO called out without getting up from his seat, not before throwing Tamir a look which he understood to mean something like: Stop interrupting our important work with your odd Lebanese mumbo-jumbo.

Sasson sighed, looked for the relevant reel and inserted it into his device, put on his headset and listened for a moment. He ran the reel back once or twice, and jotted down a few words in embellished but clear Arabic on top of Ophira’s summary:

a: A/U, BB

b: ?

a: Is everything ready?

b: Yes, everything.

a: Inshallah, we will succeed. Stay low. Watch al-Darija.

Tamir’s jaw dropped. Is that what he said? Stay low??

Sasson looked at him scornfully. Of course that’s what he said! It’s what I wrote, isn’t it?

What’s al-Darija?

I think it’s a type of bird. Ask the translators. I’m not sure.

And the dialect?

Palestinian.

Tamir thanked him and rushed over to translation. In the corner of his eye, he saw Sasson going back to the conversation he was forced to abandon with the air of one going back from child’s play to real, adult work. Tamir placed the corrected summary before Mika the translator, and asked her what al-Darija was. She opened a dictionary and started flipping through its pages. Her languid tranquility drove Tamir up the walls, while at the same time evoked in him strong feelings of envy. Such laid back work suited him much better than the perennial turmoil he was subjected to as an intelligence analyst. From the corner of his eye, he saw producers piling up summaries on his desk. Zaguri came out of the reception room and said to Tamir: It’s chaotic in there.

Tamir said he knew.

Its sounds like something big.

Yes.

Are you sure you’ve got this under control? Zaguri asked with a slight air of contempt.

Don’t worry, Tamir raised his voice.

Zaguri lingered there for a moment, staring him down, before turning around and going back to the reception room.

It means stint, Mika said.

Stint? The bird? Tamir vaguely recalled nature classes in the kibbutz, and the descriptions of marsh birds and seabirds. The stint is a migratory bird, fairly rare, which lives in marshlands. Since the marshes were drained, it doesn’t have reason to come here anymore, Tamir remembered the words his nature teacher said, which suddenly sounded like a poignant elegy.

Wow, Tamir, I’m impressed… How do you know such things? Mika looked up at him with a pair of blue eyes.

It’s the kind of things kibbutzniks know, Tamir mumbled. Instead of teaching us calculus, they taught us about stints, coots, moorhens… He tilted his head as if he were straining to hear something in the distance. Something else stirred his memory, some tune, something from the formative years of his childhood, from when things were first given names, something… What was it? A lullaby? Something his mother would sing to him when he was sick? No… But, yes, it sounds like a song. A song in Arabic… The hoopoe forgets, the heron takes flight… The ibis hides in the thicket… Only the stint…

Tamir? The mesmerizing blue of Mika’s eyes opened up like a clear expense of wonder.

Tamir gathered his wits, rushed over to Old Faithful and quickly typed in the corrected conversation. He emphasized these were airborne-unit elements, so it’s safe to assume ‘stay low’ pertains to an air craft’s altitude. Tamir knew that air crafts flew low in order to evade radars, but didn’t say anything since his recipients were more versed on the subject than him. He added that the expression ‘the stint’ could refer to one of the relevant operatives in this context, but that he had never encountered that term before. To make sure he wasn’t misleading his recipients, and also to deflect some of the heat directed at him, he added: Pending check by Jibril unit of Department 195.

That was a mistake. The phones kept ringing. The relevant bodies demanded an authoritative answer, and told Tamir that he’s the authority at the moment, as far as they’re concerned. At the same time, they did not hesitate and immediately issued warnings to forces deployed around Har Dov, as well as a general warning to all forces in the South Lebanon sector. Tamir looked for Eli Nissenbaum’s home number, rang the operator asking for a civilian line, and called him. He sounded half asleep. Tamir hesitated for a minute, for field security concerns, but Nissenbaum replied that general security is more important than field security. Unless you take into consideration instances like Coventry, in which case….

Alright, alright, Tamir interrupted him. al-Darija.

What’s that?

Have you ever come across that term?

After an extended silence on both ends of the line, Nissenbaum finally said: No.

What about any other bird nicknames for those up north?

Those led the son of…

Yes, Tamir said. It was clear to