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

It isn’t?

Yaki chuckled. According to protocol, I’m not supposed to tell you what happened afterwards.

Since when do you follow protocol? Aren’t you from 504?

Hey, who taught you to talk like that?

Tamir silently smiled to himself.

Can we be certain that no one’s listening in on these encrypted phones? Yaki asked.

No, we can never be certain. But I say we risk it.

Fine, Yaki agreed, taking risks is my thing. Anyway, so they tailed her when she left the hotel in Beirut. She went into some café and they noticed the waiter handing her something that appeared to be a note. She got up and walked over to use the phone in the café. A couple of minutes later, she got out and took a cab to a different hotel, something cheaper. Half an hour later, she left the hotel and headed back to the Front’s base. Generally, if they had any brains between their ears, they’d stakeout the hotel and try to find out who’s staying there. But the guy told ‘Ali that they’re always worried when they’re operating in Beirut: there are a lot of eyes there, and anyone who’s watching someone is most likely himself being watched by someone else, and more or less everyone reports to the Syrians— and often to the Iranians, as well.

So, what do you make of this story?

Isn’t it obvious?

I’d rather hear it from you.

Don’t you think I’ve said enough? Don’t be greedy.

Tamir thanked him and told him he’d gladly spend his measly army salary buying him a meal at the Barometer, a pub he frequents. I’ll even order you a cognac, he added. Hell, I’ll even order you a glass Martell— even though I’ll need three salaries to afford that. Unfortunately, I don’t know any good whorehouses around here.

Yaki laughed. Too bad you don’t have the training for it, he said, I would’ve taken you for a ride in downtown Sidon, before Hezbollah shuts the city down.

Moti came in and asked Tamir how things were coming along. Tamir replied that he will finish his official training period tomorrow, and that he more or less runs the unit already.

Excellent, Moti said. Anything you think might be unusual or important, report to me immediately. Don’t think twice about it. And I want a weekly progress report.

Tamir nodded. It was getting darker outside, twilight descended upon the futuristic towers rising from the base. Tamir absentmindedly flipped through some week-old logs, and decided to head out. Nissenbaum was long gone. He shut off the lights, left the room, took the stairs two flights down, and turned to exit the building. The air was a bit chilly outside. Winter’s starting already, he thought to himself. Suddenly, he recalled the crisp winds cascading down the edges of the Western Galilee mountains like tumbling carpets, whipping up the remnants of the summer and autumn dust, preparing the air for the arrival of the first winter rain; the weeping boletes stirring underground, near the trunks of pine trees, eagerly anticipating the rain; the silent, almost secretive cleansing of the air above picked cotton fields; the delicate ripples over the still waters of fish ponds. Winter’s starting, a shiver ran down his back, not due to the cold— it wasn’t that cold yet— but because of a thought, a memory, a feeling of emptiness which suddenly sliced through him. He noticed he forgot his sweater in the department. He deliberated for a moment, considering just leaving it there and enjoying this illusory chill, before finally deciding to head back to the department.

Once there, he noticed that he had forgotten to shut down his computer. Exemplary conduct, he thought to himself self-deprecatingly. How could an intelligence man be so scatterbrained? As he rolled the cursor over to shut the computer off, he noticed an incoming dispatch. He clicked on it, more out of habit than out of curiosity. It was a decipherment of an encrypted message sent from the Saudi embassy in Paris to a factor at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Riyadh. Tamir’s eyes opened in surprise as he read the message:

From: 22A3D

To: Supervisor 22A

Regarding: Operational Cooperation Iran-Palestinian Organizations

Our sources (see reference 7564G/13) report that the Iranian economic attaché in Lebanon Mahmud Safadi met a representative of a Palestinian organization on the 24th of October. Which organization is unclear. The meeting was held in a Lebanese restaurant in the Latin Quarter. As you will remember (see reference 7643B/2), Safadi is a member of Department 10, Iranian Intelligence. Based on prior experience, it is plausible to assume that contact with him implies an advanced operational stage. That can be read alongside reports by the office in Vienna (reference 5339A/5) of Iranian designs to increase cooperation with operational Palestinian factors. The assumed objective is to apply increased pressure on Israel and perhaps even establish a new front, seeing that the pressure applied by Hezbollah on the South Lebanon Army is insufficient.

e. Mainstream, and Slightly to the Right

The dispatch about the Iranian-Palestinian cooperation raised a lot of interest, but there was not much that could be done besides waiting for further developments, with the hope that such developments won’t simply impose themselves on those waiting for them in the form of a surprise terrorist attack out of the blue. In the meantime, a couple of days had passed and nothing dramatic happened. Nissenbaum had all but dissipated. Tamir sat at his desk and read everything that needed reading. He felt quite comfortable in his new settings, and felt he had quite a decent grip on the ins and outs of the organization, although it’s hard to tell, he told himself in an attempt to quell a sense of hubris that was brewing in him prematurely.

One afternoon, Tamir let out a sigh of satisfaction after having finished going over the material he had assigned himself to read that day. He sat up and felt it was time for a coffee, and perhaps even a comforting slice of cheesecake in