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

a tall wave, seeing the splendid deepness unfolding before him, as if he could see both the surface of the sea as well as its depths, its corals and reefs, the deep-sea creatures wading on its floor, from blind crustaceans to the Leviathan and the Gliding Serpent. I’m living the life of arts, Tamir thought, I truly am living the life of arts. How uplifting. How splendid.

And then came the summons. Kidonit. It sounded like a call from a previous lifetime, intended for a different person. He didn’t want to go back to being that person. He tried to defer the matter till summer, but his efforts were in vain. We need another person in Kidonit now, he was instructed by the department. Someone’s discharging and there’s a three-week gap until their replacement comes in. What’s the problem? Just ask to borrow someone’s notes. That’s what all the students do.

The night before his expected journey to Kidonit, he tossed and turned in his bed. He couldn’t say what it was that was bothering him exactly. He decided to try to read the most boring text he could lay his hands on, a surefire method to fall asleep. He got up, glanced over at his humble library, and picked up How to Know Higher Worlds by Rudolph Steiner. A student he once unsuccessfully tried to hit on told him that she was an anthroposophist, and recommended the book. He bought it solely to impress her, and after reading a few lines, discovered it was a depressingly tiresome read. He pulled it out of the shelf and, sure enough, it worked like a charm: a few lines into the author’s astral realms, he dozed off. He dreamt he was weightlessly cruising among translucid silver stardust astral rings. Suddenly, the galactic fog stirred. A faint batting of wings was both heard and not heard. From a distance, he could see Earth, blue and dreamy. Something tiny detached from Earth, pierced the atmosphere, and made the heavens quiver. What was it? A bird? He saw spotted wings, golden-brown, beating in space, and smelled familiar aromas of marshland soil, salt, tamarisks. Nothing will grow here, sounded a serious, ominous voice. This is a land that eats its inhabitants. The wings kept fluttering in the empty void, the beak extended forward, suffocating in the airless vacuum. The stint will die here, he thought desperately, the stint will die here.

b. Source Confidentiality

Kidonit remained practically unchanged. It was a strange feeling, because he himself felt a completely different person to the one who came through the gates of this base a million years ago. Actually, it wasn’t that long ago, he mused. It felt peculiar to wear uniform again, even though he wore them with the irreverent unkemptness of a reserve soldier. On his way over from the gate to the base commander’s office, he observed his surroundings. The same ridiculous whitewashed trees, the same ramshackle temporary structures, the same girls’ quarters, the same antenna field overlooking the forested mountains rising above Ein-Doev, the same peaks piercing the wide expanse past which lie Syria and Lebanon.

Soldier, tuck in your shirt! a hostile master sergeant greeted him by the base commander’s office. His skin was pale and his eyes bloodshot; an unknown greasy substance covered his hair, reminding Tamir of Kahane from the ‘Submarine’ at Bahad 15. Tamir did not indulge him with a response, and simply walked past him. He reached the quarters and dropped his bag in the room he was assigned, before making his way over to the bunker.

At the bunker, he was greeted by a nimble IAO named Sharon. He told Tamir that a lot has changed since his time at the base. The Palestinians are a low priority now, they’re hardly covered. They’re pretty much inactive, anyway. They have zero presence in the field. Almost everything is Hezbollah now. He reviewed the Hezbollah networks they covered, went over a couple of other matters, and said he’ll stick around for a few more hours before heading home.

Tamir sat at the intelligence analysis desk and started leafing through summaries. He felt such a great distance between himself and what he was asked to do now, that he could hardly even make out what he was reading. For a moment, he felt that his Arabic had escaped him. Things took a while to set in, like an immigrant slowly recalling his childhood native language which he hasn’t spoken in decades. Despite Sharon’s detailed survey, Tamir found it difficult to understand who exactly these Hezbollah operatives were, where they were stationed, how they related to each other, and what were their roles. Occasionally, he asked Sharon a question, but the IAO’s terse answers did little to help Tamir situate these operatives and map their activity.

He cast his eyes over to a map of Lebanon hanging on the wall beside him. This land, whose geography he once commanded so effortlessly, now seemed to him like a dense, turbid kingdom, immersed in fog and gloom. He looked at it now and saw nothing.

Okay, is everything clear? Sharon asked two hours later. Can I go home now?

Tamir nodded. There was no point in answering differently. Sharon wished him luck, and vanished.

Tamir went into the reception room. He didn’t know anyone. A new producer now sat in the space once occupied by Ophira, her hair meticulously gathered, pulled back tightly, her expression hazy. When she noticed Tamir staring at her, she looked at him bemused. He nodded his head slightly, and went back to his desk.

A short while later, summaries started flooding to his desk at an increasing rate. Tamir immediately understood he was dealing with an activity intensification, but couldn’t gather what the activity was. He knew he needed help. He consulted the producers, but the picture did not get any clearer. At some point, he managed to ascertain that weapons were being shuttled from one place to the other. Tamir asked for the active stations to be pinpointed— but the