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

feed you hope with a spoon and drink your blood with a straw. He kept walking down the hall and stopped before a small brass sign bearing the title Shomron & Sharoni Communications Services. He rang the bell fixed to the bottom of a metal numeric keypad. The intercom came to life and a female voice instructed him to look at the small screen at the bottom of the keypad. He looked straight at the screen. A few seconds later, a buzz sounded. He pushed the door open. A young security guard asked him to remove any metallic objects and pass through the scanner. Afterwards, he gave him a visitor’s badge. A person with yellowish skin, his face spirited and his body underneath his short blue t-shirt fit, appeared beside them.

Tamir. He didn’t ask, he asserted.

Yes.

I’m Assaf.

Tamir nodded.

Follow me.

Tamir thought up some alternative phrasings in his head. ‘Will you please accompany me’, for example; ‘this way, please’; or even, ‘welcome, would you kindly come this way?’ These were all literal translations from other languages, in which these combinations sounded completely natural. Hebrew permitted their composition in terms of vocabulary and grammar, but their utterance would have sounded wholly artificial. Why is that? Because, at the end of the day, Hebrew was molded as a soldier’s language and the language of… For some reason, the term barbarians sprang to his mind. For a moment, he thought of his students. After all, they’re good kids, or at least they could be, but they’re trapped in the confines of this language, of this society. They don’t stand a chance. And I probably don’t, either, he lamented.

He followed Assaf. They entered a room that looked like a small conference room. Assaf told him to wait in there and asked if he wanted anything.

Do you have an espresso machine?

Yes.

Can you make a macchiato?

Don’t get carried away.

Espresso with milk, no sugar.

Assaf left the room.

A couple of minutes passed. Tamir’s mind was empty. He felt something approximating meditative serenity. The door opened and two men walked in. Tamir recognized them immediately, despite the years that had gone by. One of them was the balding, mustached, puffy-cheeked man who had intervened in his investigation at F.S.D.2 and who showed up to snatch al-Darija after she had crashed. The other person was the silent, tiny-yarmulke-wearing man who had also been present on both occasions. The formerly puffy-cheeked man had by now lost whatever hair he had remaining, his mustache grayed, and his face had become bony and flaccid. He didn’t age well. His partner grew slightly hunched, his hair streaked with silver. The former now wore a blue blazer over a light polo shirt, the latter a white shirt with the top two buttons undone. His red yarmulke was replaced by a sandy yellow one. Something had cracked in his once foreboding sealed exterior, Tamir thought to himself, but maybe I’m just imagining.

Well, did you think we’d ever meet again? The older man asked in a slightly contrived tone, neither pleasantly congenial, nor comfortingly familiar.

I don’t know, Tamir said.

Assaf came back with his coffee.

Where’s Efrat? Asked the bald man who had yet to introduce himself, and perhaps was not intending to do so.

She went home, Assaf replied.

Okay, well, I’m not gonna ask you to make me a coffee as well, the bald man joked. Assaf sat down in the far side of the long elliptical table and opened a laptop computer.

How’s life in academia? the man turned to Tamir again.

Floundering, Tamir replied honestly.

Yes, the other guy intervened, and no job security, either.

I see you’ve taken an interest in my life.

We’re thorough people.

Well, it’s good to see you can talk as well.

The man in the white shirt stared at him grievously.

Tamir sipped his coffee. It tasted like a typical espresso capsule. Reasonable enough, within the boundaries of the genre. I thought you were located somewhere else these days, he said.

We’re located in many places, the bald man said.

Alright, Tamir said, but just so to be certain who I am speaking with— you’re still Mossad, right?

We are the appropriate authority to discuss this matter with you, and we are coordinated with all the relevant bodies, the man said emphatically.

Okay, I guess I’ll have to settle for that, Tamir said, although he was displeased by the answer.

That’s right. Now, tell me a little more about your life.

I thought you already knew everything.

We’d rather hear it first-hand.

Why?

What?

Why do I have to tell you anything? Am I under investigation? You asked me to come. You need something from me. Let’s hear what you need, and take it from there.

We’re about to divulge some sensitive and highly classified information, and we just want to clarify a few things before we do so.

No.

No, what?

No, we’re not going to play it that way. You’re going to have to trust me. No third degree. If you don’t like it, we can go our separate ways.

Listen, the man in the white shirt sat up in his seat, but his mustached counterpart shook his head slightly. He settled back down.

Tamir raised his head. He was no longer the young soldier he was back then, during that interview at GHQ. This time, they would dance to a different tune. That much he had decided as soon as Assaf had called. And introduce yourselves, he said. You know who I am, you even know I might be getting fired soon, but I feel I’m talking to robots. I need names, even aliases. You were called Menashe the last time we met, he told the mustached man, and you didn’t have a name.

The mustached man studied him at length. He seemed to be deliberating whether to take Tamir’s assertiveness as a positive or a negative. Finally, he must have decided there was a positive side to it. He conjured something approximating a cautious, unconvincing smile. I’m Musa, he said, and this is Oz. You’ve met Assaf already.

Nice to meet you, Tamir said, trying not to sound dismissive. Musa is Moshe? So, not Menashe?

Musa