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

converted to Judaism. Turns out he was growing increasingly devout.

Returnee?

Very much so. Ultra-Orthodox.

Ultra-Orthodox and dating a Bedouin?

Have you ever seen her?

No, Tamir lied. Anyway, he hadn’t seen her since she was a little girl.

Well, she’s very pretty. That works on ultra-Orthodox, as well. Doesn’t it, Oz?

Oz snarled in contempt.

Anyway, it turned out for the best.

How so?

Because the ultra-Orthodox marry off returnees to what they consider to be defective women— other returnees, or converts. So, there you go, a returnee and a convert.

Match made in heaven, Oz snickered.

And she agreed to convert?

Not right away. Over time. Her Palestinian zeal died down pretty quick, and she had nowhere else to go. Maybe she also loved him, who knows…

Is she still in Acre?

Uh… no, they moved to Jerusalem.

To an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood?

Yes.

Wow, strange… Tamir said.

Musa and Oz exchanged glances.

And what did her sister make of all of this?

We never quite figured out what she thought about it. At times, she managed to stay very unclear.

Enigmatic, Tamir proposed.

I always knew we needed a professor here, Oz said mockingly.

And that’s how our affair with her began, Musa said. She would send us information about the Front, about meetings, training, things she overheard, and a bit about what we were really after— Rajai.

I don’t remember seeing anything about him from Raspberry.

Yes, it was so sensitive we decided to compartmentalize it.

Did she send anything of value?

It’s hard to say. Our evaluators felt that she maybe she did. No one was really certain. We couldn’t corroborate most of the things she sent with other sources. It’s unclear how much of it was actually reliable.

Did she sleep with him?

She later told us that she did. There was no reason to doubt that. Anyway, it didn’t go on for long, because pretty quick after we recruited her came the second attack. We were against her taking an active part in operations, and we let her know that. On the other hand, it enhanced her credibility in the organization. Anyway, she didn’t ask us, and decided to take part regardless. Maybe that was her way of getting back at us for destroying her settlement. Or maybe she was just thrilled by the action.

You knew about the attack in advance?

We didn’t know much, Musa evaded. That’s not important now. The main thing was not to compromise Raspberry. We treated her as an extremely high-quality source, even though she hadn’t actually proved herself yet.

I see, Tamir said, even though he found Musa’s phrasings a bit odd.

As you saw yourself, we were able to extract her after she landed. The helicopter fire towards the Ultralight was a blunder. At that point, we couldn’t tell which of the two gliders she was in. It’s hard to control such things in real-time.

But her glider was hit as well.

Yes, ground-unit fire. The forces weren’t sufficiently coordinated. But still, she wasn’t killed. It’s true that we didn’t expect you to appear there.

Tamir remained silent. For so many nights after that, he could still see her before his eyes: in his sleep, in daydreams, and in twilight, the fire in those dark eyes, the proud, erect posture, a hand clutching a gun pointed directly at him, choosing him. With time, the memory faded, becoming less and less tangible, seeming more like a legend, like a dream.

Why didn’t she shoot you? Oz suddenly hurled a question at him.

Tamir recalled the tamarisk thicket, the wonderous awe he felt towards that girl, the hand that washed and bandaged his head; the sweet, hot tea; the receding sound of dogs barking outside; the swelling, soft silence inside, like a heart of chocolate in a fresh-baked babka; her lips whispering something in a primordial language, the language of marshes, deserts, and seas.

I have no idea, he said.

Oz stared at him prolongedly. Tamir saw nothing in his eyes but suspicion and contempt. He assumed it wasn’t personal, that this was his general outlook on the world.

We held on to her for a while, debriefed her, Musa said.

Why didn’t you call me? I knew the organization better than any of you.

We didn’t care about the organization. We cared about Rajai, about the Revolutionary Guard.

Tamir thought to himself that if he had questioned her about the organization and someone like the guy from Department 143 had questioned her about the Revolutionary Guard, they would have done a lot better than the people sitting in front of him now. He remembered the underwhelming performance of the Mossad representative at the meeting with the deputy director of the MID-RD, as well as ‘Ali the Yellow’s questioning. But at the same time, he thought that had he been invited to participate in Dallal’s questioning, he could have…

We didn’t trust you, either, Oz added. And for good reason. What the hell were you doing there when she landed, anyway? Why didn’t you just stay in that surveillance van, the mouse?

Mole.

What did you think would happen? She could have killed you. Not that I would have given a shit…

What could he have…?

Anyway, we didn’t learn much, Musa said. We didn’t want to apply too much pressure, because there was still a chance we could use her again. So, we didn’t debrief her like we would a foreign agent, but like you would a source. And honestly… we didn’t make much headway.

We should have broken her, Oz muttered.

He could have saved her. Like she saved him then. From the thicket, from the night, from Ronen Schwartz, from the cruel kids, from the kibbutz.

Oz is Beit Shammai, Musa smiled. But for now at least, we rule by Beit Hillel.23 Anyway, I don’t think she knew much more than she told us.

Tamir waited in silence. Assaf typed in something on his laptop. Oz stared grimly at the table before him.

Then, we found ourselves in a problem, Musa said. We couldn’t send her back to Lebanon. How could we explain that she had survived the attack? She escaped and made it back across the border? Not very likely. Your guys would never have bought it, and Rajai