The Marsh Angel

by Hagai Dagan

  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 is Musa. Let’s move along. I’m going to ask you a couple of questions anyway. Try to answer them without making a fuss.

  Let’s give it a try.

  The woman you knew during your military service as an operative for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command, a.k.a al-Darija— has any information regarding her reached you in the period following your discharge from active duty?

  No.

  Musa peeked at his notes. Not even on the one occasion you went for reserve duty in your unit, at Kidonit base?

  No, Tamir said, briefly contemplating his conversation with the guy from Owl Team about Amir Rajai. Besides, if I had learned something there, I would have passed it on and you would have known about it anyway.

  I’m asking if you learned anything that, for whatever reason, you chose not to pass on, Musa locked eyes with Tamir.

  No, he replied, I didn’t learn any new information about her. I just ran around like an idiot chasing Hezbollah operatives and could barely make sense of what they were doing.

  I see. And in the years since?

  No. I cut ties with all of that.

  What about your relationship with Amalia Ben Menachem? Nothing came up there?

  I’m pretty sure that you know everything that she knows.

  That’s not what I asked.

  No, nothing came up.

  I don’t believe you, Oz said.

  Tamir looked at him and shrugged. You’re going to have to live with it, he said.

  We need to speak, Oz said to Musa.

  I agree, Musa said. Wait for us here with Assaf, we’ll be back in a minute.

  The two men left the room. Tamir sipped his coffee. You got any cookies here? he asked Assaf.

  Assaf raised his head from his laptop, and observed Tamir through squinted eyes. He remained silent. Tamir reached over to his bag and pulled out a book. He knew he wouldn’t be able to concentrate, but he had never mastered the art of sitting around doing nothing. Whenever he had gazed inwards, he discovered nothing but a faint whisper, a sorrowful murmur in a big empty void. What was there to do with a faint whisper?

  What are you reading? Asked Musa who re-emerged through the door.

  The Last World, Christoph Ransmayr.

  Any good?

  Interesting. I’m struggling with it a bit.

  Musa looked over his shoulder. Oh, you’re reading it in German.

  Yes, and I’m finding his German quite challenging.

  But otherwise, you’re okay in German, right?

  Yes.

  Fluent?

  Pretty fluent. Since having studied German in university, he occasionally read books in German, not so much because he feared losing his command of the language, but because as time went by, he found it harder and harder to read Hebrew literature. The books would confront him with everything he was trying to get away from. They were too contemporary, too Israeli. During long vacations or semesters he wasn’t teaching, Tamir used to go to Europe, mostly to Germany, especially to Munich, to drink wheat beer, breath the cool, fresh air, lose himself in its pleasant streets, and immerse himself in the language.

  Good, that might come in handy, Musa said.

  What do you mean?

  Oz thinks it’s a bad idea to offer you what I’m thinking of offering you. He thinks you’re a rogue and that you can’t be trusted. He also thinks it a bad idea to recruit someone without training. We won’t have time to train you. That invites more trouble than you can imagine. It’s a big headache.

  You’re going to recruit me?

  I’m quite apprehensive about it as well, Musa ignored his question, but I’ve decided to take a risk. It won’t be the first time we throw caution to the wind. Oz thinks we can do perfectly without you. I agree we can do without you, but maybe not perfectly.

  Tamir looked at him curiously. He thought Oz was right. He had always felt the world could do perfectly without him in every which way. He felt he was quite redundant, that he certainly was not vital in any way, same as pretty much everyone. The only difference between him and other people was that, on the one hand, he was aware of it, and, on the other, it bothered him. He didn’t know why it bothered him.

  I’m going to bring you up to speed, Musa said. Before, though, I want you to sign this. Assaf?

  Assaf pulled a form out of his briefcase and placed it before Tamir. He put the Ransmayr book back in his bag and looked at the form. It was a confidentiality agreement, more or less the same as those he remembered from his military service. He didn’t see the Prime Minister’s Office emblem on the letterhead, nor of the Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations. He hesitated. Finally, h
e signed the agreement, under the watchful, suspecting eye of Oz. He figured that to him, this signature wasn’t worth the paper it was written on.

  Musa pushed the signed form towards Assaf. So, we’re talking about the woman known as the stint, al-Darija, he said, a former member— and perhaps still to this day, that’s still unclear— of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command.

  But who is she? Tamir asked.

  What?

  You said she’s known as the stint, but you know her true identity, don’t you?

  Do you?

  No, Tamir said, thinking to himself that that was only partially true.

  Okay, Musa said, so the stint joined the Front’s airborne unit and participated in two attacks.

  You’re jumping to the middle of the story, Tamir interrupted him.

  Musa looked at him in silence.

  You recruited her, didn’t you? She was your source, codenamed Raspberry?

  Musa looked over at Oz who shook his head in disagreement. There’s no choice, Musa said, he has to know.

  He doesn’t.

  Yes, he does, Musa insisted. Otherwise we can’t move forward.

  This is a mistake, a serious mistake, Oz snarled angrily.

  Musa turned back to face Tamir. Yes, we recruited her. Jibril’s organization was strengthening its ties to the Iranians at the time. We knew Amir Rajai was liaising with them. He was very close to the Iranian top-brass. They entrusted him to make Lebanon one big warhead and bring it down on our heads. We thought that we could either reach the top through him, or at least neutralize him— but we preferred the former. We ran all sorts of checks, and discovered that he has a weak spot for young women. It probably won’t come as news to you if I told you it’s extremely difficult to get agents into Iran, but getting them into Lebanon was much simpler, and we suddenly had an opportunity on our hands. We needed a pretty girl and a link. The connection to the Front was the link, now all we needed was to get a girl in there. We sniffed around a bit. We met with the Shin-Beit, and they told us about a pretty Bedouin girl who was going to Palestinian youth-movement meetings in Acre. Naturally, the Shin-Beit tracks their every move. We discovered that she was an orphan, that all she had was her sister, that her parents were killed in a seaborne attack by al-Sa‘iqa.

  Yes… Tamir muttered.

  Yes, what?

  Nothing. Go on. For a moment, it seemed to him like Musa was standing atop a mounting and reading the veiled holy word of God.

  We reached out to her. We tried to see what she was made of, Musa said. It was pretty clear she had a bone to pick with the Palestinians. Even regardless of the al-Sa‘iqa attack, she was a Bedouin, not quite Palestinian, a less distinct identity… It was clear that her parents’ death presented us with a golden opportunity. There’s no better agent to groom than someone with a motive.

  Why did she go to the youth movement then?

  We wondered that ourselves. So, we asked her. She said that, firstly, it was Fatah, not Sa‘iqa, and secondly, that she wanted to get to know her enemy better.

  And you believed her?

  No, Oz said.

  Not entirely, Musa corrected. It didn’t sound very plausible that a girl her age would make such lofty plans. But she sounded very mature and determined, and was happy to work with us. As if she was waiting for us her entire life.

  Too good to be true, Oz hissed through clenched teeth.

  It was a dilemma, Musa continued. We knew Rajai’s connection to the Front was tightening. At that time, there were plans being made for action in Iran in the near future but there wasn’t enough intelligence available. We were pressured from above. There were decisions to be made. We decided to bet our money on her. Since we knew Rajai was grooming the Front’s airborne unit, the idea was to slip her in there. We trained her in weapons, in piloting gliders, even Pipers… We came up with a cover story that she was trained by the Palestine Liberation Army in Yemen. It was risky, but we knew Jibril had no contact with the PLA, so there was little chance they’d carry out due diligence.

  And then they demolished her settlement, Oz snickered.

  We had no idea something like that was brewing, Musa said. Go figure you had to track the activity of every jackass in the Acre municipality as well.

  It was a case of Jewifying lands, Oz pointed out.

  Jewifying, my ass, Musa growled. Anyway, she was with us in training when it happened. We tried to hide it from her, but she obviously found out later. You can’t keep a thing like that hidden for long. Her sister spoke to the media…

  Like a radical Palestinian nationalist, Oz remarked.

  We deliberated how to approach damage control. We spoke with her, asked her how she felt. She said that in her settlement, no one ever trusted the Jews, so what happened came as no great surprise to her. She knew Acre is a city of fascists, that’s how she put it, and she knew this day would come. But her priorities were still clear.

  I didn’t believe a single word she said, Oz said.

  One side killed her parents, the other destroyed her house— which trumps which? Musa asked, musingly. That’s what I told myself back then.

  If you even call that a house. Pile of disgusting tin slabs, Oz sputtered.

  Tamir thought about the wretched bushes on the banks of the Na‘aman, the thicket, the tamarisk, the herons and the ibises crowding together on its branches after nightfall.

  You always have to keep the worst-case scenario in mind, Musa said. Say she’d have reached Lebanon and flipped, turned to the other side. What then? What would she tell them about us? That we recruited her and that we’re interested in top Iranian officials in Lebanon? That’s not too much. I thought it was worth the risk.

  Tamir nodded.

  We made her sign a confidentiality agreement, of course, and made it clear that she was not to talk about these things to anyone, including her sister. But obviously we couldn’t trust her word on it. Her sister seemed like a weak link. We asked the Shin-Beit to dig up everything they could about her. We then discovered she had a Jewish boyfriend.

  Really?

  Yes, some guy from Acre who used to frequent her village to buy stuff from her tribe.

  Probably agricultural equipment they stole from the kibbutzes, Oz remarked. Tamir found himself nodding in agreement.

  In short, it became a whole thing, Musa said. We felt it was best that she moved to live in Acre, rather than some Arab village. That way, it would be easier to keep tabs on her.

  And her tin shack was razed anyway.

  Yes, Tamir said, but in the interview in the newspaper…

  Oh, so you saw that? Musa looked at him sternly.

  Yes, I came across it.

  Uh huh… Well, she was furious. But she had nowhere to go. Where could she have gone? A girl on her own, and a Bedouin at that… Her only alternative was marriage.

  Probably as the second wife of some old pervert, Oz added. A wonderful life.

  So we told her, move to Acre, go to Haifa University, just keep quiet. Don’t cause a stir. You’d only be putting your sister at risk.

  You suggested she should live with her boyfriend?

  Yes, but he insisted she 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 convert
s. 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.