Dudi slept the entire way back to Jerusalem and woke up as we entered the underground parking lot. I told him I would be right up and he didn’t ask any questions. He left and slammed the door. After the echo faded away, there was a divine silence, with only the sound of the engine shutting down. It sounded like fragments of a long day. I spent a minute staring at the wall in front of me, a transition from my personal task to the national mission. This was a little ritual I had every time. Sometimes it was one minute, other times it was twenty. A whirlwind of dopamine or adrenaline washed through my body. Sometimes I dream that Seffi is angry with me, and I wake up with clenched fists and sweating. Sometimes I have a daydream that I find Seffi, and when that happens, I feel like calling Amit and Eitan and telling them that I did it. My body is tense at the beginning of every mission, as if reminding myself “This could be the big day.” It’s the thought that all the years of training will come down to this one decisive moment: pull, cock, dig my heel into the ground. I’ll bend my knees, lock my elbows, squint, and then Boom! It’ll be a moment that determines who lives and who dies.
Four tons of steel speeding on a bumpy road, with me inside, covered in pounds of steel, with a shining Austrian pistol and an M-16 rifle. If this is not enough, there will be soldiers with steel joining us at the entrance to the village. They’ll do whatever I tell them to do.
It was a gorgeous day. The sky was blue, and strong rays of sun shone on the beautiful Judean hills. I was supposed to meet the army forces at the entrance to Tekoa, an Israeli settlement. When we arrived, there was no one there but the elderly guard at the gate.
“Did you see soldiers here?” I shouted at him.
“No,” he replied.
I glanced at my phone to see what time it was. I had nine unanswered calls and a message from Dudi, the operations coordinator: “It’s been canceled, man. Come back.”
It’s hard to describe the feeling. If tomorrow the State of Israel were to sign a peace accord with all the Arabs, we’d be stuck with hordes of planes and tanks and tens of thousands of military men and ISA workers who would be unemployed. What would we do with all of it? That’s the same feeling a security guard has when his mission is canceled. What do we do with the combat spirit and the energy ready to explode? Where do you let it all out? On whom?
It would take months for the village of Marah Rabakh to go back to the way it was before the ISA suspected that it was where the kidnappers were. There were hardly any tiles left in the houses. Doors were ripped off, walls broken. A drug dealer refused to let the security forces enter his house. During the argument, he even pushed Captain Fajar and that was the end of his front teeth. Bitton beat the shit out of him.
I recalled the slogan on the wall of Amit’s office: “With no other target, move towards the roar of the cannons.” With his promotion to the position of the deputy division director slipping away, without any leads, even a lost ticking wristwatch might sound like a roar. One of Captain Fajar’s agents told him that a rumor had spread that Jubran Abdelkhader Halili, Yihya Sidawi’s nephew, was bragging to the car mechanic at the car repair shop in Halhul that he’s going to continue in his uncle’s footsteps.
Two hours later, two infantry companies were on the outskirts of Halhul. When we broke into his house, his mother almost had a heart attack. “Where’s Jubran?” Billal screamed at her.
“Hoon! Right here!” she screamed and pointed to a large “Hello Kitty” doll lying on the couch. A small head with huge Harry Potter eyeglasses peeked out from behind it.
I never saw Billal so amused. All the way back to Jerusalem he laughed and sang songs of the good old country. He couldn’t stop laughing when he told his supervisor where he was led by the so-called urgent report obtained by Captain Fajar.
I tried to get the key into the lock on my apartment door three times and failed. My hand was shaking again. The tremor in my hand started about a year ago. Donna noticed and mentioned it when I tried to eat some of the sushi she brought home. I couldn’t get hold of the rice roll. She looked at me with concern and asked if I was sure I was all right.
“It’s the skinny guy’s fault,” I said, turning my head towards Lior, whose hand I shook 15 minutes earlier.
“Stop it!” she said, as she always did when I called him that. But this time she wasn’t kidding. “He’s a good friend of mine! Stop being jealous!”
“Then why did you bring him here to work with you? You see him twice as much as you see me.”
“I never see you because you work all the time. That has nothing to do with anything. I like him as a friend, I love you as a boyfriend.” I dropped my chopsticks and picked up the sushi with my hand. Donna let out a long sigh. “You are negative and bad.”
I thought the tremor would disappear with time, that it was just some nerve short-circuiting in my brain, but it just got worse. It was happening not only after Krav Maga training, but also after arrests and field operations, continuing into the night until I fell asleep. Sometimes it would even happen for no reason, and I would put my hands in my pockets.
“You should see someone about that,” Donna said to me. “It doesn’t have to be a psychologist. Maybe a neurologist or a homeopath or something.” I refused and continued to refuse until I finally agreed, but only to ask Libby about it. Then Donna stopped mentioning it. Perhaps she just surrendered.
She came to the apartment a half hour after me, as per security protocol. She said “Hi,” and got into the shower. I nodded with my head because I was playing on Yemima the song that I had heard in the morning and it was stuck in my head. It was an old song, by the band Tipex, that always reminded me of Afula. Yemima was too cracked and hoarse for the song, and wasn’t right for the sweet melody.
“I feel like I’m losing you,” Donna said later that evening, with a white towel wrapped around her.
“Why do you say that? Because my hands shake a bit?” I threw Yemima on the bed; I had had enough of her.
“The tremor is a symptom.”
There was a loud knock on the door. “Stay here,” I said to Donna and jumped up from the couch. Through the peephole I saw an Arab with something in his hand. I knew this moment would come. My gun was still on me from the canceled operation; I took it out and cocked it.
When I threw the door open, he jumped back and a big black kippa fell off his head onto the yellow tiles.
“Hey, what the fuck!” he screamed, staring at the gun.
“Itay! What are you doing?” I heard Donna yelling behind me.
“Who are you?” I demanded.
“House committee! I’m on the house committee,” he breathed heavily. “I can come back another time.”
“House committee?” I asked and put my gun back into its place.
“House committee,” he said, still leaning his hands on the wall behind him.
“How much do you need?” I asked. His mouth was open, his eyes were still focused on the side of my waist.
“Haven’t you ever seen a gun before?” He shook his head.
“How much do I owe you?” I put my gun away and took out my wallet.
“Two hundred and thirty,” he said.
“Do you have change for 300?”
He rummaged through his pockets nervously and handed me one 50- and one 20-shekel bill.
“Here,” I said and handed him three 100-shekel bills. I didn’t let go even after he took hold of them. “Tell the cleaner that the next time he puts the rug on my rail, he won’t get it back.” I let go of the money and aimed an imaginary gun at him and pulled the trigger. “Boom,” I said.
He wasn’t laughing. He picked up his kippa, kissed it, and ran down the stairs.
I went back inside and knew that I was going to hear about this.
“Itay! What the hell!” she screamed at me. I looked up at her because I thought I heard a trace of amusement in her voice. “
You almost killed him!”
“You’re right,” I said, wanting to prevent the argument before it started.
“Do you realize that you’re insane?” she said with a look on her face that seemed like a smile for a moment.
“I’m sorry. I thought . . . never mind. This job has ruined my head.” I went to my room and fell onto the bed. The springs let out a sound of pain.
“You’re out of your mind,” she said as she took off her towel and turned to the closet. Her body was still pink from the hot water.
“You stand there with your gun out and I’m behind you naked in a towel, screaming, like some whore,” she muttered.
Wearing boxer shorts and one of my army t-shirts, she sat down next to me, like one of the guys. She leaned against the wall with a pillow between her warm back and the cool wall.
“I’m sorry about this. Please forgive me,” I told her, still surprised from her mild reaction.
The room was warmer than I remembered it. Maybe it was Donna who had me feeling warmer.
“Just do me a favor. Don’t do that again,” she said and took my hand. I caressed her leg, and she caressed my arm.
She told me she was working Saturday night, so I should keep Saturday free so that we can do something fun together. We could go dip our feet in one of the springs in the hills around Jerusalem.
“Great,” I replied. “Is what’s-his-name working with you on Saturday?”
“Yes, Lior is working on Saturday,” she said, stressing his name. This Lior guy was pale and skinny, but he had nice eyes. His beard was light colored, a little lighter than his long curls. He has the face of an artist, and if that wasn’t bad enough, he actually was one. Once when they came back from the university, he invited her up to his place to see his paintings. She went with him, knowing it would drive me crazy, and then she told me about it the moment she got home. It did drive me crazy. After I calmed down, she told me it was nothing, that they had tea and she left.
“Is he a good painter? He should come to Afula so he can paint the store I’m going to sell.”
“Don’t be patronizing. By the way, I think it would be a good idea to invite him over for dinner. I want you to deal with it.”
There is nothing that could interest me less than meeting the pale skinny guy.
“All right,” I said, without any enthusiasm.
“Should we turn off the light?” she asked, and went to turn it off.
I answered, “Yes,” a second after the room went dark.
Her curls were in the small area between my shoulder and chest. Some of them tickled me until I blew them away.
“Are you excited about Tuesday?” she asked me.
“Yeah. I’ve never had anyone pay for a flight ticket for me. It’s really cool.”
“Will you call me?”
“Yes, I promise.”
I put my hand on her soft stomach. I thought she had fallen asleep, but then she asked, “This is going to go on much longer, isn’t it?”
I wanted to say that I don’t know, but every time she asked me, I told her what she wanted to hear. I moved up on her ribs, to the tips of her breasts. She smiled a stingy smile with a closed mouth.
“Does that feel good?” I asked her.
She said that it did. Her warm skin and the smell of her hair were intoxicating. Her nails gently caressed the stubble on my face.
A pleasurable groan came from deep in her throat when I covered her body with mine. She kissed me hard, and I bent my knees so I could feel her with my feet. Her breathing deepened and her tongue intertwined with mine. I peeled off her G-string underpants, which hid very little. Her round feminine body drove me mad every time.
She took off my shirt and caressed my belly. Her warm soft hands made me breathe deeper. She moved her hand up and down from my belly to my waist, above my pants line.
“Wait,” she said, and put Spotify on. She put music on her phone, songs only she knew. I felt like they were carefully picked for this very moment. She grabbed my back tight and pulled me into her. I heard the thunder start to roll but she caught me so hard in my neck that the pain made the sounds in my head fade away. Donna released my neck as I pushed myself into her the fourth time.
“Don’t,” I told her.
“What don’t?” she asked.
“Don’t let go,” I told her, trying to avoid the sounds.
“Wha . . . Itay? Are you okay?”
The blow to my chest threw me back and reminded me that I was still in Hafar al-Batin.
I pressed the sheet in front of me and cried into it quietly. Donna usually comforts me at this point, but this time she just lay on her back and kept silent in despair.
Chapter 26
After getting out of the shower, I called reception even before getting dressed. I needed a mop. The floor in the hotel was so crooked that all the water that sprayed outside the shower created a big puddle, which I had to jump over acrobatically in order to keep my socks dry. I listened to three songs on the only channel on TV that played American music. The mop still hadn’t arrived. I called reception again and asked them to hurry up. The receptionist didn’t quite understand what I was saying but still agreed with every word.
The days in Baku went by fast, and I didn’t get many opportunities to see daylight.
Two days before the trip to the tournament in Miami, Dudi from the coordination department called to tell me that I was not going. The Director had decided that two jiu-jitsu fighters and a coach didn’t justify a personal security guard overseas, when here in Israel we’re on the verge of a severe escalation as the investigation of Jonod al-Takhrir and the abduction of corporal Keinan progressed.
Instead of being on the flight to Miami, Dudi signed me up for a Holocaust Memorial trip to Poland with some high school as part of their Holocaust studies.
“I would rather drink lava,” I told him. The thought of having to run after high school students at Auschwitz gave me the shudders. It was enough that my Grandma Bianca suffered there.
“Okay, then I’m assigning you to a different delegation,” Dudi said on the phone. “An arms exhibit in Baku. It’s a week long − Sunday to Saturday.”
“All right,” I said. I had no idea where Baku was, but it sounded better than Auschwitz. I later learned that it’s the capital of Azerbaijan. Damn it. I don’t even know where that is.
“You fell for the oldest trick of the coordination department,” Leroy said to me in a tone you use to explain things to a child. “That’s their way to convince security guards to go on boring trips. They offer you a trip out of hell, and then you settle for a shitty trip.”
How does he always know everything before everyone?
I landed in Baku after a five-hour flight through Turkey. A third of the arms companies and representatives of the Defense Ministry had flown over earlier. The security officer from the embassy, Natan Avmeicher, was waiting for them at the hotel. An observer-scanner had arrived in a different flight. On the first evening, I had a scheduled meeting with her and Avmeicher.
Avmeicher is the kind of guard who didn’t get hired for his intelligence. I’m not saying that I’m a genius, but Avmeicher would get this hollow gaze every time our conversation strayed from security-related matters. Talking to Leroy or Bitton was interesting, at times even fascinating, but it seemed like Avmeicher wouldn’t have a meaningful insight even if it slapped him in the face.
It was half an hour before the meeting in the lobby and they still hadn’t sent up the damned mop. No one likes to step in a puddle, but when I step in water with my socks on and they get all wet, it reminds me of the war.
I met Avmeicher in the lobby, and we discussed the weather for a bit.
“Yes,” he said like a local, “it’s a bit cold here.”
I was surprised to hear that all the guards at the embassies have b
een through the Unified Security Course at The Academy. They spend a year and a half in some hole-in-the wall country and then another year and a half in a more desirable European or American consulate. “I didn’t do too badly. My friends are working in Nigeria, Eritrea, and Cairo, and other God-forsaken places,” Avmeicher said with a self-satisfied smile. We stood up to greet Zaor, the Azerbaijani security guard who our hosts hired for us. Zaor was the first local person I had met until now who spoke English. He was well dressed, wearing a tie and jacket that were in style back in the 1980s. He had a gray mustache and was missing a tooth.
“The observer is late,” I said to Avmeicher, looking at my watch. He said he had spoken to her and that she would be there in a minute. Then he looked up and smiled. “There she is,” he said.
“Liza!” I cried in surprise. What were the odds?
“Itay! What a coincidence,” she slapped Avmeicher on the back, surprising everyone. I got half a hug.
“We worked together in Israel,” I said with an apologetic smile. I didn’t know if my face was red or not, but I felt the heat in my cheeks.
“I’m going to get some coffee,” I said apologetically, and left the round table because my gut told me to leave. I don’t usually drink coffee in the evening unless I’m going on an arrest mission in the West Bank.
“Get one for yourself too!” Liza said as though I were her waiter.
I returned to the table with black tea and some Azerbaijani coffee. Avmeicher had begun his boring briefing, coordination times, transportation, etc. I remembered Liza being beautiful, but not this gorgeous.
“Regarding special equipment,” she began her part of the briefing, “The exhibition management set up small operations room where I’ll be sitting and watching the surveillance from the smart cameras. I can even tell you who’s new in the pavilion, and who’s back.”
“And who’s Ba-ku?” Avmeicher asked with a satisfied grin.
Fracture Point Page 14
