Esther's Sling (6 page)

Cohen did not wait for Avner to reply. “That is a good point, Ben. Why don’t you participate with Zvi and the planning group? Zvi, what do you think?”

Both Avner and Raibani were caught off guard. But Raibani liked the idea and his face showed it. Avner did not, but he recognized that the only way he could come back into this room with a plan that he had concluded was not viable and have it accepted as such was if Raibani had been involved in the process. As Avner’s political mind came to this realization, he knew that the prime minister had just given him a great gift. “Yes,” said the defense minister. “I welcome Ben’s involvement.”

Amit Margolis enjoyed the view north and west over Tel Aviv and its Mediterranean waterfront. The fortieth floor of the Neve Tzedek Tower was commanding. It was a little before 6 p.m. on December 31, 2009, and the last hints of sunlight were rapidly fading away on the western horizon. Amit tried in vain to pick out his apartment home in the Tel Baruch neighborhood five miles to the north. His eyes followed the traffic on Highway 20 north past Mossad’s new office tower on the edge of Camp Rabin, the compound in Tel Aviv that houses the headquarters of the IDF, up toward his exit at Boulevard Keren Kayemet Le-Israel. But from there it was already too dark to pick out his street.

This was Amit’s first visit to the apartment of his long-time friend Dov Hirsch. Like many of the katsa, the professional Mossad spies who find themselves on long-term assignments in foreign, sometimes hostile, lands under assumed identities, Amit spent his free time with his fellow Mossad brethren – or just alone. Dov had served with him in Mossad but had left the Institute four years before to join Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, Ltd., the large Israeli defense contractor. Now a Rafael sales professional, Dov had purchased this three b
edroom apartment a year earlier.

Dov walked out of the living room and onto the balcony. He handed a beer to his friend. “Happy New Year,” he said.

Amit raised the bottle to examine the label. “Dancing Camel? Where’s the Goldstar?”

“Just try it,” Dov replied as he smiled. “This beer is fantastic. My favorite now.” Hirsch raised his own bottle of Dancing Camel
in salute to Amit.

Margolis tried some. “
Mmm. Not bad.”

“You are getting shit-faced tonight, my friend.” Dov Hirsch was known as a party boy while at Mossad and, as Amit suspected, being in the private sector did nothing to curb this aspect of his personality. “And you are definitely getting lai
d.”

Amit laughed and turned his eyes toward the beach, whic
h was only a quarter mile away. The white sand and breaking surf was clearly visible in the gathering night. “You haven’t changed a bit. The view here is amazing. How long have you been here?”

“I gave Rachel her
get
about eighteen months ago.” Hirsch was referring to the writ of divorce that had to be granted from husband to wife under Israeli law. “I bought this place in January. Got a great deal from some guy who had bought three units here on spec in 2007. He rented two of them for less than he expected and couldn’t find a renter for this one. He was sucking wind on the mortgage payments.”

“All right. Are you going to make me ask, asshole? How much?”

Hirsch smiled and looked at his old friend. “I offered him 1.2 million dollars and settled at 1.3 million. You believe that?”

“Sounds like a deal. But to be honest, I’m the last guy to ask about the real estate market here. How did you afford that? Rafael paying you that well?”

“Hell no. I mean, Rafael pays me okay, but … you know my background. My parents were helpful.” Dov Hirsch was the scion of a family that had made a small fortune developing real estate in Tel Aviv and Haifa.

“Ah, yes. Maybe your dad can support me.”

“Hey, I’m lucky. Someone has to be. You are working way too hard, Amit. Still going to Russia all the time?”

“You know I can’t talk about that.”

“I will take that as a definite yes.”

“Come on,” implored the active Mossad agent. He was suddenly uncomfortable. “How’s Rachel and the kids?”

“Okay, okay. No talking about the Institute.” Dov took a deep swig of his beer. “She’s doing great. We had our bitter period. You know how that goes.” He shrugged his shoulders. “I guess like everyone does. But we are on decent terms now. The kids are doing well – as well as can be expected.”

“That’s good to hear.”

“She still lives in our old house in Tel Baruch, not far from you. You should call her, she always liked you.”

“Ah, no. Not going there,” Amit replied to his friend’s suggestion. “What’s the story tonight?”

“Tonight will be legendary my friend. Wait until you see my girlfriend.” Dov made a face as if he were going to whistle, but no sound came out, only a long exhale. “She’s a smokin’ coosit. A fucking twenty-five year old sex machine.”

Amit laughed. “You are totally out of control.”

“She is bringing this one girlfriend of hers, Enya. Oh, man, you are a lucky son-of-a-bitch tonight.” He slapped his friend on the back. “The body on this woman is just mind numbing. I can’t sit here and think about it or I will have to go jackoff.”

“Oh, boy,” Amit said with a laugh, shaking his head from side to side. “You definitely make be forget about work.”

“Hey, buddy, that’s what it’s all about.” Dov turned and headed back into the living room. “I have the last couple Real Madrid games on DVR. Let’s watch some football. The girls won’t be here for a couple of hours.” Hirsch stopped as he was passing through the open sliding door and turned. “In case you were wondering, I spoke to Dori Goldman yesterday. Enya is officially cleared. Oh yeah!” Dov pumped his fist in the air and went inside.

Margolis turned back to look over the city. Night was fully encompassing the skyline and artificial lights now danced through the arteries of Tel Aviv to the accompaniment of the occasiona
l car horn and ambulance siren.

Mossad maintained a policy of reporting sexual liaisons, both on duty and off, to internal security. The intelligence agency was extremely paranoid about its agents falling victim to
“honey traps” – the seduction of government employees and other useful targets by enemy agents. Dori Goldman was a senior internal security officer of Mossad and had only one job. His sole responsibility was to discretely check the names and background of sexual partners. For a single heterosexual man like Margolis, this was no problem, but the policy applied to everyone, including married employees having an affair or a one night stand or employees who attended a gay bar on a weekend night. The deal was simple: Dori Goldman’s files were never opened other than by him unless espionage was suspected. No employee of Mossad had ever been black-mailed as a result of reporting the names of their sexual contacts, including the time when a young agent bedded the wife of the prime minister. But the Mossad employee who was caught having sex with anyone who had not been reported to Goldman within 48 hours of the act was assumed to have compromised Mossad and would be fired or worse. Dov Hirsch had cleared the way for his good friend – both personally and professionally.

With an hour to go until midnight, Amit Margolis was already feeling the effects of too much alcohol and not enough food. The girls were responsible for the latter but had yet to show up. Amit found his way to the bathroom. He stood over the toilet, voiding the byproduct of three beers. All he could think about at that moment was that he would turn thirty-five in 2010. He was about to start the downhill slide to forty. And forty was no longer young. He was single and committed to a career that offered no prospect of changing his marital status.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way
, he thought. He remembered his college girlfriend and his plans to marry and start a family. He would be a successful business executive and she a beautiful courtroom attorney, defending the wrongly accused. All she had to do was wait for him for two years while he attended the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University. It would pass so quickly, they told themselves. Their phone calls and emails were frantic and passionate at first, the ebbing not even noticed by Margolis as he struggled with school. He had his business classes and he grappled with the added burden of taking English courses during that first semester to gain mastery over a language that his father had taught him at home, but that had been buried beneath the onslaught of Hebrew in school.

The email he opened on the night of December 10, 2000
, had come earlier that afternoon while he was in the library studying for an exam. It came from a close friend and he still remembered every word of it to this day. His soul mate, the woman he knew he would marry once he was settled back in Tel Aviv, was involved with another man – an older attorney. She was “in love,” the email went on to say. Amit’s friend could not stand the thought that Amit was in the dark when all in their circle of friends back home knew what was happening. Amit had called her four times that night, each call fueled by more alcohol. Each call reaching the voicemail of her cell phone. Each call growing angrier, the accusations of betrayal becoming harsher and cutting deeper.

He did not sleep that night and by the time an email arrived from her at 3 a.m. his time, all his senses were impaired. But he could read it well enough to know that his plans were in ruins. He drank until he passed out that night, missing his exam. It had taken all of his charm and a faked email to convince his professor that his grandmother had unexpectedly passed away that Sunday night. The ruse worked well enough for Amit to reschedule his accounting exam and continue his studies at Duke. But the wounds to his heart and his pride had never healed. And
as a new year neared, he knew that he had to get his mind off the subject to avoid ripping the scabs open yet again.

Amit emerged from the restroom to sounds of laughter and the sight of two perfectly formed women, both in jeans and very tight tops. “There he is,” exclaimed Dov, stretching his right arm out towards his friend as his left arm held tightly to his girlfriend. Amit walked over to be embraced into a huddle. “This is my best friend, Amit,” he said enthusiastically to the two women. “This is Nava.” Amit shook the hand of
Dov’s girlfriend, who looked every bit the sex machine that Dov had described earlier. “And this is the gorgeous Enya.”

Amit extended his hand, but Enya stepped to him and hugged him. She had a big smile. “Yo
u are as handsome as Dov said.”

Her auburn hair and blonde highlights
, combined with her green eyes, made her beauty as exotic as it was instantly hypnotic to Amit. The Mossad agent was happy to have three beers under his belt. His natural reticence was on holiday. “Well I have to say Dov did a terrible job describing you. He said you were gorgeous, but anything short of beautiful and intoxicating is simply insufficient.”

“See, I told you Enya,” said Dov. “Watch out for this guy.”

Fifty minutes of food, wine and a round of vodka shots followed. Amit Margolis soaked in this 26-year-old with a five-foot-seven-inch frame that carried 118 perfectly distributed pounds. But what surprised Amit was that the beautiful woman in front of him had a mind to match her looks.

As midnight approached, Amit was on the balcony with Enya as Dov and Nava came out, each holding two crystal champagne flutes with the contents of a newly opened bottle of
Veuve Clicquot Brut. In the background, the television announced a countdown to midnight. Amit and Enya each took a glass of champagne in hand. “Five, four, three, two, one. Happy New Year!” Dov shouted, his judgment and volume filter now impaired significantly. “Shanah Tovah,” replied Nava. All four took a sip of champagne and Dov and Nava immediately wrapped themselves in a passionate clinch.

Enya did not wait for Amit to make his move. Her two years of service in the IDF following high school had taught her more than just how to shoot and strip a M-16 rifle; it had given her self-confidence and the assertiveness that came with it. She brought her left hand up and wrapped her long fingers around the back of Amit’s hair, pulling his head down to hers. The kiss was tender and, to the pleasant surprise of each of them, emotional. They lingered in the moment. As their lips parted, Enya smiled. “Very nice,” she said softly.

In the city, a scattering of firecrackers could be heard. On the beach, a few parties were underway with sparklers and the occasional Roman candle or bottle rocket. No large fireworks display could be seen as would be happening in major cities all over the world that night. Israel did not formally recognize the Gregorian date of January 1 as a holiday. In the ongoing tension between secular Israel and observant Israel, this battle had been won early in the State’s history. Only Rosh Hashanah, the new year for humans as determined according to the Torah, was officially recognized as a holiday. By the time Amit and Enya were able to think beyond the moment, they realized they were alone on the balcony. They sat down. Enya broke the silence. “You are not what I expected in a Mossad man.”

Margolis looked at her. He was not happy. “Is that what Dov told you?”

“Oops, am I not supposed to know that?” She reached across and caressed his right forearm. “Does that mean you have to kill me now?”

“No, it means I have to kill Dov.” Enya laughed openly, almost choking on a sip of champagne.
Amit pulled out his wallet, retrieved a business card and handed it to her. “That’s my business.” He pointed to the name on the card. “I own a financial consulting company. Dov likes to bullshit. Still like me?”

Enya wasn’t sure who was being honest. Her girlfriend had told her that both Dov and Amit were Mossad agents and that thought was exciting. But as she looked at Amit she concluded that it didn’t matter at this moment. “Yes, very much.”

Amit Margolis woke up at a little after 8 a.m. on Friday, January 1, 2010, with a dry mouth and a slight hangover. The room was not familiar to him, but he knew he was still in the apartment of Dov Hirsch. He turned on his right side, his body gliding easily under the single tan sheet. He reached across the short distance of space between him and the naked body next to him. Enya was lying on her right side and still asleep. He ran his hand gently through her long soft hair, down her shoulder, coming to rest on her hip. He knew from that simple act how dangerous this woman was. He was no stranger to waking up with a woman by his side, but his usual emotion was to get out or get her out. His emotional response this morning was the opposite. He had not felt that in a very long time.

Amit rolled back over to check his cell phone. He lift
ed his slacks off the floor, reached in the pocket and pulled out his phone. A red light flashed in the upper right hand corner. He pressed the power on button and pushed the icon for email messages. He had one email waiting. Amit touched the screen and the message opened.

Conference call with client anytime this morning. You set the time
.

There was no day off for Amit, and his employer wanted him to stop by the office sometime this morning. He did not get this email too often and he did not want it now. But he had a job and that job had ruled his life since he returned to Israel from Durham, North Carolina and joined Mossad in September 2002.