The Marsh Angel by Hagai Dagan (best thriller books to read .TXT) 📕

So, why would anyone dismantle it?

Beats me. It doesn’t make sense. I mean, it landed just to unload a cargo of oil, right? There aren’t any dockyards there, or anything like that. They’re not there to give it a tune-up or to repurpose it.

You tell me— Iranian tanker in Tripoli?

Strictly offloading, the NID duty officer said decisively.

So, what then?

So, maybe your source didn’t understand what he saw.

Maybe, Tamir sighed, lost in thought. He thanked the duty officer and slumped into his blue office chair. What the hell’s going on it Tripoli? He called the NID again and asked what had to happen for someone to issue an order to surveil that tanker.

Something with a bit more substance than a source standing on the beach in the dark thinking he might have seen some pipes being dismantled.

If it’s finished unloading the oil, how long before it sails off?

A day. Two, at most. They don’t want to keep it just floating around there. It’s time wasted.

And then, how long until it faces our shore?

What difference does it make?

I don’t know…

It’ll sail outside of our territorial water back to the Suez Canal. That’ll take about a day, a day-and-a-half.

Okay. Tamir hung up the phone. He started going over his incoming dispatches, but nothing caught his eye. He called Kidonit and Efroni, but they had nothing to report. Neta told him she’s thinking about coming to Tel-Aviv the following day and asked if he wants to get together. Haifa’s starting to cramp my style, she laughed. They agreed tentatively to meet in the evening. He stared blankly at the screen for a while, before finally getting up to call Keren who had spent her time going over some incoming dispatches of her own.

Well, did you save the homeland?

No.

So your hunch was wrong?

I’m not sure.

She stared at him with something approximating compassion. That’s okay, she said, we took a ride, broke our routine. Too bad no one was here to appreciate us putting in the extra effort. We would have gotten a bonus.

Really?

Ya’ think…?

p. The Cage is in Motion

The following day, Tamir tried to find someone to take an interest in the tanker story, but that proved easier said than done, as he couldn’t disclose to anyone what ‘Ali the Yellow claimed to have seen without compromising Yaki. Not only that, but following his conversation with the NID duty officer, he himself was no longer certain that ‘Ali even saw what he claimed he had seen. He spoke with Moti and the NID again, but to no avail. Iranian tankers offload oil cargo in Lebanon all the time, they told him. Right, he said, but the timing— there’s something unfolding now. Moti brushed Tamir off by saying he’d look into it. Tamir finally got hold of the deputy director of MID-RD and shared his hunch with him. Hunches are important, the deputy director said, but do you know how much it would cost to send a plane to surveil that ship? Do you know how much one hour of flight costs? I need more substance than what you’re offering me at the moment to justify that.

Tamir was getting tired of everyone telling him that hunches were important. It started to sound like some kind of blank mantra people were simply repeating after having been so resoundingly caught out during the Yom Kippur War. He deliberated whether to hint at ‘Ali the Yellow’s revelation, but decided it would be too complicated. He gave up, asked Moti to issue a clarification notice, and went home.

While he was having dinner, Neta called and said she was meeting some friends and might not make it to his place in time. She asked until what time he thinks he’ll stay up. He replied that he wasn’t sure if he was going to get any sleep at all. You take work way too seriously, she said, you need to relax. I’ll come over to soothe you.

He opened a bottle of beer and put a Bob Dylan cassette in the cassette player. Dylan had left all womankind behind and set off to traverse the open, inexhaustible expanses of America. Tamir looked lamentedly at his cramped, sparsely-furnished Tel-Aviv apartment. He was filled with an urge to drop everything and disappear into the open planes of America. He must have fallen asleep at some point, as he was awoken by the doorbell.

Neta, her eyes shimmering, her curls glowing like an incandescent heap of dusky coal. Wanna catch a movie?

He looked at his watch. It was 11:30 p.m.

Where? Paris Cinema? He recalled they run late shows.

No, let’s go to the drive-in.

What’s on now?

What planet do you live on? Every day at midnight they play a skin flick.

Really?

Yeah. It’ll be a hoot. C’mon, let’s go.

I was planning to stay available, he hesitated.

Oh, no problem, she said and pulled out a large khaki-colored cellular phone.

Tamir looked incredulously at the device. Where did you get one of those? he asked.

I’m a very important person, she said. Because our roster in Efroni is so short, there’s always the chance they’ll have to call in someone on leave.

Tamir called the civilian line at Kidonit’s intelligence analysis post, hoping they haven’t gone to sleep yet. Luckily, Jonny was still there. Tamir instructed him to call Neta’s army phone should something unusual pop up on one of the networks, and gave him her number. He then put on his blue suede jacket, and the two headed out to the drive-in.

The movie, staring Nina Hartley and Ron Jeremy, started a couple of minutes after Neta parked her car. Neta thought that Nina Hartley was cute and sexy, and appreciated her joie de vivre. Regarding Ron Jeremy, she said she was glad she didn’t have to have that thing inside her. A short while later, she turned to Tamir and said she believed that the whole point here was active viewing; she pulled down his pants and underwear in one purposeful swoop and sat on top of him, facing the screen