Throughout my whole army service, I only ever slept with one guy I met through the office. I can’t remember his name. I do remember my boyfriend at the time annoying me and that that had been my quiet vengeance.
As a student, I gave it my usual effort and kept myself involved in campus life. I was also a TA. I studied business management at the IDC (Interdisciplinary) Hertzelia. I almost finished my MBA at Tel Aviv University, but they insisted I take a course that I was acting TA for at another institute, so I told the department secretary—who actually liked me very much—that I decided to keep the picture of the Beatles where I’d planned to hang my master’s degree, and that she could tell Dr. Shpitzer to go… well, you know.
Dr. Shpitzer was a right condescending prick who lived to prattle on about irrelevant nonsense—to me and to the world. He once told me that the whole deal with rescheduled tests only started because, at the time, there had been a siege on Jerusalem, and students at the Hebrew University couldn’t take their tests. Thus, there was no possible valid reason to not take an exam at the appointed, original date.
I looked at him as he told me that, stared at his shiny bald head that I don’t want to tell you what associations brought to mind, at his Dumbo ears, mere minutes after I shot him a glare and told him, “Tell me, Yossi, did the students during the War of Independence also work at a pizza joint until three AM so they could manage to pay their tuition, or were they too busy making flour at Monifuri’s mill outside the walls? You fucking idiot!”
When you take chess classes at a neighborhood community center and call an arrogant elitist an asshole when he’s the one who holds the power over your eventual graduation, you shouldn’t expect to have a four-pointed black hat flying in the air a few years later.
My cellphone vibrated in my right pocket and I quickly stood, pulled it out, and answered.
“Yes?”
“Noa?” Timothy’s voice came from the other end of the line. “Where are you?”
“I’m here, Timothy. At the Elizabeth,” I replied.
“Where? I can’t see you,” he grumbled.
“Here, here, I’m here,” I said as I walked from one end of the coffee shop to the other.
Timothy had to have been handsome, back in the day. You can tell that he knew it, too.
We sat, and he made sure to sit only after I had—the gentleman he was. I love that. Still, he could have been my dad.
“What are you ordering? Or are you still on you usual morning fast?” Timothy smiled at me.
“I don’t have an appetite in the morning, Timothy. You know that about me already. But do me a favor and order me a Coke that doesn’t have three quarters of the cup filled with ice. Put some fear into that waitress. Though not too much—we want it fizzy not boiling.” I winked.
“Waitress, please bring over two Coca Colas, a coffee and a croissant.”
“Of course,” the waitress replied and headed straight over to the kitchen area. As she walked away, she purposefully avoided the constant stares from the barman.
Chapter Four
Amsterdam. 2004. The old wing of the Krasnopolsky hotel. We’d been screwed over with the rooms.
By we, I mean Eran and me.
Those were five unforgettable days. It was the first time—and hopefully the last—that I’d felt as if I were completely doomed. I don’t wish it on my worst enemies, and I’m not lacking any of those.
It’s not that I’m a bad person, but I don’t really have much issue with stepping on others—as long as the writ hadn’t come from my end.
The habeas corpus. It originated in the British court, and I’m rather convinced there are remnants of it in the Israeli one, too. If I remember correctly, it’s when a judge orders the authorities to bring in an accused to check whether or not he was actually guilty, and if he wasn’t, then order his release.
Timothy has never been a fan of the court system. He claims it’s inherited from his leaving the Bolsheviks hanging on to the chairs of the high court. And at the altar.
Timothy’s habeas corpus also dealt with bodies, but he cared less about its physicality as long as it ceased its existence.
Eran helped him out with that. He was the Israeli representative. Timothy was the CIA’s. They were two parts of a multinational task force consisting of fifteen countries. In hushed tones, the task force was known as K15.
The task force held representatives from the United States, Russia, Britain, Israel, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Pakistan, India, Canada, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, and Japan. You counted that correctly. There were only fourteen countries because Israel had two representatives.
No one knew who Israel’s second representative was, and that, of course, included me, Eran, and all the rest. It was even spoken about as a legend—that fifteenth representative—and that Israel never denied it only because it allowed her to hold more clout. None of the other countries ever spoke out about the subject, and there was a constant feeling that the topic wasn’t allowed to be spoken about.
I never saw right to investigate it, and hadn’t even known about the whole ordeal until the second night in Amsterdam. It was only then that Eran told me about the significance of the matter. I thought I had ingested some seriously powerful hallucinogenic mushrooms when we had that exquisite cream of mushroom pasta two chefs had cooked for us on a planchette. Don’t ask me how to make pasta
