The Critical Offer Page 4

  In a routine weapon cleaning, a bullet was discharged from somewhere, granting him the scar above his right eye: his hallmark for years to come. And during the long winter nights, freezing in his winter gear under the military-issued blanket in a flimsy pup tent, he dreamed of “his” beautiful Ayelet, dancing back at the kibbutz with others.

  His progress up the ranks was swift. From the paratroopers, he was transferred to the armored corps where, a twenty-three-year-old major, he was placed in command of a battalion of Patton tanks. But the dream of flying, the heavy baggage of his childhood and adolescence, brought him back to the gates of the Tel-Nof Air Force Base - a seasoned commander demanding a reevaluation from the air force medical unit.

  Perhaps it was the need for proven fighters in the cockpits rather than rookie adolescents who’d never seen combat, or changes in the Air Force’s medical approach, or the captivating smile he flashed at the secretary on his way in, or the red scar on his forehead, or the strong impression he made on the air force psychologist - whatever it was, this time he received his approval.

  And so he “missed out” on the First Lebanon War, a cadet among cadets at the Hatzerim Airbase, enviously gazing at the Phantoms that took off bomb laden and heavy and returned empty, at times damaged, other times not at all.

  And finally, in the summer of 1985, his moment came.

  Graduation!

  A flower of colorful smoke trails adorning the skies, officers’ peaked caps being tossed into the air, and the long-awaited silvery fabric wings pinned to the front of his starched uniform.

  ...This is it! My life is finally starting! Even without Ayelet... He permitted himself a small, hidden victory smile: “I, Gershon Shalit, a major, twenty-five years old, am a pilot..!”

  Now, he felt, his path was set before him. Now he knew that he would show them: All the way to the very top of the pyramid.

  And then, on one full moon’s summer evening, he abandoned his plane.

  * * *

  Once he was crippled, the air force lost all interest in him. Apart from the cost of treatment, his provident fund, and financial rights, no one had compensated him for his bitter disappointment, for the fact that he would never fly again.

  Having already achieved the status of fighter pilot and combat commander, envisioning himself progressing up the ranks all the way to the top of the pyramid, he was now forced to begin crawling, his legs and back crippled, from the very bottom up a different pyramid altogether.

  And so, he swallowed his pride and turned to the same people who’d always seen him as an Outside Kid, requesting that they provide him with a room for his long rehabilitation. The kibbutz grudgingly obliged.

  There, down the hill, there were two long, rectangular sheds, their rooms linked by creaky wooden porches. Their old roofs were covered in a bed of rotting ironwood leaves, mossy shingles peeking among them. His room was small, featuring a squeaky bed, faded curtains, and plywood walls. From his window, he could see the irrigation reservoir that also served the kibbutz as a swimming pool. Each year, at the end of swim season, the water would be thick with a viscous fungal slime that sunk to the bottom of the reservoir.

  “We boys had to scrub that pool to prepare it for use. We called it ‘scum’ - the rotting crust we scraped off and threw across the fence. It smelled sweet and putrid, and stank to high heavens,” he told Adam Ben-Ami years later.

  His left leg began to heal in the comfort of its cast. The pain in his neck became more tolerable, and the paresthesia in his fingers lessened. Now all that was left was his back and paralyzed legs, which required slower, lengthier rehabilitation. Gershon, however, was frustrated and despondent, and not merely because of the pain.

  “You see, my dear Adam,” he would later reconstruct, “not only did my loving parents ship my ass off to the kibbutz, and not only was dismissal from the air force considered the height of disgrace back then, despite it being the result of an accident, and not only was my childhood dream demolished - but my beautiful Ayelet, she went off and married some clumsy putz, and a foreigner at that. Truth is, until I started working for the Mossad, my life was frustratingly dull. Nothing even approached the adrenaline of flying a jet fighter.”

  “I happen to know what you mean, Gersh. I was there.”

  “But Adam, I wouldn’t break. I refused to break. I would make it to the top, in spite of everyone. I would show them all.”

  His neighbor from across the plywood was Nechama, a kibbutz purebred and a nurse in training at the nearby Emek hospital, at the foot of mountain. Being extremely passionate about her chosen line of work, she was overjoyed with the opportunity luck had summoned to her doorstep - a real live wounded soldier, rehabilitating just next door!

  “She wasn’t pretty in the classical sense. There was something crude about her face - maybe the incisors in her upper jaw that protruded slightly out of her lips, or maybe it was the nose, or the fact that she never wore makeup, nor did she ever pluck or shave a single hair. But she was strong and athletic, and she had smooth skin, great legs, and her breasts - I swear, I’d never seen a firmer or bolder pair of breasts in my life.”

  Adam’s eyes widened slightly, a thin, expectant smile stretching his lips.

  “And her eyes, there was a craving in them. Like she longed for something that was missing from her life, a sort of shy yearning. ‘These are nurse’s eyes, pal. Nothing gets past them,’ she would scold me whenever I failed to follow her instructions.”

  He had never noticed her before. His heart lay under the thrall of beautiful Ayelet, who could not have cared less. Nechama, however, had often observed him from a distance - back then, before his enlistment.

  Now she would bring lunch and dinner to his room, take his clothes to the communal laundry room and bring them from the communal clothes depot, support him as he hobbled on his crutches, assist with his grueling physical therapy, listen to classical music with him on the old record player in her room. An intimacy soon developed between them, and they began sleeping together, naturally and with no explanations necessary.

  “At first I was thrilled by her love of sex, and I felt that I’d gained back some of my life. Then one little joke almost got me kicked out of the kibbutz.”

  “You? You made a joke? Impossible.”

  “Listen, wise guy: One day, when Nechama was at the hospital, I rolled up her winter blanket into a vaguely human shape, laid a pillow under its ‘head’ and surrounded it with red flowers. Her mother, of course, picked that exact day to check on her, found a mummy in her bed, nearly had a conniption fit…God, the sounds that came out of her! I just barely escaped her wrath.”

  “Nicely done, Gersh! Nothing like a sense of humor to keep a relationship alive. So you were quite the prankster, huh?”

  “You can’t take humor from those who have it, and you can’t give it to those who don’t. You have no idea, Adam, how much of a prankster I truly was - and you probably never will.”

  Three months later, she told him that she was pregnant. Seeing as she didn’t want to have an abortion, and it was as good a reason as any to tie the knot back in those days, they were married in a modest ceremony at the rabbinate in nearby Afula. And as he stood under the chuppah and Rabbi Mendel cried “Mazel tov!” he had already known in his heart that she would never be his true companion nor the only woman in his life.

  And when he could walk again, they left the kibbutz and moved to the green oasis of Marom neighborhood.

  Once again he was facing a demanding career; and already he was losing interest in Nechama. When the twins were ten years old, he was an esteemed colonel in the intelligence corps, with his goals set high and far, all the way to the top of the pyramid.

  And then, one summer morning, Nechama packed three suitcases, took the twins, and left on a bus paid for by an ultra-Orthodox yeshiva. They were taken to Jerusalem and out of his life. Forever.
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  “It hurt, when she left me for Hashem Yitbarach and that religious bullshit, it really did.”

  “But you didn’t love her. The marriage was an accident more than anything, wasn’t it?”

  “But none of that matters when you’re dead certain that your doting wife and daughters will always be there for you.”

  “And the twins - do you still see them?”

  “Very rarely. I think they’re lost to me…”

  “Then what are you whining about? Did you love her that much? Come on, you had a fling and you knocked her up. It happens - but you, with your overgrown conscience and your idiotic chivalry and your kibbutznik-schmutznik values, you went and got married. Be grateful that you’re finally free of her.”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “It’s never that simple. And what about love, Gersh? Didn’t you think you deserved to love?”

  “I repressed it. I was afraid to go after great and beautiful women. I only ever let the other ones come after me...”

  “Like Dahlia, for example?”

  “For example, yes. But look, Adam, I had missions to run, responsibilities, power over life and death. That was more than enough to fulfill me back then.”

  “God, Gersh, you naïve sap. Settling for life’s crumbs rather than trying for the main course. If only you’d known how many women had fallen for you…”

  Falafel

  February 26th, 2025

  Crashing waves thundered in the distance, and the air carried the smell of the storm approaching the coastline.

  Gershon got out of the car and stood on the pavement, looking back toward the car: “Need to stretch my legs a bit!” he shot in his deep voice at his bodyguards and started walking down the wide, old sidewalk.

  The suicide bombing attack, the canceled meeting, the persistent patter of raindrops, and the gray clouds above - had filled him with a grim, contemplative unrest. The scent of rain reminded him of the wet kibbutz soil: “My previous life,” as he’d often refer to it.

  “…Don’t be shy, you may be glum… It’s the autumn, with its clouds and the wailing wind…” he hummed to himself the beautiful, old song in his rumbling bass, hoping that it would alleviate some of his misery.

  He hurriedly limped up Ben Yehuda, a bustling street in central Tel Aviv, from which he would turn toward Nordau Boulevard and the apartment of his old friend Adam Ben-Ami.

  He nodded slightly at the two men occupying the silver Skoda Superb with the innocent-looking plates. Thirty feet behind it, a black Chevy Savannah silently trailed them, its windows tinted and bulletproof.

  The Superb and the Savannah rolled slowly beside him, annoying the impatient drivers who were scurrying to make the green light at the corner of two streets.

  He crossed Jabotinsky Street, sensing the weight of his small 9 mm Sig Sauer shoved into his belt beneath the black Uniqlo coat. He passed old, three-story houses, the plaster crumbling from their facades, brown iron rust eating at their walls. Shops and cafés, of the sort that often popped up around northern Tel Aviv these days, peered at him from both sides of the street.

  A sudden, distant rumble emerged from beneath the earth. It grew louder, bringing to mind something like a subterranean elephant stampede. The street shuddered, and angry bluish steam gushed here and there from manholes in the asphalt. The subway thundered down below, its racket gradually subsiding and then ceasing abruptly, giving way to sudden silence. In the rain-blurred distance, he could see the entrance to the NTA-Nordau, the new Metro station, leading to the northern arm of the newly inaugurated Purple Line.

  ...Just like New York, huh? Days of the Messiah! A small smile, cynical and yet grudgingly astonished, appeared on his lips. …Wonders never cease...

  He passed the gates to the Chinese Embassy. If he had raised his head, despite of the drizzle, he could have made out the red flag with its large golden star and four small ones, flapping vigorously in the rising west wind.

  He noted that two of the black armored Passat TSI’s were parked on a red-and-white no-parking zone in front of the embassy. “Shit… diplomats or no, they shouldn’t be blocking the sidewalk!” he muttered and picked up his pace, passing by the neighborhood supermarket on his way toward Nordau Avenue.

  It was around noon, and his stomach growled demandingly.

  “I assume Ben-Ami’s fridge will be its usual empty self,” he quietly intoned while approaching Momo’s Falafel, to which he had been unerringly loyal for years - even before his current position. Probably the last posting of my career… he pondered, as he crossed the wet crosswalk toward the small eatery.

  The smell was unmistakable - the fried oiliness of falafel. Gershon’s mouth watered instantly, and he wondered absently if he had twenty shekels in coins, or he’d need to break a two hundred shekel bill.

  The light rain evolved into a full-blown shower. He found himself, not for the first time, grateful for the graying toupee with the silvery temples. It was crafted for him, along with the gray mustache, by the experts of the so-called Theater-Club, the makeup and camouflage experts in the Mossad’s Visual Deception Department.

  The toupee clung tightly to his head. His grayish mustache was similarly well-attached, unimpressed by the rain now streaming down his face. The old-fashioned prescription Ray-Bans he wore, however, were rendered useless by the rain.

  The painful longing for the touch of a woman added to his darkening mood as he drew closer to the enticing smell of fry oil. The wind grew fiercer. “It’s always stronger by the sea,” he muttered and started quietly humming “Against the Wind” song, one of his favorites.

  And then he saw her.

  She was opening her wallet by the counter, and a greenish bill suddenly fluttered out of it. The wind blew it in a frenzied zigzag into the murky stream of rainwater flooding the avenue, where the water carried it toward the storm drains near the intersection.

  Before he’d fully considered what he was doing, he lunged at the devious bill, but couldn’t get to it in time - it crumpled into a soggy mess in the muddy water.

  He handed her the wet bill, sporting a wide, if slightly flustered, victory smile.

  “Thanks so much, xié xie, mister. Thank you!” the sentence started in slightly broken Hebrew and ended in English. She grinned at him, a porcelain smile revealing two lines of white, matching teeth set in dark gums. He noticed the delicate expression lines at the corners of her eyes and her small mouth, the smooth raven-black hair, the alabaster skin, and the mischief in her dark, almond-shaped eyes.

  “It is okay, Miss. No problem,” he replied, absentmindedly, in English. “Xié xie?” he added, staring at her with amused bewilderment.

  “It is ‘thank you’ in Chinese. I speak Hebrew, sir. No need for English, please,” she said, not unkindly, nevertheless switching to English for the last two words. Her Hebrew was imperfect, but entirely intelligible - she spoke with confidence, her accent sharp and unapologetic. She patiently waited for Momo to place the brown falafel-filled bag on the tarnished stainless steel counter.

  “Two for me, please, Momo. Sauerkraut and no tahini,” he said, surreptitiously ogling the Chinese wonder before him. She seems about thirty-five… forty, at most, he discussed internally, scanning her further.

  She was tall, her feet in shiny, black flats, wearing gray chinos, a white blouse, and matching gray jacket. Her slender, boyish figure was complemented by small, pert breasts. ...Very attractive! Somewhat mysterious, and who cares about her age..., he summed up, as pilots do, still staring at her from a safe distance.

  The subtle lines at the corners of her eyes spoke of her age - perhaps slightly above his original estimate. He hardly noticed how much this delighted him.

  He’d never bought into the whole new-age shtick with its “auras,” “energies,” and “soul-mate” mumbo-jumbo. But in the presence of this woman, it was as if so
me ineffable force was tugging at him, drawing him toward her. Something about her was familiar, inviting. He almost felt as if he knew her from some other life.

  ...How? How do I know this marvel of a woman..?

  The gears in his brain spun frantically, like someone had hit the rewind button on an ancient tape recorder. Finally, the image snapped into his mind.

  Right! Yes! Four years ago, at the Presentation of Credentials ceremony for the Chinese ambassador. It was in Jerusalem, at the Presidential Garden, and she - yes, she was there..! He cheered inwardly, pleased that his memory was still as sharp as ever.

  The image was clear and vivid: He’d just finished introducing himself to the president and stopped by the restroom before heading back into the modest reception hall to regroup with his bodyguards. Seeing as he had gone through the trouble of dressing for the occasion, he permitted himself the indulgence of remaining there for a while longer. He remembered, with absolute clarity, how he stared at her, imagining the sensation of encircling her waist with his arms and pulling her close, kissing her...

  But in reality he had always been a coward when faced with a beautiful woman: And the greater her beauty, the lower his confidence in his own, masculine charm.

  Dreams, of course, often fail to come true.

  After a glass of juice and a handshake with the ambassador, he noticed that she had disappeared. “You blew it!” he scolded himself then, as if, had she still been there, he wouldn’t have lost his nerve at the moment of truth, before the presence of her feminine beauty.

  So, he thought to himself now, bubbling with restrained joy, as it turns out, there is a God after all!

  His eyes were still scanning the lovely contours of her face and her lithe figure as she reached out to collect her freshly prepared falafel. He longed to embrace her and rest his cheek in the delicate curve of her neck, to inhale her perfume, to feel loved and protected.