“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 occasional 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.
6 — A New Year
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. “You 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.”