He had fumed at his father’s bigotry, but the rift solidified. Soon his father decreed that if the marriage should come to pass, Zak Trading Ltd. would not. In fine adolescent form, the defiant son answered with the most rebellious act he could imagine. He joined the Israeli army.
This had two results, first being that his father made good on his threat to sell the business, retiring early and well on the proceeds. The second, and the one that took him completely by surprise, was a sudden coolness that developed in his relationship with Iricha. She eventually made a tear-laden confession that, although her love for him was boundless, life as the spouse of an enlisted man in the IDF was not the idyllic future she had envisioned. She then went about devising any number of schemes by which they could rescind his enlistment and return to the good graces of his family. Her favorite idea was to fake a pregnancy, which she imagined might lead to a hardship discharge for Ehud, and a softening of his father’s stance. Then, a quick marriage-miscarriage strategy would put them back on the road to enduring happiness and prosperity.
It was here that Zak united the concepts of love and war. He had grown up watching his father, the master artisan of trade, deal his way to success. Getting a customer to pay more for less while believing it was he who had gotten the bargain — that was the elusive masterpiece. Yet it was Iricha, the buxom, raven-haired waitress from Haifa, who made him realize that slickness and manipulation were not limited to the world of commerce. He finally saw that his fervent Palestinian lover had been negotiating her own contract, one in which he, and the security of his family’s wealth, were the commodities in question.
Then there was the matter of his enlistment. Zak’s father was not without influential friends who probably could have orchestrated the loss of his enlistment papers. But the choices had been made, and his father would make him live with them. Stung by this realization, Zak did the only thing he could. He jettisoned his bride-to-be and stuck with the Army.
The string of events served to form Zak’s life in many ways. He knew in the recesses of his mind that he could just as easily have been duped by an Israeli woman, or for that matter a Greek or a Latvian. But resentment grew within, and he started to despise and distrust that entire race of people who were generally considered “the enemy.” This ember was fanned easily, as Zak lived and worked within the IDF. Like most military sub-societies, the culture was close-knit, conservative, and completely suspicious and intolerant of the enemy. That meant all things Arab, and particularly all things Palestinian.
Within the first year of his service, Zak received word that Iricha had gone on to marry a wealthy Lebanese banker, a man more than twenty years her senior, and the flame was stoked ever more brightly. First Zak had lost his family and fortune, then his soul, all to an amoral temptress. It created a vast emptiness within him. But the void filled quickly with hatred, with an urge to extract payback on the people, the way of life, whose product was Iricha and her carefree evil.
He was not a warrior in the conventional sense. He had never been one to strike out with fists, nor was he physically strong or athletic. Yet he looked for ways to use the weapons that had always served him. Wits and cunning, the ability to manipulate. Those were the instruments he’d use against the vile people who were both his national and personal enemy. Iricha had turned the tables on him, but Zak vowed to never let it happen again. And someday an opportunity for retribution would come.
Early on, he made every attempt to put these troubling thoughts aside in order to focus his considerable talents on a fledgling military career. It got off to a promising start when, as fate would have it, he was assigned to be the supply clerk of a large infantry unit, something akin to placing an arsonist in charge of a fireworks factory. He quickly learned the intricacies of the military bureaucracy and turned them, wherever possible, to his advantage. Within eighteen months, the 6th Infantry Regiment had caviar and the finest Scotch each Thursday afternoon, the commanding officer was riding around in a Mercedes staff car, and corporal Zak had found himself recommended for a commission.
Having never intended to make the military a career, he reconsidered, and decided life as an officer might not be bad, especially in view of his limited prospects outside the service. That in mind, he accepted the promotion, but only with his commander’s personal assurance that he could switch specialties. A career in supply and logistics was tempting, but Zak had already seen its limitations. In choosing a new field, he fell back on one of his estranged father’s favorite maxims — scientia est potestas. Knowledge is power. And so it was, Lieutenant Zak requested, and was granted, appointment to a new division. Aman. Military Intelligence.
For the merchant’s son, it was an atmosphere in which to flourish. Lies and deception were the stock in trade, a veritable playground for Zak’s shrewd mental games. It was also his chance for payback. He felt increasing satisfaction each time he embezzled money from a Hamas bank account, or bribed a shopkeeper in Gaza. Each success brought gratification, but also whet his desire for more. His stock rose quickly in this shadowy corner of the IDF, and his commanders gave him increasing freedom, opportunities for bigger and more meaningful operations. However, here Zak had gotten carried away. He lost sight of the fact that this obtuse branch of the military was still just that — a branch of the military.
Zak hatched a plan to place a bomb at the upcoming meeting of a pro-peace Palestinian group. The bomb wasn’t supposed to go off. It would simply be a dud, one that could be readily identifiable as being of Hamas origin (easy enough, since the Israeli military was constantly defusing and confiscating just such weapons). The resulting in-fighting amongst the Arabs, Zak reasoned, would be a joy to watch.
His commander, a recalcitrant lieutenant colonel, didn’t see it that way. He thought the whole idea absurd, if not downright dangerous, and ordered Zak to kill any further thoughts of it. Two weeks later, a bomb did indeed detonate at the meeting in southern Gaza, and an anonymous caller claimed credit for a rogue offshoot of Hamas.
Zak’s commander launched a ballistic accusation up the chain of command. Things always fall heavier than they rise, and the lieutenant colonel was immediately reassigned and told to shut up. An ominously quiet investigation got underway. Zak, of course, insisted he had nothing to do with planting the bomb, which was true in the most literal sense. He passed a lie detector test with flying colors, an easy thing to do when you understand how they work, and in the end there was scant evidence. Certainly nothing to hang a court-martial on. Still, the military has its ways. The senior leadership was highly suspicious, and Captain Zak was quietly informed that he would never be anything more than Major Zak. He was reassigned to Signals Intelligence Division, or SIGINT, graveyard of careers lost.
Zak’s remaining years in the service seemed professionally quiet. This, however, was not a consequence of his having been idle. In his eyes, the bombing in Gaza was a great success. The Palestinians quarreled and became suspicious of one another. Editorials in the Arab press pointed fingers everywhere. Everywhere except at Israel. If nothing else, Zak’s time in the intelligence world taught him the value of the media, and of public opinion. Time and again, governments made decisions based not on facts, but rather on opinion polls, the mood of the people. This caused Zak to expand his original ideas, and give them one further, devastating twist. He quietly espoused his thoughts to those who had helped in the first attack, along with a few other carefully chosen friends, men who felt as adamantly about the cause as he.