The Sinai Secret

FORTY-EIGHT

Dizengoff

Tel Aviv

The Next Morning

Theli Yent was no beautician, even though she arrived every morning (except Shabbat, of course) at the same beauty parlor in the Dizengoff, once the city's most fashionable neighborhood. The area still boasted coffee shops, discotheques, and boutiques, but it was showing its age like bald patches on what had once been an exquisite fur coat. The shop catered to an older clientele, those who had enjoyed it here in the vicinity's heyday. Most had been born in Western Europe or the United States and were therefore accustomed to the luxury of trying to replace youth with facials, massages, and sculpted hair. Early on, Theli had noted that no matter how much the other girls in white jackets rubbed perfumed salves into leathery skin, irrespective of the quantity of eye shadow and lip gloss or the subtle arrangement of thinning hair to conceal bare spots, the only thing that really improved was the coffers of the shop. And maybe, just maybe, the attitudes of its refurbished customers.

Theli had been working at the building for two years now, ever since she had returned to Israel with a degree in computer science from Southwestern University, a small school for electronic and math geeks within blocks of the Mississippi as it lazed through Memphis, Tennessee. She had been home only a day when she had been approached by a charming young man who had told her he was recruiting persons skillful both on the computer and in English. She never knew how high she had scored on the tests she had taken, but they were far more difficult than any she had taken in school.

Then he told her whom he really worked for.

At twenty-four, she had been willing to trade the sugarplum visions of high salary for the equally evasive excitement of working for Israeli intelligence, Mossad. When it turned out she would do all her spying from a computer terminal, she was disappointed, of course. But, after all, it would count as her mandatory military service.

So, she came to work six days a week to the building with no street number that looked like one of those Bauhaus multistoried buildings whose no-nonsense utilitarianism had appealed to the wave of immigrants of the 1950s. That had been when the city itself had been newly created from a few settlements and the old port of Jaffa, the same port from which Jonah had commenced one of the strangest voyages ever recorded.

Every day she would speak to the girls already snipping hair or smearing ooze on customers for a facial as she passed through the salon. She had no idea if they were actually cosmeticians or worked for Mossad, too. Once across the mirrored, brightly lit room, she opened the door marked office and descended several flights of stairs to another door, this one flanked by two armed men in uniform. Inside was a long room consisting entirely of a double row of computer screens. Even if the place was well lit and never varied from a constant twenty degrees Celsius, it reminded Theli of a dark cave dug into a mountainside, a place in the desert where Elijah or another Hebrew prophet might have lived.

This morning a man she had never seen before was waiting at her workstation. His windbreaker displayed the authorized visitor's badge. He was tall, tanned from the sun, and inclined to exhibit a perfect set of teeth. British, judging by the accent of his Hebrew. "I've got a favor to ask of you."

Theli was instantly on guard. Hardly a day passed without… without-what was the American phrase?- her being hit on. Men hit on her regularly. They frequently wanted favors that caused problems. She said nothing as she sat down and turned her machine on.

"I need some information," the man said, unfazed by Theli's lack of response.

She was entering her password, which appeared as a series of Xs across the screen. "Information requests come from the head office."

He hovered over her shoulder. "True. But this request comes from an old friend of the company, something he wants run down outside of channels."

Theli swiveled around in her chair, switching to English. "Let me get this straight: You appear unannounced, no introduction, and want me simply to drop what I'm doing to go outside established procedure to get you information you might or might not have clearance to see. Is that about it?"

He was reaching inside the pocket of his windbreaker. "I apologize." He handed her a folded, letter-size piece of paper. The first thing she noticed was the embossed seal at the top, along with the word secret stamped in red right under it. "I really should have started with this."

"That certainly would have expedited things," she commented dryly, reading and returning the sheet. "Exactly what is it you want?"

"Sharing your next coffee break would be nice."

It would have been churlish not to reward the clumsy effort with at least a smile. "Let's get started on the information you want."

A few minutes later the stranger was about to leave. "What about the coffee break?"

"Don't take them."

For the first time the perfect teeth disappeared.

"But I usually leave here about seventeen hundred."

It was only after he had gone that Theli realized she still didn't know his name.