Fracture Point Read online

  To my father.

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  Fracture Point

  T.D. Mandowsky

  Copyright © 2021 T.D. Mandowsky

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No parts of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information retrieval system, without the permission, in writing, of the author.

  Translation from the Hebrew by Ram Chopra

  Editor: Amnon Jackont

  Contact: [email protected]

  www.mandowsky.com

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Thanks

  Message from the Author

  Chapter 1

  Donna said I was like a centaur.

  “What’s a centaur?” I asked, sticking my head out from under the blanket. Donna was in the middle of her daily struggle in front of the mirror, trying to put her wild curls into a ponytail tight enough to last until the middle of her shift.

  “It’s from Greek mythology or something,” she said hesitantly, as if she didn’t remember exactly. I knew that she was trying not to make me feel stupid.

  I googled it and found a picture of a creature that is half human and half horse.

  “And why does this freak remind you of me?” I asked her.

  She finished with the ponytail and collapsed on the bed next to me.

  “It’s pretty sexy.” She smiled with her white teeth and stroked my cheek.

  “You’re such an educated, sensitive guy in the daylight.” She grabbed my jaw, “And when the darkness comes . . . Ta-da! Itay Evron is chasing evil.”

  I liked her exaggerated description.

  “What am I better at?” I asked her, as if she could compare.

  “Honestly, I cannot imagine you fighting,” she said.

  Little did she know.

  Chapter 2

  Grandma Bianca passed away right before I began the course. After the funeral, my cousin Libby took me to the Shuka Pub at the Mahane Yehuda Market in Jerusalem. It was her idea “to get rid of the bad feeling from the funeral,” before plunging into the shiva routine.

  “It’s not a big deal. Just coffee,” Libby had said. I knew Grandma Bianca would smile and say to us, “Sure, my darlings. Go have fun,” and scratch the bottom of her old wallet to check if she had some change she could give us.

  Libby was driving. She honked and cut in front of the other cars, sliding into the parking spot she found for us.

  There are a few things I don’t like about Mahane Yehuda. One is how crowded it gets on Friday afternoons. It offers a hodgepodge of secular, religious, ultra-Orthodox Jews, Arabs, tourists, and old Jerusalemites who have been selling their produce at the same stalls for 40 years. The merchants bellow at the customers in their unique colorful melodies, overwhelming outsiders such as me; I’m from Afula, a small city in northern Israel. The population in Afula is much more homogenous, which makes life much more comfortable.

  In addition to the crowds, it’s hard to ignore the puddles on the ground of the market. They may be more bearable in the winter, but when you step in one of these in August, you know that the cold and murky water on your shoes or in your sandals is a mixture of dirty floor-washing water and fish oil. These are not puddles you want to step in.

  But there is also so much I love about this market. It has the highest quality vegetables at the lowest prices. The kitchen utensils remind you of what you need at home. The juice man offers his weekly specials, such as a mixture of beets, tahini, carrots, dates, halva, and bananas. The fact that bargaining is acceptable here, and the sense of triumph after buying three bags of spices at a better price than the man in front of you in line, are priceless.

  I took a sip of water from my glass. Libby went to the bathroom 10 minutes ago. Maybe she’s crying in there, after pretending to be brave at the funeral. Maybe she’s catching up on the news while sitting on the toilet. You never know with her.

  I took out the purple pad that Sharon gave me. It was a small white pad with a purple bird with huge eyes on it and light purple pages. I told her that no one uses pads these days; people use their phones.

  “You never know when you will need to leave a note for someone,” she replied with a calm smile. “And when you do, it might as well be a positive note.” When she said “positive,” she spread her hands out in a round movement from her chest.

  I asked the bartender for a pen and flipped to the last page of the pad. I started doodling a picture of a tomato on a flag.

  The hot August sun and the cool Jerusalem afternoon breeze mixed together and caressed my skin. The summer was coming to an end, and this saddened me, but the pleasant fall air provided a modicum of comfort.

  “Go on, Froggie.” I heard Libby’s voice behind me. She was back from the bathroom. “Go on with your story.”

  “What’s there to tell?” I answered, not having anything to tell. “They didn’t tell me anything about the position. They just said it’s a student position and that there’s a long course all summer.”

  “All right, don’t tell me.” She smiled a small smile, sitting down next to me as she put her thin sweater on the chair. “You’re dying to tell me. That’s the way it is, Froggie.”

  Libby knew that this had been my dream ever since the days when I was the smallest and palest kid in the class. She was the one who lent me the book, when I was 14, about the Palestinian guy who spied on Hamas. She was the one who came with me to the movie about the agent handler who died at the end of the story. She even went running with me through Afula when I was training for the army. All of my friends knew that it was my dream. What other explanation could there be for my refusal
to smoke weed with them? I wanted to be the perfect candidate for the job, in order to make it an easy decision for the recruiters.

  Libby ordered her usual Irish beer. I ordered black coffee.

  “I thought it was just coffee,” I said with a smile. She gave me a look, and I didn’t bother to answer.

  I never understood the point of drinking a flat beer and then having it sit in your stomach like a loaf of bread. But then again, after all these years, I have never really understood Libby.

  There were long silences between our sentences, filled with the bustle of the Friday market as it was about to close. I have known Libby since I was born. Our joint silences are pleasant. Even when my father would yell at us for playing soccer in the house, there would be a long silence during which Libby would smile at me, and I would do my best not to burst out laughing. She was like a sister to me. No, she was more than a sister. I’m not nearly as close to my real sister, Doreen.

  I didn’t tell anyone other than Libby that I had applied for the position. I kept it to myself. Not because of the secrecy that it requires, but because of what I had learned in the army: nothing is certain until it actually happens. Libby is the only one who wouldn’t judge me if I didn’t get accepted. Who is she to judge me? I have been beating her at soccer since I was five and she was seven, when we played in the living room. She knows what I can do.

  “Is this going to be something that has to do with your studies?” she said, taking a stab at it. I wanted to say that ever since I studied political science, I understood that the country needs intelligence, and that an intelligence organization needs people with guns. But maybe that was stretching it a bit.

  “This is going to get in the way of my studies,” I said with a bitter smile. “I’m starting the Unified Security Course, if you know what that is.”

  Libby shrugged just as her beer arrived. We raised our Turkish and Irish glasses and drank.

  “You’ve had enough of the old people, haven’t you?” she asked me. I thought to myself that maybe she was asking me a lot of questions as a way to avoid talking about her divorce.

  “Look,” I said to her, the way we used to talk to each other when we were kids. “It’s not that I’m not happy with my current job. The old age home is a quiet place, and the on-call medic position has great benefits − better than anything a student could dream of. I get a computer, Wi-Fi, a printer, and a comfortable sofa where I’m even allowed to take a nap.”

  “Don’t the old people drive you crazy?” she asked, knocking on her head.

  “Sometimes they call the medic’s office at night asking for help putting on their orthopedic stockings. Sometimes they just babble in their native language, and I just answer them by saying ‘Yes,’ and ‘Right.’ It’s entirely bearable.”

  “It doesn’t sound that great,” she said, as she almost knocked over her beer while looking at the street.

  “I love my job,” I said, defending my old age home. “Every student would love a job like that.”

  “That is so true!” she said with deliberate exaggeration. She sipped her beer as if she had been fasting for a week. She tried to hide a small grunt as she patted her stomach, “This beer always reminds me that I have to get in shape. Check out the belly.” She said, pinching her stomach.

  “You can work out with me. I’m getting back in shape, too.”

  “Thanks, Froggie. Now tell me about your new job. What’s the big secret? It is not like you’re going to work for the ISA or something.”

  I took a long sip.

  “Itay?” she looked me in the eye and did not blink, “Are you . . . wait a minute, no way!”

  “Look,” I said, trying to stop the snowball. How did the first person I talked to about this reveal my secret so easily?

  That’s what I call a perfect secret service candidate.

  When Libby was surprised, everyone would hear it. I tried to silence her. She whispered, “Explain all of it to me. Now.”

  I had received the invitation to apply in a paper envelope in the mail. The ISA logo was on the document and, for a second, I thought that my beloved cousin had sent it as a prank. I had a telephone interview, and then I met with a recruiter in an apartment in the center of a residential neighborhood in Jerusalem. Then there was the occupational psychologist and the unit director. Finally, I received a call from some woman who only gave me her first name and said, without any emotion, “You’ll begin the course in August. Good luck.”

  “That’s great,” I said to her before she hung up.

  This is terrifying, I thought to myself.

  After telling Libby, I swore her to secrecy.

  “Tell me,” she blinked nervously, as if she had something in her eye, “you . . . ummm, what’s so bad about your life? You should finish your degree, stop working at the old age home, get a nice job at the bank, or whatever. Do your nine-to-five job. What do you need this crap for?”

  “I understand what you’re saying. This isn’t an easy decision . . .” I answered.

  “What position are they recruiting for?” she asked as she pressed my biceps, making her point that I’m strong − or maybe weak.

  “Here,” she said, as she pulled the purple pad towards her. “Write this down in that ridiculous little pad of yours. Write this: ‘I, Itay Evron, will miss the office of the on-call medic someday.’”

  I thought she was done, but then she added, “where you can watch TV shows all night, and you don’t have to chase terrorists.”

  “Libby – Mental Support and Empowerment 24/7.” I reminded her of the slogan I once wrote for her potential mental support business.

  “No, seriously. What do you need this in your life for right now? Didn’t you have enough in your army service?”

  At this point I wondered how I would be able to stop Libby from going on and on about this.

  “I’ll say just one last thing, and that’ll be it,” I said.

  “Go on,” she said.

  “Intelligence is intended to prevent violence. If we had good intelligence back in . . . what happened would not have happened. That’s why I’m so sure about this.”

  I slammed my coffee down on the table to make it sound like my decision was final.

  Libby let out a long sigh. “As long as that’s what you truly believe.”

  “What about you?” I demanded.

  “What about me?”

  “How are you doing?”

  The bright sky turned a dark orange as the crowd at the market started to thin out.

  “I’m all right, you know. Breaking up with my spouse.” She stared peacefully at her flat beer.

  “Breaking up” was Libby’s way to describe divorce. She never shared her feelings with me, nor did she seem to have any intention of doing so at the moment. “I won’t try too hard, but you know that I’m here for you.” I said.

  “Yup, yup,” she said, and took another sip.

  “I’m sure everything’ll be fine in the end,” I tried again.

  “Sure. It’s raining men!” She said and winked toward the old, toothless watermelon-seller.

  “How long have you two been together?” The bartender interrupted us, bringing us two shots of what smelled like aniseed.

  We looked at each other and laughed.

  “Together? About 24 years,” I answered.

  “We’re cousins,” Libby said, “but more like brother and sister.”

  “Oh,” he muttered as he poured two glasses for the girls next to us. “You don’t look alike,” he said as he looked from one to the other.

  “You really don’t look alike,” the cute, curly-haired girl added.

  “Go ahead,” Libby elbowed me, looking at the cute girl. “Don’t be Roni Rosenthal again.”

  To Libby, Roni Rosenthal represents someone who has the perfect opportunity, but blow
s it. Rosenthal was one of the greatest soccer players in Israeli history, but is also remembered for his horrible miss when he was playing for Liverpool, in the game against Aston Villa back in the ‘90s. In London it is known as the worst miss in English football history. I’m not that big on soccer. I played at school and sometimes in the living room at home, but Libby is crazy about it. She always knows who’s in the Arsenal lineup, and she knows all the players on the bench and where they’re from. When the Gunners were playing, Uncle Abraham allowed her to miss dinner.

  “What are we toasting?” Libby asked as she raised her glass.

  “I don’t know,” the curly-haired girl said with a smile. “Are you celebrating anything?”

  “A funeral,” Libby replied.

  The smile with her perfect teeth slowly evaporated, and for a second it even seemed as if her curls lost their bounce.

  “Don’t listen to her,” I said, embarrassed. The other girl also looked at her strangely.

  “Really?” the curly-haired girl asked.

  “Yes, we came from a funeral, but it was a happy funeral,” Libby said

  “That’s weird,” the curly-haired girl responded, followed by an awkward silence.

  “Forget it,” I said. “It was a happy event.”

  “So here’s to your new job,” Libby said, as she touched her glass to mine and leaned over to do the same to the glasses of the two girls. She emptied her shot glass before I had the chance to say “Cheers!”

  “What new job are you starting?” the curly-haired one asked me after drinking her shot of Arak and making the cute face that girls usually make when they drink strong anise alcohol for the first time.

  Damn you, Libby, I thought.

  “I’m starting a course in a government office. Nothing interesting. I’m Itay, by the way,” I said, hoping to change the subject. “And you?”

  “Donna and Na’ama,” they said.

  “What are you studying?” Libby asked.

  “She’s majoring in psychology,” said Donna, pointing at Na’ama, “and I’m starting a neuroscience program.”

  When she heard neuroscience and psychology, Libby got interested. Please don’t bore them with the story of your internship in clinical psychology, I thought. I didn’t have the energy to listen to it again, especially now.