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CHAPTER 14

Ariel walked out at Mordechai’s side. Neither of them said anything until after they got in Mordechai’s car and were out in traffic.

“So what does Klugscheißer mean?” Ariel asked.

Mordechai laughed. “Smart-ass,” he replied a moment later.

“What? That was the best you could come up with?”

“I can curse in six languages and insult your mother in eight,” Mordechai said, keeping his eyes on the road. “Be glad that was all I chose to say.”

Ariel chuckled at that. “So, how many languages are common in Israel? Hebrew, of course, and I assume Arabic and English. What else?”

“Hebrew is the official language, spoken by most everyone in the country. Arabic is next most common, spoken by maybe twenty percent of the residents. Right behind it is Russian.”

“Russian?” Ariel was surprised by that.

“Yes, there was a mass migration of Russian and Ukrainian Jews to Israel in the eighties and nineties. Almost as many people speak Russian as speak Arabic.”

“So where does English fall?”

“Many Israelis can speak English to one degree or another. It’s a required second language in the schools, and it’s widely used in the commercial business and banking sector and in the government. It’s also fairly common among the military, especially the officers. But the number of citizens for whom it’s their birth language has dropped a lot over the last generation or so and is pretty small now. Mostly immigrants from Canada, the US, and the British Commonwealth. German, French, Yiddish, also more common years ago, but small numbers now. Amharic from the Ethiopian migration. A few others.”

“Huh. So when do I start my Hebrew classes?”

“Soon. Next week, hopefully. I think I’ve found a tutor who can meet with you at night.”

Mordechai negotiated a difficult turn, avoiding oncoming traffic. Ariel waited until they were through the maneuver and traveling down a quiet street before he said anything else.

“I know you fought in the wars, but how often have you had to use weapons otherwise? I would have expected our speed and strength to be enough to take down anyone we’d face.”

Mordechai sighed. “There are times where speed and strength and stealth are all that are required to deal with a situation. But there are also times where the ability to kill at a distance, or to kill many rapidly, is what is needed. Recall that Israel is beset by enemies.”

“How often?”

“Twice in the last six months.”

“Wow.” Ariel absorbed that. “So you think I…”

“You may be called on. That is possible. But the odds are not high. Our counterintelligence and counterterrorist groups are very good, and we don’t ordinarily get called in that often.”

Ariel heard the emphasis on we and understood what Mordechai was saying. “Am I going to meet the other two of us? What were their names—Menachem…”

“Menachem Aronson and Eleazar Katz,” Mordechai replied. “Yes, but not just yet. They…it’s hard to describe. They don’t deal well with modern times, so they choose not to meet it any more than they have to. They have small, very isolated residences, with very well-paid housekeepers and a lot of books. They seem to be content. We don’t call on them very often—the last time was in 1995 when Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated. They were added to Shimon Peres’ bodyguards for several months, and it’s a good thing they were. They quietly stopped several follow-up assassination attempts.”

“Quietly?”

“Menachem and Eleazar tend to be very—direct, one might say, but they are very good at stealth—better than I am, in truth. So good that the news organizations never heard or said anything about them.”

“Huh.”

“And the organizations that sponsored the assassins were left wondering what happened, which is not a bad state of affairs.”

Mordechai turned off on a side street and parked near a bar with the sign john bull pub flashing neon from the window. “Come on. They claim to be an English-style pub. They’re not, but not even the English have many real English-style pubs any more. Besides, we’re not here to eat.”

Ariel followed Mordechai into the pub. The lighting was dim inside, although brighter than outdoors. It was late in the evening on a weeknight, and there weren’t many people there.

Mordechai looked around. “There,” he said, and led the way to a small isolated table in a back corner. They settled into chairs so that they both were looking back out over the seating. A petite waitress appeared in the next moment.

“Hi, I’m Beth, and I’m your server tonight,” she announced in accented English. “What would you like?”

“What do you have in the way of a single malt scotch?” Mordechai asked.

Confusion crossed her face. “I don’t know. I’ll have to go ask.”

“Do, please.”

She scurried off.

“Scotch?” Ariel asked.

“Wait and see, my boy.”

It took a long moment, but eventually Beth reappeared. “The bartender says that we have Glenlivet.” She pronounced the last word carefully.

“Ah, well, I had hoped for Glenfiddich, but Glenlivet will be acceptable. I’ll have a small Glenlivet and water, and my friend here will have a Perrier.”

“Right away, gentlemen.” Beth scurried off again.

“Scotch?” Ariel repeated.

Mordechai grinned. “Dr. Hurwitz’s report left out a couple of things.”

“Like what?”

“Like the whole thing about everything but blood tasting nasty.”

Ariel thought back. “Yeah. And I forgot to ask about it. So what gives?”

“Whatever causes the vampirism, one of the first things it does is it changes the sense of smell.”

“Smell?” Ariel thought for a moment. “Oh, right. Most of what passes for flavor is actually scent driven. I knew that,” he said in a disgusted tone. “I should have already figured that one out.”

“Right,” Mordechai said. “The basic tongue sensations of salt, sweet, sour, and bitter still seem to work fairly well for us. But the perception of scents, to use Dr. Hurwitz’s analogy, gets reprogrammed very quickly, at least partly to ramp up our ability to smell. So in addition to everything else, the vampire thing crosses the blood-brain barrier almost immediately to do that.”

They paused to allow Beth to set their drinks on the table, which she did with facility, then returned to the bar.

“So, scotch?” Ariel repeated, nodding at Mordechai’s glass.

“It turns out that besides water we can actually consume other non-blood-based liquids.”

“You mean besides the magen bars?”

“Yes, besides them. In a pinch, if you’re really desperate, you can drink a glucose and water mixture and survive on that. You won’t feel great, but you can survive on it for a while. It’s best if you get the hospital glucose bags or bottles if you have to do this, though, in order to get the best purity. Not the more common dextrose solutions, mind you. It has to be glucose. Dextrose will make you sick, and other sugars like fructose or maltose or table-sugar sucrose are even worse. It has to be pure glucose, understand?”

“Got it. Glucose. Good to know. But what does that have to do with scotch?”

“Bear with me. Our bodies don’t metabolize alcohol after the conversion. It usually passes through the liver and kidneys and right out of the body. But enough of it might damage the kidneys, so avoid it. Beer and wine, even kosher, have so many extra carbohydrates and other compounds that they will make you very, very sick. Don’t even try them. You’re not geared for vomiting anymore. But oddly enough, a highly distilled high-proof alcohol can be pleasurable in one sense.”

Mordechai lifted his glass, sniffed it, and smiled.

“It smells good?” Ariel was surprised.

Mordechai shrugged. “It’s an acquired ‘taste,’ so to speak. It has to be highly distilled. This”—he lifted the glass again—“is at least eighty-proof, at least forty percent alcohol, with the balance being water and the flavor esters of the whisky. I don’t drink it, I literally inhale it.” And he proceeded to do so.

“So vodka, gin, stuff like that…”

Mordechai shook his head. “Those can be high alcohol and high proof, but they just don’t have the flavor esters of a good scotch whisky. And it has to be a good single malt scotch. The blended scotches just smell like piss to me.” He lifted the glass again and inhaled. “Ah.”

“May I?”

Mordechai slid the glass across the table. “Be my guest.”

Ariel gingerly lifted the glass below his nose and sniffed. The odor was strong, was almost overpowering to his senses, in fact. It made his nose tingle, almost like hairs in the nasal passages were stirring around. But the scent…he couldn’t describe it, and he wouldn’t want to experience it a lot, but it was almost…almost…it almost reminded him of what a good steak smelled like when it was being charcoal grilled. The smell hung in the back of his throat almost begging to be swallowed.

“Wow.” Ariel took another sniff, then dared to touch the glass to his lips and take a tiny sip. It was disappointing. Little flavor, no burning in the back of his throat, no sensation of heat as it trickled down his throat. “Wow,” meaning something entirely different from the first time.

Mordechai reclaimed the glass and took another sniff. “Indeed, wow.”

Ariel sat and drank his Perrier, playing with the bubbles, while Mordechai sniffed his scotch. As he neared the bottom of the bottle, he looked over at Mordechai.

“So, you have two licenses for your pistols?”

“Yes.” Mordechai sniffed the scotch again. “And a Mossad ID, a Shin Bet ID, and a Special Police ID, none of which allow me to carry guns. Only the licenses do.”

“Can you shoot with both hands?”

“I can, but I shoot better with the right than the left, so if I need to shoot I usually use the right. I carry the extra pistol after having one jam and break on me in an operation.”

“So you don’t shoot with both hands at the same time?”

“Forget the movies, Ariel. Any kind of firefight or battle is an exercise in multitasking, and there are very, very few people in the world who can carry two guns and select separate targets for each of them in that kind of situation. That is the ultimate in multitasking, and most people who try it end up getting distracted, which then ends up with them getting dead. Yes, you are strong enough that you can reliably shoot that pistol you’re carrying one-handed with a little more training and experience. Yes, you can undoubtedly learn to shoot at least fairly well left-handed, again, with more training and experience. Yes, with combat training you can undoubtedly learn to carry two pistols and use them to shoot at the same target fairly well. But forget about being able to carry two guns and having the level of situational awareness to be able to target them independently. That’s a one in a billion skill. Even Dirty Harry and John Wick only used one gun at a time.

“That said, what Shimon said is the truth: in a firefight, in a battle, you take the shot you have at the moment, because that may be the best shot you get. The only time you wait for a better shot is if you’re on a sniper mission, which I doubt you will ever be.”

At that moment, Mordechai’s phone sounded. He pulled it out of his jacket pocket and looked at the screen. “Trouble.” He stood and pulled a money clip out of his pocket. “Come on, we’re leaving.”

He dropped a bill on the table and headed for the door. Ariel gulped down the last of his water and hurried to catch up.


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