The End-Time Foretellers

by Ran Weber

  72

  A phone call from Ehud early in the morning tore the sleep right out of my eyes.

  I had fallen asleep late, after all the pizza and coffee and after my nocturnal run. By the time I had come back and showered, it was already 1:30am.

  “Say,” he asked, “want to go out surfing? I have a surfboard for you, you’ve seen it already. I also have a diving suit your size, if you need one.”

  I looked at my watch. It was still early, 6:10am.

  I thought for a moment. “All right,” I said and rubbed my eyes. “Where?” I tried to subdue a little yawn.

  “I’ll come pick you up in half an hour. I have a little van now with plenty of room for surfboards.”

  He showed up a little late. I waited outside. He opened the window and tossed the diving suit to me. I looked at him and at the suit.

  “What, Yoav, are you some sort of nerd?” he asked. “Go put on the diving suit and let’s get going. You don’t need to bring anything, just yourself, the diving suit and the surfboard that’s already in the van. I even brought clean towels straight from the laundromat.”

  I got back inside and put on the diving suit. No need to drag anything with me, no phone, or wallet, or equipment. Just me and the waves. I had almost forgotten that feeling.

  We reached the sea. Ehud drove about the limestone parking lot and finally parked in its northern side. He told me he likes to be able to see the car from the sea because he didn’t want to take any chances with all the characters hanging out in the area. He gave me the surfboard. It was high-quality “Rusty” surfboard. I looked at Ehud’s surfboard, it was a little better than mine, but I didn’t complain. I felt a pang of yearning for home. I looked at the sea, tall and orderly waves. I had never seen the likes of them back in Israel. It was unlikely, but it appeared as if the waves, at least the tallest of them, were over six feet tall. I’ve heard about beaches in California that have such tall waves.

  Ehud looked at the sea. “Amazing, eh? This is a special beach, a rarity. Even for California. It has the biggest waves and today, the forecast says the sea will be especially stormy. You have waves over six, maybe even eight feet tall. Works for you?”

  “Perfectly.”

  We rushed into the water with our surfboards and started rowing into the deeps. At first, we caught some small waves and then we rowed toward the larger ones. I haven’t surfed for a long time and my body felt a little rusty. I managed to catch a medium-sized wave, or at least medium-sized when compared with the other giant waves. It was sheer delight. I lay flat on the surfboard so that the perfect tube would completely enclose me.

  The wave crashed and I swam back to catch another, larger one. I jumped up in an attempt to somersault in the air and was hurled away from the surfboard. I realized that I’ve lost it. My heart started pounding. There was a wall of water over eight feet tall behind me. I’ve never had to deal with anything like that. It was scarier than the tallest waves I’ve ever encountered, even with a surfboard, which I now did not have.

  I took a deep breath and allowed my instincts to take over, surfing with my body, keeping my chin above water… I slid toward the shore with an enormous speed. I found myself a few feet away from the beach. I’ve managed to safely escape the terrible water monster.

  I washed my face and took a dip in the water to settle down. I looked about the shoreline, trying to see where the surfboard had been ejected from the sea, but couldn’t locate it. I looked up at the parking lot in an attempt to find Ehud’s car. It wasn’t there. Or perhaps I’d forgotten where we had parked it?

  I got out of the water and started to look for Ehud. Where had he gone to? I had nothing, he hadn’t even left me a towel…

  I took the surfboard leash off my leg and looked at it. The ring that circles the leg, including the Velcro straps, looked intact and was still connected to the leg. The other end of the leash, the rope connected to the surfboard, was torn. I took a closer look at it. It was a clean cut. I touched its end and sniffed it. Glue. No normal surfer would glue a leash. Certainly not before going to surf such powerful waves. Unless… unless Ehud had tried to kill me? Could Ehud have something to do with the End-Time Foretellers? Far-fetched, but possible.

  I approached a few people and asked to make a phone call. Most of them ignored me, except for an elderly lady who must have felt sorry for me. She agreed that I use her cellphone, so long as she was the one dialing. Perhaps she was afraid I’d make an international call to Australia. She called Binyamin and handed me the cellphone. I explained the situation to him and he came to pick me up in less than thirty minutes.

  73

  The Valley, Los Angeles

  I concentrated on the screen, another moment and I’d be in. I took over agent Jim’s computer by remote access, it was easier than I thought it would be. The disk-on-key I had brought him contained only some very basic information, nothing groundbreaking, surely not what he was looking for, with the addition of a nice little software for remote access takeover. He must have been so eager that he had plugged the disk-on-key into his home computer right away. The commercial antivirus software he was using did not help him to stop my little software that “sat” on the disk-on-key’s drivers. I can only imagine his reaction when the installation software on the disk-on-key that had undergone a little upgrade and contained my new Trojan Horse had asked him, “A new software component has been found. Install the new application?” He must have enthusiastically clicked “Yes,” and then the operating system asked something like, “New application is from an unidentified developer. Are you sure you want to open it?” and he cursed Microsoft and clicked “Yes.”

  I was inside, at the very heart of Agent Jim Clark’s digital nervous system, doing what he was used to doing on a daily basis, spying after an innocent person who has no idea you’re virtually sitting on his tail. There was a thrill in it, I had to admit.

  He had not deleted his web browser’s history. Turns out he wasn’t the sharpest pencil in the box. I began to go through the various websites he’d surfed, until one of the forums caught my attention. It belonged to a white supremacist group. The username and password were saved on the computer. “White Eagle,” he called himself. I’ve seen worse. I looked at the history of messages he’d published in the forum.

  Mr. Clark wasn’t especially fond of Jews, African-Americans, Chinese, or Mexicans. He believed that they were taking over America and were bringing about its downfall. I found messages in which he was cursing the “fat-nigga’-ruining-all-his-assignments.” I smiled to myself and printed the messages, just in case.

  In some of the messages, he mentioned the End-Time Foretellers. I wondered what his connection to them was. Could it be that the End-Time Foretellers was a right-wing American organization? I couldn’t find what I was looking for. I thought about it; it wasn’t reasonable to assume he didn’t have the information, it had to be somewhere else.

  I realized that I had no choice, I had to physically break into his office and go over his files. I still found no proof tying him to the End-Time Foretellers or a lead to work on.

  I went into his inner email system and task management and appointment calendar software, which actually belonged to Judy, his secretary. I had a few important tasks I needed to update it with. I paused for a moment and went into another appointment calendar, higher-up in the chain of command. Just in case.

  74

  “Rami, I have to talk to you about Ehud.”

  “Well, that’s interesting.”

  “What is?”

  “I’ve just finished a conversation with him. I wanted to ask you a few things.”

  I said nothing.

  “But before I share my insights with you, what did you want?”

  “I think Ehud is somehow related to the End-Time Foretellers.”

  A brief silence followed, then Rami said, “Have you gone completely
out of your mind, Yoav? What is wrong with you? You can’t locate the End-Time Foretellers, transfer codes to the Iranians, and then blame Ehud? I’m really worried about you. I’m starting to think maybe Ehud was right…”

  “About what?” I asked.

  “He sent me a fax with some of Schetritt’s records.”

  “These are fake!”

  “Ehud said that’s what you’d say. Meanwhile, he’s the one who’s regularly providing me with information. You, on the other hand…”

  “The man tried to kill me!” I was furious. “I’m telling you, Rami, he’s withholding information. I think he’s in contact with the Iranians and he’s not sharing that information with us. The man would sell his own mother’s house, if the right buyer happens to come along.”

  “He didn’t try to kill you,” said Rami. “He told me exactly what happened there with the surfboards.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said he tried to scare you a little to make you understand you need to work as a team. He agreed with me that it wasn’t such a smart thing to do, in retrospect.”

  I didn’t answer.

  “But he’s also right.”

  “About what?”

  “About saying that something doesn’t smell right. You are not reporting what’s really going on to me, Yoav.”

  “What do you want, Rami?”

  “How were you able to infiltrate Schetritt’s organization so easily? What’s the story?” asked Rami. “Yoav, I’ve known you for years. If it weren’t you, things would have ended differently. Forget about the accusations and focus on the task again. I didn’t send you to America for you to tell me one of my agents in the enemy. Besides, I want to start getting explanations, you get me? Things are really starting to stink.”

  “You’ll get explanations.”

  “When?”

  “Real soon.”

  I hung up the phone and turned to check the local news websites. One item caught my eye: “Hackers have infiltrated the computers of a Citibank subsidiary company in Los Angeles. A group called ‘The End-Time Foretellers’ has claimed responsibility. Preliminary investigations indicate that no money or information has been stolen from the accounts. The group has left a message: We were here. The End-Time Foretellers, a new world order.”

  75

  Federal Correctional Facility, San Francisco Area

  “Norman, you have to tell me where it is.”

  Norman sat in a wheelchair, his head slumped over. He seemed a little dazed. “What?”

  “Did you increase his dosage?”

  “Yes, Senator,” answered the orderly who stood beside them. He began to stammer. “I… I thought that… the order from high up was… to keep him in a state of…”

  “Senator,” said Norman and nodded, “Is… is it really… you?”

  “Where’s the source, Norman?”

  “I… forgot,” said Norman.

  “We need the source, Norman.”

  “W... why?” asked Norman and rubbed his forehead. “Everything’s en… coded. The source is just…”

  “We can’t have anyone finding it. You know that,” said the Senator and approached him.

  Norman nodded and rubbed his right temple. “No one will find it, Se… Senator.” He paused and half a smile rose to his lips. “But…” he said, “they’ll find me, Senator.”

  “No one will find you, Norman,” said the senator and turned to the orderly. “Make sure not to give him drugs that support such hallucinations.”

  76

  The Valley, Los Angeles

  The house was quiet. Binyamin was reading a book on the living room sofa and I restlessly roamed about between the living room and the kitchen. Everything felt too small, too crowded. On the one hand, living beside Aharon and Binyamin was very comforting and relaxing, but on the other hand, there was also something pressuring and disturbing about it.

  The fact that I had to share my life with other people, live in the same space with other human beings, wasn’t simple for me. I had gotten used to loneliness. Besides, the fact that I was living in constant concealment was unbearable. I had to act according to the standards of an imaginary self I had developed in order to justify my stay there. I reached the conclusion that I had lived my life like that anyway, in concealment, whether an external concealment while working on different assignments, or an inner concealment; no one really knew what was going on inside me. The closest people to me, Adi, Amos, or Uri, had no idea about what was truly going on inside me. Sometimes I wasn’t sure I knew myself.

  “Yoav?” asked Binyamin.

  “What?” I replied, disentangling myself from the thoughts that occupied me.

  “You wanted to say something?”

  I shrugged.

  He looked at me with concentration, pointing at the seat next to him. When I sat down, he continued to examine me with kindly eyes. “It still looks like something is troubling you,” he said.

  “Maybe,” I said defensively.

  “Want to talk about it?”

  “Not really,” I said sincerely. How would you explain to an ex-handyman-shepherd about transatlantic struggles, I thought. How would you explain that you feel so depressed and frustrated that you want to just throw everything and run away as far as possible. That you feel like no one can understand you, no one. And worse, that no one even cares.

  “It looks like you have a lot weighing on your heart.”

  I examined him closely. He was no liar, but…

  “Thanks,” I smiled, “good to hear. Good to know someone cares in this uncaring world we live in.”

  I looked into Binyamin’s eyes and saw sincerity in them. There was a softness underneath the outer rough coating. I had a feeling that he was there for me without any egotistical interests, that he really saw me. I was desperate and he touched my heart. It was an unfamiliar feeling.

  “What are you thinking about?” he asked.

  I tried to change the subject. “Nothing, nothing. Just something I need to do on the internet for…”

  “Yoav?” he asked softly, “are you all right?”

  I severed eye contact and lowered my gaze to the rug. “It’s hard for me, I’m not used to everything that’s going on here.”

  “What?”

  “I’m used to a different world, a world in which nobody cares.”

  He was silent. I went on. “I don’t want to get into this, but I’m really not what you think. Still, I sense that you see a deeper level in me, that you can really see through me behind all the masks.”

  “In order to understand what’s really going on, you need to truly listen deep inside, and not just look outside, do you understand?”

  “No,” I answered simply.

  “Close your eyes for a moment and listen to your heart. Leave the world, get inside and ask yourself, does He really care? Does he really see me? Take a deep breath, forget about the role playing and the dazzling outer reality, your heart knows the answer.”

  I closed my eyes. I had a pleasant feeling in my heart that it was true, that he cared about me.

  I opened them. “Yes, you care.”

  “Right. No matter what you do and what dark secrets from your past you’re hiding.”

  I felt fear overwhelming me.

  “I don’t see you as a character playing one role or another. What interests me is your heart, beyond any words, emotions, or role-playing games. Call it your soul. You are an amazing person. I see you and my heart is breaking.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  Binyamin smiled. “Do you really want to know?”

  My heart was pounding. “Yes.”

  “Because of that constricting envelope that protects your heart and keeps putting its light out, that makes you behave so nicely, but feel so frustrated on the inside. B
ecause you feel that you have no place in this world and nobody sees you. But that’s not true!” he paused to catch his breath. “I care about you, remember that. From the moment you’ve entered my heart, I will always care about you. Aharon loves you very much too. Normally, it’s hard for him to connect with people. He’s known Donnie for a long time and I think he hates him. I believe that children have a good ‘radar’, they can usually see through a person and know what’s inside his heart.”

  I didn’t know what to say. He described in simple words something I had felt for years and was never able to put into words. “Thank you for caring,” was all I was able to say.

  “Tell me,” he said, “why don’t you ever talk about your family?”

  “There’s nothing to talk about,” I said. “I have a little sister called Adi. My mother had passed away and I’m not really communicating with my dad.”

  “Why?”

  I sighed. “I don’t have the energy to discuss it right now, Binyamin. Let’s just say that we’ve never had a real connection. Ever since I was a little boy, I was more attached to my mother. Dad was always busy with his own affairs and was never interested in what went on in the house, certainly not interested in me. I learned to manage on my own, especially after mom died. I realized my expectations of him were unrealistic, so I simply lowered them. Sometimes I send him an email, or really get over myself and call to wish him a happy holiday, that’s it.”

  Binyamin nodded. “Is it good?”

  “What is?”

  “Is it good for you like this? Your relationship with him?”

  “What difference does it make?” I said. I was starting to feel uncomfortable with the conversation. “Some things never change, Binyamin. He doesn’t care about anything, I’ve already explained that to you. He doesn’t want things to change. I’ve had enough of it very early on. Maybe you don’t understand what I’m talking about, because you are a caring person, you care about everything,” I forced myself to stop the tears.