Last Instructions

by Nir Hezroni

  I unclench my fist and take her hand in mine. The world around me turns white. Snow stretches all the way to the horizon and appears connected to the white clouds in the sky.

  “Come on, let’s go!” She tugs my hand and I start walking with her. We walk for an hour in silence. The flat white ground begins to rise and I’m panting from the effort. The snow becomes deeper the higher we go and my boots get heavier. She presses on quickly as if the ascent has no effect on her. Bare trees border the snowy path. Their black branches are covered with strips of snow.

  “Come on. You have to see it. Before the darkness falls.”

  We continue our ascent and I try to keep up with her.

  We reach the top of the mountain. The peak is flat and there’s a clearing measuring about forty meters across. A wooden cabin stands in the middle of the treeless area. We don’t go inside. We stand at the edge of the clearing and she points down toward the open expanse at the foot of the mountain.

  “Do you see it?”

  I look down and I realize what she’s talking about and why we had to climb to the top to see it. Far below us on the white surface are the delicately drawn lines of three concentric circles that appear to be the work of an enormous compass cutting through the snow. The radius of the outer circle measures approximately one kilometer, and the other two within it divide the largest one into equal parts. It would have been impossible to see from below.

  She retrieves a dark green military compass from one of the pockets of her white fur coat and aims the sight at the center of the circle. She takes a small notebook out of her pocket and jots down a figure. Then she puts the compass back into her coat pocket and pulls out a second instrument. She turns it on and aims a red laser beam at the center of the circle far below us. She writes down another figure in her notebook.

  “We’ll go there tomorrow morning,” she says and turns toward the cabin. “Let’s go inside. It’ll be very cold soon.”

  She opens the cabin door. We go inside and close the door behind us. It’s very cold outside and the temperature must have dropped a few degrees below zero. There’ll be more snow tonight for sure. It’s freezing inside the cabin. A thin layer of ice covers the floor and the structure’s single window is frosted over. Standing in the center of the room is a wood-burning stove with a large iron kettle resting on its surface. There’s a wooden closet near the front door and two bunk beds stand on either side of the room, with the window between them.

  “I’m thirsty.”

  I open the closet door. Stacked on one of the shelves are folded woolen blankets and white sheets. On the shelf above it are several cans of corn, a bag of rice, spices, eating utensils, and a large box of matches.

  I turn around and she’s standing behind me with an ax.

  I jump back, but she hands me the ax. “Hurry. Before it gets dark. Before the wolves come out.” She points outside. I understand and leave the cabin. It’s very cold out now and I’m shivering.

  I walk a short way down the path we climbed earlier and chop down a few large branches. The branches are dry and frozen and break easily and I prepare a number of piles of logs about half a meter in length that I carry back to the cabin and stack in a neat pile opposite the wooden closet. All this time she is pacing around the cabin and looking in every direction, as if she’s afraid that someone will show up.

  I pick up the last pile of logs and the ax and return to the cabin. She closes the door behind us with a large iron bolt.

  I use the ax to chop one of the logs into thin strips, which I then place in the stove and light with a match. The small pieces of dry branch catch fire quickly and I stack a few thick logs on top of them and close the iron door. I take the kettle off the stovetop and go outside to fill it with snow. When I come back inside she bolts the door behind me again.

  “Where do you want to sleep?” I ask her and point to the beds.

  She shrugs. “I don’t care.”

  I rest the kettle on the iron stovetop and make up the two bottom bunks with sheets and clean pillowcases, before placing a woolen blanket on each of them.

  The water in the kettle boils and I make two cups of tea with sugar. We stand beside the stove drinking tea and warming ourselves. The layer of ice on the floor of the cabin begins to thaw and steam collects on the window. She uses her finger to draw a smiley face in the condensation.

  I ask her name.

  She doesn’t respond.

  “You should get some sleep,” I say. “You must be very tired.” She lies on her bed and I tuck the woolen blanket tightly around her.

  I carefully open the door of the hot stove, add a few more logs and then close it again. I go over to my bed, get in, cover myself with a blanket, close my eyes, and allow my fatigue to lull me to sleep. Then I feel something small and warm creep under my blanket. She presses herself up against my back. I can feel her breathing.

  The kettle on the stove continues to spout steam into the cabin air.

  The howl of a wolf comes from outside.

  December 5, 2016

  Carmit woke up and stretched, taking care not to disturb Guy, who was fast asleep beside her. The dream was a new one. She got up and went to the bathroom and then to the kitchen to drink a glass of water.

  She put on her favorite tracksuit, grabbed her iPhone and headset, and stuffed a key to the apartment in her pocket. The streets of London were deserted at two in the morning and she played a particularly noisy Prodigy playlist as she inhaled the cold night air and started running.

  December 6, 2016

  “You brought him in.”

  Rotem was sitting on the edge of the desk in Grandpa’s office.

  “Why did you do it?”

  “Mint tea with sugar?” Grandpa asked, pointing at a flask on his desk.

  Rotem remembered she was thirsty. “Do you have Coke?”

  “No. It’s not healthy.”

  “What you did with your psychopath was unhealthy, too. Why did you allow him to make it through? He clearly wouldn’t have gotten even a foot through the door had he gone through our regular screening process. We are very good at weeding out nutcases. Okay, I’ll have some of that tea.”

  Grandpa poured some hot tea from the flask into a thick glass and handed it to her. “Look, Rotem, I’m about to tell you a few things that can’t be passed on within the Organization. I know you know him better than any of us, and I need your brain to catch him. So I’m deviating here from our regular procedures. I can count on you in this regard, right?”

  “Shoot.”

  “This particular agent was recruited for the purposes of the Bernoulli Project, with which I’m sure you’re familiar. There were twelve assassination targets and he received three of them. Now’s not the time to go into why three and why specifically the three nuclear scientists out of the twelve scientists in total, but he did his job and he did it well. His objectives were eliminated. The fact that he also killed many innocent bystanders is a shame; but in the end, a nuclear warhead that was going to be used against the State of Israel remained hidden in some remote location that no one knew anything about.”

  “Aside from him,” Rotem said.

  “Do you think 10483 knows the location of the bomb?” Grandpa asked.

  “Of course he does. And in the ten years he’s had to plot his revenge—you can be sure that he’s already positioned it where he wants it and that it will explode on the day and at the time he’s determined.”

  “Why do you think he knows?”

  “Nobody learned the location of the bomb. We know that. It was never used so it remained hidden somewhere. He met three targets, which makes his chances of hearing or seeing something much more likely. We have to go on the assumption that it’s in his possession.”

  “It weighs anywhere between one hundred and two hundred kilograms. How could he have moved such a thing all the way from Mongolia to Tel Aviv?”

  “Don’t underestimate him. And don’t be sure about Tel Aviv. Maybe he pla
ns to raze the Old City of Jerusalem, or at least something big on a regional scale. You have yet to tell me something I didn’t already know, by the way.”

  “We needed someone creative. That’s obvious. But we also messed around with his brain.”

  Rotem’s eyes widened. “You messed with his brain?”

  “We implanted an expiry date. He was supposed to commit suicide on December twelfth, 2006. Exactly ten years ago. But it didn’t happen.”

  “How did you do it?”

  “By coloring relevant areas of his brain with a light-sensitive material and projecting behavioral learning patterns at the appropriate wavelengths through his eyes, while playing an audio file through a headset. The manipulation of the primary senses while the subject is unconscious is more effective than hypnosis because the subject doesn’t end up functioning like an automaton.”

  “Fuck me,” Rotem exclaimed, rising from the desk and beginning to pace around the room. “Are you fucking crazy? Who does that kind of thing? How come my division knows nothing about this? Fuck! How come I don’t know anything about it? How many other people have you done this to? This will blow up in our faces. It already has. What did you call it? Transformation? You’re playing with fire. Who knows about this besides the inner circle? Who performed it? When did you do it to him?”

  Rotem pulled a set of keys out of her pocket. “Here’s a flash drive. Put the transformation file on it for me. I want to hear what you implanted in his brain. You’re insane.”

  “It wasn’t a single transformation. We performed several on him.”

  “Fuck!”

  “Four throughout his training and also during the course of his activities abroad.”

  “Fuck!”

  “He underwent seven transformations in all.”

  “Fuck!”

  “I can share just the final one with you. The others remain at the level of the inner circle only.”

  “Fuck! You said he also underwent transformations during the course of his activities abroad. Who performed them? A mobile laboratory overseas?”

  “A subcontractor. She performed three transformations for the three assassinations he carried out,” Grandpa said, taking the flash drive and copying an MP3 file onto it.

  “Okay, I’ll listen to the file and then I want to speak to her.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “I need her to tell me about his responses to the process he underwent, and how she managed to get to him. You said the subject undergoes the treatment while unconscious, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “So your subcontractor managed to render 10483 unconscious on three occasions? I need her.”

  “We do, too, but she’s disappeared. She’s not answering her phone and we don’t know where she is. Where in London that is. London is a big place.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Carmit Schneider.”

  “And there’s still something else I don’t get.”

  “What?”

  “Why did you knowingly recruit a psychopath into the Organization? You haven’t explained that to me yet.”

  “And I won’t be doing so in the future either,” Grandpa responded, putting an end to their conversation.

  December 6, 2016

  Surrounded by eucalyptus trees, the Organization’s home base sits in the center of the country. The small group of gray concrete buildings with a perimeter fence guarded by soldiers could be any other Signal Corps or Adjutant Corps base, but most of it lies deep underground, and the guards in uniform are not soldiers. A few dozen meters below, there’s an endless series of reinforced concrete bunkers, complete with parking levels, generators, computer rooms, more and more levels of offices, war rooms, communications centers, and living quarters. The gray concrete structures aboveground are air defense systems, for the most part, that are manned around the clock.

  Rotem left Granpa’s office and skipped her way toward the elevator, getting in and pressing the button to the fourteenth floor. She hurried off to her office on the so-called Mineshaft Floor, the nickname the field operatives gave the level occupied by the Organization’s psychology departments, where much “digging” took place. She entered her office, locked the door from the inside, sat down in front of a computer, and inserted the encrypted flash drive on the key ring into a USB port. First she copied the instruction file she’d written yesterday onto her own computer for backup purposes, and then she put on a pair of headphones, played the MP3 file, and listened with her eyes closed. After coming to the end of the audio file, she backtracked a little and listened again to the last part of the recording.

  You remain seated on the stone. You know what you have to do.

  The grass and woods around you disappear.

  Your breathing quickens.

  You won’t remember this conversation.

  You feel wonderful.

  You won’t dream anymore.

  Never again.

  You’ll continue sleeping now until you are no longer tired and then you’ll wake up.

  This is your last dream.

  “Holy fuck!” she exclaimed out loud and then realized that someone was knocking on the door.

  She opened the office and Avner stepped in.

  “They programmed him to commit suicide on December twelfth, 2006,” she said. “After he did all that work for them. They made him kill himself in 2006.”

  “Do you refer to the inner circle?”

  “Yes. Grandpa gave me this recording of the final transformation he underwent.”

  “Transformation?”

  “A rewiring of the brain of some kind. Sophisticated hypnosis. Don’t mention to Grandpa I told you all this.”

  “So it didn’t really work out for them then, I guess. Fact is, he’s alive and kicking.”

  “Perhaps he tried? Whatever it was that they did to his brain must have caused him to try. Maybe he jumped off a building or shot himself in the head or tried to hang himself or doused himself in gasoline and set fire to himself or slashed his wrists in a warm bath or did a thousand other things that didn’t work. We have a lead!”

  “Meaning?”

  Rotem went over to the whiteboard in her office and cleaned it. She then drew a timeline with December 12, 2006, as its starting point.

  “Let’s say he jumped off the roof of a building,” she began. “And let’s say he wasn’t killed. We need to check hospital records for December twelfth—for patients admitted following suicide attempts. Their records show everything. We can start in the center of the country and widen our search if we don’t come up with anything around here. When we find our attempted suicide victim, we can check the duration of his stay in the hospital, the date of his discharge, if they made a photocopy of an ID card he was carrying, or anything else like that.”

  Rotem added a second point to the timeline, labeling it “Discharge,” and at the end of the timeline she wrote: “Today—12/06/2016.”

  “Get it?” she asked. “We haven’t looked for him until now because we were sure he’d died in his apartment ten years ago; but that’s not the case. He burned a body that he carried up from the basement and placed on his bed, then he began plotting his revenge, but his plans were interrupted on December twelfth, 2006. For how long? Two weeks? Two years? Let’s go check out some hospitals. They won’t give us the information over the phone. We need to go there in person. We’ll start with Tel HaShomer.”

  The door to Rotem’s office swung open and Grandpa peered inside. “Avner, I need you for a few minutes.”

  “I’m coming. Rotem, don’t leave without me.”

  The two men walked down the corridor, then went into one of the conference rooms and sat down.

  “Avner,” Grandpa said, “I need to ask you to do something that won’t be easy for you, but is essential.”

  “If you’re going to ask me to back away from this investigation, then forget it.”

  “You’re emotionally involved. I wouldn’t expect an
y of us to be objective under such circumstances; but it’s going to hinder your decision-making and put the rest of the team at risk.”

  “Listen to me, and listen well,” Avner said. “I’m in on this no matter what. If I was simply a new recruit, I’d listen to what you have to say; but we’ve both been here for long enough to know how the Organization works. The Organization is not used to working on home soil, and it’s not designed to think twice before pulling the trigger. As long as everything is conducted on foreign soil against outside enemies, we don’t have a problem. But when things are going to be happening here, with my wife possibly in close proximity when they close in on him, no one is going to carefully calculate the trajectories of the bullets they fire into his skull, and that’s only if they choose to use firearms rather than explosives. If it was just a SWAT team, I’d feel more at ease; but let me take a wild guess and say that you have more than one team on this. How can you expect me to remain here in my office while that psychopath thinks of ways to turn my wife and Amiram into some sick piece of so-called art? Not a chance.”

  “Look, Avner—”

  “No, I’m in on this—no discussion.”

  Grandpa sighed. “I’m too old for this,” he said. “Okay, team up with Rotem. The two of you will look for him in addition to another team I’ve dispatched. We’ll be getting help from all the other entities—the army, the Shin Bet, the SWAT unit. Our cover story is that we’re dealing with an Islamic State terrorist. Work in conjunction with the second team. Try to think rationally despite your wife’s involvement. Keep a level head.”

  Avner didn’t respond. He stood up and left the conference room, and Grandpa remained in his chair for a few minutes before returning to his office.

  December 6, 2016

  Several people were sitting around the table in the conference room. The furniture in the room was old and heavy, and thick carpeting muffled the sound of voices deep in conversation. The door opened and an elderly man with white hair and bright blue eyes entered the room and sat down at the head of the table. He read from a sheet of paper in his hand: