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Last Instructions_A Thriller_Agent 10483

Page 19

by Nir Hezroni


  Before she left the room, she went back to the two bodies lying on the floor and examined the veins in their arms and legs. There were no needle marks.

  * * *

  “I’m so sorry but I’ve just received word from England that my father is in a very bad way. I have to check out and fly home immediately.”

  The desk clerk in the lobby looked at Carmit’s teary eyes. “Of course,” she said. “No problem. I’ll charge you for just the one night.”

  “And could you please call a taxi to take me to the airport?”

  “Certainly, I’ll call one right away. You can sit here in the meantime. Would you like some cold water?”

  Carmit thanked the desk clerk. She must remember to also thank Elliot and his geek friends for the sensor camera they gave her before her trip to China.

  Within ten minutes the taxi was there to collect her. On the drive to Ben Gurion Airport, Carmit ran her hands over the handles of the knives in her belt. They truly are of the finest quality. She stepped out of the taxi at the airport, waited outside for a few minutes, and then hailed a second cab. “Good morning,” she said to the driver. “To the Dan Hotel in Herzliya, please.”

  Now she’d have to change her appearance. If her straight black hair became blonde curls, no one would recognize her. “Hair makes a big impression.” That was one of the phrases that stuck in her head from back in the days of the basic agents training course.

  Any moment now a maid was going to walk into Room 607 at the David InterContinental and start screaming at the sight of the two bodies lying on the carpet in large pools of blood.

  05/25/2016–23 weeks and 5 days since waking

  Yesterday I finished installing almost all the trashcans. I wake up this morning and head out for a day of errands.

  I go to a printing services company and order 3 decals of the Tel Aviv Municipality logo for my vehicle—2 large ones and a smaller one. The owner of the print shop tells me that the decals will be ready at noon and I pay him upfront in cash. I then drive to a store in Or-Yehuda that stocks tools for building contractors and purchase a generator, a large jackhammer, waste removal bags, a pickax, a shovel, and a roll of red-and-white striped barricade tap.

  I call the Pazgas gas company and order 2 large gas tanks. I give them the Moshav Yanuv address and tell them that someone stole my home’s 2 tanks. I arrange to have the tanks installed in the afternoon. Earlier this morning I disconnected the home’s 2 tanks and put them in the basement.

  I collect my order from the print shop at noon and drive to the Reding parking lot, where, at the far end of the lot, I apply the Tel Aviv Municipality decals to my carpet van. It’s a municipal vehicle now, not a carpet van.

  I drive around the city in my municipal vehicle and collect Tel Aviv Municipality’s stand-alone steel barriers, packing them into the back of the van. Later in the afternoon I go back to the house on Moshav Yanuv to meet up with the gas technician, who installs 2 large gas tanks to replace the missing ones. Once he leaves, I disconnect the new ones again and put them in the back of the van, replacing them with the 2 original tanks that I bring up from the basement.

  I take the 2 trashcan bombs I still have left and put them in the back of the van, along with a few additional tools, a carton of mineral water, and cans of corn and peas, a can opener, plates, and a set of disposable cutlery.

  05/26/2016–23 weeks and 6 days since waking

  I get up very early in the morning, before sunrise, and drive to Rabin Square. I mount the curb and drive the van into the square. I park my municipal van in the center of the large open expanse and form a 20-square meter perimeter around the vehicle using the Tel Aviv Municipality barriers I collected the day before and the red-and-white barricade tape, which I tie between them. I also hang up 4 posters—one on each side of the perimeter—that I ordered yesterday from the print shop.

  Caution!

  Work underway to repair ruptured water pipe

  Commencement Date—Thursday, May 26, 2016

  Completion Date—Friday, May 27, 2016

  Our apologies for the temporary inconvenience

  Tel Aviv Municipality—Yours and for You!

  I connect the jackhammer to the generator and arrange all my tools. I begin digging a 2-meter by 2-meter hole in the square at exactly 7 in the morning. I use the jackhammer to remove the layer of paving stones, taking care not to break the stone tiles so that I can use them afterward to cover up the hole. After removing the paving stones I go to work on a layer of gravel and compressed earth, under which the ground is soft and easy to dig through. I fill the waste disposal bags with the earth I remove from the hole. At the end of the day I have a 1-meter deep pit. The work was tiring and I pack my gear into the municipal vehicle, get in, eat a dinner of corn and peas, and go to sleep on the pile of carpets at the back of the van.

  I’m up and out of the van the next day at 5 in the morning. Still wearing the municipality shirt from the day before, I stretch and gaze at the facade of the City Hall building in front of me. Not one of the numerous municipality employees who passed by all day bothered to question the nature of my work here in the square yesterday.

  I take the 2 trashcan bombs out of the van and lay them down inside the hole I dug. Next to them on each side I place the 2 large gas tanks that I retrieve from the vehicle. I connect a single length of electrical cable to one of the screws on the outer casing of each trashcan bomb—to serve as an antenna. I run the cables to the lip of the hole.

  A passerby comes over to peer into the hole just as I’m starting to cover the gas tanks and trashcans with the earth from the bags I filled. He sees the gas tanks and trashcans and the electrical cables connected to them. He turns and takes off quickly and I hurdle the barrier I’ve built and bring my shovel crashing down on his head. I quickly drag him by his feet into the hole and cover him with earth along with the trashcan bombs and gas tanks. After firmly compressing the earth I add a layer of gravel, which I then cover with a 1-centimeter thick layer of concrete. I give the concrete a few hours to dry before covering it with a thin layer of sand and replacing the paving stones, closing the gaps between them with a filler material identical in color to the other tiles in the square. I allow it all to dry for a little longer and use the time to dismantle the barrier I built, pack the generator, jackhammer, and the rest of my tools back into the van and cast my eyes over the square. It looks good. If I detonate the device I’ve buried during the course of a large public rally in the square, the damage will be considerable. I drive back to the Reading parking lot, remove the municipality decals from the van, and throw them into the nearest trash bin. My vehicle is a carpet-cleaning van again.

  From the parking lot I drive to the Organization’s main base to do some reconnaissance. I have to be careful about remaining in one spot for too long, and I can’t drive past in the van too often so as not to arouse suspicion. I spend a few weeks surveying the location and trying to figure out if I can get close enough to the base with a gas tanker in order to carry out one of the stages of my plan—but I don’t find a weak spot. The base is protected by several security perimeters; it appears to have an internal waste disposal system, I can’t find any piping leading into the facility, and the roads into the base are protected by concrete barriers to prevent vehicles from crashing into the facility. Even if I were able to break through with a gas tanker and detonate it on the roof of the base, the damage would be minimal because the facility is built entirely underground.

  I abandon my plan to blow up the Organization’s main base and drive north to carry out some reconnaissance around the Haifa Bay area instead. I drive through the fields bordering the area of the Oil Refineries and petrochemical plants. They appear easily accessible. If I hijack the gas tanker at the beginning of its route, I can disable the driver and keep him in the cab with me or stop by my house and put him in the basement before continuing north. I can tie the gas tanker’s steering wheel in place and jam the gas pedal to the floor and s
end the vehicle crashing into one of the facilities, but the damage I’d cause would be limited. It would be better to find a central sewage or rainwater drainage pipe that serves the petrochemical plants into which I can empty the gas tanker’s entire load. The gas will spread under all the facilities at the site and rise up through hundreds of different openings; igniting the gas will then cause an explosion across the entire site and much more damage.

  The old ammonia storage tank at the site won’t be able to withstand the blast and will certainly rupture, leak, and explode. In April of 2013, an ammonia storage tank exploded in Texas, some 30 kilometers from the town of Waco. The tank was holding a little under 300 tons of ammonia and the explosion left 15 people dead and 160 injured. The tank in Haifa contains 12,000 tons of ammonia and sits just a few kilometers from the surrounding communities, including the city of Haifa itself. Waco is a town without much luck. It’s also the place where David Koresh torched himself and 76 of his cult followers in the wake of a 51-day FBI siege around his so-called Branch Davidians center there. I’ll visit there one day. 51 divides by 3, without a remainder, to leave you with a prime number.

  I spend the next few weeks visiting the Haifa Bay area and documenting the waste disposal and drainage system openings around the site, as well as the facilities of the various plants, sketching maps in my notebook. I find it strange that the waste disposal infrastructure under the site isn’t protected at all. Once I’m done with the fine-tuning of the final stage of my plan, I put an end to the trips up north and focus on getting into shape and preparing equipment for my escape in the event that they manage to track me down.

  December 22, 2016

  Rotem ended her conversation with Grandpa and replaced the receiver of the encrypted phone. She’d informed him that they’d come up with nothing new since learning about 10483’s hospitalization and subsequent escape, and that aside from his departure and return through Ben Gurion Airport he hadn’t been spotted anywhere else at all. Grandpa wanted her to try to get bumped up the priority list of the Shin Bet’s Eye in the Sky facility; but because the facility was focused solely on the terror attack in Jerusalem, with the prime minister dedicating all available resources to the matter, he didn’t think they’d get a time slot until the investigation was over.

  Avner’s gaze was still fixed on the screens in front of them. “I don’t even want to think about what Efrat is going through right now,” he said. He and Rotem were sitting in the multimedia room, with images of different faces flashing by on the screens before their eyes. Faces in front of bank ATMs, faces at train stations, faces at Interior Ministry offices, endless faces—and not a single hit from the facial-recognition software. “It’s been eighteen days since her abduction, and ten days without even the slightest piece of information concerning her whereabouts or fate.”

  “Or Amiram’s,” Rotem added. “He must be holding them somewhere. They’re his bargaining chips. As long as he has them he knows we can’t do all we’d like to. The Organization isn’t going to blow up his house even if we locate it tomorrow, because we know that they could be inside.”

  Rotem was lying.

  Avner knew she was lying.

  Nothing was going to stop the Organization from achieving an objective, and objective 10483 was firmly in its crosshairs.

  The door to the room opened and a curly head peered in.

  Rotem turned her chair toward the door and saw the face of the coordinator of the Domestic Recruitment Department. “Hi Maya,” she greeted her. “What’s up?”

  “You have to see this.”

  Maya stepped into the room and placed a printed sheet of paper on the desk. “Two days ago,” she said, “someone filled out an online application form on the Organization’s recruitment website, and in answer to the question: ‘Do you have any significant plans for the near future?’ he fed us this text that I’ve printed out here for you. In the section of the online form in which you can attach files like a resume, he uploaded two files. One an image file and the other a video. I’ve sent them to your mail, Avner. You have to see this.”

  Avner and Rotem leaned over the printed page on the desk.

  Greetings,

  A number of matters for your attention and response:

  1. Beginning at 08:00 (8 in the morning) on Sunday, the first of January, 2017, a powerful bomb will go off in Tel Aviv every 10 minutes. The blasts will continue until 15:20 (3:20 in the afternoon) of the same day.

  2. On Sunday, the first of January, 2017, at 15:30 (3:30 in the afternoon), a very powerful explosive device will be detonated in a public place in Tel Aviv.

  3. On Monday, the second of January, 2017, a strategic facility in Israel will be hit by an explosion. The damage it causes will far exceed the damage caused by all the explosive devices on the first of January (the day before).

  To prevent the aforesaid, you must take the following action:

  1. At 20:30 (8:30 in the evening) on Saturday, the thirty-first of December, 2016, all three of Israel’s major news channels (Channels 2, 10, and 1) must air the following message: “Gabriel Silverman (Serial Number 10483) was recruited into the service of his people and homeland and he served them well. Nevertheless, we tried to assassinate him following the completion of his duties. We apologize for the distress we have caused him and hope for his forgiveness.”

  2. The apology must be issued on air by one of the Organization’s senior officials (inner circle) who must be standing in a conference room at the Organization’s main base with the backdrop of an Israeli flag and the Organization’s official emblem.

  3. If you choose not to air the apology on the thirty-first of December and then change your minds later when the bombs start going off, you will be able to issue the apology and thereby suspend the blasts by means of a live radio broadcast. Since I won’t be in front of the TV on that day, you will have to broadcast the apology on the Reshet Bet radio station. In such an event, I will suspend the bombing campaign; but for the entire rest of the week, you will have to air the apology on all the eight o’clock evening news programs again, along with an apology to the residents of Tel Aviv for the distress they suffered as a result of your inability to meet my demands on time.

  Good luck!

  “Un-fucking-believable!” Avner exclaimed.

  “The first of January is just a week away,” Rotem said.

  “We have to notify the inner circle. I’m calling Grandpa again. Call Rafael and get him to come here. Can we check the IP address of the computer he used to fill out the form?”

  “Just a sec, let’s look at the files he attached. Open your mail for a moment.”

  Avner touched the space bar on the keyboard of his laptop. He ran his finger over the fingerprint reader and entered a key phrase to log into the Orion system. He looked for Maya’s email in his in-box folder and opened it. Attached to the email was a file named BARS AND ROSES.JPG. Avner opened it, and the image of Efrat and Amiram that appeared on the screen took his breath away. Both were standing in an iron cage in a basement somewhere, illuminated by a beam of light, and both were holding a single red rose in their right hand, their arms reaching through the bars of the cage. Their faces were expressionless. They looked pale. Both had lost weight. Hanging on the bars of the cage on either side of them were two white sheets that were pulled to the side like curtains.

  They’re alive. He hadn’t killed Efrat. He can still save her. There’s hope. The sense of relief that washed over Avner was soon replaced by a sense of dread. The clock was working against them. Avner tried to remain calm and focused, but he couldn’t. He jumped up from his chair. “Dirty motherfucker!” he exclaimed. “He’s got no intention of releasing them at all. He’s going to turn them into one of his grotesque works of art in that basement, too. We have to find him.”

  Rotem placed her hand over Maya’s. “Maya,” she said, “can you get someone from Information Security to come here right away? We’ll take a look at the video he sent meanwhile.”
r />   “No problem,” Maya said and left the room. Avner opened the attached video file. He and Rotem watched a recording from the basement that was blown up on Ibn Gvirol Street on December 4. The last few seconds of the video showed a caption that read:

  I have a camera in my new basement, too. If you don’t want another movie like the one you’ve just watched, you’d better carry out Instructions 1 and 2 that I outlined in response to the question: “Do you have any significant plans for the near future?” on your standard online application form.

  The video ended and Rotem and Avner sat there in silence for a while. They had both known members of the team killed in the blast and watching the scene unfold this time from an angle that offered a view from above of the entire room was a harrowing experience.

  Maya returned to the room accompanied by a burly young man with long hair in a ponytail. “Hi,” he said, “Alex from Information Security. What can I do for you?”

  “See what you can get from these files.”

  Alex started by examining the data of the image file. “It was taken with an iPhone with the Location Services option on. Let me see if he hasn’t erased the EXIF data.” After pressing several keys and clicking the mouse a few times, Alex opened a Notepad document and recorded the coordinates he found. He then opened a GIS application and entered the data. “Write down this address,” he said. “Thirty-one HaHarzit Street, Savyon. It’s at the end of the street. A stand-alone house. I’m checking the video file now.” He uploaded the file to the network’s share platform and ran it through various software programs. “No. It’s completely clean. There’s no data aside from the video itself.”

 

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