by Nir Hezroni
Grandpa retrieved his laptop from its case and opened it. Fingerprint, password, key phrase, and he opened the video file that showed the agents going into the basement and the events that followed. “Do you see what he did?” he said. “He kept two of our agents alive in that basement for months, hooked up to IVs so they’d die slowly and in agony. That was ten years ago. And he sent the notebook to us now knowing that we’d read it and send people to find the basement; and he sat somewhere with a remote control device and a camera and simply waited for us to go in so he could blow up the entire building on Ibn Gvirol with our people inside. That was twenty days ago. And then he sent us to Savyon to find a nonexistent basement in a house whose owner is currently living abroad so that he could blow us up again—and that, I’m afraid to say, is still only the beginning.”
“You caused him to do those things.”
“No. It’s him. He’s damaged. We exploited his fundamental character traits for our own needs, with the reinforcement of the transformations—and we got it wrong. He does more harm than good. Much more harm than good. He saved us in the past from a nuclear threat, but my concern is that this same threat will come back to haunt us through him, and he is far more efficient and dangerous that those we feared in the first place. The final transformation that you performed on him included an expiration date. We implanted a date on which he was supposed to commit suicide. Regrettably, it worked only partially. Ten years ago, he jumped in front of an oncoming bus, but he didn’t die. Apparently he’s a lot better at killing others than he is at killing himself. Unfortunately, an ambulance that was passing by rushed him to the ER at Ichilov Hospital and they managed to save him there. We learned all of this just recently. You have to understand something, he’s still the exact same person—even after the run-in with the speeding bus on Ibn Gvirol and nine years in a coma. It wasn’t you who turned him into what he is; I can assure you that his brain contains no remnants of the transformations you performed on him. We can’t take credit for who he is. And now he’s abducted Avner’s wife and Amiram, too. He’s sent us a letter outlining his plans to detonate various explosive devices in various locations around Tel Aviv if we don’t broadcast outrageous apologies through all the news media outlets. Here, read this.” Grandpa opened the application form on his laptop and passed it to Carmit. She took the laptop and read the document.
“And what’s he been doing for the past ten years? Why did he decide to take action now?”
“Like I said, he was unconscious for nine years. At Lowenstein Hospital. We weren’t looking for him all that time because he killed someone, placed the body in his house, and torched it along with the entire structure. We were sure he was dead. We thought back then that we’d seen the last of him. He needs to be taken out.”
“If you want my help, I’m going to need more details.”
“The three assignments he received—around the time of the transformations you performed on him—involved the assassination of three members of an Iranian cell that was in the process of purchasing a nuclear bomb from Kazakhstan. He killed all three and caused extensive collateral damage.”
“You can say that again,” Carmit interjected.
“… and I believe he managed to get his hands on the bomb.”
“What?”
“I think he managed to get one of his victims to give up the location of the bomb and has smuggled it into Israel. That’s the worst-case scenario, and we need to act accordingly and assume he’s going to detonate the bomb here.”
“He’s not going to detonate it here. That’s what he went to the United States for. And I don’t buy it.” Carmit and Grandpa turned their heads to look at the bed. Rotem had her eyes open and repeated her words: “I don’t buy it.”
“Don’t buy what?” Grandpa asked.
“That you performed the transformations on him just to assassinate three scientists. You had another agenda, too.”
Grandpa remained silent.
“And the bomb isn’t here,” Rotem added. “It’s in the United States.”
“What?”
“I’ve been thinking about this now while you’ve been talking,” Rotem continued. “He flew from Israel to Spain and returned from Frankfurt. I think somewhere along the way he collected the bomb and transported it to the United States to detonate it there. We’re looking at Europe but Europe isn’t the issue. We’re seeing only the beginning and end points of his trip.”
“But why the United States?”
“Because it will cause us more damage there than if he were to detonate it here or anywhere else. He’s disturbed but not stupid. If he detonates it here, the entire world will be behind us. It’ll result in a very large number of casualties in the short term; but in the long run, as crazy as it sounds, it will strengthen the State of Israel. If he detonates it in the United States and implicates us, it will spell the end of Israel. If Mommy and Daddy America get whacked with a nuclear bomb by their troublesome kid in the Middle East, they’ll send him to boarding school.”
“How the hell would he smuggle a nuclear bomb into the United States?”
“Leave it to him.”
The room fell silent. Grandpa stroked his beard and contemplated.
“We have to kill him,” Carmit said.
Rotem sat up in bed and stretched. “What happened to the other people who were with me when the bombs went off?” she asked. “Is Avner okay?”
“Aside from Avner, they were all killed. The two of you were standing slightly farther away from the center of the blasts. There were two devices.”
“Fuck. Rafael and his team, too?”
“Yes.”
“How’s Avner doing?”
“He’s out of commission. He’ll be here for a good few weeks still. Several nails had some fun with his liver, lungs, and one of his kidneys. His condition isn’t life threatening, but he has to remain hospitalized. Fortunately, you got off more lightly.”
Rotem closed her eyes and went quiet for a moment. “Okay, bring me some clothes. I need to get out of here,” she said.
Grandpa pointed at a bag next to her bed.
Rotem pulled off the strip of surgical tape that was holding the IV needle in place. She pulled the needle out, took a ball of cotton from a plastic drawer next to the bed, and stuck it to the puncture mark with a fresh strip of surgical tape. She turned her back to Grandpa and Carmit and removed the hospital gown she was wearing. “Did he ruin my fairy?” she asked.
“I’m going to have to say yes,” Carmit responded, looking at Rotem’s back. The fairy tattoo was dotted with shrapnel scars and small sutured cuts.
“He has to be killed. What about the Eyes in the Sky? Are they working on it for us?”
“Yes. We’re top priority now.”
“Did you say that two men showed up at your hotel?” Rotem remembered to ask Carmit.
“Yes. At some time after three in the morning. Not very nice guys.”
“They weren’t ours,” Grandpa took the trouble to mention again.
“Someone else is looking for the bomb, too,” Rotem said before jumping to her feet, throwing off her hospital gown, and putting on the clothes that were in the bag next to the bed. “I wonder how they found you. Does anyone else know you’re here?”
“Just one other person, who I trust a thousand percent.”
“Yet they knew about you and knew that you’re here in Israel, and maybe they want to get to the bomb through you. You may be under surveillance right now. They believe you’re connected to 10483.”
“Why?”
“Wherever he’s gone, you’ve gone, too; it’s pretty simple,” Rotem said with a smile as she paced around the room. She thought for a moment and then added: “I assume the guys who showed up at your hotel weren’t carrying IDs of any kind. Did you speak to them? Did you pick up on an accent perhaps?”
“They didn’t get any time to talk,” Carmit said, closing the laptop and returning it to Grandpa.
Gran
dpa stood and placed his hand on Carmit’s shoulder. “Thank you for what you did there in Savyon,” he said. “We found your fingerprints on the laptop charger you left there.”
“What did she do in Savyon?” Rotem asked and looked at Grandpa.
“She applied tourniquets to you and Avner after the blast. One could say you’re both still here now thanks to her.”
Rotem skipped toward Carmit and hugged her.
10/22/2016–45 weeks and 1 day since waking
I’m standing outside the dental clinic in Yehud. There’s no security here on the weekend and I open the back window of one of the offices on the ground floor and jump in. I close the window behind me. I go to the lobby and disable the alarm, and then into the employees’ kitchenette to pour myself some water in a plastic cup. I wait for the alarm company to send someone to check on the building from the outside and examine my beard in the mirror in the meantime. I’ve been growing it now for several months. The alarm company’s security guard doesn’t see me in the kitchenette. After he leaves, I find a mask that’s used to administer laughing gas and a canister of the substance. The gas, a combination of nitrous oxide and oxygen, sedates the patient and ups his pain threshold. Nitrous oxide is also used as rocket fuel or in motor racing. Since it’s richer in oxygen than regular air, the injection of nitrous oxide into an engine means that more oxygen is available during combustion. And because you have more oxygen, you can also inject more fuel, allowing the engine to produce more power.
I connect the mask to the canister, lie down in the dental chair, look at the time on my iPhone, and inhale deeply with the mask over my mouth. 5 minutes later I wake up in the chair feeling somewhat dizzy. I put the tank and canister in my backpack and leave the building through the same window I used earlier.
I go to Tel Hashomer Hospital and wander around the wards until I find a deserted dressing room in the Internal Medicine Department. I go in and put on a set of green scrubs. I wander around the various departments and go into the ER. It’s very crowded, with dozens of people waiting for emergency care, and it’s easy for me to walk into the nurses’ room and search the drug cabinet for something marked Propofol or Diprivan. I find the Diprivan and take 3 vials, along with several sterile syringes that I get from the equipment cabinet.
I go the bathroom in the ER and take off the orderly scrubs and dress in my own clothes again. I put the scrubs in my backpack. I may need them again in the future. I drive back home and begin working on my carpet van. I park the van just outside the front door and unload all the equipment I’ve bought from various stores and suppliers.
1. Steel plates
2. Blowtorch, electrodes, and a protective eye mask
3. Electrical cable and 12V lightbulbs
4. Power drill and screws
5. Transparent epoxy adhesive
6. Plate of armored glass
7. Metal rings
8. Wooden cabinets
9. Tubs of epoxy coating for parking garages
I remove the wheels of the vehicle one by one. Each time, I raise one wheel off the ground with the jack, remove it, and then lower the vehicle again onto a log I’ve cut to the appropriate height. 10 minutes later the van is perched on the logs, with the 4 wheels off to the side. I deflate the tires, lay them flat on the ground, and drill a 2-centimeter wide hole in each of them. Using a funnel I fill the tires with the epoxy coating for the floors of parking garages and allow the material to dry and harden. When it solidifies, it will make the tires puncture-proof. The ride will be bumpier because the shock absorbers won’t be as effective, but I don’t drive fast.
I open the back doors of the van and weld the steel plates to the sides of the vehicle. The plates block the windows, which I’ve already covered with pieces of black cardboard. I use rope and pulley wheels to lift and position the steel plates. It reminds me of the work I did in Bolivia. I weld steel plates to the inside of the vehicle’s front doors, too, up to the height of the windows. I use the clear epoxy adhesive to stick the plate of armored glass to the inside of the van’s windshield. The plate of glass doesn’t cover the entire windshield and there are small gaps on the sides, but it will do. 90 percent of the windshield is protected. I apply 2 squares of armored glass on the inside of the front windows in the same manner. The armored windows are thicker now and I won’t be able to open them, but that’s okay. I apply a layer of the epoxy adhesive to secure the armored glass to the window frames around them so that the armored plates aren’t dependent solely on the regular glass and don’t fall when it shatters.
I weld steel plates to the back of the driver’s seat and on the inside of the 2 doors of the vehicle’s cargo bay. I fix narrow wooden cabinets to the steel plates now covering the sides of the cargo bay and fill the drawers with the equipment I need to move ahead with my plan. I make sure that everything fits and locks in place before removing the equipment again and returning it to the house.
I install a series of bright lights along the roof of the cargo bay and connect them to the van’s battery, with a manual ON/OFF switch. I weld 4 metal rings to the floor of the cargo bay. 2 at the back and 2 in the front. When I’m done, I cover the floor again with old carpets.
10/29/2016–46 weeks and 1 day since waking
After leaving the wheels to dry and harden for a few days, I put them back on and go for a test drive in my carpet van. It responds more sluggishly than usual because of the heavy armor plating and full tires, but the overall ride is satisfactory.
I return to the basement and install an infrared camera that’s directed at the cage and can be accessed via the Internet, with a password, so that at any given moment I can use my iPhone to view what’s happening in the cage. Connecting the camera to the wireless network I’ve set up in the basement is simple and takes no time at all. It was a lot harder 10 years ago to set up a video camera on a wireless network.
At a sex store in Tel Aviv I buy 4 pairs of metal handcuffs like those used by the police. Their packaging says that the handcuffs come with 2 keys each and are not toys. They can be opened with a key only and are recommended for people who want to experience an authentic sense of helplessness. The shop assistant also offers me scented massage oil and a set of black leather bondage straps. I pass and buy the handcuffs only.
I’m warmly welcomed when I return to the tools and building supplies store. I’m a regular customer by now and the sales assistant behind the till calls out: “Hi, Roman. What’s up?” I tell her I’ve secured a contract to renovate a villa in Herzliya and pay in cash for a 50-meter length of galvanized 10-millimeter-thick steel cable. The cable has a maximum weight-bearing capacity of 6.8 tons and will fit my purposes. The consultant at the store asks me how my work is going for the customer who requested an armor-plated room with bulletproof windows. I tell him that I’ve completed the work and that the customer is very satisfied. “I won’t be doing another project like that for him,” I say. “Those steel plates weigh a ton and the guy intimidated me a little. Seemed to be a mobster of sorts.”
I go back to the military supplies store and buy a particularly durable backpack I’ll use to carry the steel cable after I measure out the precise length I need and cut it accordingly.
I buy blue overalls and a pair of brown pants and a matching brown shirt similar to those worn by UPS workers. I take the items to a fabric print shop and have the same MASHANI—CARPET CLEANERS logo that I have on the van printed onto the overalls, and the UPS logo printed onto the brown uniform. The saleswoman is curious and asks me what I need the clothes for, and I tell her that my wife and I have been invited to a costume party on Friday night. I’ll be there in the overalls with a small rug in my hand, and my wife will be wearing the UPS uniform and carrying a small parcel. The saleswoman thinks it would be great idea to add 2 peaked caps to the costumes. I agree and purchase 2—1 brown and 1 blue.
When I get home, I fold t
he UPS uniform and place it on a shelf in the closet. On top of the pile of clothes I place a parcel comprising a shoebox half-filled with earth and wrapped in brown paper, a writing pad, a pen, and sheets of paper with the UPS logo and places to sign that I’ve printed out. I fold the blue overalls and place them on a different shelf.
December 24, 2016
At 11:45 at night the shift at the AngelFire facility changed. The team that had spent the past two and half weeks analyzing the terror attack in Jerusalem had wrapped up its work, and the two operators on the Core shift, joined specially for this latest task by eight Shin Bet investigators, finished uploading the data to the systems and distributing it among the relevant parties—the terrorists’ point of origin, the identities of the people they were seen within the months leading up to the attack, who crossed the border from Jordan to make contact with them. Everything had been figured out and documented, and the squads in the field would get to work that night—the Duvdevan elite special-ops forces, undercover counterterrorism units, SWAT teams, and the Border Police.
Meital and Dafna stepped in to replace the exhausted team that vacated the facility. They liked working together and always tried to arrange joint shifts. The girls that had been there before them looked so spent that Dafna opted not to say anything about the state in which they had left the facility. Pizza boxes and empty soda cans were scattered all over the place, empty water bottles, photocopies of maps, candy wrappers, and half-empty bags of snack food.
“What a bloody mess!” Meital remarked after the departing shift had left. “Let’s tidy up this dump a little.”
They took a roll of large garbage bags from the kitchenette cupboard, filled four of them with trash, and left them in the kitchenette. The cleaner would take them out in the morning with the rest of the trash.
They both enjoyed the night shift. Fewer uninvited guests and bothersome phone calls, and they could focus on their work. The project this time was an interesting one. They’d asked the girls who were there before them to load the cache with the locations they needed to work on, and everything was ready for them to start when the communications system came to life.