Last Instructions_A Thriller_Agent 10483
Page 29
* * *
The elevator stopped suddenly on the thirty-seventh floor, dropped a few centimeters and came to a rest with a bang, the emergency brakes locking onto the steel tracks of the elevator shaft. The lights went out. Carmit turned on the flashlight on her cell phone and shone it around the elevator. She pressed several buttons without getting any response and then placed her phone on the floor to shine the flashlight’s beam onto the elevator’s ceiling. She jumped up and grabbed a piece of the ceiling’s decorative covering, pulling it down along with a bundle of electrical wires connected to spotlights and fans. Fitted into the exposed ceiling of the elevator was an emergency escape hatch with two metal handles on either side of it. Carmit gripped and hung onto them with both hands, raised her legs, and pushed her feet up against the escape hatch, which opened outward and fell with a bang onto the roof of the elevator. She let go of the handles and dropped to the floor of the elevator to pick up her phone, which she then gripped between her teeth. Hands gripping the metal handles again, with a backward roll, she was on the roof of the elevator, grateful to herself for the long runs in Hyde Park that had kept her in shape. She looked over the elevator shaft. The door to the thirty-eighth floor was about a meter above her and she climbed up to it and looked for the safety mechanism that allow the outer doors to open. After groping around for two minutes or so, she found the small metal lever that released the door’s locking mechanism when pressed. She opened the outer metal doors of the floor.
* * *
He left the elevator room and walked over to the edge of the roof of the circular tower. The range of his model aircraft controller from here covered all the trashcans he’d yet to detonate, as well as the explosive device buried in Rabin Square. The undulating tone of the air-raid siren rang out all around him. He took the model aircraft controller out of the pouch in his suit and activated it.
A series of blasts could be heard from below, and clouds of black smoke rose from locations where there were still unexploded trashcans. The biggest black cloud, accompanied by a large fireball, rose from Rabin Square to the northwest, and he watched as the fireball ascended and turned into a column of black smoke. He threw the controller aside and checked his phone battery—87 percent. He then walked back toward the entrance to the roof and slowly climbed up the steel ladder leading to the roof of the elevator room.
* * *
Carmit turned off the flashlight on her phone and put it back into her pocket. She went to the stairs and climbed up until she reached the door onto the roof. A series of explosions from the streets below echoed through the stairwell. The door was open, its locking mechanism riddled with bullets. She walked out quietly and looked around.
The roof in front of her appeared deserted and she emerged from the stairwell and stood still momentarily under Tel Aviv’s cloudy skies. Then she took a few steps forward, looking around in all directions. A noise from above caused her to spring quickly to the side, and 10483, who’d tried to jump on top of her with all the weight of his protective suit, missed her by just a few inches. She swiveled quickly, jumped back, and stood facing him.
“I know you,” he said.
“That’s right.”
“You’re Kelly Grasso. I met you at a hotel in Montreal. You work at…”
“Cymedix,” Carmit completed the sentence.
“You’re an Organization employee.”
“Not exactly. A subcontractor. I mean, I was. I no longer work for them. I quit.” Carmit glanced sideways and focused for a second on the open door of the elevator room. Someone would probably be coming up the stairs soon. Her face remained fixed on 10483.
“You were following me back then in Montreal,” he said. “I remember sitting across from you at the hotel restaurant. I remember your face.”
“Yes. I was also around when you carried out the other two assassinations. I messed with your brain.”
“What do you mean?” 10483 pressed the magazine release button on the Micro-Uzi, allowing the empty clip to drop to the floor with a clang. He felt for another magazine in the pockets of the vest of his protective suit. He was out. He’d gone through all of them. He released the firing pin with the barrel pointed at Carmit and nothing happened. The Micro-Uzi’s chamber was empty. He tossed the submachine gun aside. His movements were slow. He wasn’t rushed.
“I was sent by the Organization to the same three locations where you were at the time to do your work on those three scientists. Your three objectives. On each occasion, I disabled you during the night and in essence reprogrammed your brain. Similar to hypnosis but significantly more powerful and precise. It’s known as a transformation.”
“I should have suspected that something was awry. I thought the headaches I was waking up with were the result of jetlag. What did they do it for? Why did they hypnotize me?” He didn’t take his eyes off her and slowly drew Amiram’s pistol from the pouch it was in. The pistol’s breech was pulled back and ready to slide into place at the press of a button and feed a round into the chamber the moment a new magazine was inserted. He didn’t have another magazine for the gun. He released the catch holding the breech and it slid forward with the sound of a pistol being loaded. He raised the weapon slowly, aiming the barrel at Carmit’s face, and squeezed the trigger.
—Click—
Carmit didn’t flinch. She’d seen that the breech was pulled back with the magazine still inside, and she knew it was empty. 10483 threw the pistol aside.
“I don’t know. I don’t know what was in the encrypted transformation files they sent me, except for the final one.” Carmit’s right hand moved to her waist to draw one of her knives.
“What was in the last file?” 10483 reached into one of the pouches in his suit and pulled out a commando knife with a serrated blade.
“You were programmed to commit suicide on December twelfth, 2006.” Carmit took a few small steps backward. He moved toward her. His movements appeared cumbersome.
“You know you don’t stand a chance, right?” he said. “Your knife won’t get through my protective suit.”
“I know,” Carmit replied, her steps taking her close to the edge of the roof.
He continued to move toward her. “It almost worked. I jumped in front of an oncoming bus that day.”
“I know.”
“I’m their best agent and they sent you to mess with my mind. Bunch of assholes. I arranged a nice end-of-the-year party for them and they had to go ahead and ruin that, too, with all those people they sent to my house today. Would it have hurt them to wait a while and apologize? A simple apology from them and I would have stopped everything.” With the knife still in his right hand, he slipped his left into one of the pouches of his armored suit and took out his cell phone. “And now I have to bring forward my plans involving another device because of them, too. It was designed for next year but I’m changing my plans now.”
“What plans?”
“I’m going to blow up the CIA headquarters now. I planned originally to send letters to the CIA, the White House, and the FBI, but we’ll make do with the message I sent a few minutes ago to The New York Times while riding the elevator up to the roof. Their email address is: letters@nytimes.com. By the way, it’s funny to give an email account such an archaic name.”
“What letters? What message?” The knife was still in her right hand, her eyes focused on his.
“Letters with explicit and confidential details about all my activities abroad. They won’t really be of much interest to the Americans because nothing took place on their soil, and their policy in recent years has been: ‘Events outside our borders is of no concern to us.’ But blowing up the CIA’s headquarters and everything else in the vicinity will definitely be of concern to them. I’ve also sent The New York Times precise details about the nuclear warhead I’m about to detonate.” He unlocked his iPhone. “The letters I’d planned to send are in a drawer in the kitchen of my house, the one you mounted an assault on today. Your friends from the Orga
nization will be able to read the full text later. You won’t.”
“You don’t have to do this. What about the lives of everyone living around there? You’ve hurt enough people already. You’ve proved your point. You don’t need to be remembered as the man who blew up Washington.”
“When you chop down trees, splinters fly. The Organization must cease to exist and there’s no other way of achieving this objective. I won’t be leaving this roof alive. I know that. I’m not a fool. Blowing up CIA headquarters will be my final act. But soon I will undoubtedly become the most famous intelligence agent in history. I attached an image to the email to make it easier for them to publish the story.”
“They’re not on my list of favorites either. The Organization. And I’m not proud of what I did to you. I’m sorry. But let’s go downstairs. They won’t kill you if you turn yourself in.”
10483 smiled. Once. He never smiled. “What’s your name?” he asked. “What’s your real name?”
“Carmit.”
“We’re alike, Carmit. I live your life and you live mine. The Montreal hotel isn’t the only place I’ve seen you. I’ve met you on many occasions. You must have run into me, too. Under different circumstances, we could be together. Too bad it’s never going to happen. We’re sitting together on the beach and a tsunami is approaching.”
Carmit looked at him intently. “No. It isn’t going to happen,” she responded. How does he know about my dream? Could the transformations have connected them in such a way? Her thoughts were interrupted as he continued to speak.
“Look, Carmit, Kelly Grasso, or whatever your name is. We’re both going to draw our last breaths on this roof. I’m going to kill you and all those security forces racing up the forty-nine flights of stairs to the roof right now are going to kill me. It’s okay. I’m ready to go. But McLean has to go, too. It’s an essential part of the plan.”
“How does McLean fit in to your plan?” She tightened the fingers of her right hand around the handle of the knife.
“The mail I sent ties the Organization to the blast. The Americans will put two and two together and the rest will follow. The Organization will cease to exist.”
He walked quickly toward her. She jumped aside and with a swift movement of her right hand thrust the knife into the seam on the right-hand side of his protective suit in the area of his neck. The blade of the knife broke and she jumped backward. He continued moving rapidly toward her. She pulled her second knife out of the left side of her belt and threw it at his face. He ducked his head forward quickly and the point of the blade struck his helmet and bounced off to the side. He kept moving toward her, removing his helmet and wiping the sweat from his forehead and eyes. He was on her, his fist gripping the knife and bringing it down toward her chest. She swiveled quickly, kicking out and sending the knife flying from his hand. He managed to get to her again and close both his hands around her throat, his face almost touching hers, his breathing heavy from the effort. Carmit felt the air in her lungs running out. She tilted her head back as far as she could and then slammed it forward into his forehead with all her might.
A bright flash of light.
The rays of the setting sun struck the two huge silvery rectangular sails of the Ocean Ranger, painting them in arcs of shimmering purple-orange light. She swayed slightly on the thin transparent strand of energy, eager by now to set out on her way, trying to oppose the magnetic field holding her in place. The gangplanks to the Ocean Ranger have been folded back already and the cargo is in her hold.
Fog.
You’re six years old. Focused on coloring in a page. Your lips are firmly pressed together and the tip of your tongue is peeking out between them. You’re doing your best to stay inside the lines and I walk past and move your hand. A red line of crayon crosses your page. You lift your head and look at me. You aren’t angry.
Fog.
You’re a soldier, standing at the hitchhiking station at the Golani Junction, and I stop to give you a ride. I ask you where you need to go and you look at me and smile. You tell me that you don’t care where I drop you off as long as we’re heading south. Your hair is in a short ponytail held by a black rubber band and you untie it and run both your hands through your hair in a single motion from your forehead to the back of your neck.
Fog.
We’re both sixteen. We’re swinging on the sofa swing on the porch outside your parents’ house. It’s just the two of us. The air is filled with the fragrance of jasmine. It’s summer. Coming from inside the house is a soft jazz number by Jeannie McCreedy. There’s no one in the house. I run my hand through your hair and the smell of conditioner blends with the fragrance of jasmine in the air. We kiss.
Fog.
We’re lying in my bed. I slowly run my finger from the back of your neck down to your tailbone and feel you tremble. You turn to me and caress me. You say: “What makes us who we are, our lives, is our sequence of memories. What would happen if that was taken away from us? What would remain?”
Fog.
We’re walking together along the cold hot sand ice river and looking at the changing landscape in every direction. The bare trees around us fill with green leaves that turn yellow-red and fall to the ground, grow anew, and fall again. The cold hot air is full of leaves swirling in the freezing scorching wind. You you tell tell me that we can stay here forever.
Fog.
The Ocean Ranger breaks away from the field and begins to move away. From pier 52, her thousands of windows look like small shimmering dots, but I see you even without seeing you. I know you’re standing at the window in one of the cabins and looking out right now.
I know your hands are pressed against it, creating a ring of condensation around your fingers on the cold glass. I know you take your hands off the window and watch the picture of the outline of your hands slowly disappear from the glass.
I know I will never see you again.
I know I will never see you again.
Never.
A bright flash of light.
Both of them were out cold for a minute, lying alongside one another on the roof. They opened their eyes at the exact same second. 10483 looked around him and turned toward the knife that was lying on the floor next to him, gripped it, and swung it at Carmit’s face. She turned her head quickly to the left. The knife cut her above her right ear and the tip of the blade hit the floor. She sprung to her feet, taking advantage of the fact that he was a lot less agile than she was in his heavy armored suit. She ran a few steps toward the knife that was lying on the roof a few meters from them, and the second she bent down to pick up the knife something hit her in the head and knocked her back to the ground. She tried to get up but couldn’t. Her head was spinning and some high-pitched feedback was in her ears and mixed with the sound of the air-raid siren that continued to wail through the air. She remained on all fours, staring with blurry eyes at the small pool of blood forming on the surface of the roof below her from the drops trickling from the cut his knife had left in her head.
10483 looked at his foe swaying on all fours and bleeding. Good that he saw the empty Micro-Uzi on the surface of the roof next to him when she ran for her knife. He picked it up, threw it at her as hard as he could, and struck her in the head. “A gun without bullets can also be useful sometimes,” he said to himself out loud and smiled. The rifle knocked her off her feet but didn’t kill her. He’d finish dealing with her before every Tom, Dick, and Harry got to the roof and killed him, too, but first there was something important he needed to do to continue his plan. He turned his back to the center of the roof and looked out, standing about two meters from the edge and observing the clouds of smoke rising from the scenes of the blasts down below. He took the iPhone out its pouch, unlocked and opened his shortcuts page. He immediately pressed the MCLEAN BLAST link, verified that the action was completed, and after seeing a green circle marked ACTIVATED appear on the screen, he allowed the telephone to drop from his hand onto the surface of the roof.
10483 spread his arms out to the side, looking for a short while at the reality he had created in the city below his feet and thinking about the reality he had just created in faraway Washington. He started to laugh when the song, “The Final Countdown,” popped into his head. It’s a shame he hadn’t thought about it before activating the warhead; he could have detonated the device just as the chorus started. Okay, enough horsing around, there’s one last thing he still needs to do while he has the time. And that’s to kill the nuisance swaying behind him and bleeding onto the roof. He turned to face the center of the circular roof again and was immediately confronted by Carmit’s face and a powerful kick from her leg that knocked him backward toward the edge of the top of the tower. Had he not been dressed in the heavy protective suit, he may have been able to avoid the kick. He stumbled backward, trying to maintain his balance.
“Die already!” Carmit yelled.
The knife she threw this time struck him in the neck, right above the collar of the bulletproof vest. He grabbed the handle of the knife in both hands, stumbled backward, and fell off the roof of the building, from the dizzy height of the forty-ninth floor. The circular Azrieli Tower is 187 meters high. That means the fall would take 6.832 seconds. He’d hit the ground at a speed of 164kph. 10483 released his grip on the knife handle and spread his arms out to the sides again, his eyes still looking up at the cloudy sky above him and watching the floors of the building flash past at an ever-increasing rate, until the building and the world disappear and he’s enveloped in blackness. Carmit approached the edge of the roof and looked down. From the height of the forty-nine floors she could see him sprawled on the floor of the plaza outside the building, far below her, motionless.