by Rose Fox
ROSE FOX
*ABIGAIL – Spy or Die
Second Book in a Series
Translated by Judith Yacov
Rose Fox
ABIGAIL – Spy or die
All rights reserved to the author of the book.
The plots in this story, the characters, and their names were created by the author and are exclusively the fruit of her imagination. Any connection between the characters or names to those of people, alive or no longer alive is purely coincidental.
Excerpts from this book may not be reproduced, copied, photocopied, recorded, translated, stored in a database or distributed in any way or by any means: electronic, optical or mechanical, in current use or to be invented in the future.
No commercial use of any kind may be made of material included in this book or sections or parts thereof, without the express permission of the author and publisher.
Dedicated with love,
To my husband, Eitan
P r o l o g u e
The stone in the ring
A l i a s
A i s h a
Double Agent
The First Glitch
Karma Öcalan
Cover Story
Attempted Assassination
Tourist Guide
Diversion
Village without a Name
The Trap
SECRET OPERATIONS
Plans
More Trap
Family Entanglement
R e v e n g e
Effendi Khaidar
T i m m y
Lethal Blow
Execution
Heavy Water
P r o l o g u e
The man kept to the shadows and was sheltered by the moving leaves reflected in the office window panes. He had purchased the M16 rifle he held the day before in an alley near the Beer Sheba Central Bus Station from a young fellow, who had whispered to him hoarsely:
“I swear by the Prophet of Allah that this rifle once belonged to a Colombian drug lord,”
They concluded the deal quickly. He received the firearm in exchange for five banknotes he peeled from a large roll and then disappeared.
At midnight, that night, he received two pictures of the target for elimination. She was a woman.
He studied the pictures and committed the details of her image to memory. In one picture, her fair hair was tied in a topknot and, in the other - hung loosely at the nape of her neck and fell to her shoulders. He raised an eyebrow quizzically, surprised by her eyes, because they were almost colorless, with thin green filaments surrounding the irises. He gave no thought to the details of the image in terms of beauty but merely for the purposes of identification.
He was accustomed to assassinating people with complete professionalism and had never failed.
For this assignment, he leased a basement in Tel-Aviv for five nights. The place reeked of mildew and he would come out of it to follow her. He found her office with ease and in a matter of three consecutive days, realized that she remained there alone in the evenings. On the day of the assassination, he took a cab and tailed her, driving her car, all the way to her home on Gordon St. in Tel Aviv where she went to the second floor. He debated whether to kill her in her home or at her office. After a brief pause, he decided to avoid conflict or a chance encounter with neighbors or tenants and carry out the hit on her in her room when she was alone.
On the fourth day, at dusk, he loaded the magazine of the rifle with twenty rounds. He attached a silencer to the barrel and pushed it into a special pocket sewn into the lining of his worn out coat. The cold of the barrel permeated his shirt and made him shiver but also made him feel secure.
At first, he opened the basement door a crack and peered into the street then immediately closed it again. Then he counted to five, extending one finger after the other as he counted and when he had spread out all his fingers, he opened the door wide and went out on the street without locking it. He walked nonchalantly and calmly to her office, which was only a four-minute walk from the basement. The building was dark, and the offices were closed. He climbed the stairs to the third floor, avoiding the elevator. He always did this so as not to encounter people, who might recognize him. When he reached the third floor, he faced two enormous glass doors with a sign.
Attorneys at Law
Abigail & Adam
He reached the door with two large strides and busied himself with a slim knife and a flat rubber band to force open the lock. Suddenly a loud knock was distinctly heard in the quiet of the office building as the doors opened. He hurried inside and hid in the shadows of the leaves outside that the window panes reflected and listened, feeling tense, as he awaited a possible response.
Pamela also heard the knock; the fair- haired secretary had stayed late on her own at the office to finish an urgent job. Pamela was an Arab, who lived in Jaffa and like Abigail, she laughed at the resemblance between them; the very resemblance that amused them then was the stroke of fate that would end Pamela’s life.
She raised her head and stopped typing, strained her ear to listen, but all was quiet again. She shrugged her shoulders and continued typing as she decided to ignore the disturbance.
The man moved forward quietly to the entrance to her room and glanced at the figure sitting in front of the computer. Her fair hair hung loosely down her back, and it was sufficient for him to decide that it was the woman from the picture he had received.
When he was satisfied, the man pulled the rifle out of his coat and almost without aiming, pressed the trigger. The silencer clicked as the bullet was released from the gun. It hit the woman’s fair head, and she sank forward on the table before her as the soft groan of her last breath escaped her. He came closer and fired another shot at her temple to be sure she was dead. He pulled the photograph out of his pocket to verify her identity and silently left the office.
The assassin ran down the three flights of stairs with springy catlike steps. He walked out onto the sidewalk, breathed deeply to restore his calm and slowed his steps as he tried to keep an even pace, without hurrying until he reached his room.
Within ten minutes, he gathered his sparse belongings into a fabric bag, checked he hadn’t forgotten anything, then left the place and disappeared into the darkness.
He emptied the musty basement had of any items that could provide a clue to his identity. It was vacant and ready for the next tenant at least a day before the period he had paid for was up.
*
The stone in the ring
The report of the elimination of the ‘Mossad’ agent, Abigail Ben Nun, spread like wildfire between the intelligence services and echoed in the international media.
They celebrated her murder in Iran, where she had been held as a hostage and whose clutches she had escaped at the very last moment. In the Iranian parliament, the “Majles”, celebratory speeches were made calling her assassination “Allah’s revenge on our enemies.”
The English language “Jerusalem Post” reported the story in detail under the headline:
“Mossad Agent, Abigail Ben-Nun, who succeeded in bluffing Her captors – has finally been killed.”
The American “New York Times” described the event from a different point of view:
“The assassin appears without baggage, documents or means of communication, Carries out ‘the hit’ within 72 hours and disappears.
But… if he gets caught or fails, they will annihilate him or he will commit suicide.”
Abigail learned that someone had killed Pamela, her secretary, the same evening.
That night, the two ‘Mossad’ agents, Barak, and San, received the newspaper headlines and called her to meet with them. At the meeting, she glanced at the media Internet websites and a sh
iver ran down her spine and she said:
“That monstrous headline praises a despicable assassin and a wretched murderer.”
“Not necessarily,” Barak responded. “Everything written about him here is entirely accurate. I think it’s a wholly realistic representation,” but when he saw the way she glanced at him, he added:
“Don’t you agree with me that praise is due to someone who works efficiently? Well, he managed to track you down and from their point of view the performance was precise, excellent and even brilliant.”
His remarks angered Abigail. She stood up and exclaimed in disgust:
“Firstly, praise is due to a positive person of worth. This praise disregards the fact that he is a psychopath and a vile murderer. Secondly, you’re ignoring the fact that this man made a mistake in identifying his victim and assassinated Pamela instead of me.”
She moved towards the door and spat out angrily:
“I’m still alive and I intend ending my association with you and the whole organization right now.”
“That’s interesting, Agent Abigail. Now tell us, my lovely lady, where, precisely, do you intend going?”
Abigail paused with her back to them and loudly drew in her breath. All at once it was clear that if she wanted to continue living, she could no longer reveal herself to the world as – Abigail. She heard Barak pronounce the words that she already knew and understood:
“Everyone knows that you were eliminated last night so, whether you agree or not, the fact is you no longer exist.”
Abigail pursed her lips in fury, turned to them and sat down helplessly on her chair. She bowed her head in surrender, acknowledging the facts and the truth of his remarks.
Now, she glanced at San, the agent who was usually scarce with words. This time he behaved differently, throwing down the computer printouts as he exclaimed:
“See how they are all celebrating your demise.”
She glanced at the headline of the Iranian newspaper, ‘Inshallah’, on the computer printout and he said:
“You can read Arabic and Farsi, so here, read this.” She looked at the printout and read in Farsi:
“Justice has been done –
The fugitive spy has been eliminated.”
“Very nice indeed, really excellent,” she said. “If you ask me, it would be worth making a public appearance just so the people, who sent this murderer, discover they failed and murdered someone else instead of me.”
“Really? That’s interesting; what do you think you will achieve by doing that?” Barak inquired.
“As they say, he will be eliminated or commit suicide.” She replied and stuck out her chin defiantly.
“What a pity, Abigail. If you say that, then you haven’t learned a thing.” San remarked.
Barak asked her gently:
“I need to understand. Do you believe that if they eliminate that murderer, their pursuit of you will end?”
She took a deep breath, knowing that from now on she would never be able to appear in public in her present identity. She noticed Barak, looking at his wristwatch and heard him announce.
“In a quarter of an hour, some professionals will arrive. They will make you over and create a woman with a totally new and different image.” Abigail shuddered.
A sharp current quickly flowed through her ring finger, and she glanced at the stone in her ring. It grew darker in color, and she knew that the stone was reflecting her aroused emotions. Barak also glanced at the ring and then at her face because he was familiar with the attributes of the jewel she wore on her finger.
It was a very unusual stone.
She received it two days after returning from her imprisonment in Iran, exhausted and wounded in body and soul.
An Iranian Terrorist Organization had captured Abigail while on a mission to Russia and held her prisoner in a cave for years. When they were moving her to Lebanon, she succeeded in escaping from the vehicle in a daring Israeli military operation.
She spent the first day back home sleeping feverishly and neither ate nor drank. She just trembled, alternately waking and sleeping. The following day, she sat on the light-colored mat in the large, dark women’s tent of her mother, Leila. It was the canvas home where Abigail was born and had spent the first six years of her life. Here, her mother had named her Naima, and she delighted in hearing that name again from the members of her family. From the moment she returned many guests, with leaders of the nation among them, crowded the Bedouin encampment of the ‘Ka’abiah’ tribe.
Her mother, Leila, sat in the large tent, still overwrought with emotion.
“Naima,” Leila wept as she slipped a ring off her finger. “Take it, it’s for you. When you were born, your father gave it to me but, from today, it belongs to you.”
She sniffed and wiped her flushed face with her sleeve.
“See how the color is changing right now,” she exclaimed.
“No mother, father is no longer with us and I don’t feel I should accept it.” Then, she caught on to her mother’s last remark:
“What was that you said? About noticing how its color is changing now.”
“That’s right. Usually, it is the color of your eyes, very pale green.”
“Usually?”
“Yes, the stone in this ring has a unique feature. The color darkens to bottle green, almost black.”
“Really?!” Abigail laughed and stretched out her hand curiously, but her mother moved it away from her and said:
“Look at it, what color is it now?” and again she slowly brought the ring closer to Abigail, and asked:
“Now?”
“Mother, there is no change. What are you saying? Wait, here it’s getting a little darker, and now it’s losing color and… what’s happening here?”
Her mother sighed deeply, and her eyes narrowed as she smiled. She threw her white scarf over her head, wound it round her neck, let it drape over her left shoulder, and then straightened her back.
“Your father would roam in the desert with his herds looking for grassy pasture.” She stared into space and continued speaking.
“Two days after your birth he set out with the sheep and reached the deserted copper mines near Timna. He told me that there, among the stones and excavations; he noticed the gleam that flashed from the sun shining on the green veins of copper that ran through the shattered rocks. There, on a protruding ledge, a sliver of light green stone sparkled. Once he reached it, its pale green hue grew darker.”
Abigail laughed.
“Mother, that’s just a story, right? It’s not true, is it?” She stared at the stone. At that moment, it was colorless and almost transparent, and she knew it was almost like her eyes. Her mother, Leila, rolled the ring in her fingers and continued speaking, apparently not hearing Abigail’s remarks.
“Since it happened so close to your birth, your father decided that the stone’s similarity to the color of your eyes was significant. At any rate, he decided that it was a gift from heaven for the infant who was so entirely different from our other children.”
Silent and pensive, Abigail took the ring in the palm of her hand as she watched how the green deepened in it. She rolled it onto the mat, and the pale green color took over once more. Then, as if playing a game, she brought her hand close to the ring and pulled it away again, enjoying the changes in the shades of green from dark to pale. Leila continued talking.
“When I found that the stone changed its shade in response to temperature, I began using it to check if my children were feverish.”
“Yes, if one is excited or frightened, skin temperature changes when the body emits energy,” Abigail laughed in delight.
“That’s right.”
“Oh, Ya'Umi (my mother), it’s not just a ring, it’s a lie detector!”
“No, Naima, the stone does not distinguish between truths and lies. It only registers the level of energy and changes its color with excitement, whatever the cause.”
“When you wore it on your
finger, mother, did you notice the color change in the course of the day?”
“Yes, of course, when I was angry or emotional, the color deepened. Sometimes it also burned my skin or shocked me with a slight current. That’s why I stopped wearing it when you were being held captive.”
“Really?!”
“The ring angered me. It was difficult for me to see it reveal my sorrow and grow dark in color, but now it belongs to you.”
“Just let someone dare to remove it from my finger!” Abigail muttered a threat and slipped it on the ring finger of her left hand.
*
A l i a s
Nameless people came and fussed over her for two hours.
The first person cut her long hair, it fell in bunches on her knees and dropped softly to the floor. He colored her hair almond brown and styled it in a short bob that revealed her ears. Another pierced her ears with thin gold hoop earrings.
As they colored and shampooed her hair, and pierced her ears, Abigail understood that everything was changing, including her profession. There was no chance of ever going back to her office or representing clients in court.
No mirror was placed in front of Abigail so she could not follow the changes as they were unfolding. Now someone else stood before her and asked.
“What shade would you like your eyes to be?”
He opened tiny boxes and Abigail viewed the colored lenses inside them. She selected a dark blue shade, understanding that the intention was to blur her distinctive features, especially her eyes, which were almost colorless. From this moment, she would lose the nickname “Pale Eyes”, given her at the Bedouin encampment where she grew up.
“What’s your name?” a voice behind her asked and she answered right back:
“Abigail” and shivered as she realized that her name would also change.
“From today, you are Rania,” Barak announced. Abigail Ben-Nun was assassinated yesterday and her burial will take place tomorrow at noon.”
Another unfamiliar man faced her, and two flashes of his camera made her screw up her eyes that were still tearing from the contact lenses they had just inserted. She understood she was being photographed to update her records with a new identity.