by Nir Hezroni
“Angela speaking, who’s calling please?”
“Hello.”
She recognized the voice.
“It will cost you fifty thousand pounds.”
“You don’t know what we want yet.”
“True, and it’ll cost you fifty thousand.”
“Are you available in early 2006? The first week of January?”
“Just a sec, let me see.”
Carmit muted the call and returned the phone to its pouch. She walked for another 30 seconds or so, retrieved the phone again and continued the conversation.
“Three days. From December 31st in the morning to January 2nd at night. Excluding flights. Fifty thousand pounds into account number 016497725 at Credit Suisse. Transfer within three business days. Today is Monday, so I’ll check on Thursday afternoon to make sure the money’s come through.”
“Don’t you trust me?” asked the voice on the other end of the line.
“Don’t take it personally, but I don’t trust any of you. And I say that as someone who cleans up your shit off the grid.”
“We’ll need you in Geneva for one night of headphones and glasses. You’ll get started on January 15th at the Crowne Plaza. It’s near the airport.”
“Send me an encrypted image and encrypted conversion file to the following email address: [email protected].”
“You’ll get them today.”
“I won’t look at them before Thursday afternoon.”
“Greedy bitch.”
“Evil manipulator.”
Carmit hung up and returned again to The Prodigy. She broke into a jog, upped her pace again and looked over at a group of ducks that were trying to evade the charge of a small child. After the money arrived she’d withdraw it in cash and redeposit it into two different accounts. She’d open the two accounts when she got home, after showering and having breakfast. She quickened her pace and took pleasure in the heat generated by her body. It contrasted starkly with the cold London air. She was in excellent shape.
NIGHT. JUNE 2005
I’m in the shower.
The water flows over my body and washes off the still faint stench of sewage.
The light outside the bathroom is on and my eyes are fixed on the illuminated gap between the floor and the bathroom door.
2 shadows move across the floor outside the bathroom.
Someone is out there.
I leave the bathroom faucet on and go over to open the door.
Standing behind the door is an old man dressed in a black suit. He’s carrying a black leather bag.
“I’ve come to get you.” he says.
He removes a rope from his case.
“Here, hang yourself.”
He offers me the rope with the palms of his hands turned upward.
Steam is rising from the hot water behind me.
Drops of water are running down the fogged mirror.
I wake at 1:30 and get up to continue digging my basement.
I live in a ground-floor apartment in a residential building with 4 floors. I’ve been digging under the apartment’s living room for the past 11 months. It was hard to get through the layer of concrete under the floor, but it was plain sailing thereafter.
I set aside 2 hours for digging every night. I place the earth I extract into construction sacks, and I put those into regular trash bags that I throw into various garbage bins around the neighborhood every morning before I head off to work.
I’m using timber to support the sides of the basement, and when the work is done I’ll cast concrete to construct the basement walls. No one comes into my apartment, so the large hole that begins just before the front door and stretches into the living room remains unnoticed by anyone.
I remove 8 bags of earth from the apartment early every morning, and at this rate the basement will be ready in 5 months. If all goes according to plan it should reach a depth of 6 meters.
I’m fitting the basement with a bathroom, storeroom, battery and generator room, ventilation system, electricity, plumbing, and CCTV cameras.
Close to the middle of the room, under the front door to the apartment, I’m building a 4-meter-high steel cage with thick bars. The cage has a steel door with a lock. The cage also has a small 10-centimeter-high opening adjacent to the floor.
There are 2 ways to enter the basement—either through the metal bottom of my bedroom closet and down a ladder fitted below it, or by falling into the steel cage, once I finish rebuilding the floor. Anyone entering the apartment and heading straight to my room will open 2 doors in the floor and fall straight into the cage.
The open roof of the cage can be shut and locked with 2 steel plates that slide on rails on either side of the cage. Landing on the floor of the cage after the fall will trigger this locking mechanism automatically.
I plant blocks of explosive material I collected over my years in the army in 10 different places in the basement. I connect them all together with fuse wire, thus turning the basement into one giant bomb, with an electronic detonator fitted to an ordinary light switch located near the ladder. Someone who isn’t familiar with the basement and who wants to turn on a light will blow it all up.
I fill the storeroom with canned produce, dehydrated foodstuffs, and gallons of bottled water.
When they come to kill me I’ll be ready.
December 4th 2016
Avner placed the notebook on the table and rubbed his eyes. He stood up, raised his arms above his head and stretched. He took his laptop out of his bag, plugged it in and continued working on the document he’d started at home.
• For action tomorrow morning—The building in which 10483 was living before his death needs to be evacuated and a sweep must be made of the basement he writes about, if it does indeed exist; and if so, the explosive charges need to be neutralized. Take into account the fact that not everything that appears in this notebook is the truth (it may be his imagination or deliberate deception). Take care not to flip any light switches on the way down into the basement. Send agents in fire engines and dressed as firefighters to evacuate the building due to a reported gas leak. Coordinate with the police, the ambulance service, and the fire and rescue services.
Avner left the office, closed the door, and walked over to the guard station.
“Is that coffee offer still valid?”
“Sure, come with me. I’ve got an espresso machine. Much better than the regular shit The Organization provides.”
The guard filled the small espresso machine’s water tank and turned it on. He placed a capsule of coffee in the designated slot and two small glass cups under the spouts.
“Long night?” the guard asked.
“Through to the morning and afterward, too, probably.”
“My shift ends at seven. Whenever you feel the need to wake up a little, come see me. I’d give you a Vodka and Red Bull if I had it—that would wake you up a little more,” the guard laughed.
“That’s all I need.…”
They both sat down to drink their coffee in the kitchenette before hearing a short buzz from the area of the offices.
“I need to get going,” the guard said, rising quickly out of his chair, his cup of espresso in his hand. “Someone’s approaching the building.”
“I thought I was the only one who comes here at this time of night.”
“Yes, these are usually dead hours. We’re a small branch. I’m outta here.”
“See you later.”
Avner returned to the office with his cup of coffee. He placed it on the table, sat down in the chair, and continued to read from the notebook.
MORNING. DECEMBER 2005
I go out this morning with a regular trash bag. I’m no longer clearing earth.
The basement is ready.
Someone said to be a member of a crime family lives on our street.
He approaches me.
He shoves his face up close to mine.
I can sense the pulsing of his blood flowing thro
ugh his body.
“You parked in my space,” he says.
“I parked on the street,” I respond. “And there aren’t any private parking spaces here.”
“The space outside the entrance to the building is mine. Park there again and I’ll beat the crap outta you.”
“I’m going to park there again,” I say.
He punches me hard in the nose. I close my eyes and focus on the feeling. The blood flows down from my nose into my mouth and I collect it with my tongue.
“I know where you live,” he says to me.
“In the building across the street, on the ground floor, the door on the right,” I tell him.
He turns around and walks off.
Before leaving for work I go back inside, change my blood-stained shirt and put a Band-Aid on my nose. It may be broken.
Nurit meets me in the corridor at work. She asks me to report to Yaron’s office in 15 minutes and quickly disappears.
I know my name appears on the list for the next round of layoffs. I have the system admin’s password to get into the company’s human resources management program and I conduct daily checks on the wages of all the company managers and any other interesting information I can find.
I stop by my office, retrieve a flash drive from the top drawer of my desk, put it in my pocket and report to Yaron’s office.
Yaron and Nurit are there, fixing me with frozen stares.
“I’m sure you’re aware of the state of the global pharmaceuticals market and the effect the recession has had on the entire sector in general and our company in particular,” Yaron says.
I notice he’s reading the text from a sheet of paper resting on his desk.
“I broke my nose today,” I say to them.
“We’ve been forced to let you go,” Nurit says. “This booklet contains a presentation that outlines your compensation package,” she adds.
“I need to remain in this job,” I say. “It’s important.”
Nurit looks at Yaron.
“The decision is final,” he says.
“I have a presentation, too,” I say to them. “You should see it.”
They look at each other and then at me.
I plug the flash drive into Yaron’s computer and open the presentation I’ve prepared. It’s made up of selected screenshots of their respective hobbies.
Nurit’s face turns bright red and Yaron’s goes white.
“This material gets uploaded to YouTube within an hour after I’m fired,” I say to them. “Ten minutes later, an email with a link to the material will be sent to all company employees, and five minutes later it gets sent to your extended families.”
“I believe we can change the list of layoffs,” Yaron says. “You can go back to work.”
“Yes, I believe you can change the list,” I respond.
Yaron asks me for the flash drive.
I tell him he can keep it as a souvenir, but that I still have several more copies of the presentation so it doesn’t really matter.
I return to my office and continue working.
My phone rings at 4 in the afternoon. Amiram is on the line. He informs me he has sent an encrypted email to my account at The Organization and that I should open it and read it.
I tell him to wait a moment and place the receiver on my desk.
I access my web-based email account at The Organization and open the message.
It reads: “There is someone we want you to kill for us. You need to organize a trip to a customer in Switzerland.”
I close the message and it’s deleted and disappears from my account. I delete my browsing history and shut down the computer.
I pick up the phone. “Got it,” I say.
NIGHT. DECEMBER 2005
The sensation of pleasure begins at my fingertips and courses through my back and neck all the way to the top of my head. Shivers run through me and I can feel every hair on my body. It’s more powerful than sex, better than a good meal.
It’s hard to press down on the pedal. Every time the wave of pleasure begins to dissipate I have to press down on it with my foot with all I’ve got. Otherwise the next wave won’t come. It gets harder and harder every time.
I don’t know if it’s the mechanism of the pedal itself or because my body, which is usually young and strong, is showing signs of weakness and confusion. Perhaps it’s because I haven’t eaten in a long time. For several days now. Okay, I’ll go get myself something to eat.
But first just one more small press on the pedal.
Oooooooha, another wave passes through me. I close my eyes and again surrender to the sensation. The need to eat or sleep fades once more. I try to think when I last slept and where, and that, too, evades me.
No.
I can’t.
I have to break away from this cycle. But my body won’t listen to me. It remains standing in front of the large glass wall from which this pedal emerges. I came across it by chance. I mean it’s always been there just like all the rest of the furniture in my house, and my life was just fine before I began messing around with it.
My foot presses down on the pedal again and another wave of pleasure washes over me. Everything around me is spinning in colorful sparkling light and I lie down on the floor alongside the pedal, too tired and spent to press down on it again, and finally fall into a deep sleep.
“Look—the rat is dead.”
2 white coats are looking down at the floor of my cell. My body is sprawled there. I am watching the scene from above.
“Yes, it chose to press the handle until it died of exhaustion and hunger, even though there was a pile of food right next to it, just four steps away. It didn’t even touch the food.”
One of the white coats is wearing yellow rubber gloves. He picks up my body and disconnects the electrode from my head. The other white coat is holding an open plastic bag. Yellow gloves tosses me in. He ties the top of the bag and throws it in the trash.
“This proves without doubt that the brain’s pleasure center is more powerful than the centers of sleep or hunger.”
“Yes, but I’m concerned about taking things to the next level.”
“Why? Just think of the huge potential in terms of alleviating the suffering of terminally ill patients or patients with chronic pain. It’s a drug-free treatment with no side effects.”
“Right, no side effects … except for the fact that the rat’s dead.”
“It’s a rat.”
“In this context—we’re exactly the same. What do you think a person would do if he had direct and unadulterated access to the pleasure center of his brain? The same thing. All the rat did for exactly five days was press and press the pedal until it died of exhaustion, thirst, and hunger. It didn’t care about anything else.”
The 2 white coats remain silent for a moment. I continue to observe them from above.
“You may be right.”
“I’m not saying that we aren’t going to publish, but there’s no way we’re going to take it to the practical level. Never.”
“Okay, let’s get out of here. It’s one in the morning already. We’ll start working on the final report tomorrow.” The rows of neon lights in the laboratory go out one after the other. The cleaner will show up early tomorrow morning to empty the trash bin.
I’m lying in my bed again.
The lights in my apartment are off.
There’s someone in the apartment.
I can sense it.
I hear light rustling and breathing from the direction of the front door.
I know who it is.
I hear a loud noise, a scream, a thud, the grating sound of metal against metal and then silence again, disturbed occasionally by weak screams that seem to come from far away.
I turn over and go back to sleep.
I wake at 1:30 and get up to go see the man in the basement.
I climb down the ladder under my bedroom closet and turn the basement light on using a hidden switch.
&
nbsp; Sitting in the cage in the middle of the basement is the guy who punched me last week.
The sudden light causes him to cover his eyes. “I’m going to slaughter you like a pig!” he screams.
I get myself a chair and sit down in front of the cage.
I stare at him while waiting for him to stop yelling.
He goes silent after a few minutes.
“This basement is sealed,” I say to him. “If you scream with all your might, you’ll be faintly heard in the apartment above, but it, too, is sealed with thick acoustic insulation and no one outside will hear a thing. So don’t waste your energy. You’re going to need it.”
He tries to move the bars. He can’t. The steel bars are 2 centimeters thick, welded together, and they’ve been cast into the concrete floor of the basement. He kicks out angrily at the floor and the bars and looks up at the steel plates that shut the cage 4 meters above him.
I take a ladder and place it about a meter and a half from the cage.
I press a switch that opens one of the cage’s steel ceiling panels and say, “You’d do good to move aside.”
I climb up the ladder several times and throw some things into the cage. 3 cartons of mineral water. A box of mixed dried fruits, rice cakes and pita bread, and a bucket filled with trash bags.
I shut the ceiling of the cage again, turn out the basement’s main light and leave just a small lamp glowing.
I turn on the basement’s ventilation system.
“I’m going away now for two weeks,” I tell him. “That’s your food and drink. The trash bags are for you to shit in and then tie shut. You can piss into the bottles after you drink from them. Work out how much to drink and eat each day so that you don’t run out too quickly. Use the time to kick your smoking habit.”
Before climbing back up into the apartment, I turn to him and say: “I may need your fingers. That’s why I’m keeping you alive.”
MORNING. JANUARY 2006
I’m flying to Switzerland today at 5 in the evening to carry out a routine system-performance check for a client. Nurit approved the trip.
Amiram asks me to stop by The Organization’s home base before leaving for Geneva.