by Nir Hezroni
“I put sleeping tablets in your water,” I say to them. “Ten tablets for each of you. You’ll soon fall asleep.”
They both start to scream again. I tell them they each received just 10 tablets. “I promised you’d die slowly,” I say to them. “The tablets won’t kill you.”
I wait for them to fall asleep. They try as hard they can to fight it. They beat themselves and bang their heads against the bars in an effort to neutralize the effect of the tablets.
I watch them for about half an hour, then open the cage door after they both fall asleep.
I drag them out and position them in keeping with the picture I have in mind. Before going back upstairs I turn around to look at them one last time. Perfect.
I photograph them and the man in the aquarium.
Back upstairs in the apartment I print the 2 images on small sheets of glossy photo paper.
February 2nd 2006
“Janet speaking, how can I be of assistance?”
“Hello.”
“It’ll cost you seventy-five thousand pounds.”
“You’re out of your mind.”
“That’s what you get for the bullshit with the surveillance team last time.” Carmit was digging into a bowl of spaghetti pomodoro. She sucked noisily on a string of pasta, and drops of tomato sauce spattered and landed on the tip of her nose.
“You almost killed one member of the team,” the voice on the other end of the line sighed.
“Admit it was a brilliant idea,” Carmit grinned. “You don’t give up, do you? You’re wasting your time.” She took a sip from the glass of red wine on the table in front of her and signaled the waiter with a thumbs-up and a smile that she was ready for a refill. “When do you need me?”
“Next week. Friday. Bariloche, Argentina.”
“Ah, a little pressed for time, are we? Perhaps I should have asked for more. Three days. Thursday morning to Saturday night. Excluding flights. Seventy-five thousand British pounds into Credit Suisse account 016502381. By tomorrow evening at the latest. Headphones and glasses?”
“Yes.”
“Encrypted image and encrypted conversion file to [email protected].”
“You’ll get them today. The payment, too.”
“It’s a pleasure doing business with you.”
“Fuck you!”
“Die already”
NIGHT. FEBRUARY 2006
My headache stops abruptly.
I place the bottle beside me. It takes immediate effect.
When the pain subsides I’m extremely focused. Sharp as butcher’s knife. No, sharp as a surgeon’s scalpel. I’m able to analyze everything clearly, as if a black veil was shrouding my brain before and is now gone.
My brain, usually inhibited, begins to realize its potential with full force. That’s why I always have a small pencil in my pocket. So I can make a note of things before the veil comes down again and dulls everything.
But I don’t take my pencil out this time. This time I look inward.
I scan my insides from the bone of my little toe all the way through to the fine capillaries in my brain. My awareness splits into several paths, each scanning a different system or organ—kidneys, digestive system, sex organs, respiratory system, heart, metabolism. All the data is gathered and processed quickly.
I understand now that in order to prolong the effect of the juice I need to adjust the pH levels in my stomach and slow my blood flow. I do so. I can now consciously control these functions.
I can’t understand why I never thought to do this before. I buy myself a few more minutes before the black veil takes over again.
I know that every sneeze takes 14 minutes off an individual’s life. I know this because I can read the capillaries in my brain and understand the erosive effect the pressure of a single sneeze has on the walls of the blood vessels.
I think for a moment that perhaps I should write it all down in the notebook, but there’s no time now. I have to delve deeper.
I slightly adjust the rate of flow of oxygen into the red blood cells in my lungs, and my eyes fix momentarily on the back of my left hand. I play with the skin pigmentation on the back of my hand such that my beauty spots and freckles appear and disappear with every passing second and display the current time.
I notice I have less than a minute. I’m dwelling on trivialities again. I breathe in, totally suspend the functioning of my stomach, and move directly into my brain. The effort to comprehend all these connections is huge, and my body temperature rises despite the fact that I channel more blood into my brain to rid it of excess heat, and produce as much perspiration as possible to cool my body.
Then, mere seconds before all the alarm lights begin flashing red and the black veil again sets in, I understand it all. My brain is laid bare to me, completely decoded, I am aware of the function of every single cell in that gray sponge, every interneuron, every tiny electrical current.
I temporarily shut down a problematic neural circuit, apply a number of bypasses and restore normal functioning to all my body’s systems. The black veil won’t return again.
I get up and throw the bottle in the trash. I won’t be needing it anymore. The bottle lands in the bin and knocks out a piece of crumpled paper. Instinctively, I bend down to pick it up, but then I stop.
I concentrate for a moment and the piece of paper rises up off the floor on its own, its folds straighten out completely, and it floats smoothly through the air and comes to rest gently on the table next to me. I take the small pencil out my pocket and write on the page: “Remember not to sneeze anymore.”
I wake up at 1:30.
I check the bottles in the fridge and the displays in the basement and go out for a run. It’s quiet outside and the street is empty. I go around my block and then all the way to Yarkon Park, then I continue along the running track toward the sea.
When I run I don’t have to think or dream.
It’s almost 2 in the morning yet it’s hot outside. I’m sweating.
I hear someone running behind me.
I run faster until the breathing fades into the distance and disappears.
I turn around.
There’s no one behind me.
I have to remember not to sneeze anymore.
MORNING. FEBRUARY 2006
I’m at Ben Gurion Airport, waiting to check in.
Earlier, I’d emptied the contents of the fridge into the trash and threw out the garbage. I’ll be away from home for a long time.
I call the office and speak to Nurit. I tell her I need to take 2 months unpaid vacation due to a family emergency. “Okay,” she says.
I use my laptop to connect to The Organization’s 300-tips website.
I leave a message.
“Amiram, you’re being watched. Two people came to my home and told me you sent them. Someone outside The Organization is aware of the mission you gave me. They tried to stop me, unsuccessfully. I invited them to dinner in Milan. I think you need to leave The Organization. It’ll be safer for everyone. I’m sure they’re monitoring you as well. Careful they don’t poison you. Check the bottles in your fridge before you drink from them.”
I board the plane to Frankfurt.
I’ve stashed the money in several inside pockets.
The material about Instituto Balseiro is on my laptop.
The girl’s tooth is around my neck.
The 2 photographs from the basement are in my wallet.
The flight attendant asks me what I’d like to drink. “Orange juice and water with ice,” I say to him.
I’m on my way to my second target.
February 2nd 2006
Limor came to first. Her head hurt and she wanted to place her hand on her forehead but wasn’t able to. Then she noticed that the basement wasn’t in complete darkness—there was a bluish glow coming from the aquarium in front of her, and two spotlights were casting yellow circles of light around Erez and herself.
She was seated next to the empty ca
ge in the basement on a heavy iron chair at one end of a table made of thick wooden beams and covered with a white tablecloth. Wooden bowls containing pieces of cooked meat and potatoes, and several loaves of bread were set out on the table. She looked at Erez, who sat on the other side of the table and had yet to wake up, and noticed he was wearing a light blue robe. She looked down and realized she was dressed in a robe, too. He had removed their clothes and dressed them in robes while they were unconscious. Her mouth was gagged with strips of duct tape wrapped several times around her head. She could only breathe through her nose.
Limor tried to work out why she wasn’t able to move her hands. She looked down at her arms and legs and saw they were tied firmly to the chair with hundreds of small zip ties. She tried to fall backward together with the chair but wasn’t able to. The chair was bolted to the floor. A long metal cord was wrapped around her stomach and then dozens of times around the back of the chair. She wasn’t going anywhere. The only part of her body that wasn’t tied to something was her head.
Erez was tied to his chair in the same manner.
She noticed an intravenous drip hooked up to his arm.
Limor looked at her right arm and saw an IV tube coming from it, too. The two tubes inserted into their bodies were connected to a single tube that emerged from a container the size of a water cooler bottle. The container sat on a high shelf outside the cage and the tube connecting them to it was long. Drop after drop left the container and flowed through the tube, split into two and made its way into their veins.
The drip would keep them alive for weeks. The basement’s ventilation system was on.
He promised they would die slowly.
Fixed to the tablecloth with two strips of adhesive tape was an A4 sheet of paper. The page read: “L’Ultima Cena.”
December 4th 2016
Avner closed the notebook and sighed. His throat was dry and he went to the kitchenette to get a glass of cold water.
The notebook said “I drag them out and position them in keeping with the picture I have in mind.” Avner wondered what that picture was.
The trail of bodies 10483 left behind was getting longer. Another unsolved case was now resolved. Two more agents died at his hands. Two agents with families that don’t have graves to visit to this day. “Missing in action in defense of the country”—that’s the version the families get; but Avner knows no rest until all the loose ends are tied up. As the man who heads the recruitment department, he holds himself personally responsible for their fate. And now, finally, he knows he can give three families graves over which to mourn.
He wrote:
6.Agents 6452 and 7274 were killed by 10483 in Tel Aviv. File can be closed.
7.Make sure that the team going into the basement this morning comprises long-serving agents who’ve seen a thing or two in their lives. The basement isn’t going to be pretty.
8.Arrange for a female American agent to travel to Amsterdam to look for her “brother” who disappeared in May 2005 so that we can get the remains of the body. Equip her with 6844’s DNA sample.
Dinner in Milan … They’d racked their brains for ages after the two agents disappeared. The strange message Amiram received from 10483 had thrown them completely off track. Every available agent in Italy at the time was sent out to look for the three agents in Milan. They thought that perhaps 10483 had managed to persuade the two agents to help him with the rest of his mission and that’s where they’d met their deaths. He thought they’d agreed to it because they hoped that the airport cameras in Italy would pick them up so that they could all be arrested by Interpol. But they were down in the basement the whole time.
And how had they forgotten to issue a stay of exit order against him? What an endless succession of screw-ups! But perhaps he left the country under a different passport. Avner paged back through the notebook and read again:
I open the Lufthansa website and book a flight to Frankfurt in the name of Peter Connor. I still have his passport.
Avner sighed again. Such amateurism. How had they not thought to cancel the passport? He entered “6452, 7274” into the system’s search engine and browsed through the collection of resulting documents. Surveillance requests, hospital checks in Europe, lists of unidentified corpses in Italy, compensation payments to the families of the agents, wiretaps on foreign agents, hacking of Interpol computers. So much energy spent looking for something that was right under their nose the whole time. How had they missed the basement when they’d searched the apartment after the fire?
An individual who kills for his country will eventually do so for himself, for personal motives. If someone cuts him off on the road, for example. Violence breeds more violence. How do we channel this violence is the question. It can be done—with the right kind of training and guidance and ongoing psychological treatment and assessment. Of course that’s assuming the agent is sane to begin with.
Avner’s jaw dropped the first time he laid eyes on the Bernoulli Project hit list. It included the names of twelve of the world’s leading physicists and chemists. All twelve were to be assassinated within four years. 10483 took out three of the targets; the remaining nine were killed one after the other by lone agents. For each target—a different agent, who was unaware of the other targets. Accidents, suicides, heart attacks, a stroke. The fact that no one around the world linked the series of deaths to a single entity was quite surprising. The notion was so insane that apparently no one even thought to do so. Who would want to kill a Nobel Laureate in physics? A scientist working on a medical breakthrough in the field of antiviral vaccines?
Avner was still missing one key piece of the Bernoulli Project puzzle: He knew the “what” but not the “why.” Ten years down the line, it was time to find out.
Avner lifted the receiver of the office’s encrypted telephone. It was already past three in the morning, not exactly the best time to trouble The Organization’s top-ranking directors. But Avner wasn’t able to contain himself. He needed answers now. Before the teams were sent in the morning to the apartment in Tel Aviv.
The person on the other end of the line picked up after two rings.
“Hi, Grandpa,” Avner said. “I need your help.”
December 4th 2016
Grandpa put the handset back on the dresser next to his bed. He pulled off his blanket, sat down, and put his feet into his slippers. Then he got up, stretched, and went to his home office. He sat down in front of his desk and passed his finger over the fingerprint reader. Three computer screens arranged in an arc on the desk in front of him came to life.
It was clear that this would happen.
That charred body was too easy.
We should have kept looking.
Grandpa opened his Outlook contacts folder, found the phone number he needed, picked up his office phone, and dialed.
December 4th 2016
Rotem Rolnik was sound asleep.
On the living room carpet.
She was lying on her stomach, arms stretched out to her sides. The short tank top she wore left her upper back exposed, and the wing tips of a colorful fairy tattoo peeked out from under the fabric. The fairy’s feet appeared in the space between the lower end of her tank top and the black sweatpants she was wearing.
Her hand rested on a stack of printed pages and next to her was a pile of books with small yellow notes stuffed between their pages. Two open laptops were perched on the coffee table by her side. Both displayed aquarium screensavers.
The house looked like a tornado had swept through it. The carpet, floor, and living room couch were littered with jumbled heaps of clothing. An empty pizza box lay on the carpet, and two empty Carlsberg bottles, one upright, the other on its side, were on the table next to the laptops, along with a half-eaten slice of pizza.
The shrill ring of a telephone startled Rotem out of her slumber, and as she opened her green eyes she banged her head on the coffee table.
“Ahhhhh … Dammit. Shit! Shit! Shit! Double shit!
My head’s gonna explode.”
She stumbled through the living room, rubbing her head while rummaging through the piles of clothing for the encrypted cell phone, before retrieving it from under a black skirt.
“It’s three thirty in the morning!” she roared into the mobile.
Her expression changed the moment she recognized the voice on the other end of the line.
“Grandpa?”
Rotem listened for a few seconds and then rattled off in quick-fire bursts. “You’re fucking kidding me!—I don’t believe it!—Tell him not to move and not to touch the notebook—To just leave it on the desk—He’s probably poisoned the pages with arsenic or cyanide—He needs to go and wash his hands right now—With lots of soap—I knew he was alive!—I can’t believe it!—That wasn’t his body—How did his DNA disappear from the database?—Clearly he deleted it intentionally—He must have acquired an admin password—Just like I said all along—You know he was a hacker, right?—I have to see it!—Where did you say it is?—Ganei Tikva?—No, Ganei Yehuda?—I’m on my way—You coming too?—I don’t want him touching it anymore!—I’ll bring gloves!—Tell him—Tell him to just leave it alone—I’m on my way!!!”
Rotem tossed the cell phone onto the living room couch and headed quickly for the shower, throwing off her clothing as she scampered to the bathroom. Her tank top landed on another pile of laundry and she kicked her sweatpants and panties off and left them on the carpet. She had to wake up. A jet of cold would will do the trick.
Rotem wrote a research paper on 10483 when she was seventeen. It was part of her thesis for The Organization’s course in micropsychoanalysis.
She was recruited at fifteen. Her name came up together with those of two other students from the Education Ministry’s program for gifted teenagers. “Exceptional EQ capabilities in addition to a particularly high IQ,” read the report, to which the director of the program had added in her own hand: “Don’t let her slip. She’s something special.”