by Nir Hezroni
I purchase yellow and blue overalls and black plastic boots from a different store.
I load all the equipment into the van.
MORNING. FEBRUARY 2006
I put on the overalls and a pair of work gloves and drive to the park. I park the van and walk through the open green expanse.
I adjust the sprinklers. Some I rotate 180 degrees so that they’ll spray water onto the path and some I leave aimed at the grass and surrounding vegetation. I also adjust the rotation mechanism of the oscillating sprinklers to allow them full-circle coverage.
I follow the lines of sprinklers until I find the control mechanism for the irrigation system’s main pipeline. It’s in a large metal cabinet.
I break into the cabinet, close the main tap and then turn off the irrigation computer. No one will notice if the sprinklers don’t turn on for a day. Several people walk past me and I wave to them and drink from the bottle of water I brought with me.
The main pipe has 2 taps. One before the irrigation computer’s transmission and one after. It’s built that way so that the water can be turned off while someone works on the computer.
I close the tap in front of the irrigation computer, saw through the thick metal pipe between the 2 taps, and remove a piece measuring half a meter or so. I screw on a standard 5-centimeter adaptor on the end of the pipe leading to the sprinklers. To the adaptor I attach a 2-meter-long flexible pipe with a connection that fits the discharge port of the pump I purchased.
I check to make sure that the pipe connects securely to the pump.
Then again.
One last time.
I roll up the length of flexible pipe, place it in the cabinet and shut the door.
I fit a standard connection for a domestic diesel oil storage tank and fit it to the suction port of the pump. I took measurements for the connector size at several homes I passed during my walks through the city.
I drive to a nearby fish restaurant for lunch. There I use my laptop to access the cameras in my apartment and check on my art exhibits. The aquarium is lit up in blue and the Last Supper is still underway. The food on the table has taken on a greenish shade and the 2 actors are still sitting across from one another, their heads sway.
After lunch I drive my van to the gas station. I fill the van with gas along with the tank of the small generator I bought. I leave the gas station and drive to a point from which I can observe it. I pull over.
I get out of the car and check to make sure the generator I bought works. It starts immediately. I turn it off and attach the pump to it. I turn it back on and check that the pump is working. The pump’s motor quickly comes to life.
I turn off the pump and generator, put them back in the van and wait.
A tanker arrives later in the afternoon to refill the gas station’s fuel tanks. I wait for the tanker to finish and then follow it to the fuel depot, 10 kilometers outside the city. Using the binoculars I watch the driver of the tanker refill his vehicle and speak to another driver next to him. They’re smoking cigarettes. It’s dangerous. You shouldn’t smoke near fuel.
The driver gets into the tanker and parks it in a lot inside the depot. Then he gets into a private car and drives off.
I wait for nightfall and scale the back fence of the depot. There’s only a guard at the entrance, and there aren’t cameras.
He doesn’t see me.
I walk over to a tanker parked outside the guard’s field of vision. The door to the vehicle isn’t locked. I get in and go to sleep in the cabin, behind the driver’s seat.
I wake at 1:30. All is quiet. I go back to sleep.
February 14th 2006
“Kelly speaking, may I take a message?”
“Where are you??? I haven’t been able to reach you for two days.”
Carmit makes a point of turning on her cell phone only when she’s at a safe distance from her home and children, so that no one can hone in on her address by monitoring the subway lines she takes or her location patterns.
“You know you’re not my only client.”
“But I’m your best one.”
The last remark was met with silence.
“I need you in Montreal in three days.”
“It’ll cost you two hundred and fifty thousand.”
“What???”
“Two hundred and fifty thousand pounds. Excluding flights. You’re killing him, working at such a pace. This is the last time with him. It’s already too much.”
“You don’t know him.”
“I actually do. Two hundred and fifty thousand. I know you aren’t authorized to lay out this kind of money without additional approval. If I get confirmation, at least I’ll know it’s not a personal vendetta. Two hundred and fifty thousand. And besides, I hate Montreal.”
“I’ll call you tomorrow. Just do me a favor and leave your phone on.”
“Call tomorrow afternoon at two. The phone will be on.”
“One of these days I’ll get my hands on you.”
“Careful you don’t end up losing one.”
“We’ll talk tomorrow.”
“Not before two.”
“And one more thing.”
“What?”
“This will be the final transformation.”
“It better be. And I’d like you afterward to keep your distance from me for at least a year. You’re pushing me too close to the fire; I can feel the heat.”
The man on the other end of the line hung up.
MORNING. FEBRUARY 2006
I wake to the noise of the engine. The driver is in the seat in front of me. I lie quietly in the cabin behind him. The tanker exits the depot gates and heads off toward the city. It’s very early in the morning. The roads are empty.
The driver accelerates to a speed of 100 kilometers per hour along a straight section of the road. I can see the speedometer. There are no other cars around us. I jump up, reach out, and open the driver’s door. The driver isn’t wearing his seatbelt. I push him out.
The tanker zigzags a little. I grab the wheel and pull off to the side of the road. I reverse back to the driver, who’s lying on the road. His head is tilted back at an unnatural angle. His eyes are open. He isn’t moving. I roll him off the asphalt into a clump of bushes at the side of the road. I remove the battery from his cell phone so they can’t pinpoint his location. I return to the tanker and head off again.
I drive to where my van is parked and transfer my equipment to the tanker. I head from there to the park and park the tanker on a side street, behind a dense group of trees. The tanker can’t be seen from the air or the road.
I sit in the tanker and wait. I use the time to prepare 3 glass bottles that I fill with gasoline and into which I stuff gasoline-soaked rags.
Shortly before 1 I start up the tanker and drive into the park. I pull up alongside the irrigation system’s computer cabinet and connect the length of rubber hose I left there to my pump’s discharge port; I connect the suction port to the tanker’s 95-octane tank. The tank holds 30,000 liters of fuel. That’ll do. I hook up the pump to the generator, which I turn on, but leave the pump off. For now.
Several Instituto Balseiro staff members are wandering through the park on their lunch break, and a number of families with children are walking along the paths and lawns.
My target jogs into the park with his bodyguards.
I wait for him to advance 200 meters along the path and then turn on the pump.
All the sprinklers in the park turn on and spray jets of 95-octane liquid fuel in all directions, drenching the paths and surrounding lawns.
The people in the park eventually realize this and start running.
I light 1 of the bottles I prepared and throw it as far as I can.
February 15th 2006
The park was peaceful that afternoon. The morning mist had disappeared and given way to wispy cirrus clouds. A warm summer sun shone down on the people in the park, workers on their lunch break, mothers and fathers with children,
and joggers, out for an afternoon run.
The people in the park appeared somewhat amused at first when all the sprinklers came to life at once, spraying in every possible direction. So typical of the Bariloche Municipality to screw things up with the direction of the jets … they must have thought.
The laughter, however, soon turned to cries of distress, as the park’s visitors realized the sprinklers were spraying gasoline and not water. Mothers reached frantically for their soaked children, people rushed toward the park’s exit and screams filled the air.
Then came the explosion.
The park ignited in a massive burst of flame as a huge ball of fire rose above the canopy of green trees with a thunderous whooooshhh.
Flaming people ran wildly in all directions, falling to the ground and rolling.
Baby carriages burned, abandoned on the walking paths.
The small group of joggers who were running along the center of the path didn’t escape the fire. When the sprinklers started spraying, the bodyguards turned their heads to look at the individual running between them. He was a tall and thin man with short blond hair. He stopped jogging, realized what was happening and gestured for the bodyguards to make their escape. They broke into a mad dash out of the park. They didn’t make it.
The tall man didn’t run. He remained where he was and reached for a cell phone in his pocket. And while everyone ran screaming, he calmly placed a call.
A sea of fire swept toward him at a furious rate.
The phone emitted one call-waiting tone.
The ball of fire reached him.
The phone emitted another call-waiting tone.
His clothes caught fire.
One more tone.
December 4th 2016
Avner replaced the receiver.
He glanced at the open notebook on the table and sighed. There was nothing new here that they didn’t already know. The Organization knew for sure that 10483 had carried out the massacre in Bariloche. It was depressing nevertheless to read how he’d prepared for and carried out the murder of over one hundred people with what seemed like no emotion whatsoever.
Grandpa was on his way.
He told Avner it was time to explain more about the Bernoulli Project, that it wasn’t a matter for the phone.
Grandpa is one of the most brilliant minds to have ever worked for The Organization. He earned his nickname, thanks to the long white beard that adorns his face and his advanced age. He’s always reminded Avner of Santa Claus—after a good diet. The running joke about him is that he received the order to set up The Organization from David Ben-Gurion himself, and that he was already then on the verge of retirement.
“I’ll be with you in twenty minutes,” he’d said on the phone to Avner. “Stay right where you are.”
Avner got up to stretch and walked out of the small office to the branch’s public space. He grabbed a stale biscuit from an open package on the counter in the kitchenette and washed one of the glass cups in the sink to make himself another cup of coffee, choosing to forgo Benny’s espresso this time. He wasn’t in the mood to talk to anyone right now.
His cell phone rang five minutes later and Grandpa was on the line again. “One more thing, Avner, go wash your hands and wear gloves before you touch that notebook again.”
“Why? Are you worried about fingerprints?”
“The pages may be poisoned. He may have put something there.”
“No way on earth I’m going to handle this notebook with rubber gloves. I’m not that paranoid. Besides, if that thing was poisoned I would be dead by now. I’ve been reading this thing for hours.”
Avner put the cell phone back in his pocket.
The person outside the Ganei Yehuda satellite branch finished working under the white Mazda, put his tools back into a bag, checked the device now installed under the car, carefully looked around using a low-beam flashlight to make sure nothing was left behind, crawled out from under the car, and disappeared through the shrubbery and trees surrounding the villa.
AFTERNOON. FEBRUARY 2006
I light the 2 remaining bottles, throw them into the cabin of the tanker and walk to the hotel. Ambulances, police vehicles and fire trucks speed by me on their way to the park. On my way to the hotel I call Aerolíneas Argentinas to book a flight to Buenos Aires, and then Lufthansa to reserve a ticket from Buenos Aires to Frankfurt and from Frankfurt to Montreal. That’s where my final target is.
Back at the hotel I shower and wash off the smell of gasoline. Then I check out and take a cab to the airport. On the way there I ask the driver to stop at a post office and I mail the large backpack I bought, with all the clothes and equipment inside, to 406 East 32nd Street in Manhattan. There’s no such address.
People at the airport are gathered in front of television screens watching the broadcast images of the fire. I sit at a café, order a hamburger and a Coke, and open my laptop. I read up on École Polytechnique de Montréal. It offers studies in chemical engineering, electronics, computer science, mechanics, mathematics, geology, biomedicine, physics, and nuclear research, and is located in the center of Montreal.
My flight’s been delayed for an hour. The airport is operating in emergency/disaster mode and one runway has been set aside for airlifting casualties out of Bariloche. I use the time to go online and reserve a rental car that will wait for me at the airport in Montreal. I also book a hotel room near the school.
I save maps of Montreal and material from the school’s website onto my laptop to study during the flight.
I land in Frankfurt and take off to Montreal. I retrieve a random suitcase from the baggage carousel at the airport in Montreal and take a cab to my hotel.
I open the suitcase at the hotel. It contains baby clothes.
I read up on the target. I browse through the list of faculty members at the school and cross-reference the names with photographs from the Internet. I recognize my target. His name is Bernard Strauss. He teaches molecular physics. He used to be in charge of the SLOWPOKE nuclear research project conducted at the school.
I read the SLOWPOKE project specification document I downloaded from the Internet. The SLOWPOKE is a small experimental nuclear reactor that uses 93-percent enriched uranium with aluminum cladding. The core, just 22 centimeters in diameter and 23 centimeters high, is an assembly of around 300 miniature fuel rods. Criticality is maintained as the fuel burns up by adding beryllium plates in a tray on top of the core, which sits in a pool of regular light-water measuring 2.5 meters in diameter and 6 meters deep. The reactor is mobile. It can be installed, for example, in a submarine, and the 20 kilowatts of power it generates could recharge the vessel’s batteries for decades without the need for any additional fuel. Very interesting.
February 17th 2006
While Carmit hates hotels in general, she absolutely despises freezing cold ones. Montreal was −23°Celsius. A cold that’s hard to describe to someone who has never experienced such temperature. You wrap yourself in layers of clothing, scarf, gloves, a thick coat, and you freeze your ass off every time you step foot out the door. The residents of Montreal have thus found a wonderful solution: They simply don’t go outside. For the entire journey—from the airport to the central train station, to the subway, to the mall in the city center, and from the mall to the hotel—she never once goes aboveground.
Last night was the final transformation of her target. It ended at five-thirty in the morning. She’d read in his notebook that he wakes every night at 1:30, so she waited for it to happen and then waited for him to fall asleep again before pumping four doses of anesthetic gas under the door to his room. She began the work at 2:30. Three solid hours of headphones and glasses. It wasn’t easy. She was forced for some of the time to sit on him and hold down his arms and legs to prevent him from throwing off the equipment when he was struck by convulsions.
Luckily the jet lag from the flight and a thermos of coffee kept her awake through the night, otherwise he would have found her in his ro
om in the morning, sleeping on the rug next to his bed—and that certainly wouldn’t have ended well at all.
Afterward Carmit slept all day and woke at five in the evening. She was ravenous, but the thought of going out in the freezing cold to look for a restaurant sent shivers through her, so she slipped on a pair of jeans and a brightly colored sweater, donned her white woolen hat and went downstairs to eat something at the hotel restaurant. She’d be flying back home to London in just a few hours.
She sat down alone at a table for two, leaned back in her chair, and opened the menu. She decided to go for the salmon with a side of mashed potatoes and a bottle of red wine. As she lowered the menu, 10483 was sitting in front of her.
February 17th 2006
Keep your eyes closed.
Listen to my voice.
Breathe through your nose.
I want you to feel your body filling with air when you inhale.
I want you to feel your body emptying of air when you exhale.
Your breathing is becoming more relaxed.
Slower.
You’re becoming more aware of the air flowing through your body.
Are you able to feel it?
Try to picture the volume of your thumb.
Can you picture it?
Now you try to picture the volume of your forefinger.
Can you picture it?
Now try to picture the volume of the space between your thumb and forefinger.
Can you picture it?
There is absolute silence all around.
Your breathing is calm.
You are now in an open and quiet place.
All you can hear is the soft sound of flowing water in the distance.
You’re surrounded by green grass and trees with thick trunks and lush green canopies.
You can feel gravel beneath your bare feet.