Agent on a Mission

by Rose Fox

  According to the clock on the dashboard it was seven forty and it was still as light as day. He opened the car door and looked around. There were many trees, all coniferous, but they stood quite far apart and didn’t look like a really dense forest. Rain had begun to fall and Sharif wondered whether he should go looking for the driver when suddenly, he appeared, chewing a rolled flatbread sandwich and handed a paper bag to Sharif.

  “I didn’t know what you like to eat, so I brought you the same,” he said.

  Sharif took the bag from him, pulled out the rolled pita and began eating it with gusto. Within a few minutes he had consumed it and looked at the driver who was chewing leisurely.

  “Do you want more?” the driver asked, speaking with his mouth full.

  “No, thank you,” Sharif replied, yawning noisily and holding on to his stomach as if he had just eaten an entire lamb. “That was good and very timely,” he added as he exhaled loudly, to the laughter and amusement of the cabdriver.

  When the cab driver finished eating, he threw the wrapper out of the window and straightened up in his seat. He started the car and they drove off. They drove for another hour, perhaps an hour and a half with Sharif dozing and waking intermittently. The car bumped when the driver went off the road and continued driving on a dirt track. Sharif opened his eyes and looked at the drab old building facing them.

  “What do you think about spending the night here?”

  “In this building?” Sharif wondered, scratching his head and answering laconically.

  “Actually, why not?”

  “Look, the board and lodging are on me and tomorrow at six we’ll continue on our way. Okay?” The cab driver suggested and without waiting for Sharif’s answer, he got out of the cab.

  The rain got heavier and Sharif ran after the driver into the building. A strong thunderstorm rolled in the sky above them and sleeping in this place now seemed to be the best possible idea.

  At five thirty the following morning, Sharif was already on his feet, ready to continue the journey. The evening before he had managed to shower in a very meager drizzle of water, but it had been sufficient to refresh him and remove the dust of the journey from his body. He stared at the clothes he had taken off, decided not to be fussy and put them on again because who knew what the way ahead had in store for him.

  He sat waiting quietly but the driver was nowhere to be seen. He went to the counter and rang the small bell that stood there. He waited patiently and, after a few minutes, rang it again. Then a young man appeared, yawning loudly with his mouth wide open.

  “Yes, who called me?”

  “I did. I’m waiting for the driver I arrived with yesterday,” Sharif explained.

  The young man’s hair was unkempt and he was unfocused. It was clear he could hardly open his eyes. He mumbled something in Russian and Sharif shook the youngster’s hand to get him to focus but gave up trying. He turned towards the shabby torn diary on the counter and ran his finger down the names until he found a Sergei’s room number.

  He went to the room and knocked on the door. There was no response so he opened the door and looked inside. The room was empty, the bed was made and it was clear no one had slept there that night. Sharif looked in the dining room and didn’t find him there either. He sat down and decided to continue waiting for him. He waited for a long time and then grasped what he had avoided understanding earlier. First, he put his hand into his plastic bag and saw to his dismay that his wallet had disappeared and there was not a single Ruble left among his things.

  Sharif spat out a whispered curse between his lips. He thought about reporting to the police but his instincts told him to keep a low profile and he rejected the idea. He decided to carry on under his own steam, gratified that he had gotten this far. He got up to leave, raised his arm to say good-bye to the young man but the latter stopped him with a scream and put his hand out to him, demanding payment.

  “The driver paid,” Sharif informed him.

  “No one paid,” the fellow replied, angrily.

  Sharif decided to share his problem with him. He opened the bag and let the fellow, who stared at Sharif quizzically, look inside.

  “I fear the cabdriver stole my money and already made his getaway yesterday,” Sharif told him.

  “I’m sorry, but you have to pay,” the fellow shrugged. “I have an idea. If I have no choice then I agree to spend today working at anything you wish and that’s how I’ll pay. What do you say?" Sharif suggested.

  The young man signaled him to wait and went to the rooms. Sharif glanced quickly at the door, thought about opening it and running away. He started making a move for it but a broad sturdy guy with light-colored hair arrived, his dark little eyes darting everywhere. He seemed pleased with the arrangement he had just heard.

  “Great!” he exclaimed. “We have a worker for two weeks and he’ll do whatever we need.” He spoke in Arabic peppered with Russian.

  “Two weeks?!” Sharif yelled. He was expecting to work for a few hours that day and thought that would cover his lodging and what the cabdriver owed them but then he heard what the innkeeper said.

  “Yes, and that’s also not enough. The driver owes me two hundred and eighty rubles.”

  “How much?!” Sharif knew that in the financial terms of the region that was a great deal of money and he exclaimed,

  “How? For what?”

  “Hey, don’t make problems for me. I’ll bring a policeman here and you’ll have plenty of explaining to do,” he said in broken Arabic as he looked at Sharif out of the corner of his eye and immediately added:

  “I saw you were also planning to run away like your driver, right?”

  Sharif lowered his gaze and was silent. Azar, the manager of the drab hotel signaled to the young man standing on the side to lock the entrance door and went into his office. There, he picked up the telephone receiver, made a call and spoke quietly.

  “Hello, two fellows came here and I suggest that you apprehend them.” He listened to what he was being told and then said quietly,

  “One of them ran away. I managed to detain the other one for the present. Come at once.”

  Sharif remained at the hotel.

  He befriended the young man, called Raj, who told him he was paid fifty rubles a week. It was a miserable wage that he sent to his family, but he was happy that he had a job at all.

  They sat silently together every evening. Sometimes Raj sang in Persian, his mother tongue and then sipped from a small bottle of vodka. He had been given the bottle as a tip by Azar, for both of them. When he sang, his eyes filled with tears, which he wiped away with his filthy sleeve and offered the bottle to Sharif.

  The following day, Raj brought him a fresh change of clothes and after a few days he brought him a faded coat of uncertain color. At first, Sharif refused to take the coat till Raj told him quietly that he had taken it from a pile of unused clothes in the storeroom and even then, Sharif hesitated.

  “Take the coat; it’s okay. Sometimes it gets so cold here, it’s impossible to survive without one.”

  A week had ended. On the seventh evening, Azar, the innkeeper joined them. He drank with them from the bottle and as he became inebriated he told them that his mother was Iranian and his father, Caucasian. They stared at one another in silence in a brotherhood of the new friendship that had been forged between them. Sharif recalled that Raj had warned him that Azar was unpredictable and had warned him of his moodiness, so he kept quiet.

  “My father left when I was a kid,” Azar wailed. “But he did leave me something. Because of him I speak a little Arabic.” Azar chattered for a few more minutes till his eyes closed. When the two were certain he was drunk he suddenly opened one of his little eyes and spat out maliciously,

  “Hey, both of you, I hear every word you say, so take care!”

  Ten days had passed since Sharif came to the inn. That morning, he dragged a bucket and was soaking a rag in its murky water to wash down the floor when, suddenly, Azar a
ppeared before him.

  “Here, take this,” he said and Sharif stared at him. Between his fingers he held two twenty Ruble notes and flipped them as he handed them to him.

  “For me?” Surprised, Sharif leaned on the mop he held.

  “Da, da, (yes, yes), it’s for you”, the man said in Russian as he offered him the notes, “You already paid your debt with your work.”

  Sharif put out his hand cautiously and pulled the notes out of the fingers in front of him. Azar remained standing and, with the utmost candor, told Sharif, “I lied. Your debt was much smaller. That’s why I’m paying you now for your good work.”

  Sharif shrugged and put the notes into his trouser pocket, then unexpectedly, he asked,

  “What about Sergei, the driver who brought me here?”

  Azar broke out in a long streak of curses, of which Sharif could only make out a few, but understood that Azar knew the cab driver from before. When he finished shouting and turned to go Sharif said in Arabic,

  “ Kol kalb biji yumo, (every dog has his day).” Azar turned round angrily and waved his fist and Sharif hurriedly explained,

  “I meant that the driver’s day of reckoning will come," and he saw Azar’s fist drop.

  Sharif stayed there for one more day, except that he didn’t work that day at all. He found his plastic bag, the one with the red Coca-Cola logo, exactly where he had left it ten days earlier. He took it without examining its contents, pushed the door closed and left without saying goodbye. In fact, during the day he had thought of it, but couldn’t decide whether he was also angry with Raj or accepted his stay there in lieu of payment.

  Sharif did not know that already on the first day, Azar had reported him and Sergei to the authorities and thus did not take precautions or protect himself.

  A strong wind blew outside and the cold penetrated his bones. He stood with his back to the door, scanning the surroundings. To his right and ahead of him he saw gigantic trees, conifers that don’t grow crowded together but there were many of them. The idea of entering there did not appeal to him and even frightened him. Snowflakes hung on their branches and the wind whistled as it blew through them. Soft snowflakes drifted in the air and sank slowly to the ground, but didn’t pile up on it.

  Sharif decided to turn left and he started walking in the direction of the distant highway. He hoped a passing vehicle would stop and give him a ride.

  A car coming towards him went off the highway and onto the dirt road and bumped slowly on the sand until came right up to him and stopped. A dark-skinned girl rolled down a window and turned to him. Sharif raised his arms on both sides to demonstrate that he didn’t understand what she was saying. He touched his chest, smiled apologetically and turned to continue on his way. He heard the car door open behind him and powerful blow landed on his head and slipped down on his shoulder. Sharif tried to turn round but both legs folded beneath him, his body twisted in a half turn and everything went dark.

  He didn’t feel the two men drag him and throw him into the car. They hurried back into the car, sat on the back seat and rested their legs on his unconscious body as the car continued on its journey.

  The two were friends of Azar, the innkeeper. He had called them to turn Sharif in to the police but, for some reason, they hadn’t come when he called them ten days earlier.

  Sharif regained consciousness during the ride and found he was lying under their shoes. He felt the bumps of the ride and the pain in his neck reminded him what had happened. He gradually grasped where he was and continued lying there in silence, pretending he was still unconscious as his brain calculated his next move.

  A few minutes later, the car stopped and the driver got out. When he opened the rear door, Sharif sneaked a glance at him and saw a man dressed in police uniform. The two men lifted their legs off him, got out of the vehicle, picked him up and placed him on the driver’s shoulder, without knowing that he was fully conscious and realized his situation now. The driver shifted Sharif’s position on his shoulder to improve the weight distribution when Sharif suddenly jumped off and fell on the path in front of him. Before the men realized what had happened, Sharif got to his feet and ran very fast towards the trees he had seen before and disappeared between them.

  He stood among the many trees for a few seconds, allowing his eyes to adjust to the lack of light and then, quickly continued pushing his way inwards. After walking for a few minutes, he selected a tall tree, climbed it nimbly till he reached a branch in the trunk. He found a niche between the enormous branches, where he put his nylon bag and lay down.

  A few moments later he heard people speaking excitedly. Torch beams, projected in various directions, racing between the branches. The search for him continued for an hour or even more, but when that stopped and quiet returned Sharif continued lying on the branch without moving. He waited in the niche until he fell asleep.

  He was roused from his sleep by fresh voices. They had brought heavy back-up. Torches projected a variety of strange beams of light and for a moment a ray, directed up at the tree actually touched him but, fortunately for him, did not cast its light on him so he was not discovered. After a while, the people seemed to give up their search, their voices died out and the beams of light disappeared with them.

  He stayed like that, without moving, for hours. From the darkness that deepened and took control of everything, Sharif understood that daylight was ending, the very moment he had been waiting for. As he slid down the tree, his shirt caught onto the splintered bark of the tree and he heard it tearing. He feared his torn shirt might raise suspicion, so he decided to change into another shirt he had prepared. He opened the red bag and was surprised to find a transparent nylon bag containing dark bread and two cucumbers in it. He also found the two banknotes as well as three more warm sweaters. Sharif hugged the bag and pressed his lips to the red plastic.

  “That’s for you,” he said quietly, meaning Raj, his new friend from Azar’s inn. He rolled up his torn shirt and put it back in his bag. It was clear to him that under no circumstances should he leave a trail and he knew that now they might be looking for someone in a white shirt so he decided to change into a brown one. Now, he quickly put on the faded coat because the wind that blew between the tree trunks was icy cold, pinched at his face and made his teeth chatter in his mouth.

  Sharif weighed two possibilities now. If he decided to continue deeper into the forest, who knew where that route would lead him, and if he decided to leave the forest, his pursuers might be waiting for him and he would fall into their hands like a ripe fruit. He did not know which choice was the correct one, but because he feared the other route led to darkness and the greater likelihood of getting lost, he turned back and emerged from among the trees. He decided to rely on the blessed cover of night.

  With the trees behind him, he stood for a few seconds and accustomed his eyes to the dark. A full moon sailed across the sky like a yellow circle in the pervading dark. Behind him he heard the hoot of an owl, accompanied by a chirping of a cricket looking for a mate to spend the evening with, in the frozen grass.

  Sharif didn’t know where he was but relied on his good luck and healthy instincts and had no idea what a good choice he had made.

  Chapter Twenty Five

  Abigail sobbed with revulsion. She was lying in a large pool of urine. She had attempted to restrain herself for hours without success and had wet her clothes, the same clothes she had worn since she was caught days earlier. She had lost count of them. Gradually the liquid was absorbed and seeped into the sand beneath her. The stench of urine mixed with the smell of wet earth and she had grown accustomed to it.

  Suddenly she remembered that she hadn’t received any food that day. Her stomach grumbled out loud and she was very hungry. She searched and checked in another direction but found nothing there either.

  Abigail felt stinging prickles on her irritated and itching skin. The odor of urine attracted insects and crawling creatures of all kinds. Greenish fat worms crawle
d over the ropes, passed over her body descending to her clothes that were stiff from the dried out wetness they had been soaked in. Abigail studied the worms crawling over her. Some of them were narrow and small like pins and one of them that had tiny hairs sticking out of its back.

  She was bored and tried to preserve her sanity by seriously studying the worms. She decided to give them names. First of all, she decided that they were all female and thought of names in alphabetical order, from A to Z. For a change, she discovered some pale sandy colored cockroaches, which Abigail decided were transmitting signals and she made up the conversation they were having.

  ‘Look, there’s someone new here’, and the antennae opposite transmitted a cheeky reply:

  ‘She’s not new at all, I saw her yesterday.’

  Afterwards, she looked at their size and decided they were a father and his rebellious son and she suggested helping them make up their differences and composed a conciliatory conversation.

  Suddenly voices were heard, growing louder. She recognized they were speaking Arabic, but there were unfamiliar words that didn’t pose a problem because they were few and scattered over long sentences. Abigail strained in her effort to hear.

  “That’s it, he’ll live, and it’s unbelievable! I swear he didn’t have a hope. You should have seen how his broken bones protruded out of his flesh. Repulsive! And he lost so much blood. He’s not human. I tell you he’s an animal!”

  Abigail shuddered.

  “That’s for sure. So why do you think they brought the doctor to him?”

  “Really, why did they?”

  “Well, listen. They were all certain he would live an hour, maybe even two hours. Five days later, when they saw he was still alive, with God’s protection, they realized something unusual was happening here. What’s more, don’t forget he was surviving without almost any food.”