Last Instructions_A Thriller

by Nir Hezroni

  I leave Efrat on the floor at the front door, go to get my van, and park the vehicle near the entrance to the house. I load Efrat into the van, lay her down on the floor, tie her hands and feet to the metal rings, retrieve the last page that I tore out of my previous notebook from one of the cabinet drawers, slip the page under my shirt so it doesn’t get wet in the rain, close the doors to the back of the van, and go back into Avner’s house. I place the page on the kitchen table alongside a full glass of orange juice that Efrat had poured for herself but didn’t get time to drink. The page outlines some of the last things I did 10 years ago, and ends by saying that I will get to them and their families and exact my revenge on everyone. I’m putting my plan into action.

  I open the refrigerator in Avner’s kitchen, drink the rest of the bottle of orange juice, and toss the empty bottle into the trashcan under the sink. Fixed to the refrigerator is a whiteboard displaying the message Avner left for Efrat about going to the Organization’s satellite branch during the night. I add a small smiley face under the message with the erasable marker that’s hanging from the whiteboard on a colored piece of string. I use the bathroom and then leave the house, get into my van, and drive away. When I get to my rental, I put the sleeping Efrat in the cage along with the sleeping Amiram and remove the cuffs around his wrists and ankles. Before doing so, I inject him with some of the Diprivan. I go up to the living room and come back down with the blowtorch and weld shut the cage door and its hinges. No one will be entering or leaving the cage in the near future.

  I turn on the food machine and adjust the settings so that it will begin dispensing meals 3 hours from now, and once a day thereafter at the same time. I turn off the lights in the basement and return to the living room, go outside, tidy the van, park it in its regular spot, and return to the house.

  I sit in the living room, open the laptop, and watch the recording of the team in the Ibn Gvirol basement running for the ladder. It’s still raining and I make a cup of coffee in the kitchen. I was hungry earlier and had planned to cook dinner, but the feeling passed and I make do with coffee.

  I take a shower and go to bed.

  December 24, 2016

  “I regret to say that again we got very close to the bomb and again it slipped out of our hands at the last minute.”

  The mood in the warm boardroom in Toronto was gloomy. Outside, the snowflakes were once again caught up in a dance in the swirling winds, and Herr Schmidt’s group sat inside in silence.

  “I don’t believe it. What happened?”

  “We’ve lost contact with the twins.”

  “Maybe they’re busy tracking down the bomb and aren’t accessible?”

  “They’ve conducted dozens of missions for us around the world and this is a first. Ricardo has always made contact on time. We haven’t heard from them in three days and that can mean only one thing.”

  “Are we going to send more people to Israel to replace them?”

  “Yes. Even though our chances of finding anything have dropped significantly. We still have the images of the two. The woman landed in Israel recently. She’s probably looking for the bomb, too, and she has an advantage over us now. Ricardo reported finding her in Israel and said they were going to interrogate her, and that was the last message I received from him.”

  “They found her?”

  “Yes. She happened to sit down at a restaurant they were at.”

  “What are the odds of that? She must have been part of a team that was keeping an eye on the twins. They were toying with us. Maybe she was the one who took them out?”

  Herr Schmidt smiled. “If the twins were killed by anyone, it must have been an entire unit of the Mossad or some other intelligence agency, and they must have worked very hard to do so.” He looked at the image of Carmit that was on his desk alongside that of 10483. “This young woman doesn’t look like an entire Mossad hit squad.”

  “But what are the odds of them just happening to walk into the very same restaurant? Perhaps she found them and sat down, then waited for them to notice and follow her? Maybe the letter we received about Shariri was a trap?”

  Herr Schmidt sighed. “In any event,” he said, “I’ll send a larger team of people this time, even though I don’t think they’ll be more effective than the twins. But we have to try.”

  “Yes, we do. Perhaps we should send the Barber?”

  “He’s unstable. It could backfire on us.”

  “I don’t really think we have a choice.”

  Herr Schmidt sighed. He hadn’t slept much over the past few days. “Okay, I’ll get in touch with him.”

  12/05/2016–1 day after putting the plan into motion

  I turn on the light in the basement and go down the stairs carrying a bouquet of roses and white sheets. The basement here has been constructed as part of the house and I don’t have to climb down a ladder from inside the bedroom closet. Efrat and Amiram shield their eyes from the sudden light that blinds them. I turn off the recording that’s been playing on a loop in the basement, take a folding chair from against the wall, open it, place it in front of the cage, and sit down facing them.

  I observe them for a few minutes until they grow accustomed to the light.

  “Have you ever tried to shut your eyes tight and apply pressure to them?” I say to them “If you haven’t, you should. Close your eyes and apply pressure to them with the tips of your fingers. Like so. Not too hard. On the verge of pain. Now leave your fingertips on your eyelids with the same pressure and wait. Initially you’ll see dots of light that move from the center to the sides like small stars. Don’t ease the pressure. The image will change gradually and in the middle you’ll see a light blue circle of sorts that expands and switches color in its center to blue-black and then red. When you release your fingers and your eyes, that same circle will remain hovering in front of you for perhaps a minute or 2 until it disappears altogether. You can amuse yourself with this while you’re here in the cage. It will alleviate the boredom. It works in total darkness, too.”

  They stare at me but don’t say a word.

  “Now you’re going to stand up in front of me,” I continue. “I’ll give each of you a single rose. You’re going to hold it in your right hand and we’re going to take a pretty picture. But 1st tie these sheets nicely to the bars like so to give the image an interesting background.”

  I throw the sheets to Amiram but he doesn’t move. They’re staging some kind of a strike against me. I ask them if they’re enjoying the food. I tell them that I put a lot of time and thought into designing their food dispenser, but if they don’t appreciate my efforts I will switch it off and come back to see them in a few days.

  Amiram stands up and hangs the sheets on the bars of the cage like I show him. He and Efrat each hold a single rose in their right hand and I photograph them with my iPhone’s camera. I then tell them to give the roses and sheets back to me. Efrat hands me the roses and Amiram unties the sheet curtains and returns them to me. I tell them to wait for me for a moment and not to go anywhere and go back upstairs with the sheets and roses. I go to the kitchen, make a large pot of popcorn, and transfer the popcorn into 2 big disposable bowls. I go back down to the basement with the 2 bowls of popcorn and my laptop, connect the laptop to the large screen on the wall in front of the cage, place one bowl of popcorn close to the cage so they can eat, too, and sit down on the folding chair with the other, facing the screen and not the cage this time.

  “We’ll watch a movie together now,” I tell them and screen the clip I made with the camera in the previous basement—my creations at the Last Supper table, the team descending, the team members wandering around the basement in gas masks and examining the cage and my works of art, the team running for the ladder.

  We watch the film several times. It’s important to pay attention to the details.

  “Do you know that there are thousands of different species living inside each of your bodies,” I tell them when we come to the end of our last loo
k at the video clip. “Bacteria, germs, viruses. When you’re born you’re sterile, but from then on and until your death you accumulate more and more different species that live inside you. Particularly in your intestines. In fact, you’re giant colonies of microorganisms. If we were to collect everything living in each of you and make it into a single round ball, that ball would weigh a little more than a kilogram.”

  I take the laptop, close the screen, fold the chair and leave it resting against the wall, go upstairs, turn off the light in the basement, and shut the door.

  I’m an 11-year-old boy. I’m rushing to class through the large courtyard in the middle of the school. The bell rang 2 minutes ago and I hope the teacher’s late and I can make it to class quickly. I run through puddles in my gym shoes and the water seeps in and wets my socks. I’m looking down at the puddles on the asphalt of the big courtyard in an effort to skip over them and don’t notice the girl moving toward me. I crash into her and she drops the books she was holding. They fall onto the asphalt and get wet. I bend to pick up the books. When I stand up straight again I look at the girl. She has a black braid in her hair and is wearing a blue school shirt. The girl suddenly reaches into her bag with her right hand, pulls out a knife and stabs me in the chest several times. Shick. Shick. Shick. Shick. Shick. I drop down on all fours and try not to topple over. The girl puts the wet books into her bag. I collapse on the ground. The girl stands over me and holds the knife in her outstretched hand. She twists the blade right and left in the air and allows the rain to wash it off until it’s clean. The blood flowing from me mixes with rivulets of rain. The girl puts the wet knife back into her bag and continues walking in the opposite direction.

  I’m an 11-year-old boy. I’m rushing to class through the large courtyard in the middle of the school. The bell rang 2 minutes ago and I hope the teacher’s late and I can make it to class quickly. I run through puddles in my gym shoes and the water seeps in and wets my socks. Something causes me to look up from the puddles under my feet and I jump to the side to avoid crashing into a girl who’s walking toward me. She continues to walk in the opposite direction. I get the feeling that I’ve seen her before and shivers run down my spine. She walks on and I continue running to class. The teacher hasn’t arrived yet and I sit down quickly in my chair, panting.

  I’m an 11-year-old girl. I’m walking in the rain toward the school offices to report to the secretary after the geography teacher kicked me out of class a minute after the lesson started. She didn’t even allow me to put my books back into my bag. That boy from my year is running toward me without looking where he’s going. If he bumps into me, I’m going to kill him.

  12/06/2016–2 days after putting the plan into motion

  I get up early in the morning and make myself scrambled eggs and a salad with an avocado that I pick from the avocado tree in the garden behind the house. It’s avocado season and the tree is full. After breakfast I drive to Savyon, get off the main street, and drive along the quieter narrow roads in search of a secluded house that appears unoccupied. After searching for 2 hours I come across a secluded house at the end of HaHarzit Street. The gardens around the house have grown wild and it looks like the owner doesn’t live there. I take the last 2 remaining trashcan bombs out of the carpet van and install them on the sidewalk—one very close to the entrance to the house and the other a little farther down the street. I take a picture of the house with my iPhone, return to the van, retrieve my laptop, search for an available Wi-Fi network, find an open one named ROSA, and verify that I can connect to it and surf the Internet.

  I drive back to my rental and turn on the laptop. I open my photo library and move the cursor over the image of the house I photographed on HaHarzit Street. Right click, Properties, Details, scroll down a little, and copy the GPS coordinates.

  I download and install EXIF Editor and use it to alter the GPS coordinates of the picture I took of Amiram and Efrat in the basement, and check to make sure that the data has been saved properly. I close and reopen the picture of them in the basement and see that the file opens properly.

  Again.

  One more time.

  I erase all the metadata from the video file of the team in the old basement and save it to a separate folder together with the image file I changed.

  If Amiram was in the basement alone, I’d turn him into a piece of art in the style of Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, but I have 2 people in the cage and I need to choose a work that suits a duo. I end up going for the picture that Salvador Dalí painted on the roof of his museum in Spain. It will be relatively difficult to set up the art installation and hang them from the ceiling of the cage in the correct position. To create a perfect picture I’ll have to widen their feet, too, but it will be worth the effort.

  I check Waze to find out where Avner’s car is. He’s in Ra’anana. At Lowenstein Hospital. The car is stationary. I have to assume that Avner managed to figure out that I was there and has gone to the hospital to question the staff. I didn’t think he’d pick up my scent that quickly. I need to press ahead with my plan and kick things off this month. I also have to assume that the Organization now has an updated photograph of me. I did well to refrain from hanging around in places with cameras or to avert my gaze when there were cameras around. I guess that my beard, too, buys me a little time before any camera has a chance to tell them where I am or where I’ve been.

  December 24, 2016

  Marcus Delaney felt ill at ease. The somber man in front of him in a strange hat—like that worn by clergymen in Rome—was wearing a thick black coat and standing at the counter of his small gas station store. Not the kind of person you’d expect to meet in a small town in North Dakota. Marcus had just finished tidying the shelf behind him and when he turned around to face the counter again the man was already there. Marcus got the feeling that he’d been standing there and looking at him for a few minutes already.

  “Do you ever feel the need to dig into the earth with the end of your shoe?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You’re excused. When you’re standing on soil do you ever stab the end of your shoe into the earth, with little kicking movements?”

  “No.”

  The man in the hat fixed Marcus with a stare and shook his head slowly.

  “Actually yes. Now that I think about it I do sometimes kick aimlessly at the ground with the end of my shoe.”

  “Be careful not to overdo it.”

  “What would you like, sir?”

  “I allowed it to take control of me. I wasn’t careful. I didn’t pay attention. I used to stab at the earth with the end of my shoe whenever I found myself walking over exposed soil. It didn’t end well. It started with worn-out shoes that I needed to replace often, but I then started to walk home through playgrounds so I could dig in the children’s sandbox there. I started with my feet and then moved on to digging holes with my hands. My nails hardened, I began losing my sight and my sense of smell got sharper. Whenever someone passed nearby I could smell what they had eaten that day and the day before, and if it was a hard-boiled egg or tuna with onion, then a week back, too.” The man with the strange hat took a cigarette out of a box in his coat pocket and lit it with a Zippo, put the lighter and box back into his coat pocket, and took a long puff on a cigarette.

  “You’re not allowed to smoke in here.”

  “I started sleeping under my bed on earth I scattered there from the potted plants in my house. My wife didn’t know what was happening. She took me to a psychologist, thought it was some kind of a midlife crisis, but it didn’t help, and then the other changes started, too. My nails grew and a sleek black coat of fur grew over my body. My ears disappeared almost completely, and at night I’d vanish from the house and return to sleep under the bed in the morning, leaving holes behind me in all the gardens of the surrounding homes. I turned into a mole.”

  “Sir, would you like to buy something or pay for gas?”

  “Do you see a line here? Is there
a line of people standing behind me and waiting for me to finish up?”

  “No.”

  “It’s because only the two of us are here. And we’re having a conversation. You’re impolite. When someone speaks to you, you should listen. Impolite people have a short lifespan. Would you like to have a short lifespan?”

  “I’m listening.”

  “I left Texas two weeks ago. The ground there is hot and living there in the burrows I dug isn’t pleasant. And the burrows often collapse due to the type of soil there. Here in the north the ground is cold and hard. It’s harder to dig into but the burrows remain intact and the worms in the soil here are different. Tastier. Juicier.”

  “Sir, you don’t look like a mole.”

  The man swiftly drew a pistol from his coat and aimed it at Marcus. “Do you have any issues with my appearance?”

  The blood drained from Marcus’s face. He looked into the eyes of the man wearing the clergyman hat and for a moment the man’s eyes appeared smaller than normal and somewhat reminiscent of a mole’s. He wanted to say so but he couldn’t utter the words.

  The man’s phone rang with the ringtone of a sad flute. He kept his pistol aimed straight at Marcus’s face and used his free hand to retrieve the phone from his coat pocket and answer the call. Marcus couldn’t hear the person at the other end of the line, only the man standing in front of him. “Hello, yes, it’s me. Yes, I’m free for the next two weeks. Where? Israel? Do you know anything at all about the types of soil there? No, I mean if they’re good for digging. Never mind, I’ll find out when I get there. One hundred thousand dollars. Yes. Fifty now and fifty on completion. Two? A man and a woman? Send the photos to my cell phone.”