Last Instructions_A Thriller

by Nir Hezroni

  “She’s disappeared.”

  “What?”

  “Disappeared. We have no idea where she is or if she’s left the country. All air and sea ports and land crossings have her photograph and fingerprints, but she’s a professional. She may have already managed to get out and head back to England, but not on a direct flight for sure; and we have no idea where she lives there. The Organization-issue cell phone I gave her at the main base was found on the roof of the Azrieli Tower. And if she has a device of her own here, we aren’t familiar with it. We have no way of knowing where she is right now.”

  December 25, 2016

  Ben Gurion International Airport was relatively quiet that Sunday afternoon. Tourists arriving and departing, pilgrims and business executives returning to Israel and hurrying out to grab a taxi to get back to their families.

  Two nuns dressed in black habits with white collars were sitting in the food court and eating identical dishes of noodles and vegetables. They were engrossed in conversation when the man dressed in black sat down next to them. His head boasted a capello romano and a thick black coat hung over his arm.

  “Hello, Sisters,” he said. “A pleasant afternoon, isn’t it?”

  “Hello,” they both responded, looking at him and trying to ascertain the nature of the man who sat down next them—if he was just being friendly or if he was one of those troublesome individuals they sometimes encountered.

  “I noticed you’re both eating mushrooms. Are you aware that you’re eating pieces of the most intelligent brain on Earth?”

  They both looked at the man, who placed his folded coat on his knees.

  “It’s a field that interests me, Sisters. I smell them when I’m digging tunnels under the ground and looking for food. The fungus itself is a huge organism that can live for thousands of years. It spreads under the surface in the form of a weblike structure that can cover an area of several square kilometers. It’s a huge brain under the ground. What we see aboveground is only a small finger that the fungus extends in order to reproduce. I try not to damage them, even if it means having to burrow deeper into the earth. You’re eating an animal now that is far more intelligent than a dolphin or chimpanzee. Or humans, too, for that matter.”

  “You dig tunnels under the earth?”

  “Yes, Sisters. It’s my destiny in life. Everyone has a destiny. It’s the earthworm’s destiny to aerate the soil, my destiny is to dig tunnels in the earth, and your destiny is to serve the benevolent God who created that wonderful organism known as a fungus.”

  The nuns pushed their plates to the middle of the table.

  “Thank you, Sisters.” He bowed to them and stood up. The woman he was following had finished eating and was heading to Concourse C on the way to her departure gate. He’d been following her since Tel Aviv. When he realized she was heading to the airport, he booked a flight to New York with his cell phone and was already in possession of an electronic boarding pass by the time he walked into the terminal. He stood behind her at the check-in counter and got a look at the destination printed on her ticket. Using a second passport under a different name, he then booked another ticket for himself, to the same destination that appeared on hers, walked away from the check-in counter, went through the security check again, for her destination this time, and caught up with her once more in the food court, where she was eating a slice of apple cake and drinking coffee. She was easy to spot with that colorful woolen hat on her head. He’d follow her onto the aircraft soon and remain on her tail from there on.

  Night

  The sky tonight is black as coal, starless, and a ghostly white glow from the full moon peeks through a hole in the clouds, illuminating the snowflakes falling to the ground. The air is still and quiet. Not a breath of wind. The glow from the moon lights up the thick layer of white snow covering the ground, and the river looks like an enormous black snake slithering through its white surroundings. She walks quietly through the snow, leaving in her wake a long trail of footprints that stretch from all the way back over the hills behind her and to the river she’s walking toward. She reaches the bank of the river and stops. The bodies floating in the water come to a halt and amass into a single heap at points where the river twists and turns and other debris piles up. Behind the hills where she’s come from, Hiroshima is ablaze in an orange glow that paints the surrounding hills in the colors of an endless sunset. She doesn’t want to look back at the burning city but feels she is not alone. She turns around and sees them both close by. Standing two meters behind her. The angel folds its wings backward and its skin shines and appears to reflect the light from the moon. Just like the snow. The angel’s hand is holding onto the hand of a young girl in a white dress, and both are almost swallowed up by the white snow all around them, with only the girl’s black eyes and the angel’s bright blue orbs distinctly visible on the white backdrop. The snowflakes around them continue to fall in straight lines and disappear silently into the layer of snow on the ground.

  “Keiko?”

  “Yes.”

  “私は今夢を見ていますか？”

  “Yes, you’re dreaming now.”

  “I’m sorry.” She drops to her knees, clutching the palms of her hands together and bowing until her forehead almost touches the soft snow. A small hand lightly touches her shoulder. She straightens up in silence, still on her knees. Tears are streaming down her cheeks. “I’m so sorry.”

  “I know.” Small hands caress her face and the black eyes look deep into her soul. “I forgive you.”

  “That doesn’t make sense. How could you ever forgive me?”

  “I forgive you. This is the last time you will see me. You know what you have to do. A huge wave is approaching. It’ll be here soon. The time for playing God is over.”

  The angel and the girl turn around, head off hand-in-hand and are swallowed up by the falling snow. She feels the black hole that opened up in her heart a long time ago begin to close and disappear. She can breathe easier. She knows what she has to do. She stands and starts walking toward the bridge that stretches over the river.

  December 26, 2016

  “You need to get here now, sir.” Special Agent Thomas Greene was speaking to the director of the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division. “Drop whatever you’re doing. I apologize for the urgency but I can’t discuss the matter over the phone.” The conversation ended and Thomas Greene stared again at the nuclear warhead in front of him.

  He stepped slowly and examined every corner of the storage unit. Resting on the wooden table on the one side of the unit, next to a neat stack of tools, was a thick A4-size manual bound in a see-through cover. He leaned forward without touching anything and peered closely at the manual. It looked like Russian. He took out his secure cell phone, photographed the title on the cover page, and sent the image to the Operations Room at the Counterterrorism Division. “Find a translator and get back to me.”

  RDS-9I 38KT

  Инструкция по сборке (торпеда / баллистическая ракета малой дальности)

  Инструкция по применению и Применение

  Special Agent Thomas Greene was still busy documenting the rest of the contents of the unit when the director of the Counterterrorism Division arrived on the scene some forty minutes after their call and stepped quickly into the storage space. “Damn traffic jams for half the way,” the director said. “What’s that smell?”

  “A dead rat, sir. Here behind this table. It gnawed a hole here through the wooden ceiling and fell into the storage unit. Probably died of starvation after gnawing on the plastic.”

  “Ask the owner to bring a garbage bag and get it out of here. It’s impossible to breathe in here.”

  “Or a small mahogany casket perhaps, sir, with a small Stars and Stripes draped over it. A whole lot of people may owe their lives to this rat, and perhaps it deserves a burial with full military honors and a three-volley salute.”

&nb
sp; Special Agent Thomas Greene briefed the director of the Counterterrorism Division on all he had learned thus far and showed him the screen of his cell phone:

  RDS-9I 38KT

  Assembly Instructions

  (Torpedo / Short-range Ballistic Missile)

  Arming and Operating Instructions

  “It’s a translation from Russian of the title of that thick manual there on the table.”

  “Oh my fucking God! It’s a nuclear warhead!”

  “Apparently so, sir.”

  “And this vacuum cleaner? Here presumably to activate that thing from a remote location? To cause a drop in barometric pressure to simulate altitude?”

  “I don’t know, sir, but I think the holes in the plastic made by the former rat here, God rest its soul, sabotaged the operation of the device. I called you first, sir, along with our Bomb Disposal Squad, so that you can take charge of the incident before other administration officials try to intervene. I canceled the request for assistance made to the local FBI office by the police detective who was first called to the scene. I don’t want us to have too many people with something to say. Right now we only have two. The policeman and the storage facility manager, and I’ve made it clear to both of them that if a word of any of this gets out we’ll know who to look for.”

  “Good thinking, Special Agent…?”

  “Greene, sir.”

  Loud sirens rang outside and a minute later three bomb squad members entered the storage unit and stood dumbfounded in front of the nuclear warhead. One of them looked up after taking a long close look at the contents of the box wrapped in the torn plastic. “We need the army here. Someone who specializes in warheads. And CIA personnel from the Russian department. Technicians who speak Russian and can read through that manual eight times so they know exactly what they’re doing. If I touch the wrong thing here, Washington will go up in smoke. Perhaps we should evacuate the area?”

  The director of the Counterterrorism Division shook his head. “That would cause a nationwide state of panic that would take years to recover from. We need to handle this quietly.” He looked at Thomas Greene. “Have you started looking into the madman responsible for this?” He gazed at the vases with the plastic flowers, the strange writing, the dry drops of blood. A fucking voodoo ritual with an atomic bomb. Un-fucking-real.

  “Yes. I sent the name of the person who rented this unit to headquarters, along with a copy of his passport. The manager of the facility gave me his particulars. The lessee’s name is Oscar Salstrom and he’s a Swedish citizen. Maybe someone who’s carrying this out on behalf of Islamic State? That writing looks like Arabic. Border Patrol officials checked the passport and sent me details. Oscar Salstrom entered the country on the nineteenth of March through the Tijuana overland border crossing. I was told by Border Patrol officials that he entered in an RV, and the manager of this facility also told me that he left an RV here in long-term storage. It’s parked here outside. Do you think he managed somehow to smuggle in the bomb in the RV? How did they miss it?”

  “Is he still in the country?”

  “No. I was informed by Border Patrol that he left here on March twenty-eighth. He was here for just nine days, sir.”

  “Where did he fly to from here?”

  “To Tel Aviv, with a connection in Frankfurt, sir.”

  “Tel Aviv? That’s odd. Get someone here who knows Hebrew so they can read what’s written on the plastic. It could be Hebrew if this Oscar Salstrom flew there. Let’s go outside for a moment and check out the RV. Ask the manager of the facility to get the keys, and if he doesn’t have them, then tools to break in.”

  “Yes, sir. Later I’ll compare the fingerprints from the unit here with the prints they took from him at the border crossing just to make sure we’re definitely dealing with the same person.”

  “And we need to keep a close eye on this place twenty-four seven. After we clear out this storage unit, I want a bed and a fridge with food in here, and guards to be stationed inside around the clock until this Salstrom or whoever sent him comes back to figure out why their bomb didn’t work or until we catch him ourselves if he doesn’t come back here.”

  “Yes, sir. I’ll take care of it.”

  They approached the RV and the members of the bomb disposal unit began checking to see if it was rigged.

  December 25, 2016

  A nurse popped her head into the room and asked him if he was done eating because a woman was there to see him.

  “Yes. No problem. Send her in.”

  The door opened and in walked Efrat.

  She was pale and had lost weight, but the glint in her eyes was still the same. “What did he do to you?” she asked as she approached Avner’s bed and looked at all the instruments around him. “What did he do to you?” Avner asked in response, and Efrat leaned over the bed to hug him. Avner’s pain disappeared for a short while as he held her close in a long embrace.

  She sat down on the armchair for visitors at the side of his bed and wiped the tears from her eyes. “It could have been worse,” she said. “I can see that you haven’t touched your food. Are you still not allowed to eat much?”

  “I’m as hungry as a bear. But the food here is inedible. I’m already having hallucinations about food. I swear I can smell a shawarma in a wrap right now.”

  Efrat smiled, reached into her bag for a tightly sealed packet, opened it, and took out two shawarma wraps that smelled absolutely wonderful. “I stopped at Shemesh on the way,” she said. “I’ve got cabbage and pickles here, too, just the way you like it.”

  Efrat reached into her bag for another packet from which she pulled out two cans of Carlsberg. She opened them both, handed one to Avner, and kept the other for herself. They raised the cans in a toast and each took a long sip. And then Avner placed the can on the cabinet next to the bed and sunk his teeth into the shawarma, savoring every bite. Efrat tucked into hers with gusto, too.

  “I don’t remember you being a big fan of shawarma,” he said.

  “After a month on dog food, things change.”

  “A month on dog food??”

  “It’s a long story. We have plenty time. Let’s finish eating first.”

  They both sat in silence, eating their food and sipping their beers.

  “I’ve decided to quit the Organization,” he said to Efrat.

  The faint sound of thunder could be heard outside.

  Rain started to fall again.

  December 29, 2016

  Taylor was the first to get to the door, and he opened it. He never bothered to check who was knocking, no matter how many times they told him to ask first who’s there and only then to open.

  It took him a few seconds to understand that the curly blonde figure standing in front of him was his mom. “Mum’s here!!!” he shouted gleefully. And Carmit, standing in the doorway with her bag on her back still, picked him up, squeezed him tight against her, and nuzzled into his neck, inhaling his scent.

  “Muuuuuummmm!!” Emily came running out of her room, wrapped her arms around her mother’s waist, and pressed her cheek to her tummy. Carmit lowered Taylor to the floor and hugged her daughter.

  “What did you bring us?” Taylor asked, bouncing with joy.

  “I know I missed Christmas by four days, but that’s it; no more work trips for me. That was my last one.” Carmit freed herself of the large backpack and placed it on the floor for Taylor to start rummaging through its contents.

  “You’ve been away for a long time, Mum. I’ve missed you,” Emily said, still holding on to her mother.

  Guy emerged from his study, barefoot, dressed in sweatpants and a T-shirt with an image of Heisenberg from Breaking Bad. He walked over to Carmit and held her in a long embrace. She rested her head on his shoulder and was suddenly overcome with exhaustion.

  “It’s over,” she whispered in Guy’s ear.

  “I don’t believe it! Lego Alien!” Taylor, who was sitting on the floor surrounded by pieces of torn wrapping pa
per and the clothes he’d thrown frantically out of the bag, raised his arms in triumph, clutching the box of Lego.

  Carmit, Guy, and Emily looked at him and burst out laughing.

  * * *

  Late that night, when everyone was fast asleep, Carmit got out of bed, taking care not to wake Guy, and went over to her backpack. She retrieved her cell phone from one of the pockets and made her way to Guy’s study, closing the door quietly behind her. She removed the phone’s memory card, slipped it into the appropriate slot in Guy’s laptop and opened the Pictures folder. She marked three images and printed three copies of each. Now she had three copies of the letter 10483 wrote to the FBI, the CIA, and the White House, along with three copies of his image to go with them.

  She drove to his house immediately after coming down from the roof of the Azrieli Tower and fleeing the scene. The house was under guard, but the two Organization security personnel who were smoking outside let her in when she showed them the temporary Organization tag Grandpa had given her. Everyone had left to join the chase and a search of the house had yet to start. She went into the kitchen and opened the drawers one by one. One of the drawers contained the envelopes he had prepared, and she opened one of them and took pictures with her phone of the image of 10483 and the two pages of the letter that were inside, put everything back in its place, and waved good-bye to the guards as she drove away.

  Carmit went to the kitchen, put on a pair of disposable cleaning gloves, returned to Guy’s study, opened one of the drawers in the desk and took out three white envelopes, postage-paid for international delivery. She retrieved the pages from the printer tray, carefully folded the copies of the letters, inserted one copy of the letter and one image into each envelope and sealed them. She Googled the street addresses for the letter’s three destinations and printed out labels for each envelope: