Chapter 33
Bassam Al-Biri clocked out his time to end the work day in the tunnel, just as the sun was setting. It was a little past the iftar, the daily break of the Ramadan fast. Enduring the fast was becoming more manageable in 2019, as the Holy Month was moving away from the summertime and instead taking place in May. Bassam brushed the dust off of his arms and looked forward to the meal that his wife had prepared. He could afford a good dinner, and had invited many relatives and friends, as his pay had risen several times during the last few years. Because of the continuing, mysterious deaths of workers, the tunnel builders had by far the best paid jobs in Gaza.
Bassam had managed to get a place at the construction site thanks to his cousin, Moussa, who was a Hamas activist. Bassam himself was not a strong believer in the cause of Hamas, but he had four kids to feed and send to school, and he had also managed to negotiate a special insurance of fifty-thousand dollars in case of death. Every time the noise of the drilling machine or the dehydration got unbearable, he thought about how his kids would eventually benefit from his efforts, finish high school and maybe, one day, get a good job in the Arab Emirates. Unless Hamas, inshallah, had managed to destroy the Zionist State of Israel in the meantime. In that case all his family would come back to what they considered their land, Palestine.
His thoughts were on the fresh labneh yogurt that was waiting for him at home, when he felt a slight pinch on his right arm. His left hand reacted immediately and smashed the bug on his skin. He was about to look down to see what insect he had just killed, when a strong wave of nausea hit him. He lost his balance and fell to the ground, the nausea became a big black cloud that wiped out all his thoughts like a huge hammer. The last thing he saw were the shadows of his coworkers, rushing towards him from the tunnel entrance that he had just left.
All of Bassam’s coworkers stopped just short of his body. They controlled the mixture of fear, anger, and grief they were feeling, and followed the instructions they had been given; not to touch the scene.
In minutes, an Iranian officer arrived with his assistants, and started taking pictures and collecting every kind of sample from the scene. At the end of the examination, in the middle of the night, Bassam was enclosed in a thermal-controlled body bag and smuggled into the Sinai Desert, from one of the many tunnels that were running below the border between Gaza and Egypt. Two days later, the corpse of Bassam was laying on a table in the research laboratories of the VAJA, the Ministry of Intelligence in Teheran, where the full dissection could eventually take place.
Four months later, Mehrdad Esfahani, the VAJA research head, sent out the Outlook invitation to brief all interested parties, as this time there was a ground-breaking discovery.
Alireza Gilani accepted immediately, canceled all other important meetings, and then went back to the Financial Times article he was reading. It was about the imminent offer of shares of Ambrosiax, a new US pharmaceutical company that was claiming to have invented a drug that could extend life by many decades.
Alireza was feeling a growing sense of anguish, as if he was under a siege of threats that were increasing by the day. He was sure that such a drug would be banned in his country, like the other synthetic drug that he had been fighting for the last several months in vain. At least he was now hoping to get some answers on this mysterious killer.
The triumphant tone used by Mehrdad Esfahani to start his presentation left no doubt; there was major progress done. Along with Alireza, there were the heads of the Gaza and Lebanese secret operations and the chief ayatollah of the Ministry, who was reporting directly to the Supreme Guide of the Revolution.
“For once,” said Mehrdad, “we have to thank the Americans. Our officer in Gaza used to work in the Los Angeles Police Department, as a crime scene investigation expert, before deciding to return to Iran and leave his parents in California. It is thanks to his expertise that we have been eventually able to isolate the cause.”
“Why was his family exiled to California?” Alireza prompted. “Are we sure we can trust him?”
“His family left Iran back in 1979, because his father worked in the secret police of the Shah, and Iran was no longer a safe place for him. He was born in the United States, grew up amid the Iranian diaspora of the West Coast, and became a police officer. Despite being a US citizen, he felt he needed to come back home. He returned to Iran in 2010, at the aged of thirty, and offered his skills to the Islamic Republic. After several years of loyal service, we decided we could entrust him to the most intricate tasks, like overseeing our investigation in Gaza. It paid off big time.”
“What did he find out?” urged the head of the Gaza operations, eager to know the results.
“We analyzed each and every thing that was on the body of the victim, from clothes to terrain samples. We actually dug out and collected everything that was around the body in a radius of five yards, took it here to our labs, and went through a full examination of it all. It was nearly five hundred pounds of dirt. That’s why it took some time, but we now know the answer. Our man - his name was Bassam - has been killed by a fly.”
“A fly?” commented Alireza, showing his disbelief.
“Obviously not an ordinary fly,” Mehrdad continued, “this one has a microchip attached to it, and is full of toxin to kill the victims. It is the attack weapon, no doubt. We have been lucky two times, or better, God has blessed us two times. First, the victim killed the fly and it remained attached to his body. Second, the methodology we used this time made sure no evidence could be lost.”
“Beware of your statements,” the chief ayatollah interrupted Mehrdad to challenge his view, “one might say that it was Western science, and not God’s will, to help us out.”
“But it was God that changed the heart of our officer, putting his knowledge at our service to show His glory and help us defend our country,” Mehrdad promptly rebuked. He was used to the theological challenges from the ayatollah, and he never gave up an opportunity to stand up for his faith.
“Anyway, now we know exactly what type of new threat we are facing. From here, we have to find a way to fight back, but it won’t be easy.”
“No,” thought Alireza, “it won’t be easy. We will need help.” He congratulated the research team, and he promised he would suggest them for a special reward in his next meeting with the Minister, in a few days. He then concluded the meeting and went back to his office. He noticed that after the long, dry summer the mountains outside of his window looked more barren and desolate than usual.
Israel had come up with a new, disruptive weapon, potentially more dangerous than the nuclear weapons that Iran was trying to match.
Three days later, he got his strategy approved by the Minister in the security review meeting. As soon as he was back in his office, he called the head of the Arab Emirates mukhabarat - the secret service. Alireza had never met him in person, however all his agents assured him that the one responsible for the counterintelligence, an agent named Tarek, was a reliable correspondent.
The Last Enemy - Part 2 - 2011-2023 Page 32