Abigail – The Avenging Agent: The agent appears again (46 page)

“Who will draft the order on behalf of
the ‘Mossad’ to the Kurdish traitor?”

“All of us,” replied Mustafa.  “But,
first, let’s find out which ship sails the route to Turkey.

After inquiring into the Turkish
shipping companies, it was decided to send him on the Turkish vessel, “Ankara”
but then, Mustafa stopped and looked at his colleagues.

“There is a problem.  I don’t know their
password to him.”

Silence reigned and they stared at one
another.

I am going to take a chance and send the
instruction without a password.  We have no choice.  Let’s disregard it and
pray that the Kurd isn’t too pedantic.”

Within an hour, the instruction to Karma
was drawn up and transmitted to him.

“Receive a car and a
package which you will plant in the identical vehicle

on board the “Ankara.”

You will receive details at the meeting tomorrow, at
Midnight.”

And, indeed, Karma received the radio
communication, deciphered it according to the key he had and did not pay heed
to the fact that he had not been given the password.

It
didn’t occur to him for a moment to wonder what had happened.  It was a
deviation that could cost him his life.

* * *

Effendi’s flight landed at the Iranian
airport at seven in the evening.  He was tired to death and in a foul mood.  He
went through passport control and customs quickly and turned to the enormous
airport parking lot that spread out over hundreds of acres.  After an
exhausting search, he discovered the silvery “Bentley” with the registration
number MS102, pressed the key and heard the two short beeps.  The first thing
he did was to call Rulam, his good friend from the organization.

“Hi, how are you?  What’s new under our
Iranian sun?”

They were close friends and often met
for coffee at the “Café Amana.”  They would listen to the clattering of
Backgammon dice being thrown on the boxes and pass the day doing nothing.

“Where are you calling from?” Rulam
asked. The tone of his voice was unusual and Effendi caught a strangeness in
his voice and raised his eyebrows.

“Hi, Rulam, it’s me, Khaidar,” thinking
he hadn’t recognized him yet.

“Yes, A’halan, where are you?  I was
looking for you the whole week,” he said, hiding, of course that he knew
Khaidar had traveled to the United States.

“I went on some errands, met a few people
and rested before returning.  What’s new?  Is everything all right?”

“Yes.”

“What’s new with you, man?” he asked and
instead of an answer, he heard Rulam ask him:

“Do you still drive that silvery
“Bentley” of yours?

“Yes, of course, why did you ask?”

Rulam ignored him and suggested:

“Come meet us at our café and
we’ll talk.”

“About what?”

“We haven’t spoken for a week.”

Effendi looked at his watch, yawned
loudly and decided he was too tired to travel such a long distance now.  He
decided that the luxurious car seat suited him better and a few hours of good sleep
would suffice to revive him.

Before he fell asleep, he thought over
the events of his visit to his family.

            He
knew that his situation was worse than it was before his conversation with his
sister, Salima.  But, even in his wildest dreams, he never dared to think she
would squeal on him and give her approval to the organization to eliminate him.

*
* *

            Newspaper
headlines screamed:

“Lead
discovered to hackers,

responsible
for the countrywide computer virus attack.”

            Abigail
read the reports disinterestedly, but then her heart missed a beat and she
caught her breath as she continued reading.

“The
hacker’s backpack, containing documents,

was
found in the area of the attack.”

Now,
Abigail recalled that she had dropped her bag as she made her crazed dash along
the dark tunnel to escape the dogs and had abandoned it on the tunnel floor.

            She
didn’t know what had happened that day under the Imam’s Mosque.

            Ali
had lit up the walls and the ceiling of the Royal tunnel, casting light on the
giant cables, alongside which, he noticed the camouflaged backpack.  The dogs
barked and he pointed to the bag.  One of the soldiers picked it up as he
yelled for joy and swept it up victoriously above his head.

“Idiot, throw it on the floor!  It might
be booby-trapped!”

The soldier dropped it in fright and
they both retreated, but nothing happened. They waited a few minutes.  Ali sent
the soldier back to fetch it and shouted to him:

“Check it out and feel it before you
bring it to me.”

“It’s empty, there’s nothing inside.”
The soldier announced and peeked inside.

 He
touched something, felt that it was a piece of cloth and pulled it out.

            “Hey,
it’s a hijab, it’s nothing more than a woman’s bag.  How did it get here?”

            “No
way! Did those bastards dress up as women?” Ali asked.  “Continue examining it
more thoroughly.”

            The
soldier sat down, put his hands into the bag and pulled out a rolled cloth,
spread it out and shouted again:

            “I
found a painted canvas, just doodles!”

            Ali
illuminated it with his flashlight and mumbled:

            “Interesting,
very interesting,” he exclaimed and kneeled to get a closer look.

            In
the painting, a woman was depicted in a tent with two young women and a little
girl. Through the flap of the tent, a white camel, an enormous palm and yellow
sand appeared in the background.

            Another
soldier came up behind them.  He was Ibrahim, their commanding officer.  He
stood over them, looked at the painted canvas and hit Ali on his back as he
yelled in his deep bass voice.

            “In
the names of all Allah’s holy prophets, what crazy good luck we have!”

            “It’s
only a painting, Sir,” Ali exclaimed, but Ibrahim didn’t even answer him.  He
leaned over the painted canvas, noted the clothing worn by the painted figures
and noticed the resemblance between them.

            “It’s
a family,” he said, “they resemble one another and it’s probably the family of
the bastard, who was here in the tunnel.

            Ibrahim
pulled out his communications device and made a call.

            “Commander,
Sir,” he said, “I have discovered something and we can stuff down the throats
of the people who messed with our computers.”

            “Come
over here and bring it with you,” his commander barked.

            He
was excited by what he had just heard because they had been chasing the wind
until this point.  He turned back and looked at Emir.

            This
time, Emir came to inform them that they had traced a radio transmission and
caught three ‘Mossad’ agents after cracking their communication code.

            “Apparently,
we are getting another agent who made a mistake.”

            “Is
that so?” Emir enthused, “now we are holding seven ‘Mossad’ agents and it seems
it’s time to consider executions.

            That
very day, the rolled canvas reached Iranian Intelligence, which examined it
under a magnifying glass.  Sallah raised a troubling assumption:

            “Perhaps,
they left it there on purpose, just to mislead us or it was just lost by someone.”

            “I
don’t think so.  We are dealing with a thorough and efficient enemy and that is
not his style.” Ibrahim stated.  I think it’s most unlikely that this painted rag
was just accidentally lost by someone,” he laughed out loud as he enjoyed considering
the possibility of the idea.

            “Not
necessarily, Sir.  Precisely because the enemy is so thorough, they could have
left the bag behind as a ploy to confuse us with an idiotic painting.”

            “Do
you think that all the figures painted here, the little girl and these women,
are working against us?”

            “They
look like real people to me, people who live in the desert where the sand is altogether
yellow, perhaps, too yellow.”

            “What’s
that got to do with it?”

            “In
our deserts, in the Sahara, in Abu Dhabi as well as the Turkish and Iraqi
deserts, the color of the sand is pale, much lighter than the color here.”

            “Explain,
Sir, what are you driving at?”

            “I’m
wondering if it isn’t by chance that small desert in Palestine, you know, what
do they call it?”

            “Negev,
Jezreel Negev.  If that is so, then the people dwell there in tents and if I’m
not mistaken, they are Druze or Bedouin.”

            “Well
done!” Ibrahim patted Ali on the back, “since you are familiar with this, get a
move on and start working.”

            He
turned to the others, excitedly.

            “We
are now looking Bedouins or Druze, who live in the yellow sands that resemble
these figures.  The moment you find anyone resembling them, let me know and we
will carry on from there.”

            Fereydoun,
the Head of Intelligence, was assigning the new tasks.

            “Ibrahim,
you will select the team to explore the deserts, but only after the people
receive my approval.”

            “No
problem.  They will appear before you tomorrow.  All you have to do is equip
them with…”

            “That’s
clear.  Ali, you take care of making copies of the painting you found in the
enemy cyber warrior’s kitbag.”

*
* *

Little Arlene, Abigail’s daughter, had
already wandered far away from the tribe’s encampment. She was leading the
tribe’s sheep and goats to the yellow dunes.

Arlene did not remember her mother. She
had come to terms with her death, just like all the members of the Ka’abiah
tribe. She would never forget her mother’s funeral, when she had held onto the
hand of her weeping grandmother, Leila.

She was not yet eight years old and was
proud that they relied on her and permitted her to herd the flock that numbered
some thirty-five sheep and eight black goats, on her own.

A large billy-goat walked ahead, leading
his group of females. He lowered his head that bore menacing horns and
threatened to gore anyone coming towards him.

Two black and white dogs raced around
the herd as they barked and chased after a sheep that had dared to wander out
of the group’s territory and didn’t stop until it returned to the fold.  The
hot wind rolled the light tumbleweed balls of dry twigs over the sand.  The
child stopped near the steep dune, taking care to remember her grandmother
Leila’s warning not to climb the dune with the herd, lest the animals sink in
the sand.

She sat at the foot of the sand hill and
leaned against the split trunk of a tree, enjoying the meager shade of its flat
top.  It provided slight relief from the terrible heat of the yellow desert. 
She blew into a hollow bamboo stalk in which she had made holes and produced
jarring tones.  The sheep bleated in response and she imagined they were her
friends, blew her flute, talked and sometimes also sang to them.

The skies were blue and the sun beat
down mercilessly.  Her blue eyes, whose shape resembled her mother’s,  closed
for a few minutes and she woke up when the dogs barked.  They pawed at the
earth and looked in the direction of the dunes rising high up around her.

Arlene tried to hush them up, but they
obstinately continued their angry barking as if they smelled an unfamiliar
scent that threatened their territory.  She rested her flute against the tree
trunk and made her way quietly to the dunes.  She made a broad circle around
them and there, she saw them.

There were two of them.  They lay on
their bellies, holding large rifles that they rested on the sand.  They were
facing the sand dune and did not notice the little girl, peeping at them.  The
dangerous smell of an unknown intruder aroused her Bedouin nose.  She retreated
quickly to the flock, raised her flute to her lips and blew her usual tune as
she hurried the sheep to follow her back to the encampment, to her place of
safety.

She made her way to the camp in the
space of a few minutes, during which she didn’t stop playing her flute.  She
knew that this way, she demonstrated calm to the visitors. At the same time, it
was a warning to the members of her family, who were not accustomed to hearing
the sounds of her flute near the tents.

Her uncle, Adnan, came out of the men’s
tent.

“Hey ho, stop playing that flute!  Why
are you returning now?”

She raised the flute in the air and
signaled towards the dunes from which she was returning, raised two fingers in
the air and when he looked at her in puzzlement, she said:

“There are two of them, with rifles and
they’re lying on the sand to the rear of the dunes,” and panting excitedly, she
saw her uncle’s eyes widen with interest.

“What, what happened?” Sharif, her nine-year-old
cousin, came out and Adnan hurried him to go back into the security of the
tent.  In the following seconds, Yosef, Leila’s husband, came out too and when
he heard what Arlene had seen, he suggested calling Mahmoud and, perhaps, Halil
and Adnan, as well.  He hurried into the tent and And also called the tribal Mukhtar,
his brother in law, the husband of Miriam, his sister. They lived in the
tribe’s tents that were a fifteen-minute camel ride away and spoke to him
quickly:

“There are visitors in the area, armed
and lying in ambush.  Arlene discovered them, but they didn’t see her.”

“Is that so?” I’m coming right away and
will bring what’s necessary.  Take out whatever you have, too.”

In the minutes that followed,
preparations went full-steam ahead in the tribe’s encampment.  The flap in the
canvas of the men’s tent, which was always kept open to cool the air, was
lowered and closed. The mothers and children left the two women’s tents and
gathered in the great dark tent, with Leila, the mother of Abigail and of the
whole tribe.

The sheep were bleating as they were
gathered and huddled together between the slats of the picket fences. A sharp
odor was emitted from the compost heap when the piles of straw were removed
from it and thrown into the cattle enclosure.  The white camel cow that
appeared in the painting, brought by the uninvited guests, was tethered to a
peg of the women’s tent with a thin rope.  It chewed the cud of food, it had
regurgitated.  After it folded its legs beneath it on the sand, it whinnied to
call the foal, which was also light in color, to come and sit beside it.

A considerable distance from the
encampment, where all the dismantled old car chassis were piled up together
with rusty barrels, the men had hidden weapons and covered them with pieces of
lumber and loosened bales of straw.

Adnan and Leila’s husband, Yosef,
entered the weapons cache, selected arms and returned to the tents.  They
dismantled the rifles and revolvers, oiled the parts, reassembled them and
loaded them with ammunition cartridges, going through the motions in calm silence. 
The young men and the youths sat cross-legged on the mats and watched what the
men were doing and getting a practical lesson in self-defense.

In the distance, behind the range of
dunes and shifting sands, two masked men unrolled the painted canvas and
compared it to the landscape that lay before them.

“Yah' Habibi, (my friend) I know that
this is the place.  There is no doubt of it,” Abdul claimed, “and do you know
what convinces me?  Look and see for yourself.”

Mahmoud looked at the painting, raised
his gaze to compare the tented landscape and the sand facing him.  He saw the
herds in their enclosure, the three horses grazing in the area and heard a
donkey braying.  He shrugged.  Nothing he saw matched the painting.

“Do you want a hint? Look at the animals
wandering around there,” but Mahmoud shrugged his shoulders again and said:

“I looked.”

“Did you see all of them, the horses,
the camels, and the sheep?”

Then, Mahmoud noticed the white camel
cow, tethered to the dark tent.  He had seen many camels in his lifetime but,
they were all orange-colored or yellow.  He could not remember ever having seen
a snow white camel like the one crouching beside the tent. A white camel also
appeared in the painting they had and, at once, he realized what made Abdul so confident
that this was the place the artist had immortalized on the canvas.

The two men had not been sent to kill or
injure anyone and they had been discovered by the girl in the middle of their
surveillance assignment to gather information. The plan was to send their
findings to Fereydoun, the Head of Iranian Intelligence.

They had already covered other deserts
and encampments in the Middle East. They drank coffee with tribesmen, making
comparisons between them and the figures in the painting and found no
similarity to the painted landscape at the places they visited.
Today, the landscape before them was very much like that in the painting,
especially that same white camel cow and the enormous palm that had been
planted beside the dark tent.

“Let’s get closer and have a look at the
women of this tribe to make a final comparison,” Mahmoud said. When he saw
Abdul squinting into the distance, he understood that he suspected something.

“I don’t like this,” Abdul muttered,
“something very strange is going on here.”

Mahmoud tried to grasp what was
troubling his partner to the assignment and suddenly got it.

“Wait! There were sheep here a couple of
minutes ago.  Where have they disappeared to?  I don‘t hear the shepherd’s
flute now.  Has he fallen asleep?

Exactly! It’s strange how everything is
silent and nothing is moving,” Abdul muttered.  He looked at the sun, high up
in the sky and knew it was noon.

“What’s going on? Aren’t they eating
here, today?  Where are the people and where are the children?

“It really is strange, it looks
abandoned.”

Abdul rose slowly from where he was
lying, raised his rifle high over his head to shake off the sand that had stuck
to his sweaty hands and at that moment a shot rang out. He froze momentarily on
the spot, then fell down and lay there.

Terrified, Mahmoud looked at his friend
lying on the sand,  suddenly came to his senses and began to flee.  He dropped
his gun and the canvas on the sand while another shot sprayed sand around him
and he remained fixed to the spot, with his back to the gunmen.  He raised his
arms above his head in a sign of surrender then, turned around slowly.  He saw
two men coming closer, then pushed his hand into his shirt, pulled out a
revolver and fired at both of them.

Yosef swayed, held his shoulder but
remained upright.  He raised his rifle with great effort and shot one round
into the forehead of the man holding the smoking revolver.  He managed to see
him sink to the ground and only then, did he also fall on the sand. Adnan
grabbed his throat and streams of blood burst out between his fingers.  His
eyes stared ahead, he tottered on his feet and sank to the sand as he gurgled
and fell silent.

The shots echoed had reached the
encampment.  Two youths, Bijan, and Sultan came out of the tents and ran to the
dune hills, carrying rifles.  They stopped a short way before the dunes, raised
the rifles, pressing the butts against their shoulders as they prepared to
fire, there was dead silence.  They closed in on the dunes slowly,  taking a
wide berth around them and discovered four people lying silently on the sand.

The streams of blood that had reddened
the sand near Adnan’s neck left no doubt regarding his condition but, Yosef sat
up and groaned.  Bijan approached the two strangers lying on the sand and Yosef
shouted across to him:

“Be careful, he shot us with a revolver he
pulled out of their shirt!”  The boys halted.

The fourteen-year-old, Sultan, kicked one
of them and then the other and yelled:

“They’re both dead!”

He bent down and removed the kefiya that
covered the face of one of them.  But then, a single shot was heard.  The boy
straightened up, then collapsed face down on the sand like a log of wood.

He didn’t know that Abdul, who had
fallen first, had been lying there, playing dead, the whole time.

Bijan stood beside him and began
shooting Abdul without aiming or thinking.  He screamed like a lunatic:

“You son of a bitch, may you burn in
hell!”  He repeatedly fired until the emptied cartridge clicked.  Sinking down
on his knees, he held Sultan close, turned his body towards him and wept.

The painted canvas was laid out on the
sand in front of him.  It was partly covered with grains of yellow sand.  Bijan
shook the dirt off and showed it to Yosef, who was sitting on the ground. 
Yosef’s mouth dropped wide open as he realized why the two men had reached
them.

That same day, they carried Adnan,
Abigail’s brother, and Sultan, Miriam’s son, bearing them up high and mourning
bitterly, to the tribe’s burial place.

At sundown, Israeli soldiers and border
police came to the encampment.  They came to investigate and understand the
incident that left four people dead. 

"Why did they shoot you?"
asked the israeli soldier, ranks of officers were on his shoulders, and looked
at the distraught boy. Bijan raised and dropped his shoulders, indicating that
he didn’t know and also he didn’t care.

“Let’s go to the scene of the incident,”
said the officer and escorted Bijan to the site, where there were still
reddened grains of sand.  The soldiers measured distances, photographed signs
of movement that were visible in the sand and searched for reasons for the short,
bloody struggle that had occurred at noon that day.

The painted canvas found by Yosef and
Bijan beside the bodies of the two men had been brought to the women’s tent and
they did not show it to the soldiers.

When they brought the canvas to Leila,
the mother of the tribe, they saw how she held it, unrolled it and turned it
over to look at the other side in front of them.  Suddenly, her hands trembled
and she groaned.  Her daughters crowded round her on cushions in the tent.

Those figures are us,” she mumbled,
“it’s me, all of you, as well as our Arlene.”

“You’re right,” Liraz said,  “Who
painted it?”

Leila stared at them and everyone heard
her whisper:

“Naima.”

Both Liraz and Miriam understood that
she was expressing her longing for her daughter, who had been murdered two years
earlier, but neither attributed great importance to the words she now spoke:

She said:  “Naima is alive!”