by Rose Fox
“Someone survived the explosions!” Nabil yelled, “Wait, it’s a woman.”
“Another guard arrived, also looked through the binoculars and shouted:
“Oh wow, she came out of there alone. I think we should shoot her.”
“I have a better idea. Instead of killing her now, let’s wait for her here and we’ll see when she gets here. Where can she go from here? She has to pass this way.”
The binoculars were fixed in a short concrete tunnel, through which they followed what was happening outside. Nabil sat there and kept in touch with the only person walking in front of them. Two armed guards walked around the hill, ready to receive information that might indicate a change in the survivor’s route.
At five o’clock, when dawn was about to break, one of the guards yelled that a cart and horses had come from the direction of the city and the woman had climbed on it. Nabil ran out immediately and pressed against the right side of the hill, his weapon drawn in his hand, ready to shoot them the moment they were facing them. Salamas joined him quickly, knowing very well who was in the cart. He hoped to rescue the woman, as he had been asked to do in an urgent communication he received a day earlier.
Now, when he finished tying the scarf over her eyes, he pushed her from behind and steered her forward, into the tunnel opening. Abigail sensed the heat surrounding her and from the musty smell of mold she realized she was in a place that sunlight never reached. Someone threw her on the ground and she heard footsteps moving away. Her thoughts raced crazily. She recalled they had traveled through an uninhabited wasteland without even a single wall and this morning, a hill suddenly appeared in this desert terrain. It must have risen here only to hide or disguise something beneath it.
Abigail shook her hands that were tied behind her back and discovered that the tie was loose, understood that Salamas had failed to strengthen it on purpose. She freed her hand, pulled the scarf down exposing one eye and saw she was sitting on the sand, surrounded by metal parts and large missile cones, arranged on pallets – each on a separate pallet. She stared at the weapons in terror, because she recognized the symbols on them that signified they had nuclear warheads and understood they were, to all intents and purposes, nuclear bombs.
“Oh, who would believe me?” She thought, at once.
Abigail also held the view that Iranians had not yet produced sufficient uranium to use in nuclear warheads and were, therefore, not equipped with missiles like these. Above her stood a table with four metal legs and the tools that were visible on it exuded the smell of oil and grease. At this moment, she had no doubt that she was at the entrance to the missile warehouse the ‘Mossad’ was searching for.
What she didn’t know, of course, was that this arsenal was made up of many rooms divided over two levels. The miserable mound that appeared on the surface covered only the entrance to a vast plant in which nuclear warheads were assembled on the missiles.
The lower level contained long-range missiles intended for use over distances of thousands of miles. On the upper level, short-range rockets aiming for several or hundreds of miles were assembled. On this level, they also manufactured ‘dirty nuclear’ warheads. When they explode, there is no way to control the contamination they cause in vast areas and to every living organism.
Abigail immediately pressed the center of her earplug. She straightened the thin cord and prayed she would be answered quickly and as soon as contact was made, she whispered:
“A little sandy hill, a few miles from Naka,
I see missiles with nuclear warheads.”
Just then, she heard voices approaching and immediately put away the cord, covered her eyes with the scarf and slipped her hands back in the tie behind her back. She recognized the voice, it was Salamas.
“No, that isn’t right, don’t do that. It’s forbidden (haram), believe me, she isn’t worth the bullet in your revolver.”
Abigail’s heart missed a beat and just as she heard the weapon being cocked, she rolled aside in the direction of the table she recalled. She pulled out her hand pushed the scarf from her eyes and kicked the feet she saw. Naim fell down and a shot was released from his pistol. A second later she saw someone else’s legs approaching the table. She heard him panting with the effort and a lump of metal fell off the table onto the head of the gunman.
“Get up, get out,” she heard.
She pulled the brown lump that was pressed to her body, under her dress, pressed forcefully and broke the metallic tube, which was the detonator. In the little window on the narrow tube, the yellowish liquid began to spread out of the ampule she had broken inside it. Abigail knew that in the following half-hour, the yellow acid would dissolve the cord that held the spring and release it and that, in turn, would hit the firing pin and explode.
She pushed the explosive, which was still wrapped in brown paper under one of the pallets, so that it would not be discovered by anyone entering the place in the next half an hour.
Salamas had already left and she hurried after him. When she heard the roar of a motorcycle, she ran and pressed herself up against the hill. But then she saw that Salamas was sitting on it and waiting. She jumped up onto the seat behind him and grabbed hold of his clothes. The huge bike leaped forward, Abigail pressed her face against his back, but the wind blew in her ears and almost pulled the hijab off her head.
In the distance, the first trees and roofs of the houses of the city began to appear. She whispered into his ears, trying to get above the whistling of the wind, and tell him the last sentence Ali Akhbar had spoken:
“At seven o’clock in the yard of the hospital at Baku,” and he nodded to indicate he could hear her.
All hell broke loose in the tunnel they had left.
Hours earlier, just as the blind-folded woman had been pushed into the fore-chamber of the arsenal, Nabil called in and proudly announced that the prisoner was in their hands.
In fact, many hours earlier, during the night when the reactors were aflame, Nabil had contacted a senior officer in the Basij Militia and the Revolutionary Guards, by the same name – Nabil. He told him about a woman, who came from the direction of the reactor.
“Are you sure? How did she look?”
“I don’t know, ah…I didn’t manage to see her,” he stuttered.
Now, when he reported to Nabil, the senior officer, that this woman had been apprehended, the man asked again.
“And now? Did you notice how she looked?” And he added, at once: "Tall, with light-colored eyes?”
“Yes, yes,” Nabil said hurriedly because that was the first thing he noticed about her face.
“We’re coming right away,” Nabil shouted hoarsely, “Guard her closely.” Nabil pressed on the speaker and heard him loud and clear.
“Listen, Habibi (my friend), that is an important one you’ve caught there! She carried out many attacks and we’ve been looking for her for a long time. Two days ago, she got away from a boat on the Naka beach after killing its Captain. Keep her alive and don’t do anything stupid. I am sending my people.” And before he hung up, he added:
“Ah, she’s also dangerous!”
This was also heard by Naim, who was sitting at the binoculars. He decided there was no point in waiting and he would take care of her and finish her off right now. He was convinced he would be lauded for his initiative, so he pulled out his revolver and went to the fore-chamber and, just then, met up with Salamas, who had come to release Abigail.
Now, after her escape the place was in turmoil.
When a shot was heard from Naim’s pistol, Nabil entered the fore-chamber and discovered Naim, lying dead under a lump of metal. He yelled and fired in the air because he knew he had now lost something much greater than just any dangerous agent, who had succeeded in escaping. He now feared for his life, which clearly he knew that from this moment they do not value more than a piece of the pie.
About ten minutes later, a vehicle for transporting prisoners arrived. Steel mesh surrounded the back and
the rear doors could only be opened from inside the driver’s cabin. Two officers, who commanded Iran’s armed forces and security operations, got out of the cabin. They had both been sent to the place and as they sped along the roads from Naka, they had sounded their sirens.
On the way, they chatted about what they were going to do to this prisoner, about what information they would get out of her and understood they had caught a big fish in their net. They anticipated the praise and adulation their superiors would heap on him.
“Do you know what? It seems she’s been caught too quickly, this time,” Liam conjectured. Nabil nodded. Out of the vehicle, they now hurried inside, almost running, out of curiosity to see the agent they had been talking about, who in addition to her special activity, as they were told, was also gorgeous.
“Where is she?” Liam asked enthusiastically and was led the room, where Naim’s body still lay beneath the block of metal.
“Naim tried to shoot her…she got away from here and I…really don’t understand and don’t know how and who killed him,” Nabil stuttered and choked. He hurried to salute and saw how Liam exchanged glances with his partner, Nabil.
“Listen, we are both called Nabil, but only one of us is going to stay."
His remark was like a judgment and when arms grabbed Nabil, who had gone white in the face, he hissed:
“Not here, outside, leave him there on the sand – as carrion for the birds and beasts.”
Nabil was dragged away roughly and the shot that was heard a minute later caused no more than a blink of the senior officers’ eyes. No one noticed the explosive device under the wooden pallet, in which the acid had been bubbling for twenty-one minutes now and had nine minutes left before it would explode.
Five identical vehicles surrounded the tunnel. Armed and masked soldiers got out of three of them and spread out all around, to form a vast defensive circle. People in civilian dress got out of the other cars. They were the senior officials, sent by the supreme leader when he heard of the capture of the agent.
High hopes rested on the secrets she would divulge about the ‘Mossad’ and they had come in person to hear them straight from her beautiful lips. These hopes were founded on the stories, Ismat, the senior interrogator at the Revolutionary Guards’ building had told them.
One of the four paused beside the corpse of Nabil, who had been shot to death only a few minutes earlier, and was lying on the sand. He had known him to be one of the most courageous and successful soldiers and therefore, he was surprised and pointed at him.
“What happened to him?”
“Move that pig!” someone yelled and when the people moved on he joined them with a shrug.
They entered the building in an aura of importance, accompanied by dozens of people, who ran ahead of them and behind them, clumsily stepped back again to the two senior officers, who awaited them. Liam pointed to Naim’s body and declared:
“The idiot decided to kill her himself, and here’s the result.”
“I don’t believe it! We had her in our hands and…” Nabil’s words were interrupted by an explosion that echoed across a radius of many miles and rolled even further. The explosion hit the ammunition lying in this enormous arsenal and from that second a chain of blasts were set off that followed one after another.
Within minutes, gigantic craters opened up, filled with metal pieces and fragments of missiles. Clothes flew into the air and burst into flame on the ground and blackened everything in the area. The fire burned for almost two days, lapped at dismantled smoldering bomb parts and sent smoke up so high that it even hide the sun's light.
In the hour that followed the whole area was closed to traffic and in the adjacent town cars drove around between the houses asking people to evacuate their homes.
“Please leave your homes. You may take only one bag. Please get on the trucks assembled at the center of town. I repeat, come out right now!”
All through the morning, explosions were heard and towards noon, helicopters dropped thousands of gallons of sea water. They emptied the containers hanging from their underbellies and rushed back to the Caspian Sea to fill up with water again. The intense heat made the water sizzle and evaporate and yellow smoke arose, accompanied by the sharp smell of gunpowder which made it difficult to breathe.
Fire engines arrived at the area of the explosion only the following day and covered the smoldering objects with sand and foam. Thick smoke continued to filter in from the buried and glowering particles of metal and mixed with the smoke that was still emanating from the ruins of the smoking reactors in the distance.
The whole region looked like a post-nuclear explosion site and in the days that followed experts came to examine the levels of radioactive contamination of the air. Only ten weeks after that, were the inhabitants permitted to return to their homes.
The vast arsenal of nuclear weapons, upon which Iran had placed its hopes, was annihilated and destroyed, and although nothing was publicized officially, the reports that reached the world press were not denied.
* * *
At six twenty-five, Salamas’ motorcycle entered the outskirts of Baku. He accelerated to reach the city’s large hospital in time. At six minutes to seven he roared into the great square.
A lone helicopter stood at the end of the field, its engines roared and massive rotors on its roof and tail spun and created powerful currents of air around it.
Abigail got off the motorcycle, shook Salamas’ hand and paused for a few seconds to gaze into his eyes. She hesitated momentarily, then hugged the man and planted a swift kiss on his cheek before running to the helicopter.
Five minutes earlier a female officer asked the one-eyed man, who was sitting beside her at the end of the helicopter, and seemed particularly tense.
“Excuse me, who are we waiting for?”
“For Naima.”
“Ah, for a woman?”
He nodded and leaned back, closing his eye.
“Who is she?” she asked
“I still don’t know,” he replied, without opening his eye.
When Abigail boarded the helicopter, she clutched her hijab on her head and the rucksack on her back and the passengers stared at this tall Muslim woman, as her colorless eyes scanned the faces of those present. The woman soldier noticed how people rose and only sat back down after she had taken her seat.
The helicopter began its perpendicular take off. San, who was sitting in front of her, pointed to the pilot and said out loud:
“Barak is on the line and is talking to the pilot,” when the woman suddenly spoke, addressing her remarks to the pilot:
* * *
“Barak, I found that warehouse!”
The pilot repeated what she said into the mouthpiece and immediately transferred his earphones to her and when she put them on her head, she heard Barak say:
“I didn’t understand, Which warehouse are you talking about? There’s no sign of any kind of warehouse there.”
Abigail almost couldn’t find the strength to smile. She pulled off the earphones, returned them to the pilot and a minute later fell fast asleep.
After more than five hours of flight, the sights they flew over below were reflected in the transparent dome of the helicopter like a movie.
There were squares of the fields of the Jezreel Valley, yellow and golden wheat, brown furrows of plowed earth, waiting to be sowed with summer crops and orange and yellow sands of the desert.
Abigail straightened up and stared at the sights below. She closed her eyes tight and opened them again, like a camera snapping a picture to preserve the views that she was absorbing into her soul.
“Are you Naima?” the woman soldier could not hold back and came beside her. She noticed how excited she was by the landscape passing beneath her.
Abigail smiled at her and when the soldier pointed to the landscape and asked,
“Where are you from? From here, or here?”
“I’ll tell you,” she replied and looked at her with
her light green eyes. She slipped the ring that was the same color as her eyes off her finger, turned it over and showed her the picture of her daughter, Arlene. The tiny portrait had been cut into a circle and was attached beneath it.
“I’m from here.”
The voice of the pilot was heard, loud and clear:
“Five minutes to touchdown.”
Two people rose and stood on either side of the door, like a guard of honor and gazed at Abigail with a serious expression of respect.
The soldier returned to sit next to San. She noticed that his face was flushed and he looked at Abigail excitement. She whispered to him:
“Who is she, what is so special about her?"
She looked around her and asked again:
"Why everyone is honoring her with so much respect?”
“Well, as I said before, I haven’t the slightest idea...”
. ./ . . .
