by Rose Fox
“Hey, although it’s close to the time of the incident, the location is far away from me.”
“That’s right, so how will you reach the hotel in Italy? Oh, I feel very disheartened.”
“Wait, don’t forget, they’re in a car and I am flying. She laughed when she said:
“I’m off to beat up the bad guys, Okay?”
“If I were a woman, I’d be crying now and telling you that I love you and saying how lucky we are to have you.”
Now, she noticed that her nausea had abated and she hurried to the kitchen, poured herself a cup of tea and as she sat down to drink it, she spoke out loud to the empty room.
“Hey, I’m coming to you, my ‘Noodle’ and I am going to tell you that we’re pregnant!”
Abigail inquired how to get to “The King’s Hotel” in Italy quickly. First she booked a flight to the “Leonardo da Vinci” airport in Rome, which was close to the seaside town of Fiumicino.
She landed at noon and boarded the ‘Leonardo Express’ that cut the travel time to a half hour, non-stop, and got off at Termini, its last and only station.
From there, a cab brought her to “The King’s Hotel” in the Italian working class neighborhood of Maestri. At one forty, she was already looking over the hotel and it surroundings, where she stood.
She noticed some small buttons on the road beside a parked car and on closer inspection she found an empty revolver magazine and her senses tensed.
The silver “Bentley”, which Michael spoke of, was parked beside her and the keys were hanging in the steering lock. She pulled the handle and the door opened.
Before getting into the vehicle, she saw how the pine needles were falling. The roof of the this silver car was piled up with them and smaller clumps were caught in the windscreen wipers. Clearly, the car had been stationary for a much longer period than the others. Their roofs were covered with only a sprinkling of pine needles that the wind played with and blew away.
Behind the well-tended shrubs the sand was trampled, cigarette butts and two additional gun casings could be seen beneath them.
She got into the car and looked it over, noticed the black bag in the glove compartment and knew what it contained. Candy wrappers littered the floor, together with left-over bits of sandwiches and a kefiya. When she pulled it close to her nose, she was familiar with its delicate scent and was excited, because she recognized the smell of Karma. Without thinking, she wound it round her neck.
Her eyes fell on the phone she picked up from the road. Its cover was missing and on the shattered screen she saw a call that hadn’t been answered. She thought it might be the number of one of his captors and called it.
A voice answered with an impatient “Hello” and she hung up at once and waited.
Her idea was that if her presumption were accurate, the person would recognize the phone number she was calling from and would take the trouble to call to check who was using this phone.
And, indeed, Muntazer, one of the two captors, raised his brow when he recognized the number on his screen and said to Yusuf:
“Someone is using our captive’s phone.”
“How can that be?! Have they caught up with us?! Oh, that’s all we need now!”
“Stop whining and start thinking,” he said and stared at his phone.
The two of them were waiting for their dispatchers to tell them what to do with their prisoner, who was tied up in the back of their car. Muntazer took a last drag on his cigarette and threw it out of the window. He watched the fire point from the cigarette, as it reached the dry bushes and saw how it set off small sparks. At that moment, he heard the beeps of an incoming message.
“Where are you? You’re not at the arranged location.
Tell us where you are again.”
“Wait,” he said out loud, “Where did they arrange to meet us? Wasn’t it supposed to be here?”
“I don’t know. You were the one who received the explanation. Did we make a mistake? Oh, then where were we supposed to meet?”
“Shut up already! When will you learn to think without getting hysterical? Try and remember where they told us to go and where we were supposed to wait for them.”
Yusuf got out to check and shouted that there was a road sign behind them indicating the way to the Da Vinci airport and the other side of Fiumicino. Muntazer contacted the number from which the message was sent and explained their location. From the corner of his eye, he saw flames licking the nearby thorns and white smoke billowing out of them and he roared at Yusuf:
“Get in quickly, a fire has broken out in those thorn bushes and we have to flee!”
That was enough for Abigail, who was listening on the other end of the line. She started the car and thought how stupid agents like these can spoil the best-made plans. She was familiar with the intersection the man mentioned and took note of the cry she had heard about a fire. This was now another point of reference to help find them.
In the meantime, Michael called the number of his son, Timmy, again, sure that no one would answer, and when someone did, he choked up and stuttered in his confusion:
“Ah, hi, hello, good morning,” and heard Abigail’s voice.
“Yes, I understand you, Michael. Calm down, I have Timmy’s smashed telephone and I am on my way to his captors, it seems. Cross your fingers for luck and don’t call this number again.”
Michael felt as though Timmy had just been released.
Abigail drove out of the parking bay, heard a siren behind her and a fire engine swept past her, its orange lights flashing. Only now did she notice the fire and the smell of smoke and realized she was close to her target.
Two hundred yards ahead, cars lined the side of the road as their drivers stared at the scene unfolding on the empty lot. Two cars stood near the focus of the fire. Abigail parked at the end of the line of cars and ran to the two vehicles.
The heat was unbearable. She opened the rear door of one car and saw Timmy lying on the back seat. His arms were tied behind his back and a rag was stuffed into his mouth. Streams of spit had dried on his cheeks and his eyes were half open, his gaze fixed and expressionless.
Abigail shouted his name and slapped his pallid cheeks, turned him on his face and whacked him on the back. From the rigidity of his body and his clenched arms, she knew he had been dead for hours. She crouched down on the floor of the car, allowing the door to slam behind her and cried out loud as she untethered his arms from the ropes. Just then the broken telephone rang. She pressed the button to accept the call and heard the caller hang up.
Suddenly the front doors of the vehicle opened and two people got in and sat down. Before she understood what was happening, the car began to move. She squeezed herself against the rear of the driver’s seat and hoped that she was not within the range of visibility of the rear view mirror in front of the driver. She also hoped his passenger beside him would not see her.
When she caught sight of the dead body of Timmy, her heart shrank. She took fright when the phone rang but was relieved when one of the men spoke.
“Yes, we're coming with him. He’s dead since this morning.”
Screaming was heard coming from the telephone and the driver explained that he suffocated from the rag that had been stuffed into his mouth, adding that this was the way Allah punished his enemies. The fellow put the phone on speaker, because he wanted the driver to participate in the conversation and Abigail heard how the speaker was yelling:
“He’s not dead, he’s pretending. How do you explain that we called his phone, someone answered and then hung up?”
“Oh, Almighty and Holy Allah, help me!” the driver yelled, and Abigail immediately thought of ways to use the religious devotion and fanaticism of the two as weapons against them.
She leaned against the back seat, looking for the number of the last incoming call and pressed on it. She listened to the ring and heard someone answer her. She sniffed, whispered and hung up. A second later she heard the fellow sitting in front
of her pick up the telephone and his voice trembled with fear.
“What? Do you want to say that the dead are phoning you again?!
The driver stopped, opened the door and yelled:
“Get out, Y’Allah; let’s get the hell out of here!”
The second fellow hesitated momentarily, but ran after him. Abigail didn’t wait for even a second. She jumped over to the driver’s seat, put her foot down hard on the accelerator and the car flew forward on the unfamiliar road. When she reached the road sign to the Hungarian border, she stopped and called Michael.
When he answered her, she just said:
“Hello.”
“Oh, thank God. I can’t bear this any longer. I’m as stretched out as a violin string. Did you get to him? Did you catch them? Can I hear him say a word to his worried father? What happened? What happened to him?”
Abigail pursed her lips, wondered how to tell a father that his son was lying dead on the back seat of the car.
“Hey, Naima, why are you silent?” He begged, forgetting the code word and using her real name. When she didn’t answer, he began babbling and chattering. He understood that the news wasn’t good and shut up for a moment and then spoke again.
“How did it happen?”
“They tied his arms and stuffed a rag into his mouth.”
Michael wept. She could not see his tears but his breaths told her what he was going through and her heart went out to him. She spoke quietly:
“I am looking at him now and he is at peace.” She drew in her breath. “I’m looking for a way to send him to you, to take care of him and lay him to rest.”
Another voice burst out on the phone and she recognized it as Barak. He sounded tense, almost like that day in her apartment in Tel-Aviv, when he discovered her paintings and took them away from her. The tone of his voice was acerbic:
“Get to the Hungarian border post and transfer Timmy to a man, who will meet you there, in an hour from now, at five o’clock.”
“Barak,” she murmured, “I didn’t get there in time. He died hours ago.”
“It’s not that,” he pointed out. “It’s the painting you took with you and left in the tunnel.”
“Ah, it was left behind when I escaped, but they would found some other way of taking revenge on me, even without that painting.” Since she heard no response, she carried on speaking.
“Do you know what? I will make it up to you with another mission. It will be so enormous, that it will destroy the whole system of reactors in this country!” And Barak laughed joylessly.
“They destroyed a whole neighboring tribe of yours by mistake.”
He knew that she would understand that this was an act of revenge and retaliation against her and her family. She was sure that Barak meant to lay the blame for the death of the Alheb tribe on her conscience.
She responded quietly:
“I understand. So, Barak, if I succeed and the next assignment is carried out perfectly then, according to you, you will blame me if they respond by attacking the entire population of the Negev, right?”
As he remained silent, she added:
“I was sent to do a job. If I succeed – they will respond and that’s the name of the game. Ask San, who sacrificed an eye for this sport!” And, she hung up.
Barak pursed his lips. He knew he was blaming her for the vengeance of the Iranians, just because her actions had been successful and caused them damage. He glanced at Michael, saw his look of misery and heard him say something.
“What did you say, Michael?”
“I said she’s pregnant.”
“What, what?” He heard and understood what Michael said, but it hadn’t completely sunk in.
“How do you know?”
“When I called her this morning, she was throwing up and told me after that.”
San countered immediately:
"Then we have to hurry with the primary mission before she’s too large to move with ease.”
He glanced at Barak and noticed his expression, recognizing both surprise and disappointment on his face.
*
At exactly ten o’clock the watch on Karma’s wrist clicked and reminded him to get up. When he opened his eyes to the darkness around him, he was convinced that it was the middle of the night. He closed them again, promising himself that he would wake up in another minute.
Someone knocked at the door and he sat on the bed and listened. No one was supposed to know that he was in this room and Karma did not expect anyone to look for a man named “Barzani” at exactly ten o’clock at night.
He had fallen asleep in his clothes and socks so, now, he hurriedly put on one shoe and felt around for the other one and found it when he heard knocking at the door again. He picked up his knapsack and took pains to do everything silently. He looked at the entrance.
“Sir, can you open the door?” he heard a youthful voice and his heart rate quickened.
Karma looked around, seeking somewhere to hide and when he couldn’t find a place he turned to the window, climbed out on the railing and walked to the right, pressed up against the exterior wall. He looked below at people illuminated by the street lights, and their heads appeared small. He remembered that he was on the sixth floor. When he thought through the possible complications, he checked if he could hang on to the tree below or, at least, use it to break his fall and avoid injury.
Right now, the bellboy knocked on the door to his room, while the pair who had captured Timmy, Muntazer, and Yusuf, stood behind him waiting for the door to be opened.
What had happened was that Timmy’s kidnappers had fled in fear from the car when they recognized that the incoming call was from the phone of the captive, who now lay dead in their vehicle. As he fled, Muntazer heard the car they had just abandoned, roar and he stopped to see how it continued driving on. From the window, he saw a figure with a hijab covering its head. Yusuf also stopped, panting with fear and gazed after the car as it drove away at speed and disappeared round the bend in the road.
“Hey, a woman is driving the car!” Muntazer pointed in the direction of the car that was already out of sight.
He suddenly realized that someone had cheated and ridiculed them. He pulled off his kefiya, cast it angrily on the sand, shouting and stamping his feet. He ran straight into the street with Yusuf chasing after him, laughing out loud. Yusuf stopped suddenly and picked up his friend’s kefiya and the black headband that had fallen beside it and spoke out loud, as if to himself.
“What happened today?”
But Muntazer didn’t answer him. He was injured at having been ridiculed and, to add insult to injury, by a woman.
“What an idiot you are!” He yelled at Yusuf when he reached him and presented him with the kefiya and the headband.
“Am I the idiot?! Who shouted that the dead man was calling?! Who grabbed the phone and screamed to tell me to stop?!”
Muntazer got up and pushed Yusuf and they both rolled in the sand, punched one another and screamed like madmen until Yusuf got to his feet, put his hands on his hips and said something.
“What did you say?” Muntazer stared up at him from below.
“I said we have to return to that Italian hotel and catch that bastard we were following.”
Muntazer sat and spat into the distance, wiped his lips with the kefiya and spat again. When the roar of a vehicle was heard, Yusuf jumped into the middle of the road and waved his arms like a madman. A truck swerved and screeched to a jarring stop. Muntazer got up from the sand and ran to it, climbed up the steps at the bottom of the van and yelled to the driver:
“If you don’t take us with you, you’re dead meat!”
An hour later the two of them got off near the hotel and went to the parking lot, where they had captured Timmy.
“Oh, his car is gone.”
“Right, so come let’s ask at the hotel whether he is still here or has also left.”
They both entered the hotel lobby. Muntazer pulled two bills out
of his shirt pocket and placed them on the counter. A short man stood before him and stretched his lips into a smile, revealing tiny child-sized teeth.
Translate
“Who has been in this hotel for a few days and has an expensive car?”
The teeth disappeared and so did the smile. Suddenly, his eyes lit up.
“Yes, the beautiful “Bentley” in our parking lot since Tuesday,” and Mutazer added another bill and put it on the first two.
“Give me the name and the room number.”
“Eh…” the reception clerk scratched his head, glanced at the bank notes and Muntazer lifted his hand off them. Within a second, the bills disappeared as the clerk’s hand slid them in the direction of a thick book on the counter and the man turned to serve others. Muntazer turned the book towards him, flipped through dozens of names with his finger, looked at dates and stopped at one of the entries in the end.
“Barzani,” he said, “Room 611, come let’s go up to him!”
“Wait. Why this name in particular?”
“It’s Kurdish, idiot. Remember what Effendi told us?”
“Oh, right.”
Almost before they entered the lift, Yusuf whispered to Muntazer:
“Perhaps we should send that bellboy up to tell him something and we’ll hide behind him?”
“Wallah! (Hurrah) who said you’re an idiot?”
The uniformed bellboy was given a bank note and went up together with them to the sixth floor, with a simple instruction to cause the door to room 611 to be opened. The two men remained standing a short distance from the boy, who knocked at the door. They held their pistols close to their trousers, ready to push their way through as soon as it opened.
Since there was no response, Muntazer instructed the boy to go down and bring the key to the room and the latter pulled a whole bunch of them out of his pocket. The next minute, the door was opened and the two entered the room, each aiming his revolver in a different direction. But the room was empty.
Yusuf opened the doors to the closet one by one, with his finger on the trigger all the while. Reflected in the mirror of one of the wardrobe doors, he saw long fingers holding the windowsill from outside and understood that someone was apparently pressed against the exterior wall. He turned round and quietly moved towards the open window and fired to the right, but he missed and the bullet disappeared into the dark. At that second, a bullet from Karma’s gun hit his forehead and Yusuf sank to his death. In that slight delay of a second,
