Agent on a Mission

by Rose Fox

  Nadia rushed in and saw Abigail trying to rouse and resuscitate him and as she pressed on his chest, Abigail yelled to her to call an ambulance, but even they could not bring him back to life.

  They buried him in the family plot beside his wife, Rama.

  The grave was dug by Walid, his son, above the graves of Sultan and Latifah.

  Walid attempted to eulogize his father, but his words were lost in the spurts of tears that burst from his mouth. He roared as he cried, tried to wipe his eyes but was suddenly seized with weakness. His knees buckled beneath him and he fell down on the sand.

  Abigail, who stood beside him, raised her hand. She stood like that, silent for a few seconds. In the preceding hours she had thought about what it would be permissible to say about her adored uncle.

  “Uncle Naim” she spoke to the silent figure, shrouded in the white Kafia, and those gathered around burst into bitter tears.

  “For years I knew you were a great man, a man who was larger than life, but just one hour before you died you told me why I am still alive. Only then did I understand how I am still here, standing beside my family and who it was that saved me from the talons of those effendis.”

  There was complete silence. Everyone listened to Naima’s words with bated breath. Suddenly she called out,

  “Naim, Naim!!!” She stretched out her fist above her head and whispered hoarsely, “Allah, direct me and guide me to deal with them.”

  Clearly her words were not for their ears. It was as if she was there alone with him. A hiss escaped her as she forced herself to breathe and those gathered at the graveside followed her every word.

  “Naim,” she sobbed, “your body lies here before us, but for me, you still live. Because of you, I am alive, and my life is the continuation of yours.” She smiled suddenly and her smile was in complete contrast to the tears that streamed down her face and everyone was transfixed by her. She spoke with a broad smile and enormous love.

  “Look, Naim, we are all gathered round you, your children, grandchildren and those who love you. I promise you here that I will close the circle that remains incomplete,” then quietly hissed, “I promise to release you from the promise you made them. Yes, I will make sure that the merchandise you promised – will be delivered and your burden of responsibility will be removed.”

  No one understood what she meant and she didn’t care. She just needed to make this promise at her uncle’s grave.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Adam looked at Anton, who stood beside the two large shiny motorcycles, but kept on glancing over to the road where Sharif had disappeared a minute earlier, and his spirit weighed heavily on him. Anton beckoned to him and Adam went down to him. They hugged and walked to the hotel together.

  “Anton,” Adam remarked, “you surprise me. I didn’t know you rode a motorcycle.”

  “I did, once. What about you?”

  ”Like you, like me,” Adam replied and they both laughed.

  “I’m trying to understand why they didn’t send us a car. What’s behind the idea of giving us motorcycles?"

  “Perhaps it’s meant to hint at the kind of terrain we’re going to have to travel through,” Adam suggested.

  “Okay, so why couldn’t they come up with a truck or a 4x4, or some kind of large macho jeep?"

  Anton mumbled, stopped for a moment and then looked at Adam.

  “Hey, look who they’re giving motorcycles too. Look at the two of us!”

  “Hey there, Anton, take it easy and don’t underestimate us,” Adam said as he pulled Anton over him. “I’m almost certain there is something behind the idea of the motorcycles.”

  “How should I relax? I’m even more stressed by what you’ve just said.”

  “Don’t be stressed. Listen, now that we’re together, we’ll manage.”

  As they approached the hotel, rain began pouring down and got stronger by the minute. They ran fast for the last few meters, pulling their coats over their heads. Wet to the bone, they pushed open the revolving doors and entered the lobby. At this hour of the morning only a few people were to be seen and the lights were still burning from the previous evening.

  A young woman stood near the jewelry store, rocking a baby carriage. She approached them and put out her hand as if she was panhandling.

  It was strange to see such a sight in a place like this, but as she approached them, Adam noticed that there was no baby in the carriage. It was stuffed with a bundle of baby blankets and piles of clothes. The woman put out her arms in an embrace and Adam recoiled and moved back. There was a sharp smell of alcohol on her breath. Suddenly she pushed her hand into Anton’s shirt pocket, and then removed it.

  “Just a pickpocket,” Adam said quietly and Anton turned to her in Russian. She answered briefly and slowly walked to the exit of the hotel, pushing the baby carriage ahead of her.

  “She said we should read what’s written, but only when we’re outside,” Anton said quietly and Adam was puzzled.

  “Written where?” and then he recalled the movement of her hand to Anton’s shirt pocket.

  At the same moment one of the young women behind the reception desk, hurried over to the woman and said something to her in Russian. Her tone was firm as she urged her to leave. The woman pushed the baby carriage and went out onto the rainy street.

  Adam also urged Anton out of the hotel. It was still raining outside and they stood under the awning of the portico. Anton fidgeted in his pocket and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper that had been torn from a feint-ruled page.

  “You are tourists here. Go out today and take in the sights.”

  “Tourists?” Anton wondered. “What’s that supposed to mean?” Thinking aloud, Adam said: “Perhaps it’s just to gain time or simply create the impression we’re tourists. I don’t really know.”

  The rain didn’t stop for a moment. Thunder and lightning rolled in the skies above them and a strong wind bowed the treetops around them.

  “Look, how can we ride in this rain and, what’s more, on motorcycles?”

  Anton appeared discouraged. He never believed that he would be compelled to ride a vehicle like that, and the stormy weather outside gave him the shivers.

  “I have an idea,” Adam suggested, “if we’re lost, then let’s make the best of it. Let’s go and do some shopping at the clothing stores in the hotel and suit ourselves up for riding on motorcycles. I think they’re set up for this weather.”

  “Right, not a bad idea; let’s go for it.”

  After they finished making their purchases, Adam proposed:

  “Let’s meet in the lobby at eleven, meanwhile we’ll go up and pack.”

  They packed their meager belongings and came down to the lobby, dressed in the clothes they had purchased, wrapped up against the rain. Black cloaks covered their backs and hoods protected their heads. They gazed at one another and burst out laughing.

  “Ready? Let’s get going,” Adam said.

  Adam peered outside through the large windows. The rain appeared to have stopped and they went out the revolving doors. They walked down to the parking lot and Adam sat on the motorcycle, started it and proceeded slowly to the street. There he stopped, looked ahead and scratched his head under the hood.

  “Where should we go?” he asked and Anton shrugged.

  “Okay, it’s not important, the main thing is to get moving, park somewhere and walk around. We’re tourists, right?”

  Adam agreed and began riding slowly, waiting for Anton to come after him.

  A light rain began coming down again and the drops hit the transparent windshields and rolled down on him, creating murky rivulets. They passed a roundabout and houses gradually appeared along the sides of the road. The houses gradually grew denser until they found themselves riding down long streets. Pedestrians walked along the sidewalks on both sides of the street and Adam signaled to Anton to look for a parking place. They stopped beside the sidewalk between parked cars.

  The rain stopped and
the two of them walked down the sidewalk. Adam pulled off his hood, but left the tie under his neck in order to be prepared. He didn't forget his arrival at the hotel in Sochi, how suddenly the rainfall could start and quickly become very heavy. The cloaks floated in the wind behind their backs and they noticed tourists, dressed just like them, walking around without attracting any special attention. Older women with headscarves stood on the sidewalks, offering clothes for sale. Some of them held transparent plastic cups with red berries for sale and golden haired children stood at the stores, begging for coins from the passers-by.

  “Ugh, I smell beer,” Adam said and looked around. A long line of people stood in front of one of the storefront windows and Anton read the large old store sign painted on the wall out loud.

  “Beer is brewed here.”

  “Very nice,” said Adam, and rubbed his rumbling stomach. “That whets my appetite. Is there also something like a restaurant here? Do you think we can also find something to eat?”

  “Yes, here’s a sign post for a restaurant with a menu. Let’s go in.”

  They stood at the entrance to the restaurant. The place was dirty and Adam recoiled and turned to leave, but Anton stopped him and said:

  “You won’t find anything better. Come, let’s go in and get something to eat.”

  He pointed to a table with three chairs but even before they sat down a young woman approached them, seeking a handout and said something.

  “She said she left hungry children at home,” Anton said, “but you should just know that if you give her something, they will all gather here and beg and you won’t be able to cope with it. So ignore her, you’ve no choice.”

  They set down and Adam asked:

  “What’s there to eat here?”

  Anton spoke, as he read from the sign post on the wall.

  “The store belongs to the ‘Ruski Bistro’ fast-food chain, which means ‘Russian Bistro’, it’s good,” he said, “because it means that they have local country cuisine and we’ll do just fine with their food.”

  A woman in a clean red apron approached them and Anton asked her for the ‘the dish of the day’.

  Ten minutes later she served them each with sour cream, mustard and a straw basket containing a round loaf of dark bread, roughly cut into thick slices. Anton asked for two-egg omelets for each of them and they drank the Russian national beverage, called ‘Kvass’ made from rye and barley.

  A huge samovar stood on the corner of the counter and curls of steam rose out of it to the ceiling.

  An hour later they left the little restaurant, satisfied and well-fed and stood on the sidewalk.

  “What now?” Anton asked.

  “Let’s carry on with our tour; that was the instruction. Remember that woman with the baby carriage?”

  They chatted as they walked to their motorcycles. It was almost one o’clock, they had free time and they were in no hurry. Adam voiced his thoughts.

  “If we turn back, we’ll return to the hotel so, let’s move forward, always forward."

  The further they rode, the sparser the houses on both sides of the road became. After many kilometers they found themselves riding along an empty roadway without any houses alongside it. The area they were traversing became agricultural. Cattle roamed the pastures that spread out to the horizon and, as far as the eye could see, there were vast wheat fields. They passed cultivated strips in which enormous leaves were growing and Anton pointed to them and shouted:

  “Eggplant!” and another strip, where he yelled: “Potatoes!”

  Electricity pylons flew past them on their way and Adam drew Anton’s attention to the storks nesting atop the pylons. Their legs were red, one standing in the nest and the other folded as they stood and looked down from on high on the roadway on which only two motorcycles were riding. Adam laughed to himself when he wondered what the storks standing up there were thinking when they saw the two of them passing.

  The paved road ended suddenly and became a white gravel road and slowly changed and turned into clumps of crumbled gravel that were less tightly packed and they found themselves riding over sandy sections.

  Anton’s motorcycle got stuck in a sand dune and he was unable to extricate himself from it in time and, with every rev of the engine, dug itself further into the sand, overturned, spluttered and stalled.

  Adam pressed on ahead, but when he glanced into his rear view mirror on his handlebars he noticed that he was alone. He stopped and turned back, but didn’t hear or see any sign of the other motorcycle. He drove back until he saw Anton standing and scratching his head as he looked at his motorcycle. He looked like a jockey staring at his mount that stumbled and fell. Adam stopped beside him.

  “What happened?”

  “I got stuck in a sand dune.”

  “Oh, come on, stand it up again and try and start it, we don’t have time,” he said.

  “Ah, really? Well, I was meaning to ask, where are we hurrying to?”

  Adam pouted and twisted his face. He was also thinking about this pointless journey of theirs.

  “Look, Adam, I am familiar with this region and know that in another few kilometers there should be a great river and if I’m not mistaken, it has a beautiful lagoon. Perhaps we could even get on a boat with our motorcycles and make our way to the other side. Again, I know the roads, but I don’t remember the names of the places.”

  “Fine, but, at the first opportunity we should find the visitors’ information bureau for tourists like us and get some directions.”

  “Good, now let’s try and deal with my motorcycle,” Anton said as he mounted the cycle and started it at his first attempt.

  The way became very bumpy and the road crumbled under the wheels of the motorcycles. The cracks and gaps bumped them so badly that Adam got the idea that traveling in the gaps themselves would be safer than trying to cross the paved islands sticking out of the sand that were not contiguously joined into a navigable road.

  On the right of the road, they noticed a sign in Russian and English. ‘Tourist Information’. They stopped and went inside the building.

  A young woman looked at them and spoke in Russian. Adam mused how lucky he was to have Anton with him. She listened to Anton and then went into a room and closed the door behind her. She made a call and said just two words:

  “They’ve arrived.”

  “Good, Comrade Oksana, give them the page and direct them to the river.”

  She came out of the room and approached them with a smile and handed them a page that appeared to have just been printed on a fax machine. She smiled at Anton and they talked. Anton signaled Adam with a nod to leave the small structure and showed him the page and immediately translated it for him.

  “You are right on track.

  Continue eastwards all the time.”

  “Whose name is on the page?”

  “No one’s.”

  “Really? So, how does that woman know it’s for us?”

  “Because there’s a note here: “For the Motorcycle Tourists.”

  “Really? Then perhaps we aren’t just touring. We must be under surveillance,” and then asked at once:

  "I heard you talking to her. What did she say?”

  “She said we have to cross the Donya River and a boat awaits us there.”

  Adam thought about this, tapped his fingers on his lips and exhaled. He stared at Anton, who appeared puzzled.

  “What’s that worried look for?”

  “I thought it was too good to be true. Forget it, I’m just suspicious. So, shall we carry on?”

  With renewed strength and good spirit, they mounted their motorcycles. Not for a moment did it occur to them that they had been discovered the very day they arrived. They had no idea that they were followed by people who were giving them freedom of movement yet had a determining hand in their travels.

  After riding for about ten minutes, Anton came forward to ride abreast of Adam. He pointed to his mouth and stomach, as if to say ‘I’m hungry�
��.

  Adam rolled his finger and shouted “let’s move on a bit and then look for a place.”

  They came to a restaurant, stopped beside it, peered inside and were disappointed. It was small and shabby but, because they were very hungry and didn’t know if they would find another one, they decided to go inside. They parked their motorcycles in the sand, between piles of junk and scrap that lay around and entered the restaurant. The owner, a pleasant, red-faced man, who was very fat, welcomed them warmly. He served them a good meal and then directed them to the lagoon.

  After they left, he picked up his phone and said quietly, “they received instructions and they’ve just left for the lagoon.”

  It was a quarter past five when they reached the riverbank. It was cool and rolling waves almost made the river flood.

  Anton approached a man standing on a rotting wooden platform and talked to him. The man pointed to someone else. Apparently this was the man who awaited them and he was accompanied by his son. They loaded the two motorcycles on the boat and that was when their nightmare began.

  Churning waters and high waves smashed down on them, wetting them and the entire deck. The owner of the boat never stopped laughing and chattering away. He seemed to have consumed too much alcohol and he was sailing in zigzags that couldn’t be explained any other way. The boat seemed to sail at right angles to the high waves, which rocked the vessel relentlessly. Adam and Anton held on to the iron posts on the deck and prayed to cross safely to the other side.

  When they got off the ship on the river bank, they had to offload the motorcycles by themselves, but during the horrifying passage Anton succeeded in getting an explanation from the captain’s son. The youngster directed him where to find a hotel or inn where they would be able to end the day.

  When they rode away on their motorcycles, the captain’s son waited a while and called Igor, the innkeeper.