Agent on a Mission

by Rose Fox

  Abigail pulled the thick cord at the top of the knapsack and closed it. She set it near the window and peered outside to where a light was flashing. She thought that she had become paranoid, but she looked outside again, anyway. ‘What’s happening to me?’ she thought and continued looking in the direction facing her.

  Giant poplar trees that were planted on both sides of the street swayed in the night breeze and suddenly the two points of light sparkled again. She curled her hands into two cones like binoculars as she had seen her father do when he looked for his sons herding their cattle in the wide expanse of the desert dunes and had to focus into the distance.

  In the window on the other side of the road, a pair of glasses moved around and reflected two small circles of light. No, they weren’t glasses but binoculars, which were lowered now from the searching eyes of the person who was watching. Abigail noticed a dark shadow. Someone was spying on her apartment, following her movements and comings and goings. She shuddered. Who was it? Who was following her?

  She considered calling her dispatchers, but they had told her that from now, whatever the circumstances, she no longer could contact them, especially not from a radio transmitter she could be identified with. She leaned against the wall, rocking slowly and thinking what she should do. Then she had an idea.

  In her bedroom, she always laid an enormous doll on her shiny coverlet. The doll stared out of its enormous green glassy eyes at anyone who entered the room. That wasn’t what interested Abigail now, nor did she recall that the doll had been a birthday gift from her sister Latifah, “because of her eyes”, as Latifah said at the time, when she was twelve years old.

  She tied the doll to a broomstick with her apron and leaned it opposite her bed in the room, but not facing the window. Since the doll was tied to the upper part of the broomstick, she hoped that it would resemble the figure of a person and deceive and mislead whoever was watching her from across the road. Meanwhile she began to carry out her plan.

  Abigail left the room crouching well below the window line so as not be seen and only straightened up when she was out of her room. For a few seconds she pondered about letting the whole matter go, not wanting to arouse attention, but she decided not to leave unfinished business, especially not before clarifying whether someone had discovered her planned departure and journey.

  She went down the stairs of her apartment building without turning on the lights in the stairwell. Before exiting the building she clung to the entrance and glanced again at the window on the second floor of the building opposite hers. She did not see points of light, though the dark figure still stood there.

  Abigail crossed the road, hoping that the tree tops were providing her with cover from prying eyes and she entered the building. She climbed up the stairs to the second floor. Abigail presumed that the layout of the apartments in the building were similar to her own and when she stood at the top of the stairs on the second floor she thought, right or left, then decided to go to the right because that faced the window in her apartment across the road.

  Abigail stood at the door and slowly pressed the doorknob down. It responded and opened.

  ‘How careless,’ she thought. She quietly closed the door behind her and continued walking on the tips of her toes towards the window that faced her apartment. Even here, she could already see the doll she had left propped up in her apartment and it really looked like someone busy doing something. She checked quickly, glancing behind her to make sure she hadn‘t been followed and kept close to the wall at the entrance to the room. Slowly, very slowly, she peered inside.

  Beside the window, she saw the back of the head of a person sitting on a bench and looking out of the window across the street at her apartment. From time to time the person picked up binoculars, looked through them and then laid them down.

  Perhaps I should attack the person and end the matter, she thought, or call out and surprise him, In the end she fumbled around on the inside wall, found the light switch and turned on the light. The room was suddenly flooded with light, revealing a woman sitting on the bench. She turned round and stared at Abigail. Her hair was black and her eyes were slanted.

  Abigail was fully alert. Her senses were keen and she had to tense her muscles not to leap for the woman’s throat or hit her dark head. She stood facing her, legs apart and moved her fingers as if she was playing a piano. The expression on the woman’s face was complete surprise. She remained seated as if she had turned to stone. Her mouth opened and not a sound came out.

  Slowly, Abigail took two steps towards her but the woman made no noticeable movement. A thought flashed through her mind that she was a doll that resembled the little Korean with the black gloves from which the cord of death with its silver star was thrown. She glanced quickly at the seated woman’s ungloved hands. In a split second, Abigail saw the woman make a quick movement that was hardly noticeable towards her leg. Abigail spun round on the spot, on one leg, and her elbow hit the woman’s head hard. She was thrown at the window behind her, her head hit the glass and a rolling smashing sound was heard as the glass disintegrated into shards. She dropped on the floor and her bench fell over on its side. A trickle of dark blood began to drain into a small puddle under her head and her body shuddered as her eyes turned back in their sockets.

  Abigail hurried to find a telephone. There was one in the corridor near the entrance to the apartment and she called 101 and reported, “ambulance to apartment on the second floor at 26 Gordon Street. Hurry, the woman is badly injured.”

  She hung up and called Barak.

  “Yes, who’s calling?” Barak asked, wide awake.

  “It’s important that you know. A woman observing me from the building opposite mine has been injured. I called an ambulance and it should arrive in a few minutes.” She said and hung up.

  She hurried to the front door, opened it and peered out into the dark stairwell. Without turning on the light, she leaped down the stairs, two at a time, rushed to the entrance and disappeared into the dark in the direction of her apartment building. On entering the hall, she heard her telephone ringing in her apartment and quickly ran upstairs. By the time she opened the door, the ringing had stopped. She dialed *42 to get back to the last caller and heard Barak’s voice at the other end of the line.

  “Don’t ever use call back. Whoever needs you will call again or reach you some other way.”

  She was panting hard and put her hand on her chest to help catch her breath after running up the stairs.

  “Well done!” he complimented.

  “It’s interesting how that happened. I wonder if I’ve been discovered.”

  “Perhaps, but as you’re leaving and I won’t be able to talk to you, remember that this doesn’t bode well for you. They haven’t given up on you after Modang. Take care and watch out, Abigail!”

  “Really! How long will this go on for?”

  “I don’t believe I have an answer to that, but just carry on being cautious and suspicious all the time.”

  “I will.”

  “As we said, be down on the street at 4:00. I’m crossing my fingers for you. Your success will be our success,” then he hung up.

  The ride to the airport was quick. It was not yet dawn when she reached the terminal and the street lights were still on everywhere. She got out of the cab and thanked the driver and at the same moment a tall dark young woman with a security company tag on her blue sleeve came up to her and escorted her without a word so that Abigail did not wait in any lines or security checks. When they finished, the escort smiled at her, raised her arm to say goodbye and walked away to the edge of the hall to watch Abigail from there.

  Abigail got a can of beverage from an automatic dispenser and sat down at one of the tables spread out between the fast food counters. From there she looked at the flashing lights on the board that changed with the rhythm of the departing flights. Her Prago Airlines flight was second from the top and scheduled to depart at 5:42.

  The traffic suddenly
increased with many people pouring into the hall, pushing carts piled high with luggage. The laughter of children and loud chatter were heard and the bustle and excitement were intense. Abigail reminded herself again and again that she was not going on a trip or a holiday, though when she heard the departure of her flight to Prague from Gate 3 announced her heart thrilled with excitement. She looked for Gate 3, picked up her bag and walked to the gate following the direction of the lighted arrows and turning left.

  In the plane as she leaned back in her seat, she thought to herself that from now she was on her own, alone with herself on a special mission and she trembled.

  As she left the airport terminal in Prague she faced a wide car park filled with cars and cabs. She looked around, not knowing how to decide where to go when, to her left, a white cab sailing by stopped nearby her. The driver stretched across the passenger seat beside him, opened the door wide. Abigail bent down and peered into the car and then got in immediately and sat down with a sigh of relief.

  They drove for forty minutes on excellent roads, keeping on the right track and when they went off the highway onto a side road, the driver spoke to her for the first time saying:

  “We’ve arrived.” Abigail got out of the cab and leaned towards the driver, her eyes questioning. He said, “one hundred meters from here there’s a train on which will travel to its final destination. There, you’ll be told where to go.”

  He smiled and without waiting for the door to close, made a sharp U-turn. The door slammed shut from the movement of the car and it raced away and disappeared in the opposite direction. Abigail stared after it and felt a twinge in her heart.

  She reached the station just as the train arrived, puffing up gray rings of smoke and sounding a loud whistle. A young woman, wearing a scarf round her head, passed along the carriages, singing like an angel. She offered bread rolls from a carton tray attached to a cord round her neck. Abigail beckoned to her offering her a two kopek coin for a roll. She bit into it and glanced at her watch. It was Israel time and she realized she couldn’t relate to that and would have to change it soon.

  An hour later they reached the end of the line and she got off the train onto a crowded platform. The train left with a rattling of carriages and Abigail looked around her.

  On the other side of the rail tunnel, people waited for a train to take them in the direction she had come from. A miserable bitch with her tail between her legs roamed on the railway track. Papers wafted on the filthy sidewalk and nylon bags hung off twigs and dried stems and blew like little flags in the breeze.

  The bitch climbed up to the square, roaming around and sniffing for food all the time. Her ribs stood out against her skin and Abigail sat on a sun-scorched, faded bench and opened the cord of her bag to look for the remnants of the bread roll she had bought on the train. She pinched off a large piece and whistled to the bitch. The scrawny animal raised her tail and looked at her, slowly wagging its tail. Abigail threw the piece of bread to her and she caught it in the air, swallowed it whole and immediately looked up at Abigail again with hungry eyes. Abigail threw her the remainder of the roll thinking that it might keep her alive for another day.

  There were plenty of taxis around but she thought that even if she hailed one, she wouldn’t know where to ask the driver to take her. Peddlers spread their wares on the sidewalk and offered them to passers-by. Everyone bustled around her but no one paid attention to her.

  Abigail hesitated; she put her hand into her backpack and pulled out a little triangular yellow flag, rolled it between her fingers and then replaced it in her bag. She supposed that there were eyes observing her every move and assumed that someone would notice her now and, indeed, she was not mistaken.

  All at once, one of the peddlers come out from behind her wares that were laid out on the sidewalk, approached her and Abigail stared at her. She was tall and heavy-set and her face was very beautiful. She had a pug nose and her eyes were blue and clear as glass. The woman spoke Russian and Abigail stretched her arms out sideways and answered her in English which the woman deeply regretted she didn’t understand. She embraced Abigail’s shoulders in her soft chubby arms and turned her towards the right in the direction of the stores. She went through the motions of riding a bicycle with her arms and legs and Abigail understood.

  “And what shall I do with a bicycle?” she asked out loud in English and the woman showed her a movement of ‘onwards’ and again touched her right arm to say on the right of the road and patted Abigail’s shoulder affectionately. A beautiful smile rose to her lips, she said a few words in Russian, then returned to stand behind her wares and continued offering them to passers-by on top of her voice.

  An hour later, Abigail put her brown bag under the spring behind the saddle and mounted the bicycle hesitantly. She felt secure about riding very soon. The road was flat, a cool breeze tickled her ears and she sailed easily on her new bicycle in an easterly direction.

  She was in great spirits, wasn’t hungry and had bought a blue bottle of water on the train and she was keen to get going. A sudden breeze came up and her hair hit her face and got wound around her neck. Abigail stopped in the middle of the empty road, gathered her hair into a ponytail and stuffed it into her blouse. She continued on her way, looking at the scenery she was passing through.

  Low slung village houses appeared on both sides of the road, surrounded by yellow harvested fields that stretched as far as they eye could see. She passed green fields of pasture and streams of water flowing across plowed fields gleamed in the distance.

  Gradually the houses increased and joined together into neighborhoods and the fields disappeared completely. Instead, huge trees and deserted plots of sand with wild overgrowth appeared. Barking dogs were heard in the distance and children ran around in the yards of the houses.

  She stopped to rest, wheeled her bike as she walked alongside it. Now, she looked out for a kiosk or grocery store. It was already half past eight in the evening and the air was very hot.

  Abigail was exhausted. She felt as though she had been riding for almost three hours. The thought that the next few days would be the same occurred to her and she began to lose her high spirits and felt a little lost. She wiped the perspiration off her face and leaned against a tree, holding her bicycle in front of her.

  Suddenly it occurred to her to call using her wristwatch. She leaned the bicycle against a tree trunk, sat down on the sand and pressed the button. The hands and digits disappeared and the display screen on the minicomputer was blank. She pressed the internet button and wrote,

  I’M HERE ALONE. WHERE SHOULD I GO?

  She immediately added Barak’s email address which she had memorized and sent the message. She got up and waited. She rested the sole of her shoe on the tree and whistled a song. The beep of an incoming message sounded and looked at her watch excitedly. All that appeared on the dial was:

  DEAL WITH IT

  Abigail stuck out her lower lip in disappointment. The message was like a punch in the belly and made her situation clear to her in a way she had, in fact, anticipated.

  Passers-by stared at her and then went on their way and she understood that almost no tourists visited these regions and all the people she saw actually lived there. Children ran about and even came up to her. She watched their games and nodded to them. She gestured to ‘ask’ where there was a place to eat and sleep and found she was speaking to them in English. They explained to her that further on in the same direction she was traveling, there was a house where she could sleep and eat and then immediately turned back to their games.

  Abigail got back on her bicycle and continued riding, only now, every muscle in her legs ached. After a few minutes she saw an old building, a short way from the road that was longer than the rest of the buildings in the area. She left the road and walked along a dust path that led to it. It was the only inn in this large region.

  Earlier that morning a man had come to the inn and asked to speak to the innkeeper.


  “Hello my friend,” he said. “When a blonde young woman arrives here today, which room will you give her?”

  Slavik, the innkeeper, was accustomed to situations like these. It wasn’t the first time he had been asked to place people in specially requested rooms and in this case, too, he did not regard it as unusual or extraordinary. Only, this time, the person asked for something more.

  “I would like to have an additional key to the room and want to get organized there in advance.”

  “No problem,” Slavik said and picked up the two banknotes the man put down. “Of course, don't mention a word about this to the woman. It’s a surprise,” the man said as he suppressed a smile that implied secrecy.

  “Of course,” Slavik replied and gave him another key.

  In front of the building Abigail saw flowers that colored the earth bright orange. The lawn ended all at once beside a low fence that marked the boundary between the well cultivated yard and the public area around it. Vehicles parked outside the fence and, from the dust on them, she could tell that they had been parked there for several days.

  Without warning a roll of thunder exploding overhead startled Abigail. She looked up and saw a group of dark clouds gathering to form a large mass. 'That was fast', she thought to herself. A moment earlier, there was a light breeze and it was still warm without a sign of these clouds. Within seconds it began to rain lightly but the wind grew stronger and whipped the raindrops against her face.

  Abigail hurried to the neatly cared for yard, leaned her bicycle against a large light post and entered the corridor. When she stood there to get out of the rain, she heard sounds of laughter and talking coming from the building and knocked on the door. No one responded so she turned the doorknob. The door opened into a large room and she was greeted by the noise and bustle. Adults sat in armchairs, some of them smoked, others read or played cards.