by Jack Gardner
I lay on the comfortable hotel bed and closed my eyes, trying to recreate our last meeting at the airport, when she was already headed back home. It was a horrible meeting, a nightmare that I would not wish upon anyone. Her eyes were red with incessant tears, her body shivered, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. Her beautiful white face was covered with red and purple marks and her nose, which she kept blowing while ceaselessly apologizing, grew out of her gentle face and turned red. Even now, years after that day, I could clearly see those images in my mind, and my heart skipped a beat, just as it did in the past. Only that then I knew that I had to be tough, otherwise I would not have been able to realize my decisions. Now I knew that I would do whatever it takes to make it up to her for the pain and the sorrow I caused her then.
As the hour when she was supposed to come approached, I found myself looking at the clock more and more often. I restlessly got out of the bed and wandered through the large hotel room, pausing by the window to see, from the twentieth floor, the roofs of houses below me and the cars making their way home at the end of the workday. I looked at the clock again and again even though I was sure that she would be punctual and show up exactly on time.
I tried to remember that incredible passion we shared. I remembered that then, when our love was at its peak, I thought about her almost all the time, insomuch that I could not concentrate on anything I was doing. I wondered, ‘could it be that the door would open and everything will be just as it was then? Could we feel as if time and space stood still and we could pick up on our love from the exact same point where we left off, as if time has not passed?’
Of course, I did not know the answers to these questions, but I did know just how much I wanted our meeting to set us back to that same spot. A minute before 5:00 p.m. I heard a hesitant knock on the door. Charged and excited I walked toward the door and opened it. She stood there, different than the way I remembered her. When we were together she was a blonde, and now her hair was red. I looked straight into her big brown eyes. These have not changed at all, and they looked back at me warmly. Soon a smile joined that look, just that smile I remembered, and she walked in and fell into my arms, as if our goodbye had been that morning.
Holding each other, we receded into the room until we hit the bed and fell on it. Things picked up quickly. Our clothes were taken off and thrown away like a storm. Our naked bodies met in the kind of passion that only longing and wild dreams can create. But deep down inside, I knew that was not the test. It was clear to me that whenever sex was involved, we were always able to enjoy each other to the maximum: we were just built in complete compatibility, and we both loved the act of lovemaking. The true test was feeling. Only if I felt that I loved her I would know that I was in the right, and, of course, she had to feel the same heavenly way about me. Even though only recently, as we were setting up this meeting, she said that notwithstanding everything her love for me was stronger than ever, she still had to prove it.
Our bodies merged together in primeval, uncontrolled passion that erased at once all the thoughts and questions that bothered me. I was taken up entirely in the storm of passion.
11
I did not waste any time. I had no time to waste. There are two probable reasons for being placed under surveillance: the first is that someone wants to learn your movements—the places you go to, the people you meet—which means that the surveillance effort will last for an indeterminate amount of time, which may be even weeks, in order to collect information that would help verify or refute some kind of suspicion they have about you. The second reason may be that you are already past suspicion and not much stands between you and an imminent arrest.
Being that I had no idea why I had the honor of being under surveillance, I decided not to take any risks and adopt the second option as a working assumption. I did not want to be arrested without knowing what for and why. And so, that night I decided to go underground. Since I knew that my apartment was already under surveillance, I was careful not to change my routine and turned off the lights at the usual hour. Then I sat in a windowless room in my apartment with a phone book, the yellow pages, and a map of the city. After three hours of hard work I had an idea of where my safe haven should be. I considered the topography of the area, the transportation routes, open spaces that could allow for escape routes—everything one learns to consider in my field of work.
My first mission the next morning was to escape my stalkers. But in order to gain precious time, I had to do it in a way that would seem unplanned to them. It had to seem as if the surveillance team had made an error that made them lose me, rather than me attempting to break free from them. Naturally, these kinds of errors do happen and my goal was to convince them that it was an innocent mistake. The way to do this is to keep a daily routine, meant to lead the team on a long, slow walk that would have them doze off until that moment where you suddenly disappear and leave them confused.
The place I chose for my disappearing act was the city’s central bus station—a huge cement complex that was full of platforms, commercial zones, restaurants, and cafés. A series of elevators and escalators connected the nine floors of the building, and luckily for me, for financial reasons probably, the escalators were of the narrow kind, a fact which would make my stalkers have a hard time staying close to me without risking their being exposed.
Since I already knew I was under surveillance, I did not have a hard time discovering my stalker, even though I expanded many efforts trying to conceal this fact. After my disappearing act I would have to make sure I was “clean” before I could go to the first of three real estate offices that I marked on my plan. I had a number of unusual items in a bag that I occasionally carried around: dark sunglasses, of the kind that conceals one’s eye color, a small mirror, an artificial beard, a small bottle of glue, and special hair color that would allow me to change within a number of minutes, from a dark-haired man to a blond. After wandering for over two hours, where I dragged the team with me through shops, streets, markets, and even a café, where I thoroughly read a daily newspaper for twenty-five minutes, I walked toward the bus terminal.
I started wandering between the odd shops on the ground floor, while pausing in front of shop windows to examine the goods they offer, constantly aware of my stalkers’ fields of vision, and moving them toward the first floor escalators. When I got to the escalator I stood in my place, looking around as if I had yet to choose which way to go, and then turned in the opposite direction toward the stairs. About ten steps later—the time it would take my stalker, who rushed to take the elevator to the second floor, to come back down to the first floor—I turned around and rushed up the long and narrow stairway, knowing that for fear of being discovered, none of the surveillance team members would follow me.
Now I had a sixty-five feet advantage over them, in a rough access zone with many exits: to the platforms, the elevators, and the stores. They were not enough to cover all of the options. And unlike them, I knew exactly where I was going, and within seconds, I disappeared in the ladies’ room, rushing into one of the stools and locking the door behind me.
Twenty minutes later, I walked out of there with blond hair and a beard, wearing dark sunglasses, and with my jacket inside out, so that now it was a blue denim jacket in lieu of a light brown one. I carried my bag in a plastic bag that hid it entirely.
The ladies’ room was located in a hallway leading to an emergency exit that gave on to the lower levels of the bus terminal. I raced down to the lower level parking lot, which was dark and crowded with parked cars. I didn’t appreciate the next step too much, but it was a necessity: I chose a white Chevrolet, of a very popular kind, cracked open the lock within seconds, pulled out the starter wires, and connected them. The engine roared and I drove out of the parking lot. I drove a few blocks before I stopped the car, abandoned it at the side of the road, and hopped on a taxi, giving it the address of the first real estate office on my list.
I examined the road behind
me in the side mirror and in the driver’s panoramic mirror. No one was following me. Luck was on my side, and an hour later I already had a new—even if temporary—roof over my head.
***
Something heavy, like a large hammer, landed on my right hand. I screamed, a short terrified scream, which was brought to a halt as soon as a large hand covered my mouth and cut off air supply to my brain. I started choking, and could oddly feel the sweat running down my back within seconds. A strong light, stronger than the sun, was aimed at my eyes from a few inches away. I was blind, paralyzed, and drowning in sweat, but I was not deaf, and there was no mistake who’s voice it was that was talking to me in a low, chilling tone.
“And you thought you were a professional?” said L, “you gravely disappointed me. But maybe I was wrong to expect anything else from you.”
My lungs were about to explode, my legs were twitching. It was instinctive. Basic survival instincts. I bit the hand with all my might. It was like biting on a cloud. I felt my teeth pushed back into my head. I screamed in pain, and heard myself screaming. Now everything around me was dark.
The nightmare was over and I was breathing in deeply, my hurting lungs inhaling and exhaling. The sweat was real, as if someone poured a bucket of water on the bed. But I was alone, lying in the dark in my garret apartment, and thanking the Lord that it was only a nightmare. My teeth hurt and my mouth tasted like blood. The shout I had dreamed was probably real. I could hear the sounds of motion from the floor beneath me. My landlady probably wondered what is going on with her mysterious tenant. There was a good chance that she would come to see for herself, and I did not want to seem impolite.
It took her five minutes to put on something decent. After all, we hadn’t met yet. She probably brushed her hair and removed any sign of sleep from her face—the kind of thing women know how to do quickly whereas us men have no idea how to do at all. I heard her footsteps on the wooden staircase, which led me to think about the training I got to walk up any kind of staircase quietly. A nervous knock and the door and a cultured-sounding voice, “Mr. Korob, is everything alright? I heard screams…”
It took me a second to realize that I was Mr. Korob. I tried to sound as calm as I could. “Mrs. Reiss, I sincerely apologize. I must have had a nightmare.”
She was silent for a brief moment, probably trying to understand what kind of a man that voice represented. “Just a bad dream. I understand. You really did shout quite loudly. Usually, I don’t wake up that easily. I thought I should check up on you, maybe you needed some help…”
I thought help would have been quite alright. “Thank you, Madam. I truly am sorry for keeping the door closed. I’m not dressed, you see. I thank you again and apologize for waking you, I’m sure this kind of dream will not recur.” I was completely sure of it: I wasn’t planning on falling back asleep.
“Alright then.” Her voice was calm, as if it was a relief that her mysterious tenant was at least polite. “Maybe in the morning you would like to stop by for a cup of coffee…” she offered, not finishing her sentence.
“Yes, I would love to have a coffee, really…” I replied quickly, “only that I am leaving the house very early. I have a plane to catch, but I’d be delighted, some other time.”
“Alright.” Maybe some disappointment showed in her voice and maybe not, “well, some other time. I’d be delighted as well. Good night.”
“Good night, Madam.”
And she walked back downstairs.
12
The Bureau’s agent training department was housed in a five-story building in a densely populated commercial zone. The department took only half a floor; the other half belonging to a communications company that preferred, so it seems, to conduct its business from a different location. The heavy door was locked with a big external lock, and except for the modest sign on the entrance door, stating Niva International Communications Ltd. and a phone number, there was no sign of life. If anyone was to look into that company, he or she would have found that it was listed with the IRS and had active files. These listings led to the company’s busy headquarters in the city’s downtown business district, where its activities matched the company’s description and regulation, as well as its reported range of activities. The phone number on the aforementioned sign led to a voicemail where a polite female voice asked you to leave a message and informed you that a representative would contact you as soon as possible.
An especially suspicious type that would have gone as far as looking into the files in Niva International Communications Ltd.’s planning department, which was housed in their headquarters, would have discovered a detailed plan to establish a marketing unit that would focus on the distribution of products and communications services in Latin America. This unit was supposed to be housed in the aforementioned half floor. On the first line of the form tracing the unit’s activities, which was fastened quite orderly to the file’s cover, it was stated “occupancy in progress,” with a remark next to it, “date pending.”
In short, Niva International Communications Ltd. was a real company, alive and working. Its owners collaborated with the Bureau by giving it the cover of a business that can be used in different ways, and all this not in order to be rewarded, but as a patriotic contribution to national security. The goal of these attempts to cover up the Bureau’s activities, so characteristic of secret agencies, was to create a quiet work environment, isolated from the other residents of the building, which were all small- to medium-sized businesses. Two elevators and one flight of stairs led to the floor taken up by the Bureau, whose iron door was always locked, including an extra anti-theft lock. The direct elevators from the building’s underground parking lot did stop on that floor, but most of its permanent residents preferred the outdoors parking lot. They made sure to park as close to the exit as possible, with their cars facing out, so that if they needed to evacuate quickly, time would not be an issue.
At 7:45 am, Eduard, the son of two British citizens, parked his white Mitsubishi in the exterior parking lot, right by the exit, but not before he examined, out of habit, the few cars that were already there at this early hour. There were five cars there and he knew them all. He took the elevator to the third floor and pressed the buzzer next to a sign reading “employee assignment,” with no further explanation.
Eddie, as his friends called him, a well-built man in his mid-forties, was a field man and part of the Department of Operations’ force. He was now placed to guide the first round of new recruits in the training division. This sudden temporary appointment, announced to him only a month earlier, was the result of outside factors over which Eddie had no control.
Every field man has to share some of his experience periodically with the training division, but this time, and unlike other times, Eddie was called to the task following a failed operation. That moment, the moment where Eddie realized that his team was exposed and they were coming close to a long jail sentence, not to mention the loss of a promising career, came back to him incessantly during the past month. He wanted to forget, he tried to get away, for a moment he even considered (though not very seriously) to ask for a reference to see the Bureau’s psychologist so that he could assist him in ridding himself of these bothersome thoughts that kept coming back to him. But nothing helped.
Now, as he was pressing the buzzer, looking toward the camera hidden in the acoustic ceiling and waiting to hear the voice of the person on duty, at that exact second his brain once again filled with that horrible moment when their eyes were blinded by a strong projector and they heard the roaring voice of a security agent calling them in English to stand still or else risk getting shot then and there. He shook his head, as if that motion could cast away the thought, and was then happy to be disturbed by the sound of the buzzer. Another day of teaching in front of him and a nauseous feeling in his stomach. He loved doing and hated teaching. The word “castration” described this feeling quite well.
That morning, Eddie wore a light sports ja
cket over a buttoned down gray shirt and black jeans. His clothes were a kind of appropriate compromise between business casual and totally casual. He wore high-end Rockport shoes because he found them to be the most comfortable in the world, even though they looked cumbersome and cost a small fortune. On his left hand was a quartz titanium Seiko with a two-toned gray and gold band. This watch was dear to him because it was a present for his fortieth birthday—an age of self examination that ended with an enormous change in his personal life.
Nicole, the officer on duty, did not waste a second on saying good morning or anything of the such. “Don’t take off your jacket, you’re out of here.” Like the other employees there, she knew exactly how much Eddie hated the teaching position that he took on against his will. Eddie had known her for a month now, and learned to appreciate her serious and hard-working nature, along with her exceptional sense of humor, which seemed to erupt at the most unpredictable moments. If this were a kind of a joke, her serious look would be exchanged with a smile in a heartbeat.
“I just got here and I’m already leaving?” he sounded surprised. “And where, if I may ask?”
She did not say anything as she handed him a memo, her face still showing optimism. He took the memo and read it twice. It was laconic, saying only that Eddie should report immediately, no later than 09:00 a.m., to the office of the Head of Operations. The memo’s title, at the bottom of the page, had the time of delivery on it—06:30 a.m. that same morning—which made Eddie believe that someone woke up early, or, even more likely, spent the night at the office.
