ABIGAIL_SPY & LIE

by Rose Fox

  Adam pushed the door open with his bent knee and suddenly noticed the dark slim figure of a man dressed in black from top to toe. The man stopped in front of him, apparently as surprised as Adam was and Adam noticed his slanted eyes. At that very second something shiny was thrown in his direction and, instinctively, Adam shifted a few millimeters to the left in a move that saved his life.

  The figure disappeared.

  Adam stood shocked, trying to register what had just happened. At that moment, he turned round with lightning speed and ran to Anton, but was too late.

  Anton lay on the sand, his body twitching and convulsing. The black figure rose up from him and slipped away like a cat. Adam knelt over him.

  Anton was still breathing, though with great difficulty. He clutched at his throat and dragged in the air with a shrill whistle desperately trying to get air into his choking lungs. Adam bent over him, pressed on his chest, released and pressed again; attempting to revive the breathing of the convulsing body, but Anton appeared to have stopped breathing. Adam stood on his knees, inhaled a deep breath and exhaled the air in his lungs into Anton’s mouth. It seemed to help because Anton‘s chest rose and fell as he breathed evenly. Adam spoke to him.

  “Anton, can you hear me?” But Anton did not respond.

  Adam rubbed and massaged Anton’s temples gently and called out his name again. This time his eyes opened and Adam helped him up and supported him. They paced, very slowly across to the suite. Anton walked with difficulty and his legs kept buckling under him, threatening to make him fall.

  When they entered the suite, Adam noticed that Anton’s shirt was ripped open and a very thin, neat line, which appeared to have been drawn with a ruler, was visible on his chest. A few drops of blood oozed out of the fine scratch. Both Anton’s pockets were pulled out and dropped on either side of his trousers, apparently also ripped open quickly with a very sharp blade.

  “Have we messed up?” Anton asked hoarsely and rubbed his neck. A prominent red line crossed the breadth of his throat.

  “No, it seems we’ve been discovered.” Adam responded.

  Anton sat on the sofa in the entrance and Adam remained standing, facing his injured colleague. Clearly, Anton had not yet recovered.

  Neither of them slept well that night. Anton could not fall asleep, his head ached very badly. Adam soaked his ripped shirt in iced water, laid it on his head and moistened his face. The man was burning with fever. Adam rummaged in the medicine box, found a paracetamol capsule and gave it to Anton.

  At daybreak, Anton lay on his bed, mumbling and hallucinating. His fever had not gone down and Adam dragged him to the shower.

  After the shower, Anton looked like a chicken, whose feathers had just been plucked and he was unable to stand. Clearly, he had suffered serious respiratory damage and Adam looked at him and scratched his head.

  “Shouldn’t we go to a clinic or call a doctor?” Adam hesitated.

  “Are you crazy?! If you’ve decided you want to be discovered, then yes.” Anton answered slowly and hoarsely. His vocal chords still hadn’t recovered.

  The doctor, who came, was balding, short and straightforward. He examined the long scratch that extended the length of Anton’s chest and abdomen and frowned. Afterwards he touched the protruding scar around his neck that looked like a closed furrow made by a plow. He spoke in Russian and Anton replied weakly. Then he took out a notebook and wrote something down and went out the door, leaving it open.

  On his way to the office, the doctor made a call and whispered, “one of them is finished.”

  Anton pointed to the retreating figure of the doctor and told Adam he had recommended he go to hospital. He was very weak now and could hardly speak.

  “What does he think happened to you?” Adam asked.

  “He says there appears to be internal respiratory damage.” Anton said very slowly and after every two words that came out of his mouth he had to inhale noisily.

  “What did he prescribe?” Adam asked and held up the doctor’s note for him to see, but Anton shook his head from side to side and closed his eyes.

  “I don’t feel well…” he said, suddenly signaling something to Adam and a spurt of yellow liquid burst out of his mouth, spreading over his face and on the bed linen around him.

  Anton died at ten o’clock in the morning as Adam held him in his arms and cried like a small child.

  That same day, Anton's body was flown to Israel.

  At 10:30 in the morning, a transit vehicle with darkened windows arrived. Some men got out of the car and very quickly took him away in it to an airport on the shores of the Black Sea. Here, a light aircraft awaited them on the runway, with its engines running and at two in the morning the plane landed at the 'Dov Hoz' airport in Tel Aviv.

  Anton was buried at noon the following day.

  His acquaintances, friends and his wife, Irena, followed his coffin in shock. The lines of mourners were joined by people his wife had never met, who asked to take charge of the funeral arrangements. He was buried in the military cemetery and the newly piled mound of earth was covered with wreaths that were laid in the names of lawyers, judges and members of his family. A large wreath decorated with a black ribbon and the insignia of the Ministry of Defense was laid in the name of the State of Israel.

  At the end of the funeral ten men stood on both sides of the wreath covered mound. A young man read a eulogy from a page he held.

  “In the name of the State of Israel, we salute you, Justice Anton Stolov for your actions and achievements in the service of the state for which you made the ultimate sacrifice. Your deeds cannot yet be revealed but will be told one day.”

  On the command of “Fire!” the ten men fired three rounds in honor of the judge, who had just been interred.

  Abigail stood among judge Anton’s mourners, wearing sunglasses which concealed her tears as she touched the straps of her handbag. She was unable to conceive that he was dead.

  A group of three unfamiliar men stood close to her and she had the feeling that they were, in fact, escorting her, almost shielding her. Abigail assumed that they were acquaintances of his. At the end of the ceremony, one of them extended his hand to shake hers and she felt a note that he placed in her hand. She immediately closed her hand into a fist and then opened it.

  NEXT THURSDAY, AT 4:00 AM, A TAXI WILL AWAIT YOU.

  GOOD LUCK.

  She crumpled the note and turned it into a little ball.

  Nine days left till her assignment.

  Now, her efforts were dedicated to concluding her personal business with the policeman, who had upset the lives of her uncle, Naim, and herself.

  * * *

  Chapter Eighteen

  Abigail attempted to deal with the matter of the policeman legally and she called her friend the investigator, Michal, and asked to meet her commanding officer, Commander Yoav Halamish. Michal transferred her call.

  “Yes, Abigail, I’m listening,” he said.

  “I have several things to tell you, but not over the telephone.”

  Abigail arrived at the busy police station and waited for the officer. When she entered his office, he rose to meet her and shook her hand warmly.

  “You have a very enthusiastic supporter here in Michal, a true admirer,” he said when he sat down again.

  “Yes, I agree with you. She’s a smart investigator and a good friend.”

  Yoav leaned back in his chair and waited to hear what she had to say. Abigail cleared her throat and spoke, without looking in his eyes.

  “You have a policeman who traffics in women,” she began with the first sentence that came to her.

  “A policeman who traffics in women?” Yoav sounded amused and a small smile was smeared on his thin lips when he kept on listening about the close surveillance the policeman kept on her uncle, Naim.

  “When did that happen?”

  “When he returned from Prague, and he followed him from the airport all the way to his home in the Negev.”
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  Commander Yoav squirmed in his seat. He was uncomfortable with what he was hearing.

  “Can we verify this with your Uncle Naim?”

  “No, unfortunately he died two weeks ago and I am speaking on his behalf,” she said out loud and thought to herself ‘and taking revenge on his behalf’.

  “I regret, Abigail, you are a lawyer and who knows better than you that we cannot operate on the basis of rumors and stories.”

  “That’s right, but the driver who drove Naim is alive and well. That same driver is now married to my mother and his name is Yosef Mizrahi.”

  Yoav made a note of the name and Abigail continued.

  “It was easy to remember the license plate number of the car in which the policeman traveled. It was 010-10, the last numbers of a white Mazda.”

  Yoav noted this down too and asked as he wrote.

  “What happened in Prague that brought our policeman to follow your uncle?”

  “Naim escorted women, who were ordered by Arabs in Saudi Arabia. I heard two names: Omar and Ashraf.”

  “Trading women? Aren’t you exaggerating? Was our policeman involved in business like that? By the way, does that policeman have a name?”

  “Yes, Shimon.”

  The pen fell out of Yoav’s hand as he looked up at her in amazement.

  “Are you certain? Do we have a Shimon here at the station?”

  “I don’t know; that’s why I’m here. He was also a jailer at Megiddo Prison.”

  “Right. How do you know he was a jailer at Megiddo?”

  “Because that was where Naim’s son, Walid, was imprisoned.”

  “Aha,” Yoav said, “that’s the fellow who was arrested at the camel race in the desert. Oho! I remember that story.”

  Indeed, Commander Yoav was cooperating with Abigail but, he took every opportunity to try and fault her statements. He feared the publicity the affair might garner and was relieved that the issue was not supported by facts.

  Then, all at once, Abigail put two cell phones down on the desk and with her hand still on them, she said, “these cell phones belonged to my uncle, Naim. You can verify the messages he received and the phone numbers and you can cross check them with the instrument Shimon used to call Naim.”

  “Really? Do you have anything more on him?”

  “In his meeting with Naim, he spoke about a specific woman who evaded the two traders from Saudi Arabia and disappeared," and just at this moment an idea flashed through Yoav’s mind.

  “Well, if we could locate that woman we would have a really well-founded case.”

  “You’re looking at her right now,” she said quietly.

  “You didn't understand; I’m speaking about the woman your uncle discussed with the policeman.” he said, and pleased with himself, he leaned back in his chair and smiled.

  “Yoav, I am the woman they ordered,” she said and Yoav stared at her in surprise. “From the time I was born, my uncle kept me concealed and later changed my name from Naima to Abigail Ben-Nun to avoid sending me to his masters in Saudi Arabia.” She saw how his eyes opened wide into big circles and his mouth dropped in disappointment.

  Shimon was arrested as a result of the complaint filed by Abigail and, on the basis of the facts acknowledged by the judge, he was held over for ten days.

  Time was short and she was due to set out on her assignment, so Abigail contacted Commander Yoav again but this time he squirmed.

  “Abigail, I would very much like to meet you, but it’s impossible. You must understand.”

  Clearly, the officer was being evasive and she had no choice but to try and close the issue on her own and she went to Michal.

  When she entered her office, they embraced and laughed when Michal told her how Yoav was also avoiding her.

  “Can you arrange a visit for me with the imprisoned policeman?” Abigail requested.

  “What! Are you crazy?! You’ve really lost it!” Michal exclaimed. “I know you want to push for closure with this, but think logically. The man will never agree to talk to you.”

  “Leave that to me; just help me get into the prison to visit him.”

  “Abigail, I really can’t,” she responded emotionally, “tell me, why you want to meet him?!

  Abigail hesitated, unsure whether to go into another detailed explanation of the reasons that led her to approach him and said, “listen, that man sent the murderer, who killed my sister Latifa; my father was killed because that policeman told my cousin Walid that he had planted the bag of drugs in his saddlebag. And to add to that, I am not really certain but I believe my sister’s murderer came to my apartment at his behest to persuade my sister to get me to come home in order to kill me.”

  Abigail drew in her breath and continued.

  “That policeman persecuted my uncle and had he not died, it’s possible that he would have made sure he did.”

  Michal was silent. She knew that Abigail had every reason in the world to make sure that the criminal remained in prison.

  * * *

  Sunday was an important day for detainees and prisoners. At 11:00 the names of prisoners, who were expecting visitors, were called. Shimon was startled to hear his name called, as he was not expecting to be called.

  “Shimon!”

  During the three days that he had been detained in prison, he could not understand who was incriminating him and he considered all the possibilities. He decided that no one could prove anything against him and understood that if he kept quiet and didn’t cooperate, no one would ever succeed in implicating him.

  Shimon recalled the consignment from the Far East, when he was compelled to kill one of the two girls he brought because she didn’t appeal to Ashraf, who had ordered her. He claimed she was too old for his taste, so Shimon strangled her in the car, and when he got out of the car, he thought that the mustached driver had witnessed what he had done. Shimon knew that if he wanted to continue enjoying his freedom he had better get rid of the mustached driver so that’s what he did, at the first opportunity, and then he could relax.

  An additional problem arose because Naim sat in the other car opposite him and he wasn’t certain if Naim witnessed what he had done, even though it was pitch dark outside, but this time he could not act.

  Naim was important to the system and Shimon had received sharp and clear warnings from the big dealers, who forbade him from harming him. In the end the matter was solved much more easily than Shimon could have expected because Naim had died and the field was clear for him now.

  Only this morning he had wondered about the Bedouin woman, who had disappeared, but he was certain that matter would also work out in the end and he would find her, and send her to them.

  His name was announced on the loudspeaker again and he panicked. The barred doors of his cell opened automatically and he went out into the large hall. A policeman waited at the entrance and Shimon raised his arms sideways to allow himself to be searched. The policeman winked at him and jabbed his elbow in Shimon’s ribs as he hissed, “you clever bastard, you never said a word to us about her or your daughter.”

  Shimon narrowed his eyes. He didn’t understand what the jailer was talking about and went ahead to the visitors’ hall. Behind a transparent barrier that rose up to the ceiling, he saw a woman dressed in a long white gown. A floral scarf covered her head and face. She was tall and held a little blue-eyed girl on her other arm.

  He stared at her and was convinced that there was a mistake, but she was the only visitor that wasn’t sitting in front of an inmate, so he sat down and faced her. The thick transparent wall separated them and Shimon knew that if he wanted to speak or hear, he had to pick up the telephone receiver that hung on his right.

  The woman sat on the chair and picked up the girl on her knees, and Shimon gazed at her. Only her eyes were visible above the scarf. They were large and pale with little green lines like threads around the irises and long lashes that cast shadows on her cheeks. Her gaze was piercing and Shimon trembled.
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  “Do you know me?” he heard her say on the phone. She spoke in Arabic and Shimon shook his head. He looked at the girl on her knee. The woman continued talking to him in Arabic.

  “I am the Bedouin woman from the Negev.”

  Her eyes narrowed as she smiled and then she let go of the veil she had been holding over her face and it dropped to her chin. At the same time she pulled the scarf off her head and revealed her light-colored hair. Long dimples appeared on her dark smiling cheeks.

  Shimon didn’t recognize her but acknowledged to himself that she was certainly very beautiful. He wondered what the small child was doing there on her lap. He sat back in his chair and heard her ask,

  “What happened, Shimon? Were you reminded of something?”

  For a moment, he wanted to get away, but she continued talking to him.

  “Do you remember the little Bedouin girl who disappeared?” Shimon looked at the child on her knees again but it was clear that she could not be the child from over twenty years earlier. The woman leaned towards him, her face almost touching the transparent Perspex between them and her eyes very close to his as she spoke on the phone as if she was divulging a secret.

  “Shimon, do you want to release me from that contract? Or would you like to deliver me to them?”

  It was very tempting. He thought that if he did deliver her to Ashraf, he would be a king. But it sounded suspicious and too easy and he was confused.

  The little girl on her lap put out her hand and touched the Perspex divider. It was an insignificant gesture that gave the event the appearance of family closeness. Shimon glanced behind him at the jailer, who stood at the entrance and at the people around them to see if someone noticed what had just occurred but they were all taken up with their own interests.

  The beautiful woman waved her arm in the air, her wide sleeve opened in front of him and Shimon saw the silver cell phone inside it. He smiled at her in understanding and she gathered her sleeve up immediately and leaned very close to him so that he would be able to read her lips.