Last Instructions Read online

  - I’d like to see that.

  - No problem. I have a box full of these ants that I smuggled in from Colombia and I’m gonna set up a camera. When this asshole falls asleep here on the floor, we’ll end up with one helluva movie. We’ll be able to sell it to National Geographic.

  Lorenzo left the hotel room and returned a minute later with a closed cardboard box in his arms. He placed the box on the floor and opened it, and hordes of black ants came crawling out. Instead of moving randomly around the room, they arranged themselves in a black circle around the figure of Shariri shackled to the floor.

  - I don’t believe it! Just like you said. Just look at those little bastards!

  - I don’t expect him to talk anyway. So at least we’ll have a nice memento.

  Lorenzo retrieved a tripod from his suitcase and positioned it in front of the man who was lying on the floor with a look of terror on his face. He mounted a video camera on the tripod and aimed it at Sharon Tuvian.

  - I advise you not to fall asleep.

  - That’s it, the camera’s ready. When he falls asleep and the ants move in, I’ll start filming.

  - Are you getting the full circle of ants in the frame? Don’t cut out any of the circle. It’s really beautiful.

  - Yes, everything is set to go. You know what, I have about twenty hours of available recording time on the camera’s memory card; let’s go out for a nice plate of hummus on the promenade somewhere and the ants meanwhile can do their thing when he falls asleep. I slipped three sleeping pills into the water we gave him to drink earlier. He’ll be snoring like a pig in no time. We can edit the movie afterward and sell it to National Geographic.

  - Or maybe we should simply upload it to YouTube. And then his wife and kids can enjoy the show, too.

  - Great idea. Remove the rag from his mouth so the ants can get in.

  Lorenzo pulled the rag out of Sharon Tuvian’s mouth, and both twins then turned to head for the door. The ants waited patiently. “I’ll tell you everything you want to know,” Tuvian started screaming. “Just get them the hell away from me!”

  December 9, 2016

  When Jing Feng opened his eyes and tried to get up from the armchair in his living room, he discovered that he wasn’t able to. His hands and feet were bound tightly to the chair, and several loops of rope held his stomach firmly in place against the backrest. It was late at night, and Jing Feng tried to remember when and where he had fallen asleep. His mind was a foggy blur and he shook his head from side to side. He sensed movement in the living room and realized he wasn’t alone.

  “Zhè shì shuí?” he shouted.

  A flashlight went on and lit up the face of a woman who was sitting on the carpet in front of him. The beam from the flashlight in the woman’s hand moved away from her face and illuminated a white towel spread out on the home’s wooden floor. Lying on the towel was a syringe containing a rosy liquid, an iPad connected to a set of regular headphones with thin coiled cables, a pair of glasses, and an oxygen mask that was hooked up to a green metal canister, which looked like an oxygen tank, by means of a thin transparent tube. The flashlight’s beam returned to the face of the woman in front of him.

  “I hope I’ve mixed my materials well,” the woman spoke. “I’d already thrown away everything I used to have in my laboratory, and I was forced to visit a few different places to prepare this sauce. All my mice are gone, too, so I couldn’t test the sauce first. You’ll be my lab mouse now.”

  “Caroline?” Jing Feng recognized her voice.

  She stood up, turned on the light in the living room, and then sat back down on the floor in front of the armchair with her legs crossed. He could now see the person he had only ever spoken with by phone. She was wearing long black jogging pants and a black sweatshirt with a hood, and she had black sneakers on her feet. On the floor beside the towel was a small backpack, and next to it he could see a plate of roasted cashew nuts and a glass of whiskey. “I took the liberty of visiting your kitchen,” she said. “This Golden Irish is superb.”

  “What’s going on? What are you doing here?”

  “You sent me to carry out the transformations on Kazuo Shimizu.”

  “So what?”

  “Kazuo strangled his daughter and committed suicide. Just like you, Kazuo was no saint, but his daughter had never done anything wrong. She appears in my dreams almost every night and tells me that I killed her—and she’s right. I can’t bring her back to life, but I can atone for what I did to her by doing what I’m about to do to you.”

  “The transformation was designed only to cause him to commit suicide. The file we sent you caused him to shoot himself.”

  “Don’t waste your breath. I cracked the encryption and listened to everything.” Carmit picked up the oxygen mask and approached the chair. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to kill you.” She placed the mask over Jing Feng’s face. He shook his head to try and prevent her from doing so, but to no avail. She opened the tap on the green canister. “You’ll be out soon and then I’ll hook you up to my equipment. I’m going to break a record today.”

  Jing Feng squirmed in his chair and tried to break free from the ropes that bound him.

  “What I’m about to perform on you now,” Carmit said, “is one long transformation three times. We have the entire night ahead of us.” Carmit picked up the syringe and stood in front of the chair. “Not the same transformation that Kazuo underwent. You’ll be getting something I prepared especially for you. It’s a phobia cocktail—claustrophobia, agoraphobia, arachnophobia. You’ll be afraid of flying, of dogs, of heights, of dirt, of syringes, of ghosts, of clowns, of death, of solitude, of being a failure, of people, of snakes, and of goldfish.”

  The room spun around Jing Feng. Carmit injected him with the rosy solution and then used medical tape to stick his eyelids to his forehead so they’d remain open. She then fitted him with headphones and glasses for the transformation. To protect her own eyes, she put on a pair of sunglasses with dark orange lenses. Prodigy came booming through the earphones she inserted in her ears. She turned on her iPad and the transformation software’s monitoring screens began displaying the parameters that kept track of the synchronization between the pulses of blue light that penetrated Jing Feng’s brain through the windows of his eyes and the recording that was being fed into his brain through his ears. Carmit dripped a little water into Jing Feng’s open eyes every few minutes to prevent them from drying out and went on eating her cashews and drinking her whiskey. When the transformations were done, she collected and folded her equipment and packed everything back into her bag. It was 4:30 in the morning and her flight was due to leave Shenzhen’s Bao’an International Airport in two and a half hours. She still had to return her rental car to the agency at the airport before her flight.

  Carmit untied the ropes and moved Jing Feng back to his bedroom. She put her bag on her back, jumped out the window she had climbed through earlier, and closed it behind her. She walked briskly away from the villa, leaving on the ground behind her the guard that she neutralized earlier before breaking in and keeping clear of areas illuminated by streetlights. Her rental car was where she’d left it a few blocks away. She got in and set off for the airport. She stopped on the side of the highway to throw out the syringes and the green canister with the oxygen mask still attached to it. She took off the gloves she was wearing and stuffed them into the pocket of her pants. She’d throw them away at the airport, in a trashcan in one of the toilet cubicles.

  03/23/2016—Morning, 14 weeks and 5 days since waking

  I wake up early in the morning, make myself an omelet sandwich in a bun and eat outside the RV. There’s a cool breeze blowing and the trailer park is filled with the song of birds. The sun will be up soon. I get the RV ready and leave the trailer park.

  The drive to McLean passes quickly. The roads and infrastructure here are good, and there are trailer parks and roadside diners everywhere. 5 days of driving gets me to a trailer park in the George Wash
ington and Jefferson National Forests. I find a spot at the far end of the park and unload the tools, metal rods, lumber, and wooden boards I bought the day before at a large Sears store. I lay everything out on the nearby strip of tarmac, put on a pair of yellow rubber gloves, and begin dealing with the RV’s shit tank. I carefully disassemble the tank and drag it out from under the vehicle. Fixed tightly in place above it is the warhead, which is now caked in a thick brown-black layer of waste. I position the 2 new jacks I purchased at Sears directly under the warhead, and I use them to support one of the wooden boards to which I’ve nailed planks along the sides to prevent the warhead from rolling off. I raise the jacks so that the wooden platform is right up against the warhead. I use the hacksaw to cut through the steel cables that are holding the warhead in place, leaving it loose and resting stably on the wooden board, and then I gradually lower the 2 jacks to a height that allows me to slowly maneuver the RV to the side. By the time I’m done maneuvering the RV, the warhead remains resting on the wooden platform on the 2 jacks, with the vehicle parked next to it. I use the metal rods I bought to construct a pyramid above the warhead; and with the new pulley wheels and metal strip I purchased, I lift the warhead above the wooden board, and it sways in the air and drips large brown clumps of waste onto the wooden platform underneath. I peel away one layer of the plastic sheeting and stuff the filthy wrapping into a garbage bag that I place to one side. I measure the exact dimensions of the warhead and construct a strong crate using one of the boards and the lumber I bought, reinforcing the structure with additional lengths of wood on all sides. After further strengthening my construction with several bands of metal, I place it under the swinging warhead, which I then cautiously lower inside the crate. I wash off all my equipment and leave it out to dry. I also hose down the strip of road around the RV with the pipe that serves to supply water to the vehicle. I shower and change clothes. I place the 2nd wooden board on top of the crate, nail it shut and leave it next to the RV. I open the tent, cut away its floor, and position it over the wooden crate to protect it from rain and prying eyes. I’m not worried about someone trying to steal the crate at night because it’s way too heavy to be moved. I reattach the RV’s waste tank and seal the holes and openings at the top with strips of duct tape. I prepare myself a dinner of mac and cheese and broccoli and go to bed early.

  The following morning I hire a moving company to transport the crate from the trailer park straight to a long-term storage facility some 3 miles from the city of McLean. I tell them to send 4 guys because I have a crate that weighs 150 kilos; but when the truck arrives, only 2 sturdy Russians step out. They grip the sides of the crate and lift it onto their truck’s hydraulic ramp, and then into the back of the vehicle. 2 American Russians lifting a Russian warhead. It amuses me.

  I follow them in the RV and we drive to the long-term storage facility where I’ve reserved a 2-meter by 3-meter storage unit. When we get there, I meet with Chris Martinez, the facility’s manager, and pay him upfront in cash for a year’s worth of storage. I ask him if it would be okay for me to come back in a few days to leave the RV with him, too, and he says yes and takes an additional sum of money from me. I ask him if it would be okay for me to return once or twice at some point in the future to sort out the contents of the storage unit. He says of course, gives me a key to storage unit No. 24, my unit, and I open it. The 2 movers carry the crate I built inside. I thank them and give them 2 $50 bills as a tip. They smile and thank me. After they drive away and the storage facility manager returns to his office, I move all the tools and other items I bought at Sears into the unit and lock it. I’ll return tomorrow to continue my work. I examine the cylinder and the locking mechanism of the storage unit’s door. I’ll buy a new cylinder tomorrow and replace the existing one. I get back into the RV, head down Clara Barton Parkway, and park across from Sycamore Island.

  The Potomac River is flowing gently and several kayakers row past. I sit on a rock and gaze at the bare trees and running water. Leaves are scattered on the ground and a large turtle on the bank of the river lifts its head and looks around. The sun will be setting soon; and before I return to my hotel, I cast one last look at the building across the river that is home to the CIA’s new headquarters.

  I’m pleased to have storage unit No. 24. It’s an excellent number.

  03/25/2016—Before noon, 15 weeks since waking

  Israel and the United States are similar countries but on a different scale. Both are security oriented democracies; and in both countries, members of the military and the defense establishment play leading roles in their country’s decision-making processes. If I really want the Organization to suffer as much as possible, I need to kick-start the worst possible chain reaction; I need to proceed in a manner that will spark the most intense rage from among the powers that be in Washington. There’s no point in detonating the warhead in New York, although the number of civilian fatalities would be much higher. Blowing up McLean, however, will produce the optimal effect. McLean is home to CIA headquarters and a large proportion of America’s intelligence community lives in the area. They’ll want revenge, and I will point them in the right direction. And that will force Israel to shut down the Organization.

  The Pentagon is a 12-minute drive from here. Washington will definitely take a hit; but more importantly, there’ll be very little left of the CIA’s headquarters. A large part of the agency’s headquarters sits deep underground and most of the structure is well protected by a thick layer of concrete, so I’ll detonate the warhead at 11 a.m. Israel time, which is 4 a.m. Washington time. Everyone will be at home at that time, and most of the homes around here are made of wood.

  I’m sitting in my storage unit and eating a bacon and cheese sandwich. In front of me is the disassembled crate, and the warhead is resting on the wooden board that served as its base. On a small wooden table I built a little earlier is the Operating Instructions manual that I didn’t bury in Mexico. I kept the manual with me, I stuffed it between a pile of sports magazines in one of the RV’s drawers. I loosen a few flat-headed screws and detach a circular metal plate from the side of the warhead.

  I disconnect the battery, take it out, and examine it. There are no signs of corrosion. I position the stepladder and climb up to the lightbulb on the ceiling of the storage unit. With my flashlight gripped between my teeth I unscrew the hot bulb and replace it with an electrical adapter that’s fitted with a lightbulb socket on the top and an electrical outlet on its side. I screw the lightbulb into the socket at the bottom of the adapter. The storage unit lights up again and I take the flashlight out of my mouth, turn it off, and put it in my pocket.

  I connect an extension cord to the electrical socket and place a multi-outlet at the other end of the cord on the floor below. I plug in the UPS and then connect the UPS to the power converter. I remove the old battery connection that fits the warhead and I hook it up to the OUT side of the power converter I bought with 2 electrical wires. The UPS comes to life. The converter is working and its red LED light is on. I connect the converter to the warhead and a small green light appears on the nuclear device.

  The Russian-language manual is next to me and I read through it carefully and adjust a set of switches to define a detonation height of 3.5 kilometers above the ground, although the ideal altitude is somewhat less. The warhead’s barometric pressure sensors may not be particularly precise, so I give myself a safety margin. I turn on the switch that overrides the trigger mechanism that arms the warhead when launched on a missile. A small red light comes on next to the green one. The warhead is primed for action. I turn it on.

  I move the bomb’s power switch to the aКТИВНЫЙ position and the green light goes off and another red one comes on in its place. Both red lights are on now, and the moment the warhead reaches an altitude of 3.5 kilometers, it will explode. I recall those movies in which people are on the hunt for secret codes to activate nuclear bombs. It’s a whole lot simpler in reality.

  I connect th
e smart-house electrical system to the UPS’s 2nd outlet. To its 3rd outlet I connect the control unit for the system, and to the 4th outlet I connect the charger for the cell phone I purchased with a $500 prepaid SIM card. It will last me for a long time. I plug the vacuum cleaner into the smart electrical socket.

  I build another crate around the warhead, this time making the frame from pieces of wood and using sheets of plastic to tightly seal the crate with the warhead inside. I run the warhead’s power cord through a slit in the plastic, which I seal afterward. I then insert the end of the vacuum cleaner’s suction hose through a 2nd hole in the plastic before sealing that with silicone, too. I move the vacuum cleaner’s power switch to ON and nothing happens because the smart electrical socket is inactive.

  When I choose to remotely activate the warhead, I’ll access the smart-house electrical system in the storage unit via the Internet and activate the smart socket. With the power on, the vacuum cleaner will kick into action and suck out the air from the crate. Within a few seconds, the barometric pressure inside the crate will drop and the warhead will detonate.

  I disconnect the suction hose from the side of the vacuum cleaner and use my phone to connect to the network I’ve set up with the help of my cellular device. I enter a password to access the smart-house system and turn on its electrical socket. The vacuum cleaner comes to life. The system is functioning. I turn it off remotely again with my phone and reconnect the suction hose to the vacuum cleaner.

  I place the 2 porcelain vases I bought on either side of the crate with the warhead inside. I fill each one with plastic flowers and arrange them nicely. “O Lord, thou God to whom vengeance belongeth, thou God to whom vengeance belongeth, shine forth,” I write in black marker on the sheet of plastic on the top of the crate. On the sheet of plastic on the side of the crate facing the door to the storage unit I write: “This is the beginning of your end.” I make a cut on my wrist with the box cutter and decorate the plastic sides with drops of my blood. When I’m done, I cover the cut with a Band-Aid, scatter some dry leaves I’ve collected from outside around my work of art, and take a photo of it with my cell phone for the sake of posterity.