Last Instructions Read online

  “It’s not good,” Rotem replied. “He had a whole year to plan his revenge.”

  The doctor returned to the room with an A4 sheet of paper displaying a color image of 10483’s new face. “Here, take it, I made you a copy. I hope you manage to locate all the money he stole.”

  “Yes, he’s our only connection to the robbery of the Brinks van in ’98. Almost five million shekels. If he hadn’t disappeared on us ten years ago, we would have solved the case already.”

  They got up and left the room, thanking the doctor for his help. They were wise to arm themselves that morning with two police IDs which made it easier for them to get answers. They now had a photograph that they could run through the computers of the Organization, the Shin Bet, the Border Police, and local authorities to get a picture of where he’d been during the course of the past year.

  They were getting into Avner’s car when his Organization cell phone rang.

  “Hello.”

  “Avner Moyal?”

  “Yes.”

  “We believe your car was tampered with outside Ganei Yehuda. Can you check the underside of your vehicle?”

  “Who is this?”

  “Rafael. Let’s just say we have a common target.”

  “And how do you know that something was done to my car?”

  “We have our ways. Also, it seems that it was 10483 who tampered with your car, so you’d be wise to get out of the car if you’re in it now, and ensure that no one is near the vehicle.” The call ended.

  “There’s no need to hurry,” Rotem said. She remained in her seat as Avner closed the door he’d just opened. “If he wanted to blow us up with whatever he fixed to the underside of this car, he would have done so already. So … Grandpa’s sent another team after him. Just as I thought. I wonder if we would have found out had they not warned us now about something under the car.”

  “Grandpa told me there was a second team.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Old habits die hard. I’m sorry,” Avner said with a smile.

  Rotem faked a look of anger despite knowing after her talk with Grandpa that there was at least one more team on the trail of 10483 aside from them.

  They got out of the car and Avner crawled underneath the vehicle. He emerged moments later with a package the size of a book that was wrapped in black duct tape.

  “It was stuck to the underside of the car,” he said.

  Rotem took the package and slowly tore off the strips of duct tape. Inside was a cell phone connected to several rechargeable batteries. The phone was locked.

  “He’s been keeping track of us,” Rotem said. “He must have Waze open, or some other GPS application with sharing. So he knows now that we know what he looks like.”

  “That we know what he looks like?”

  “He’s seen the route we’ve taken—Tel Hashomer, Ichilov, Lowenstein. I’m assuming he knows now that the staff here has given us a photograph of him. Don’t turn off the cell phone. I don’t want him to know that we’ve found it. Perhaps we can use that to our advantage. In any event, I’m guessing he won’t be using it to get to us at this stage. He’ll save us for dessert because we are the tastiest. Let’s go back to the main base for now.”

  “Just a moment,” Avner said before using his own cell phone to take a picture of the 10483 image they now had. He looked through his list of incoming calls, attached the picture to a text message, and sent it to the number of the last call he received. He wrote, “This is him. Good luck.”

  Seconds later he received a reply: “Thanks. May the best team win.”

  December 6, 2016

  “I’m walking barefoot in the snow. My feet don’t make a sound. Snowflakes swirl in the gentle breeze. The shrubs in the large courtyard look dark green in the moonlight, they’re covered with domes of snow. I move toward the figure in front of me. It’s a young girl. She’s wrapped in a blue coat, the hood covers her head completely and she wears yellow boots. She’s looking down at the snow. Black sunglasses cover her eyes. She looks no older than six or seven.

  “My bare feet and hands don’t feel the cold as I move toward the girl. I’m not wearing gloves. The snow continues to fall. I come to a stop and she looks up at me. She removes her sunglasses. ‘My name is Keiko and you killed me,’ she says.”

  “And then you wake up?”

  “Yes. I’ve been having the same dream almost every night.”

  “Are you still involved with the transformations?”

  “No. I’ve cut all ties with them. With all my handlers. With the Organization. With the Chinese, with the Norwegians. I’m no longer doing any of that. I even threw away the cell phone I used to use to communicate with them, and I dismantled the lab and released all the mice into Hyde Park. I can’t understand why this dream keeps recurring.”

  “Who requested the transformations on the Japanese guy?”

  “On Kazuo Shimizu?”

  “Was that his name?”

  “Yes. The client was a large Chinese government backed corporation. They paid upfront in full with a single bank transfer. I have to figure out what went on there. Elliot, I have a flash drive with me with the encrypted transformation file they sent me to perform on him. I didn’t destroy it. They got me to use the same transformation file on Kazuo five times. The very same file—with no changes. Never before has a client asked me to perform the same transformation on a target over and over again. Work your magic and see if you can figure out what they were trying to do. Let’s meet here again tomorrow. I have to work out what went on there and who that girl is. She’s the same girl who was standing beside her parents at the Geneva airport. The same young girl I sketched without even knowing I could draw. The same girl who appeared in my dreams after I’d completed the transformation on Kazuo Shimizu.”

  “Can’t you access the audio file? What’s the problem? They were supposed to send you the password so that you could play it into Kazuo’s head, right?”

  “No. There’s no password. They sent me the encrypted file along with an iPad app that unlocked the encryption during playback and then locked it again afterward. Following the final transformation, the system deleted the sound file. But I copied the original file to a flash drive before the final playback, so I still have that copy. I tried to play around with it but have no idea how to open it.”

  “I’ll try to work on it this evening.”

  I continue my way down the quartz stairs and hear the rock above me slide back into place. It blocks the sunlight and I’m enveloped in complete darkness. I continue down the stairs. My right hand brushes over the passageway’s rock face to my right, and my left hand is stretched out in front of me to prevent me from bumping into anything. I stumble and almost fall when the stairs end and the ground below my feet flattens out. I don’t have my phone with me and I’m not wearing a watch, but I estimate that I’ve been descending for about 52 minutes, assuming I covered the 3,120 steps at a rate of 60 per minute.

  I make my way down a long quartz tunnel and see a faint dot of light in the distance. I think, There’s light at the end of the tunnel, and I’m amused. I continue until I emerge from the tunnel into a large park. My knees hurt and my legs are shaking. A cold sun shines over the park’s grassy expanse, and the leaves on the trees, in various shades of green, yellow, red, and brown, flutter in the cold wind. Some of them fall to the ground to join the colorful carpets of leaves under the trees.

  The park is filled with families and young couples. Children are playing on the green grass, adults are sitting around picnic tables and drinking coffee from flasks, and the smell of hot dogs drifts through the air. There is a small restaurant located at the juncture of several pathways. The grass, tree, and pathways stretch out before me in every direction.

  Suddenly, all the families, couples, and individuals who are wandering around the park stop what they’re doing and turn their heads in a certain direction. They remain frozen like that for a few seconds, and then, all
at once, they continue going about their business.

  I walk along one of the pathways that winds among the trees and cross several streams by means of small wooden bridges. The sun shines through the branches of the tall trees. The people around me don’t appear to be interested in one another, but every few minutes, they freeze and turn their heads toward that same point. I follow the path I’m on toward the point they keep looking at.

  I step out from among the trees into an open grassy expanse. There aren’t any trees here, and no benches or pathways. The area is also void of people. I walk toward the center of the open field. The grass is moist and my shoes get covered with a layer of dew that wets my socks. The wind turns icy and the bright white light that shines from the sun does little to ease the sudden intense chill in the park.

  I continue to make my way to the center of the big field of grass. I keep going until I reach a circular paved surface. Peeping here and there between the paving stones are small tufts of grass, and the paving stones are covered by reddish green moss. A stone fountain stands in the middle of the circle. Its 3 tiers are chiseled in the shape of 3 blooming flowers. The fountain is surrounded by a circle of smooth stones, and an inner circle of 5 benches made from wood.

  The fountain is dry. There’s no water in it. I see there is text engraved into one of the smooth stones. It says:

  If you ask me whence this story comes, I will tell you it comes from a storm of wind and iron, from orange-flaming arrows of fiery glass and the ashes of the dead.

  I sit down on one of the benches and rest for a few minutes.

  The stone fountain comes alive. A gentle stream of water gushes from the fountainhead and pours down into the floral-shaped tiers below, filling them one after the other until the bottom one is full to the brim. I peer into the large floral-shaped structure. An ethereal image looks back at me from the water. A young boy lies in bed, and someone, his mother perhaps, is sitting on the carpet by his side. She’s leaning over to look at something and all I can see is her back. I can’t make out the identity of the boy. The image is blurred and fuzzy, and it fades and disappears in a puff of smoke. The fountain goes dry and the 3 floral-shaped tiers are drained of water at once, remaining bone-dry again. I touch the stone. It’s very cold.

  02/20/2016—Morning, 10 weeks and 1 day since waking

  I get up at 3 in the morning, before my phone has a chance to wake me, and I turn off the alarm. The hotel lobby is deserted and I go out to my pickup. The lumber in the back of the pickup is in disarray and one of the lengths of wood is lying on the ground a few meters to the side of the vehicle. The cargo bay is dotted with blood, and there’s a blood trail leading from the pickup truck down the street. I unlock the vehicle, remove a pair of thick leather gloves from the glove compartment and put them on. I retidy the pile of lumber and retrieve and replace the piece that’s lying on the side of the road, taking care not to cut up the gloves on the razor blades I’ve embedded in the wood. Someone tried to steal them during the night, or tried to get to the tools underneath, and now he must have a good few rows of sutures.

  I start the engine and drive to the train cemetery. This is the 1st time I’ve ever kept gloves in the glove compartment. It amuses me.

  I drive alongside the trains and shine a flashlight on the cars until I find the one marked with the white X. I park my vehicle next to the car and turn off the lights. The light of the moon will suffice for now, the sun will be up soon. I put on the gloves again and unload the lumber. I saw 2 beams to 10 pieces, 40 centimeters each, then I use 4 beams together with the pieces I sawed using a hammer and nails and build a 4-meter ladder. The banging of the hammer breaks the silence around me.

  I rest the ladder against the side of the train car and climb up. Looking in, I see that the car is filled with salt or some other mineral. I taste a few grains. Yes, it’s salt. There’s something black sticking up out of the center of the salt bath. When the car was full to the brim with salt, the object would have been completely hidden; but over the years, the high-altitude desert’s cold winds have clearly scattered some of the open freight car’s load, and the treasure buried there has been exposed. I climb in and push my way through the salt toward the black object, which turns out to be the rim of a black barrel. I dig a little into the salt around it. The barrel is in good condition. It doesn’t have any holes and the salt hasn’t caused excessive corrosion. The dry air of the high-altitude desert probably played a part, too. I check out the sides of the freight car. They’re thick and strong. I won’t be able to cut through the bottom to allow the salt to spill out. I’m going to have to lift the barrel out of the salt from above. I have lots of work to do. It’s already 3:40.

  I retrieve the roll of rope from my pickup and cut off a 6-meter piece, I tie one end to one of the lengths of wood. With the other end of the rope in my hand, I climb the ladder again, dragging the length of lumber behind me. I do the same another 6 times, throwing all 7 pieces of wood into the salt inside the freight car. And then I bring up the rest of the equipment. I leave the tent in the pickup. When I bought it, I thought I’d be digging into the earth and I was going to use it to cover the hole I made, but now I’m going to be digging up salt in a freight car. I join 2 lengths of wood to form a V, and then do the same with another pair. I plunge the 2 V-shapes into the salt on either side of the barrel and connect their respective apex points using 2 beams that I fix together to form a single thicker one. The structure I’ve created has 4 legs that support the double beam above the barrel. I’ve reinforced everything with dozens of screws. I saw the last remaining length of lumber into several pieces to form a counterweight to go with the pulley wheels I purchased. I take a break for a few minutes to allow my body to rest and I drink some water from the bottle I brought with me. I put a few grains of salt from the freight car into my mouth. They don’t taste the same as cooking salt.

  I cut 3 pieces of rope, dig around the barrel, and create 2 loops of rope tied to it. I connect the 2 loops with the 3rd piece of rope and all this is connected to the pulley stand I built and to the beam hanging over the barrel. I pull the rope and the barrel rises. Without the pulleys I could not move it. It must weigh at least 150 kilos. And then, with the barrel suspended in the air above the side of the freight car, I use my one foot to push it past the edge, before releasing the rope and lowering it slowly to the ground at the foot of the car.

  I leave the pieces of equipment I know I’ll no longer need buried in the salt, throw the wooden pulley system I constructed down to the ground, and collect the rest of my gear and carry it down the ladder. Using the chain saw I then cut the ladder into several pieces. I use the pulley system to lift the barrel into the pickup truck’s open cargo bay, before dismantling the wooden structure and packing the lengths of lumber into the back of the vehicle. I secure the barrel to the cargo bay with some rope. It’s already 6:30 and the desert around me is glowing in the early morning light. I take some pictures of train engines at sunrise, return to my hotel, and pay my bill.

  “Did you get some nice photographs?” the desk clerk asks.

  “Very nice,” I reply. “The old locomotives look fantastic at dawn. Thanks for the tip. And here’s a tip for you, too.” I take out a 50-boliviano note and give it to him.

  I return to my vehicle. I put on the radiation protective apron that I bought from the dentist and begin driving back to La Paz. The apron will protect me from most of the radiation emanating from the barrel. My exposure time will be lengthy. I won’t be able to leave the barrel out of sight for even a moment, lest it be stolen. At night I’ll sleep in a tent alongside the pickup truck. I can get food supplies in villages along the way. I have a 2-day drive back to La Paz, and then a journey of another 30 days or so to Tijuana in Mexico. From there I’ll cross the border into the United States somewhere near San Diego.

  02/21/2016—Evening, 10 weeks and 2 days since waking

  A full day of driving takes me to the town of Oruro, where I buy some vegetables,
a bag of rice, a loaf of bread, and a few spices. My pickup is parked outside the small store and I don’t let it out of my sight. While I’m at the store, I refill 2 large bottles with water, dropping iodine purification pills into each. I drive for another half an hour in the direction of La Paz, then make a right off the main thoroughfare onto a dirt road, which I follow for about 10 kilometers into the wilderness.

  I prepare dinner with the groceries I bought. While the rice is cooking in a pot with some hot spice I picked up at the store, I erect the tent and lay out my sleeping bag. I eat the meal I’ve made, drink some of the iodine-tasting water, and go to sleep.

  I wake the following morning at dawn, put on the lead apron and check on the barrel in the pickup’s cargo bay. No one is going to bother me here and I have time. I drill a number of small holes into the side of the barrel near the top; then I use larger and larger bits to gradually create several holes of approximately 3 centimeters in diameter each. I make a point of not drilling too deep into the barrel. I shine my flashlight into the barrel through each of the holes to see what’s going on inside. I can see that the barrel is made up of 2 parts. Fitted to the bottom section is a metal covering with a 5-centimeter gap between it and the outer lid of the barrel. There are 3 hand grenades with their pins removed in the space between the 2 sections. The grenades have been fixed to the inner covering such that their safety levers are pressed up against barrel’s outer lid, which, in turn, is holding them in place and preventing the grenades from exploding despite the fact that the pins are out. Removing the barrel’s outer lid would release the 3 safety levers; and 3 seconds later, the 3 grenades would explode. By the time the person removing the outer lid had realized what was happening, he or she would be blown to bits and the warhead, would be destroyed in a regular blast and not a nuclear explosion since a nuclear explosion has to be triggered internally by the complex detonation mechanism within the warhead. That would be a real waste.