Last Instructions Read online

  I drill more holes in the barrel, farther down the sides, to see if there are any other booby traps, but find none—only layers of plastic sheeting and grease in which various items have been stored. There are 15 holes in the barrel by the time the rechargeable drill’s battery dies. I wander around my vehicle and tent and collect 3 thin twigs from a dry shrub nearby. I use duct tape to fit a thin nail to the one end of each twig. I hold the flashlight in my mouth to leave my hands free to grip the twigs with the nails, and I peer through the holes in the upper section of the barrel. I carefully insert a thin nail into each of the grenades to replace their missing pins, making sure that all 3 nails fit firmly in place.

  I open the outer lid of the barrel and remove the grenades from the surface of the inner metal covering one by one. I leave the grenades equipped with their makeshift pins, breaking off the twigs and wrapping several strips of duct tape around the top of each device to prevent the nails from moving. Just to be sure, I fix each safety lever to the side of the grenade with several strips of tape, too. I remove the barrel’s inner lid to see what’s inside.

  Wrapped in several layers of greased plastic sheeting I see the nuclear warhead. There’s no mistaking it. I leave it closed up in the plastic.

  There are several other smaller plastic-wrapped bundles alongside the warhead. I open them. The 1st contains 4 thick instruction booklets in Russian. I browse through a few pages and am able to partially understand the text thanks to the Russian I learned back in Israel before setting out. I’ll use the road trip to Tijuana to continue with my Russian studies at night so I can properly understand the operating instructions for the warhead.

  The 2nd package contains a Russian-made Makarov pistol, 2 empty magazines, 2 boxes of 9mm rounds (50 rounds per box), a compass, and binoculars. I dismantle the pistol and examine it. It’s clean and well-oiled. I open one of the boxes of rounds, put my gloves on, and fill the 2 magazines. One I insert into the pistol, tapping it gently upward to lock it into place. Loading the bullets into the magazines with the gloves on is cumbersome and slow, but it’s vital not to leave any fingerprints on the cartridges. Spent cartridges are an excellent source of fingerprints. The gun can be easily wiped clean later on. I return the gun, the 2nd magazine and the boxes of bullets to their plastic wrapping, along with the 3 grenades, and put the bundle back into the barrel.

  The 3rd package includes an old Nokia cell phone and 2 batteries. I don’t try to activate the phone and return it to the barrel. The 4th package contains various maps of Bolivia and 30 bundles of 100-euro banknotes, with 100 notes in each bundle. I fold up the maps and return them and the bundles of cash to the barrel. I empty one of the sacks of salt into the upper section of the barrel where the grenades used to be, replace the outer lid and use strips of the black duct tape to seal the holes I made in the sides of the barrel.

  I fold up the tent, pack my belongings into my backpack, get into the pickup truck and head off in the direction of La Paz. It takes me 4 hours to get there. I drive around the city trying to locate a suitable vehicle for my trip to Mexico.

  I don’t find one right away. My search continues for a few days.

  Every evening, I drive out of the city, make myself dinner, and sleep in the tent beside my pickup.

  I press ahead with my Russian and Spanish studies before going to sleep.

  For example: “Officer, I’d be happy to pay my fine to you in person,” in Spanish is: “Oficial, estaría feliz de pagar mi multa a usted en persona.”

  And the phrase, “The ideal altitude for a nuclear explosion is 2.253 km,” in Russian is: “ИДеаЛЬНО ВЫСОТа ЯДЕРНОГО ВЗРЫВа 2.253 KM.”

  December 6, 2016

  “We have a photograph of him,” Rafael says, tinkering with his cell phone and returning the device to the front pocket of his pants. “I’ve sent it to you. He doesn’t look anything at all like the one we received from the Organization.”

  The other two team members look at their mobile devices and memorize the new image.

  “Let’s have a look now at Avner’s residence on Moshav Mazor,” Rafael addresses Meital. “Line zero. Run it backward.”

  They observe the movements around Avner’s home in reverse—Avner returning home from the Organization, looking for Efrat and heading out again; a second vehicle approaching in reverse and a figure carrying a second figure out, laying the figure on the ground; then the figure on the ground getting up and entering the home and the second vehicle moving away.

  “That’s 10483 abducting Efrat. Make a note of the time; we’ll go back there shortly. Keep running it in reverse.”

  —Click—click—click—click—Avner heading to the Organization, another car pulling up at Avner’s house, the same car diving away.

  “Stop.” [12.3.2016 / Saturday / 23:06]

  “Run it forward a little slower.”

  The car heads down the dirt road and stops outside Avner’s house. Someone gets out, meets a second figure who emerges from the home and the two go inside. “That’s Amiram coming to give the notebook to Avner. Run it forward a little faster until he comes out again and then follow the car.”

  “No problem.”

  —Click—click—click—click—Amiram’s car heads toward the exit from the town, and then disappears suddenly from the screen.

  “What the hell?”

  “Just a moment. Dafna, come here for a second and give me more contrast.”

  —Click back—a car appears.

  —Click forward—it’s gone again.

  “Look here by the side of the road,” Dafna says, using a cross-shaped cursor to indicate a black mark on the screen. “The mark wasn’t here two seconds ago,” she continues. “The vehicle you’re looking at flew off into a ditch at the side of the road and overturned. That’s why the color of the object has changed from the white of the roof to the black of the underside of the car.”

  “But there was nothing on the road!”

  “I’m running it forward,” Meital says, resuming control over the system.

  They see someone walking toward two dots on the side of road and then moving on a little farther. Fortunately, the trees on the side of the road are cypresses, without long branches that would have hidden everything. The figure approaches the overturned car, crawls inside, emerges again, and then doesn’t budge for about fifteen minutes. Someone else then gets out of the overturned car and the two individuals remain there together for a few minutes. Then one walks back toward the town, while the other remains lying in the ditch alongside the overturned vehicle.

  “Did he kill Amiram?” one of the team members asks.

  “I don’t think so. Run it forward faster and follow him.”

  The figure walks a few hundred yards into the town, turns onto one of the pathways leading off the main street and disappears under a clump of trees. A minute later, a van emerges from under the trees and stops on the road alongside the overturned car, the prone figure is dragged into the vehicle, which then drives away.

  [12.3.2016 / Saturday / 23:55]—Click—click—click—click—10483’s vehicle leaves the town passes Be’erot Yitzhak, turns left at the interchange onto Route 471, and eventually turns right at Bar-Ilan Junction onto Road No. 4, heading north.

  “Fuck, I don’t believe it!”

  The vehicle disappears again under a thick cover of clouds.

  “Is there any way to see where he exits after the clouds?”

  “No. The cars on the road at night all look very much alike. If the sequence of images at two-second intervals is broken, we don’t stand a chance.”

  “Run it forward to the point at which he abducts Efrat. The images are a lot clearer there since it’s morning.”

  [12.4.2016 / Sunday / 10:25]—Click—click—click—click—10483 drags Efrat into his car, the car heads out of the town; it passes Amiram’s overturned vehicle, which in the daylight can be clearly seen from above but not from the road itself, and then immediately disappears again
under a cover of rain clouds.

  “Shit!” Rafael exclaims as he sits down on one of the vacant armchairs. “I hate the winter. Okay, listen up. We know that he lives in the Sharon region or the North. On both occasions that we managed to follow him for some of the way, he was heading north on Road 4. A town in the Sharon region, around Kfar Saba or Ra’anana, is probably our best bet, unless he moved farther north. We know for sure that he’s holding Efrat and Amiram and we have an updated photograph of him. Come back to the main base and we’ll cross-check his image with everything that moves.”

  Before leaving the Shin Bet facility, the three civilians voiced their gratitude to the AngelFire commander and the two operators. “Thanks, girls. And don’t forget to review the image sequences for the movements around the building on Ibn Gvirol Street—at least eighteen months back. Try to see if this same car was in the vicinity of Moshav Mazor and Ganei Yehuda, and if there was anyone inside keeping an eye on the two locations. Check if he messed around with one of the Ganei Yehuda cameras a few days ago. Whenever you see him, try to follow him and see where he came from, and where he was going.”

  “No problem.”

  The three-man civilian team leaves the room escorted by the AngelFire commander, and the heavy door closes behind them with a dull metallic thud.

  “Interesting huh? I’m making coffee. Want one?”

  “Of course!”

  “A baguette. God, if only I had a nice crispy baguette with pesto and thin slices of tomato and mozzarella cheese, with a little olive oil … I’m starving.”

  “And a large burger with onion rings on the side.”

  Both girls sighed in unison.

  December 6, 2016

  Elliot took the Underground from Hammersmith to Acton Town. After leaving the station and circling the building to make sure no one was following him, he went into a small café adjacent to a dry cleaning store, ordered a cup of Earl Grey tea and scones, took a seat on a stool facing the street, and opened his laptop. Before accessing one of the Darknet’s commercial sites, he first made sure he’d leave no signs on his computer after completing his work.

  19:31

  ZeuS1212: Hey Botnet herders!

  19:31

  ZeuS1212: Need a ~50K Botnet for 6h tonight

  19:33

  ComeToPapa666: Bitcoin mining?

  19:33

  ZeuS1212: Nope. Decryption

  19:33

  ComeToPapa666: 55K herd, $35 an hour

  19:34

  ZeuS1212: Deal

  19:34

  ComeToPapa666: Pay in advance (Bitcoin)

  19:34

  ComeToPapa666: Once transferred you get control for 6h

  Within less than five minutes, 55,000 PCs were at his disposal for six hours, at a cost of $210. Elliot again thanked the torrent gods for the people who upload cracked software, TV series, and movies and unwittingly leave themselves open to networks that take advantage of their computing resources and the content stored in them. He uploaded a cracking program with centralized admin to the Botnet network. Five minutes later, he uploaded the encrypted file to the system and put the cracking instructions into motion. Fifty-five thousand computers began working on the task.

  Elliot removed the flash drive and closed the laptop. “Shitty weather, isn’t it?” the waiter said, placing a cup of steaming hot tea, a plate with two scones, and two small bowls with butter and jam on the table. “Yes,” Elliot responded, “it’s been drizzling incessantly for four straight days now.”

  Elliot drank his tea and ate the scones. He left the payment along with a tip on the table, exited the café, and returned to the nearby Underground station. He spent the next few hours running errands and shopping, then took the Underground again, to a different area of London, went into a pub, ordered a pint of Guinness, and reopened the laptop. Although just three hours had gone by, he received a message when he logged into the Botnet that was running the crack. He downloaded the cracked file onto his flash drive and erased the cracking software from the Botnet.

  22:38

  ZeuS1212: All yours, keep the change;)

  22:38

  ComeToPapa666: THX

  Elliot took a sip of his beer and inserted a pair of earphones into his ears. He listened to the cracked audio file until he finished his beer and the recording came to an end. He wondered if he should tell Carmit that he hadn’t been able to crack the encryption. It was going to shock her for sure.

  He returned the laptop and flash drive to his bag, paid his bill, and rode the Underground back home again. He’d give her the recording tomorrow. She needed to hear it.

  December 7, 2016

  - Did you bring the handcuffs and the rope?

  - You have trust issues, Ricardo; you need to learn to rely on people.

  - Did you bring the handcuffs and the rope?

  - Yes, of course I did. When is the son of a bitch supposed to arrive?

  - In ten minutes. I got a text message. The fucker is on his way.

  - The son of a bitch has nice sofas. He has good taste when it comes to design. Refined taste.

  - They’re just white leather sofas.

  - No, they’re not just sofas. The stitching is precise. Someone made them with love. The leather is soft and velvety. Well processed. From a young cow. The son of a bitch has good taste. It’s not every day you come across someone with good taste. It could be yak leather.

  - What kind of leather?

  - From a yak.

  - How do you know what yak leather looks like? You live in fucking Manhattan. You weren’t around the last time a herd of yaks or buffalo or any other animal aside from a duck or a puppy on a leash passed through there.

  - I’ve seen a yak. Two months ago. In Nepal. It looks like a cow, but with a smoother hide and curved horns, long ones. But the one I saw was brown. Not white.

  - You were in Nepal? What were you doing there in Nepal—mushrooms?

  - I was there on assignment. I didn’t have time for nonsense.

  - For Herr Schmidt?

  - Yes, for Herr Schmidt. I brought back something from Nepal for him. Something in a box.

  - Yak leather?

  - It was a small box. I don’t think it contained yak leather. The box may have been big enough for a small piece, but I don’t think that Herr Schmidt would have sent me all the way to Nepal to bring him a small box with a piece of yak leather inside. Listen to this, Ricardo, I saw a yak when I was in Nepal and that yak changed the way I perceive the world. That’s what that yak did.

  - What did it do?

  - Listen. I’m sitting in a restaurant in Kathmandu. Herr Schmidt’s box is on my lap and I’m eating.

  - Yak meat?

  - No. I’m eating a dish of chicken and noodles with red chili peppers—so fucking hot that it melts the toilet you shit it out on the next day. I see a big brown yak walking slowly down the street some two meters away. It gets to a tap, opens it with its tongue, and drinks a few gallons of water straight from the tap.

  - That’s one smart yak!

  - It’s one fucking smart yak. Listen, when it’s finished drinking, it closes the tap again with its tongue. Can you believe it? It closed the tap.

  - That’s one motherfucking smart yak!

  - And I’m telling you, Ricardo, if a fucking yak closes a tap after drinking from it, then it says something about us, too.

  - Are you sure you didn’t drop some mushrooms there?

  - It means that we have to respect the planet and stop wasting its resources. And we should learn to appreciate beauty. Like this sofa we are sitting on right now.

  - Fuck this fucking sofa and fuck this fucking country. I’m telling you, when we get back from here, I’m quitting.

  - What wrong with Israel?

  - The steaks here are shit. And wherever you go, people look at you like you’re a criminal. The person who stamped my passport when I arrived interrogated me for an hour as if I were a criminal; every mall I go into
I’m checked with a metal detector as if I’m a criminal; every time I go into a restaurant, the security guard at the door looks at me as if I’m a criminal.

  - Perhaps it’s because you’re a criminal.

  - I’m a businessman.

  - In any event, if we finish our work here quickly, we’ll be on a plane back to New York.

  - We’ll stay here for as long as it takes. Until Tuvian or Shariri or whatever his name is gives us the location of Herr Schmidt’s bomb.

  - I’m simply saying, for argument’s sake, that we shouldn’t drag it out for too long.

  - Now listen to me carefully. We’re not going to kill him until he’s finished talking and has told us everything he knows. No matter how annoying he gets. No matter how ugly he is. And even if he spills some blood on these beautiful sofas made from the hide of a young yak, you’re not going to smash his head in with a crowbar and you’re not going to strangle him or electrocute him. Herr Schmidt has asked me to make it perfectly clear to you that this guy has to tell us everything he knows before he is sent to meet his maker.

  - What if he pisses me off?

  - Restrain yourself. We need what’s in his head, not his head itself. I’ll deal with that when the time comes. You just make sure that he doesn’t constitute a danger, and count to a hundred when you feel like gripping his head between your hands and smashing it into the floor tiles. And when you get to one hundred, take a deep breath, unclench your fists, and drop your hands to your sides, and stop looking at the rope with one eye and the ceiling with the other. We’re not going to hang him. Do I have your word, Lorenzo?

  - Deal. As long as he doesn’t dirty this sofa.

  - I hear footsteps on the stairs. Turn off the light. Did you bring the handcuffs and the rope?

  - Yes.

  December 7, 2016

  You’re on a bus in downtown Osaka.