Last Instructions Page 9
The rectangular hole I’ve cut into the sewage tank allows me to fix it back into place over the warhead. I secure the tank and reseal the opening using the piece I sawed away.
I place several small and somewhat purplish Bolivian potatoes into a pot of water and begin cooking them on the RV’s stove. When they are done, I’ll make some mash with the butter I purchased. There’s a picture of an alpaca on the butter’s wrapping.
I learn by reading through the warhead’s instruction manual that its fuse can be programmed. Its activation mechanism has 2 setting options—arming and detonation on impact, or arming and detonation some distance above the ground, the device fitted at its tip has a barometric pressure gauge. This is very good.
I use the RV’s toilet to check for leaks in the sewage tank. The warhead in the tank is wrapped in several layers of plastic and grease and will soon be covered in a layer of shit, too. The Australians gave me special tablets to drop every day into the toilet bowl in order to melt the contents of the sewage tank and thus make it easier to empty its contents with the pipe. I don’t use them so as not to damage the protective layer of plastic around the warhead.
I sleep every night outside the mobile home in a sleeping bag in a tent, dressed in the dentist’s lead apron. The apron protects me from the radiation. I make sure I add iodine tablets to the water I drink. The iodine destroys any germs and bacteria in the water and also prevents radiation damage. Radioactive iodine-131 can be harmful. I need to look into the subject of iodine and radioactivity.
•Remember to read up on it when I’m somewhere with cellular coverage again
In my current location, the RV’s radio picks up nothing more than a single Bolivian AM station that plays songs that comprise primarily of wails of various kinds.
I plug my iPhone into a charger that’s connected to the RV’s cigarette lighter. Gina and Mark either left it for me as a gift inside the glove compartment or simply forgot it there.
03/03/2016–11 weeks and 6 days since waking
I press ahead today with my work on the RV. I open the package containing the 3 hand grenades and remove the strips of duct tape such that the nails alone are serving as their safety mechanism. I dismantle the RV’s plastic ceiling panel and fix the grenades to the vehicle’s roof. I run a length of thin metal cable across the ceiling and wrap it around each of the nails 3 times, knotting everything into place with several pieces of fishing line. I then dismantle one of the RV’s inner panels and run the end of the thin metal cable down the side of the vehicle before tying it to a metal ring I’ve removed from a key ring that was in the RV. I replace the ceiling cover and the side panel. If I pull down hard on the ring peeking out from under the side panel alongside the driver’s seat, I’ll have 3 seconds to get myself out of the vehicle.
I connect the switch I bought to the fuel pump’s electrical cable, in a hard-to-find spot under the RV’s engine well, and I turn off the power. I’ll deactivate the fuel pump whenever I park the RV; and if someone tries to steal the vehicle, they won’t get farther than a few dozen meters before the fuel feeding the spark plugs runs dry.
I gather some dry branches and place them in a heap in the barrel I sawed in half the previous day. I set them alight and throw the package with the cell phone, its 2 batteries, and the collection of maps of Bolivia into the fire. I have one PDF map on my cell phone and don’t need any others.
I hide the pistol, the extra magazine, and the box of bullets in the RV, behind the microwave oven. I’ll have to ditch them in Mexico, before crossing the border into San Diego.
03/08/2016—Night, 12 weeks and 4 days since waking
I park at the side of a dirt road near the town of Tulcán in Ecuador. The border crossings from Bolivia into Peru and from Peru into Ecuador went by smoothly, with the gift of a few cartons of cigarettes and a bottle of whiskey for the border guards. For most of the way through Peru, I follow the roads that run along the coastline, and in 4 days I cover a distance of 2,754 kilometers to the border crossing near Huaquillas. From there I travel north into Ecuador for a farther 823 kilometers to where I am now; and tomorrow I’ll cross the border into Colombia.
I do my food shopping in small towns, and I sleep every night in open areas at least 20 kilometers from the nearest community. I’m not troubled much at all along the way. Now and then hikers appear and marvel at the RV. I greet them and wish them luck on their travels. Tonight I get a visitor of a different kind. While lying in my tent and reading through the Russian-language instruction manual and translating the words I’ve yet to learn with the help of Google Translate on my iPhone, I hear the door to the RV slam shut, the engine fire up, and the vehicle drive away before the engine coughs, splutters, and dies. Someone is trying to steal my trailer. He may have been sent by the Organization.
I count prime numbers in my head until someone rips through the side of the tent to my left with the sudden slash of a knife. He slips quickly inside and sits on my sleeping bag and leans over me. “Get the RV going again right now if you want to live,” he says. He’s holding a knife in his right hand, which is raised above me. I wonder if he knows about my warhead or if he simply wants to steal the RV. I’ll get him to tell me that tomorrow.
I tell him that I don’t think I’ll be cooperating with him and that he should put the knife down and get off me because it’s uncomfortable. I raise my one arm toward the roof of the tent to reach for the hammer from my toolbox that’s hanging there. His eyes follow my hand and he sees the hammer. He slams the knife into my chest. He looks surprised. The look in his eyes reminds me of the expression on the face of the black-coated, blue-hatted man who followed me in the Netherlands the moment I pushed him onto the Metro tracks. I manage to get my hand on the hammer and bring it down onto his head. Not too hard. I still need to talk to him tomorrow morning.
It’s good that I wear the lead apron at night. It protects me not only from the radiation. I crawl out of my sleeping bag, leave the tent, and get things ready for tomorrow’s talk. I take 2 strips of duct tape and repair the tear his knife made in the side of the tent. 1 strip on the inside and 1 strip on the outside. I spread contact adhesive over and around the 2 strips to reinforce the joint. I don’t keep the pistol in the tent because local police sometimes show up at night to conduct standard drug raids. The hammer is enough. It’s good that I started dreaming again when I was hospitalized for 9 years. I have heard a doctor tell a nurse that my muscles are in relatively good shape because I move in my sleep. It took me some time to move my muscles on demand, something the man who tried to kill me can’t do right now. I get back into my sleeping bag and go to sleep.
I’m woken in the morning by the sound of shouting and cursing in Spanish. I stretch and leave the tent and walk over to the RV, which is parked about 100 meters or so away. I turn on the fuel pump and turn the RV’s ignition switch. It takes a minute for the fuel pipe to fill again and for the engine to come back to life. I park the RV close to the tent again and turn off the engine. The shouting continues.
I go into the RV, brush my teeth, and make a cup of coffee. I go outside and sit on a rock in front of the man I caught the night before. He is buried in the ground with only his head sticking out of the earth and resting against a rock. I put it there so he’d be comfortable and wouldn’t have to strain his neck muscles when he woke up. His body lies buried at a slight angle in the trench I dug during the night. The trench is about half a meter deep at his feet and about 20 centimeters deep at his head. Aside from his head, he is completely covered with earth. His hands and feet are bound securely with rope and a heap of rocks is holding him down just for good measure.
“Is your neck stiff or has the rock helped?” I ask.
“Get me out of here now. I have friends and they’re on their way here. If you want to live, you’d better release me.”
I take a sip of coffee and remain silent. I look at the man. I look at the open expanse all around us. I see a large eagle-like bird in the sky. I l
ook at the man again and take another sip of coffee.
“Who sent you?”
“My friends. They’re on their way.”
“Your friends from the Organization?”
“Yes, from the Organization. We control anything and everything that moves around here—the traffic of goods, the smuggling of diamonds, and very soon they will all come looking for me. We are the most powerful organization here.”
“Did Amiram send you?”
The man goes silent. I finish my coffee and start to collect dry branches and twigs that I arrange in a pile next to the tent. I then divide the pile into 3 smaller ones—thin twigs, slightly thicker branches, and branches with dry leaves on them. I start to stack the thicker branches in the form of a pyramid. The head of the man who tried to steal my RV is in the center of the structure.
“Get me out of here!”
When I’m done with the thicker branches, I move to the twigs and use them to form a 2nd layer around the base of the pyramid. I cover the structure with a canopy of dry leaves. I then go back to the RV to retrieve a lighter from the kitchen. I return to the pile of branches and set fire to the dry twigs in a few places.
“Who sent you?”
“You’re insane!”
The twigs are crackling and a cloud of white smoke rises into the blue sky from the orange flames.
“Who sent you?”
“You’re insane!”
“Insane!”
“Insane!”
The man who tried to kill me is very loud. I return to the RV, turning my head to call out to him, “Que le vay a bien,” before stepping inside to have my breakfast. Yesterday, I bought a bag of croissants at the bakery in the town of Latacunga and froze them in the refrigerator’s icebox. I defrost a few of them now in the microwave and eat them with some strawberry jam I still have left over from Peru. The shouting from outside ceases and I finish eating and clean up the kitchen. I go outside and look at the charred head of the man who wanted to kill me, surrounded now by the last remaining smoking embers.
I once used to kill in the framework of my work or simply for the sake of art. I realize now that my liquidation of the thief puts me in a particularly good mood. I take 2 small sticks, tie them together in the shape of a cross, and place the cross in the pile of stones over the man’s body. To the tip of the cross I attach a piece of paper on which I’ve written:
Died as a result of an acute
Allergic reaction to fire
I break into a rendition of “Light My Fire” by The Doors, crawl under the RV to check that everything is securely fastened and hasn’t come loose during the long drive, return to the vehicle, put on the lead apron, and start driving toward the Colombian border. By the time the local police come across the body I’ve left behind I’ll already be a few countries away from here.
December 7, 2016
The multimedia room six floors below ground at the Organization’s home base was more crowded than usual. Avner and Rotem arrived first and began the search, and three others joined them an hour or so later.
“It looks like we’re after the same target,” one said, noticing the image of 10483 on one of the screens.
“Rafael?”
“Nice to meet you, Avner—I assume?”
“Yes, and this is Rotem, the head of the Personality and Psychopathology Research Department.”
“Have you come up with anything yet?”
“Yes. Regarding Amiram first—there was a deep impression clean across the front grill of his overturned Land Rover. 10483 flipped the vehicle into the ditch with the help of a metal cable he tied between two trees on either side of the road. A field investigation revealed markings on the trees. There were no signs of any injury to Amiram. The same goes for Efrat—no signs of injury or harm besides a few drops of blood. As for 10483 himself, we’re running a search based on the most recent image of him from the date he regained consciousness through to the present. Few places hold onto video footage dating back even a year, but we know that the Israel Airports Authority stores their footage indefinitely, so we started with Ben Gurion Airport. We fed his image into the IAA’s system and it took no more than a few seconds to get a hit.”
Avner directed the trio’s attention to one of the monitors, moved the cursor to a point on the screen, and clicked PLAY.
“Here, on the ninth of February, at five thirty-five in the morning, he boarded an Iberian airlines flight, IB 3321, to Madrid. The flight departed at six. Here, the camera shows the departure gate, and there you can see the monitor with the destination—Madrid.”
“What passport did he fly with?”
“We don’t know yet. We could ask Iberia for the passenger list, but I’d rather keep this in-house for now. We’ll keep looking through all the footage and wait to catch a glimpse of him scanning his boarding pass through one of the airport’s QR readers, then we can cross-check that through the system and find out. I’m just about to get the IAA’s security chief on the line. Take a look meanwhile at the footage from his return: Can you see him coming out of the bridge and into the arrivals terminal? The flight that arrived through that gate was Lufthansa LH686 from Frankfurt. March twenty-ninth. He flew to Madrid, returned via Frankfurt, and used two different airlines. The question is: What was he doing for two months in Europe—or elsewhere perhaps, if he flew on from there? The fact that he used two different airlines seems to indicate that he wasn’t exactly sure where he’d return from, or that Europe was simply a connection, or that he’s trying to cover his tracks. We could easily check with the Spanish or German airport security authorities, but we don’t want to involve other countries yet. We don’t want his image to fall into the hands of some organization that will connect the dots.”
“And do you know what passport he used to reenter Israel?”
“No, not yet. Here, too, we’ll cross-check the timing and see if he came back in on the same passport.”
“Okay, let’s divide up the work and run through other video sources that may have captured his image. Government ministries, seaports, the borders with Egypt and Jordan. Maybe we’ll come across something else.”
They spread out among the various workstations. Rotem went up to her office for a few minutes and promised to return shortly. Rafael reached for the receiver of one of the room’s telephones and dialed a number.
“Hadar here. How may I help you?”
“Hi, Hadar, it’s Rafael. Do you have anything for us?”
“I’m afraid not. I’ve been trying to get in touch with you. You’ve dropped down on our list of priorities. We can’t work on it now.”
“What do you mean? Where’s Meital? Put her on the line.”
“Sorry. Turn on your TV or a radio. Haven’t you heard about the terror attack?”
“No, we’re in a location with no cellular access.”
“There’s been a terror attack in Jerusalem. Two terrorists. One blew himself up inside a bus and the other ran into the crowd of rescue workers and blew himself up ten minutes later. A huge fucking mess. Right now everyone’s focused solely on that.”
“When can you get back to us?”
“I can’t say for sure. Based on similar incidents in the past, it could take up to two weeks.”
“Two weeks??”
“Could be. I see you’re calling from a red line so I can give you a few details, but I can’t tell you much. You realize of course that we now have to study and run checks on every individual who got onto the bus from the time it left the Central Bus Station on its first round early this morning and through to the moment of the blast. And that means tracking every single passenger who got on or off the bus, going back in time several months with respect to every single individual, finding the terrorist and seeing who he met with, who the other members of the cell are, who parked outside whose home, who their handler is, where he hangs out, the banks they used to receive finances, who made the explosive belts, where he got the material from—and the same goes for th
e second piece of shit who blew himself up among the ambulance crews.”
“The man we are looking for is extremely dangerous, too. He blew up an entire building in Tel Aviv.”
“I know. Zero fatalities. The count so far in Jerusalem today is twenty-three.”
“Fuck!”
“Exactly, and that number will rise. You know how it goes. The Shin Bet’s Operations Division Chief is the only one who can shuffle our priorities now, and believe me he’s not going to do so.”
“Okay. Can you let me know the moment you’re free to continue the work for us?”
“Of course.”
Rafael replaced the receiver. The others in the multimedia room looked at him. “We don’t have Eyes in the Sky now,” he said. “Their immediate tasks now involve gathering essential information concerning a terror attack that just took place in Jerusalem, and that’s going to neutralize our search with the aid of aerial footage for about a week or two. We’ll have to collect data from regular cameras and alternative means. Come on, we have to find out what he’s been up to over the past year.”
“Eyes in the Sky?” Avner queried, looking up from his screen.
“A Shin Bet facility. Cameras that are fitted to meteorological balloons and shoot images from the sky every two seconds.”
They continued to run searches through various systems in an effort to find a match for the image they had—but without any further success. Avner finally reached Ben Gurion Airport’s chief security officer; Rotem had returned from her floor with a thick book bearing the title 10483, and was flipping quickly through its pages.