Abigail – The Avenging Agent: The agent appears again
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Authors: Rose Fox
Rose Fox
*Abigail
-
The Avenging Agent
Second
Book in a Series
* Translated
from Hebrew to English and edited: Judith Yacov
2015
Rose
Fox
*Abigail
–
The Avenging Agent
©
All
rights reserved to the author of the book, 2015
The plots in this
story, the characters, and their names were created by the author and are
exclusively the fruit of her imagination. Any connection between the
characters or names to those of people, alive or no longer alive is purely
coincidental.
Excerpts from this book
may not be reproduced, copied, photocopied, recorded, translated, stored in a
database or distributed in any way or by any means: electronic, optical or
mechanical, in current use or to be invented in the future.
No commercial use of any
kind may be made of material included in this book or sections or parts thereof,
without the express permission of the author and publisher.
Dedicated with love, to
My husband, Eitan.
u e
The man kept to the shadows and was sheltered by the
moving leaves reflected in the office window panes. He had purchased the M16
rifle he held the day before in an alley near the Beer Sheba Central Bus
Station from a young fellow, who had whispered to him hoarsely:
“I swear by the Prophet of Allah that
this rifle once belonged to a Colombian drug lord,”
They concluded the deal quickly. He received the firearm
in exchange for five banknotes he peeled from a large roll and then
disappeared.
At midnight, that night, he received two pictures of
the target for elimination. She was a woman.
He studied the pictures and committed the details of
her image to memory. In one picture
,
her fair hair was tied in a
topknot and, in the other - hung loosely at the nape of her neck and fell to
her shoulders. He raised an eyebrow quizzically, surprised by her eyes,
because they were almost colorless, with thin green filaments surrounding the
irises. He gave no thought to the details of the image in terms of beauty but
merely for the purposes of identification.
He was accustomed to assassinating people with
complete professionalism and had never failed.
For this assignment, he leased a basement in
Tel-Aviv for five nights. The place reeked of mildew and he would come out of
it to follow her. He found her office with ease and in a matter of three
consecutive days, realized that she remained there alone in the evenings. On
the day of the assassination, he took a cab and tailed her, driving her car,
all the way to her home on Gordon St. in Tel Aviv where she went to the second
floor. He debated whether to kill her in her home or at her office. After a
brief pause, he decided to avoid conflict or a chance encounter with neighbors
or tenants and carry out the hit on her in her room when she was alone.
On the fourth day, at dusk, he loaded the magazine
of the rifle with twenty rounds. He attached a silencer to the barrel and
pushed it into a special pocket sewn into the lining of his worn out coat.
The cold of the barrel permeated his shirt and made him shiver but also made
him feel secure.
At first, he opened the basement door a crack and
peered into the street then immediately closed it again. Then he counted to
five, extending one finger after the other as he counted and when he had spread
out all his fingers, he opened the door wide and went out on the street without
locking it. He walked nonchalantly and calmly to her office, which was only a
four-minute walk from the basement. The building was dark
,
and the
offices were closed. He climbed the stairs to the third floor, avoiding the
elevator. He always did this so as not to encounter people, who might
recognize him. When he reached the third floor, he faced two enormous glass
doors with a sign.
Attorneys at Law
Abigail & Adam
He reached the door with two large strides and
busied himself with a slim knife and a flat rubber band to force open the lock.
Suddenly a loud knock was distinctly heard in the quiet of the office building
as the doors opened. He hurried inside and hid in the shadows of the leaves
outside that the window panes reflected and listened, feeling tense, as he
awaited a possible response.
Pamela also heard the knock; the fair
-
haired secretary had stayed late
on her own at the office to finish an urgent job. Pamela was an Arab, who
lived in Jaffa and like Abigail, she laughed at the resemblance between them;
the very resemblance that amused them then was the stroke of fate that would
end Pamela’s life.
She raised her head and stopped typing, strained her
ear to listen
,
but all was quiet again. She shrugged her shoulders and
continued typing as she decided to ignore the disturbance.
The man moved forward quietly to the entrance to her
room and glanced at the figure sitting in front of the computer. Her fair hair
hung loosely down her back
,
and it was sufficient for him to decide that
it was the woman from the picture he had received.
When he was satisfied, the man pulled the rifle out
of his coat and almost without aiming, pressed the trigger. The silencer clicked
as the bullet was released from the gun. It hit the woman’s fair head, and she
sank forward on the table before her as the soft groan of her last breath
escaped her. He came closer and fired another shot at her temple to be sure
she was dead. He pulled the photograph out of his pocket to verify her
identity and silently left the office.
The assassin ran down the three flights of stairs
with springy catlike steps. He walked out onto the sidewalk, breathed deeply to
restore his calm and slowed
his steps as he tried to keep an even pace, without hurrying until he
reached his room.
Within ten minutes
,
he gathered his sparse
belongings into a fabric bag, checked he hadn’t forgotten anything, then left
the place and disappeared into the darkness.
He emptied the musty basement had of any items that
could provide a clue to his identity. It was vacant and ready for the next
tenant at least a day before the period he had paid for was up.
* * *
The
report of the elimination of the ‘Mossad’ agent, Abigail Ben Nun, spread like
wildfire between the intelligence services and echoed in the international
media.
They
celebrated her murder in Iran, where she had been held as a hostage and whose
clutches she had escaped at the very last moment. In the Iranian parliament, the
“Majles”, celebratory speeches were made calling her assassination “Allah’s
revenge on our enemies.”
The
English language “Jerusalem Post” reported the story in detail under the
headline:
“Mossad
Agent, Abigail Ben-Nun, who succeeded in bluffing
Her captors – has finally been killed.”
The
American “New York Times” described the event from a different point of view:
“The assassin
appears without baggage, documents or means of communication,
Carries out
‘the hit’ within 72 hours and disappears.
But… if he
gets caught or fails, they will annihilate him or he will commit suicide.”
Abigail learned that someone
had killed Pamela, her secretary, the same evening.
That night, the two ‘Mossad’
agents, Barak, and San, received the newspaper headlines and called her to meet
with them. At the meeting, she glanced at the media Internet websites and a
shiver ran down her spine and she said:
“That
monstrous headline praises a despicable assassin and a wretched murderer.”
“Not
necessarily,” Barak responded. “Everything written about him here is entirely
accurate. I think it’s a wholly realistic representation,” but when he saw the
way she glanced at him, he added:
“Don’t you
agree with me that praise is due to someone who works efficiently? Well, he
managed to track you down and from their point of view the performance was
precise, excellent and even brilliant.”
His remarks angered
Abigail. She stood up and exclaimed in disgust:
“Firstly, praise is due to a
positive person of worth. This praise disregards the fact that he is a
psychopath and a vile murderer. Secondly, you’re ignoring the fact that this
man made a mistake in identifying his victim and assassinated Pamela instead of
me.”
She moved towards the
door and spat out angrily:
“I’m still
alive and I intend ending my association with you and the whole organization right
now.”
“That’s interesting, Agent
Abigail. Now tell us, my lovely lady, where, precisely, do you intend going?”
Abigail paused with her back to them and
loudly drew in her breath. All at once it was clear that if she wanted to
continue living, she could no longer reveal herself to the world as – Abigail.
She heard Barak pronounce the words that she already knew and understood:
“Everyone knows that you were eliminated
last night so, whether you agree or not, the fact is you no longer exist.”
Abigail pursed her lips in fury, turned
to them and sat down helplessly on her chair. She bowed her head in surrender,
acknowledging the facts and the truth of his remarks.
Now, she glanced at
San, the agent who was usually scarce with words. This time he behaved
differently, throwing down the computer printouts as he exclaimed:
“See how they are all
celebrating your demise.”
She glanced at the
headline of the Iranian newspaper, ‘Inshallah’, on the computer printout and he
said:
“You can read Arabic and
Farsi, so here, read this.” She looked at the printout and read in Farsi:
“Justice has been
done –
The fugitive spy has been
eliminated.”
“Very nice
indeed, really excellent,” she said. “If you ask me, it would be worth making
a public appearance just so the people, who sent this murderer, discover they
failed and murdered someone else instead of me.”
“Really?
That’s interesting; what do you think you will achieve by doing that?” Barak
inquired.
“As they say, he will be
eliminated or commit suicide.” She replied and stuck out her chin defiantly.
“What a pity, Abigail. If
you say that, then you haven’t learned a thing.” San remarked.
Barak asked her gently:
“I need to understand. Do
you believe that if they eliminate that murderer, their pursuit of you will
end?”
She took a deep breath, knowing that
from now on she would never be able to appear in public in her present
identity. She noticed Barak, looking at his wristwatch and heard him announce.
“In a quarter of an hour, some
professionals will arrive. They will make you over and create a woman with a
totally new and different image.” Abigail shuddered.
A sharp current quickly flowed through
her ring finger, and she glanced at the stone in her ring. It grew darker in
color,
and she knew that the stone was reflecting her aroused emotions.
Barak also glanced at the ring and then at her face because he was familiar
with the attributes of the jewel she wore on her finger.
It was a very unusual stone.
She received it two days after returning
from her imprisonment in Iran, exhausted and wounded in body and soul.
An Iranian Terrorist Organization had
captured Abigail while on a mission to Russia and held her prisoner in a cave for
years. When they were moving her to Lebanon, she succeeded in escaping from the
vehicle in a daring Israeli military operation.
She spent the first day back home
sleeping feverishly and neither ate nor drank. She just trembled, alternately
waking and sleeping. The following day, she sat on the light-colored mat in
the large, dark women’s tent of her mother, Leila. It was the canvas home
where Abigail was born and had spent the first six years of her life. Here,
her mother had named her Naima
,
and she delighted in hearing that name
again from the members of her family. From the moment she returned many
guests, with leaders of the nation among them, crowded the Bedouin encampment
of the ‘Ka’abiah’ tribe.
Her mother, Leila, sat in the large
tent, still overwrought with emotion. “Naima,” Leila wept as she slipped
a ring off her finger.
“Take it,
it’s for you. When you were born, your father gave it to me but, from today,
it belongs to you.” She sniffed and wiped her flushed face with her sleeve.
“See how
the color is changing right now,” she exclaimed.
“No mother,
father is no longer with us and I don’t feel I should accept it.” Then, she caught
on to her mother’s last remark:
“What was
that you said? About noticing how its color is changing now.”
“That’s
right. Usually, it is the color of your eyes, very pale green.”
“Usually?”
“Yes, the
stone in this ring has a unique feature. The color darkens to bottle green,
almost black.”
“Really?!”
Abigail laughed and stretched out her hand curiously, but her mother moved it
away from her and said:
“Look at
it, what color is it now?” and again she slowly brought the ring closer to
Abigail, and asked:
“Now?”
“Mother,
there is no change. What are you saying? Wait, here it’s getting a little darker
,
and now it’s losing color and… what’s happening here?”
Her mother sighed deeply
,
and her eyes narrowed as she smiled. She threw her white scarf over her head,
wound it round her neck, let it drape over her left shoulder, and then
straightened her back.
“Your
father would roam in the desert with his herds looking for grassy pasture.”
She stared into space and continued speaking.
“Two days after your birth
he set out with the sheep and reached the deserted copper mines near Timna. He
told me that there, among the stones and excavations; he noticed the gleam that
flashed from the sun shining on the green veins of copper that ran through the
shattered rocks. There, on a protruding ledge, a sliver of light green stone
sparkled. Once he reached it, its pale green hue grew darker.”
Abigail laughed.
“Mother, that’s just a
story, right? It’s not true, is it?” She stared at the stone. At that moment,
it was colorless and almost transparent
,
and she knew it was almost like
her eyes. Her mother, Leila, rolled the ring in her fingers and continued
speaking, apparently not hearing Abigail’s remarks.
“Since it happened so close
to your birth, your father decided that the stone’s similarity to the color of
your eyes was significant. At any rate, he decided that it was a gift from
heaven for the infant who was so entirely different from our other children.”
Silent and pensive, Abigail took the
ring in the palm of her hand as she watched how the green deepened in it. She
rolled it onto the mat
,
and the pale green color took over once more. Then,
as if playing a game, she brought her hand close to the ring and pulled it away
again, enjoying the changes in the shades of green from dark to pale. Leila
continued talking.
“When I
found that the stone changed its shade in response to temperature, I began
using it to check if my children were feverish.”
“Yes, if
one is excited or frightened, skin temperature changes when the body emits
energy,” Abigail laughed in delight.
“That’s
right.”
“Oh, Ya
'
Umi
(my mother), it’s not just a ring, it’s a lie detector!”
“No, Naima,
the stone does not distinguish between truths and lies. It only registers the
level of energy and changes its color with excitement, whatever the cause.”
“When you
wore it on your finger, mother, did you notice the color change in the course
of the day?”
“Yes, of
course, when I was angry or emotional, the color deepened. Sometimes it also
burned my skin or shocked me with a slight current. That’s why I stopped
wearing it when you were being held captive.”
“Really?!”
“The ring
angered me. It was difficult for me to see it reveal my sorrow and grow dark in
color, but now it belongs to you.”
“Just let
someone dare to remove it from my finger!” Abigail muttered a threat and
slipped it on the ring finger of her left hand.
* * *