Abigail – The Avenging Agent: The agent appears again (33 page)

The dock was almost deserted. A huge dog
came towards them and barked loudly and Hodgkin gestured to ignore the dog. 
When he turned to her, Abigail noticed that his famous beard was now partly
hidden by the hat he wore and only his eyes and bearded cheeks were visible.

They entered a path formed between dilapidated
train carriages and old wooden huts.  The pungent odor of urine hit her
nostrils and brassy music sounded suddenly.  The last hut had a door and
Hodgkin entered it.

Abigail began to get organized.  First,
she put on the goggles but raised them to her forehead, then she pulled out her
keys.  Attached to the key ring was a sharp blade with a protuberance, which
when pressed on, beamed a straight ray of light.    Setting the timing device
on the bomb to 2:40 am, she calculated that when the bomb exploded the ship and
would be far from the shore and on the high seas for more than an hour. 
Finally, she spread the glue on the bottom of the bomb and it was ready to be
fixed to the underside of the ship.

They both peeped out of the door and
when they thought no one was likely to see them, they came out, one at a time,
onto the path.

Little lights shone on the ship and the
deck was empty.  Abigail stopped at the pillar on the edge of the quay to which
the ship was tethered and pulled the goggles down over her eyes.  She took a
breath and jumped into the sea.  Drops of water sprayed out and a quiet
slipping sound was heard as she disappeared.  On the quayside, Hodgkin took the
dark-colored rope out of his knapsack and attached the hook at the end of it to
the pillar.  Now, he waited patiently to throw the rope to her when she
finished attaching the device to the underside of the ship.  All he had to do
now was to wait for her head to rise out of the water again.

Abigail descended slowly into the depths
of the sea, swam to the ship and ran her hand over the stern until her fingers
touched the edge and knew that she had reached the bottom of it.  She felt how
oily it was and could almost smell it.  Then her hand felt the snails and the
algae that were attached to the ship and when she tried to affix the bomb, she
was unable to. 

She kicked angrily in the water,
realizing that the shells would form a barrier that would prevent the
explosion.  She immediately opened the tiny penknife attached to her key ring
and scraped off the thick layer of shells. When she felt the bottom of the ship
with her fingers, she attached the bomb to the place she had cleaned. Only then
did she give mind to the fact that her lungs were ready to burst.

With the little strength she had left,
she moved her hands and began to propel herself upwards, flailing her arms
without direction.  It seemed to take an eternity and when she finally came out
of the water, she noisily released the air that had been compressed in her
lungs.  She fluttered her arms to keep afloat and heard:

“Psssst.”

The blackened rope floated on the water
and she swam towards it, caught it in both hands and pulled herself to the
quayside.  Just then, a ray of light from a hidden projector flashed out of
nowhere and illuminated the water.  Hodgkin cursed and lay flat on the quay,
face down with his arms close to his body. Abigail let go of the rope and dived
below the surface.  The long ray of light moved around, lit up the flotsam and cast
rings of light on the sterns of the ships in the water and moved on until it
disappeared.

When Abigail burst out of the silent
darkness again, she looked for the rope and discovered it only when Hodgkin
jerked it.  Abigail grabbed it and was pulled to the quay, panting from the
effort.

They hurried down the lane and entered
the last hut, dried themselves off and, calmly, walked away at a regular pace,
pretending to be a pair of lovers.

When they got back to the hotel, Abigail
felt her temples pulsating and, only in the morning after sleeping for hours,
was the pressure in her head relieved. 

On the following day, the world press
reported:

“A mysterious explosion destroyed
the ship, ‘El-Cabo’.”

It was said to be carrying equipment and
missiles to Syria.  Nothing appeared in the Iranian press and it ignored the
elimination of the “Shihab 3” missiles that Iran was probably responsible for
producing.

Abigail, herself, did not hear about the
explosion.  Of course, she also didn’t see the two Mossad agents, Barak, and
San, rejoicing and clicking their cups of coffee in celebration.

“Admit that she is amazing and there’s
no one like her!” Barak exclaimed enthusiastically and his eyes sparkled.

“Fine, calm down; just don’t jinx her
with an evil eye.”

“Who, me? Never!” Barak shouted and stared
into San’s single eye.

Barak knew that San
found it difficult to pay a compliment and it was difficult to get a good word
out of him.  Now he enjoyed his remarks that acknowledged the unusual ability
of their agent, the apple of Barak’s eye.

It was dawn when Abigail finally got
home.  She entered quietly, tiptoed into the bedroom and stopped when she saw
Karma, looking at her.

“Hi there, my man,” she said, tiredly.

“Wait,” she remembered as he got up to
embrace her, “we have an invitation to join a tour to Tabriz, as Lutfi's
guests.”

“Is that so?” Karma remarked. 

He already knew her well enough to know
that even if she didn’t talk about what had happened, it did not mean that she
hadn’t pulled off something unique.  He turned her face towards him and noticed
the dark circles under her eyes.

“Tired, or hungry, too?”

“Both.”

He hopped out of bed and went to the
kitchen and a few minutes later, when she had almost fallen asleep, she heard
him call her.

Her eyes almost closed and she could
hardly chew the toast he had prepared for her.  She was so exhausted that she
forgot to tell him about the new assignment that awaited her, down below, in
the tunnel, the one she planned to combine with the tour to Tabriz.

* * *

The tour to the Grand Bazaar was set for
Sunday.  Abigail was preparing herself mentally because the tour was only a
cover for her principal mission.  For the present, she did not share the
information with Karma because; according to the encoded messages, it was going
to be an extraordinary undertaking.

The idea was to introduce a virus that
would sabotage the state’s computers.  Abigail had already received the virus
on a Flash-drive at that terrifying meeting at the ‘Chai Huneh’ pension. She
occasionally pondered that she might not have attached so much importance to
the assignment, but for the traumatic event of the triple murder in Room 202.
There were nights when she would awaken in panic from the flashes of memory left
by those terrifying moments.

On this occasion, the group was larger
than ever and the tourists filled three buses. Everyone was talking, chattering
and loudly planning what they would purchase at the Grand Bazaar and the noise
and bustle enveloped them.

Karma and Abigail shook hands with Lutfi,
the dark-skinned tour guide.  He winked at Karma secretly and gave him a
thumbs-up sign that expressed male fraternity approval of the choice of a
stunning wife.

Ten minutes later the guide joined them
and the buses set off on the tour.  At first, the chatter of the tourists
continued, then slowly quietened down until most of them dozed in their seats.

The weather was strange.  It was hot,
but gray clouds gathered in the sky and, to everyone’s surprise, great big
drops of rain flew around in the air and soon turned into a downpour. Lutfi
looked at the rain washed windows and the rising wind with concern.  When the
rain turned into a real deluge, he took the microphone, cleared his throat and tapped
it to wake up the members of the group.

“I will be making a small change in our
route,” and he explained:  “Look outside, it doesn’t seem we will be able to
stop at the Bazaar.  But, we will be able to get a look at it from quite close
by as we pass it.”

Abigail flinched in the fourth row
because she realized that it threatened to derail her mission.  She approached
him immediately, smiled her beautiful smile at him and asked if they could, at
least, stop at the Mosque or the Palace.  Lutfi shook his head and she tried to
challenge him:

“Have you forgotten the mysterious
repair job and the enormous cables lying in the sand?  Do you remember how they
canceled your tour?”  He laughed.

“Now, finally,  that you have
permission, are you giving up?”

“I’ll tell you what; perhaps we can stop
inside the Bazaar and stay for a few minutes.”

That sufficed her and like a little
girl, who has just been given a lollipop,  she went back to her seat.  She knew
that, had he insisted on leaving out the Bazaar, she would have been forced to
get off the bus and reach the place by her own devices.

She occasionally felt for the Flash-drive
she had hidden in her bra, to make sure it was there, but she did this
secretly, away even from Karma’s loving eyes.  Abigail also did not know that
he had received a message to give her backing and support in the tunnel.  The
truth was that Karma, himself, had not yet understood that this was the day he
was supposed to provide that support.

Only later in the day, would Karma piece
together the information and help her as requested and, in fact, save her life.

For now, Abigail closed her eyes and, at
ease and relaxed, she listened to the guide’s comments.

“Today we are going to visit an ancient Bazaar,
perhaps the oldest in the Middle East.”

This was the sentence he always used at
the start of this tour and, as always, he enjoyed seeing the interest it
aroused. He listened with satisfaction to the excitement of the visitors, who
were planning their shopping and trying to guess what they would see at the
Bazaar.

Outside, the rain got heavier and beat
harder against the bus windows.  The driver increased the speed of the wipers
and drove on in a long line of cars that splashed water from puddles that
formed along the road.  Lutfi bent down to the driver, shared a few words with
him and picked up the microphone again and spoke:

“Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a small
change of plan.  As I said earlier, we will enter the compound, stop to look
around but we won’t be wandering around the stores.  The downpour is still very
hard, as you can see,” and he ignored the cries of disappointment.

A minute later, he added:

“I understand you, but I am also
surprised because rain is very rare here, and there’s nothing to be done.”

One of the women, who sat in front of Abigail
burst out with an unusually loud cry of disappointment.   Abigail whispered to
her that it was possible to stroll around this particular Bazaar when it rained
because it had a roof.  She hoped she would be able to exploit the woman’s
disappointment and not miss the chance of pulling off her mission.

“Excuse me,” the woman called out and
the passengers turned their attention to her,  “the shopping area must surely
be covered by a roof.  It would be a pity to miss out on an experience like
that because of a sudden, unexpected rainstorm.”

“Right!” someone called from another
seat, “she’s quite right, especially if we have protection and can walk under
roofs!”

“Hey, what about a little initiative,
some courage.  What’s happened, are we made of sugar?!”  Someone else shouted
from the back seats of the bus.

“Okay,” the guide relented. “Let’s agree
to walk around for an hour and a half.”  Then, he continued:  “In that case,
let me tell you that the stalls in this Bazaar are laid out in parallel lines
and are called ‘rastos.'
  The path between them is covered with
a roof that is intended to provide the shoppers with protection from the sun
and the heat.  So, it is reasonable to presume that today the roof will protect
us from today’s rain.  I also suggest strolling along the ‘dalanos’, the alleys
that connect two ‘rastos’ or the interior and exterior parts of the buildings. 
I know they are also covered with roofs.”     

Now the buses were progressing in a long
convoy and when a motorcycle maneuvered between the vehicles, the irritated
drivers beeped on all sides.  Lutfi continued:

“Listen,” he said, “I suggest that you
will be able to save time if you don’t tour the ‘timzot.'  There are no shops
there, only warehouses of expensive goods like carpets, jewelry, and gold, so I
suggest you pass on them.”

The rain had almost stopped, but the
road was full of puddles.  Abigail suddenly remembered there was a small Bazaar
called the ‘Bazarche’ that served only one of the city’s quarters.  She
recalled that it was located near the gates at the entrance to the town and was
connected to it.  She got up and approached Lutafi and whispered in his ear
that, perhaps, they really should forsake the large Bazaars for the ‘Bazarche.' 
An hour and a half would be enough time, there.  But, the guide pointed to the
road and showed her that the bus had already reached the Grand Bazaar.