Abigail – The Avenging Agent: The agent appears again (56 page)

            Abigail
felt like crying.  Her ear rang; her body hurt from the lashes and she was
hungry.  All she could do was lie down and curl up on the bunk where she sat.
When she lay on her side, she felt her fetus moving and she stroked it secretly
as tears gathered in the corner of her eye.

            She
fell asleep and woke up when she heard a key turning in the lock.  A red haired
man was shoved into the room and he looked at her suspiciously.  He began
marching back and forth and yelled:

            “Sons
of bitches, bastards!  May Allah take you all!”  Then he recoiled as if he had
only just noticed her and asked her at once:

            “Who
are you?”  Abigail shrugged.

            “What
are you doing here?” He asked and immediately replied: “I know; you’re one of
them! They put you here on purpose, right?”

            “Those
animals don’t stop at anything,” he announced, and suddenly screamed at the
ceiling “Why?! Why did you have to kill all of them?!”

            Abigail
didn’t know how to relate to him.  She wanted to tell him that she didn’t have
the strength to contain his troubles.  She was resting after they had beaten
her and she wanted some quiet, but she was compelled to listen to him.

            “Enough
already!  I have nothing more to lose. I even confessed and told them
everything, but instead of killing me, they simply killed all the people who
matter to me.”

            He
approached her and she felt his breath and then heard him whisper out of the
corner of his mouth:

            “I’m
from the ‘Mossad’” and her face muscles froze.

            “You
must surely know that they only bring people here whom they suspect of being
connected to it,” and out of the corner of her eye, Abigail saw the stone in
her ring changing color.  After a short silence, he asked:

            “Have
they told you when they’ll hang you?  Because no one gets out of here alive,”
and she caught her breath.

            “Do
you speak Persian?” he asked.  “Say something to show me you understand me.”

            Abigail
nodded her head slightly to acknowledge she understood though she was still fearful
of what he said.

            “In
an hour, perhaps two, they will come and take me to the Public Square.” He
glanced softly at her.

            “May
I ask you something?” And, Abigail nodded.

            “If
you escape, please get a message to a man called Mushari  He is a ginger head
like me. Tell him that I didn’t inform on him,” He whispered again:  “They call
me Ali, but that’s not really my name.”

            “And,
what is your real name?”

            “Oh,
at last you’re talking, what’s your name?”

            “Naima.”

            “Where
are you from?”

            “From
here.” She said and pointed to the pallet.

            He
looked her over, reached out to touch her wounds and she recoiled.

            “I
see they have taken care of you, ha?”  he said and pointed to her torn clothes
and bleeding neck.

            “Who
did that?  Was it Gerard, the little bastard Frenchman or his bitch of a wife?
Two mentally disturbed sadists.”

            Abigail
gritted her teeth when she remembered how the woman had spat on her and
suddenly, she found him credible.

            “Would
you like to change places with me?” she inquired, and Ali got up from the chair
and stretched out with a sigh of relief on the bunk in her place.

            “If
you tell me how they caught you,  I’ll say what they suspect you did and also
what your fate will be.”  When Abigail was almost tempted to answer him, he
said:

            “No,
don’t tell me, but I will give you the signs.”

            He
sat up on the bunk and spoke.

            “If
they caught you in the street and dragged you here then they know nothing about
you yet. They will continue interrogating you,” and he waited for her response
and when she said nothing, he continued:

            “If
they caught you in the net and brought you here in a bag then they’re certain
they have things on you, want to hear more from you but you’re actually
finished.”

            “Stop,
that’s enough!” she said, almost begging, but he continued chatting away.

            “What’s
more, if they didn’t check you out, they expect you to make calls from here.” She
thought that this was what she suspected and suddenly heard him snoring on the
bunk.  After a quick glance at him she noticed that his eyelids were moving and
he was apparently peeping at her.  She turned her back to him and heard him
ask,

            “Did
you make contact?”

“No.”

“Why not? Believe a man who has been
through everything here.”

“That’s enough.  Do me a favor and keep
quiet,”

Abigail puffed up her cheeks in
exasperation.  She got up and began pacing, counting ten paces along the length
of the room and she noticed a stud stuck in the gray concrete in the corner where
the walls met.  It looked like a nail that had been left there after
construction and when she tapped it with her finger, she felt the heat
emanating from it.

“Tell me about yourself,”  he asked and
she shrugged.

“Where were you born?  Where are your parents? 
Do you have siblings, or children, perhaps?

“Ali, shut up, for Allah’s sake!” she
yelled and he stopped talking.

The key turned in the lock and a man was
thrown inside, fell down on the floor and lay there.  The moment she glanced at
him, she screamed.  It was Karim, and she knelt down beside him.

Blood had congealed on his chin and he
was wheezing.  Saliva mixed with blood bubbled from his lips and a thin rivulet
of blood ran out of the corner of his mouth.  A short phlegmy cough burst out
of him.  Abigail rushed to pull him up and supported him in a sitting position.

“Karim,” she said, “It’s me, Naima,”
Karim said something and coughed.

She brought her face closer to hear him,
but he spoke out loud, too loudly in fact.

“They know everything about us, tell
them, because there is no point in denying it as they have proof.”

When he spoke to her, he made incessant
signs with his eyes and Abigail followed his signals showing he was hinting at
his body.

“Hmmm,” she hummed and moved her fingers
over him as if stroking his torso.  Her hand touched his damp shirt that was
torn and when she felt the device stuck attached to his armpit she understood
they had brought him to the room to get her to talk and record what she said.

He coughed, whistled as he sucked in air
and wiped away the blood with his stained fist.  The fits of coughing and the
pink saliva that collected on Karim’s lips were ample evidence of severe damage
to his lungs and she listened to his wheezing with concern.

“They will come and take me to the
square in about an hour and will transfer me through six doors to the left and
outside through the seventh one.” He explained and she understood that he was telling
her the way out to freedom. 

Abigail faced him and her lips moved,
soundlessly,

“What do they know about me?”

Abigail knew that she was not being
recorded by the device on Karim’s body now. And since her back was turned to
the concrete wall, she was also not being filmed by the hidden camera.

“Absolutely nothing.  Only that you’re a
tourist guide,” he spelled out soundlessly with his lips and then spoke aloud
with a tremor in his voice:

“I didn’t know how to describe our
relationship.”

“Why didn’t you tell them that the only
relationship between us was that you helped me find a house?”  She said and
tried to speak clearly.  She raised her eyes above Karim and, all at once,
realized that their fate was going to be hers too, and that she also had
nothing to lose.  And since that was the case, she moved closer to the door and
waited.

When she heard the key moving in the
lock, she clung to the door and as soon as it opened slightly, she kicked her
and immediately hit Aisha’s face with her elbow and she fell backward.  Abigail
stood over her and addressed her in Bedouin Arabic.

“Just a little reward for spitting in my
face, not for your pointless blows to my body,” and she saw with satisfaction
how Aisha opened her eyes wide in amazement.

She ran across the corridor at once,
passed six doors on the left, reached the seventh one, and almost collided with
a vehicle that was waiting close to the entrance with its rear door open.

She crouched and ran to some nearby
shrubs, then stepped up on the sidewalk. After straightening up, she looked around
and tried to recognize the place she had been brought to the previous night
when she had been packed in a fish net with Karim and Alice.

Four imposing giant palm trees curved
above her and rose into the sky.  Their trunks formed the shape of the letter
‘W’.  Their appearance was so unusual, that she pulled the phone out of her
bra, photographed them and on a whim she sent the picture and called. She spoke
quickly as her eyes darted in all directions to keep watch.

“I’m facing these palms.  Where am I?”

“How did you get there?!” Michael asked
in alarm.  “You’re right by the Revolutionary Guards’ prison. Take care.”

“Why?” 

“It’s said that the only place people go
to from there is the public square.”  And then she knew that the ginger-haired
man had spoken the truth.

“Oh, Ali the redhead asked to inform
Mushari that he did not give him away,” and she asked right after that:

“Where is the Public Square they would
have led me to?”

Instead of answering her, he said:

“Is that so?  The message will be
conveyed.”

There was a short pause, “So Ali was
caught?” and Abigail blurted out,

“Yes, they’re taking him the Public
Square, right now.”

“Hey, Naima, what are you doing there
and how did you meet Ali?”

She hesitated for a moment and then she
said:

“They trapped me in a fish net with
Karim and Alice.  She died and they beat the Ambassador almost to death and
they’re going to hang him, too, in the Square.”

“So how… what
about you?”

“I escaped.”

She heard a
short laugh.

“Thank God.  Turn northwards to the palms
in the photograph and help will reach you.”

She wanted to ask what kind of help he
was referring to, but she didn’t delay and hurried to check out the directions
of the place.

Throngs of people streamed forward, many
women and children among them, and Abigail wondered to what extent it was
entertaining or educational to watch people being hanged by their necks and
swinging in the Public Square.

Tall metal poles were pushed forward by
cranes and rose up high above her.  She presumed that they were meant to serve
as gallows, on which the condemned would be hanged.

Suddenly, she looked back.  She
estimated that the distance from the prison to the Square was only one
kilometer and then she turned on her heel.  At first she walked, then ran until
she returned to the bushes to which she had escaped.  She crouched down and
peered out from behind the shrubs.  The car was still standing at the entrance
to the prison but hid what was happening behind it, so she changed her
location.

Two people bore a load in their arms and
she noticed Ali’s red head.  The car was started and Abigail jumped and stood
beside it.  She opened the door, pulled out the driver and pushed him down and
got in his place.  She pressed her foot down hard on the accelerator, heard the
roar of the engine and raced ahead.  The car climbed over the bushes and onto
the road, continuing its journey when Abigail had no idea where to drive or
where she was.

From all around the swarms of people and
whole families continued making their way to the Public Square.

In order not to attract
attention, she slowed down and continued driving on the road for almost five
minutes and then, drew up and stopped on a side street.  She got out, opened
the rear door and jumped inside.     

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               
                                                               Ali, the red-head,
looked at her fearfully and shrank back into the corner.  Karim lay there with
his eyes closed and a small pool of blood had collected near the corner of his mouth. 
She called out his name and when he didn’t answer, she laid two fingers on his
neck and felt that there was no pulse.  When she understood that Karim was
dead, a cry of pain burst out of her mouth and the whining of the siren close
to them seemed to continue her scream.  A police car stopped beside them.