Kill Them Wherever You Find Them (20 page)

"Sir?"

"Avi, I have known you too long to not see
when something is wrong. Be straight with me."

Avi had been concerned that his feelings
might have been too transparent. Clearly his concerns were well
founded. He admired and respected the General. In more ways than
one he was more a father to him than his own father had been. The
General had even introduced his granddaughter, Tzipora. Truth be
told, his granddaughter was an incredible person. Had he not
already been in love with Mona well, who knows? Based on that
experience, he knew that the General not only respected him but was
also fond of him as if Avi were his own son.

His head spun over possible responses. He
respected the man. He also knew that one could not bluff his way
out of anything with this man. He had witnessed the outcome of
those who tried and gone down in flames. The General was insightful
and his bright copper-colored eyes seemed to penetrate one's soul
to the core. The man was a walking, talking lie detector.

"General, I apologize if my behavior was
anything less than reflective of the professionalism and dignity of
one serving in, and representing, your staff. I sincerely regret it
if in
any
way I disappointed you today by anything I said or
did. I know I spoke abruptly at one point during the day. I make no
excuses for my behavior and submit myself to any discipline you
deem appropriate."

"My boy, my boy, let's not jump immediately
to extremes. I'm concerned that something is wrong, I certainly did
not mean my inquiry to be taken as a criticism of you in any
way."

It worked! He knew the General well.
Self-effacing and admission of culpability, even if there was none,
was a sure way to disarm his suspicions. He felt badly about
playing the old man like this, but far too much was at stake to do
otherwise. He had to employ this minor deception for Mona's sake.
He knew that her mother was either dead, or about to be put to
death. He could barely deal with the weight of that knowledge as
well as now having to put the General off of his scent.

"Thank you sir. I appreciate your generosity
as well as your concern for my well being. The simple fact is I've
had a migraine headache for the better part of a full day now.
Light and sound have been difficult to handle, though necessary
given the exigencies of the day. I must say the champagne hasn't
helped matters."

"I'm sorry to hear that Avi. I'll instruct my
driver to drop you off at home first so you can get some rest. Take
tomorrow off. Hell take the next two days off. We all deserve a
rest. I'll have my personal doctor look in on you tomorrow."

"Thank you sir, that won't be necessary. An
aspirin and a good night sleep should restore me sufficiently. The
extra day off will be all the doctoring I need. Thank you sir."

"Not at all. I have come to depend on you a
great deal. I'll see you first thing Tuesday morning, nachon?"

"Nachon sir. Shabbat shalom."

"What? Oh yes, Friday already. Good Shabbas,
Avi."

Arriving home, he went through the mechanics
of collecting his postal mail as he rummaged through his
refrigerator for anything that had not yet gone rancid during his
long absence. He desperately wanted to hold Mona, for his own sake
as much as hers. He longed to feel her warm, soft body next to his
– to hold her in his protective arms, swearing he would never let
her go again.

Over and over Avi would question himself,
"Mona, what have I done? What
could
I have done?"

He didn't dare call her, nor did he dare to
contact her via the usual system they had established. He wondered
if she already knew, if she had been contacted, regarding her
mother's death.

With a mental groan, he knew he'd have to
await Mona' signal to meet with her. He had no idea what their next
meeting would bring. Tears, certainly. Would she blame him for her
mother's death? How could she not? Avi blamed himself. Maybe he
could have done more, done
something
to delay the
Experiment. Over the past weeks, months even, he had tried to
determine a course to postpone the experiment, if not derail it
altogether.

What did Mona's handlers expect of her,
expect of him? He wasn't trained as a spy, a scientist, certainly
not a saboteur. While his position gave him instant proximity to
the General, in no way did it give him autonomy to do as he pleased
without consequences!

Avi was able to pass details on to her
handlers, via Mona, regarding military expectations, goals, and
functions regarding
The Project
. The Prime Minister was very
tight-lipped regarding much of it to the point that even the
General himself was at rare times in the dark. Sure, Avi was the
point person to coordinate much of what happened between the three
facilities, but even he did not know the full extent of what
actually happened in them. Only the Prime Minister was fully
briefed.

He was certain, absolutely certain, that much
as the General trusted and even confided a great deal in him, he
also kept a great deal of information from Avi. For that matter, he
kept most of what he did away from everybody on his staff. In the
last years the General seemed to have aged twenty years under the
weight of this burden he had to shoulder.

Avi marveled at the extreme measures taken to
protect
The Project
. Really, it all seemed to border on
paranoia. He caught himself in the very thought. Given the
information he had already turned over to obvious enemies of the
state, certainly the paranoia was justified. A sense of shame, even
a hint of self-loathing, began to well up. He eventually dispelled
feelings of remorse, as he had on other occasions, when he
remembered it was all for Mona, everything. Yes he acted on behalf
of her mother too, but primarily for Mona.

At that instant he was startled by a
carefully buried memory. In a forest of Estonia, one of the men who
arrived into the clearing with her said, "You are not the only
person in
The Project
with whom we are in contact, yet you
are the most senior military official." He was so shocked by what
transpired at that time that he had not, until now, even considered
the full impact of that statement. Was somebody else on the
General's staff working with these agents of Iran? Was it somebody
in
The Project
itself? The way it was stated it was
ambiguous as to the placement of the other individual, but Avi was
certain that he wasn't the only person leaking information. Did the
other person know him by name? Was the other person also being
compromised, or was he (she?) an actual traitor? Maybe it was more
than one other person? How could this even be possible?

Avi again started to panic. Were his role in
this duplicity revealed, he would be branded a traitor –
independent of his pure motives. A traitor to the state, especially
a member of the military, was subject to the possibility of
execution. What was he thinking asking for money to be deposited in
an offshore account? He did it so he and Mona could be free. Who
would believe that? A forensics investigation of wired money and
banking accounts would eventually lead to him.

As if a punishment from God for his lie to
the General he could feel the blossoming of a whopper of a headache
begin to express itself at the back of his skull, drilling its way
to his eye sockets. The faux promise of aspirin and bed rest may
yet come true. Avi was beginning to panic to the point that he'd
gladly take a Valium over aspirin. Better yet he'd gladly down
both, with a shot of something strong.

Settling for an aspirin with a glass of tepid
tap water he went to bed, falling into an uneasy sleep.

In a crazy dream, Mona was talking to him –
at least trying to. She was unable to formulate intelligent words.
Instead her communication was the beeping sound unique to the cell
phone he used to talk with her. Reality informed his emerging
conscious mind that this wasn't simply a dream. He awoke to the
third and final beep on his "Mona mobile phone." On the screen was
a text message of just three words, "Picture of Mona."

Excitedly he opened the picture, eager to see
her face. What filled the small screen was nothing short of
revolting - to the point of surreal.

Table of Contents

14. Betrayal of Family

"We laugh at honour
and are shocked to find traitors in our midst."
- C. S. Lewis:
A Mind Awake

Tehran, Islamic Republic of
Iran

Mona was relieved to
be returning to Tehran,
once again to be with Ghasem Suleimani, the commander of the Quds
Force of Iran's Revolutionary Guards. The trip through Europe and
Turkey was long and, at times arduous. Moving through Turkey was
especially difficult now that so many refugees from the Syrian
civil war were flooding the borders into Turkey and refugee camps
established there.

With tens of thousands of refugees entering
into the country, tensions were increasing between the indigenous
population of Turks and Syrians who were initially welcome but now
were posing problems not least of which were medical, food,
habitations, and criminal behavior concerns.

To make matters worse, Syria had just
recently lobbed heavy artillery shells into Turkish territory. The
Turks responded in kind. Everybody in Turkey was growing suspicious
of Middle-Eastern foreigners in their country. This was a concern
to Mona, trying to get to Iran via Turkey. Though her Turkish
spoken language was acceptable, she was unable to suppress,
convincingly, her Farsi accent. Trying to speak Turkish in any
other accent just sounded foolish. Iran was supporting the Al al
Fiyed regime in Syria. This marked Iranians in Turkey for added
suspicions and sometimes overt hostility.

She was relieved to reach her homeland. Her
life among the Zionist Entity was mentally and physically taxing. A
devout Muslim woman of the Iranian culture, she gladly again wore
the modest clothing that covered her from head-to-toe with just
small openings for her eyes, with mesh covering the eye
openings.

In due the men called for her to report to
them. Mona made her way through the streets and crowds, walking
past children begging for food. The western-imposed sanctions did
nothing of note to curtail government research into nuclear bombs,
but they were having a severe impact on the ordinary, innocent
people of Iran. "That's okay," Mona was in a pensive mood, "soon
the western world would be destitute and their own children dying
of starvation – those who survived the initial attacks."

The walk was long, made all the more so due
to the heat. She was unaccustomed to so much walking, being able to
drive by herself or with others in her car in Israel. In Iran as
well as other countries where strict Islam is observed it is
forbidden for women to drive. Though she had to admit she'd miss
the freedom of driving she realized restricting women from driving
served a greater purpose, one that required an eternal
perspective.

Something she heard in Israel sometimes crept
into her thoughts: There was absolutely nothing in the Holy Qu'ran
that stated that women had to have their faces covered in public.
She knew the Qu'ran by heart and realized this was true. Still, a
more thoughtful interpretation did allow for one to cover one's
face so as to not tempt a man into sinning. Was this not
admirable?

What westerners called Islamic radicalism she
considered to be dedication to God. How can westerners judge what
they have never truly taken the time to learn first-hand? Mona
admired the women of her faith who followed the "spirit of the law"
by strictly observing the "letter of the law." If all women around
the world would accept modesty and religious limitations then there
were be fewer divorces, far less adultery, an end to perversions,
happy homes and families, strong and healthy children everywhere.
She was glad, even rejoiced in donning the modest covering that hid
her beauty from the eyes of the men around her - allowing them to
return home to their wives with a clean conscience and pure
thoughts.

At long last, she was in the outer office,
gratefully accepting the water that was offered her. Nearly gulping
it down, she received the offer of a second glass.

Through the mesh covering her eyes, she
couldn't clearly see that the water was a little cloudy. She
noticed a slightly acrid taste but thought nothing of it. Municipal
water usually tasted different than bottled water.

Mona was asked to wait a few more minutes.
She picked up a copy of
Al Alam
from the table in front of
her, one of the main newspapers in Tehran. Scanning the first
paragraph in the main story, she read the Supreme Leader of the
Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei announced that
"Iran will not succumb to pressures being exerted on it by the
hegemonic powers."

He made this statement Wednesday in an
address to the nation's intellectual leadership in Tehran. "What
day is today?" she wondered. Mona read on, eyelids sometimes
closing briefly as the sounds around her picked up the semblance of
being in a wind tunnel. She slightly shook her head to clear it. By
the time she had reached the end of the article, half-read and less
understood, she submitted to the exhaustion that completely
overtook her. Mona reasoned to herself an excuse of the heat and
the long travel to return home. No sooner had this thought drifted
through what was left of her consciousness than she slipped into a
dreamless sleep.

"She has been changed back into Western
clothing and secured to a metal chair which is bolted to the
floor."

Mona heard these words as if through wads of
cotton stuffed in her ears. Struggling to open her eyes through
lead-weighted eyelashes she viewed another woman in the room. She
was unable to identify the woman due to the head-to-floor burqa she
was wearing. She thought she recognized the woman's voice as she
spoke to somebody on the mobile phone, but couldn't precisely
identify her. Given the deferential and self-effacing tone and
manner, Mona correctly divined that she was speaking with a
man.