Abigail – The Avenging Agent: The agent appears again (36 page)

“No, no, it can’t be attended to here.”

He repeated the sentence several times,
looked at Abigail and asked:

“How did this happen?  It looks as
though someone bit you and pulled off a chunk of your flesh.  What happened to
you?”

Abigail did not respond.  Her eyes were
closed and she wasn’t paying attention to what was going on around her.  Once
more, Dr. Adel repeated:

“This treatment needs to be carried out
in a hospital, under different conditions, with skin grafts, and under general
anesthetic.”

This surgeon was not a party to the
secret and he related to the treatment purely as a matter of medical care. 
When Dr. Muna also did not respond, he realized he was talking to himself and
that there was no chance his advice would be followed.

 He trusted his colleague, Dr. Muna and
knew that she was an internist.  She had called him in as a specialist and
expert in his field, which explained why he was surprised that his advice to
transfer the patient to the hospital was not accepted.  After a few minutes he
relented and gave up, took a surgical kit out of his bag as he stopped ranting
under his reddened nose.

Abigail spent the following two days at
Dr.Muna’s home and did not realize what astounding results the tunnel operation
had achieved or its worldwide success.

Karma heard snippets of information
about the virus attack on the state’s computers.  The damage was extensive
especially to the computer systems of the Ministry of Fuel and part of the
information stored in them was just erased. The next day, it was reported in
the Iranian newspaper,
“Inshallah,”
which quoted the Iranian Deputy
Minister of Fuel, who said:

“It is still unclear whether the attack was mounted within
Iran or from outside the country.”

Karma was proud when he heard and read
the reports but could not decide whether Abigail was connected to the lethal
blow to the state’s computer system.  He sent Robin to fetch a newspaper and
hungrily devoured the information.  It was reported that, on Sunday evening,
the employees of Iranian State Fuel Company had been instructed to close down all
of their computers, at once.

The spyware that had been implanted into
the system in the tunnel had penetrated the central computer and caused
countrywide contamination. The virus changed network settings, copied recorded
messages, photographed screens and messaging software, transmitting them to
central computer hubs in other countries.  The virus made its way to 135
computers.  It reached mechanical and electrical equipment programs in Saudi
Arabia, Lebanon, Syrian, the Sudan and Egypt and gathered information from
them.

The Iranians did everything to track
down and discover where the virus came from, but it was impossible to identify
which of the computers had been hacked.  All the information that was copied was
sent to many servers and only one of them was in the tunnel – the location
where the hacking had taken place.

Another week later, the official
response from the Iranian Students’ News Agency,
‘ISNA’
was received.  It
reported that the “Viper” virus had attacked the computers of the Ministry of
Fuel and its subordinate companies.  The Agency assured that no damage had been
caused to the production of the black gold from the Islamic Republic.

The truth was that the loss was greatest
at the nuclear facility at Bushehr.  It frightened the Russian scientists, who
were operating it to such an extent that they warned that if it was made
operational again too early, it was likely to cause another “Chernobyl disaster.”

Karma’s hands shook as he read a short
report on another page, fearing that it may have some truth in it.

“After an intensive
investigation, it was found that the “Viper” virus was implanted using a USB Flash-drive
by a local agent operating on behalf of Israeli intelligence.”

As a result of the penetration of the
virus in the tunnel of the “Imam Mosque,” the Iranian project upon which the
entire Iranian nuclear program is based was removed.  Almost a month later an
imaging sketch was published of the military facility at Parchin, which, as
suspected all over the world, served the Ayatollahs’ regime to promote this
program.

A
worldwide security warning was issued by the management of Microsoft. The
company announced that it would work to repair the break into its “Windows”
software that had allowed the virus to pose as the program and cause the
damage.

An urgent knock was heard at the front
door.  Dr. Muna peered through the peephole and opened the door.  Robin stormed
in and cried out as he waved his arms and the doctor turned pale.

“Where are they now and how soon will
they get here?”

“Two cars had parked down below and
others are approaching from the side streets!”

“Oh God, help us!” Dr. Muna called out,
wringing her hands.  She paused and then yelled:

“Everybody, go to the opening!”

“Where’s the opening?  Quickly!” Robin
shouted and the doctor pointed to the cupboard under the marble top in the
clinic.  Robin ran, opened the doors wide, bent down and entered, leaving only
his rear sticking out of it.  He fiddled around with something there and called
out in a muffled voice:

“It’s open, come in!”

The doctor pulled Abigail, pointed to
the opening under the marble top and whispered to her:

“Do as I am doing.”  She bent down,
crawled on her hands and knees and Abigail heard her voice echoing from inside
the cupboard, calling her name.  Abigail crawled inside and heard her whisper:

“Hurry, close the doors behind you!”

From behind them they heard heavy blows
coming from the apartment, followed by the sound of shattering glass, screaming
and heavy footsteps.

“Come here, be quick,” Abigail heard and
crawled after the doctor into the narrow tunnel. Abigail reached a
low-ceilinged burrow that was impossible to stand up in and curled up beside
them.  The odor of the sand and the musty air took her back in time to the dark
period, when she had lain bound and tied up, as a captive in an underground
prison for years. She shuddered, found it hard to breath and sobs burst out of
her lips.  Robin pulled her to him and covered her mouth with his hand.  In the
silence that fell, they could hear the footsteps of people running around the
apartment, doors opening and banging shut, shots and blows and her heart beat
wildly.

Somehow Abigail had still not grasped
that she was lying beside two underground fighters, members of the
‘Mujahedin-e-Khalq’
that Karma also belonged to.

The soldiers spent quite a long while on
their rampage of the “Nest”. They moved and dragged things about, opened and
slammed doors and fired into closets to ensure they would kill anyone hiding
inside rather than be surprised by them if they entered the rooms.
 
They searched in bins and banged their rifles on the walls, listening for
sounds coming out of them, trying to discover whether they were empty or
serving as a hiding place.   They peered into dark niches, destroyed whatever
they could get their hands on, letting out their anger on objects they found.  The
soldiers’ screams “Allahu Akbar!” (Allah is Great) were heard by the three of
them, curled up in the dark tunnel.

Muna understood that they would never be
able to return to that apartment.  She pushed a handle in the corner of the low
ceiling and whispered:

“Are you ready to move?”

Then, she pushed the wall.  A breeze and
bright sunlight entered the dugout and blinded their eyes that had grown
accustomed to the gloom.  They ran and hid among some bushes and from there,
crouched as they moved ahead to the entrance to the yard and went out to the
street.

When they were some hundred meters from
the building, Dr. Muna turned and looked back and whispered to Abigail:

“Don’t be frightened by the explosion.”

“What
explosion are you
talking about?!” she asked as her eyes opened wide.

The explosion that was heard a few
seconds later hurt Abigail’s ears and was immediately followed an additional
explosion.  Abigail was preparing to run away but, stared at the doctor who
stood fixed to the spot and her eyes opened in amazement when she saw her
smiling with happiness.  Now, a chain of explosions was heard, clouds of gray
smoke burst out of the windows and then everything was silent.  Flames licked
the trees and shrubs in the yard and Abigail pointed to them, staring in
amazement at how calmly Muna and Robin stood by and watched, their faces
beaming with satisfaction.

Robin murmured:

“No lab, no clinic, and no more
soldiers.”  He gazed at the doctor and she responded:

“Yes, thank God, they’re all gone.”

Only now, Abigail began to grasp that
she was not here by chance.  She understood that Robin, the good-hearted
driver, did not just happen to be following the bus she and Karma had escaped
on by some coincidence.  He also didn’t just wait for her to recover by chance,
either.

Abigail regarded the doctor beside her. 
She thought that she would never have guessed she was a freedom fighter, who
risked her life with clandestine activities.

There was an uproar raging in the Mosque,
above the tunnel. 

When Abigail fled for her life into the secret
royal passage, she saved some valuable seconds that allowed her to reach the
outer bounds of the hall.  The guards hurried to the dog she had kicked off the
rope ladder after it bit and tore away some flesh from her leg.  They patted it
on the back to encourage the animal and urged it back up to chase after her. 
They understood that the animal smelled the scent of its prey, tasted its blood
and would be able to track it down and lead them to it.  Another black Alsatian
joined the dog and they ran together to the place where the bus was waiting. 
Here, the two dogs went around sniffing the air with their sensitive noses
trying to trace the scent that had disappeared from that exact spot.

Five minutes later the empty bus
returned from its adventure and the distraught driver told the soldiers of the
Republican Guards that a man and a woman had boarded the vehicle.  He told them
a story they found difficult to believe.

“The woman pulled me out of my seat and
drove the bus to the main road, “Tachta Jamche”, and when she got off the bus,
I saw her hailing a cab.”

The guards took the driver back to the
place where he said the two had got off.  There, they noticed the drops of blood
at the side of the road and they saw the dogs yelping excitedly and running
around in circles.

When they returned to the Mosque, they
began gathering evidence from witnesses who were still wandering around the
site.

“I saw someone supporting a woman, who
was almost fainting, and taking her outside.  She could hardly walk and blood
was running down her legs,” a woman reported emotionally and pointed to traces
of blood that looked like the sole of a shoe.

Mussa, a plainclothes policeman, who was
in the area, approached them, panting.  He told them that he had seen two
people get on the bus that drove away with its door open.  Someone else
reported that he saw the taxi pick up the couple,  there, on the main street
and that the woman fell as she got out of the bus.  This man was a cab driver
and he added an important detail.  He said:

“I know that the cab they took traveled
westwards, in the direction of Gachin.”

               
The guard immediately suggested that
they look for a doctor in the area the taxi drove to and Mussa said it was
unlikely that any doctor would risk treating her without reporting the injury
to the authorities.

“You’re right, so let’s look for a physician,
who would be prepared to take care of her,”  Shitar, the commander of the guard
replied.  He was the trainer of the dog that followed Abigail in the tunnel. 
That would be the modus operandi of someone helping our enemies,” the guard
stated.

            “Do
you have any ideas?” Mussa asked and suddenly he hit forehead and cried out:

            “What
idiots we are, have you forgotten what is located in Gachin?!

            The
guards stared at him and he answered his own question.

“I have surveilled the clinic of the
doctor who lives in that city, several times.  Her house is about an hour’s
drive away from here, in the valley between the hilltops and not far from the
‘fortress’.

“Fine,” Shitar said, “so we can agree
that this is our chance to kill two birds with one stone.”

“No, four.”

“Four?”

“The ‘Nest,' ‘the Fortress’ and a pair
of damned, dangerous traitors.”

“Right.” Mussa agreed, “let’s meet in an
hour from now to make plans and discuss what happened in the tunnel.”

A half hour later, three men entered the
‘Imam Mosque’ and went to a room assigned to them.

“It’s time we eliminated these two
points of opposition, the ‘Nest’ and the ‘Fortress,’” Shitar declared.