Pressure Chamber, page 15
“We need your skills here.” He sighs, knowing that this is a lost battle.
“Don’t worry. It’s called multitasking. I’m a woman.” She smiles.
“Who’s seen you there? Who knows that we, in the form of you, are working on this case?”
“No one but Daphne Dagan. She won’t leak it.”
“I’ve just now returned from an interesting chat with the interior minister. With us in the room were the heads of Military Intelligence and the Shin Bet. The honorable minister – let’s put it this way – delicately expressed his concerns regarding the Israel Police’s ability to cope with the complexities of the case it has been trying unsuccessfully to solve for several months by now.”
Rotem’s eyes light up. “And he’s given the Organization the green light to work on it in parallel? Can I wake the dragon? Can I discuss it freely with Control? With Operations? With Angel Fire? With Unit 8200?”
“Slow down. Don’t get carried away. With all due respect to five abducted civilians, we have a greater responsibility for the safety of many more, and I have no intention of diverting resources disproportionately just because the honorable minister believes his grandson is worth more than others. I’m going to allow you to continue working on the case, but without the police knowing that we’re involved. Continue working with Daphne Dagan; we’ll move Nathan Shmueli aside, and you’ll replace him to work on the case directly under the guise of an external investigator. We’ll come up with a story for you.”
“No need. If we aren’t going to conduct things on a full scale, then the current format will suffice. I’m receiving updates directly from inside the Forensics Department; what I require in addition to that is the data from the other police divisions involved in the investigation. For it all to be channeled to me. And from my perspective, I’d rather they didn’t know about it. My activity there should be on the sidelines, totally unnoticed. If I were to intervene directly and we were to get Nathan reassigned, it would only cause trouble. Just make sure that if I need access to other elements, and not necessarily within the police, I won’t be hindered and they’ll comply.”
He blows lightly on his cup of tea and sips from it. “Consider it done. Look after yourself.”
“Of course.” She stands up and steps towards the door, blowing a kiss back at him before closing it behind her.
He waits until she’s out of earshot and then picks up the phone and presses the speed-dial button for the head of the Operations Division.
“Yes, Grandpa?”
“Motti, I have a small favor to ask.”
38.
Tonight, I’ll remember my dream
Tonight, I’ll lucid dream
I’m strong and can face up to any character who seeks to harm me in my dream
Tonight, I’ll remember my dream
Tonight, I’ll lucid dream
I’m strong and can face up to any character who seeks to harm me in my dream
Tonight, I’ll remember my dream
Tonight, I’ll lucid dream
I’m strong and can face up to any character who seeks to harm me in my dream
04:56
I’m sitting on a bench in an old, noisy train car. The smell of coal is coming from the chimney of the locomotive at the front. Next to me is a young girl in a Victorian dress, and I realize that I’m a child again. She’s my friend; the same girl I was with in the pool, and who was lying opposite me in the tent. The rattling of the wheels on the tracks creates a monotonous background noise.
Tatack-tatack
Tatack-tatack
Tatack-tatack
She has a string of pearls around her neck and her dress hides her legs and shoes. I look at myself. I’m dressed in similar clothes. A long white dress. White gloves. A scarf.
Looking out of the window, I see two stone towers in the distance.
“The tracks will curve to the right soon and we’ll start to move closer to the towers,” the girl says.
“It happens sometimes,” I reply.
“Want to go on a journey?”
“Yes.”
She reaches her hand out towards my face, brushing strands of my hair back and caressing my cheek.
Tatack-tatack
Tatack-tatack
Tatack-tatack
There’s a smooth sea in the distance. A cool breeze ruffles my hair. A setting sun. It’s pleasant.
I’m in.
I’m at the cinema with Anat Aharon and I have to go to the bathroom. I tell her to come with me, but she says she’ll wait for the intermission. I need to go now, so I get up and go to the bathroom, which is at the front of the cinema, behind the screen.
There’s no gender sign on the door. Hanging there is a picture of a white mouse, with a note underneath that reads: Out of order. Undergoing repairs – sorry for the inconvenience. The note reminds me of something. A different bathroom perhaps. Maybe in a house that was never a home for me. Maybe at boarding school. Maybe in the home of the foster family that turned me into a slave. Before the fire.
Reality check.
I’m dreaming.
I go into the bathroom, which is lit by a powerful fluorescent light. The floor is soiled with black fingerprint powder. There’s a long line of sinks, and my school geography teacher is leaning over one of them and throwing up. I know it’s her without seeing her face. I feel sorry for her. I continue past the sinks and see Lee Ben-Ami standing in front of me in a white dress. Her eyes are black and very big, disproportionate to her face, like in the illustrations of children with huge eyes by an artist whose name I can’t recall.
I hear someone whispering my name repeatedly. It isn’t Lee because her mouth is shut, only her eyes remain open. She points to one of the toilet stalls and I open the door and see a lake in the afternoon light, just before sunset. There’s a steep incline of a few yards on a dirt path with thick vegetation on its sides, and I descend and stand on the sandy shore.
The movie theater’s popcorn smell, which turned into the smell of bleach in the bathroom, changes into the pleasant fragrance of perfume. I remove my shoes and socks and feel the warm sand under my bare feet.
A soldier in a green uniform approaches and tells me that I should put my socks and shoes back on. It’s not safe here. I climb back up to the door. The soldier comes with me. In the bathroom he presses me up against the wall and kisses me. It’s nice but a little scary. The door to the lake is still open and a cool breeze is blowing over us. His hands are strong. I sense that something is wrong. I move my head from side to side and tell him that he’s making me feel uncomfortable. “Stop!” I say to him, and he takes a step back.
“I think I saw him once,” he responds. “The guy you’re looking for. I replaced him one Saturday. I know what he looks like. A crazy son of a bitch. Tell Rotem.”
“And Nathan?”
“Only if he’s come down from his branch and gotten dressed.” The soldier laughs.
The door of the toilet stall opens and Anat Aharon is standing there. “Where did you disappear to?” she asks, then looks at the soldier. He turns around and goes back down to the lake, and I can tell that something that shouldn’t have happened has just happened.
I lower my eyes and look at my feet. I’m still holding my shoes and socks in my hand. Anat asks if I want to go to Disneyland next week. I’m pleased she’s not angry at me. I ask her if she wants to swim in the lake.
“Liquid bleach is made from sodium hypochlorite. Mixing liquid bleach with vinegar produces chlorine vapor, and inhaling that will kill you,” she says.
We go down to the lake. There’s a large rocking chair on the sand by the water and we sit on it together. We share a long kiss. Her tongue tastes of mint and strawberries. I slip my hand into her pants and she turns her head to look at a van that’s approaching along the shore of the lake, raising a cloud of dust in its wake.
I know something’s about to happen but I don’t know what. It’s an intense sensation.
The name Helen pops into my mind. Who is Helen?
Something is going to happen very soon.
In a perfect world, you can do anything and everything will turn out well. You can trust people without fear of being hurt.
Anat Aharon and I pass through the bathroom again. I stop at one of the basins to wash my face. I can feel the sand on my feet mixing with the black powder on the cool white floor. Footprints, fingerprints, drowning in a stormy sea, the savagery of nature, human nature, the State of Israel vs. Daphne Dagan, a minor. The prosecution’s summation. The defense’s summation. One thought follows the next, spinning in my head.
I wash my face, and when I lift my head, Lee
Ben-Ami is looking at me from the mirror with huge black eyes. She’s wearing the same white dress. She reaches out to me. Her face is pale. She doesn’t shout. She whispers softly.
“Help me.”
Daphne wakes up in state of panic and sits up. The door to the room is open and a figure is standing there.
“Mom!” Daphne shouts.
“It’s me,” Anna approaches. “Are you okay? You were screaming in your sleep.”
She rubs her eyes. “What was I saying?”
“You said ‘Stop’ several times and then you yelled: ‘Help me.’”
“Wow, sorry. Did I wake you?”
“Come on, I’m used to it by now.” Anna smiles.
“I was having a really weird dream. I need to write it down before I forget.”
“Can I make you a coffee?”
“Yes. Thanks.”
Anna leaves the room and Daphne begins writing quickly. The mirror was terrifying. She saw herself but not herself. Lee Ben-Ami, who looked back at her from the mirror, was the emotional reflection of herself in her subconscious. She knows she’s read about it somewhere. A warning not to look in the mirror during lucid dreaming before you’re in full control of your dreams and know how to wake yourself up.
She gets up, puts on a pair of sweatpants and walks into the kitchen just as Anna rests two mugs of coffee on the table. Anna’s very presence, awake and by her side early in the morning, is comforting.
Anna tosses a pack of cigarettes onto the table and sits down. “What frightened you so much?”
Daphne wraps both her hands around the hot cup of coffee. “Let’s say you’re lucid dreaming. Wandering around contentedly in a world you’ve created for yourself and busy with various kinds of interesting activities. Now, you feel like looking into the mirror for a second to check that your lipstick hasn’t smeared.”
“Okay.”
“Well, don’t do it.”
“Why not?”
“In dreams, the laws of physics fly out the window. If you look into a mirror, you won’t see yourself the way you’re used to seeing yourself. It’s similar to looking at your hands during a reality check in a dream. It’s not the reflection of light rays off the surface of the mirror like in the waking world.”
“So what’s it like in a dream then?”
“In a dream, you’ll see yourself in the mirror the way your subconscious perceives you. You’re glimpsing into your soul. And it’s totally unexpected. Maybe you won’t have eyes in the mirror. Maybe you won’t have hair. Maybe you’ll be a child or an old woman or have the face of someone else. A face can change too while you’re looking at it. That’s why you’re meant to leave looking into a mirror to a stage in which you’re in total control of your dream and can wake yourself whenever you choose.”
“Is that what happened to you now? Did you escape from it in your dream?”
“No, you woke me up. And I hadn’t planned on looking in a mirror. It happened by chance. It’s good that you woke me. I could have ended up stuck there for hours.”
“You’re crazy to be carrying on with your sleep experiments. You’re starting to scare me.”
“It’s interesting. I’m learning a lot about myself.”
Anna sips her coffee and looks at her.
“And eventually, it will help me get rid of the nightmare too. I’m sure it’ll happen if I stick with it.”
Daphne sips her coffee while Anna gets up and leaves the kitchen, returning with a joint. She sits down and lights it.
“Want a hit?” she asks, offering it to Daphne, who takes a drag and then hands it back.
“Anything new happening?”
“With what?”
“The Babysitter.”
“In the waking world? No.” She does a reality check before she continues. She’s awake. “Nothing since the chocolate. We’re waiting for him to do us a favor and show up again. But Anat and Lee are back in my dreams.” She reaches out and Anna passes her the joint. “We’ve been assigned to another case for now. A new Volvo imported privately from Switzerland. Heroin hidden in the doors. Discovered during an inspection by the Customs Authorities, who were waiting for the importer to collect the vehicle. But no one showed up, and the owner’s details are fictitious of course. It may have been a private initiative on the part of some workers at the Ashdod Port to supplement their income. We’ve been looking for evidence there for two days now, with no luck so far.”
“The usual boring stuff.”
“Yes. A welcome routine bit of criminality.”
They both start laughing.
“Is there anything to eat? I’m starving.”
Anna goes over to the fridge.
“Just this,” she says, turning to Daphne with a cherry tomato in her hand. “There’s one left.”
“Half each.”
They burst out laughing again.
39.
Lee runs barefoot from her room into the Images Room, and quickly through the X-ray Room and towards the door that leads to the outside. The door is locked. She pulls on the handle with all her might, screams and slams her fists against the door in frustration.
Her heart is pounding. She presses the palms of her hands against the door, leaning over and panting. She needs to focus. She has to find a way out. She can’t afford to lose her cool. She turns and looks at the X-ray equipment. Breathe. Her respiratory rate returns to normal and she returns to the babies’ room and stands over him. He’s still out. She needs to backtrack now, but slowly. To pay attention to details. The only way out of here is to think. To look. To assess.
She leaves the room again, walking slowly this time, and studies the other side of the door, the one with which she isn’t familiar. There’s a lock that allows the door to be opened from the one side only. She looks at the image-covered walls of the room adjacent to hers. Hanging above the desk are sixteen numbered X-rays of the skeletons of the babies arranged in the shape of a large square.
The monitor on the desk is on. If he has an Internet connection, she can call for help. She moves the mouse to reveal that the computer is password protected.
Above the computer is a shelf she remembers, with a row of glass jars of various sizes. She didn’t dare approach them the first time. Now, she picks one up and takes a close look. The fetuses of conjoined twins suspended in a clear solution. She shudders and returns it to the shelf. The other jars also contain the fetuses of conjoined twins, in varying stages of development. Some as small as a matchbox, others almost as big as premature newborns.
She leaves the jars behind and goes into the X-ray Room, walking past the silent machines towards the closed door. She tries once more, but again it doesn’t open, and she stands there and examines the structure from up close. It’s a thick steel door, like the door to an apartment, with a high-security cylinder lock that takes a dimpled key and not a key with teeth.
She goes back to her room, crouches down next to him and starts going through the pockets of his pants. She finds a single key, to her room. She stands up and places it next to the sink. In his other pocket she finds a small notepad and a very worn-down pencil.
About half the pages from the notepad have been torn out, and the remainder are lined and blank. She runs her fingers over the first page and then takes the small pencil and begins sliding the graphite tip back and forth across the page, quickly, but taking care not to apply too much pressure. After covering the entire page, she reads the letters that are revealed:
Sunday
03 / 25 / 2017
Ten in the morning
Status meeting
System integrity
Two open issues
She returns to the Images Room with the notepad in hand, places it on the desk and then begins a systematic review of the room, item by item. The objects on the desk, the computer, the keyboard, under the keyboard, the drawer, under the wooden desktop, inside the reading lamp. No key.
She runs her hands over all the photographs stuck to the wall, pressing against them to check if there is something hidden behind one of them. If the key isn’t on him then it has to be here in the room with the photographs, or in the X-ray Room.
The sound of a groan followed by the rattle of metal startles her, and she runs back to her room. He’s sitting on the floor, one wrist cuffed to the frame of the bed, his other hand pressed against the back of his neck.
“You should stitch my head. There’s a special needle and thread in the first-aid kit in the cupboard on the right.” He speaks in his usual dry and emotionless tone.
She takes a deep breath and tries to speak calmly. “Where’s the key?”
“I’m sorry, but I can’t tell you. It would compromise my plans.”
“Then you’ll remain just as you are. Shackled to the bed.”
“Stitch the back of my neck in the meantime. It’s uncomfortable to keep my hand here like this.”
“Where’s the key?”
“I’ve already explained that I won’t divulge its location.”
“You’re going to stay cuffed to the bed, without food or water, until you tell me where it is.”
“Stitch the back of my neck.” He turns his head away from her and she sees the wound, which hasn’t stopped bleeding.
She has a long look at the cribs. “Get on the bed,” she instructs, “and lie face-down with your free hand under your stomach.”
She can’t believe what she’s doing. She should slash his face; instead, she’s going to play nurse to him. But she has to keep him alive so he can tell her where the key is. If he bleeds to death, or if the wound becomes infected and bacteria enters his bloodstream, he could lose consciousness and she and the babies would be stuck here with no way out.
