by Max Cossack
“No we don’t.” Soren clicked to hang up.
The phone rang again. Soren tried to ignore it, but like an alarm clock it kept ringing. Seven times. Really need to change that setting. Soren picked it up again. “What do you want?”
Roper said, “I told you. We need to talk.”
“So talk.”
“Not over the phone. In person.”
Soren sighed. He held the phone to his chest and considered. Again he lifted it to his mouth. “Okay. Tomorrow. I’m free at noon.”
“Tonight. Right now.”
“It can’t be that urgent.”
“It can be and it is.”
Soren said, “So come on over.”
“No! Not at your house!”
“Where, then?”
“You know Sven’s Hot Mug?”
Soren said, “It’s got to be closed at this hour.”
“Remember the outdoor canopy for summer customers behind the building? The tables and chairs are still out there.”
“You know it’s only about forty degrees right now?”
“Wear a jacket.”
Soren sighed. “How soon?”
“Twenty minutes?”
“Make it thirty,” Soren said and hung up. He swiveled and put his feet on the floor.
Sylvia mumbled, “Who’s that?”
“A friend.”
“I bet,” she said.
“It’s DCA business.”
“Always is.” She pulled the blanket over her head.
Forty minutes later Soren pulled up in his Prius and saw Roper’s heap parked in front of Sven’s. He parked right in front of it.
Soren got out of his car and looked around. It was a cloudy night. He couldn’t see much of anything, just the shadows of the high maple branches and Roper’s red Audi Fox on the street. The lights in the coffeehouse were out. The nearest streetlight was fifty yards away.
There was no telling what that jerk Roper was up to. Soren felt a little thrill of nerves. It didn’t amount to fear, but it was an emotion, so Soren took a moment to savor it, then walked around the dark little brick building to the back. He stepped under the canopy. In the darkness the white painted metal tables and chairs reflected a dim yellow-white light.
“Shh. Over here.”
Soren walked in the direction of the hiss and found Roper sitting at a table in the deepest darkness far under the canopy. Soren grabbed a light plastic chair across from Roper and sat. “Okay. I’m here. What is it?”
Roper stood and peered behind Soren. Roper said, “You came alone?”
“Who would I bring?”
“Just a second.” Roper walked back the way Soren had come. He disappeared into the darkness. A few moments later he reappeared on the other side of the coffeehouse building. He must have circled all the way around.
Roper came back to their table and sat again across from Soren. Roper said, “Looks okay. Don’t think you were followed.”
“Who would follow me?”
“Abarca, who do you think?
“Abarca’s out at this hour?”
“Or one of his men. Enrique, for one.” Roper shuddered. “Don’t you know who you’re dealing with?”
“I have some idea.”
Roper’s eyes darted first one way and then the other and then back again. He looked up, like a mouse scanning for owls above him in the night sky. Soren half expected the man to dive under the table any moment.
Roper said, “You obviously have no idea. You think you do, but you don’t. Just a second.” He hopped up again and sprinted back around the building in the direction opposite from before. He emerged and sat down again across from Soren. The sweat on his face shone in the weak light.
Soren said, “Relax, will you?”
“Easy for you to say. You don’t know.”
Soren asked, “I know I’m here. What I don’t know is why.”
“I found a buyer for the painting.”
“What are you talking about? Abarca’s the buyer, right? Or he’ll find the buyer.”
Roper said, “I wouldn’t advise going with Abarca.”
“Why not?”
“You don’t know what he’s like. You haven’t seen the things he’s done.”
Soren said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“That’s my point. He’s capable of anything.” Roper gave a visible shudder. “And you saw how he treats me. Like a stooge.”
“Shows his good taste. How is that my problem?”
“Plus, he doesn’t pay me fair. I bring him one sweet deal after another and he doles out pennies like peanuts.”
Soren shrugged. “So work out a better deal for yourself.”
“I am. That’s why we’re here. And it’ll be a better deal for you too.”
“I’m listening.”
Roper said, “I can introduce you to someone who’ll fork over big money for the painting. Right now. Cash. He takes the painting off your hands. We cut Abarca out of the deal. No middleman. More for both of us.”
Soren looked across the table at the sweaty eager man. What if this were a test? Suppose Abarca himself had sent Roper? That was something Soren would do—in fact it was something Soren had done—send someone to feel out a new contact to see whether he was an FBI agent or provocateur or otherwise untrustworthy.
Though Roper was convincing. The sweat was real. But that could be just because in cutting out Abarca he was scaring himself.
Either way, it wasn’t even close. Abarca was the one with the connections. Abarca was the one who could set Soren up as a power in the Movement. Roper was nobody.
And if Abarca was ruthless, so much the better. He’d get things done. Further proof he was the kind of leader Soren wanted to hook up with.
Soren said, “You think I’m in this just for the money?”
“What do you mean?” Roper raised his eyebrows in another of his clumsy cheap acting tricks.
Soren said, “You think the revolution means nothing to me?”
“My deal can make you rich.”
“So what? And if Abarca’s as dangerous as you say, why would I want to tick him off?”
Roper grumbled, “I’m offering you a deal. Don’t you even want to know for how much?”
“No.” Soren stood. Roper sat dumbfounded.
Soren walked away with a feeling of power and control. It was a good feeling.
29 Gus In Action
While Hack-as-Roper kept Soren occupied at Sven’s Hot Mug, Gus was toting a painting-shaped box down a dark alley to the spot he’d mapped as immediately behind Soren Pafko’s house.
As soon as he received the “all clear” text from Hack, Gus navigated the dark path from the alley up to the back door. He didn’t need a flashlight. He never carried one in the woods either. He relied on letting his eyes get used to the darkness.
Gus stopped at the back door and set the box down to lean it against the outside wall of the house. He removed a small leather packet from his coat pocket and took out two thin hooked metal rods. He stuck them together into the keyhole and wiggled them around. Forty seconds later the door opened. He picked up the box and went inside and closed the door behind him as slowly and quietly as possible. Not even a click.
He was in the kitchen. He saw stairs leading down. Would someone keep a valuable painting in a basement?
He moved his bulk from room to room on the ground floor, floating like a big ghost through the darkness, scanning the walls for the painting. Nothing.
In the living room, a stairway led upstairs. It occurred to him he had assumed Pafko lived alone. What if he lived with someone? Gus scolded himself. Before breaking and entering, he had forgotten to research the most basic question.
He decided to avoid any trip upstairs unless necessary. He returned to the kitchen and took the stairs down into the basement.
Gus prowled around the basement, checking all the walls. No painting. Nothing behind the bar either. But in the laundry room
, he found a box leaning against the wall behind the water cooler. It was the right size. The box wasn’t even sealed. Gus removed the painting, verified it was the right one, and replaced it with the copy from Gloria.
As Gus turned back towards the stairs, the basement lights came on. He froze. The sudden blast of light dazzled him. Then he heard the scariest sound in burglardom.
Cachongck! Cachongck!
Gus knew the sound well. He had made that sound himself hundreds of times. It was someone racking the slide of a pump action shotgun—getting a round chambered and ready to fire.
As he began to recover his sight, Gus looked up at the kitchen doorway at the top of the stairs and made out the pale thick legs of a woman in a light blue nightgown. He couldn’t see her top half.
She said, “Whoever you are, I know you’re there. I won’t come down and blow you away. Not just yet. Too messy. Too many cop questions. I’m going to head back upstairs to the second floor.”
Gus didn’t breathe.
She said, “I just dropped down here to let you know I hear you and that I will be waiting at the top of those stairs with this twelve-gauge Mossberg. Unless you want a buckshot blast to turn your face to mush, you’ll sneak out the back door the way you came in. Take anything you like, by the way. I don’t care. Just don’t come up that second flight of stairs.”
The woman’s legs disappeared. He heard the light thumps of a few of her footsteps on the floor above, then nothing.
Fearful of a trap, Gus stood stock still for ten minutes, listening. Taking some comfort from the silence, he tiptoed up the stairs to the kitchen. He peeked around the doorway into the kitchen. No one there.
For his convenience, his hostess had kindly opened the back door wide. Carrying the painting box by his side as a shield—a maneuver he knew to be futile—Gus sprinted through the kitchen and the back door.
No one blew him away. Gus sprinted down the backyard path to the alley. Once he hit the alley, he hung a right and kept going and didn’t slow for a hundred yards. He stopped and laid the box down and collapsed against a handy tree, gasping for breath. He looked back down the alley. No had followed. He felt himself all over for gaping wounds. None.
He knew he’d been built for power and not for endurance, but this was ridiculous. He really needed to get back in shape. No more smoking. And no more burgling. Ever.
30 Credit Where Credit Is Due
We solved your Rivelle problem, didn’t we?” Abarca said.
Now Soren was getting somewhere—another private meeting with Abarca. Soren had left the double-dealing chauffeur Roper in front of the house on the street to sulk in his heap. When Soren strode indoors, Enrique held the door wide open and didn’t even glare at him. And now Soren was sitting in a position of favor in the gold upholstered chair to the immediate left of Abarca’s position of power on the big black couch.
Soren said, “Trust me, Rivelle was more an annoyance than a problem.”
“Nonetheless, he was a distraction, with his constant interruption at your meetings, always disputing the minutiae of revolutionary thought, and worst of all, his interfering with revolutionary unity, when we know collective unity is the indispensable requisite of revolutionary action.”
Soren was curious. “What did you do with him? He just disappeared. No one can find him.”
That was true. The police were baffled. The College had scrambled to find someone to cover his classes. The local four-page weekly—the Ojibwa Savage—had dubbed Rivelle’s disappearance “missing-professor-gate” and published a tearful interview with his broken-hearted ex-wife Shelly.
Abarca gave a dismissive wave. “Nothing for you to concern yourself with.”
“Is he alive?”
Abarca cocked his head. “Why are you so interested in this man of so many small potatoes?”
Probably should back off. “Forget I asked.”
“I already have,” Abarca said. “Let us no more discuss him. I have something much more important to talk about.”
“The painting?”
“Including the painting.”
“Is it really an Ilianius?”
Abarca said, “First, allow me to tell you a little story.”
Abarca must have caught something displeasing to him in Soren‘s expression. Abarca narrowed his eyes. “You are interested in my story, no?”
Soren started. “Very interested. Sure. Of course.”
“And you don’t mind if I once more smoke while I regale you?”
“Of course not.”
“Excellent.” Abarca extracted another Cuban stogie from his case and worked through the interminable steps of his lighting ritual. He lit up and admired his handiwork for an extended time and then leaned back on his couch and exhaled a toxic cloud towards the ceiling and watched the poison swirl in the air above.
After yet another protracted interlude of oxygen deprivation for Soren, Abarca finally spoke. “We held state power in Venezuela, but we were also in trouble. Financial trouble. The Bankers were putting the proverbial screws to us. The pressure caused internal contradictions and tensions. And tensions led to disputes. Yes, disputes even among the elite revolutionary cadre. Something that would have been unthinkable in the time of true Chavismo.”
Abarca shook his head in sadness. “And sad to say, some of the disputes brought violence. Of course, I desired nothing more than peace among all. But not everyone understood the necessity for peace.” Abarca clenched and unclenched his right fist.
Abarca stared at his open hand a moment. Then he said, “But that creates a question, of course. A question that we revolutionaries face when things suddenly turn against us, as they sometimes do.” He looked at Soren as if expecting Soren to know what he was talking about.
Soren obliged. “Yes,”
Abarca continued, “The question is, how can we transport hard-won personal assets to another life in another place?”
“I see.”
Abarca said, “And then I became aware of a new possibility. Being a military man, a hardheaded man of action, I had never come across the idea before. It seemed to be the answer to my prayers—although of course I had long since given up actual prayer.”
“What was that?”
“A painting. A very small triptych. You know.”
Soren had no idea what a triptych was. He nodded.
Abarca said, “It fit very snugly in my jacket pocket. When I became aware of its value, I knew I had solved my problem. And then I became aware of stamps.”
“Stamps?”
“Postage stamps. Coins as well. Tiny portable items of great value. Easy to carry from place to place. Material objects that leave no electronic trail behind.”
“I see.”
“My main business became planning my next move to my next arena of revolutionary action. And then came the assassination attempt.”
“Really?”
“The CIA tried to kill me.” Abarca lifted up his left arm. “See these scars?”
“Yes.” Soren leaned closer to examine Abarca’ forearm, which showed three grooves of slightly darkened skin.
Abarca said, “To my good fortune, only nicked me. CIA bullets.”
“Really?”
“Yes, of course, really. Which is why I fled to the U.S..”
Soren said, “I don’t understand.”
“You are aware the CIA may operate legally only outside the borders of the U.S.?
“Yes.”
Abarca said, “Obviously then the safest place from the CIA is to be within those borders.”
Safest from the CIA inside the U.S.A.? Something about that logic troubled Soren. “I’d assumed the economic troubles in Venezuela were the reason you left. You know, the shortages—no food or electricity or clean water or unused toilet paper.”
Abarca glared at Soren. “Do not credit the Yanqui propaganda. Neither I nor anyone in my circles, the comrades in struggle I knew personally, not one of us, ever lacked for any of those thin
gs.”
Soren scrambled to recover. “Nor should you have.”
Abarca nodded and went on. “I hid in a container in the hold of an ancient freighter. The voyage took weeks. I nearly died from heat and thirst and exhaustion. But in the end, I saved myself and my few paltry portable possessions.”
Abarca examined his cigar. “When I arrived, I fell into a brief counter-revolutionary bout of malaise. Almost a depression. A spiral. I felt I had abandoned my mission. What about my life’s work? What could a refugee such as I do to further the people’s cause inside this terrible country which is the source of so much misery for those both inside and outside it?”
Abarca took another puff. “But then I realized, this is exactly where I should be, where I can do the most good, here in the belly of the imperialist beast. I have contacts. I have friends. I have money. But I faced another question.”
Soren was beginning to follow the man’s sometimes tortured logic. “You mean, what to do next?”
“Exactly.” Abarca nodded in respect for Soren’s insight. “Or, as Comrade Lenin asked, ‘What is to be done?’ And what do you guess I decided?”
Soren guessed, “Something to do with portable items? Art, maybe?”
“Exactly. Art. You are sharp. On the surface, I am merely Abarca the art dealer. Beneath the glitz and glamor, something else.”
Soren wondered, Glitz? Glamor? But back to the subject. “And my painting?”
Abarca asked, “Is it a true Ilianius? Underneath, I mean?”
Soren said, “I think so.”
“An Ilianius is worth millions,” Abarca said. “Think what that kind of money can do for our cause.”
“I see what you mean.”
“And you have the painting, no?”
“Yes.”
“And we want it too, of course. But there is one more thing, one very important thing involving you personally.”
“What’s that?
“We have big plans for this country, which is the key arena for ultimate revolution and liberation of the world’s oppressed. And our resources are considerable. But we benefit from local support. We have explored the politics of the U.S.A. and decided that your DCA is our best potential ally among all the candidate movements, organizations, parties, factions, tendencies and splinters.”