by E. L. Pini
“Dead? And you are?”
“We should call a doctor, right? To call the time of death.” I point again at Be’er, stalling for time, considering what I should say next. Neither Schultz nor Ehrlich were a good option. Especially Ehrlich, who was sent by the Israeli government to assist Be’er, begging the question – why the shit was I coming into England on Schultz’s passport. Moshe will pull every possible string, the press back home’ll have a field day, and I’ll be out of prison in three months, or six months, or a year. Verbin will lose it.
On the other hand, I could stick with Dr. Schultz. The papers were good. But I won’t have a way to demonstrate a satisfactory link to Be’er, and might very possibly get charged with murder. They’re the only papers I have with me.
10:57 – “I’ll ask again. Who are you, sir?”
I present him with Dr. King Schultz’s German driver’s license.
“The professor and I were supposed to have a meeting,” I explain. “I’m an executive in Green Energy Systems – an Italian Energy company. We were looking into the construction of solar farms in the Negev Desert for use of the Israeli military. Lots of sun there. Free power, basically. He’s an advisor for the Israeli government,” I say, again pointing at Be’er.
“Sit down, please,” O’Keefe tells me, and I suddenly notice that his voice is vaguely familiar. I sit down and search my memory. He reaches toward the table and collects my Glock. The sleeve of his jacket hitches up and he notices me notice his Rolex.
“Hey, RP,” he said, smiling impishly.
“What fresh fuckery is this, now?” I ask and stand up.
“Sit down,” he raises the Glock. “Fuckery with a bullet in the chamber at this piece’s most effective range.”
“Rasputin.”
Was it the clip of Gigi’s murder? Is that where I first heard his voice? This the sick bastard who murdered Gigi and his wife and their daughter, and this isn’t Russia, here he is not untouchable, and even if he was, this time I would end him.
“Push the table closer to me.”
I get up again.
“Sit down, don’t move!” he commands, and takes a step back. “Push it with your legs.” He gestures with his bullet-in-the-chamber Glock.
I sit back down and shove the table toward him as bidden. He takes out a handkerchief, carefully collects the syringe and wrapper from the bottom of the paper basket, puts them in his pocket. He continues around the room, collecting evidence against me.
Where the fuck is Ran, I wonder. Hasn’t he realized this is taking too long? But then I hear noises from room next door: a door slamming, dragging, shuffling, glass breaking, swearing in Russian.
“Your friends,” Rasputin says, bringing his wrists together to let me know they’re handcuffed. “Flotilla thirteen, Matkal,” he adds in Hebrew with hardly any accent. This man doesn’t have an accent in any language, I suppose.
“My men, all Spetsnaz,” he continues. “But there are ten of them. Only five of you. Von Clausewitz, you know how it is.”
I try to put my thoughts in order. They have Ran and the rest of the team. And he knows about us. And he knows about me, much more than he should. And what do I know about him? That he’s a Macdonald- triad-psychopath that kills for kicks? That he’s conniving and sharp as a whip? That he’s well-trained in both sambo and Brazilian jiu-jitsu? I can probably handle that. Probably. What else? Personal buddy to both Putin and Naryshkin. And, perhaps most meaningfully, his admiration towards his father, who abused him as a boy and was later executed by the KGB – because of us.
“You had other plans,” I say to Rasputin. “The professor died on you, huh?”
“You’re pretty clever, aren’t you? Definitely more than he was. But I’m… slightly cleverer.”
“Why did you kill him? He would’ve made a premium spy.”
“That was you in Phicardou, right? Back in Cyprus. The professor told us you were ‘fairly intelligent,’ but unfortunately your idiot friends bombed the Imam Ali tunnels last night. That’s why he’s dead. Change of plans.”
Imam Ali? I know the name from our EEI – a massive Iranian missile bunker on the Syrian-Iraqi border. The initial plan must have gone well; a squadron of F-16s took off from Ramat David Air Base toward Khmeimim. This pissed off the Russians, who sent a corresponding squadron of MiGs that intercepted our F-16s.
Chatter commences on the red line between headquarters, and meanwhile at the far end of Syria, on the Iraqi border, another tetrad bombs the tunnel in Imam Ali, having tricked the S-400’s detection system.
“So, did you find what you were looking for?” I ask.
He ignores the question.
“I asked if you found what you were looking for in Cyprus.”
“Yes, of course, just before you arrived,” he lies, with a nonchalance that betrayed how much that memory card meant to him. He then surprises me by switched to a methodically placating tone, drawing, “Honestly, Russia isn’t your enemy. Certainly not now. In three years, maybe five, when we’re finished creating the new order, perhaps you’ll become expendable – but right now, you’re the most powerful adversary in the region. Occasional bloodletting is good for your health, you know. Just look at the Brits,” he nods towards the street outside. “They had to go all the way to the Falkland Islands just for some target practice. But you… you scare the Arabs, the Syrians, the Iraqis and Iranians, the Turks – scare them right into our arms to buy weapons and aerial defense systems. You are our top sales promoters. This evening, just before eight o’clock, your PM will have a press conference, where I assume he’ll tell the whole world how you crushed Imam Ali to dust by slipping past our aerial detection tech. Your government pulls this shit whenever it suffers some internal political crisis, and it is very bad for my sales. So you’re going to get that press conference called off. If you don’t…” he gestures toward the nearby room and slid a finger across his throat.
I believe him. Still, I figure that if I manage to kick the table up into his face, I’ll have two seconds, give or take, to swarm him and get the gun. If I miss, I get shot in the chest. At this range, there will be no missing.
“Cancel the press conference, and they go home,” he says, nodding toward the other room.
11:02 – Left leg is braced against the floor. Right leg will kick up the table and dodge to the side.
“Of course, you killed Sokolov, so I have no choice but to kill you.”
That need to deliver the last strike seems to be a common denominator of this entire class of human, no matter what side they’re on.
“I’ll make the call. Let them go and I’ll make the call.”
“Here,” he tosses me a heavy handset, looks like the kind that operates on radio. I catch it with my right hand, swing it back in a half-circle and lunge it right at his head. He ducks – now’s the time; left leg pushes into the floor. I rise up along with the coffee table. It slams into him, then we both fall on top of him.
He manages to fire a shot. It stings horribly. His bullet takes flesh from my shoulder. Only a sacrifice will work at this point. I dive for his legs and pull them out from under him. He goes down like a bag of rocks, unable to break his fall. His head bashes against the floor tiles. I manage to stand all the way up. I didn’t want to ground him – he’s small, and trained in sambo. I work better with some altitude. I pick up the floor lamp and slam the heavy metal base into his face, hear the nasal bones breaking. I follow through, thinking of Gigi. I raise the lamp and bring it down again for a terminal blow, but the little dreck manages to roll away a second before the metal lamp base comes down, and he squirms around to stab my foot with an icepick. I hear sounds from the next room. A distant whine of sirens. My head is spinning. I feel drowsy, did he cut my artery?
I lose focus, then take a heavy blow to the back of my neck and go down. When I stagger to my feet, I am facing two g
orillas with overgrown Makarov pistols. I am certain I know one of them from Asmara. He helps Rasputin to his feet and points at me, his intent clear. Both pistols are raised towards me, at zero range.
Somehow, the Russians don’t concern me as much as the approaching police. Right now Rasputin and I share a common interest – we both want to finish this up and get out of here before the cops arrive. This is game theory in all its glory – once just one of us is caught, the other will soon follow.
Rasputin groans, wipes the blood from his face, and says something in Russian about the approaching sirens before returning to his nearly-unaccented English.
“Sacrifice maneuvers are the tools of those who have nothing to lose. They’ll work once, but no more. Storming a hill while being fired on by a Goryunov machine gun and howling like an Indian, that’s not so impressive. If you think about it, it’s really a kind of fear.”
How does he know? I wonder.
He repeatedly wipes the blood from his face.
“Russia is a big bear,” he says. “Israel – a cockroach.” He makes a squishing motion with his foot, laughing, and quickly leaves the room with his troop of gorillas. One of them, the one from Asmara, stays and approaches me with his gun drawn, then smacks me across the face with it. Rasputin scolds him from the hallway and they quickly disappear.
11:08 – I drag myself to the nearby room, and it takes everything I have left to free Ran and his guys from the zip-ties. The sirens are drawing closer. We have to be gone when they get here.
“You’re pale!” Ran hurries toward me and ties a makeshift tourniquet around my foot.
“Move your ass. Get everyone out of here before the police get here.”
“What do we do with the professor?” he asks.
I shrug. “His employers can look after him.” Then I become lightheaded and everything goes dark.
39.
I woke up on crisp white sheets. I looked around and realized I was in Ran and his wife’s bedroom. The face hovering above me, however, was unfamiliar.
“Who is this?” I asked.
“Doctor Simanovitz. How do you do.” He carefully shook my hand.
“The doctor was sent by the embassy,” said Ran, whom I now noticed standing behind him.
“Let’s take a look, then,” said the doctor, removing the bandage from my shoulder. He seemed satisfied.
“Good as new,” he said, and carefully touched the wound, checking to see my reaction.
“This will hurt a bit,” he said, and pressed with some force, again looking at my reaction.
“That hurt?” he asked.
“A bit,” I confirmed.
“Good. I think it won’t even scar. Just a flesh wound – grazed off some meat, but nothing vital was hit. Now let’s see the foot, please,” he said and lifted away the blanket.
“I gave you some stitches down here,” he said, turning my foot around like he was trying to screw if off. “A quarter inch, even less, four millimeters from an artery. Good.” He put my foot down and went to wash his hands.
“The medical report, they told me to send it to Dr. Verbin from Hadassah. You know her?”
“Yeah, a bit.”
“Amazing woman. That light in her eyes. Half our class was hopelessly smitten with her. You two have something going on?”
“Yeah, quite a lot of something.”
“Oh? Oh, you’re the husband! Oh, well done. Lucky man.”
Simanovitz loaded a syringe and squirted some fluid out.
“For the pain. Excellent stuff. Keep you from hurting on the flight. Okay?” he asked, as he jabbed it onto my arm. “These you can take on the plane; they’ll help you sleep. Tomorrow you’ll be good as new.” He gave me a couple of pills. “Take care. And give her my best.”
Ran took me to the airport. On the way he said, “Bella got you a business seat.” He boarded with me, and helped me into my seat, although it wasn’t necessary.
“What’re you flying for?” I asked. “You think I need a babysitter? Go home.”
“I’m not leaving you alone. And my orders come from the highest possible authority.”
“Bella?”
He nodded. “Alright, if you’re settled here, I’ll get back to coach before take-off.”
“You’re not going anywhere. You’re here to watch me, so you can stay right here in business.”
He stayed, though he seemed somewhat ill at ease.
“Can I get a Macallan?” I asked the stewardess.
“Macallan? What’s that? Sorry, I’m new.”
“Whisky.”
“I’ll check.”
“Make it two.”
“You sure, boss? Whisky with your meds is kind of a no-go.”
“Good thing we’ve got nowhere to go to.”
“You sure I can sit here?” asked Ran.
A moment later the rookie stewardess returned with two glasses filled with Lagavulin up to the brim, like cups of tea.
“No Macallan, sorry,” she said.
“Lagavulin is fine, thank you,” I said.
Ran didn’t take to the Lagavulin’s rich, smoky flavor, so I had no choice but to drink his, as well.
Pretty soon I started to feel dizzy. I closed my eyes. I wasn’t sure if I was asleep or awake. I tried to stand up, but couldn’t. I briefly knew I was on the plane on my way to Israel, but immediately lost that knowledge. Suddenly – Wagner’s Valkyries, red tongues of fire burst out and tear at the black.
“Gott im Himmel, the Bundestag is on fire! I repeat, the Bundestag has gone up in flames!”
The camera quickly swerves over to the soot-covered face of Michael Kohlhaas, who is holding a Tavor assault rifle, a grenade belt slung across his chest. They are frag grenades. M26s.
“Mister Kohlhaas, I ask, we all ask, when does the wanton destruction end? You’ve burned down the opera, you’ve blown up the courthouse, now the Bundestag – what’s next?”
Kohlhaas’ gang of bikers functions like a well-trained raiding party. There are three access routes to the Bundestag. One route is heavily mined, and surrounded by roadside charges, with no way of knowing which charge will trigger which mine. The other route is under remote control. The third route is wide open, leading the search and rescue teams straight into the fiery maw of Kohlhaas’ bikers.
The camera points over the reporter’s shoulder.
“Mister Kohlhaas?”
“I’m no Mister, and you’re no gnädige Frau, just an ugly redhead. I already told you. This country is shit. Priests, rabbis, politicians, cops, judges – corrupt sons of bitches, all of them. We must destroy, demolish, rebuild.”
“Mister Kohlhaas, I understand you’ve been wronged, your horses were stolen, but to destroy the whole country on account of this – das ist unmöglich!”
“And what of satisfaction?!” He lifts the Tavor over his head and lets out a burst of gunfire. His biker gang gathers around him. Thunder rolls down from the heavens, drowning his voice. Everyone looks up, as well as the camera. The Valkyries in the soundtrack ride from one wild ferocious crescendo to the next.
From the belly of the black cloud bursts a squadron of attack helicopters. Colonel Kilgore is standing on the leading helicopter’s landing skids, wearing a wide-brimmed fedora and chewing on a cigar. He jumps off the skids before they touch the ground and runs to embrace Michael Kohlhaas in a hug. The colonel takes a deep breath. His chest expands. He looks around approvingly and whispers in Kohlhaas’ ear: “Wow, I absolutely love the smell of napalm, it makes my day. How about you?”
“Why are you whispering?” asks Kohlhaas.
“I don’t know, they told me it wasn’t politically correct. Fuck ‘em. I just wanted to tell you, Michael, anything you need, you just say the word, anything you need, Michael – it’s on me.” He shoves a double corona cigar dow
n Kohlhaas’ shirt pocket and tosses him a small handheld radio. “Stay on this frequency. I’m Crown 1, you’re Justice Warrior.”
The colonel withdraws back into the helicopter, which starts to rise.
“The cigars, Michael!” he yells. “Cubans are okay now!” he waves his hand and the chopper door slides shut. He disappears in a black cloud.
The camera returns to the redhead reporter.
“Are you aware that the government has appointed a special task force for the purpose of capturing you, alive or dead?”
“We’ll see.”
“See what?” Verbin says. “Yeesh, you’re pretty warm… have you taken your temperature?”
She places a cup of tea in front of me, thick with lemon and honey and spearmint, and with a soft towel, soaked in warm water and smelling of eucalyptus oil, she wipes my forehead.
“Thank you,” I say, but she is gone.
“Verbin? Verbin?”
I woke up soaked in sweat. Looked around. Recognized the plane. Recognized business class. I took me a moment to collect myself, and then I saw Ran coming toward me. He told me we were would be landing soon.
“You okay?”
I nodded and wiped the sweat away, and for a moment the dream flashed before me again, and I thought of Ya’ara, who told me once that my identification with Michael Kohlhaas was just another symptom of my twisted, juvenile character.
40.
It had been an exhausting day for First Lieutenant Vlad of the security division. The RET holding company had recruited a dozen naval engineers, and it was up to him to vet and reapprove each of their clearance passes, although most of them had just recently concluded their service as officers on some of the more classified units of the submarine fleet.
When he’d finished conducting, then typing up, the final interview, he leaned his chair back against the table and lit a cigarette.
Vlad vaguely remembered having stuck a post-it to his screen. and tried to find it. He didn’t find it on the screen or on the computer, not beneath the keyboard, not the wastebasket.