Good and Dead (An Avner Ehrlich Thriller Book 2)

by E. L. Pini

  “No problem,” he said. “Pizza oven. 1000 degrees.”

  ***

  The next morning, we sat down in an isolated corner of the dining room, engrossed in our bacon omelets. I was looking out the window, watching two screeching mynas peck some other bird’s chick to death, then prance around like peacocks.

  “Non-kosher hotel,” Boris said. “Much better.” He smiled and for a while returned to his thoughts. “Look at those bastards,” he muttered, looking at the mynas. “Butcher that tiny little guy and walk around like they’re all that. More bacon?”

  Sergio appeared, asking if he might have the pleasure of joining his distinguished guests. He sat down without waiting for a reply and placed a copy of the Daily Star in front of us. In the corner of the front page was a photo of a stretcher being wheeled into an ambulance next to the still-smoldering remains of a car.

  “Shit,” Boris blurted, his face reddening.

  “Why shit?” Sergio wondered. “Isn’t this what you were looking for?” he pointed at the headline covering most of the page: “JACK THE RIPPER IN BEIRUT.”

  I took the paper and started reading. The story was about a serial killer who was cutting the heads off BDSM prostitutes. The second one this week had just been found. It’s hard to find prostitutes in Latakia and Tartus, let alone ones who specialize in BDSM. The saintly Shiites would never stoop to such perversion, and had most likely already decapitated what few there were. Sergio gave a quick look around and surreptitiously shoved three colorful business cards under the paper.

  “DNA?” I asked.

  He snorted contemptuously. “The police here won’t bother with something like this. However, any Europeans who are looking for a girl like this will almost certainly find her in one of these.” He tapped the cards under the newspaper.

  “Any other places like these around here?” asked Boris.

  “Plenty, but most are for Bedouins,” he said, waving dismissively. “I’ll keep asking around, though. Coffee?”

  He raised his hand and a waiter quickly approached.

  “Two ristrettos for my guests,” he ordered, and was on his way.

  “Come on,” I told Boris when we were done, collecting the paper and business cards. “Let’s go upstairs and practice our BDSM.”

  “I call first hogtie,” he said cheerfully, and before I could reply my phone rang, with Gonni on the other end. He sounded excited. “Porcupine is positive. Repeat, Porcupine is positive.”

  “We’ll be there in fifteen,” I said.

  We got into the car that we’d hired following the taxi incident, and drove to the harbor. We got there in ten minutes. The little black sea urchins that had been placed about five nautical miles northwest of the harbor were transmitting continuous contact alerts. Gonni didn’t even try to hide his excitement. Eran was like that, too.

  “Irregular alerts are usually some big fish or a clump of algae floating by, but continuous alerts couldn’t be caused by something like that.”

  “When will we know for sure?” I asked.

  He handed me a small tablet. A cluster of little black crosses marked the sonar’s contact points. The crosses were connected by a green line that traced the shape of a large, elongated object.

  “Is that it?” I said, trying to mask the slight tremor in my voice.

  “The numbers are off,” said Boris, absorbed in the screen of Gonni’s laptop. “Something here… I don’t know.”

  “My team will be back soon and we’ll know for sure,” said Gonni.

  “What’s going on with your engine?” I asked.

  “We haven’t managed to fix it yet. But we’ll get it running in minutes if necessary,” he said, and again that bright, mischievous smile, the glint in light blue eyes. For a second I was shaken. The anniversary of Eran’s death was coming up. Last year, Verbin and I went to complete the trek that Eran never made, to Mt. Dome. This year I would apparently spend it alone, among BDSM hookers and hydrogen bombs and whatever fresh hell was still to come.

  “Where are all the dirties?” asked Boris.

  “If you’re referring to the crew, the captain and his officers – they’re in the pool room,” Gonni said peacefully. “They all said thank you for the falafel. Oh, look, my men are back –”

  Five soldiers in scuba gear were climbing aboard. Gonni and the others helped them out of their wetsuits. Their faces told us there was nothing to tell.

  “Dolphins,” they said. “Just dolphins.”

  “That explains the numbers,” sighed Boris.

  Numbers my ass, I thought. We’ve still a stealth bomb dancing around under our feet with a projected death toll of millions. I looked at Gonni, who looked like a wilted flower, and Boris who was running something on Gonni’s laptop. They were exchanging mumbles.

  “Boss,” Gonni gave me a wrinkled smile. “Boris and I think… if you could talk to the crowns?”

  “I could.”

  “We need more porcupines. We need to pave the sea floor with sensors.”

  I nodded and went down below deck, to the little command center Albert had set up with his computers and equipment in one of the living quarters. I tried to contact Froyke, who didn’t answer. I tried Moshe, who was in a meeting with the Chief of the General Staff and the rest of the command echelon, watching the screen that Albert was transmitting. Looking at our pod of dolphins.

  “Ehrlich, you’re on speaker.”

  I passed on the demand for considerably more sensors.

  “I’ll check and get back to you. It’s the same shit down here,” Moshe said with surprising informality.

  Twenty minutes later I got a call back from Nora.

  “The navy used every porcupine they had in stock. They’re loading more now in Germany and recalling a recent shipment that was sold to the US. The manufacturer promised there’d be a few dozens more by tomorrow morning.”

  “I hope that’s not too late,” I said.

  As we were about to get off the ship, Gonni came up to me and handed me a Russian Navy officer’s hat. “I don’t know if this is somehow important, but the Latakia team found this, floating in the water.”

  “Someone’s lost their head,” I mumbled, and tried it on. It didn’t fit. I flipped it over. There had been writing on the inside, washed nearly clean by the water. While the words were illegible, the writing was clearly Arabic. Interesting – a Russian military hat with Arabic writing. We took the hat below deck, to Albert, who mostly ignored the writing in favor of the metal badge on the front of the hat. I tried to rush him, which of course did nothing.

  “Your writing is inconsequential,” he said. “There are far more interesting phenomena at play, here.” He shuffled around for an electronic meter which started crackling the second he brought it near the hat. He moved it away and back a few times to make sure. The crackling changed accordingly. He dropped the hat into a plastic bag.

  “Who touched this hat other than me?” He asked, and without waiting for a reply swiped the Geiger counter over to each of us. The electronic crackling was there, but much weaker.

  “We’ve got radiation!” Albert happily declared. “Minimal, but it’s there. This hat has been exposed to nuclear radiation.”

  “What about the writing?”

  “Can’t you tell? It’s so obvious. It’s their Takbir, their battle cry. Allahu Akbar.”

  “And what about us?” Gonni asked, pointing at the Geiger counter.

  “You’re pretty nice folks, overall, I think. Oh, the radiation – don’t worry. It’s not even an x-ray at the dentist’s.”

  “You can go probably back to the hotel, then,” said Gonni. “We’ll keep you posted.”

  ***

  “You look like a turd that got run over by a truck,” said Sergio, meeting us at the hotel lobby. We sat on one of the sofas, far away from everyone else
.

  “Sergio,” I said, “You are a poet.”

  “I always thought so. Listen, some people came by, from Hezbollah Preventative Security. Terrified the hotel staff and guests. There was a murder-robbery yesterday, not far from here. A Palestinian cab driver, friend of theirs. I assume you know nothing about this.”

  “Nope,” I confirmed. “Anything else?”

  “I managed to buy some of the dead hookers’ DNA. It’s already been delivered to Bruno. One test has already come back.”

  “You’re a star. What is it?”

  “The foreign substance was the same in both women. We’ll get the rest tonight, or tomorrow at the latest. Go, have a bath. I’ll send an espresso up to your room. And some whisky. You seem to need it.”

  We walked to the elevator. Boris checked no one was nearby and said, “So how does it work, do you think? If it is him? When does he just… get up and decide it’s time to slaughter a prostitute?”

  “From what we know, he usually uses it to reward himself for success, achieving a goal he’s set for himself. Textbook Pavlovian conditioning. But it’s not limited to that. He also rewards himself when he fails, when he’s frustrated… to cheer up, I guess.”

  Boris closed his eyes briefly. “When we catch this fucker, you take the Rolex,” he said, “and I’ll take the hand.”

  58.

  “Must everything you people do always be such a mess!” sighed Sergio, tossing over a copy of this morning’s Beirut Daily Star.

  “More coffee?” he asked.

  “Affirmative,” I said, and my heart skipped a beat as I took the paper. WIDESPREAD RECRUITMENT OF RESERVE FORCES IN ISRAEL. IRAN ON HIGH ALERT. STOCK MARKET IN CRISIS. The articles discussed the threats expressed by the Israeli PM and the aggressively destructive responses from the Iranians. The president of the PNA and his colleague from Gaza Hamas had declared they were joining forces and setting up a joint military headquarters; the IRGC similarly declared the foundation of the “Shia Crescent United Front,” comprised of the IRGC in Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq. The US President’s warning to all nations involved – to avoid taking action from which there would be no return – was repeated several times.

  “What’s next, boss?” asked Boris. “What do we do?”

  “What about the DNA?” I asked Sergio.

  “Matches your guy’s,” he said. “How’s the coffee?”

  “It is excellent.”

  He nodded contentedly. “Another thing. The Coast Guard found a body floating in the Mediterranean yesterday. Bullet in the head, a Russian work uniform and an IRGC-printed Quran in his pocket. That any help?”

  Boris and I exchanged looks.

  “It would help if you could check the corpse for traces of radiation,” I said.

  “Radioactive radiation? Seriously? I mean, I’ll check. Nothing to lose at this point.”

  “Thank you. And tell whoever’s watching the brothels to look harder. Maybe he’ll be back to celebrate his recent victories. If we find him now, we can put all of this to rest,” I said, tapping the newspaper.

  As evening approached, two flotilla fighters left one of our Dolphin-class subs on a couple of “hogs,” a sort of underwater scooter, and arrived at the Spartacus carrying two heavy crates containing the porcupines we’d been waiting for. Someone apparently realized that this was war, and that hauling ass was not merely preferred, but required.

  Gonni divided the sensors between his teams, and asked if I had any preference as to where they would be planted. We sat at his laptop and went over the locations of the previous batch.

  “Here,” I said, magnifying the area around the Latakia harbor. “And here,” I pulled the map toward Tartus.

  “That’s Russian military territory, we can’t.”

  “Why can’t we? Yop tvoyu mat’!” Boris interjected. I signaled him to calm down.

  “And if we could, would you do it?”

  “Of course!”

  “So would I. So let’s.”

  Gonni narrowed his eyes into a glare and pursed his lips.

  “Sending them out there,” he tilted his head toward the team handling the sensors, “Will most likely mean sending them to their –”

  “Stop,” I said. “How many drones do you have?”

  “Ten.”

  “And how many of these porcupines can each drone carry?”

  “Let me check.”

  After a moment he came back and told us it was ten per drone. We divided the harbor area into strips. The first drone flew out at 02:30 am. Upon reaching the northernmost spot we’d marked near the Tartus harbor, it released its prickly load. Five minutes after that we sent out the drone assigned for the second strip, taking a brief pause so as not to alert their aerial detection systems. After that we sent drone number 3 to Latakia. This also went smoothly, prompting us to send number 4. By now some Ivan had finally been woken by some alarm, and huge white beacons began scanning the waters and the sky, swiftly moving back and forth.

  “I’m taking it out!” yelled the operator of drone number 4, who was deftly avoiding the beams of light, flying the drone just inches above the surface of the water. The other soldiers crowded around him, whooping and whistling their encouragements. The beacon was zigzagging wildly, and seemed to have finally glimpsed the drone – it was drawing lower, closer.

  “Behind you!” cried the soldiers. “No!”

  Drone number 4 collided with a sudden wave and fell into the water.

  “Self-destruct!” ordered Gonni, and the drone exploded into a million pieces.

  “So this is a problem,” said Gonni, looking downcast.

  “Check if number 4’s porcupines are transmitting,” said Boris. Gonni stared at him for a moment, then went to check his laptop. After a second he looked back, a great deal happier this time. “It’s there,” he cried out, excitedly, “Four is transmitting!”

  Boris explained that he’d hoped getting kicked around by the waves had activated the tiny detonator meant to release the sensors. The porcupines had been freed and sunk beneath the surface a split second before the drone self-destructed. I asked if the same thing might happen to a drone that crashed into the water directly. He considered this for a minute, then shook his head, saying that a crashed drone would immediately sink, and the water pressure would make a similar detonation unlikely.

  “It has to happen above the water,” he said. “We’ll send number five out with the same operator.

  Gonni gave the pilot his new mission. After a few minutes, the pilot turned to me to ask, “Should I go low, then?”

  “Negative. Only when they come after you.”

  But this time nothing else was moving over the water. Apparently whoever was there last time assumed it was a false alarm of a bug and went back to sleep.

  “Release!” ordered Gonni, and the final five porcupines were freed into the black waters of Latakia harbor.

  They soon began transmitting the first signs of life.

  “Five or six hours, tops,” said Gonni. “Tomorrow morning we’ll have results.”

  “We’ll head back in the meantime,” I said.

  On the way back to the hotel I drove while Boris read me an article from Ha’aretz, a little treat from Nora, delivered with the porcupines. According to the article, the head of the German BND, who has been attempting to bridge the gap between the many sides of this conflict, had just returned from Tehran and told his Chancellor and officials that General Qasem himself had promised him that the submarine was supposed to arrive at Bandar Abbas at the end of the joint marine naval exercise – but that contact with the sub had been lost after the maneuver and, despite every effort, had not yet been reestablished. He also mentioned that the last time they spoke to Hamdani, he reported a severe radiation leak from the bomb in the sub’s belly,
radiation that had contaminated many of the crew, and even brought on a coup, which Hamdani had been forced to quell by extreme measures.

  A source in the Chancellor’s office had leaked that they had been asked to be discreet about the fact that at the end of the meeting General Qasem, holding photos of his two children with tears in his eyes, swore on their lives that neither he nor any other official Iranian source had had any contact with the sub. Hamdani was in control of it, and was doing with it as he pleased.

  “Thoughts?” asked Boris when he was done.

  “I believe the general. He knows better than anyone what happens to them if… well. You know. Why do you think they’ve been letting us beat the shit out of them like we have been? It’s because those bombs were dropped on Lebanon and Syria and Iraq, not on Tehran. They’ll never sacrifice Tehran to take us down. Don’t forget, these are the people who invented chess – or at the very least, made everyone think they did.”

  “So that’s it?”

  “Did I say that was it? Let’s see if Sergio-slash-Giacomo has some news.”

  We took the elevator up from the underground parking. Sergio was in the lobby. We sat in an isolated corner, and he told us that five other dead sailors had been pulled from the sea. According to his source, the initial pathologist had suggested, based on the degree of ulceration and swelling, that they had been exposed to deadly radiation – and had promptly been removed from the investigation.

  Sergio’s phone suddenly buzzed. “This is important,” he said. “Go up to the roof for a smoke, I’ll be right there.” We did as he suggested.

  A soft breeze carried the scent of the sea to us. I closed my eyes and surrendered to it, felt my nostrils widen to take in more air. I imagined myself inside a clear bubble filled with blue seawater, surrounded by complete silence.

  The silence was broken a moment later, when Sergio arrived with a bottle of Barolo Riserva Colonnello. In the other hand he held three glasses, balanced with the skill of a master waiter. I took the glasses from him, and he poured.

  “L’chaim,” he said.