Wolf's Vendetta

by Craig MacIntosh

  Despite the air conditioning, Levich mopped his brow. “So now you have turned me into a patron of archeologists? Besides this gratitude what else do we gain?”

  “Not only for the cultural heritage, Boss.” Lowering his voice, Viktor said, “This dig is the perfect cover for moving the product. Who would suspect such a use of a heritage site? Our Bedouin contacts bring in the merchandise under cover of darkness. When we have stored enough, we ship it to Tel Aviv. Foolproof, Boss.”

  “And for this I am a respected man, eh?”

  “And a rich one. And getting richer, Boss.”

  “I don’t like being this far out of the city. I don’t want to come this far again, Viktor. You can handle this from now on.”

  “No problem. We should be there soon. Not far.” Leaning over the front seat, Viktor tapped the driver’s shoulder, asking about the distance to the dig site. Turning to Levich, he said, “Ten minutes and we are there.”

  Fanning himself with a straw hat, Levich said, “Keep in mind I’m not in the mood to hear a lecture from some scholar on pottery fragments no bigger than a fingernail.”

  “You won’t suffer a word, Boss. The scholars are gone. In their absence we have Saul, ex-paratrooper from the IDF. He mans the site for us. You’ll see how it is possible to hide so much product with so little effort in the desert.”

  The van rattled on, earning the driver a frown and warning from Levich about his recklessness. Trailing a rising tail of dust, the van slowed.

  “We’re close,” said Viktor.

  Negotiating the last hundred yards in low gear, the van’s driver crept up a steep, rock-strewn slope and came to a stop just short of two sprawling tents overlooking a parched, twisting wadi. The camp was deserted. Clouds of dust swirled around the van, eventually dying to reveal wheelbarrows, rows of shovels, and large wooden-framed screening tables set on sawhorses.

  The smaller of the two tents shaded a large plank filled with potsherds and plastic bags full of what appeared to be small white stones. Empty cots with sleeping bags lined one side of the shelter. In the middle sat a mess table. A sweating canvas water bag hung from a tripod.

  Their driver got out and called to a figure leaning over a table in the second, larger tent. The man looked up, acknowledging the visitors with a wave. Thin, deeply tanned, and bearded, he spoke to the driver, then ambled to the van. Viktor got out, shielding his eyes from the afternoon sun.

  Levich did not move, preferring instead to stay in the van. “This is our welcoming committee?” he said.

  The bearded man in khakis shook hands with Viktor and then hailed Levich. “Ah, Boris Levich, welcome. I’m Saul. So, you come to pay us a visit, eh? Pity the academics are not here to welcome their financial angel. But that would have been inconvenient, eh? Let me show you where your money is going. We have a surprise for you.”

  Urged by Viktor, a reluctant Levich climbed from the van. Shaking hands with the paratrooper, he donned the straw hat and said, “Where is the security I’m paying for?”

  “My Bedouins, you mean? They’re bringing in a shipment tonight.”

  “And the police?”

  “They’ll stay away as long as they are paid.”

  “More of my money, eh, Viktor?”

  “Money well spent, Boss.”

  Saul waved Levich forward. “Come, I show you the surprise we have prepared for you.”

  With Viktor and their driver behind him, Levich followed Saul through a narrow cleft in ochre-colored rocks. Halting at a dark, nearly perfect rectangular opening chiseled from the rocky soil, the little column crowded next to a heavy stone slab leaning against a rock wall above the opening.

  “What do you think?” said Saul. “My crew just finished excavating this space today. It is perfect for our purposes. I think you will find that it suits you.”

  “I suppose it is quite useable,” said Levich, “for our purposes.”

  “We can store one hundred kilos in here with ease. By tomorrow night this will be completely filled.”

  Levich said, “Can you guarantee that the volunteers who work on this dig will not stumble on your handiwork?”

  “This vault is a recent creation. They don’t know it exists.”

  “Excellent,” said Levich, peering in the cavity. “Is this the surprise you spoke of?”

  Hit from behind, Levich lost his footing and tumbled into the deep pit.

  Stunned, he groped the ground under him, his entire body aching from the impact. Rising to his knees, he steadied himself against the wall.

  “What…happened?”

  Eight feet above him, Viktor’s face floated into focus. “You fell.”

  “I don’t remember,” mumbled Levich. He stood, raising both arms. “Don’t just stand there, Viktor. Fetch a ladder. Help me up.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “What? Are you crazy? Enough of this nonsense. Help me.”

  The paratrooper joined Viktor at the chiseled rim. “No one can help you, Boris Levich. This is the end for you.”

  Color drained from Levich’s face. Staring up at a gloating Viktor on the edge of the pit, he understood. “If it’s money you want, I can arrange that. But first you must draw me up from this hole.”

  “That we cannot do.”

  Levich bargained. “I have money, Viktor. A lot of money.”

  A chilling reply. “I know. I’ve watched you for months. I know your account passwords, your secret codes. I know how to access your accounts. You thought I was some drunken, simple ex-soldier you could use and toss away some day, eh? I was who you wanted me to be.”

  “But why, Viktor, old comrade? You don’t have to do this. Think clearly.”

  Tossing pebbles at Levich’s feet, Viktor said, “Oh, but I am thinking clearly. I do have to do this. How else am I to return the money you took from the Brotherhood?”

  “Is that what this is about, the money?” Levich leaned against the stone walls towering above him. “We don’t have to return it, Viktor. We can share it. On my word. That would be some five million for you alone. Give me your hand, old friend.”

  “Take a long look at the light, Boris Levich. Fix your eyes on what little sky you can see. This is to be your tomb.”

  Signaling to the van’s driver and Saul, Viktor ordered the two to help put their shoulders to the leaning slab. A waterfall of loose stone fell into the pit.

  “Then shoot me! Be merciful! Kill me!” screamed Levich.

  “NO!” yelled Viktor. “Suffer in the dark.”

  Spewing curses, Levich leaped at the corners and fell back. He clawed at the walls of his grave. The big stone above him moved, showering him with dirt and rock. Straining with great effort, Viktor and the other two stood the huge slab on edge, then leaped back, letting it drop into place, sealing Levich in his tomb. Using shovels and picks, they tossed rubble over the hewn block, obscuring it. After thirty minutes, the ground looked like the debris field of a hundred other digs.

  Muffled screams sounded for a few minutes, ceased, then started again.

  The intermittent wailing lasted for hours but there was no one to hear it.

  Eventually, there was only silence.

  Chapter 113

  Nash’s story did indeed, as Wolf predicted, have legs. Certain Nells’s role in the Ukraine debacle was given a pass, Wolf made an anonymous phone call to a congressional aide serving with a House subcommittee investigating the plan’s origins. His second clandestine call went to both counsels serving their respective partisan masters on the Senate Judiciary Committee. The Beltway buzzed with gossip. Subpoenas were threatened and then issued when lawyers for potential witnesses stonewalled. Capitalizing on the issue, House and Senate members paraded in high dudgeon for the evening news. Ghost-written opinion pieces glutted the Times and Washington Post op-ed pages. Carnivorous cable talk show hosts, fed a diet of leaked CIA briefings given Congress, ate guests alive. Disgusted with the usual screaming matches between talking heads, Wolf turned off th
e TV and called McFadden.

  “It’s a circus, Sam. Every day we get something new to digest.”

  “It’s not just the media’s fault,” said McFadden. “You had a hand in it.”

  “I feel like Doctor Frankenstein’s assistant.”

  McFadden said, “I’m curious. The White House trotted out the vice president as apologist-in-residence. How’d he get tagged?”

  Wolf was unsympathetic. “I have it on good authority that his national security advisor played godfather to the whole hair-brained scheme.”

  “Any proof?”

  “Some of Nash’s notes that didn’t make the final cut.”

  “Maybe you should feed some of that to your media contacts.”

  Groaning, Wolf said, “Nash was it.”

  “Sorry, Wolfman, that was a cheap shot.”

  “Nah, you’re right. I can’t manage this thing. It has a life of its own. I should let it go.”

  “The cops here think the case is wrapped up.”

  Wolf dared a question. “Did they ever track down the killers who took out Shurkov?”

  “They’re saying it was kept in the family. Russian mobsters whacking one another.” McFadden paused. “That should ease your mind, Wolfman.”

  “Don’t know why that would.”

  “I’m just saying…” McFadden added, “You had me worried the last time we talked.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning we talked about Boris Levich fleeing to Israel. I said he was untouchable and you said, ‘Nobody’s untouchable. Even in Israel.’”

  “I do remember saying something like that.”

  “Don’t go to Israel, Wolfman.”

  “I have no plans to do that.”

  “Good. I’ll hold you to that.”

  “I’m not promising that I won’t make a few phone calls.”

  “You’re incorrigible.”

  “Funny you should say that, Sam. That was Colter’s line.”

  “He was right. So…no Israel?”

  “Phone calls, yes. Israel, no.”

  Chapter 114

  Epilogue

  Robert Nells did not survive the notoriety of the Ukraine plot. He and his supervisor, along with their CIA contact, were found guilty of violating numerous federal statutes, perjury, and lying to Congress under oath. Turning on each other in court, their defense crumbled and they were sentenced to three, five, and eighteen months respectively.

  In Nells’s case, the price of his legal defense cost him reputation, career, family, and future. Both the home on Twenty-sixth Street NW and its contents were sold to pay his mounting legal bills. The elegant Federal-style home sat vacant for 120 days, finally selling for $1.5 million—a “steal” according to the realtor. Among the heirlooms auctioned in an estate sale was the surviving Louis Tiffany Cobweb lamp. It fetched seven figures, money Nells never saw. He is housed at the federal correctional facility in Morgantown, West Virginia. His invalid wife is in an assisted living manor in Prince Georges County, Maryland. Lawyers gobbled most of the proceeds; the assisted living facility took what was left.

  Agreeing to turn state’s evidence in return for a lighter sentence, the vice-president’s national security advisor served twenty months at Pensacola’s federal security camp. The vice-president steadfastly denied any knowledge of his senior aide’s role in the Ukraine proxy war fiasco. A presidential pardon is rumored to be in the works.

  New Amsterdam Global Bank and Trust, another casualty, was locked down by regulators and its assets seized. Bank officers not quick enough to flee were fed to the courts piecemeal.

  The family of Sean Nash’s wife buried him next to their daughter. Using proceeds from the insurance settlement on the Brooklyn property and the sale of the Santa Barbara condo, they established a journalism scholarship named for Sean and Danae Nash.

  McFadden’s business prospered. With personal security a growth industry, it turned a profit for the third consecutive year. McFadden and Reggie recently hosted a party for the San Diego Police officers who protected them during the search for Kurskov’s killers.

  True to his promise, Wolf buried Royce’s ashes in a quiet glade deep in the forest behind the cabin. The Ranger’s former wife, who lives in Boston, sold the cabin and four acres surrounding it, then deeded the remaining land to the state of New York.

  Wolf made his calls to Israel. A friend, who served with Shin Bet, reported Boris Levich’s disappearance. A former Spetsnaz soldier and cashiered IDF paratrooper had run the missing Brighton Beach godfather’s crew in his absence. Both were gunned down in a daylight gun battle with a rival gang outside a Tel Aviv club.

  Six months later, volunteer archeologists unearthed human remains during a dig south of Tel Aviv. News reports said the dig team’s initial excitement about finding what they supposed an ancient tomb turned to horror once it was determined the remains were those of a male victim who had apparently been buried alive. A tailor’s embroidered label and custom-made shoes confirmed the bones were those of Boris Levich.

  Thirteen months to the day after Wolf first returned from Russia, he received a plain brown envelope containing a glossy five-by-seven snapshot. The photograph was a close-up of a familiar marble surface—the north wall of the CIA’s lobby in the agency’s original headquarters building. Centered in the picture was a black five-pointed star newly carved one half-inch deep in the polished stone. Turning the photo in his hands, Wolf read the message scrawled on the back.

  This is Colter’s star. You deserved to know. With all my love, Yana.