“The Order is very old and very misogynistic. But nothing seems cast in stone anymore…” Tony temporized.
“Shocking! Misogyny at any religious organization! Who would have ever imagined! Anyway, soit! Let’s ask them tonight,” she said. “Now, if you excuse me, I have to tend to our family’s enterprises, organize dinner, call a whole host of people I have to thank for their help, haggle over the cost of my thanks to each of them, and talk to Sól and Siegfried about our treasure trove of artifacts and how to share it between la France, l’Allemagne— who kindly lent us Her ‘underwear’—and charities and foundations, who should also benefit from it. But don’t worry: I won’t mention the Order’s disorderly situation to anyone. You’ve helped me get out of some impossible conundrums, and I shall do the same for you.”
“Thank you, Chloé. And I will have to contact our operators, and organize this expedition to the jungle.
David wants to spend at least a week with his family. We owe him that much. So I said two, since all this is hard to organize. Then he said just one again: apparently, this ozonosphere disengaging from the soil can’t wait much longer, which lead me to plan for an entire week of madness ahead—such madness being my own. And now I have also an Order to rebuild, and an old vampire to query tonight at dinner, as if he were a new ‘Oracle’, finally free from his maker, maybe even unwilling to stay with us…” Tony replied, shaking his head and looking at an avalanche of coded messages on his tablet.
“All right, then!” said the Countess. “I shall see you at dinnertime! Ah, and please dress elegantly, Tony. This might be our last supper…for a while.”
Shaking his head, he whispered: “Heretic!” to her ear.
“Au revoir, Mr. Bond!” she chuckled.
Still shaking his head, he snorted, curtsied to her, and left.
33—Next week in California
Even if four days later than expected after feverishly maneuvering all over Europe, Tony finally got back home, and eventually called David, to tell him to meet him at his condo on Manhattan Beach. Less than an hour later, David was on his way there.
When he arrived, he found Tony with six other men—all of them well above David’s considerable muscled build and height; except two, more Latino-looking, who, nonetheless, were still strikingly bullnecked. As he entered the living room, he found them studying maps of Lake Maracaibo’s basin, discussing options, routes, obstacles, sometimes rather heatedly debating, speaking in seemingly recognizably different variants of Spanish—some so heavy in slang David could hardly get one out of three or four words said.
After summary introductions, Tony went head-on to the matter: “So, David, did you get all the equipment you said you wanted to take there? Equally important, how much of it you plan to extract when we leave?”
“Plan to extract? This equipment costs a fortune. To get my boss’ permission for this incursion I almost had to offer him my first-born and my stones. I intend to ‘extract’ it all,” David replied.
“Cute,” said one they called ‘Lieutenant’. “How long since you’ve seen combat?”
“Well, a few years now. I was briefly with IDF, got my training. My wife was expecting. The pregnancy was rough. She convinced me to make a living from what I got my first doctorate on, when I was very young. Since then, I went chasing storms instead of bad guys. So, as I said, been some time,” replied David.
“We should abort,” said one they called ‘Bullseye’.
“Why? What is this?” asked David. “Is this a joke, Tony? You got me to Europe, to go get buried alive under the mud, running from assassins, posing as pizza delivery boy in a nest of criminals, putting my neck on the line in so many ways—all that in exchange for a promise of getting me to Catatumbo; and now you get this gaggle of mercenaries to ‘interview’ me, cut me to size, and send me packing? What the fuck is this joke?”
“Let me explain something,” clarified the Lieutenant. “There are at least five ways to get you there. We’ve gone over all of them. There is one that should work—depending on how much equipment you absolutely must carry. We will have to put our lives on the line…”
“… And make a few unsavory deals to get you there,” continued Tony. “You see: the normal route will be the best route after all. But this time, a whole lot of people will have to stick their necks for you to succeed. And you still look like a giant lobster with golden curls, the archetypal ‘gringo’—so you shall be noticed…”
“Did I look any more Latino when you first met me? I don’t recall,” retorted David.
“True. Anyhow, we were negotiating a safe passage from the Colombian side, following the Catatumbo River, using sandbanks, choppers, forests, and what not. It was going to skirt Venezuelan customs, which might balk at getting a ‘gringo’ who looks very ‘gringo’ entering the country with complicated electronic surveillance equipment, going to a lake where most of the wealth of the country is generated—and where considerable suspicion exists about hidden Russian assets, and drugs are traded like hotcakes.
Two people have died already, to alert us that—even though we were playing barely legal ball with the big coca overlords—you were going to end up dead, and your equipment, taken, stolen, gone, vanished, kaput.
Then we checked all sorts of other possibilities, and ended up selecting the more obvious route. Arriving might be the easier part, after all…but…”
“But…?” asked David.
“But to leave, on your way northbound, you might have to swim to a submarine, taking your equipment with you, which won’t be easy. The submarine we’re thinking would be military issue. So, if the sub were caught, Venezuela—and possibly, Russia as well—might consider this not just espionage, but an outright act of war. As you can imagine, especially nowadays, that could be a knotty diplomatic problem.
The other alternative, the perfect one, would have made that submarine unnecessary by using smugglers instead—but that be high risk; indeed, extreme risk of your equipment being stolen, and of you, getting killed. Also, smugglers and coca lords are like a modern convenience marriage: sometimes not on speaking terms, at other times screwing each other; at yet other times, getting other people to screw together, never sure where the screwing would be replaced by stabbing, shooting or bombing. Smugglers used to have a ‘reliable price’; but since now there is total chaos—which, officially, doesn’t exist anymore—there is no amount of money, gold, bitcoin, coke, anything that can guarantee they won’t turn on us, and we, be turned to food for the alligators—or, worse, if rumors are true, for starving Venezuelans. One can do a mean ‘barbie’ on 235 pounds of gringo muscle.
So, the simplest way to get you there be like this: You will enter Venezuela through Caracas, on a plane from São Paulo. You will be a German from Novo Hamburgo—in Southern Brazil—who speaks a little Portuguese but mostly German and English, because you travel a lot to see exotic places. You will get a perfect explanation of your new identity.
Your name now will be ‘Davide’. Learn to say it as if it were ‘daa-vee-tscheeh’, almost like Da Vinci. And your family name, will be Dicker.”
“Dicker? Thicker in German?” laughed David.
“Or more of a dick, if you prefer,” chuckled Tony. “But this is no joke,” he added, his face turning grim. “You will arrive with a group of tourists—you see them here, minus their four ‘wives’, all of whom are karate black belts; two are also sharpshooters, one is a demolitions expert, and one of them is one of the best hackers in the business. Of these ten people, aside from me, seven speak fluent Russian as well.
From Caracas you will fly to Mérida; and from Mérida, we will take 4x4s and go over to Santa Bárbara del Zulia. There, a member of the Spanish-speaking crew will suddenly ‘experience a massive blood pressure drop’. Ignoring the travel guides’ protestations, he will go to the emergency, and spend a little too much time there, under medical care. To take the other passengers to destination in Puerto Concha, the tour operators will then be force
d to continue, regardless. Some of us will stay with you, pretending we thought the operators wouldn’t leave without us. Business is quite beaten up, so they won’t dare upsetting the real tourists. When we resume our route from the hospital, we will be ambushed and disappear, ‘kidnapped by brigands’. To avoid trouble, someone is also going to make any evidence any of us having ever landed in Venezuela disappear.”
“Can you do that?” asked David. “How?”
“How, doesn’t matter, David,” replied Tony. “It’s a need-to-know mission, you better get a hold of the idea. Instead of going to the relative comfort of Puerto Concha, however, you will end up at another group of ‘palafitos’, those famous Lake Maracaibo shacks on stilts, in neat contrast to the castle, and nothing like Plaine-Monceau. To give you an idea, the water around the ‘palafito’ serves the locals as toilet, sewer, and fishing ground. The toilet is a square hole for your ass, limited by four 6x2 wooden boards; and when you shit there, the catfish below will clean up anything you drop, eat it to the last crumb. Pee on the bucket as you use it. I wouldn’t try sticking my dick there on the shitting hole—just a thought. That same bucket, you will use to flush the square duct with water from the lake—to reduce the stench, and prevent sudden backflow—a true five star hotel treatment.
On the upside, though, you will have an entire week to get all atmosphere, soil, or water samples you want—during the night. During the day, we will get you samples, if need be. In our group there are four engineers, one of them in nuclear physics, so you can explain exactly what you want from those doing the sampling for you, in as minute technical detail as you want.”
“Why on Earth would you bring a nuclear engineer there? Can’t you get any mercenaries that are just mercenaries? You’re doing more than bringing me there to sample and measure air, water and soil parameters, aren’t you?” snapped David.
“Need to know, David,” said the Lieutenant.
“Need to know is fine. However, if you’re spies or military infiltrates or whatever, and we get caught, I doubt the Geneva Convention would do us any good,” David retorted.
“Alright,” admitted Tony. “There are credible rumors and not-yet-fully-vetted evidence that there are more than a few Russian nuclear submarines in the lake. Disguised as prospection crews, they might be building some underwater base, no one knows exactly what for—unlikely just to keep the crew’s hands occupied. In principle, that also determines our no-go areas: we should try to avoid the eastern shore of the lake, where most of the hydrocarbon fields are concentrated; but there is a narrow swath at the center of the lake, roughly oriented East-West, which is rather promising as a submarine hideout.
You will measure your methane, your radioactivity, your CO2, your whatever you want. In the meantime, we will check for signs our Slavic friends might be there. That’s all I can say, and it’s already too much. If you get caught and they extract that from you, they will assume you have far higher clearance than you ever did—I checked your file, no worries—and you will have to dance accordingly, nowadays under ‘enhanced’ interrogation. You still recall your ‘scopolamine’ training, don’t you?”
“Wow! You know a lot about me! Fine!” accepted David, “Now, let’s suppose we get there, to record all data we need. Do we travel by boat? Do we have a submarine? How do we leave? When do we leave?”
“You have one week from infiltration to target extraction at reference point. The rest we’ll take care,” said Bullseye.
“I see!” grunted David, “Need to know!”
Bullseye gave him a thumbs-up.
“Now, he’s starting to understand!” winked the Lieutenant, toasting with his bottle of beer. “And another thing: here, in this room, there’s a lot of chest candy, the occasional snake eater, and so on. Now, you BOLO for hostiles—but no military slang until you’re safely on your way back home, understood, ladies? If we’re to succeed and you want to make double sure, you David go study Brazilian-German slang from the south like it’s your wife’s panties.”
“You think I’m an idiot?” snarled David.
“That, David my man, is TBD. But there might be ‘other tourists’ in the same group, OK?” the Lieutenant snapped back.
“OK. I will do my very best to look touristy. What else?” David retorted.
“Well,” said the Lieutenant, “my name will be Ewaldo, but we’re supposed to know each other very superficially, like tour-casually. That way, if anyone’s cover is blown, only that one will be gone—including you.”
“And mine be Júlio,” said Bullseye, “but remember. We’re only tour-casual, except Tony, who will put his ass on the line for you. He will be Antônio, and you might want to call him Tom, like Tom Jobim, from the ‘Garota de Ipanema’. He will be your nurse—and if you screw up, he too will be screwed. There will be frequent military patrols, and control posts, and probably attackers of unspecified nature, all along the way. How’s your close combat training?”
“Needs dusting off,” replied David.
“Well, fucking dust it off,” said ‘Júlio’, shrugging. “It will come in handy.”
“So, are we just going to study the lightning or are you guys going to do some covert ops?” asked David.
“Need to know, remember?” snapped ‘Antônio’ “Not our mission…but there might be ‘other tourists’. That’s all you need to know.”
“Fine. What else do you need from me?” asked David, snorting.
“Exact volume and weight of the most tightly packed, compact form your equipment can take, by tomorrow at 1700 hours, I mean, at 5:00PM. It should be ready for pickup here in Los Angeles at 2000 hours, at the address I am going to give you now. You shall have it there, at the TRP palafito, for pickup from our FOB, in a week’s time.”
“You’re asking me to part company with my boss’s equipment? No can do,” said David.
“Then there’s no ‘Davide’ in this mission. No can do. A Brazilian tourist won’t land in Venezuela with extremely expensive Yankee equipment during a Yankee embargo and find any way to avoid being questioned to death. Perhaps you be far better off asking for an official permit for scientific work at the lake,” replied ‘Antônio’.
“In normal times, it would take forever. Under the current administrations of both countries, it ain’t gonna happen. I know sometimes objectives are more important than rules—but, I suspect, this much irregularity my boss won’t stomach,” protested David.
“You could break the Ninth Commandment, for a good reason,” suggested ‘Antônio’.
“Humpf…Still, there is another thing, even more dangerous: Earth’s atmosphere might start uncoupling. If the solid ground and the atmosphere get untethered, all your covert 007 missions will go to hell in a Mary Poppins basket.” Turning to face Tony squarely in the eyes, pointing at him, David raised his voice a notch: “You delayed me to go slog through the mud, surrounded by vamp…” David cut short his phrase. “By vampire-like assholes, and now are backing off on me? Some friend you are!”
“No. I’m assuming, you, for all your best efforts, wouldn’t be happy travelling by submarine across the Caribbean—especially in a submarine of a type that is classified; one that, to procure, would require more arm twisting and giving more blood that I am normally willing to give; and one that will take your shit perfectly safe from A to B, unless it’s sunk before it arrives at destination—which would be the only possible fucking reason you might not get your fucking equipment at the fucking TRP ‘palafito’. And even if I was in the mood to get another ass ripped trying to convince my superiors, for all your best efforts against claustrophobia, you might fail that challenge—and screw the entire operation over, forcing us to off-load you say at the entrance of Lake Maracaibo or having to heavily sedate you, especially after reading what the OMPF had at NPRC on you,” said Tony.
“WTF? The OMPF and NPRC know my shit from HSD at IDF? WTF?” roared David.
“If it exists, it can be hacked!” contemporized ‘Júlio’ splayin
g his hands.
“Fuck you!”
“Sure thing, darling. Call me Irene!” replied ‘Júlio’
“What did you say?” grunted David, red as a maraschino cherry.
“A name that just occurred to me,” clarified ‘Júlio’.
“Anyone we should know…?” asked ‘Ewaldo’.
Tony shook his head, pouting. David decided to clarify the point later on. “Even if you could overcome your claustrophobia, and the sub is sunk, then Debbie will be a widow and your children fatherless. So, instead of any of that, I say: let them at least have a 50-50 chance they get you back, if you could pull through, after a week shitting on a square hole where a spider can bite you in the ass and kill you every damn day; or snakes, tropical diseases, dealers, thugs of any sort get you—or, if you’re lucky, they won’t. Now, that’s the kind of fucking friend I am,” ranted Tony.
“My boss would be pissed,” conceded David.
“But you would be alive,” jumped another silent-type muscleman, who was going to be ‘Daniel’ on the tour.
“Suppose I can do that…” more sighed than said David, quite deflated, “…what else then?”
“Nurse is standing by,” said Daniel. “Show me your ass!”
“My…what!?” exclaimed David.
“Unless you want to be injected in your dick, since your boss will cut your stones off…” said ‘Ewaldo’, a.k.a. the Lieutenant, still intrigued about who ‘Irene’ might be.
“You would need a whole bunch of vaccines, five today, six more before we leave, in São Paulo,” started ‘Daniel’.
“I’ve already taken a few in preparation for the trip, a month ago or so,” David protested, while preparing nonetheless.
“Some might not be at full strength now. Others you probably didn’t get. We don’t want you there sick as a dog, do we? Don’t worry. I will give you some pills for the unpleasant next two days. Are you allergic to eggs?” said ‘Daniel’ shoving the first needle up David’s left cheek.
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