“No, you don’t. But we do know exactly how they look. Problem is, it would be better if we could bypass all the people that normally stand in our way to the boxes. Binding them all, moreover, there are reporting times, rotating schedules to follow, procedures for spot checking—all things that, should we know, would make our lives a lot easier,” emphasized Tony, tapping on the table with his index’s nail.
“And why don’t you ask our friend Oleg, if he’s so talkative?” said Gennady.
“We asked. But his rank is below that pay grade. You, on the other hand…” insisted David.
“Aviation and Marine—are not one and the same thing. GU military intelligence has some common protocols—but they change, every so often, precisely to prevent this sort of smash-and-grab” shrugged Gennady.
“But where the boxes would be, who would know the codes to disarm alarms and get away with the boxes…that more or less you have a clearer idea, don’t you?” asked Tony.
“Let me think…!” replied Gennady.
“Perfect!” clapped Tony after a couple of minutes.
“Perfect…what?” asked Gennady.
“We will be back in a few minutes. We have to plan this very carefully. The submarines will be here in less than twelve hours…” said Tony.
“You cannot possibly expect me to go to their base, steal their boxes and get them to the subs in less than twelve hours. My exit strategy also…” objected Gennady.
“Ah, yes. Your contact is in Maracaibo. You will have to get there to go back and report,” said Tony.
“How do you know that?” Gennady was now frankly shocked.
“Never mind. We have other elements near the base. Some will create a distraction and others will retrieve the boxes, so you can ‘escape’ to Maracaibo. To protect your ass, you can say you’ve copied the data David has collected, and offer it to your bosses as your ‘harvest’. We have found Oleg’s stash of hazmat suits and such. When you get it, bag your flash drive carefully. Oleg will officially be MIA/KIA for Mother Russia, having told you in his dying moments he had poisoned everything to keep you alive, so you could go back home.
Just don’t say you know he’s dead, just in case. Improvise. You have been all over the fucking world creating trouble. Improvise, tovarich! We will punch you badly enough, so you can say you escaped from us if you so wish—but I’m sure you’ll get plenty of people from here to Maracaibo that will shoot you, punch you and stab you for free. While you make your way there, we will take Oleg, and the two YSR885R’s and be out of this rotting swamp before you know it—if all goes well,” replied Tony.
“Fine! But…I haven’t told you where to go look for the boxes yet…” said Gennady.
“Ah, never mind…” replied David.
“Never mind? Were you joking? Do you already know? Can you read my mind?” asked Gennady, making David turn red like freshly boiled lobster.
“No!” chuckled Tony, “When we talked to our assets near the base they told us they had already located them…”
“Th…th…ey h...h…ave…?” stuttered Gennady.
“Yes!” agreed David, chortling. “That’s it. They have!”
Tony glared at him. “Now, we have made sure Oleg would remain under total sensory deprivation until he’s safely tucked in the sub’s brig. Would you help us pack all this equipment and decontaminate? I can’t get the ‘Empress’s people to do it without telling ‘her’ the mess this is. Also, there were only two hazmats in the other shack. I guess one was a spare one…” Tony was speculating. Then, suddenly, after hearing a horrible beastly growl coming from outside the complex, he abruptly stopped and rushed out to see what was going on followed hardly a step behind by David and Gennady.
Arriving too late, as they craned their necks on the veranda to survey the lake in the direction of the howling, they saw just a strange, evanescent shadow; a flying shadow, carrying what seemed the body of an operative in camouflage outfit; limp, with a broken neck, dangling lifeless from both shoulders—like human prey clawed by an incredibly fast dark bird of some sort.
“Guess the second hazmat was for the flying Dutch man,” ironized Gennady. “What sorts of animals live in this place? Or was that Dracula, or some sort of new drone? You two don’t seem too scared by it, regardless. Either your cojones are ostrich eggs made of titanium, or there’s something going on here you two aren’t telling me.”
“There’s something we’re not telling you,” admitted Tony. “Will that suffice?”
“Sure, if you can tell me we have nothing to fear from this vampire, drone, or whatever the fuck it is, that’s helping you. On the other hand, if that thing is dead, maybe it could clean this place without a hazmat? Since vampires are dead, it won’t die killed by Oleg’s poison—or would it?” joked nervously Gennady.
Discretely, David winked at Tony, and, discretely, Tony quickly nodded. Why not?
“Regardless of who cleans the place, we have to pack those instruments carefully. Guess Oleg was planning to take them as well. Maybe they are not smeared with the toxin. Could you identify the toxin and sample the instruments to see if they’re safe, David?” asked Tony.
“Sensory deprivation or not,” interjected Gennady, “Oleg should still remember exactly what he did or didn’t contaminate with the poison, shouldn’t he?” Tony nodded. “If you and your vampire bodyguard can get inside my head, you two should be able to get inside Oleg’s as well and find out, shouldn’t you?”
“Are you sure you want to go back to Mother Russia?” asked Tony, chuckling.
“Yes!” replied Gennady. “At least until I can take Yuri Petrovich with me.”
“So be it,” answered Tony. “Now, our group’s been decimated. The operatives that will extract those boxes from the Russian base can’t possibly come here after extraction: with alarms blaring, ‘Vavoom’s soldiers will be hounding them—hence, they can’t help us move all this stuff either.
We’re going to have to get it ready and set on the moored boats, ready to go, before sunset, covered with the brown tarps, and hope we’re not discovered. We’ll rendezvous with those carrying the boxes and the codes—and with someone defecting from that base, someone who also knows how to connect the box to the tether. Using the tethers would allow us to pilot the Russian subs at a safe distance from ours, but getting in the subs and attaching them might delay our escape too much if we don’t time things perfectly right.
You and David will take the boat loaded with most of the equipment, and with it, tow another boat I’ll get from the “Empress”. Once you’re at the rendezvous point, you will leave David with the equipment, take that extra boat and leave for Maracaibo. Since all this will happen at night, you won’t be seen by anybody at either the submarine or the boats bringing the Russian subs’ control boxes from the base—unless Catatumbo goes crazy.
Soon after that, the first of our submarines will emerge and David and the equipment will get onboard. When we arrive, they’ll take the box, dive, and go tether the first Russian sub. By then we shall be doing the same from our second sub to your second sub.
If ‘Vavoom’s people get too close, that section of the lake is quite flammable. We have remotely activated floating mines—even a couple of ‘squids’—and our operatives have a few SVLK-14S as well.
Hopefully, if our timing’s not off by more than ten minutes, we should be fine, tether both subs and leave before we have to set the lake on fire,” said Tony, swallowing hard to finally take in some air.
“Squids?” asked David.
“You rusty, soldier” scoffed Gennady, “remotely activated surface-to-periscope depth mines, with sensor tentacles. When you first activate, tentacles extend. Second stage, they become contact-sensitive. Third stage, they detonate even if not contacted, on timer or signal.”
“Ah, I see,” commented, a bit embarrassed David.
“You guys too have those, don’t ya? One more stage, I believe: magnetized?” snarked Tony.
“We have a
ll your guys have—only bigger, and better, Tony!” joked Gennady. “Fine then! We have to time a Russian base heist, two—or four? — surfacings; two transfers of cargo; two drones getting inside two subs through the hatch after surfacing, or tricking torpedo hatches underwater, without causing massive flood damage; two drones doing each an eight-thread tethering; then two dives, or two double-dives; then, two hijackings using two sets of rotating codes, from boxes that might be missing a master key; and then two exfiltrations of submarines Russia would rather blow up than lose to your people, towed by two subs Russia would love to catch, escaping through the seaway, across Tablazo Strait to wherever you’re going, right? What could possibly go wrong?” he gushed, rather than spoke, chortling at the end. “Let’s do this shit!”
“We’ll start small,” ironized Tony, “by cleaning the base,” he said. Then he left, seemingly to take a walk over the palafito’s back veranda. When he came back, Severian had gotten inside Oleg’s mind, extracted the necessary information and told Tony and David what was poisoned and what not. That allowed them to pack the equipment much faster.
Under David’s protestations, Tony made a copy of his Catatumbo modeling fobs, complete with validation samples. But then, unbeknownst to Gennady, he also took the fob drive to another computer, of ominous look, before giving it to the Russian.
This last extra step David noticed. So, while Gennady was busy, he couldn’t resist quizzing Tony about it. “I should not plug my fobs to that computer, should I?” he hinted.
“Not you shouldn’t,” Tony replied dryly.
“What did you just add to my fob drive?” David asked.
“Why do you care? You didn’t tell me you were Mossad. Was Haim as well?” swung back Tony.
“Haim is a progressive rabbi I have the utmost respect for, who also happens to be a good friend,” replied David.
“I love non-answer answers. Guess Mossad trains you well. Are you Kidon?” blurted Tony.
“If I were, I would not tell you. Not even under Seal of Confession. So, you’re not going to tell me what you put in that key fob?” asked David.
“Well, if you were Mossad…maybe I could…but since you’re not, I guess I can’t,” bartered Tony. “A nasty truth is better than a polite lie sometimes; but sometimes the reverse is true—so I try to offer neither, whenever possible.”
“OK. To that, I can either reply ‘no comment’, or break the Ninth Commandment...” negotiated David.
“I see. Do you speak Estonian?” asked Tony.
“Only a few choice insults. Why?” replied David.
“Keentva in Estonian means ‘in the wind’. Now KINTVA, if you rearrange it a bit, gives you VATNIK…” continued Tony.
“Something who buys wholesale Kremlin propaganda in Russian, Belarusian, and such. Also a padded jacket in Russian, right?” jumped David.
“Yes. Now, I’m not saying anything like this exists, but KINTVA could stand by “Kill Intelligence Neutralize Targets Vacuum Assets”, an imaginary hybrid worm, that would activate if anyone were to try to scan your fob in order to recover from it anything other than what you willingly gave them. Otherwise, those using your keychain fob drive would be perfectly safe. I’m not saying this has anything to do with what you were asking. Just saying it would be neat if it were so,” finished Tony.
“I see. If they try to learn too much, KINTVA be like dust in the wind. I love non-answer answers. Guess the Order, DGSE, CIA, or whatever the fuck it is, trains you well too. Are you black ops material?” hinted David.
“I have no comment and won’t break the Ninth Commandment either,” retorted Tony. “Now, tell me, David; I need to know, so Gennady doesn’t get killed for nothing: Your model, was it total B.S.? Did you come here sent by Mossad to do something? Hunting for deuterium or tritium or plutonium or whatever?” Tony asked point blank.
“No,” replied David. “The model is not B.S. Let’s say that I have less faith in it that I pretended to have until now. Somebody wanted me to check, if those submarines were here, what they were here for. On that account, I’ve failed. That same someone…”
“Simón…?” asked Tony.
“Simón…who?” retorted David, trying not to laugh.
“All right: that same someone…” relented Tony.
“That same someone…had offered me to go back to my old job. I said I wasn’t sure. With Deb and the kids, I am now vulnerable to blackmail. But, since we became the world’s least funny clowns, the Middle East has become a lot more dangerous—and there, I have family too,” admitted David. “My bother builds zero-energy homes, city gardens and aquaponic farms and also helps collect funds to plant redwood forests in the West Coast. He wants me to start working with him, leave the long trips to polluted marshlands and newly formed deserts, the firedevils and run-of-the-mill tornadoes, the melting glaciers and exploding undersea methane pingoes, the oil spills and the arsenic trioxide runoff from spent diamond mines, or radioactive residues from tails left by processing uranium here and there…and a few other things. You see why Deb is no to so pleased with where my weather anomaly chasing cum pollution monitoring activist can take me.”
“Guess she doesn’t want to become a widow too soon…”
“Others would have to do it, and there would be others widows or widowers. Running away from things has never been my way. So I started a family in America, when it was the land of the live and let live. That used to be the essence of the country. I had heated arguments with Ehud when he said we have to first be a living memory and then ourselves. I couldn’t imagine what he saw or felt, until I saw this new wave of anti-Semitism, in my own home, coming out in the open, like scorpions after kicking stones. I often told him that I am a whole person, with a whole family and I intended to live a whole life. And I still think the same—only now I must admit the times to keep your head down, and hope things shall pass and not affect us, are over. It’s time to stop fearing and start living. And if anyone wants to attack minorities because they are minorities, show them that many minorities can become a formidable majority. But I think I’ve put my time in deadly places, and it’s time to accept less ‘adventurous’ missions in life, watch my children grow and be a part of it,” David finished, with a long sigh, almost whistling.
“So, do you want to be reactivated?” asked Tony.
“No, not really. I’d much rather be a father to my children, and a thorn on the side of those who don’t care if the world burns down so they can amortize their last refinery. I guess I’m getting too old for this!” finished David, sighing.
“Hakol ze le tová,” joked Tony.
“Yes. I know you speak Hebrew. By the way, you didn’t really need Haim and I to lecture you on the origins of Nazism, did you? Why did you really recruit us?” David asked.
“The truth? Ah, the truth! Quite a bitch, the truth is! Rabbi Izráel, the man who was left alive with the pieces of Father Lajos and his bodyguards, believed someone, a son of Israel, was destined to the be the Freer of Souls. Who that man exactly was, he didn’t know—and that, saved your life. Lajos had worked with him and told me. After he told me, they got that visitor— which I assume was either Conrad or Geoffroy. Since I had not much to go on, I assumed you might be the right candidate to study whirlwinds. Also, if Haim trusted you, I decided so should I. Providence, to some, is just a city in Rhode Island. Now, if you don’t want to be reactivated, I might be able to help,” Tony hinted, eyebrows raised, spreading his fingers out in a fan.
“How? How could you help?” David asked, looking at him quizzically.
“Simón…who? Ahem! Need to know basis, my friend. Remember?” answered Tony. “And now STFU. Gennady is getting too close.”
41—Time to Go
Holding the fob drive in his hand, Tony then continued, a little louder: “This might both save Gennady’s life and convince ‘the other side’ to start mitigating this lake’s pollution…”
“They might,” agreed David, “when they realize not doin
g it might well turn their summer dachas into oversized kites.”
At about that same time, while disgusted by the menial work, Severian was doing what he could to decontaminate the palafito. With Tony’s help, he had procured a sorely insufficient amount of chemicals to decontaminate the base. The ‘Empress’ had asked a lot of questions, had very little of what Tony needed on such short notice, had reminded him his tab was getting a bit excessive—and also, suspecting Tony might have done something irreparable to the palafito, had forced him to provide some means to exfiltrate not only him/her from “El Putafito”, but also his/her two dozen or so ‘daughters’, should the irreparable hit the fan.
With those limited resources, more than once, Severian had told Tony cleaning up some access routes for them to carry corpses and equipment might end up being perceived as some sort of trap by the original ‘tenants’ of this place and could get ‘the Empress’ in real trouble. At a loss, Tony had started hatching an exfiltration plan, while still asking him to do the best he could with what he had.
To make matters worse, as Severian’s cleaning was almost ‘finished’—and, possibly, because of total sensory deprivation—Oleg experienced a serious incontinence episode. Paradoxically, that gave Tony an opportunity to make penance from his unsavory demands to David and Severian, by cleaning Oleg’s mess—including washing him up like a newborn, so as to make his presence less ‘disruptive’ during the wait.
To Gennady—since he wasn’t really ‘seeing’ Severian—Tony also seemed to haul more packed equipment than anyone else. In fact, Tony had also helped load the boats, David’s with equipment, and his own with mines—including ‘squids’, the tentacled mines he wouldn’t let Gennady get anywhere near, no matter what.
When time was up to leave, possibly through watching the to and fro required for the loading of the boats from safe distance, members, not of the original ‘tenants’, but of some rival ‘laboratory’, surmised those palafitos were being emptied, and waited until Tony, David and Gennady left, determined to take possession of the premises before the original ‘tenants’ could take them back.
Quest for the Ark Page 43