Love Is for Tomorrow

by Michael Karner

  “Usman Salim.”

  ***

  Barcelona, Spain

  “Alright, I get it.” Salim’s voice sounded amused over the car’s speakerphones. “Every time money, gear or transport is needed, it’s: ‘Better call Salim’.”

  Priya raced past La Monumental after a five hour drive. Barcelona’s biggest bullfight arena, could hold twenty thousand spectators. It was a ring of red walls and high towers that held black and white domes aloft in the cloudless blue sky. It was still early afternoon. The turquoise shine of the sea, yellow sands and newly built port welcomed Priya. A sail-shaped tower, the Hotel Vela, reflected the sun.

  She parked just off Placa Catalunya, where the tourists and street artists met under sparse shadows in the cool breeze of the yard’s huge fountains. Flocks of pigeons rose up in the sky. They reminded her of peace, of what they fought for, even when the voices of the city trilled like a call to war.

  Priya made her way along La Rambla, the walking promenade that connected everything. It bristled with tourists and beautiful women. Now, in one of the most renowned fashion capitals of the world, Priya regretted not having had time to consider her wardrobe.

  The street opened into a modern harbor, laden with yachts and beach sides restaurants.

  Priya strolled so as not to break a sweat. She had the whole afternoon before Olga would meet Khabib in the night club. A blushing grin spread across Priya’s face as the idea of seeing Salim occurred to her. She sent him a tantalizing message to meet her for an afternoon of play.

  ***

  Opium club was a haven for top international DJs and their deafening arsenal of dance music. Salim had said this was the finest beach club in Barcelona. The huge neon lights in the form of poppy blossoms guaranteed nobody forgot its name: Opium.

  While waiting to get in, Priya indulged in an old pastime. She assessed the securities around the compound. They looked professional. Two crowd entertainers were disguised as alien invaders. They walked on stilts, wearing frightening masks and clawed gauntlets. They pretended to battle the securities with their shoulder mounted laser pointers.

  If Priya were to get into the club unnoticed, without a ticket, she would use one of their disguises.

  Not today.

  Today she would pretend to have fun and blow money. With Salim at her side, she would see what more they could learn about their enemies. The line between danger and play would be thin. An unforgettable night could end in the blink of an eye.

  “I got a seat at a VIP table,” she told the doorman, who checked the guest list. “Under Usman Salim.”

  He gave her a bright neon yellow wristband and let her through. She made her way to the bar where she could see Salim’s table.

  Salim was filling his table with the best looking girls from the waiting line. Priya frowned. How could she keep up with them? These were models and actresses. Why did Salim chose her over them? Was he just playing with her?

  Priya saw Salim follow a waitress to his VIP table.

  They passed each other with a wink.

  Priya moved to the dance floor.

  “May I say, you look incredible tonight,” Salim said in his micro-bead.

  She suppressed a smile. Salim had obtained both her and Mini’s evening wear. They hadn’t packed for a mission in Spain’s hottest nightclub.

  “Is the package here?” Priya said, eager to move the topic away from her, especially with her boss listening.

  “Sitting in the Beluga lounge, waiting for the other package,” he said.

  Priya glanced at Olga on her way to the dance floor.

  It was full to bursting point, with violet lights and dancers on tables to stand out from the crowd. Beneath them a sea of ecstatic people surged like waves. Priya dove in and disappeared.

  Her heart pounded. It was partly the music vibrating through every bone, and partly the urge to compete with the other female guests. It was also that she couldn’t come too close to Olga for fear of being recognised.

  Priya went over to the bar, ordered water, and watched from a distance.

  Olga was in the lounge, under the violet shine of the neon opium flower. The night sky shone overhead. A wooden gangplank led along the whole beach, where guests from this and other clubs mixed with each other.

  Salim was having fun with friends and models. Priya felt a stab of jealousy, but this was his lifestyle and he excelled at it, winning over the hearts of people around him.

  “Second package just arrived,” she heard Mini say through her earphone.

  Mini got up from a couch, adjusting glasses onto her face. She was headed towards Olga’s table. Priya’s eyes followed her.

  A man walked up to Olga and shook her hand.

  Priya’s stomach clenched. If Mini was too intrusive she would endanger the whole mission. She was meant to dance close to Olga’s table and record everything with the camera in her glasses. But that was only plan B.

  “Confirm, it is Khabib,” Mini said. She turned her back on them moving her hips to the rhythm.

  The man took the seat opposite Olga.

  “Priya, I want to hear what they are talking about,” Rose’s voice sounded in Priya’s earphone.

  Priya turned to the barkeeper. She got his attention immediately.

  “Can you send a bottle of Beluga to that table?” She pointed at the one with Olga and Khabib. Tell them it’s on the house if they ask.” She held up her neon VIP wristband. “Charge it to him,” she said, indicating Salim.

  The barkeeper prepared the drinks and mixers, then put the bottle into a bucket of ice on the bar in front of her. Priya thrust a hand inside and dropped in a waterproof microphone. She took an ice-cube out and brushed it over her neck before signaling the waiter to take the drinks over.

  “Tanya’s envelope is on the table. Confirm,” Mini said.

  “Positive, it is the same one from yesterday,” Priya replied.

  Priya could hear the waiter taking the cans out and filling up two glasses. The ice-cubes in the bucket sounded like grinding metal in Priya’s ears.

  “Thanks,” Olga said.

  Khabib sat with his jacket still on. He ran a finger down the collar of his shirt and opened a button, then another. It was getting hot, but he obviously wasn’t planning to stay long. Priya had to catch everything that was exchanged between them.

  Priya recognised a tattoo on Khabib’s chest partly hidden under his shirt. It showed the face of an ugly man.

  Olga slid the envelope across the table to Khabib.

  The waiter mixed the drinks, drowning out what Khabib and Olga were saying.

  “Mini, can you get a shot of the tattoo?” Priya asked.

  “I will,” Mini replied. “Save it together with the facial recognition.”

  “We’re running a scan,” Priya heard Rose say. “Right now, we still don’t know who we are dealing with.”

  Khabib opened the envelope and leaned back to see what was inside. He slid the papers out a sliver and waited till the waiter left to speak.

  “I have to get this painting for our client,” Khabib said in Russian. He had an accent, perhaps Chechen, Georgian or Dagestani. “It’s some part of a payment or a sign of good will, you know? There’s this guy who recently got it on the black market. Name’s Nate Bellic. He has the art piece stashed in a warehouse in Belgrade, right beneath an old fortress. Kalemegdan, yeah, that’s what it’s called. But he refuses to bring the painting to our first meeting. What do I care about it? It’s a painting of a pipe with some French text under it. I don’t know what it says, but it’s worth a lot. So I have to go to Monaco, to Hotel de Paris, where he wants to meet first. I tell you, we’re wasting time here. I need to deliver the painting personally to our client soon. He’s growing impatient. That first bit was not part of the plan.”

  “I’m just delivering the message,” Olga said.

  Khabib turned his head away and frowned. He seemed to soak in the dancers and think about what he would be able to afford,
when the job was done.

  “I hope I get a premium for missing the Barca play,” Khabib said. “This to do is very boring.”

  “Friends,” Kovac said through her earpiece. “This is going to be tough. I caught the man’s tattoo from Mini’s camera feed. I have seen it before on some pretty nasty guys. Khabib could be hardcore. You should be very careful.”

  Priya grimaced. “Understood.”

  Mini moved further away from Olga and Khabib. Only Priya could afford to watch them from the safety of the bar.

  “Tanya did not prohibit killing, right?” Khabib said.

  Olga shot him a glare.

  “I don’t care how you do it,” she said.

  Khabib put the glass to his lips and took a large gulp.

  “Then consider him a dead man.”

  He put the printouts back into the envelope, before tucking it into his jacket. Then he left, leaving Olga alone.

  A cold shudder ran over Priya’s back.

  “More ice?” the barkeeper asked her.

  Priya rubbed her shoulders with her hands and tried to fake a smile. “No, thanks.”

  ***

  After the club operation, the team returned to Hotel Duquesa de Cardona. It wasn’t far from the sea promenade and port. Priya entered the luxury hotel and walked around on the penthouse terrace with Salim. She soaked in the view over the city’s harbor.

  “The Treachery of Images,” Priya replied, seeing the picture on the screen in front of her. It depicted a big pipe with a French line beneath.

  “Ce n’est pas une pipe,” Salim read out loud from the screen on Priya’s phone and nodded. “Rene Magritte surrealism. A picture of a pipe does not make it one. It’s just a painting.”

  “Right,” Rose said. “Estimated worth ten million. It was stolen three months ago.”

  “We’re not going into stolen art, are we?”

  “Only when the people trading in it are also involved in arms dealing.”

  Rose sent Priya the picture and file of a man. He was already known to them.

  “The art dealer is one Nate Bellic. Our analysis on the guy shows possible Russian and Chechen connections.”

  “I’m going to hack his phone,” Priya said.

  “Let me know if you need anything,” Rose said. “Under different circumstances, this would be a kill mission. But we need Khabib alive. Intercept the meeting between Khabib and the art dealer. Find out how to get to the source, even if that means following him back to the buyer.”

  “Sounds like that’s exactly what it means,” Kovac said with a snort.

  “How do we get there?” Antoine asked.

  “You can borrow the Corvette,” Salim said. “But make sure the tank is full when you bring it back.”

  ***

  Vienna, Austria

  It felt good to be in his own car again, racing through Vienna’s familiar streets. Antoine compared it to having a normal life, the grey working days of people who lived a safe distance away from the edge.

  He was just driving home from a normal day at the office.

  “Did you see Khabib’s tattoo?” Kovac said from the passenger seat. “A very old and ugly man, with his beard twisted and winded over his bulging veins.”

  “Do you know what it is?”

  “Yeah,” Kovac said, “Koschei the Deathless. He’s a figure out of Slavic folklore and horror fairy tales too dismal to tell to children.”

  Antoine revved the engine. He kicked the accelerator. As if on cue, the traffic lights switched to green.

  “In the stories, Koschei abducted the hero’s wife, but the real problem was that he was hard, almost impossible to kill. It’s like the cause of the terrorists. They won’t be eradicated by taking only a few of them down.”

  Antoine passed the junction and pulled right. He drove along Danube canal, on the ring street. They evaded trams on the multi-laned boulevard and raced over the rails no one else used.

  “The hero had to go after Koschei’s soul, but his soul was hidden, separate from his body,” Kovac said.

  Antoine got past Schwarzenbergplatz. A huge fountain sprayed up into the city’s night air, guarded by the half-ring monument of pillars and the statue of a Soviet occupation soldier looming over the place.

  “It is said that Koschei held it hidden inside a needle. This was then inside an egg, which was in a duck, which was in a hare, which was in an iron chest, buried under an oak tree, on the island of Buyan in the ocean.”

  “I don’t know why he swallowed a fly. Perhaps he’ll die,” Antoine said.

  “What?”

  “Never mind. So, how do you find it?” Antoine asked.

  He raced past the Opera house. Its halls were now silent but the majestic veneer still illuminated the dark of night. He sped towards the Hofburg Palace.

  “As long as his soul was safe, Koschei the Deathless could not die.”

  Antoine banked hard right and barely made the curve. His wheels squealed and black smoke rose from burnt rubber on the tram rails. Then they shot past the museums’ quarter, leaving the historic part of town behind in the blink of an eye.

  Antoine looked at Kovac, seeing the parallel in it.

  “Even though it’s now in the hands of others, if we don’t find and defuse the bomb, the world is in danger.”

  Antoine pulled left, drifting from the oncoming lane to the outmost right. He rushed past the Parliament, then pulled the handbrake full stop, propelling him in a one hundred eighty degree turn on the opposite lane. Antoine felt his tires spinning and looking for grip on the tram rails. They stuck to the road and brought them forward. Antoine headed into the driveway of the Parliament’s arrival. He left it again through the exit, a curved ramp downwards that spat them back onto the ring.

  He decelerated the car and punched the remote control of his garage panel.

  “I think you got it now,” Kovac said.

  Antoine turned into his driveway, hiding the black car in his garage. A platform rose, its surface covered with gravel like a Japanese zen garden. The platform lifted higher than the car. Underneath, a door opened slowly. Antoine rolled in and killed the lights. The door closed and the garage sank, lowering the car below ground.

  The house was new architecture, built in the last two years. The design was a cube artistically placed on another cube with a big window into the back garden. It was a new home for a new beginning to leave things behind. It was no coincidence that it reminded him of a bunker.

  Antoine deactivated the alarm and unlocked the door. He slipped out of his shoes, leaning his back against the closing door. He let the keys fall onto a small table. It was just the same as when he left; modern, classy, but spartan and tidy with nothing beyond what was necessary. It was just another means to withdraw. You couldn’t plan for years with a dangerous life like this.

  “And what do you know about the tattoo’s origin?” Antoine said.

  Antoine let himself fall onto the couch. He turned on both music and tv, not intending to concentrate on either. His head sagged back.

  “You don’t let everyone in here, do you,” Kovac murmured, looking at the pictures, then turning away.

  It hadn’t always been like this. On the walls, bins and shelves held the remnants of another life. Pictures like portals to the past or another place, his son’s being the most painful.

  Antoine went to the bar. He took out a whiskey glass and a bottle of bourbon. He returned to the couch, putting the glass on the table and poured himself a drink. Instead of sitting, he paced slowly around the living room.

  “The Koschei tattoo is used by Russian Special Forces,” Kovac said. “Khabib being Chechen narrows it down to one. I had to deal with those guys, but I wish I hadn’t. So you know how you say I have been shaped by the war? Well, that just lasted two years. Imagine one that lasted four hundred years. Then I would be Chechnya.”

  Antoine took a sip. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand without putting the glass down.

  “Th
e Russian military intelligence GRU founded two Spetznaz units in Chechnya, callsigned Vostok and Zapad, meaning East and West. The overwhelming majority of personnel were ethnic Chechens, while the command personnel were mixed Russians and Chechens. Vostok and Zapad were organized at the end of 1999, initially as two special companies formed in the structure of the Mountain Grouping of the Russian Ministry of Defence. While servicemen of Zapad were loyal to the Russian government, the core of Vostok was made up of former separatist fighters of the second Battalion of the National Guard of Ichkeria from Gudermes. These are the same types of turncoats that fit Khabib’s behavior. They fought against Russian troops in the First Chechen War, then switched sides to the federals and swore allegiance to Russia. Which brings us now back to Khabib. We don’t know who this man is loyal to, but his background gives us an idea about where his allegiances lie. He changes them like underwear and puts his gun where the money is. You say I’m not scared of anything… but that scares me. This time, I do not want to be the target. They shoot first and do not miss.”

  Antoine took his phone out and looked at the display, running over names and numbers.

  “You know, it’s people like him that stop me from getting back to what I want,” he said.

  He stopped at one name. His college love, wife, mother of his child. His fingers glided over the display, to take the call. She wouldn’t know his number. Antoine had played it through in his head many times. It almost felt like another lifetime when he last spoke to her. She wouldn’t even know him anymore and he would be at a loss for words, hanging in the line speechless and freaking her out. That’s why he decided to let it be and not make her life any harder than it already was. It was his son’s birthday today. He would turn four. It was that special time of the year. Everything was worse in it.

  “I have to spy on my own family, trying to get connected through video games, buying art from my wife, and drinking my father’s whiskey. That’s all I have left.”

  He just couldn’t go back to seeing their faces. There had been a time when his room was full of pictures and reminders of them. Those were gone now, for his and their own good. He wore no rings on his fingers. Not the ring that symbolized the love they had sworn each other, nor the one he earned with blood and sweat from Westpoint. They were gone, just like he was. It was better to stay gone for all of them. If they found out who he was, they would go insane.