Love Is for Tomorrow

by Michael Karner

  Police vehicles entered Red Square from the north, but they were too late. His friends would get him, Priya and Hunter out.

  “Get into the car, Hunter,” he said. “Don’t wait for me.”

  Antoine could make it out unseen. Priya was still off their radar but Hunter stood out with his stealth cloak malfunctioning. Policemen appearing in front of St. Basil’s cathedral aimed their guns at him. They shouted and opened fire.

  Hunter threw himself flat on the ground and rolled over. The van hit the brakes and swerved between him and the police officers. A door flew open. An arm shot out and pulled Hunter in.

  “Get the hell out of here,” Antoine shouted.

  The policemen stared at him like they had seen a ghost. He gave away his position to tell his friends what to do.

  The Dodge sped away. One of the policemen took a shot at the car. The other turned on Antoine. The van was out of reach now. It roared down the square to the road where more barricades awaited.

  He needed to catch up. He knew the escape plan.

  Priya knew it too. He caught a glimpse of Priya running on the other side of the street. He tried to get to her.

  The van broke through a roadblock, overcoming the last thing that could have stopped it before the bridge.

  The police knew something was up, when Priya tried to follow the car. Once they pulled themselves together, they stretched out their hands and yelled for her to stop.

  Priya was running in front of Antoine in full speed. While she was lighter and faster, she also had to find a way through the pile of snack and souvenir stands on the street. Antoine just followed her at every turn. The bridge loomed ahead.

  The van had made it up the bridge. It banked right hard, from the outmost fast lane and pulled over to the first one, before touching the sidewalk. It didn’t brake. The Dodge broke through the barrier and hurled over the bridge.

  The van hit the water and sunk. Moscow river swallowed the whole vehicle in one go.

  Priya kept going. She leapt onto the handrail and faltered. She looked down and Antoine knew she couldn’t jump. Fear of heights.

  Antoine sprang forward. He landed on the handrail next to her and vaulted over. Somehow he got hold of her wrist. Antoine’s momentum yanked her forward. She lost her balance and went over with him. It was a long fall.

  The impact took Antoine by surprise and nearly knocked him out. It overloaded his nerves. The cold sucked the air out of his lungs. He was desperate to surface for air. He had to do the opposite and swim down. Out of the corner of his eye Antoine saw the van drifting in the deep. His comrades climbed out of the side door, one after another and headed to the base of the bridge.

  Shadows appeared on the water surface. People were gathering on the bridge. They lit up with bright flashes and muffled gunfire. The police were on them and getting desperate. A hail of bullets rained down like a shower of arrows, trailing down fingers of compression waves.

  Priya turned from him and swam to the bridge. Antoine followed, pulling himself forward with wide arm strokes.

  His comrades made it to the foundation of the bridge. All the equipment for their flight was stored there. They pulled back a weighted tarpaulin. Scuba tanks and underwater scooters, one for each of them, were hidden beneath.

  Antoine was out of air by the time he got there. He reached for the scuba gear and sucked in the cold air. Strapping the tank onto his back, he got behind the control of a scooter and pressed the accelerator button. Around him, the other propellers set in motion and swirled the water with air bubbles.

  They were all there: Kovac, Jason, Mini and Smith. They had all made it so far but they still weren’t safe.

  Then he noticed. The water was dark with blood, from one of his comrades.

  Smith’s scooter collided into the ground. He didn’t seem to react and just kept driving. His limbs were slack.

  Antoine steered over to him. Smith had lost his regulator and it was trailing behind, releasing air into the water. Antoine maneuvered both his and Smith’s scooter to the surface and continued several hundred meters to the escape boat. Antoine emerged at the stern of it. His group was already getting on board.

  Antoine spat out his regulator.

  “Smith is wounded,” he said. “Help him.”

  He swam to the entry deck of the boat. Jason and Kovacs pulled Smith up.

  Antoine hauled himself out of the water. The deck was slick with Smith’s blood. At least he hoped it was only his.

  “Oh my god,” Priya said. She started rendering First Aid but she was no field medic. No one there was.

  Hunter assisted her, pressing his hands against the wound while Jason moved to the captain’s cabin.

  Smith grabbed Antoine’s hand.

  “Did you get Khabib?” he croaked.

  Antoine nodded, clutching Smith’s fist tight.

  The sniper smiled through his pain.

  “Good boy.”

  The boat was already starting, but they were still within sight of the bridge. They were not safe yet.

  A helicopter made its rounds over Red Square and the Moscow river bridge. If they were spotted, there was nowhere left to go.

  The boat was small, made for one day trips through Moscow. Tourist ships passed them with buffets and musicians on board.

  The police seemed to be blocking the passage around Kremlin. Radio transmissions told the ships’ captains that there was a situation and they needed to stand by until everything was cleared.

  An oil tanker passed in between the boats, hiding them from the view of the sightseeing ship. Antoine turned away as Priya came to him. The palms of her hands were bloody and she tried not to touch anything.

  “How is Smith?” Antoine said.

  “Gone,” she said.

  Antoine looked past her to the end of the deck. Kovacs put a blanket over Smith’s body.

  He lifted his head and glanced over the water. Cops were everywhere. A police patrol boat drove past, going toward the bridge. Smith’s feet stuck out from under the blanket. Mini hid them fast. The whole deck of the boat was splashed with water and their clothes were wet. Antoine hoped the cops wouldn’t see the blood.

  They received a radio call, loud enough for him to hear it. The commander of the ship put in the throttle and the ship moved on, faster than before. Jason remained steady not to warrant any attention. He steered them through Moscow to the outskirts of the city.

  “So, how did you two meet?” Priya asked Antoine, nodding towards Hunter.

  “That is a short story, Priya,” Antoine said.

  “He knows you for a long time then?”

  Antoine nodded. “So long it almost feels like a previous life.”

  Rose and Salim waited for them with two black Volkswagen Passats. They wore long trench coats and hats against the cold. Antoine didn’t know how long they had waited but it must have been some time.

  “Welcome back,” Rose said, as they left the boat at the shore and came up the slope. “Well done. You saved Moscow, and a whole lot more.”

  She gave each of them a pat on the back but she wasn’t smiling. It was a hollow victory. They carried Smith past her and she laid her hand on his head. He was the shining star, the most stalwart of them all, a veteran no one could replace. Antoine could see she fought back tears. This was only the beginning. The true moment to mourn would come, when there was time.

  “Antoine,” Rose said. “It’s good to see you again. Been a long time.”

  “Did you think I would make it?”

  “I had full trust in your abilities,” Rose said.

  “That’s not what I asked,” Antoine said. “What if I hadn’t have made it through the Vostok lines and beaten Khabib. What then?”

  “Then we would have lost,” Rose said.

  They moved Smith into the trunk, every member of his team carrying him like pallbearers. Salim pulled his black driving gloves over his fingers, quiet. He gave Priya a long hug, his eyes glinting. It was their ride hom
e, for all of them.

  “Then why don’t I feel like a winner?” Antoine said.

  “Because Tanya is still out there,” Rose said. “You always learn a lot more when you lose, than when you win.”

  Only on the plane back did they find the strength to reflect.

  “Peace is costly,” Rose said. “But it is worth the expense.” She held a glass of champagne. The surviving members of the team gathered around her. They would drink to honor Smith. Without his sacrifice, it wouldn’t have been possible to survive.

  “It would have been Russia’s Nine Eleven,” Rose continued. She lifted her glass for a final toast. “I give my utmost thanks to my dear friend, Smith. The world will never know his work. His name will be lost to history. But his sacrifice will never be forgotten.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  WALKOUTS

  “Peace is our profession.”- USAF Strategic Air Command Motto

  Latgale, Latvia

  The click-clack of woodcutting echoed to the edge of the forest from the front of her cottage by the lake. She gripped the axe and slammed it down onto the chopping block, reducing the last firewood to splinters. Morning dew lay on the gravel ground and wood around her. Birds chirped by the mirror surface of the lake.

  Steps came out of the house fast, the wooden floor creaking.

  Tanya looked up from the pile of cut wood stacked at her feet, half of a morning’s good work since sunrise.

  “Mama.”

  She watched Svetlana run toward her. When she finally reached the woodpile, she smiled an exhausted smile. A vibrating phone was in her small hands.

  Tanya had known this call was inevitable. She took off her gloves and sat down on the rusty camping stool.

  Her daughter looked at her, holding the phone. The early morning call had sparked her curiosity.

  “Are you going to take it?” her daughter asked.

  Tanya stroked her hair.

  “Of course I take it, sweetie,” she said. She wiped the sweat from her skin.

  She exhaled, winked at her daughter and took the phone.

  The child turned immediately to run back into the house.

  She picked up and held the phone to her ear. Whoever wanted to talk to her, had not been discouraged by the long wait.

  She heard the sound of a cigar being pulled on. The decadence, even over the distance of several thousand miles, gave him away before he spoke.

  “Hello,” Tanya said.

  She had guessed right.

  “I have to say, I am not quite sure how to express my deep disappointment in you,” he said. “We had such high hopes. It seems you oversold your capabilities by a stretch. Pride does come before a fall.”

  The clinking of ice cubes in a crystal glass of what would presumably be whiskey came through the line. Kenway continued, “Do you know when shorting works best? Let me tell you. It is when you have a sure thing, a certainty. When you put in a large amount and leverage it on a sure thing. It will be a stretch to seat you at the Table after such a huge loss.”

  He sipped his drink, then added. “We do value your unique skill set, and what you managed to achieve was not simple. We may be in touch in the future.”

  Tanya remained silent for a moment, then replied.

  “In a game of chess, is it not the final move that counts rather than the first? I thought you said that there are only a few things better than money. Power. Influence and power. Is money just a means to get that? I hope what I had wanted to present as a cherry on top is welcomed. It depends though whether you are in it for the long game or the short game.”

  The clinking in the background stopped. “And what is that? You failed your mission. Don’t you want to tell us what happened?”

  The truth was she didn’t know. There had only been one person before who was so onto her.

  “Watch who is standing next to the president tomorrow. I hope your decision can wait until then.”

  With that she hung up and laid the phone onto the ground. Given the circumstances, she thought she handled that well. She would love to see their faces tomorrow. They would have to pry what she had won from her cold, dead hands.

  ***

  Hallstatt, Austria

  The breaking news was on national television. A reporter was speaking.

  “Regarding the prevented terror attack in Moscow, right now we have a line on who uncovered this conspiracy, the savior of the Russian Federation. Standing next to the Russian President, live from Moscow on Russia’s Victory Day, is the hero of the Muscovite population.”

  The view zoomed over the reporter’s shoulder, showing a woman beside the President.

  Antoine stared, his heart stopping in his chest. He recognized her. It was Olga Kovalenko.

  “Hero is a strong word for what I did,” Olga said. “I had a whole team of specialists operating under me. Although their identities shall remain a secret, I know very well who they are.” Her eyes locked with the camera. “Right now we don’t know who stood behind the attack, but our security cameras captured everything. The recordings will undergo analysis to learn from the incident and prevent further attacks in the future. And I can assure you that the active heroes, who made this Victory Day possible, will get their fair share of recognition.”

  Applause rang out for several minutes.

  As they died down, everyone focused on the President, standing in Red Square, with the might of an army parade beneath him. New Armata tanks rolled by, with their top secret combat turrets covered under tarpaulins.

  “The iron will of the Soviet people saved Europe from slavery,” the President said. “The ninth of May was a day of grief and eternal memory. But it is also the holiday when an overwhelming force of patriotism triumphs, when all of us feel acutely what it means to be loyal to the motherland and how important it is to defend it.”

  The cheers of the crowd swallowed the echo of his words.

  The reporter continued.

  “Meanwhile, the Chechen leader who is also attending the parade, released a statement, that he stands fully behind the President.”

  “I am loyal, but others may not be,” the Chechen leader said. “And taking me down carries risks.”

  The reporter continued, "It is worth noting that over a nine-day period, the Chechen leader will be given no less than three state awards. He is now considered a pillar of Russian statehood. Even more so than the FSB.”

  ***

  Shanghai, China

  Mei Ling turned from the screen, awaiting the reaction of her superior.

  As usual, Zhou kept his facial features unreadable and calm.

  “Lao ban,” she said, her head bowed. “There’s a high probability that our stealth suits were used in the Russian attack.”

  Zhou thought about his friend, dead in a puddle of his own blood. He wondered if he knew that this was how they would be put to use.

  Such was the unseen war. So far they had come. That soldiers were invisible, sides blurred, traces well covered and it was difficult to differentiate friend from foe.

  “The generals are assembled,” Mei Ling said.

  Zhou looked up to her, nodding. “Send them in.”

  ***

  Washington D.C., The United States of America

  Don walked nervously along the lake at the George Washington Memorial. A man sat on one end of a bench, enjoying his morning paper in the park. Don strode directly towards him. He took a seat at the other end. He didn’t know what the procedure was in this case. He continued to sit while the man read his paper. After a second page was turned, Don broke the silence.

  “Good morning, Sir.”

  “The morning is lovely isn’t it?”

  The sunshine and the lake danced bright in Don’s eyes.

  Joggers ran past.

  “Last night was not,” Brenneman said.

  Don listened. Had Dwayne Carter turned up?

  “I got an extraordinary call directly from an FSB contact. We have been called to assist on
a terrorist attack that happened in Moscow.”

  “I thought they had that all covered in the news report,” Don interrupted.

  “Yes, they do but they do not have a single suspect or clue apart from these photos. Guess who showed up?”

  Brenneman folded his paper, put it aside and took his phone out. He used his thumb print to unlock the screen and opened the picture folder. Then he handed it to Don.

  “Your mystery man. The same face from the Dwayne Carter files.”

  Don looked on in disbelief. First he was in Paris and now Moscow. He just made it to the most wanted list by both agencies. Whoever he is, he’s good.

  “I am now leading the CIA efforts. We cannot let someone else get him first. I need to be updated on everything real time. Look through old files again, in case you missed something. Anything you need, you get. Has that reporter called your Blake Griffin number yet?”

  Don said, “No. A team will be on him right away. I will get him. He made it personal when he killed my men in Paris.”

  Brenneman stood up to go. “Good. Just remember, Don, the whole story does not revolve around you.”

  Don sat on the bench watching Brenneman leave the park. No doubt his personal security guards were nearby.

  The whole story does not revolve around you - Don pondered on that. What did he mean? What was he missing? The future was going to bring a new challenge. There was a lot of responsibility. How was he supposed to get the brute from Paris? The pressure was daunting but he was going to enjoy it.

  ***

  Hallstatt, Austria

  Antoine had yet to see a place as strangely situated as his grandmother’s birthplace. The houses seemed to sit on top of each other. Built on the sloping, narrow lakeshore like swallows’ nests, their reflection shone in the enamel green surface of the lake.

  Antoine opened the green tinted postbox with a squeak.

  A letter with no return address, from Lance’s Private Banking greeted him.