Counterplay

by Robert K. Tanenbaum

  As Kane healed, he dreamed of taking revenge against those who’d ruined not only his bid to become the mayor of New York City but also, given his malevolent grandiosity, taking up residence in the White House. Then he would have been among the wealthiest men in the world and the most powerful man in the world.

  There was no telling what he might accomplish as president. He could use his influence with al Qaeda to terrorize the American public into being willing to accept the “temporary” relaxing of certain parts of the Constitution, including the number of terms a president could serve. Hell, when they see you tame the terrorists, who will have been bought off in exchange for his cooperation with establishing the caliphate in the Middle East, he thought, and bring Pax Americanus to the Western world…my world…they’ll make me president for life…emperor.

  Along the way, he would destroy the Catholic Church in the United States. He blamed the church for having gone along with his father/grandfather to keep the shameful secret of his conception. They’d all let him think that he was the bastard son of some trashy whore who’d given him up for adoption like one might throw out spoiled milk. Every day of his young life, he’d had to live with being told how lucky he was that his adoptive “father” had “rescued” him from a life of waste and drudgery.

  Of course, all the blue-blood sons at the boarding schools he’d been packed off to had laughed at him both behind his back and to his face. They’d called him “the bastard” and spread rumors, such as his mother had been a prostitute. It got worse after his sister/mother swallowed a medicine cabinet full of pills and then slit her wrists in the bathtub while he was home on vacation. Then the rumor became that he’d been “porkin’ ” her and that was the reason she killed herself.

  He’d hated them. But the talk in front of his face had largely disappeared when he castrated the bully who’d been raping him in the dormitory. It had been a good lesson in how to deal with difficult people. Cut their balls off, figuratively or literally, whichever did the job.

  And until Karp stuck his Jew nose where it didn’t belong, he had been setting up the Archdiocese of New York. He had just been biding his time before leaking to certain friends in the media that the archbishop and other church officials had been protecting rapists, child molesters, and even murderers. It would make the sex scandals that had rocked the Boston archdiocese pale in comparison.

  Then Karp had fucked it up—him and that bitch wife, Marlene Ciampi, and their disgusting mongrel horde of family and friends. Should have killed Ciampi when I had her last fall, he thought. She’s the hardest to predict. Then he smiled, remembering what he’d told Detective Fulton before Samira shot him in the knees. There’s that stupid movie thing again. Kill them quickly when you can, or it will just come back to bite you in the butt.

  The thought crossed his mind that he should now kill Karp and the others as soon as possible. But what fun would that be? No, he wanted to make them suffer and to be afraid…very afraid…before he finished them. And so he’d plotted out the moves of his “game” with Karp and the others, as part of the larger plan with al Qaeda.

  He had to admit that the plot was a bit complex, like a chess game, and, as in chess, there were many plays and counterplays. The plan had taken more than just al Qaeda’s eager acceptance; it had required certain other parties in the United States and Russia to cooperate, each according to their own schemes.

  Then when he was ready, he’d made his first move. The Escape. The authorities had reacted as he expected and launched a massive manhunt. Shooting Fulton had ensured that Karp would take it all personally. The next move had been to have Fey located and strangled. The man was a weak-spined traitor. Also, Kane wanted to keep Karp’s attention and build toward the feeling that his own doom was approaching.

  Each step took him closer to his goal. The plastic surgery. The capture. And now reduction of Agent Hodges.

  “Take him away,” Kane said to the guards. “But I want him watched 24/7. He better not escape or manage to kill himself. And Agent Hodges, just so you know, if you choose either route, I will make sure your wife and child pay for it.”

  When the guards and their prisoner left the room, Kane turned to Dr. Buchwald. “Have you ever practiced martial arts, Dr. B?”

  The man smiled nervously, wondering where this bit of insanity was going. “Uh, no, no, never had the time or inclination,” he said and laughed as heartily as he could under the circumstances. “Medical school and all that—there’s not much time for anything else.”

  “Too bad,” Kane said. “I could have used the practice against someone with some skill. But you’ll have to do. Samira, would you loan your knife to the good doctor, please.”

  “What do you mean?” the doctor cried, his voice cracking into a squeak like a nail being pulled from a board. “I’d rather not.” He attempted to wave off Samira who offered her blade. “Uh, no thanks…sit this one out.”

  “I’m afraid you have no choice,” Kane said. “I can’t let you live; you might have a couple of belts down at the Hotel Jerome and start blabbing. Next thing you know, the FBI’s all over the place. Loose lips, sink ships, you know.”

  “I wouldn’t, no, doctor-client privilege,” Buchwald cried. “I can keep secrets.”

  “Take the knife, Doctor,” Kane urged. “I’ve never killed anyone with a knife so this is as good a time as any. Besides, you might get lucky and stick me a good one. If that happens, Samira, let the good doctor go free, would you?”

  “Whatever you say,” she replied in a manner that told Buchwald he was never leaving the house alive. Still, he had no choice but to take the knife and thought, Maybe I can fight my way out of here.

  “Good, good,” Kane said assuming the on-guard thrust position unique to Kali. “Now, do your best for as long as you can.”

  The two men circled each other, the doctor holding his knife out in front of him while he blubbered and wiped at his nose with the sleeve of his other arm. Prince Bandar started to protest. “Gentlemen, there is no need for this,” he said in a calm and reasonable voice. “I’m sure Dr. Buchwald can be trusted to keep a secret.”

  “Shut up, Bandar, or take Dr. B’s place,” Kane said.

  Bandar ceased his complaints immediately. He sank with a sigh into one of the overstuffed chairs to watch the duel.

  As he circled, Kane lectured the doctor on the art of Kali. “Note the smoothness of Saksak-Hatak, the classic thrust and cut,” he said, executing the move, which resulted in a small slice on the doctor’s arm. The man began crying as Kane continued his lesson.

  “By constantly keeping the blade and point toward the opponent, the strategic positioning of the knife’s edge is never lost even when”—he sliced the doctor again, this time above his right eyebrow—“reversing from a backward to forward cut.”

  Blood flowed into Buchwald’s eye. He wiped at it with his free hand, then made a desperate lunge at what had appeared to be Kane’s exposed chest. But his opponent dodged sideways and parried the thrust with his own knife.

  Kane slashed down, opening a deep cut on the doctor’s wrist. The blow caused Buchwald to drop his knife and cry out in terror and pain. “Pick it up,” Kane insisted.

  “No, no, no…please, stop this. Don’t kill me,” the doctor begged. “I’ll do anything.”

  “Pick it up or I’m going to let one of the guards gut you like a pig and then let the dog pull your intestines out while you watch,” Kane snarled.

  Buchwald had seen the dog Kane spoke of—a snarling, piebald pit bull that he was quite sure would be happy to eat him alive. Hardly able to see through the blood and tears, the doctor leaned over and picked up the knife. He felt light-headed and nearly passed out.

  “It might interest you to know that what I’m doing here is known as the Palis-Tusok,” Kane said, “which essentially means making a lot of small cuts to bleed you. Gradually, you’ll weaken until you will be unable to defend yourself.”

  Buchwald swung his knife wildly
at his tormentor’s face. But Kane dropped to a knee beneath the blow, the same move he’d tried on Samira, and slashed open the muscle of the doctor’s thigh. The man howled in pain.

  As he staggered around to continue facing Kane, Buchwald recognized the proximity of death. But as men and beasts will sometimes do when cornered, he found a small reservoir of courage. He stopped crying and his face grew grim. He gripped the bloody handle of the knife and charged, stabbing for Kane’s chest.

  This time Kane stepped to the side and parried the knife. But instead of slashing down at the exposed arm again, his blade continued its circular path until Buchwald’s neck was open to his thrust. The blade sunk into the man’s throat and continued up, piercing the skull and into the brain.

  Kane gave the knife a violent twist and then withdrew the blade, stepping back from the falling body. The air was filled with the sweet coppery smell of blood.

  Bandar moaned from his chair. “My rug, my beautiful rug,” he complained and pointed at the growing pool of blood beneath the twitching body of Dr. Buchwald. “That is a five-hundred-year-old Persian original. Now it’s ruined.”

  Kane looked at the prince and shrugged. “I guess you shouldn’t have had it on the floor if you didn’t want people to walk or bleed on it.” He started laughing at his joke, and then laughed louder when the prince got up and rushed from the room in a huff.

  Kane turned to look at Samira, who was standing over by the chessboard. “So how’d I do?” he asked.

  “You talk too much and take stupid chances,” she said. “If you’re going to kill a man, kill him…don’t give him the motivation or time to kill you first. That’s why I don’t like this game you want to play. It is not a necessary part of the plan.”

  Kane formed his face into a pout. “Darn, I’d hoped I’d made you proud,” he said. “But it is important to me, and that means, it’s important to you…or your chance at martyrdom won’t be granted, at least not in the grand way you anticipate…. And by the way, have we made another move?”

  “Bishop to black knight?” she said.

  “Perfect,” Kane said, clapping with delight.

  Fifteen hundred miles away in a segregation cell at the Rikers Island prison, former NYPD detective Michael Flanagan looked up from his steel-framed bed when the guard opened the door to take him to the chapel to receive Holy Communion. He closed the Bible he read constantly and got up with a sigh.

  Prison had aged him. Raised a good Catholic who’d followed in the footsteps of several generations of Flanagans and joined the New York Police Department, he’d considered himself a good cop, even when he started going after scumbags and sinners the regular application of the law seemed to overlook. He saw it as just helping an overcrowded justice system. When he first started taking orders from Kane, he thought they actually came down from the Archbishop of New York. After all, the world was a better place for Christian men and women when sinners were sent to the fiery pit…albeit a bit earlier than planned.

  It had been devastating to realize that the only master he was serving was the evil one, Andrew Kane. Like Fey, he wanted to live only to testify against Kane, and then if some inmate wanted to shank him in the prison yard, he was ready. He’d been doing his best to prepare to meet his Maker and ask for forgiveness by reading his Bible and attending mass and confessing as frequently as the guards would let him. When Kane escaped, he felt as though he’d been robbed of a chance at partial redemption.

  As he made his way down to the chapel, he felt tired, and his legs heavy; he attributed it to having fasted since midnight in preparation for receiving the Blessed Eucharist.

  Because of his “status” as a segregated prisoner, kept away from the general population who might just want to kill an ex-cop for the fun of it, he was alone when he entered the chapel. He walked to the railing at the front where he dropped to his knees to accept communion.

  After a few minutes, he was aware of the rustle of robes. He looked up at the scarred face of the priest, a big man with sad eyes. Must be new…wonder where Father Woodard is today? he thought as the priest began the rite of communion.

  When Flanagan accepted the wafer representing the body of Christ into his mouth, he noticed an unpleasant metallic taste. It was there even stronger after he drank the wine representing Christ’s blood.

  The poison in the wafer was powerful but slow acting. Slow enough to allow the priest who fed it to Flanagan to check out of the prison for his drive back to Manhattan where he was the caretaker of St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

  The priest did not enjoy killing. He hated Andrew Kane for sending him on these missions and hated himself for creating the circumstances that had doomed his immortal soul. Even if those circumstances had evolved from love.

  All of his young life since entering puberty, he’d been taunted for the acne that had ravaged his face. No girls would have anything to do with him, even when he starred on the football field. A freak, they called him, Freddy Krueger. Even his own family seemed repulsed; his parents had urged him to go into the priesthood “since no decent woman will marry you.”

  So he’d committed himself to God, a young priest known for his compassion and love of children, which is what had drawn her to him. She was not what others would have called pretty, either, though as he got to know her, he thought she was the most beautiful of all women. The mutual attraction had led to love, which had led to sex—not only forbidden by his vows, but illegal in the eyes of the law because she was only seventeen. She’d become pregnant and given birth to their child, and suddenly he had two people who loved him unconditionally.

  However, when the girl’s parents, who had never cared much about her before, discovered who the father of the child was, they threatened to sue the church and go to the law. But Andrew Kane had settled with the parents and recommended against prosecution to the DAO. Then he called the young priest into his office.

  So you love this woman and child? Kane had asked.

  Yes, he’d said enthusiastically, hoping this attorney would understand that such was his motivation. I am prepared to leave the priesthood to be with them.

  Oh no, you misunderstand, Kane said. I don’t want you to leave the priesthood. In fact, I am going to get you a special appointment to serve the Archbishop of New York, but really you’ll be working for me.

  I don’t understand, the priest said.

  Kane grinned—a wolfish look, the priest would later recall, his blue eyes predatory and mean. I’ve had your little whore and brat “relocated,” Kane said. But don’t worry; they’re safe as long as you do what I ask.

  And what if I don’t? he asked.

  I’ll send them back to you in pieces, Kane replied and grinned again.

  The priest had never seen the young woman or his child in person since. Every once in a while, Kane gave him a photograph of a small blond girl who looked like a cross between the priest and her mother as she grew older. And so he had been corrupted, turned into a spy, a heretic, and eventually a killer. He lost his faith in a God who would allow such a thing—not for himself, he accepted that he had sinned with the young woman, but for her sake and the child’s. Whether they knew it or not, they lived at the whim of a madman. The archbishop had been just one of many victims, and now the police detective.

  An hour after returning Michael Flanagan to his cell, a guard walked past on a routine welfare check and noticed the former police detective was lying on the floor curled into the fetal position. When the prisoner did not respond to verbal commands to get up, the guard entered the cell and rolled Flanagan over onto his back.

  “Jesus Christ!” the guard exclaimed and threw up.

  Flanagan’s face was difficult to look at; his eyes were bugging out of his head, the whites turned bright red from burst blood vessels. White foam was caked around his mouth, and his swollen tongue protruded from between purple lips. His face was stretched into a mask of intense pain.

  “Holy shit!” the guard later told his colleagues d
uring a coffee break. “Whatever fragged that asshole must have hurt like hell!”

  13

  THE TWENTY-SOMETHING ARAB-AMERICAN BICYCLE MESSENGER rode briskly down Crosby, hopped the curb up onto the sidewalk, and came to a stop at the old brick building on the corner with Grand. He dismounted, leaned his bicycle against a railing, and walked up the small flight of stairs to the security door where he pressed the buzzer and waited.

  A young boy’s voice answered over the intercom. “Yes?”

  “I have a package for Roger Karp,” the messenger said. Oh no, a kid. They can take forever, and there ain’t going to be no tip. He had plans to go out dancing that night with some of his fellow NYU students and was already running behind on his deliveries. He leaned toward the intercom. “Uh, kid, you don’t have to sign for it. I can leave it right here, and you can get it when you want.”

  “Sure,” the boy said. “I’ll be down in a couple minutes.”

  The messenger put the box down on the doorstep and turned to leave. He didn’t get far as he was surrounded by three men—one in jeans and a hooded sweatshirt, another in a business suit straight off the rack, and the third in dreadlocks, and all of them pointing guns at him.

  “Police! Get your frickin’ hands in the air,” the one in jeans and a pullover sweatshirt yelled. He waved something that looked like a badge. “Step away from the door and walk slowly toward me…. Don’t drop your hands or I’m going to put a hot one in your frickin’ head.”

  “Don’t shoot!” the terrified young man shouted. “I’m just a bike guy!” He hurried to the bottom of the stairs, where he was instructed to lie on the ground with his arms extended above his head. The cop in the cheap business suit stepped forward and frisked him from head to toe, then ordered him to roll over—“keeping your fuggin’ hands where we can see them if you don’t want to get shot”—and frisked him again.