THE PRICE SHE'LL PAY: For the secret she never knew she had...

by Cara Charles

  The shop phone rang again. Concerned, Desiree ran upstairs.

  OJAI, CALIFORNIA

  ELISE LARSEN ANDERSEN, METAPHOR Code Name ORCA because she was a Corporate CEO “shark” killer and legal legend due to her eidetic memory, teed off from Hogan’s Hollow, the secluded, narrow tree-lined 8th hole of Ojai Valley Inn’s famous golf course. She was a bit sore from her three-day survival seminar in Camarillo taught by retired Navy Seals and battling a lingering sinus infection. She’d looked forward to the spa and golf day with the Judge to unwind.

  The California winter morning sky was a painter’s inspiration of lavender blue, and mare’s tails wispy white clouds.

  Federal Appellate Court Judge Angela G. Robles from the U.S. Court of Appeals in Pasadena hit a drive on the par four fairway. The Judge beat Elise’s drive by fifty feet.

  “Amazing, your Honor. Retirement suits your game.” Elise smiled amazed by her heroine. “Sorry, this is only nine holes. I wish we could play eighteen because you’re doing amazingly well!”

  “I love those ribbons of color in your hair,” Judge Robles smiled.

  “Lara and I went wild. Next time we’ll go for eighteen.”

  “R&R with the family is long overdue. You’ve had a stressful year counselor. I do love these spa and golf weekends with you, though.

  CHAPTER TWO - BERLIN

  WAITING FOR DR. RICHARDS to pick up, Ivan plugged his ear against the sirens. The text he’d gotten earlier from his hacker confirmed his instincts. The anxious street-crowd watched Ivan as he searched for Mavra and her dark haired boyfriend, Dimitri. Ivan looked at his beloved old train station across the Spree River, lit so poetically in the dark winter night and decorated for the Christmas holidays. The station’s historic past flashed through Ivan’s mind.

  After Kristallnacht, December 1 1938, thousands of Jewish children were put on the train here to save their lives in the ever growing unstable German life. The lower level train tunnels were flooded in April 1945, just before the Nazi surrender. And the Cold War’s Checkpoint Charlie used to be close by.

  Crossing the bridge, coming from the station, a backlit figure approached at a trot.

  ‘The policeman who shot me no doubt,’ Ivan sighed.

  Another police car pulled up at the station. Another siren was coming in the distance, perhaps his ambulance.

  He’d resisted help from the nurse who got him back on his feet. But he remembered her saying to, ‘use his scarf.’ Ivan put the chain of the watch in his teeth, tugged his black cashmere scarf out from under his wool topcoat, and tied the last gift from his dear deceased wife around his arm. His second mistake. The cold chilled him, immediately. His routine baby aspirin was bleeding him out.

  Desiree’s phone rang endlessly. At ring fifteen, he’d try later. Failure was not an option. At least he felt he’d found Dr. Richards.

  ‘But where the hell was she?’

  Ivan remembered her love for antiques, tiny villages, remote places in Paradise, and Dulce de Alegria, Amaranth and Honey Cookie bars. Desiree Richards loved Dulce de Alegria. He dialed her again.

  Ivan Kimirov a vibrant ninety closed his eyes, sorting out the runner’s footsteps.

  ‘There.’

  Dr. Richards had to answer before he was arrested. Twelve rings.

  He was glad he’d made his other call even though he’d gotten a machine.

  Elise Andersen’s time to preserve her happy life was also running out.

  DESIREE RICHARDS A VIBRANT, fit beauty of a retiree rushed up to the phone from the basement, her arms full of old children’s books, vintage christening gowns and baby clothes on satin hangers. She could feel it was urgent. Desiree dumped her load to lunge for the phone, actually afraid to answer it now.

  The caller ID said Berlin, her intuition spot on.

  “The Rose and the Amaranth,” Desiree braced.

  ‘Ode to Joy’ was playing from her late uncle’s pocket watch. She’d given it to Ivan Kimirov decades ago to identify himself in an emergency. It could only be Ivan, the unpredictable loose end from her long dead past. Lyle said Ivan a.k.a. BIG RED knew Red his granddaughter Mavra, had created the Layer One’s breach.

  “I’m here! Be careful of what you say! Hello? Are you there?”

  Ivan shouted, “Say it’s you! Please!”

  ‘My God! It’s been forty years since they’d spoken but Janitor had met with him and implanted Ivan with a GPS chip. How’d he ever find me?’

  “MACH KEINEN UNSINN, Grandpa! Hande hoch!” Dietmar the SEK German SWAT policeman, shouted.

  “I’m just calling a friend,” Ivan said to Dietmar the intense German policeman now pointing his pistol at him. “Say it’s you, Doctor.”

  Desiree understood German, “Damn it man! What have you done?”

  “Then drop what’s in your hand, sir.”

  Ivan held onto the voice modulator. “Thank God! It’s taken too long to find you. We’re out of time! Mavra knows. If I miss her, promise me she won’t suffer? And provide protection for Charles’s daughter. Mavra hates me now more than ever, because I doubled the jury’s damage award. It was the right thing to do. My eternal love to your guest.”

  Ivan shouts at Dietmar. “My hands are up, Swine hundt!”

  “Yes, don’t say anymore! Yes, I promise! How? How does she know Ivy?”

  “You’ve got three seconds before I shoot you again… one…” Dietmar warns.

  Ivan’s modulated voice shouted over him, “The briefcase. She’s seen the briefcase! I’m such a fool. I’m trying to make it right.”

  Ivan hung up.

  Ivan spoke into his dangling cellphone mic, “Peder? Deliver the package then hurry back.”

  “Yes boss,” came back in his ear.

  “DAMN YOU, Ivan! You promised me, you destroyed it!”

  Dez threw a vase into the fireplace.

  Desiree presumed dead like all her METAPHOR colleagues prayed the call cleared RAILHEAD, the NSA voice recognition capture program.

  Desiree sent out her mass IM alert.

  ‘Activating Priority A-1. Get our girl here, now. Mavra Kimirov knows. Dear.’

  Desiree collapsed on her love seat. Trusting the drugs she’d given Ivan at his request all those years ago to make him forget their asset and why he’d defected, her formula had obviously degraded and failed.

  ‘He still remembered everything it seemed. Where would this end?’

  IVAN KICKED snow over the voice modulator he’d released unseen over his shoulder.

  “You’re wounded, sir. I’m taking you to my car. I told you to halt! Didn’t you hear me?”

  Dietmar Wedlin, the tri-athlete German SEK SWAT policeman with his sniper’s rifle shouldered, took Ivan’s bloody pocket watch and put it in Ivan’s pocket. Dietmar assessed the arm wound then led Ivan back to his cruiser, his hand grasping Ivan’s arm firmly above the wound.

  “Walk quickly. It will keep your pressure up,” Dietmar said reading Ivan. “You have a suicide by cop death wish?”

  “No. Certainly not! I like waking up every morning. I’m ninety son, so why did you?”

  “Training. Shooting you will keep me awake at night. Please accept my apologies.”

  Dietmar pushed Ivan down in the backseat, and got out the first aid kit.

  “Apply firm pressure here, above the wound. I’m going to put a clot dressing on it. I’ve done this many times. It’s not arterial. You take a daily aspirin?”

  “Yes. Doing your duty can be difficult, but do hurry, I’m feeling a little cold.”

  Field dressings open, Dietmar dons his gloves, removes Ivan’s overcoat and jacket then cuts off the silk shirtsleeve. The bullet hole, upper deltoid seeps. He looks at Ivan. Dietmar takes his pulse. Irregular. Beads of sweat are on Ivan’s upper lip and forehead. Dietmar ties off coagulation pads and a pressure bandage expertly like he was back in Operation Afghanistan Freedom. Taking Ivan’s good hand to hold pressure on the dressing, Dietmar cleans Ivan’s arm. His pulse, uncha
nged. He lays Ivan in the back seat, searches the pockets then covers Ivan with his own coat. Sirens go by. Dietmar speaks with Dispatch, holding onto Ivan’s wallet.

  “What other calls? OK. Out. Mr. Kimirov? We’re always on the watch for terrorists. It’s standard training, for over a decade. And… we Germans, don’t like to be called, ‘swine hundt.’ The cameras saw you put something in the toilet tank. The smallest hint of a terrorist act will get you killed today. We shoot first. Ask questions later if… you’re still alive. Terrorism is very serious business these, Mr. Ivan Kimirov…”

  Dietmar read Ivan’s ID.

  Ivan sighed.

  ‘Part three accomplished.’ “You think I’m a terrorist? I’m hardly the profile. As a former plumber, I was checking the tank. It was flushing poorly. Just feeling useful. You’ll understand when you’re an invisible old man. You assumed I put a bomb in the tank?”

  “Sir! Don’t joke about bombs. Even that, is an arresting offense. So you’re American with a lingering European accent?”

  “After plumbing put me through college, I taught Russian language and literature at colleges in Upstate New York. Parents immigrated when I was fifteen. City girls loved my accent. I live in Paris now and keep an apartment in New York.”

  “I see. I’m checking your ID with Interpol. Protocol. Until then, lay still.”

  Dietmar turned away. Ivan sat up to look at the station clock. He stood up.

  “A cramp. You’ve drawn a crowd with your ridiculous sirens, son,” Ivan stretched.

  “No, you don’t, big man. I don’t want to catch you if you faint. Sit.”

  Dietmar gently pushed Ivan back down into the seat.

  “Sirens are protocol. All terrorists get the siren. Listen to me, Grandfather Ivan Kimirov. You’re very lucky I saw how old you were. I winged you on purpose. I’m sure you’ve got a very interesting story to tell, but save it until I sort this out.”

  Ivan smiled, looking intently into Dietmar’s eyes, ‘Clairvoyant, too.’

  “That’s what I thought,” Dietmar said, knowing this rich old man held volumes in that white head of his, he scanned Ivan’s ID into his hand held computer, again. ‘Kimirov? What’s familiar about his name?’

  Dietmar felt Ivan’s eyes on him as he put Ivan’s wallet in his bulletproof vest.

  “Kimirov? Ah. Are you related to Mavra Kimirov, the jet set, party girl, sexy, auburn haired minx? Constantly in the news with A-list actors, princes, and polo players?”

  “Never heard of her. I read. I don’t watch TV or Twitter.”

  “You can join senior chat rooms and swap war stories.”

  “Not many left to swap with, son.”

  The computer beeped. Dietmar read it.

  “You’re ninety-four, not ninety and a former interpreter? You understood me when I spoke German?”

  “Not very well. I’m long out of practice. And what’s a year or two when you’re already fine wine?”

  If the ambulance got to Ivan, he’d be in the news in minutes. Ivan glanced at his escape route.

  A TEAM OF FIVE and Mavra Kimirov, her identity hidden behind aviator sunglasses, a Rastafarian cap and a matching scarf wrapped high around the neck, watched from the crowded sidewalk. People drawn to Ivan’s arrest watched Dietmar as he waited on the Interpol “watch list” question.

  Two from her team wearing earpieces, head to the station. Ivan watched them. The rest listened to Dietmar with audio enhancers.

  Mavra Kimirov watched Ivan through binoculars, as Dietmar patted Ivan down.

  He found something in Ivan’s groin.

  “This is not an invisible gun for an invisible enemy, Grandfather of Mavra Kimirov,” Dietmar shouted as he angrily removed Ivan’s gun.

  “Her life is far removed from mine is what I meant when I said, I didn’t know her. My own blood and I don’t really know her at all.”

  “When you are asked a direct question, you give a truthful answer! A simple ‘yes’ would have saved you from arrest!”

  Dietmar was seething. Ivan’s age had made him drop his guard, their bond forever broken.

  MAVRA’S MEN WATCH HER. Not a twitch of reaction. Mavra made a call on her cell, then went back to watching Dietmar cuff Ivan, respectfully with his hands forward.

  DIETMAR PUSHED Ivan down in the back seat.

  Gunshots fracture the frigid night air across the river’s bridge, at the old train station terminal.

  The crowd screams and scatters, taking shelter between cars, many run for the few open shops.

  Dietmar’s in Ivan’s face, “Schisse! Did you do this?”

  “Purely coincidence my boy.”

  “My gut says you’re involved! You’re not too old to be a terrorist!”

  Dietmar the tri-athlete ran full out to the station.

  His partner calls on his radio. “Diet, I’m shot!”

  “Coming, Hans! Stay put, Ivan Kimirov! Move and I’ll put a bullet in your head!”

  “Circumstantial, nothing more,” Ivan called after him.

  Running full out, an instinct made Dietmar look back. Ivan’s gone.

  “Schisse, you old pain in the ass! Gun fire at Friedrichstrasse station. Terrorist suspect, ninety-four year old billionaire Ivan Kimirov positive ID confirmed, dressed wound in right deltoid on the run, one block north of the station. Re-route ambulance for Hans, he’s down at the terminal!”

  Ivan laid down in the back to remove the handcuffs with a key he kept in the topcoat near the sleeve’s buttons and re-dressed. While the crowd was looking at the station, Ivan slipped away.

  Mavra Kimirov climbed up on top the Mercedes, to search for Ivan with her binoculars.

  WATCHING ON HIS CELLPHONE, the tiny cameras Ivan had planted in the latrine were functioning perfectly…

  In the men’s latrine in the old Friedrichstrasse train station currently closed for flooding, her two-man team enters wading through the water, guns drawn, neck gaiters over their noses. Stall by empty stall, they inspect the ancient overhead porcelain tanks, many spilling water.

  One climbed up on the stool in number 15, and lifted the overhead tank lid. The entire large lavatory room explodes, killing them both. People scream, running from the station, crossing the bridge while the air fills with sirens, and crying.

  Hans lay bleeding.

  Dietmar crawled to his partner. “I’m here, Hans. Not a terrorist huh, Grandpa Kimirov?”

  MAVRA CLIMBED DOWN, pissed. Mavra ordered the rest of her men into the car, but she’s pulled away from her car by Dimitri and Carlos, dressed in all black. D sends her car away.

  Dimitri pulls her to Ivan’s kiosk with Carlos covering.

  A block away her Mercedes explodes. People scream, and scatter.

  INSIDE HIS FAVORITE cafe with a newly cracked picture window, now part of the crowd of horrified spectators, Ivan is disguised in a black beret. He puts away his tiny binoculars then softly speaks into his dangling phone mic.

  One by one like a psychic chain reaction the patrons turn toward him, looking at Ivan’s feet.

  Blood is splashing on the floor.

  He stuffs his napkin in the shoulder of his jacket. He smiles reassuring them, then slowly rises from his table.

  The room spins. ‘If only Klaus had brought my refill.’

  Ivan entered the kitchen, grabbed a clean steak knife, a piece of cheese, fairly clean napkins from bus trays, chugged cold espresso from used cups, pushed used napkins tighter into his jacket sleeve, then exited.

  KLAUS, the busy waiter holding the tray with Ivan’s espresso refill, weaved through the excited people craning their necks to look down the street. His cafe is crowded with nervous, crying, but paying spectators. Oddly, many are looking toward the kitchen. Ivan’s table is empty. Frazzled, Klaus sits for a second, and drinks the espresso. Klaus flexed his tired feet, praying he hadn’t offended his famous patron. For a moment, he could be a spectator. He noticed fresh blood on the floor.

  ‘Old Ivan? Bleeding?’
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  “Waiter? Can we get these people some water and a place to sit?”

  “But, of course.”

  Klaus wiped the floor, and hurried to serve his new patrons.

  IVAN EXITED the kitchen into the back alley and walked toward another phone kiosk. Under the covered shelter, he dug the GPS chip out of his forearm, pressed it into the cheese, and threw it back toward the restaurant. He wrapped his forearm in a napkin, unscrewed the light bulb. He leaned on the pole, as beads of cold sweat pop out on his upper lip.

  Ivan called Desiree. She answered right away. He let her pocket watch play a few bars.

  “One more thing,” Ivan whispered adding an odd accent.

  “No names. Are you hurt? Someone will be there in minutes,” Desiree said.

  “My man is coming. Please. Just listen. She didn’t get the briefcase. I fixed that and her car, but I feel I missed her. It’s now war between us. My aggression confirming something of great value is not meant for her. She’ll be coming to find her prize and Elise. I’ll try to follow.”

  “You’re hurt aren’t you, you old fool! Disappear. Your efforts were entirely pointless.”

  “I disagree. I’m confident I’ve contained my mistake.”

  “Over-confident as usual. My God, man. You must not be recognized. You’re just seven decades too late. I trusted you when you said you’d destroyed it. Trust is all we ever have. You know this! Is there collateral?”

  “None of her men are innocents. Sadly, perhaps one policeman.”

  “Pray you’re wrong. What can we do for you now, besides pray?”

  “Imperative you protect both assets. Mavra will never stop, until she has claimed her prize and her revenge. She has her own money that I cannot find. Perhaps you could?”

  “Underway. Thank you for the warning. Sorry it’s one of yours.”

  “No more than I. You were good to me. I’m sorry I brought this down on you all. I will continue containment. Adios, as they say.”

  “Call again. And only if you need us. Until then, live old friend.”

  The phone clicked off.

  DESIREE STARED at the phone then exploded, “You’re sorry? Really? Who else has to pay for your self-centered indulgences? You outrageous man!”