Doubled or Nothing

by Warren Esby

  “What’s that?”

  “We’ll let you know at the appropriate time. It’s one of those pieces of information that is given out on a need to know basis. You don’t need to know it yet.”

  I said, “Thanks,” and didn’t know whether or not to be comforted by all that information. At least if I were killed, it wouldn’t be because I was a traitor or a criminal. It would be because I was a failed CIA agent or a double-crosser or is that the same as a traitor? In either case, I’m sure that knowing I had died for one of those reasons would make my parents proud.

  Ben told me they would check in with me periodically until the next shipment was ready and to enjoy myself in the meantime. I got the impression they were being sincere.

  Chapter 28

  Olga was standing next to her car on the road next to the Salk Institute where I usually parked my car when I drove up Monday morning. I stopped to talk to her. Apparently Igor and Vladimir had not returned from Mexico the previous afternoon and she was a little concerned. I told her they probably had been arrested as most tourists are at some time or another when they go down there, and it just depended on giving the Mexican Police or Federales their fine/bribe money and they could return. It was like an admission ticket to the local sights. I told her they would probably be contacting her to send them money if they didn’t have enough. She told me that she didn’t have any money to send. That Vladimir handled all the finances and just gave her money as she needed it, just enough money to cover what she needed. She didn’t have any extra. So I told her that Vladimir must have needed to arrange to get some more money sent down there since he hadn’t had enough and the banks weren’t open on Sunday. I told her they would probably let them go that day as soon as they got the money. Well they did let them go, but it was not because they gave them money as I found out later. It was for another reason.

  I didn’t see Olga, Igor or Vladimir the next three days, but on Friday, Olga was there again. I stopped and she told me that Igor and Valdimir had returned from Mexico on Wednesday and on Thursday they were asked to go back east to meet with their handler. They had left on Friday and would not be back until Tuesday.

  “How should we handle the weekend surveillance?” I asked hopefully.

  She said, “Well, I thought I would follow you up to Disneyland on Saturday since I’ve never been there, and Sunday would seem like a good day to follow you to the San Diego Zoo or the Wild Animal Park since I haven’t been to either of those places, and I need to know how to follow people if they should decide to go to either one of them.”

  “That sounds good to me. I haven’t been to Disneyland or the San Diego Zoo and planned to go to both of those places as soon as I found someone to follow me there. Why don’t you follow me home tonight so you’ll be ready to follow me when I’m ready to be followed in the morning?”

  She thought that was a great idea and followed me back to the apartment. We went to a nice fish restaurant further down the coast for dinner and had an exciting time the rest of the night. In the morning we drove to Solana Beach and caught the train to Anaheim. I must say Disneyland was not that great. The first thing we noticed when we walked into the gate was that they had all these cartoon characters that were wandering about. And they all seemed to be speaking either German or Japanese. At least they seemed to be cartoon characters since they seemed to be caricatures of what German and Japanese tourists are supposed to be like. We didn’t hear too many American voices until we got to Main Street and realized that the only ones speaking English were the large Disney cartoon characters that were walking around and talking to the little kids.

  Those cartoon characters were quite big and had large fake heads, and although they were supposed to make the children laugh, they ended up frightening the smaller kids who immediately peed or pooped in their diapers. In that area of Disneyland, the lines for the changing tables were even longer than the lines for the rides. Olga noticed first and remarked,

  “This area smells like a dirty diaper.”

  I realized she was right, so we walked quickly away from Main Street and towards the rides. Disneyland was not that crowded since it was after Labor Day and the kids were back in school. Since we had arrived fairly early and the lines were not that long, we ended up being able to get on more rides than we had expected to, two rides to be exact, by the time we had to leave to catch the train back to Solana Beach. One of them was kind of interesting. You got on a small boat and floated slowly around this indoor room with a small canal in it, and you went on seemingly forever while someone somewhere was singing, “It’s a small world after all,” over and over and over again until the room got smaller and smaller and smaller and you finally had to run screaming out of there yelling, “Stop, Stop,” as loud as you could. It was the scariest ride I have ever been on in my life and Olga agreed. It’s one of those psychologically damaging rides that you never can get over and makes you claustrophobic for a long time afterwards. We passed on the other rides that involved boats and took one that had a train since we had come up from Solana Beach on a train and were not psychologically damaged as a result. We took the real train back to Solana Beach as scheduled. Neither of us felt like having a big meal after a tiring day so we just went up to the In-N-Out Burger restaurant and got in and out quickly. Then we went back to the apartment to put an appropriate end to our exciting day.

  During the trip, Olga told me what happened to Igor and Vladimir while they were in Mexico. They had been arrested as expected for some unspeakable crime. I hoped they had enjoyed drinking beer on Rosarito Beach. She said since they didn’t have very much money on them they had to sit in jail until they came up with the money required, but they didn’t know who to contact since they knew Olga didn’t have enough money to bail them out. They only gave her enough to eat with for a day or two at a time and they paid for her motel room. The Mexicans had taken their phones away and said they would make a call to any number Igor and Vladimir gave them to call. Vladimir didn’t want to give them his Russian contact’s number since that would be breaking security, and both sets of their parents had gone back to Russia years before. They didn’t know what to do and sat there until some Russian named Boris came in on Tuesday and found out they had Russian names. He questioned them extensively until he got them to admit they were also Russian agents, but he had to check to make sure. He finally got the answer that they were in fact Russian agents, but neither his contact nor Valdimir’s contact could understand what they were doing in Mexico when they should have been keeping an eye on their target. Their contact didn’t know about Olga working with them and they couldn’t tell him. They were finally given the bail money by Boris and were instructed to go back east for a ‘consultation.’ Olga didn’t know if they would be terminated or allowed to return to San Diego to finish their job, but she assumed they would be back on Tuesday as scheduled.

  The next day we went to the San Diego Zoo. I had decided to go there since I had already been to the San Diego Wild Animal Park with Astrid and a return trip there was not that appealing. For one thing, they didn’t let you near the animals at the San Diego Wild Animal Park. You just got in a little train and went around the outside of this big open park, so the park aspect of it was correct. In the distance you could just make out that there were animals down there, but you weren’t that close and they could have been horses or cows for all that, or people dressed up as rhinoceroses or rhinoceri or whatever the plural of rhinoceros is. I did see some elephants, but elephants are not usually wild. People can ride them so they’re pretty tame. And when you think about it, all those animals there were not really in the wild so you couldn’t really call them wild animals. They were all kind of tame. The correct name for that place should have been the San Diego Tame Animal Park if they were really being truthful, or perhaps just Animal Park, just like they name dog parks, Dog Parks or Dog Beaches if they are dog parks on the beach. And they were more honest about the San Diego Zoo. They hadn’t named it the San Diego Wild
Animal Zoo. They had just named it the San Diego Zoo. They should have been more accurate and just named the Wild Animal Park the Animal Park and then they could have named the Zoo, Animal House, although they probably couldn’t because I think John Beluschi had the copyright on that name from his movie even though he was dead and so was his movie. So I decided we would go to the San Diego Zoo since it had a more honest name and I don’t like deceit. I had encountered too much of that lately.

  We really had a good time at the zoo. And it was definitely more educational than the Wild Animal Park. They had little shows that animals performed in, and I picked up little bits of information by keeping my ears open, which I always do when I’m around Olga. For example, I was standing and looking at the Ostriches and a little boy next to me was looking at them along with his father, and he asked his father why the Ostrich was standing there on only one leg with the other leg tucked up under him like Ostriches like to do. The father told him it was because if the Ostrich picked up his other leg, he would fall down. See. That’s what I mean about learning things if you keep your ears open.

  We stopped at the Chinatown section of San Diego on the way back from the Zoo and ate at an authentic Chinese restaurant. You always can tell it’s authentic as long as it has a dragon in its title. It can be the Red Dragon or the Green Dragon or the Komodo Dragon, but if it doesn’t have dragon, you’d better be careful. At least that’s what my father used to say. We always went to the Red Dragon in our neighborhood when we wanted Chinese food. And we always stayed away from restaurants that had a taste of something in their names as I mentioned before. I was pleased to find out that the San Diego dragon we chose really had better food than I ever had at the Red Dragon. My father’s advice was as good as it usually was. And how. Afterwards, we went back to my apartment for still another exciting night, and Olga left the next morning to go back to work. She was expecting to hear what Vladimir’s contact had to say about their mission.

  It turned out that what they told them was essentially the Russian version of either shit or get off the pot although I never learned how to say that in Russian. They were very unhappy with Igor and Vladimir for having blown their cover, even though it was to another Russian agent and in another country. They told them they had two weeks to either get the information I had or kill me or both. And if they failed, then they would be killed which is usually the fate of spies who fail and of some who succeed as well.

  Chapter 29

  The next Saturday afternoon after I was recovering from still another breakfast with Ben and Jerry by reading a book in my little apartment, the door to my apartment opened and Olga came in followed by Igor and Vladimir. She had her little Beretta in her hand and she came over and stood on my right side. At the same time, Igor and Vladimir came in and stood against the wall to the left of me. Vladimir then said,

  “We want it. Hand it over or she’ll kill you.” He nodded in Olga’s direction even though she was the only she in the room.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Vladimir then said, “Kill him.”

  I looked at Olga and did the only thing I could think of doing on the spur of the moment. I winked at her and she started to giggle. While I did this I drew my own Beretta and lined it up on the target I had decided on. I took my time, but not too much time, because I knew that I had to make every shot count. Any good marksman knows it’s more important to be the first to hit the target than to be the first to fire at the target. I decided to concentrate on Igor and Vladimir first rather than Olga because if Olga decided to fire, I knew I was already dead. Igor and Vladimir were caught by surprise and started drawing their own weapons. By the time I got my first shot off, they had their guns out and were spraying bullets wildly in my direction. I knew I had to be more precise in my target selection than simply aiming at their heads in spite of the fact they were such large and easy targets because I was afraid the underpowered .25ACP caliber bullets would just bounce off their thick skulls. I chose a smaller target and took just enough time to aim precisely at the target I had decided on. I aimed at Vladimir first, and shot him through his right eye. I then turned my little pistol on Igor who was about to let off another round and shot him through his left eye. They both dropped to the floor and the room was suddenly silent. I turned my gun towards Olga who was just standing there with her gun still drawn. I still had three shells left in my Beretta if I had kept an accurate count. She just shrugged and dropped her little Beretta back into her red purse. She was dressed all in black as usual.

  “Why didn’t you shoot?” I asked. I was hoping it was because she liked me too much to kill me, but she said,

  “The first time they said ‘kill him’ it was supposed to be to frighten you. I wasn’t supposed to actually shoot you unless they said ‘kill him’ a second time. They wanted to frighten you into giving them the information you have. But they never said it a second time. You were too quick. They expected you to say ‘Stop, I’ll give it to you.’ They never expected you to draw a weapon with my gun pointed at your head. You must be very brave.”

  “Or very stupid,” I said.

  “Or very stupid,” she agreed and then she smiled and I did too. “You’re lucky. I could have killed you easily if I was supposed to do it when they said it the first time. You would never have got that little Beretta out. You’re lucky I followed their direction.”

  I’d rather be lucky than dead, as the old saying goes, I thought to myself.

  “So you would have killed me?” I asked. She only shrugged in response. She didn’t say yes or no. I’ve always hoped since then that the answer would have been no, but she has never said and maybe she doesn’t know herself the answer to that question. I’ll take lucky over the alternative any day.

  Just at this time, who should come barging into the unlocked door but Ben and Jerry with their Glocks out and ready. They looked around, expertly assessed the situation and then each of them shot several times into both Igor and Vladimir who were already quite dead. I guess they just couldn’t resist the temptation of shooting those new Glocks since they hadn’t used them yet.

  “We were at the gelato place,” Ben said as if they had a good excuse. If they had been at Baskin Robbins it would have been hard to miss the three black Buick Regals parked next to it.

  “I figured.”

  They took a close look at Igor and Vladimir and where they had been shot, and at the little Beretta I still held in my hand. Jerry said, with admiration in his voice, “That’s good shooting. That’s probably the only place you could have shot them and be assured of a clean kill with that little pea shooter.” Ben nodded in agreement. Olga just looked at me and shrugged. Her expression told me she was sure she could easily have done just as well.

  “So what do we do with them?” I asked.

  “We’ll take care of it and get someone to come in and clean this place up. It’s lucky this is a cinder block building. Hardly any damage and no bullets would have gone through the wall and the sound would have been muffled. We didn’t hear anything on our way over. This will be an easy fix.” He called Sam and told him to come out and bring Louie and the cleanup crew and be ready to take two cars out to the desert for a party tomorrow afternoon. He asked if I wanted to go this time since it was Sunday and I didn’t have to work. I turned to Olga and said,

  “Are you busy tomorrow? Want to go for a ride out into the desert with us? I think you’ll enjoy it.”

  She said, “Sure. I don’t think I have anything on my schedule for tomorrow, why not?”

  I found it strange that Ben and Jerry seemed to completely ignore Olga’s presence and didn’t say a word when I invited her to come with us. I still didn’t know that she wasn’t also a double agent, but I was sure she suspected that I was. While we waited for Sam and Louie and the cleanup crew to come, Ben and Jerry decided to go across the street to Baskin Robbins to get a fix. I found out later they were going down the list of flavors and had even eaten the bubblegu
m flavor by that time. I decided to take some of my clothes and other meager possessions and put them in the duffel bag and take them out to the car to get them out of the way of the cleaners. I didn’t want them to clean me out when they cleaned me up. Olga came with me and I asked her which car was hers. She pointed to one of the black Buick Regals. I told her to move it so Sam and Louie didn’t take it by mistake and she got in and moved it over next to the beach surf and apparel shop. Then she went inside. I locked the Expedition with my duffel bag inside and went over to see what she was doing. She was looking through the racks of bikinis when I caught up to her.

  “I don’t have a bathing suit. Don’t you think I need one?”

  “I guess. But won’t it be hard to decide with that wig on? You won’t be going to any beach with that on. It’s too hot and, as you said, part of your business uniform.”

  “You’re right. Well I’ll get some ideas and come back later. Maybe you can help me choose. I can model some of them for you and you can tell me which ones you like the best.” She smiled a smile that was almost a leer.

  “Okay. What are you going to do then? Do you want to have dinner with me? Now that you’re the only one left, you’ll have to keep close tabs on me. Be practically by my side all the time.”

  “We’ll see. But I do want to have dinner with you. Are you going to be around?”

  “Yes. I’ll either be in Baskin Robbins or the apartment. Come over when you’re finished.”