by Jon Land
“I’m still not interested.”
The three men exchanged glances. “What can we do to attract your interest, Professor?” asked another one of them.
“You know what you can do? Go to hell.”
Two nights later, Taupmann went to sleep in his hotel only to wake up in a windowless room facing a pair of big, menacing guards. Then the original trio of men entered the room and the guards left.
“You will provide us with the information we want,” the general said.
“No, I won’t.”
“You will. You just don’t know it yet.”
“Who are you? Why do you do this to me?”
The speaker had smiled. “We are either your best friends or worst enemies. The choice is yours. You either can resume your life, Professor, or you have no life.”
“I’m an important man,” Taupmann insisted indignantly. “I can't just disappear. People will look for me, people will come for me.”
The general looked him in the eye, smiling again. “This is Russia, Professor. Nobody finds anything here we don’t want found.”
When Taupmann still refused to talk, he was transferred to a military prison, not to be released until such time that he cooperated. His continued silence led to Taupmann’s transfer to the gulag from which Black Scorpion had liberated him after he’d been forgotten there and left to rot. And the old man had embraced the opportunity he believed Dracu was providing to achieve something he wanted more than anything in the world: The destruction of Russia.
The door opened with a click, allowing the noxious scent of marijuana to flood the hall in a haze of smoke. Dracu entered the sprawling confines of what Professor Niels Taupmann referred to as his workshop, but looked more like an art studio. Original paintings of all sizes, exclusively landscapes, filled out the walls while canvases in various stages of development sat on easels scattered along the spacious floor. Dracu knew there was some sense to the placement, some balance, but he didn’t dare ask what, reluctant to do anything that might upset the even more delicate balance that defined the old man’s mind. The art studio, workshop, or whatever it was reeked even more pungently of the pot stench.
The landscapes were wondrously realistic, looking not so much like art as windows offering various views of the world as the old man must’ve imagined it to be.
“You should try it,” Taupmann said to him, without looking up from the canvas he was working on. “Creating beauty soothes the soul. The world can never have too much beauty.”
“No, Professor, it can’t.”
“So grab a brush and join me. The world needs all the light it can get.”
“I’m not much good at art … or light.”
Taumpann chided him with his eyes. “A man with your vision? You are a great artist, my friend, on a different canvas of your own choosing.” The old man held up a brush. “Why not let me teach you the basics? I used to be a teacher, you know; at least, I think I was.”
“You were,” Dracu confirmed. “And a very good one, until the Russians made you their prisoner.”
Taupmann’s expression tightened, seeming to forget all about the paintbrush he was holding. “Did my students miss me?”
“I’m sure they did.”
His expression began to darken, progressing through various shades he’d used in any number of paintings to craft the sky at sunset. “I hate Russia.”
“I know.”
“Ugly country.”
Taupmann laid his paintbrush down and stepped out from behind the canvas, stuffing his hands in the pockets of his bathrobe worn over a pair of pajamas. Dracu couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen the professor dressed in anything else.
The old man stopped at a long table cluttered with any number of jerry-rigged inventions he’d concocted either on his own or on Dracu’s coaxing. Several of these were identical Bose clock radios common to high-end luxury hotels and resorts, a facsimile of which had already provided another centerpiece of Black Scorpion’s plan. Taupmann lifted a marijuana blunt rolled in a flavored cigar wrapper from the sill of an ashtray. He touched a lighter to its end and inhaled deeply, the odor of grape-scented weed swallowing the harsh scent of oil paint that would’ve otherwise dominated the room.
Taupmann coughed out a thick curtain of smoke that seemed to hang in the air. “If you haven’t come to paint, what have you come for?”
“I just wanted to check in on you. See how your final set of calculations and estimates were coming.”
The old man smoothed one side of the wild hair growing like weeds from his scalp down, leaving the other to skew in all directions. “Wonderfully. Everything checks out. We’re ready. Just one problem, though. A big one.”
“What is it?” Dracu asked, feeling the annoying tug of trepidation.
Taupmann shook a nearly empty plastic bag down to pot stems and seeds. “My supply is drained. Need more, need much, much more!”
To help blur the truth behind the professor’s presence here, Dracu had also come to offer something that quickly became as important to Taupmann as his paintings and desire for vengeance against Russia:
Marijuana.
“I’ll have it sent up immediately,” he promised.
“Good, good, good! Helps me think, keeps the ghosts away. You believe in ghosts?”
“I’ve never seen one. But I believe in plenty I’ve never seen.”
“They’re real, all fellow residents of the gulag. I watched so many die. They went, others came, then they died, too. Vicious cycle, vicious!”
“I understand.”
“My parents stop by sometimes, too. We watch television together,” Taupmann said, pointing toward a big widescreen mounted on the wall. He lifted the blunt back to his mouth and sucked in another deep drag. “Join me?” he said, offering it to Dracu.
“Not today.”
“Come, then, I have something to show you.”
Taupmann took the ashtray in hand and led Dracu to a beautifully drawn painting of Russia, complete with literally thousands of tiny, pin-size dots marring the landscape, often in large clusters.
“What do you think? The red is for our primary targets. Blue represents the more outlying, secondary ones. Green represents the densest areas of population, yellow the next level, and white the sparsest. The red and green pins are in perfect combination. Looks like Christmas.”
“Yes,” Dracu agreed, “it does indeed. I’m counting on you, Professor. I’ve waited a very long time for this.”
“So have I,” Taupmann said, through the haze of smoke that had settled between them. “But we must take care, my friend, because almost invariably it’s in the eleventh hour when failure occurs, always unexpected and always preventable had all appropriate measures been taken.” He shook his nearly empty plastic bag. “That’s why you’d best replenish my supply.”
* * *
Dracu found a subordinate waiting for him outside the professor’s suite of rooms, along with Armura.
“We’re ready to pick up the woman in Bună Ziua.”
“I’m glad you waited, because I’ve decided to join you,” Dracu said, recalling Niels Taupmann’s cautionary words. “Add some additional vehicles and men. And make sure the Securitate station is secure.”
“Is there a problem, domnule?”
“No, just a feeling.”
FIFTY-SEVEN
BUNĂ ZIUA, ROMANIA
Michael and Alexander sat in the darkness of their Alfa Romeo down the street from the wrought-iron fence that enclosed an old building lifted from another century. Very likely some member of the Romanian ruling party, and royal family before him, had resided here at one point. It was an architectural masterpiece, several centuries old at the very least, but beautifully maintained thanks in large part to the detail that went into its construction with wood and glass that were the best of their time. The roof came to a single peak ridden by a weather vane. Steel grating covered the windows and the Romanian flag hung over the front door.
The exterior was finished in burnished concrete, polished to be completely smooth.
“You believe the bartender?” Michael asked, referring to the man they’d left bound and gagged back in the basement of the bar.
“Yes,” Alexander told him, “because he was scared. More of who’s inside that building than us.”
“He called them the Securitate.”
“The predecessor for today’s SRI for Serviciul Român de Informaţii.”
“You’re talking about the old Romanian secret police,” Michael said, realizing.
He knew that the Securitate had been dismantled after the fall of the Berlin Wall ushered in the end of the Cold War, leading to the purported demise of Soviet-style secret police organizations. In Romania, this process was further expedited by the overthrow of the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, who ruled the country with an iron fist defined by the now defunct Securitate.
At least thought to be defunct.
Like its sister organization in Russia, the KGB, though, the members of the Securitate never really went away. Instead, they remained still and quiet and sought positions in the rebranded Serviciul Român de Informaţii, or SRI, from which they could reclaim the power they believed to be rightfully theirs. And, like Black Scorpion, the revamped Securitate knew well enough to remain in the shadows, leaving their ever-increasing measure of control over the country to the subject of innuendo and conspiracy theorists.
Alexander’s silence affirmed Michael’s conclusion. “This isn’t going to be easy.”
Michael returned his gaze to the building, picturing Scarlett Swan as a prisoner inside.
“Where do you think they’re keeping her?” he asked Alexander.
“The basement would be my first thought, but I noticed staining in the concrete of the foundation.”
“Staining?”
Alexander lowered the tiny set of powerful binoculars with night-vision capabilities from his eyes. They’d chosen this spot because a garbage truck parked on an awkward angle perhaps fifty feet before them precluded clear view of their car from the SRI building.
“Indicates flooding, very common in this region,” Alexander explained, handing Michael the binoculars. “My guess is it rendered the basement unusable long ago. If it were me, I’d place her on the top floor in the room furthest from the street, looking out over the back.”
“So no one would be able to hear her screams.” Michael felt his heart skip a beat, as he lowered the binoculars and handed them back.
“You saved this woman once, Michael,” said Alexander. “You can do it again.”
FIFTY-EIGHT
FRENCH GUIANA, FIVE YEARS AGO
The gunmen had come in canoe-like crafts that were actually hollowed-out logs; six of them packed three in each. Their weapons looked old, dated, but deadly.
“Must be poachers,” Michael assumed, after explaining to Paddy what he’d seen.
“Not armed like that, they ain’t.”
“What then?”
“Let’s break camp.”
“We’re leaving?” Michael raised.
“Moving. Men you spotted are likely kidnappers. We move on, unless you got eyes on killing them, mate.”
“They were headed down the path that leads to the camp of those archaeologists.”
“Bad day for those diggers, then. Bad day for that bitch you got yourself a hard-on for.”
“We’ve got to do something.”
“Then by all means,” Paddy told him, sitting down on a rock, “gear up and go do it, mate.”
“You’re not coming?”
“Rules are rules, mate. You do what I say when I say, and right now I say to take your arse where I tell you. You don’t want to do that, you’re welcome to all the knives you can carry.”
“Where will you be?”
“Fucking gone,” Paddy told him.
“Maybe you should practice what you preach.”
* * *
Michael felt his heart thudding in his chest as he dropped into a facedown body crawl through ground brush the last stretch of the way into the camp. It was hot and steamy, and the moist dirt used his sweat like glue to stick to his clothes and face.
Michael had just reached the rim of the camp and outermost tents when he heard the crackle of gunfire. Training was one thing; putting that training into practice was something else entirely. The truth was he desperately wished Paddy was here, or Alexander, but the greater truth was they weren’t and this was up to him alone.
He eased himself along the camp’s outskirts, careful to belly crawl through its darkest reaches and prepared to use his knives just the way Paddy had taught him. The gunmen were rousing the twenty-five or so archaeological students and professionals from their tents, ordering them about in a language neither the students nor Michael understood, as he studied their movements, their faces. He recognized the two camp guards and realized they were actually part of the kidnappers, had likely been behind alerting these men to the presence of so many potential victims, each representing a sizeable bounty.
That’s when he heard a rustling in the brush behind him and turned to see Scarlett Swan returning from a makeshift bath in a nearby stream, wearing only a towel. Emerging into the clearing twenty feet before him with no idea of what she was walking into.
“Scarlett!” Michael called in a hushed voice too soft for her to hear.
Her sandaled steps froze too late, one of the kidnappers on her before she could retreat. Dragging her all the way into the clearing and stopping only when her towel fell, leaving her naked. The kidnapper gawked at her, eyes bulging at the perfect shape of her body.
Scarlett slapped him across the face, drawing laughter from the other kidnappers standing over their now kneeling hostages. The kidnapper laughed too, was still laughing when he slapped Scarlett back.
And she slapped him.
And he slapped her, each blow harder than the one preceding it, the laughter growing louder as the two of them stood face-to-face exchanging slap after slap and blood started dribbling from Scarlett’s mouth.
Another kidnapper, meanwhile, was dragging one of the college-age women by the hair across the rough ground toward a tent. And a third kidnapper stood over a kneeling man, spinning the cylinder of an ancient revolver after filling only a single chamber with a bullet.
By then Michael had started to rise. None of the kidnappers noticed, too busy slapping their knees in rhythm with their laughter. They were nearing hysterics when Michael got to his feet behind the thin cover of the brush, not a single eye turned toward him when he burst into motion, twin knives in either hand.
Michael clung to the shadows, obscuring any view of him for the longest time possible. The first kidnapper to spot him was the one holding the revolver against the kneeling man’s head. He jerked the pistol upward in the same moment Michael unleashed his first knife.
The hammer clicked on an empty chamber as Michael’s blade thwacked into the man’s chest. The man regarded it briefly, looking puzzled, and then keeled over to the jungle floor dead.
Michael’s second blade was already in motion by then, taking the kidnapper dragging the girl off toward the tent in the throat and unleashing a fountain of blood that showered her.
Six left, Michael had the sense to register in his mind.
The kidnapper exchanging slaps with Scarlett was twisting to free a submachine gun from his shoulder when Michael twirled toward him and cut his throat. Felt the warm spray of blood as he kept in motion, machete unsheathed now and cutting one way, then the other. It didn’t feel real, it didn’t feel like anything and seemed to unfold in the gap between single breaths.
Michael thought he heard cries of anguish and panic but couldn’t be sure. Another gunman opened up with a wild spray that found nothing but brush, before Michael plunged the same hunting knife he’d used on the wild boar in as far as it would go and left it there. Some primal instinct made him duck, and a barrage fired by another kidnapper found the man he’d just s
tabbed instead.
The dead man’s submachine gun hit the ground ahead of him and Michael dove after it, spinning as he took its warm steel in his grasp. He clacked off a barrage that was wild at first, before quickly honing in on the motion of targets darting about the clearing that had turned to utter chaos.
Michael recorded high-pitched screams, the hostages he thought, as he recorded three more kidnappers downed before the weapon clicked empty. He glimpsed Scarlett slamming into the final man just as he was about to fire a clear shot Michael’s way. That shot went skyward instead and, enraged, the man cracked the weapon’s butt into Scarlett’s skull. Should’ve swung back toward Michael at that point, but moved to finish her instead.
Michael grazed the man’s shoulder with his next toss, leaving him only a single knife left. His mind calculated distance and angle, enough to tell him he didn’t dare risk his last knife on another errant throw, and surged toward the final gunman instead.
The kidnapper had just started the butt of his rifle down toward Scarlett again, his expression twisted in fury, when Michael jammed the blade into his thorax all the way to the hilt. Feeling it dig through muscle and sinew felt like slicing through thick burlap. The man lashed his rifle around in a slicing motion that caught Michael in the side of the head, turning him wobbly on his feet with his senses gone fuzzy. Saw two of the man, a double image, looming over him when the man re-steadied his submachine gun, just as Michael’s hand closed on a rock beneath him on the ground.
But which of the images to aim it at?
He wasn’t sure why he chose the one on the right, only that the thud of impact was followed by both of them tumbling over. Michael pounced upon the only one that landed, the same rock pounding the man’s face again and again until there was nothing recognizable left and he tossed it aside, his clothes and skin covered in blood.
He might have stayed there forever if he hadn’t heard a rhythmic beating he first took to be his own heartbeat until he turned and spotted Paddy standing at the edge of the clearing, applauding him.
“You’re ready, mate,” he said, grinning.
“I thought you’d be fucking gone.”