All Fall Down

by James Brabazon

  “You find the bathroom; I’m going to get a drink. Remember what I said about how to do this?”

  “Yes,” he replied, but he looked suddenly unsure of himself.

  “Don’t worry. You’ll be grand.”

  He headed off, back straight, avoiding the clusters of drinkers orbiting the bar. I took my time and spiraled around the perimeter, checking out the paintings and the people who might purchase them, eventually winding up at the far end of the bar, where there were no tables and no punters to hem me in. After pretending not to see me for an almost-but-not-quite unprofessional moment, the barman drifted over and jerked his head toward me. He looked like he should have been shaking down customers out back, not shaking cocktails for them behind the bar. Blond hair. Blue eyes. Six-four, two twenty and ripped. It was like looking at a hologram of my younger, fitter self. I rolled my shoulders and felt the wound left by the shooter in the cottage pulling at itself. I remembered, again, that I needed a shave. Right then I didn’t feel even forty-two, never mind twenty-two.

  “Johnnie Walker Black on the rocks. A double. And, hey, is it OK if I use the house phone? I left my cell in the cab. Pain in the arse.”

  He looked at me in such a way as to leave no doubt that I was, leaned over and handed me the receiver from a wireless landline docked beside the till. As he did so, his shirt gaped open at the neck. Hanging there on a gold chain was a traditional three-barred Russian cross. I thanked him, squinting over his shoulder at the expensive bottles lined up behind him. Individual labels drew into focus: vodka. A lot of vodka.

  I looked around for Baaz, but there was no sign of him in the crowd on the other side of the room. While Blondie poured the Scotch, I dialed the number in the book of matches and counted the rings. On the sixth tone the line clicked. Coming back to me, in distorted reverb, was the fractionally delayed thump-thump-thump of the music smothering the bar. Avraham Landau was on the premises.

  “What the fucking shit do you want, Yossi? I told you not to disturb me.” Pure foulmouthed mother-tongue Russian. I took a deep breath.

  “I’ve got a problem,” I said, also in Russian. “At the bar.”

  “Then fucking deal with it,” came the reply.

  “Nyet,” I said. “It’s a big problem. Shabak.”

  “Fuck. OK. Offer them a drink on the house. I’ll come down.”

  I hung up and exchanged the handset for a heavy tumbler of whisky. As I did so, Baaz sidled up beside me. The plan was a simple one: he would remove the SIG from his turban in the bathroom, retie it and then hide the pistol in his folded jacket—which he would then pass to me in the dimly lit jostle of the bar. He stood next to me, nervously swaying from one foot to the other, out of time with the music.

  I stepped back from the bar to give a lone, black-eyed woman with an elaborate hairdo and an expensive smile a shot at getting served.

  “OK, let me have it.” I was looking over Baaz’s shoulder, scanning the room for any response to my call. He didn’t move. “Baaz?” I faced him properly. He was rooted to the spot. He was still wearing his jacket.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “There was a . . . a problem.”

  “What, in the bathroom?”

  He nodded. I looked around. A short guy with a black ponytail, wearing a red shirt and a deep frown, bounced down the stairs. Avraham Landau. I watched him skirt around the customers and rock up to the bar. The frown evaporated into a shit-eating grin.

  “Yossi,” I saw him mouth at the barman in Russian. “Where are our friends?”

  The barman shrugged, kicking off the inevitable “you said, he said” exchange.

  “Baaz, I need it now. Is it in the bathroom?” He nodded, eyes downcast. Landau put his hands on his hips and looked up at the ceiling. The barman was looking for me. “Fuck it. Which stall is it in?”

  “It’s in . . .”

  “Where, Baaz? Where is it?”

  He looked up at me, eyes pleading. “It’s in the hotel. I couldn’t do it. It’s not . . . It’s forbidden.” Tears welled up in his eyes. “I’m sorry.”

  The barman clocked me and turned to his boss.

  Fuck.

  I gave Baaz my whisky glass and headed straight toward them. The barman’s hands went under the countertop.

  Two meters.

  The black-eyed woman who’d been served after me turned on her heels, martini glass in hand, the DJ’s rhythm moving her hips, a smile dancing on her lips.

  “Hey,” I said, wrapping around her, “you look great.”

  I drew her close to me. She froze, rigid, the movement of the music draining out of her. Our cheeks touched. My fingers slid up her neck and found the back of her head, withdrawing the long, forked silver slide holding her hair in place. With my left arm I swept her away from me gently. Her glass fell and smashed. Vodka evaporated into the barroom night. She stumbled and I heard her gasp. My right hand kept moving, arcing forward and then down, hard. The barman’s fist was closed around the grip of a Jericho 9mm. I drove the pointed metal tongues between his knuckles, trapping his trigger finger beneath the steel of the guard and the wooden countertop.

  I twisted the hairpin and brought my wrist across his face, striking his left temple. He reeled backward, gun hand relaxing. I wrenched the barrel of the pistol up and out, snapping his index finger, the limp digit still caught in the guard. Then I brought the Jericho to bear on him at point-blank range. His left hand came around, gripping the neck of a vodka bottle. I leaned in, ramming the muzzle into his sternum. I put my thumb on the back of the slide and fired. The 9mm round tore a wound channel straight through his chest, severing his spine, the noise of the shot absorbed by his lungs and the unopened breech. He dropped. Six seconds from grabbing his gun to hitting the deck.

  The bass rumble of the music thundered on, overwritten by the bright notes of an electronic crescendo shifting from one turntable to another. I’d blocked the line of sight of the black-eyed woman I’d robbed, and there wasn’t anything more unusual to hear than the vodka bottle hitting the ground. No one turned around. If they had, all they’d have seen was an unattended bar. I racked the Jericho. The spent cartridge case leaped out, clattering like a brass ice cube into a tumbler on the bar. The only other person who knew what was happening was Landau.

  He started to run but plowed into a couple dancing. Entwined in hair and limbs, he stumbled. A pissed-off dancing partner pushed him back toward me and I caught him by the wrist, twisting it up into a lock behind his back.

  “Prostite,” I said in Russian to the dancers. Sorry. “Too much vodka.” They shrugged it off and wrapped their arms around each other. I dug the Jericho into Landau’s ribs, hard enough to bruise them.

  “Move. Your office. Now. Keep smiling or I’ll kill you here. Ponyal?” He told me he understood. I turned to Baaz as we moved off toward the stairs. “Don’t go to the hotel. I’ll meet you on the beach, by the marina. OK?” He nodded. “And ditch the turban.” He nodded again and we went our separate ways.

  * * *

  —

  “KNEEL DOWN.”

  He was trembling, sweat glossing his face. Close up, in the brighter light of his office, I could see him clearly for what he was: a mid-fifties, art-dealing mafioso arsehole. I turned my head.

  “You too.”

  The skinny brunette standing next to him got on her knees as well, high heels splayed out behind her, miniskirt halfway up her waist. She’d been bent over when we walked in, snorting a line of white powder off the desk. Now she was sobbing, eyes red and wet, begging me in hoarse, tear-soaked Russian whispers not to hurt her. She was pretty and still in her teens, and as high as a kite.

  “Listen,” he pleaded in Russian. “You’re not the Shabak, so who are you? We can cut a deal. Is it money? I’ve got money. You can have money. My name is Avi, OK? Avi Landau. Everyone knows I have money. Sveta, show him where the saf
e is, honey. Give him the money.”

  Sveta looked at me. I looked at Sveta and then behind her at what I guessed was a door to a walk-in closet.

  “Is the safe in there?”

  She nodded. More sobbing. She buried her face in her hands, gagging on the phlegm clogging her nose and throat.

  “OK, get up and get in and lock the door. Don’t come out till the police tell you to.” She looked at Avi for permission. “Move!”

  She stood and then lurched forward, grabbing at the desk to steady herself. Keeping her back to me, she ran her fingers across the remnants of the powder and rubbed it into her gums before stepping through the doorway. I turned back to Avi.

  “I got your number from a mutual friend. I’d like to do some business.” His eyes widened. “I’ve got one hundred dollars,” I continued in Russian. “It’s an unusual bill. A very sought-after issue. I’d like to know what I can buy with it.”

  He dropped his hands slightly and held them out toward me, palms up.

  “OK, man, I don’t know who your friend is, but you got the wrong guy. You understand? If you want money or a painting, we can talk, but—”

  I cut him off with a round through the left hand. His thumb, forefinger detached. Blood splattered his face. Sveta screamed through the door. He doubled over, groaning through gritted teeth, forehead scraping the floor. Outside, the music throbbed and pulsed, louder and louder.

  “What can I buy with my hundred dollars, Avi?”

  “Fuck you.”

  “No,” I said, “fuck you.” I swept my left leg around, catching him on the left ear with my foot. He fell sideways and looked up at me.

  “Do you know who the fuck I am?”

  Right foot thrust kick to the rib cage.

  I felt bone crack under the force of the blow. Old-school punishment beating: underrated and surprisingly effective. PIRA had taught us a trick or two. Avi balled up on his side, the remains of his bloodied hand clamped over his shattered ribs, knees drawn up to his chest. Saliva pooled on the floor beneath his cheek. I kicked him again in the same spot and felt more bones snap. He was in trouble now. Blood bubbled around his mouth; his breathing had become shallow and fast. In all likelihood I’d punctured his lung. I squatted down and pushed the tip of the Jericho into the back of his left knee.

  “Tell me about the money.”

  “I swear I—”

  I shot out his kneecap.

  Avi roared a deep, tearing scream. He writhed and begged and brought both his hands down to the wound. The knee had imploded, lead, bone and shredded clothing blown out through the joint. I kicked his hands away and put the muzzle of the pistol against the back of his right knee. Sveta stopped screaming. I took out the hundred-dollar bill and held it in front of his face.

  “What,” I said, “does this money buy?”

  “Please, God, no. Please. Please.”

  “What did it buy Rachel?” I pushed the barrel of the Jericho deep into the soft flesh below his thigh.

  “Arkhangel,” he hissed through gritted teeth.

  “What the fuck is Arkhangel?”

  “Her work, man. Her project. The money paid for everything. Understand? Everything. Please, help me now. Please.”

  “Who sends it?”

  He was crying wildly now, the pain crushing the sense out of him. The main door to the office swung open. The doorman from downstairs had replaced his metal detector with a Mossberg pump-action. As he raised the barrel, I put two rounds in his chest. He collapsed backward into the corridor. I walked over to him. There was no one else in sight, just the illuminated emergency exit sign at the far end of the corridor. And then the music stopped.

  Screaming. Heels clicking on stone.

  Motorcycle cops would arrive within seconds of the barman’s body being dialed in. I dragged the bouncer into the office by his ankle and closed the door. Breath rattled in his chest. I shot him again, and then turned the pistol on Avi.

  “This is it, Avi. This is what all their money gets you. Shit paintings and a bullet to the head.” He crossed himself right to left, the Orthodox way. “Who sends it?” I asked again.

  “Moskva,” he gurgled through the blood and pain. “The Akvarium.”

  29

  You killed Landau, didn’t you?”

  I found Baaz slumped on the beach where we’d agreed to meet, just south of the marina. He was balled up against the cold, shivering. Leaving the bar immediately after the fight broke out, he’d swapped the crimson turban for a plain black wrap. I hoped he’d walked the long way around. It was quiet, just a couple of kids drinking beer and making out by the promenade. Farther off, a string of joggers pounded along by the sea.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said, squatting down beside him. “What’s done is done.”

  It had taken me well over an hour to get to him, ducking down side streets and back alleys. It was a relief to escape the blue light shed by the police cars. The cops had made it into the bar while I was still upstairs. I’d forced a window and scaled a drainpipe, before taking off over the roofs and dropping down into a private garden. The Shabak would put two and two together almost immediately—if it hadn’t had someone in place in the joint all along. I hoped Sveta had stayed put until the cops covered the bodies. To them it would just look like a gangland shootout.

  “No,” he said. “I messed up.” His voice cracked. Tears fell onto the already wet sand between his bent knees. He was shaking—though whether from nerves or the cold I couldn’t tell. “If I’d done like you said and hidden the gun, you wouldn’t have had to kill the barman.” His shoulders heaved. A light breeze from inland carried his sobs off over the sea. “I knew how important it was. I know how much trouble we’re in. And now it’s my fault he’s dead.”

  “Hey . . .” I put my hand on his shoulder. We were too exposed. The city was no longer safe—if it ever had been. “It’s OK. I asked too much of you, that’s all. It wasn’t your fault. If he hadn’t drawn on me, he’d be mixing Moscow mules right now.” I could see how he was pinned. I’d been hanging from the same hook for days. I wanted to tell him that at least the barman hadn’t been his oldest, only friend. “We create our own Angel of Death, Baaz. He made his. That’s all there is to it.”

  He wiped the snot out of his mustache with the back of his sleeve.

  “And I’ve made mine by coming here, haven’t I?”

  “I’m not going to tell you anything that isn’t true. This is dirty work and we’re up against it, that’s for sure. All hell’s going to break loose in the morning. Let’s hope Ezra was right about Talia keeping us alive.”

  “Yeah, but which Talia?” He managed a weak laugh at his own joke.

  “Best to stand up, shake it off. We’ll look less conspicuous if we’re walking.”

  I hauled him to his feet and then washed my hands and face in the sticky salt water lapping the sand by his feet. My clothes were still fouled with blood, but the black fabric hid most of the gore. We headed north, keeping the sea to our left.

  “Listen, Baaz. I need to ask you something. You have to concentrate, all right?” I took his silence for agreement and pressed on. “The Azriel Jacobs fellowship. Have you ever heard of it?”

  “The what?”

  “The Azriel Jacobs research fellowship at the Kolymsky School of Computer Sciences. Here in Tel Aviv. Had you heard of it? Before we met, I mean.”

  “No, I hadn’t. Are we going back to the hotel? I’m freezing.”

  “Yes,” I said. “We are. But right now I need you to think hard. Are you sure? It didn’t mean anything to you, nothing at all?”

  “I don’t . . .” He looked around, eyes wide, hands shaking. “When I read it in the paper online. In Haaretz. That’s the first time I saw it.”

  “OK. You’re sure? When you were researching where to study, applying to university, lo
oking for funding, you never heard it mentioned anywhere else?”

  “No,” he said, wrinkling his brow. “No, I didn’t.”

  “Think about it,” I said, quickening the pace. “Azriel. Azrael. It’s the same name. Azriel pays her. She looked upon the face of her paymaster and her paymaster is the Destroyer.” Baaz looked at me, dumbfounded. “And it terrified her. Moshe said she was scared, that the money came from bad people.”

  “So, what?” He stopped abruptly. “She’s being paid by the devil?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “She is. Was. Avi Landau, the guy whose number is in this book of matches”—I took them out of my pocket and lit a cigarette—“he didn’t just run the gallery. He ran cash to her. He said it paid for Rachel’s work, her project.” I looked around. We were completely alone now. “Her program is called Arkhangel. It’s the third variable.”

  “Follow the money, right?” Baaz’s fingers began to dance in the air in front of him.

  Follow the money. Everyone else certainly was, Frank included. Round and round the money goes, but where it starts, only a Russian knows. Except now I did, too.

  “It comes from the Akvarium,” I said. “In Moscow.”

  “Now you’re speaking Punjabi. What even is the Akvarium?”

  I took a long drag on my cigarette.

  “It’s the headquarters of the GRU,” I said. “Russian military intelligence.”

  * * *

  —

  WE CONTINUED TOWARD the hotel in silence. I tried to ignore the chill in the air, struggling to work out what all the slaughter amounted to. Baaz’s fingers drummed the air beside him as he walked. Whatever was going through his mind didn’t make it to his lips. Speaking slowed him down. Numbers energized him. I made my own calculations, too.

  Whatever Rachel was working on was being underwritten by the GRU, lubricated with a slick of untraceable filthy lucre.

  The visit to Gallery 7 answered the question I’d asked Moshe: I now knew which Russians were supplying the cash. But if Rachel hadn’t simply absconded, Moscow could still have been responsible for her disappearance. Just because the doctor and his goons were behind the curve didn’t mean the Russians were out of the picture. If Leonid Avilov had exceeded his orders as far as I’d exceeded mine, he could be a long way off-piste—and as out in the cold as I was.