Good and Dead (An Avner Ehrlich Thriller Book 2) Read online

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  Good and Dead

  E.L Pini

  Copyright © 2021 E.L. Pini

  All rights reserved; No parts of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information retrieval system, without the permission, in writing, of the author.

  Translation from the Hebrew by Tal Keren

  Contact: [email protected]

  Contents

  BOOK 1

  1.

  2.

  3.

  4.

  5.

  6.

  7.

  8.

  9.

  10.

  11.

  12.

  13.

  BOOK 2

  14.

  15.

  16.

  17.

  18.

  19.

  20.

  21.

  22.

  23.

  24.

  25.

  26.

  27.

  28.

  29.

  30.

  31.

  32.

  33.

  34.

  35.

  36.

  37.

  38.

  39.

  40.

  41.

  42.

  43.

  BOOK 3

  44.

  45.

  46.

  47.

  48.

  49.

  50.

  51.

  52.

  53.

  54.

  55.

  56.

  57.

  58.

  59.

  61.

  Acknowledgments

  Message from the Author

  “Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control; determined for the insect, as well as for the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust – we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper.”

  — Albert Einstein

  BOOK 1

  1.

  Moscow. South of Bitsevski Park, peeking above the bushes, is the rusted roof of a large barn. It stands in an oddly pastoral farm, invaded without warning by the city. Two huge men stand guard outside a rusted metal gate. The smell of sweat and dried urine thickens the air.

  Inside, some three hundred men stand in a circle, demarcating with their bodies a Vale Tudo ring – a no-holds-barred wrestling match to the death. In the center of the ring is a young man, firm and well-muscled, his blond hair pulled back. His high cheekbones and almond-shaped eyes hint at some old Mongolian drops in his blood. His face is pale and boyish, ending in a square and decisive Slavic chin.

  The young man’s name is Yuri Rasputin.

  He is dressed in a black ninjutsu uniform. His left arm is tightly wrapped around the neck of an older man, very white, dressed only in underwear.

  “Kill! Kill! Kill!” the crowd chants passionately, and the younger man slams his fist into the older one’s bleeding eye. He smiles and saunters around the ring, dragging his rival across the floor so that everyone in the crowd can catch a glimpse of his face as he punches him over and over again.

  The referee whistles, and the young man abruptly stops. The referee takes his hand and raises it high above his head. The older man drops to the floor like a ragdoll. The referee crouches over him, checks for a pulse, and looks pleased as he stands back up, declaring, “Good and dead!” and the crowd cheers and cries after him, “Good and dead, good and dead.”

  The bookies in the corner check their lists and distribute the winnings. A boy with a filthy face arrives with a large straw broom and starts sweeping up the empty bottles that litter the ring. The ringmaster is exchanging words with the young Rasputin, who is smiling and nodding. The ringmaster raises his hand and the audience slowly falls silent.

  “Yuri Rasputin,” he says, pointing at the young man, “has ascended to the final, and will now fight the undisputed champion of Russia, Gregor the Grizzly.” He points at the other side of the barn, where a large, hairy man in a wrestling uniform now emerges. As he approaches the audience screams, “Grizzly! Grizzly!”

  The ringmaster raises his hand again, silencing them.

  “Gregor is thirty-five years old, weighing two hundred and seventy-five pounds of pure muscle!”

  “Pure fat!” yells someone from the crowd, and is immediately silences with a punch to the jaw. The ringmaster roars. “In the other corner is Yuri Rasputin! Seventeen years old, one hundred and sixty-five pounds! He has five wins, defeating each of his rivals with his death-choke grip ! For the winner we have five thousand American dollars, cash! For the loser – eternal life!” The crowd erupts into cheers and applause.

  The fighters enter the ring. The crowd grows louder. The ringmaster hastily retreats, and the fight begins. Rasputin dances, the Grizzly moves in for a series of hooks which he easily dodges. Gregor throws a wide kick. Rasputin manages to grab his leg, and twists. Gregor hits the floor hard, but quickly regains his footing. His face is red with fury.

  “I’ve let you play, little shit – now, I kill you,” he says, and takes a half-step to the left. Rasputin steps in after him. Gregor abruptly reels back to the right, slamming the back of his huge fist into Rasputin’s face – he takes the blow full on and withdraws. But in an instant, he is dancing again, Gregor charging in his wake.

  Rasputin suddenly lunges into the air and executes an impeccable drop-kick into Gregor’s astonished face – before he recovers, Rasputin’s leg is already rising into another drop-kick. Gregor loses his patience and lashes out with a powerful hook that connects with Rasputin’s head, throwing him off balance – he stumbles back and trips over the referee, who shoves him back into the center of the ring.

  Rasputin is still stunned into a stupor as Gregor the Grizzly embraces him in a choke-hold, and shows no resistance as he drags him by the throat around the ring.

  “Kill! Kill! Kill!” yells the crowd. Gregor stops and lowers his head to look into Rasputin’s eyes. Rasputin throws a quick fist into his eye. Gregor recoils, howling in pain. The crowd falls into a deathly silence. A river of blood flows from his eye. Rasputin grabs him in a choke-hold, squeezes his windpipe, and lashes out with a series of quick elbow-blows into the wounded eye. The Grizzly screams and writhes, and Rasputin keeps punching.

  Gregor falls and slams his hand down on the floor, again and again. The referee looks questioningly to Rasputin.

  “Kill! Kill! Kill!” demands the mob. Rasputin looks at the referee, then back to the crowd.

  “Good and dead!” he calls out to them, and crushes Gregor’s temple repeatedly with the heel of his foot until his head slumps limply to the side.

  The stunned referee checks his pulse and declares, “Good and dead!” He lifts his arm into the air and yells, “Yuri Rasputin is the 1993 Champion of Free Russia!” Cheers, whistles and applause drown out anything else.

  A short while later, after four men had joined forces and dragged Gregor’s heavy corpse out of the ring, the crowd begins to thin out. A tall man in a suit hands Rasputin a thick stack of bills. He sh
oves it into his pocket and heads out of the barn, then climbs into a battered grey van. Inside he takes off the shirt of his uniform and removes the small, concealed icepick that had been fastened to the inside of his arm with a leather strap. He wipes the blade clean of Gregor’s blood and stashes the icepick in his duffle bag, smiling contentedly.

  “How’d it go?” asks the driver.

  “Good and dead,” says Rasputin.

  2.

  “Good as new!” said Sasson, our combat fitness instructor, practically glowing with pride. “Thirty-two hundred yards’ dog paddle, fifty-one minutes. Strong as a goddamn ox.”

  He pinched my wrist. “Look, doctor – hardly even a pulse on him.”

  “No heart – no pulse,” Verbin said, tossing me a towel. “The rest sounds fairly reasonable. For his age, I mean.”

  I threw the wet towel at her and began striding towards her. She skipped away: “No – no you don’t, I just washed my hair, you –” I wrapped my arms around her and pulled us unceremoniously into the water. The splash startled Garibaldi, my sleepy Neapolitan Mastiff, who until that point had been lying on his back, all four limbs stretched into the air, unabashedly allowing the breeze to cool his mighty package as the rest of us beheld the splendor of his drowsy magnificence.

  “Well, I’m done here,” said Sasson, who seemed embarrassed by our underwater fondling. “Have fun, doc. Far as I’m concerned, he’s fit to go back to work.”

  “Not if I have any say in the matter!”

  “Enough pestering, woman! Hand over the kid,” I said, and pressed my ear to her beautiful belly. “How’re things is there, kid? Be strong. You’ll be out of there in no time.”

  “He’ll make it,” Verbin said, caressing her belly.

  Of course he will, I said to myself. He can do anything, and this time, I’ll be there, at his side.

  I carried her out of the pool like a parcel. Garibaldi came up happily to run circles around us, while Adolf, our ex-military Malinois, remained slumped indifferently near the corner of the wooden pergola. Verbin smiled and stroked my forehead with a warm, comforting palm.

  “Your widow’s peak is deepening,” she said with a hint of wicked satisfaction.

  “It’s modular, the size changes according to the amount of thinking.”

  “You sure about that?”

  “Mi’a fi almi’a,” I replied in Arabic. Positive. “The bad thoughts – I keep them out, so they have no choice but to circle around and settle up there.”

  Verbin pressed her forehead to mine. The staggering depths of her blue lakes poured into my soul.

  “And what exactly went through that balding head, Mister Ox, when you jumped on top of Imad?”1

  “No idea. Instinct?” I cleared my throat. “Automatic response of my fight-or-flight mechanism?”

  Verbin smiled. “I think something broke in your brain and the ‘Flight’ component of that mechanism is cracked. A normal person would’ve fled, at that point. And would have been right to.” She moved her hand across her belly again, and closed her eyes. A warm breeze brought with it the smell of blossoming citrus, mixing with the intoxicating scent of the Rangoon creeper bushes she’d planted around the fence to celebrate our kid’s impending arrival. The smell of the freshly-ground coffee I’d just made blended into the cloud of spring. I thought to myself that this truly was a wonderful way to go through life: with Verbin, and the baby on the way, and the dogs, in our little green bubble with our house and our view of the mountains.

  A raven screamed, piercing the silence. Adolf ran snapping at the pair of ravens who were picking at the spearmint. They fluttered away, and landed a few yards further on as soon as he turned around. He charged at them again, and again they flew off, screeching. Garibaldi watched this exchange with some amusement, then returned to his indecent exposure, all four legs in the air.

  We sat on the low plastic chairs, sipping our coffee. “Do you really feel up to going back to work?”

  “I’m back already.”

  “I mean, back in the field. You went through some serious trauma. And your body’s been paying the price.” “My body seems to handle injury well. Look – ” I puffed up a bicep. “You heard Sasson. Good as new.”

  “Your regenerative powers are truly earthworm-like,” she sighed. “Cut you up and you grow right back.” She pointed at her belly. “Just remember. When he comes out, you come in. Into the house, the office, the bureau, a training post, wherever you like, just not out in the field. No more of this A-Team, Mortal Kombat bullshit.”

  “You’re dramatic today, Esmeralda.”

  “You know that constant activation of that mechanism you mentioned is a sure way to develop chronic stress, leading to diabetes, high blood pressure, and a plethora of heart problems. By the way, relentless activation of the adrenal glands is known to impair cognitive function. All that gushing testosterone takes the place of rational thought.”

  “So, bottom line, it all comes down to testosterone. I guess my dick is the center of the universe.”

  “You’re really fucked up. And I really love you.”

  “Thank the lord,” I said, and then my phone rang. Bella’s name came on the screen. Verbin noticed it too and her face soured, slightly.

  “Get here ASAP. Moshe needs you.”

  “But – but I –”

  “Bubinke,” Bella lovingly scolded, and by now I knew that tone well, the one that said, ‘You’re either coming or you’re coming.’

  “I’m coming.”

  Verbin raised puppy-dog eyes at me. “It’s just a meeting,” I said, and kissed her forehead. “It’s only a meeting.”

  * * *

  1The previous book, “The Rage and Power of A. Ehrlich,” ends with Avner overpowering the terrorist Imad Akbariyeh, who is holding a live grenade. Imad is killed, and Avner is badly wounded.

  3.

  The way from the house in Agur to Highway 38 took ten enjoyable minutes. Patches of yellow chrysanthemums yawned open among the trees, and on the sides of the road little islands of red poppies had managed to make their way through natural selection, as well as a single Judas-tree in full metallic-pink bloom.

  Spring is so short and potent around here, and the sorrow of bereavement so long, though supposedly one is supposed to overcome it, like a three-legged dog who over time learns to run nearly as well. But time doesn’t heal anything. ‘The spring is so brief around here,’ David Grossman wrote after his son Uri was killed, and that is what being Israeli is all about – it is about time not healing shit, even if you are a dog who has learned to run on three legs. It just means your pain lasts that much longer.

  I took a left to Highway 38 North. The sweet haze of spring was replaced by clouds of dust and yellow dirt, unloading trucks and heavy bulldozers. From there I turned onto the efficient and banal Highway 1 – in calmer times I usually take Highway 383 to the office in Ramat HaSharon, listening to Pavarotti and friends on the meandering road through the Tuscan-esque landscape.

  This time I listened to the news: the Iranian president promised to increase the production of uranium, the American president in turn promised a surge of new sanctions. Together, they were the bread and butter of the various meeting-hungry bureaucrats who clog the veins of the intelligence community with the fat of hidden unemployment. Usually I do my best to avoid status meetings and reviews and such, but Froyke, my boss, was sick again and I had to fill in.

  I entered the office of Moshe, the DM2, just as Mordechai, the new guy that the Prime Minister had recently dropped on us, was heatedly babbling about the looming existential threat and “the moral obligation of self-defense to which we have been driven since the beginning of time,” and, of course, mentioning the growing need for a special operations department in the Iran division, over which he happened to preside.

  Moshe, unlike his usually exceedingly poli
te self, impatiently signaled him to shut up and turned to me, saying, “Thank you for gracing us with your presence. I’m sure you have plenty to say on this subject, as well.”

  “Negative, boss.”

  “Are you sure?” he said, eyeing me skeptically. “Because I was just visiting Froyke in the hospital this morning. By the way, they are taking excellent care of him – please send Verbin our deepest gratitude. Anyway, Froyke mentioned some interesting thoughts you had, and I would appreciate it if you deemed this forum worthy of said thoughts.” There was a forgiving, fatherly gentleness in Moshe’s cynicism, perhaps meant to accentuate his overt impatience with Mordechai. I would’ve preferred to keep my thoughts to myself until Froyke’s return, but Moshe left me little choice.

  “Okay, boss. What I told Froyke was that if I were those heroic champions from the IRGC3 and their chief rabbis, I’d immediately suspend all of our nuclear efforts.”

  “Rabbis?” Moshe asked, with a slight smile.

  “Ayatollahs, rabbis, same.”

  “Hardly!” Mordechai exclaimed, “And the fact you think a fistful of dollars will be enough to have them give up on the vision of a nuclear Iran shows that you clearly exhibit a fundamental lack of understanding on the subject, as if that wasn’t already clearly evident from your claim that ayatollahs and rabbis are ‘same’.”

  Moshe stifled another smile, and Mordechai continued.

  I received a silenced Telegram message from Nora, who was sitting across the table:

  5 mins to you-know-what

  She added a little Hitler emoji:

  “The Iranians are certain that in order to regain their status as a regional empire, they have to destroy us,” said Mordechai. “Just like in the –”

  “For god’s sake, Mordechai, give it a rest.” Nahum, the head of our foreign relations division, interjected. “Ever since you arrived all you’ve done is try to scare us with the notion of another holocaust. We get it. We’ve figured it out. We’re not a bunch of idiots, even if we happen to disagree with you.”