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

  “Five or six months,” I said to her. “Don’t forget.”

  That made her smile again. I suddenly thought – is that really what’s going to happen? Me and her, moving to the States? It felt somehow odd, unreal. I went to take a shower, packed a small bag for the flight and spent the time I had left resting by her side. I didn’t really get any sleep.

  By 4 am my oversized ass was in a shitty Cessna that Operations are so good at putting together last minute, and probably one of the very last flights to depart from poor old Sde Dov Airport, which suffered from type 4 cancer of the real estate. The pilot started the engine and just as I pushed off my Blundstones, waved to get my attention and pointed at the blue Land Cruiser which was fast approaching us on the runway.

  It drove up to the plane and stopped; Nora came out. I climbed out of the plane so meet her.

  “Jesus, can’t a man fly to Cyprus in peace?” I joked, but her face was severe. She showed me a satellite image of five men standing by a Russian executive jet.

  “Taken last night, 4 am, in Nicosia.”

  “Who else knows about this?”

  “Just Albert and I.”

  “Keep it that way, okay? And I need to move your new toy,” I pointed at the Land Cruiser.

  “Yeah, okay. I’m coming with you.”

  “No, you’re not!”

  “Don’t make me pull rank.”

  “It’s going to be a combat zone, you’re not – “

  “You’re not as scared as you should be.”

  “He who has fear, dies seven deaths,” I said in an exaggerated Arabic accent. And he who already died once, apparently has no fear at all, I added, mostly to myself.

  “Fine. But you’d better fucking report, Ehrlich. I’m uneasy about this whole thing.”

  “You can rest easy, my dear. Don’t you trust me?”

  She glared at me, not knowing whether to laugh or tell me off. I waved goodbye as I climbed back into the Cessna.

  By 5:20 am I was already in Abrasha’s black jeep, which was waiting for me at the Larnaca airport. Abrasha wasn’t in the car, though – it was Weizmann, his driver since his time back in paratrooper battalion 202.

  “Yalla, let’s go,” I said.

  Weizmann nodded and drove. As I watched the brightening airport shrink into the distance, I tried to visualize my next steps. The first thing I needed to know is what this Rasputin looked like. Anything else would be a bonus. I imagined a faded old black-and-white photograph of a petite albino man standing amongst a group of uniformed Spetsnaz fighters, raising Gigi’s bloody head for the camera.

  Weizmann took us to Nicosia, where he said Abrasha was waiting for us.

  “Why did you tell me to take a flight to Larnaca, then? I could’ve come straight to Nicosia.”

  Weizmann shrugged. “You know the old man with his schemes… trying to confuse the enemy an’ all that.”

  We drove into a narrow alley, winding and paved in small stones. Good choice if you suspect you’re being followed; bad choice if you need to make a quick exit. The final serpentine twist brought us to another black Range Rover, identical to ours, down to the license plate number. Abrasha was sitting inside, smoking.

  Weizmann parked behind him and we both got out and moved to the other car.

  “Good morning, General,” I said, noticing a fancy wooden box on his lap. Cigars or guns, I wondered, but didn’t wonder long.

  “Here,” said Abrasha, handing it to me. I opened it to reveal a new oiled Glock 19.

  “Put a bullet in the chamber after you look it over,” he said.

  “This little spud gun?”

  Abrasha bent down and took another Glock from the hidden compartment under his seat, wiped it meticulously, took it apart and held it up to the light.

  “It’s no RPG, but it is a wonderful piece, gen 5. Behave and you’ll get one of your own.”

  He cocked it, listening for the click, then loaded a magazine and put it back in the compartment beneath his seat.

  “So this is what I put my ass in a Cessna and drove all the way from Larnaca for?”

  He glanced back at me, smiling, and as I settled into my seat said, “Last night a quintuplet of their gorillas landed here. It seems very important to them that we don’t get our hands on the intel, which means we absolutely have to get out hands on the intel.”

  The combative spirit that had taken hold of Abrasha made him look twenty years younger. Abrasha was about Froyke’s age – the first time I met him, he was already commanding a Golani battalion that captured the sector up north, back when we walked into a trap at that Syrian kharat el tanaq28. I can still remember his voice on the radio, begging for authorization to come in with a rescue force and get us out, and Kremerman’s voice, then the Chief of AMAN, refusing his request – I suppose it was an ego thing, not wanting a Golani force rescuing his men. Abrasha turned off his radio, went in with the rescue force, and dragged us back into Israel.

  “So where are we going?” I asked.

  “His village is about thirty mikes away. Now listen to me, RP. This guy has a memory card Rasputin’s been hunting for years. Wholly incriminating stuff, and from what the old man says, Rasputin is shown there in all his tiny glory. From what I hear we don’t even know what the little putz looks like, yet.”

  Already worth the flight, then, I thought.

  “I don’t know what his exact position in RET is,” said Abrasha, “But I do know he’s a high-ranking official of some sort, very close to Putin. Our old man is Gregorius Stephanopoulos, previously Gregor Gregoryevitch or something like that. He lives in Phicardou, on the southern slope of the Troodos, an abandoned medieval village that’s been declared a historical reserve – he works for their antiques department. Back when I took your Rasputin hunt to darknet, he contacted me and asked for fifty thousand dollars for the intel in his possession, without an option to examine it prior to payment. I told him to go fuck himself.” He sighed.

  “Yesterday he called again. Terrified, his voice was shaking. He told me, ‘They’re after me, come quick – you’ll get it for free.’ I tried finding out where the card was and he started babbling in Russian about his dog, I don’t know, I didn’t really understand. Now, the Russians have a little trading station here, from back when they sold small arms to the Turks and ruined the market for the rest of us. So if Rasputin wants Gregorius, he’s got a little base of operations already set up.”

  The landscape was beginning to change, become more rural. At some point we stopped so Abrasha could take a piss. Upon returning he said, “Goddamn quintuplets don’t scare me.”

  “Quintuplets or triplets?”

  He looked surprised for a moment. “Look, only three of them landed. But then there are the two locals who bugged my car – the one we left in Nicosia – with a GPS tracker. The question now is whether they have any other way of knowing where he is. I guess we won’t know until we know.”

  The road began to narrow and was now winding uphill. The filtered light and the dense pine woodland reminded me of the Carmel Mountains. Weizmann drifted impressively past the curves in lieu of slowing down.

  We passed a small monastery, and immediately after it the road took a sharp 45° turn and Weizmann was forced to break abruptly. The second he stopped, two police cars emerged from the woods, one from each side, blocking the road. I glanced back and saw a gray Mercedes minivan that looked like a prisoner transport appear behind us and blocking our retreat. I quickly hid the Glock in the little compartment beneath my seat. Two police officers came out of the car, their hands on their holsters, and started coming toward us, fast.

  “Are they actual cops?” I asked Abrasha, who didn’t know.

  They asked us for our IDs and handed them over to the two cops who came out of the other car, who looked to be their supervisors. They looked at our IDs, then drew their
guns and ordered us to turn around and face the car. One of them muttered into his radio. Abrasha translated for us, whispering, “They’re saying they have the goods,” and immediately was struck in the back of the head with the butt of a gun.

  They took Abrasha and Weizmann’s weapons, then cuffed us and tossed us onto the floor of the van, which proceeded to reverse back toward the woods, then take a right back to Nicosia. In the van there was a driver, also in uniform, and a guard sitting on a prisoner bench, wearing a black sweatsuit with a white stripe running down it, holding a heavy Russian Makarov.

  Abrasha asked if I still had the piece, and before I could answer he got another gun butt to the face. My clearest option was to draw my legs in toward my stomach and send a kick straight to the guard’s knees, but that would leave him the opportunity to break his fall and shoot or shoot and break his fall, depending on his skill level. I opted for the trickier option.

  “Heads up, guys,” I said out loud, and the guard bent over me as expected, raising the gun like a baton. I hunched my back and, rolling back, squeezed as much momentum as I could from my leg and core muscles to launch myself up and forward, slamming the fists of my handcuffed hands into his sternum. There wasn’t much momentum to be found, but whatever there was joined my considerable mass to crush his ribcage and knock the air out of his lungs. The gun fell from his hands. He stood there, a look of astonishment slowly dawning on his face.

  I twisted halfway back and slammed my shoulder into him. He fell over, his head slumping on Abrasha’s shoulder.

  “What do I do?!” asked the old man.

  “Choke him! Now!”

  He wrapped his cuffed hands around the guard’s throat and squeezed as hard as he could. Abrasha’s face was getting increasingly red, and I was beginning to worry he might have a heart attack.

  “Forget it – throw him to the floor!”

  Abrasha untangled from the prone guard and pulled back and I jumped – as much as I could – and landed on the muzhik’s head. Weizmann, who finally decided to contribute, fished the keys out of the guard’s pocket and unlocked my handcuffs. I released Abrasha and Weizmann took the guard’s gun.

  “Can you handle the driver?” I asked.

  “Sure,” he said and knocked lightly with the butt of the gun on the metal plate separating the cabin from the driver. The driver slid it open and Weizmann put a bullet in the back of his neck, and another one just in case. The van swerved a bit from side to side and eventually hit a large pine on the side of the road and came to a stop.

  “Cuff him,” I nodded toward the defeated muzhik. “If he lives, we’ll question him later. How far to the village?” I asked Abrasha, who didn’t answer.

  “Abrasha?”

  Weizmann noticed something was amiss and lunged at Abrasha.

  “The pills? Where’re your pills, man?” He shook him. “Where are they?!”

  Abrasha, moving with extreme sluggishness, pointed at his shirt pocket. Weizmann reached into it and took out a packet of blue pills. His hand shook as he placed one in Abrasha’s mouth.

  “Under the tongue, under the tongue. Now suck.”

  “Watch him,” I said and moved to the front. I pushed the driver’s corpse over to the passenger seat and started the car, stopping just a few minutes later, just as the thin spire of the village church peeked over the mountain.

  “We go on foot from here. Can you handle it?”

  Abrasha nodded wearily. “Just give me three seconds and some water.”

  “Take the seconds, but there’s no water.”

  “I’ll make do,” said Abrasha.

  “All right, out of the car,” I said.

  “On foot? What is this, a damn hike?”

  “Shut up,” said Abrasha. “Tie this jackass to the seat.”

  Weizmann handcuffed the muzhik to the metal bench, then returned the driver’s body to the driver’s seat and placed a cigarette between his lips.

  “Where’s his phone? I wanna take a selfie.”

  “Give me his gun and let’s wheel the car down behind this little mound.”

  Weizmann drove the car just out of eyesight and we began walking toward the village at a hunched shuffle.

  “There, the first house in the row is his. Do you suppose they’re waiting for us down there or up at the church?” Abrasha asked.

  “No, they need a line of fire and a quick escape route. That means they’re probably up there,” I pointed at a rocky mound, about 100 feet high, maybe 300 yards away from us. “Good vantage point over the front of the house. Wait here a minute.”

  I crawled toward the house, waiting for the sniper’s bullet. I clung to the back wall and moved along it At the end of it was a single window, probably belonging to a bathroom. I signaled to Weizmann to crawl toward me.

  “You’re going in there. No standing inside, only crawling. Open the door to the yard from the inside.”

  Weizmann climb up into the window, headfirst, then came back down. “It smells like ass in there. And I have to go feet first.”

  I interlocked my fingers to make a step, and he went back inside one leg at a time. I pushed him up as much as I could, trying to keep his head from banging against the window frame, then heard the door to the toilet slowly open, and then Weizmann shrieking, “Aaah fuck, dog! There’s a dog!”

  “Don’t bite it,” I whispered.

  “This thing’s a fucking monster!” Weizmann climbed the whole way down and scrambled to close the door to the toilet. Luckily, the monster wasn’t barking, merely growling angrily. It wasn’t Garibaldi’s basso profundo, nor Adolf’s acerbic snarl, but it was powerful.

  “Take a deep breath. Don’t look at the dog. Go straight to the door, unlock it, go back into the bathroom. I’ll be right with you.”

  I ran at a low hunch to the garden door, opened it and threw myself to the floor. The growling now escalated into barks. This was bad – anyone looking would be tipped off by now. A moment later I was eye-to-eye with a beautiful Australian Shepherd, a female, white with rust-colored patches. I looked around. The house had been turned inside out – everything in it was either broken, torn, or spilled. Whoever conducted the search had done so zealously.

  Weizmann came out of the bathroom with his gun drawn. The dog wouldn’t stop barking.

  “Move, I’m putting it down,” he said, staring at the dog.

  I moved between them. “You’re not shooting anyone without orders, least of all a dog.”

  “It’s a monster, it’ll fucking eat us!”

  “Calm down, Weizmann,” said Abrasha, who had poured himself a glass of water and looked much better.

  “Goddammit, calm down or I’m taking your gun,” I said.

  He took a step back.

  “Now I suppose you’re gonna tell me that when you were little you were bitten by a big dog?”

  He nodded.

  “And was it this good girl? Of course not. Look at this beauty.”

  I approached the madam, putting out an open palm for her to sniff. I slowly lowered all the way to the ground so we could look at each other as equals. It worked. The dog calmed down, sniffed me some more and let me pet her. She then pressed her head into my hand and let out a low, heart-wrenching howl.

  “You see?” Abrasha said to Weizmann. “They already have a rapport, these two.”

  As I stroked her head, I again looked around; the first floor was one big room with a smashed up kitchen and a tiny old Sony television with an external antenna, also shattered. If the memory card was anywhere in here, clearly whoever went to town on this place already found it. The bathroom and little shower were apparently newer additions, and stuck out into the garden. A large wooden staircase in the middle of the room led to a second floor, built from wooden beams supported by black iron rails. I left the dog for a moment and started moving toward the stairc
ase. The dog started whining again, louder this time. I pet her and brought my nose down toward hers.

  I had a bad feeling going upstairs, but I didn’t expect finding the old man as I did, naked and nailed to the wooden wall with 10 rusty nails through his arms and legs, his penis shoved into his mouth, just like Gigi. The trachea was also sliced in a similar fashion. Vysshaya Mera. For traitors. I touched him. The body was still warm.

  In the corner of the room, near the disassembled bed, was a lavish dog bed with a Greek white-and-blue embroidery. The heavy colonial-style closet, with its ornate wooden engravings, was left intact.

  That’s suspicious, I thought, when I heard Abrasha’s heavy steps coming up the stairs. I turned and saw him standing agape in front of the horrible scene, and momentarily worried about another heart attack.

  Then I saw him walking toward the closet.

  “No, Abrasha!” I leapt at him and dropped the both of us to the ground, managing to position myself underneath him to break his fall. I scrambled back to my feet and pressed my ear to the closet. It was clear why they left the closet in one piece. What I didn’t know was how they would activate the charge.

  “Downstairs!” I yelled at Abrasha, “Now! Weizmann, go into the bathroom!” I hoped both the bathroom and the shower were far enough to be outside the range of destruction.

  Abrasha tripped on the last step, and then the charge went off.

  The wooden beams collapsed, followed by the heavy rails collapsing under their weight with an eerie slowness that allowed me to drag Abrasha outside and out of harm’s way. The house continued to implode is a sort of dignified slow-motion.

  Once we were outside, the sound of a rotor suddenly overcame the noise of the collapsing house, and a little civilian helicopter rose from behind the hill. On the skid facing us stood a little white man, waving at us. I think it is safe to assume he was smiling. The helicopter rose into the distance as the man climbed inside, and soon disappeared. The house finished its restrained implosion.