by David Berko
A nonplused Tyrone croaked, “Dekel Hornik?”
--
Chapter 3
Being so close to the building he would enter into as commissioner Wendel overstimulated the Israeli’s adrenal glands.
All the ambient noise from the tunnels and corridors of an underground city faded away in an instant when Tyrone’s voice filled his ears in surround sound.
“Have you arrived at Eldrich’s yet?”
Seth knew Tyrone to be tracking his progress in real time with pinpoint accuracy. In short, it was more of a rhetorical question than anything else.
“I had to get coffee and buy a hat.”
“Pick up the pace a bit. I’ve already sent the necessary files along with your measurements to an eager Mr. E. You’ll be in and out.”
The Mossad agent scanning his surroundings every five seconds said, “Good,” nodding his head.
Tyrone knew what happened in the field. Judging by the simple replies he got from his asset he knew there had to have been an overabundance of images for Seth’s field of vision to take in, process, then make real-time decisions on friend or foe, threats or non-threats.
Enemies were lurking all around. Always. Those that were really skillful hid in plain sight.
“You need to get on the next line headed for Berlin Central Station. From there you can make the connection to your final destination,” he carefully communicated to Seth.
Agent Markov used his index finger to press into the cartilage of his right ear. “Copy that,” he confirmed the last transmission.
“You won’t believe who I have with me.”
Seth had just stepped onto a moving sidewalk. His head slowly swiveled towards the tracks to his right. They were empty for once—no speeding trains went by in either direction.
“Just tell me,” he replied dully after he had exhausted his short supply of patience.
“You may know him by the name Alfonso Marcello.”
“Agent Marcello?” Seth repeated, feeling stunned.
Tyrone didn’t answer directly but instead launched into the reason why help had come. “....We have four hands at the helm now, Markov.”
Eventually the moving conveyer belt brought Seth to firm ground where he would once again have to worry about modulating his own natural means of locomotion. Nothing about the sea of faces in the new surroundings registered as familiar. Seth breathed a sigh of relief. There had been a shifty character or two from earlier he had his eye on, and they appeared to be watching him with great curiosity too.
“Hello?”
“Would you quit yackin’ in my ear?” Seth replied rather testily.
A distant, far-away voice apologized which only meant one thing: despite having seniority and years of more experience and time with the agency, Tyrone had never become so smug and content with himself to the point where he missed the occasion to feel stupid over his actions or what he said.
Seth needed a clear head for the mission. Tyrone’s communication of late served as more of a distraction than a help. It intrigued him that Agent Marcello would be assisting in the operation, but as far as Seth was concerned, that remained a sideshow. In no way could he allow his excitement over the new prospect take his eyes off the ball--the primary objective.
Seth got through a line real quick to pay with currency for his fare to make the connection to his next destination where he would get fixed up as commissioner Wendel.
While he stood in front of the lady at the window to get a boarding pass, out of his peripherals Seth noticed two German policemen walking in an eastward vector straight for him.
“Your passport?” she asked in German with her hand held out.
Seth’s eyes rolled sideways while still maintaining a visual on the woman with an open palm ready to receive his fake passport.
For a languishing few seconds Seth fumbled through his pockets for his identification. The cops already closed the distance no sooner than after he had produced his passport to the transportation agent who studied him through narrowed eye slits. The two men in black uniforms with their hands down at their hips, undoubtedly by the holster, covered a football-field length in an astonishing twelve seconds.
Seth counted to three in his head, took one glance at the woman, then snatched the little blue booklet out of her hands.
She cried out but he was already packing it to get into the nearest train that was about to pull away from the station.
The doors sealed shut and the train lurched forward with a violent tug. It nearly threw Seth sideways into several passengers; his quick reflexes saved him from sandwiching an elderly woman into her husband against the plexiglass windows.
Seth ran to the back of the train once he regained equilibrium. The two hundred and ten pound piece of biological military hardware sprinted through the final segment of the subway line. A petrified-looking conductor raised his walkie to his lips but before he could speak a word Seth karate chopped him across the throat. The blow made the man turn shades of grey while he desperately tried to suck in air: Agent Markov had perfectly ruptured the man’s esophagus which cause him to instantly suffocate to death.
Though he had never been in the back of a German subway before the Israeli intuitively knew how to open the rear door while the train was underway. Three little sliders on a console were shifted all the way to the right until the German word for “open” flashed in red on the screen.
The rear hatch instantly obeyed Seth’s input even through the subway began to reach over a hundred kilometers per hour. The wind howled at those high speeds. Seth felt sucked towards the opening. Only his boots with their traction feature prevented him from being jettisoned out the opening and onto the tracks.
In a surprisingly quick sequence of spider-like movements, Agent Markov hugged the wall, scooted through the exterior hatch, and shinnied up to the top of the speeding bullet. If it hadn’t been for the gecko skin on his hands Seth would in no way have ever attempted to get on top of a fast train in transit.
And there he lay, on top of a fiberglass roof, in a dangerously climactic predicament. These were the moments where Seth Markov didn’t blink. Every blood cell in his body reacted accordingly; every muscle group responded when called upon; all the neural synapses appeared to behave like a fiber-optic cable: at the speed of light. No hesitation whatsoever.
Seth behaved like the imperfect-perfect human. His response time to physical stimuli put him at the top of the heap. No man could be his equal. Seth operated in an entirely different universe where the impossible became possible.
His fingerless gloves gripped the riveted galvanized steel edges of the subway. The train continued to put on speed, completely oblivious to the fact that a stow-a-way clung to its roof.
Seth knew he had to escape the entrapping tunnels of Berlin’s U-bahn system. And to do so would require an incredible amount of cunning, luck…and even more luck.
“What are you doing?!” a familiar voice practically ruptured the agent’s eardrums.
Seth could still hear Tyrone’s squawking, despite the deafening noise of traveling on top of a subway.
The built man grunted as he began to methodically crawl towards the middle of the caboose. “Kinda busy,” he managed to say in the midst of heavy breathing.
“You have another train headed in the opposite direction along the parallel tracks, Seth,” a new voice said.
Seth could only assume the new instruction came from none other than the newest member to join the Berlin Mission task force: Agent Alfonso Marcello.
Seth’s brain raced. “How much time till both trains overlap?”
“T-minus ten seconds.”
“Great.”
The sound of another powerful engine building up steam met Seth full on as his subway line neared a bend. He knew the approaching train, though currently out of sight, would not only be visible but also abreast of his position very soon.
The distance needed to jump onto the next ride was marginal. However,
the real danger derived from the changing velocity represented in the moving objects.
Seth had to do everything just right otherwise he’d wind up as U-bahn dressing. The blur of the high-speed trains, the high-voltage current of the tracks, the danger of the police who scurried to hunt his hide down...all of these fears were replaced with an irrational level of confidence and stoicism that only Seth Markov was capable of exhibiting.
He could get the job done.
--
Junior Cadet Wing, Masada
The teenager that had escaped the white contraption which changed his memories and life forever now reemerged into Esther’s life, quite seamlessly.
Esther jerked upward from her previous position of comfort on the zero gravity chair.
She noticed for the first time that Azriel appeared to be wearing what the other cadets had on. When she saw him initially her brain replayed images of the time where she and her mother had captured the boy and taken him to the operating room for the cerebrum memory transfiguration surgery. Back then she saw a scared kid wearing street clothes. Now the person who stood before her station dressed in a blue and white-streaked skin tight warmup suit.
If she squinted Azriel looked more like a superhero than anything else. His small shoulders, petite chest, and little cutlet arms looked larger than life in the skin-sucking suit he wore.
All of the boy’s questions to her had gone unanswered thus far.
Esther didn’t know where to start.
She knew that according to the parameters of the software that had reprogrammed Azriel’s brain, she was his sister now. Scary thought. Having a Markov boy for a brother made her more nervous than she should’ve been. For good reason though. Azriel’s real father Seth Markov did a magnificent job of scaring the bad guys before he inevitably ended their lives. If his son was anything like him, Azriel would make a name for himself—bad guys would quake at the mention of Azriel Markov.
Esther didn’t see herself as a bad guy, yet the human being standing such a short distance away made her feel criminal. He looked at her with an innocence in his eyes that peered deep into her soul. She didn’t want him looking around in there…no one belonged in there. Esther possessed secrets that had secrets. No one would ever be entitled to them. Especially not the son of Seth Markov.
“Are we gonna do sim time together?” he asked her point blank.
Now he stood at an uncomfortably close distance away from the girl who still hadn’t vacated the safety net of her leather chair.
Esther didn’t even acknowledge his presence by giving him the courtesy of a head turn, much less eye contact. Instead she stared straight ahead at nothing in particular and said firmly, “Are you tough enough?”
It was meant more as a remark than a question.
Azriel spread his feet in a wide stance, shifting his weight from left to right before settling into his athletic stance. He folded his arms across his chest.
“Don’t you want to see for yourself?”
Esther did want that. Her curiosity and desire to see what kind of caged animal Azriel really was got the better of her. She had to see it. Ephraim Markov had created a monster. Admittedly, a cute monster. But a monster nevertheless.
Esther avoided a yes or no response to his question with, “I have to run a background check on some people I’m gonna run across in today’s sim. I need to get an accurate profile on these characters, know where they’re gonna be and when, so I can interdict them. Sift them. It’s all part of the game.”
Azriel didn’t blink. “I’ll link up with your mission profile. I’m a quick study. Join you in Sim Room Number 1 at thirteen hundred hours?”
“Are you asking me a direct question?” Esther queried.
“Then it’s a yes?”
“God, you’re so much like Seth,” she murmured. Esther really quick clamped a hand over her mouth in vain. She couldn’t believe the words that had just come out of her mouth.
“Who?”
Her forehead began to glisten. “Huh?”
Azriel cocked his head and raised an eyebrow.
“Never mind. Thirteen hundred hours. Don’t be late. I’ll start without you.”
“Wouldn’t miss it.”
Esther watched as the boy looped between the funky cubicles and disappeared into a section of the cadet wing she was less familiar with.
She pinched herself on the elbow and repeated the same phrase from before upon first seeing Azriel: Crap, this is real.
--
Baruch listened to the growl of the quad exhaust system of his German sports car. Each note did something to him; they made him feel more in touch with his decision to fake an alliance with the co-conspirators of the Berlin Mission in order to achieve the takedown of the century. Seth Markov would be off the streets. The tormented Scorpion scum could then rest easy knowing the world’s most dangerous assassin finally got a taste of his own medicine.
It wouldn’t be that easy though. But it had to be done. Baruch reported directly to Malach Kemper, Head of Kidon, the snake who provided the oil to make the plan all come together.
This would get personal, too. Baruch had known Seth for a number of years, did a good many ops with him that built trust. That’s what made his impending actions the ultimate blindside. Seth came prepared for anything, but not this. How could he?
…
“Are you ready to insert yourself into this? Fully commit to what needs doing?”
Baruch braked hard and came to a stop in the middle of a busy thoroughfare. His closest tail nearly slammed into the back of him, causing the rest of the traffic to madly swerve around the impediment to traffic.
“How did you—I hung up on you.”
“Newsflash, you can’t hang up on me. We’re always connected. Just remember that.”
Baruch detected a smile in Firefly’s spooky language.
Baruch popped the clutch to his sophisticated manual transmission while simultaneously flooding the cylinders with fuel. “Fine. Keep talking oh voice in my head.”
“I don’t know why, but I have had a premonition all morning that we’re in for a few surprises today.”
“Oh?”
“For starters, there’s been chatter in the backchannels out of Spain.”
“Get to the point,” Baruch said rather indignantly. He didn’t appreciate the roundabout communication from his superior.
“I think Tyrone and Seth have help. Help that we haven’t planned for.”
Baruch slammed his fist down on the twelve o'clock position on the steering wheel. Loud, ugly curses in Hebrew and a few other tongues reverberated around the small cabin of the compact sedan.
“How sure are you of this?”
“What does that even matter. I told you what I know: now respond in a manner you see fit. I’ll bump up the frequency in which you receive Intel bytes on the positioning and intents of our enemies. You will remain a step ahead the whole way.”
Baruch avoided getting boxed in again by the brutal traffic patterns that weren’t kind to efficiency. He exhaled a little more loudly than even he would have liked.
“Just keep me posted. I’m putting my neck on the line for you. If shit goes sideways, I won’t hesitate to switch sides and go after your people. You got me?”
Malach Kemper didn’t tolerate threats from agents in the field under most circumstances. But this was a most special exception to the rule indeed. He needed Baruch: lippy, out-of-bounds, insubordinate agent and all.
“Remember who you’re dealing with agent,” he sharply reprimanded Baruch. “Stick to the plan. Go in as the interior minister’s chauffeur. She will be notified of the plan. I have people in place to make the communication go as planned. Everybody is on the same page.” Malach exhaled and paused with his chin up, “Bottom line? We win.”
“Well, winner here is en route to a guy Tyrone Banks calls Mr. E.”
“Yes, yes. I know.”
“Seth will beat me there and undoubtedly be gone
already by the time I get there. This thing is planned out to the second.”
“That’s the nature of these things.”
Baruch flicked his blinker on and changed lanes. “We have nothing else to discuss then.”
“Just remember, I’m always here.”
“I’m comforted.”
Malach Kemper smiled. “I knew you would be. You agents are very needy.”
--
Chapter 4
Berlin, Germany
The police in Berlin were on high alert. Several passengers riding the U-bahn had reported suspicious behavior by a six-foot-one male wearing a soccer hat. Among the charges brought against him: he bought things with a currency not frequently passed around in the plazas, was rude to a barista, and constantly glanced around like he had something to hide—all crimes punishable by the court of law.
Of course that wasn’t it though.
His passport, despite being a good forgery, didn’t hold water. He had used it once to cross the border. He managed to fool the agents there and get into Germany. Since then he had to show identification to use Germany’s public transportation system underground where the authorities were eventually tipped by the vigilant locals on the lookout for individuals like him.
…
Now he clung to the metal roof of a subway--the point of no return.
In the blur of color from going over a hundred kilometers an hour Seth saw blue flashes of lightning to his left. The police, no doubt. The delayed whine of motorcycles racing along the side of the tracks, screams of random passengers scurrying to get out of the way, and cops blowing their whistles filled the air.
This was it.
