“What can you tell me?”
“I know about as much as you.”
“Well, I’ve already made a few calls. Waiting to hear back.”
“I’m thinking maybe you ought to think seriously about disappearing for a while until this Russian mob thing is sorted out.”
Wolf sounded a defiant note. “I’m not running from my own territory.”
“Hey, don’t underestimate these guys. They’re in a league of their own. They don’t play well with others. If they had Colter on their radar you’d be next. Even a blind man could see your connection to him is obvious.”
“I don’t know if these are the same people who trashed my emails.”
“Don’t take a chance. Find a hole to hide in for a spell.”
“Not likely. But thanks for the sit-rep. I’ll check in with you in a day or so to see if you have more news. Meantime, stay out of trouble.”
Lindgren laughed. “That’s rich, coming from you.”
Chapter 28
Brighton Beach, Brooklyn
Impatience was one of Dimitri Ivanov’s faults. His other flaw was a cruel delight in carrying out killings assigned to his crew. Not one to delegate, Ivanov was “hands on” when it came to eliminating enemies. An avtorityet—akin to a mafia capo—Ivanov ran a crew of boyeviks, street soldiers. Wielding such authority, he could have assigned the bloody side of business to any one of his underlings but he had a perverse desire to get his hands dirty.
Rescued from a life of obscurity in a New York City sweatshop, Ivanov owed his position to one of Little Odessa’s most powerful godfathers, Ukrainian Jew Boris Levich. In gratitude for being taken in and eventually anointed a “made man,” Ivanov served Levich well. A surrogate son to the older man, he had risen through the ranks, earning his reputation the hard way—often over the bodies of enemies and peers. Looking more angelic seminarian than gangster, the slight, blond Ivanov was no bull-necked, slow-witted rival like those he had dispatched in any number of gruesome ways. Ivanov’s reputation was that of an executioner, a man to be feared. Like other battling crabs in the bucket that was Brighton Beach, he lived on borrowed time in a seaside city swarming with russkaya mafiya.
Today, much to Ivanov’s disappointment, he and an associate would be delivering a message—not a fatal shot to the head—to Mikhail Drogenev, a pensioner and gambler who owed an unpaid sum to Ivanov’s boss.
Levich called his avenging angel to his fifth-floor fortress in a brick apartment building in the heart of Little Odessa. Hands clasped behind his back, the gulag veteran cautioned his mercurial aide about tactics in private.
“It is important Mikhail Drogenev is put on notice. You are to tell him that this slight pains me. He will repay me within a fortnight. But hear me, Dimitri Ivanov, I say to you what God said about Job to Satan. Do you know the story?”
A blank face. “I do not.”
Throwing up his hands, Levich said, “Ach, I suspected as much. You forget your roots, Dimitri. Ah, your generation. Very well. So, God says to Satan, ‘Job is in your hands, but you must spare his life.’ You understand?”
“I understand, Boss.”
“What are you to do?”
“I am to spare Drogenev’s life.”
“Good,” rasped Levich. “Go. Pay your visit but remember my words.”
Leaving the apartment building, Ivanov collected Sergei Helinski, his brooding backup. They drove to Brighton Beach Avenue, a bustling strip of shops and crowded tenements filled with their countrymen.
Mikhail Drogenev was easy to find. Fond of red borscht, Levich’s debtor was a regular at the Poltava Café, a crowded, old-world eatery favored by immigrants but frowned at by the city’s department of health. The narrow, high-tin-ceilinged café had once been a saloon, a beauty shop, a failed hardware store, a barbershop, and bakery in turn. Here, in a front room crowded with eight tables and floor-to-ceiling windows in desperate need of cleaning, wrinkled gossiping babushkas, laborers, low-ranking Vory, and homesick immigrants sought anonymity in bottomless bowls of red borscht, black bread, and vodka.
A turn-of-the-century throwback, the Poltava might have been lifted straight from the pages of a tsarist picture album. English was a foreign language among the staff and clientele. Presided over by a shriveled dwarf-crone, the café’s open kitchen was manned by her scowling nephew and a surly pair of waiters for whom hygiene was an alien concept. A long counter lined with anchored stools faced an antiquated gas stove crowded with boiling pots and fryers beneath a blackened exhaust hood. A sagging back hallway led from the dining room past a single cramped bathroom and storeroom. Beyond that was an addition—once a bathhouse, now a gathering spot off-limits to all but intimates who entered from the alley. Filled with cigarette smoke and ruled by toothless backgammon-playing pensioners barking oaths at each other, the space was a refuge for Mikhail Drogenev. Until today.
For Ivanov, finding his prey was child’s play. Either an idiot or supremely confident that the size of his debt was not worth the godfather’s attention, the unshaven Drogenev was at his usual corner table. With three games under his belt, the last one a gammon, Drogenev was taunting his luckless opponent by offering him the doubling cube midway through the fourth game. About to risk the challenge, his rival looked past Drogenev and paled. Certain he had seen a dybbuk wearing Ivanov’s skin, he hurriedly excused himself. Ivanov took the retreating man’s place, settling opposite the debtor. Leaning across the scarred table, he plucked two red checkers from the playing board, his hard eyes on the unkempt Drogenev.
“So, Mikhail Drogenev, you pass your time here when you could be working to pay off your obligations, eh?”
Unbowed, Drogenev met Ivanov’s gaze. “I know why you are here, Dimitri Ivanov. I tell Boris I pay him this summer, no sooner.”
“You presume too much,” said Ivanov. “True, you and my boss shared hard times in the gulag, but that is no excuse for your insult to his charity.” Ivanov rolled a wooden piece between his fingers and lowered his voice. “Promises, promises. First it was last fall, then mid-winter. It’s obvious you have no intention of honoring your word, you son of a whore.”
Drogenev attempted to rise but felt the iron clamp of Sergei Helinski’s hand on his shoulder, forcing him to stay seated. The trembling debtor wet himself in anticipation of Ivanov’s cruelty. He eyed his fellow gamers but found no help there. Cowed backgammon players gathered their draughts and put away their boards. Tails between their legs, they abandoned the tables, exiting the Poltava’s annex. Ivanov’s muscle stepped back, a wooden bat resting on his shoulder.
“What’s this?” Ivanov said. “All your friends have fled the building. You alone are left. Why is that, Mikhail Drogenev?”
Ivanov swept the playing board from the table, scattering the die and wooden checkers across the room. “They don’t have the stomach to play alongside a man who cannot even control his bladder! Such a man who doesn’t pay his debts is a THIEF!”
Holding out his hand for the wooden bat, Ivanov caught it in mid-air. Yanked backwards from his chair, Drogenev was dragged from the room, his bony legs kicking at the yellowed linoleum in a macabre dance, losing a shoe in the process. Seeing nothing, hearing nothing, diners in the adjacent room stared holes in their meat dumplings or spooned borscht in silence. Not one patron bolted outside to call police from the sidewalk. No one intervened in Drogenev’s fate.
No match for the muscled Helinski, Drogenev’s eyes bulged. Animal-like squeals echoed down the narrow hallway. The crone’s nephew shut the rear door behind
the three men and went back to his boiling pots.
In the alley, Helinski forced Drogenev to kneel. His pleading words were cut short by a noose of twisted shirt around his neck. Forced on his back, his mouth stuffed with garbage, Drogenev lay defenseless.
A grinning Ivanov went to work with the bat. Striking his victim’s knees repeatedly, he shattered both kneecaps, then splintered the man’s lower bones. Drogenev screamed in
muffled agony. Ivanov taunted him. “You don’t pay your debts, you don’t get to walk like a man. Crawl like the insect you are, Mikhail Drogenev!”
To add to his prey’s misery, an amused Ivanov doused the bat with lighter fluid, set it on fire, and tossed it between Drogenev’s useless legs. Shrieking like a wounded animal, he dragged himself on elbows through garbage to avoid the flames.
Inches from his victim’s face, Ivanov spit a final warning. “You owe your life to the benevolence of Boris Levich. See that your debt does not remain unpaid.”
Chapter 29
That evening, Gunny Lindgren’s warning about the Russians played over and over in Wolf’s head. If they had Colter on their radar you’d be next. Even a blind man could see your connection to him is obvious.
Wolf knew the Marine’s advice was sound. One of the worst plagues to hit America, the Russian Mafia had metastasized from a handful of parasitic immigrants to an inoperable cancer. Targeted on two continents for the contents of the mysterious book, Wolf had one option: go through with his original plan to ask former Green Beret Sam McFadden for help. Following Lindgren’s advice, Wolf decided to disappear in the morning. He called his friend on a second cell phone, one of six prepaid phones he had kept for purposes like this. He got McFadden’s answering machine.
“Sam, Wolfman. Heading west. No emails. Need cover. Will explain.”
Packing light, he alerted a neighbor he would be away for a while.
“You don’t even stay long enough for me to invite you to dinner,” complained the older woman. A seventy-plus widow who cared for two grandchildren weekday afternoons, she often watched Wolf’s townhome when he was out of town. Hard of hearing, she had obviously failed him during his recent trip to Russia. But having considered the professionalism of those who had tampered with his computer, he forgave her lapse. Avoiding the hassle of reporting, Wolf had not alerted her or the cops. He would do his own investigating.
“It’s business,” said Wolf. “Heading for Europe. Doing some consulting.”
“Well, be careful,” she chided. “Can’t trust foreigners, you know.”
He dismissed her bigotry with a benign smile. “Sometimes it’s the people closer to home that should worry us more. Think about that.” Before she could trap him in more conversation, he crossed her patch of lawn to his front steps.
Unsure whether his computer had been mined, he called a trusted friend, asking her to go online and book him the cheapest one-way, non-stop ticket to San Diego. Sworn to silence, she offered a ride to Dulles—her fee a future steak dinner and bottle of wine. At dawn, the car was waiting in a light drizzle. She dropped him at the check-in level. He kissed her goodbye and made a vague promise to call. Once through security, he was on his way, Colter and Yana on his mind.
Four hours and thirty-one minutes later, his plane began its descent over brown hills covered in serpentine roads lined with housing. Runway 27 at San Diego’s Lindbergh Field beckoned in the distance. From his window seat, Wolf took in the southern half of the city and beyond that, Tijuana’s hazy skyline—all reassuringly familiar. After descending deceptively close to glittering downtown high-rises and condos, Wolf spotted the moored USS Midway. The decommissioned carrier crawled with ant-like tourists inspecting the collection of vintage aircraft parked on the angled flight deck. The sprawling naval shipyard at 32nd Street was lined with cranes, dry docks, and ships in various stages of repair. He felt the power adjustments as the captain jockeyed into perfect position to touch down in the first five hundred to one thousand feet of runway.
Chapter 30
San Diego
In no particular hurry and shouldering a carry-on, Wolf joined the stream of travelers marching through Terminal 2, and took an escalator to the lower-level sidewalk. He strolled to a pickup zone dotted with towering palms and travelers guarding suitcases in the sun. Wolf’s eyes wandered over a line of idling cars. His cellphone buzzed.
“Wolf.”
A sultry voice. “Welcome to San Diego. I’m looking right at you.”
Scanning the length of the pickup zone, Wolf smiled. “Regina? Don’t see you.”
“Losing your touch? See the silver SUV? Behind the minivan?”
Wolf made his way to the waiting car, tossed his bag in the backseat, and got in beside Regina McFadden. Rewarded with a kiss on the cheek, he settled back as she pulled from the curb.
“Where’s Sam?”
“Last-minute glitch at work. Sent me. Hope that’s okay.”
Wolf laughed. “Perfect. It’s always been a goal of mine to be picked up by a beautiful woman.”
Glancing at him with a raised eyebrow, Regina said, “Apparently, you haven’t changed much since our wedding. Same old Tom Wolf.” She laughed, perfect white teeth setting off her tan; shiny black tresses tied back, her hair even longer than he remembered. The pale blue linen blouse and baggy khaki shorts did little to hide her curves. Wolf was struck again by how attractive she was. McFadden had been right all along to fall in love with this Filipino-American beauty.
She drove east along Harbor Drive, the marinas filled with sleek white hulls and a forest of aluminum masts. Wolf felt himself relax, the sun warm on his face and arms. Across the bay was the graceful arch of the Coronado Bay Bridge connecting North Island’s Naval Air Station, which dominated the upper end of the Coronado peninsula. In the distance, the long gray silhouette of the USS Ronald Reagan, CVN 76, broke the horizon, a line of smaller warships moored astern of the carrier. Wolf’s attention was drawn by a pair of RIBs—rigid inflatable boats—churning high-speed wakes in a training exercise in the bay. He imagined SEALs going airborne over chop, salty spray like buckshot in their faces.
Following his eyes, Regina said, “Do you miss it? Being in the service, I mean. Sam says you do.”
“He should talk.” Wolf fixed his eyes on the water. “Yeah, sometimes. Then I remember how much fun Hell Week was. Wading in the surf; rolling in the sand; turning into a sugar cookie; back in the surf. Hauling logs, boats, the cold, the fog.” Turning back to her, Wolf said, “Then I come to my senses. Sure, I miss some of it. Sam probably does too.”
She jockeyed to loop north, away from the airport and the city without taking her eyes off the merging traffic. Wolf said, “Last year Sam told me he was expanding the gun range and the classrooms because of demand.”
“True. He and his partners are also adding a paintball maze. Big boys and their toys, I guess. He says we have to spend money to make money.”
“True enough. You both deserve a piece of the pie.”
“It’s mostly Sam’s doing. Mother’s invested some money as well. He’ll want to give you the tour. He’s proud of the facility.”
“I appreciate the welcome on such short notice.” He heard a protesting horn behind them. “You pick up your driving skills from watching Manila taxis?”
She laughed. “California drivers are not very forgiving.”
They stayed on State Route 163, heading north and eventually intersecting with I-15 just south of the Miramar Marine Corps Air Station. On cue, two MV-22 Ospreys dipped above the interstate in their final approach. Wolf stared at the aircraft. Regina ignored them, instead saying, “Do I dare ask what you two are cooking up this time?”
“Just thought it was time to see you and Sam.”
“Still the keeper of secrets, huh? The two of you act like brothers with some sort of agreed-upon, unwritten code.”
Wolf sighed. “Some things are better left unsaid.”
“Well, maybe it’s your turn to drag Sam into something. He certainly owes you for what happened in Zamboanga.”
“That was a lifetime ago, Regina. Lot of water has gone under the bridge since our little adventure. Hey, he got you out of the deal. Can’t be all bad.”
“Flatterer.” She joined a queue on the interstate’s Mira Mesa exit. “We’ll have time to talk over dinner. We have a pool house suite with its own office and kitchen. Stay as long as you like.”
“Thanks, Regina. I think I got out of Dodge just in time.”
She turned to him, concern on her face. “So much for your vow of silence. I hope you’re not in some kind of trouble.”
Waving away her concern, he said, “Nothing I can’t handle.”
“That’s just what Sam would say.”
She left the highway, went right two blocks, and turned left on Scripps Ranch Boulevard at the base of a rocky, near-vertical hillside with clinging eucalyptus trees and a wall of gray townhouses above. Shaking her head, she said, “What am I going to do with the two of you?”
Wolf stared out his window at the curving road bisecting rising hills crowned with red-tiled homes. “My dad always used to say, ‘This too shall pass.’” He changed the subject. “Looks dry. Still not getting enough rain?”
She followed his eyes to the hillsides. “Never enough rain when we need it, too much when we don’t. Not as green as the Philippines.”
A wistful Wolf said, “Nothing’s as green as the islands, Regina.”
Flashing him a mischievous glance, she said, “By the way, Sam changed my name. He calls me Reggie now. At first, I didn’t care for it. But it’s grown on me. My American half, I guess.”
“Reggie, huh? I like it. It fits you. How’s your mom and your sister?”
She grinned, spoke about her younger sister. “Ivy is a mother for the second time.”
“Congratulations, Aunt Reggie.”
A mock frown. “That makes me sound old,” she said. “Auntie will do.”
“And your mom?”
“Still in Santa Barbara. She’s a great support.”
“She like having a Green Beret for a son-in-law?”
“She’s delighted with Sam. Thinks the world of him.”
“So do I, Reggie.”
“Then don’t do anything foolish. Life is too perfect now.”
“Wouldn’t think of it. Just here to ask Sam’s advice.”
“Uh-huh.” She nodded right, at a momentary patch of blue above the sea of tiled roofs. “Miramar Lake.”
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