Give Us This Day

by Tom Avitabile

  The footman or whoever he was at the door scanned the invite with a barcode reader and when it beeped, stepped aside.

  The ballroom was immense and impressive as it was a part of the grand mansion that this oil oligarch, Borishenko, lived in. From the rare Israeli marble on the floor to the Venetian glass chandelier, every element of the house broadcast the highest price as it always was with the Russian top dogs. Most folks were chatting and very few dancing, despite the noisy Euro pop coming from the band on the other side of the room.

  “Alisa!”

  Bridge did not turn, but Alisa did.

  “Madam Bolotnikova, you look divine.”

  “Oh, I do alright for an old woman.”

  “Nonsense. You look positively regal in that dress and your hair . . . impeccable.”

  “Thank you, my dear, you are too kind,” the older woman said as she finally looked at what Alisa was wearing. “And may I say, you are indeed the most stunning creature here tonight. I remember when I could wear seven-and-a-half-centimeter heels.” Then she turned to Bridge. “And who is this dashing man?” Madam Bolotnikova said with just the slightest touch of disappointment discernable in her voice.

  “Oh, this is Gennady Romanov.”

  Her eyes widened . . .

  “My cousin.”

  Madam Bolotnikova had two simultaneous reactions that Bridge could read on her face. First, that as her cousin he was not a threat to her wimpy, no-account son who was looking to ruin some woman’s life. And second, that she was correct in suspecting Alisa of secretly being a Romanov.

  “Splendid, splendid. So glad to meet you.”

  Ten minutes later, Alisa returned from a trip to the loo. “Anatoly has invited me to his table.”

  “I thought we wanted Vitaly?”

  “Close enough. It’s his son.”

  “Could be even better. Where?” Bridge said, not looking at her.

  “There is a garden walk, out the French doors on the right.”

  “How long will you need?”

  “In this dress?” She adjusted the neckline to be a little lower. “Ten minutes.”

  Bridge watched as Alisa blasted through the phalanx of guests, security, and entourage that surrounded the young oligarch in waiting. The last few meters, urged on by Anatoly himself, who was waving aside his security at the sight of her.

  Bridge turned and smiled as he headed to the bar. So this whole shindig is for the twerp? he thought. “Sparkling water with lime please,” he said to the barman in Russian. A man stepped close to him. Bridge turned sideways to allow him to get to the crowded bar.

  “Spacibo.”

  “Ne za chto,” Bridgestone said.

  The man ordered vodka and turned to look around the party, then continued in Russian, “Quite a gala.”

  Bridge just grunted.

  “The woman you are with, is she someone of notoriety?”

  Bridge’s antenna was up. This guy could be State Security.

  He agreed with the stranger. “She looks it, no?”

  “Yes. She certainly does.”

  “I thought so too. But I found out she is a housewife from Rostov,” he said as he took a long pull on the Perrier.

  In genuine shock that he could have mistaken such a commoner from the Russian nowhere of Rostov as being an aristocrat, the man turned. “How do you know that?”

  “Because I married her and made her one.”

  The man reacted with a sudden flush. He attempted to smooth over his faux pas by raising his glass “A toast to your good fortune in finding such a gem in a world of stones.”

  “Spacibo,” Bridge said as he returned the toast.

  “Ne za chto,” the man said as he turned and walked off.

  Only seven minutes! Bridge thought as he looked down at his watch upon seeing Alisa and the boy wonder walking towards the French doors.

  Then he saw her. The one who could blow this whole op. She was moving like a shark, homing in on her prey. The people in her way were mere collateral damage as she single-mindedly advanced on Alisa. Bridge knew he had to intercept her, had to stop her. He stepped lively. He adjusted the gun tucked into the small of his back as he reached out to the woman. “Madam Bolotnikova. Madam Bolotnikova.” His hand on her shoulder stopped her as she turned to him, “Yes . . . Gennady, isn’t it?”

  “You remembered. I was wondering if you were related to the great Bolotnikov?”

  “Why yes, he was my great, great grandfather.”

  “I knew it.”

  “Well, good for you,” she said as she turned to catch Alisa.

  “It’s just that I studied your ancestor. He was a great man, the son of an escaped bondman who changed the system and became the tsar’s right hand!”

  “Yes. Thank you. We all know about the rebellion.” Her eyes were on Alisa now, disappearing through the doors with the man of the hour.

  “Mother . . . she’s leaving.”

  Bridge looked over and finally noticed the string bean standing next to the rotund woman. “You must be Sergei!”

  A little taken aback, Sergei said, “I am . . . and you are?”

  “This is Gennady Romanov, Alisa’s cousin,” his mother said, emphasizing the last name with a nod that seemed to confirm what she had suspected about Alisa’s true lineage.

  “Did you serve?” Bridge, the Special Forces sergeant, asked the kid who must have gotten through the Russian Army by looking at a picture of his mother every night.

  “Yes. I was a lieutenant.”

  .G.

  Alisa and Anatoly found a secluded part of the vast gardens in the compound. Like all Russian oligarchs, the Borishenko family copied everything they saw in the West. This intimate garden corner was the exact replica of a Barcelona patio. Alisa was acutely aware of a security man keeping a watchful eye on his bratty charge. “This is a beautiful spot.”

  “You like it?” Anatoly said

  “What’s not to like? This is truly heaven.”

  He took out a small plastic bag. “We can make it a paradise,” he said as he tapped the bag of white powder.

  Alisa looked over her shoulder. “Won’t somebody see?”

  Anatoly sat on a stone bench and was now looking at Alisa’s chest. “He’s one of my bodyguards. He is used to me.”

  Alisa knew that wasn’t good. She had to think of something fast. Then the frat boy, without benefit of college, gave her the opening.

  “Of course, if you want something from me, what do I get from you?” He leaned back on his elbows as he asked the question.

  Alisa smiled. She looked down at the bulge in his pants and said, “Like a trade?”

  “Something like that,” he said as he undid his belt buckle.

  “You want me to make love to you with my mouth?”

  “For starters.”

  “Hmmm. You sound like a man with a plan.” She got on her knees. Drooped her shoulders, which purposefully exposed more of her bust line.

  .G.

  Bridge was now trying to get away from the mommy dearest and her spawn. “Perhaps we can chat later, but right now I am afraid nature calls. Madam, Sergei.” He gave a slight bow and left.

  “Come on, Sergei.” She went out into the garden.

  Bridge hung a left and went outside the building. He made a show of patting his hands on his jacket then asked the guard if he could bum a cigarette.

  The guard said, “No smoking.”

  “What if I go over there by the cars?”

  The guard looked around, and reached into his pocket and tapped out a cigarette then jutted his chin to the left as he said, “I go by the wall there.”

  “Spacibo,” Bridge said as he walked off knowing that “over there” was probably out of camera range.

  .G.

  “B
ut I can’t do it if I am being watched. I have always been a shy, private person, especially when I am pleasuring a big . . .”—Alisa grabbed his bulge—“strong . . .”—she gave it a shake—“man . . .”—she leaned over and had her long hair brush his crotch—“like you. . . .” She pulled back, removed her hands and sat on her legs, and with the perfect amount of pout said, “I just can’t while I’m being watched.”

  Anatoly was out of his mind with lust and called out, “Vlad. Go away, Vlad. Back in the house, please . . . and make sure no one comes out here.” He looked over to make sure his protector had left.

  Alisa followed his eyes and seeing that they were now unobserved, she got back into her seductive, spider-like mode as she caught his fly.

  Anatoly watched as she slowly unzipped his pants.

  She looked up. “Close your eyes. I told you I don’t like being watched.”

  “What good is having a beautiful woman like you if I can’t see you?”

  “Please, just till I get started; then you can look.” She let one strap from her gown fall off her shoulder. “Then I promise I will give you a lot to look at . . .” She cupped her hands over her dress and squeezed her breasts as she looked in his eyes.

  “Yes. You do have a lot to look at.” He obediently closed his eyes, his head tilted up towards the sky.

  With her right hand, she massaged his crotch through his underwear while she reached into her bag with her left. “Ooooo, you got a lot to look at too, big boy.”

  She rolled her eyes because the line sounded corny, even to her, as she said it. Then she lunged forward and jabbed the syringe right into his neck.

  “Ow . . . Ow . . .”

  She held her hand over his mouth. “Shhhh shhhhh. It will all be over in three seconds.” He wrestled to get out from under her hand and arm that she was now pinning him down with. But the weakness attacked his body and soon he was limp; all of him was limp. She re-buckled his belt and put her shoulder under his arm and got him up. She dragged him to the garden wall.

  Bridge popped his head up as he was standing on the limo’s trunk. He jumped onto the wall and then grabbed Anatoly and hoisted him up and over.

  Alisa kicked off her heels, threw them over the wall, and climbed over as well.

  They opened the trunk and put Anatoly next to the unconscious driver who was already bound and gagged.

  “Perfect fit,” Bridge said.

  “See, it was just right!”

  Bridge put on the chauffer’s coat and hat then got behind the wheel.

  Alisa got in the backseat.

  Bridge was about to drive off when he suddenly stopped and put the car in park. “What if they are checking cars on the way out?”

  .G.

  The guard waved the big limo on then held up his hand for it to halt. The driver rolled down his window. “What’s the problem?”

  “We have to check the car?”

  “The couple in the back, they are kind of in a hurry, if you know what I mean?”

  The guard took out his flashlight and looked through the back window. He couldn’t keep his eyes off the woman with her breast exposed as the man on top of her was humping away. He looked a little longer than he should until the woman opened her eyes, squinting from the light.

  Suddenly self-conscious, he waved them through.

  Bridge looked in the rearview mirror. When they were a hundred feet from the entrance he said, “You can stop now.”

  Alisa stopped lifting her leg, raising and lowering the unconscious driver’s body she’d pulled on top of her. She rolled him off her and pulled up her dress and adjusted the straps. “I had a husband like him once.”

  Bridge laughed.

  Chapter 27

  Right Neighborly

  “So you think it’s going to be a technology attack?”

  “Brooke, it looks that way . . . especially since there are no radiological or biological threats on the board right now. That doesn’t rule it out, but it bodes for alternative methods,” Remo said.

  “So what do the alternatives include?”

  “Kronos, you want to take that?”

  “Well, there’s high-fatality interruption or destruction and then there’s denial of services, which could lead to deaths but not immediately.”

  “So give me a ‘for instance.’”

  “If you hack into air traffic control, you could do a lot of damage before they got wise and unplugged the system. Could crash one hundred to three hundred planes in a span of minutes . . . mostly on landing, when the pilots are the most vulnerable to controllers and glide path systems.”

  “Seems like a low estimate,” Remo said.

  “Well yeah, of the fourteen thousand airports in the US, only about five thousand are paved and fall under FAA control, but really there are only 376 that have regular service. So at any given minute some number less than that will have planes landing on them. And of course once a plane crashes at an airport nobody lands at that airport for hours. So at the most, you’d only get one per airport, if you are a bad guy.”

  “What else?” Brooke asked.

  “Water supply.”

  “How could they manage that?”

  “Obviously, there’s the old throw-a-bucket-of-cyanide-into-the-reservoir, but the various water authorities would probably catch it before it got to an urban center, what with all the monitoring devices along the way. But if you could override the flow controls, then you could force floods, disintegrating streets, flooded subways and buildings, and a general stoppage of drinking water. Till they reboot the system. Anyone on a subway train would be dead from drowning before they got out from underground. Also there would be a diminishing of firefighting capability.”

  “There’s only one problem with all these approaches, Brooke.”

  “What’s that, Peter?”

  “Most of the real broad hits that can do damage are hack based. And unfortunately you can do that from anywhere in the World Wide Web. Remember what the Norks did to Sony Pictures that time?”

  “But we got a cell right here, not in North Korea. So the bad guys don’t need to be here if they are only doing some kind of infrastructure cyber-attack?” Brooke said.

  “Bingo,” Remo said.

  “Go back, boys. Find me some hands-on nightmare these yahoos could be up to. And don’t stop to nap. Whatever they are going to do . . . it’s close.”

  George entered and stopped them from leaving. “This is good, Brooke.”

  “I could use some good, George. Whatcha got?”

  He laid down a copy of Shamal’s picture in front of her. “Ten witnesses to Joe Garrison’s death in the subway have ID’d Shamal, picked him right out from a stack of pics.”

  “So he was our Middle Eastern speaker?”

  “It appears so, but here’s the kicker.” He placed down the picture of Paul from the ATM camera in Europe. “I threw this into the stack just for shits and giggles, and seven of the ten also identified him as being on the car at that moment.”

  “So this Paul character was an accomplice to Garrison’s murder?” Kronos said.

  “And one witness thinks he remembers better now; that it wasn’t an argument but that the darker-skinned guy was trying to get Joe to go between the cars . . .”

  “So, your buddy Joe was trying to escape when he got decapitated,” Remo said.

  “It could have gone down that way.” George shrugged his shoulders.

  Just then the phone rang. “Doctor Hiccock on line one.”

  “Guys, let me take this.”

  “Okay, we’ll be down the hall. Tell Billy he sucks at sending me pictures of Richie,” Peter Remo said.

  “Will do.” She waited for them to leave. “Bill, how did I know I’d hear from you again, today?”

  “Brooke, tell me what you wouldn’t
tell the president.”

  “Bill, do you know we have tapes of everything that is in the air, 24/7 all around the world?”

  “Yeah, we put that in after 9/11.”

  “Exactly. We did a three-day sweep after the raid here in New York and it seems we got a target hit on a small jet plane crossing into Russia.”

  “Let me remember. There are two types of return from an aircraft, skin and transponder.”

  “Right. And we got the skin, or target, track for that plane. Cross checking with the transponder tracks showed that it switched off its box over the Czech Republic.”

  “But then you could follow it on skin return?”

  “Correct.”

  “Where did it land?”

  “Moscow.”

  “Oops.”

  “Yeah, tell me about it.”

  “So you think it’s the government?”

  “Possibly, but we think we have a better working theory. The plane belongs to Vitaly Boreshenko.”

  “Who is he?”

  “Aw, Bill, not keeping up with your Russian social registry these days, are you?”

  “Changing diapers really cuts into my debutant life.”

  “He’s one of the surviving Oligarchs.”

  “How or why would he play with bad guys?”

  “Hopefully we’ll ask him when Bridge gets him to tell us where Prescott went.”

  “So we could be talking about roughing up a key Russian businessman here?”

  “Could get his Western capitalist Brooks Brothers suit mussed.”

  “Well, if anyone can pull this off without creating a second Cold War, it’s Sergeant Major Bridgestone.”

  “My thoughts, and my operational model, exactly, Bill.”

  “Keep me in the loop.”

  “Will do boss, er . . . Bill.” She hung up the phone and smiled. She was so used to calling Bill “Boss” from when she worked for him in the Quarterback Operations Group. Then she remembered. “Damn, I forgot to tell him to send Remo pictures of little Richie.”

  .G.