by Mike Gomes
"It's not all logical when it comes to Victor," Nikolai sighed. "You're dealing with a man here who enjoys inviting trouble. And he does things all for effect. The way he harmed your husband was to send a message to you and to me. He knew you'd come back. He knew you'd see it, and he probably figured you'd contact me right away. I wouldn't doubt if he had let you leave the spot you were in on purpose, just so you could get in contact with me so that I would know he was on our trail.
"It just goes against everything we were ever taught." Gabriella was frustrated and banged her right hand against the steering wheel as the truck sat idling in place. "If someone's after you, you create distance. You get away. You move away. He had the best opportunity. He had made me out, and by happenstance, I got out of the situation. If he had taken off the other direction from me, I would have been done tracking him and he would have been left to his own devices, with no way for me to find out where he was."
"You insulted him," Nikolai told her, stopping his sentence short, not filling her in with more.
"I insulted him?" Gabriella asked, she was confused by the words. "How could I have insulted him? I'm amazed that he figured out that I was after him. The fact that he figured out who I was so early on and had set me up to come to him, is beyond what I can figure out. He's working on a different level, so how can he can see it as insulting?"
"He's insulted because you tried to kill him."
"I tried to kill him?" Gabriella questioned. "I never had the chance to even take a shot at the man. I didn't know exactly where he was. I was trying to close in on him and make a clear identification."
"It's not all that easy, Gabriella." Nikolai knew the answers, but was reluctant to share them all. "This guy thinks because you were hired, that you deserve to die. It's just the fact that you took the mission that he has such offense with."
"And how in God's name would he know that I was on the mission?" She held herself still waiting for the answer.
"He knows you and I have a history."
"He knows we had a relationship?" Gabriella snapped. "How could you let him know that we had a relationship?"
"I'm sorry, Gabriella, but at that time, I was in love, and I thought you and I would be together forever. I thought you were going to be the thing that brought me out of this madness, but then it just didn't work out." Frustration built in his voice at the mistake he had made. "Victor was my partner in those days and he was a man that I thought I could trust. So yes, there were times where I told him about the woman that I loved. I just didn't realize he was taking it all in for use at a later time."
"And he keeps calling me the Mantis. Did you tell him that too?" she asked, feeling an anger coming up in her for Nikolai that she had never felt before.
"I told them about you. I told them about your eyes and how you looked, and how you treated me. I told them how I felt about you, what a difference you were making to me. He seemed so understanding and sympathetic all of the time, little did I know that he was playing me for all I was worth." Nikolai was exasperated by his foolhardy attempts to build a relationship with Victor. "I had never said that you were the Mantis, but I think he was able to figure it out. He had figured out that you were in the game and that you were a fighter. But he didn't know where you were or what you did when you weren't in the game. I tried to pass you off as an accountant, but there was no way he was going to believe that."
"So you blew my cover?" Gabriella with disbelief.
"What cover? You had no interaction with that man at all, there's no way I could blow your cover."
"Bullshit!" Gabriella snapped, her voice overwhelmed with anger. "You know having a cover is for life. You never blow someone's cover, you never say who they really are. It doesn't matter if the mission hasn't happened yet, or if it was twenty years ago, you never let on what the truth is and who the person is. That's day one of the training we all get, and you forgot it."
Sitting silent at the other end of the phone, Nikolai was sure that what he had done had put Gabriella's life at risk, and had led to the death of Antonio. It didn't matter that when he gave Victor the information, it had been over ten years ago, and like any good agent, Victor took the information, placed it into his mind, and held it for a time that he could use it.
"I'm sorry, Gabriella. You're the last person I ever wanted to have get harmed. The fact that you lost a loved one over this makes me sick."
"Sorry, old friend, but that doesn't do a lot for me right now. So, I'm gonna let you know something, you're in it now with me. I've got some work to do around here, but I'm gonna be coming to see you, and we're gonna work together."
"Gabriella, it's not that easy. You've seen what this guy's like, and you've seen what he can do. He's gonna figure out we're waiting for him and that we're gonna come after him. He knows already that we've had this conversation. He knows that this is do or die. Either you and I die, or he dies. That's the only way someone walks away, if not the hunting will go on and on."
"You got me into this mess, and you're gonna get me out," Gabriella huffed.
"Hold on a minute, lady," Nikolai’s tone was laced with frustration. "Don't you dare act like I forced you into this. You called me. You were looking for work, I told you what I had to offer and you accepted it. I didn't pull the trigger on your husband... Or at least I didn't do it now. I may have screwed up in the past, but you're the one that was saying you were willing to take the mission."
"And it was the biggest mistake of my life," Gabriella cried. "It's a mission that's cost me everything. In this job that we have, where we say it takes everything we have, well I just had to give up everything. Did you?"
"Are you really asking me that?"
"Yes. I'm asking you. Where's your sacrifice in all of this? Just the fact that you're being chased around?" she asked.
"I lost the love of my life because of this too. She didn't get shot and she didn't get killed, but she was stripped away from me." Nikolai’s voice held a deep pain with what he was telling her. "I had found the woman that I wanted to spend my life with. I had found the woman that was gonna get me out of this and let me move on. But once the KGB found out about her, I knew that her life was over if I continued to be with her."
Gabriella sat silently at the other end of the phone, processing the information that she had just heard. Never before had Nikolai ever divulged that there had been a woman in his life that had held so much intensity, and who he cared for in such a deep manner.
"At least she's alive, she's out there. After you take care of this, you could always run back to her and have some life." Gabriella finally said. "I don't have that luxury, but you do."
"No. I don't. She married another man. She found perfection in him, and he gave her his full heart. I can never go to her now and profess the love that I always had for her. Besides, I don't think you'd believe me if I told you how much I still love you anyways."
Chapter Seventeen
Sitting in the living room of the abandoned home that Gabriella had left behind, Victor opened the medical bag that the previous couple had left there in case of emergency. As the blood ran down from his elbow, the feeling of broken bone had become a consistent reminder of what happened to him with every movement that passed. The small chips and fragments of bone that had broken off now floated between pieces of tissue, jabbing in any time he made a movement.
Dragging himself to the kitchen table, he sat down, throwing his arm up and laying it flat on the table surface, ready to do the work that he knew needed to be done.
Sifting through the bag, Victor pulled out a set of tweezers and a bottle of hydrogen peroxide. Opening the bottle, he found a small spout that was used to dribble out the contents slowly to clean small wounds and cuts. With his available hand, he twisted off the top, leaving the large mouth of the container open.
Without giving up a moment of time, he poured some of the contents directly on the wound where the bullet had gone in. A piercing, sharp pain shot through his body, caus
ing him to squeeze hard on the bottle of hydrogen peroxide, which made some to squirt out the top of the bottle. It was like a flame that ran through his elbow, darting down to his fingers and racing up to his shoulder. The logical side in his mind said that the wound was getting cleaned, but the pain was so intense that he flexed his arm, causing the fragmented bones to dig deeper into the tissue that surrounded them.
"Good God," Victor muttered through gritted teeth, as he placed the bottle down and pounded the table with his good hand.
As the pain subsided, he could still feel the tingling of the liquid going to work. Glancing over, he could see the bubbling on his skin as any fragments of dirt and infection were whisked away by what he considered, in most instances, to be a miracle liquid, but now was providing him with nothing more than torture.
"Damn it." Victor fumbled to reach and remove the tweezers from the bag. The tweezers weren't typical of the small ones used for people to pluck hair from unwanted spots on their face, or to remove a small splinter from a finger. These tweezers were more related to hemostats that a surgeon might use to grab an artery or a piece of flesh that they need moved out of the way while they performed their delicate works on a person that was unconscious.
Victor had no such luck though. The only positive thing that he could feel came from the injury, was that it was to his left elbow. Being right-handed, it at least gave him the opportunity to use his dominant hand to fish out any pieces of broken bone that would limit the minimal amount of healing that could be done under the current situation.
Sliding his thumb and index finger through the holes in the extended tweezers, Victor slowly slid them into the opening where the bullet had traveled. Each movement caused considerable and sharp pains that hit him over and over again like the beating of a drum. Initially, he thought he could control the pain by simply stopping his movement. But each time the pain stopped, it only ignited again with the next movement of his hand, causing him excruciating pain.
The decision was clear for Victor who had lived his life and fought for his life with the KGB. He now needed to simply shove in the tweezers and remove the chips as fast as possible. Knowing the pain would be agonizing, he reached into the bag again, grabbing three tongue depressors and placed them into his mouth. He used them the way many people in times before anesthetics and pain relief would place a stick into the mouth of a person that was getting a surgery or a woman having a baby.
Clamping down with his teeth, he let the impressions sink into the wood, giving his teeth something to grab onto. His right hand moved up and entered the tweezers into the hole again, as he bit down hard he cracked the wood on the first two layers of tongue depressors on the top and the bottom. The sound of the tweezers entering his body made a squishing sound as he dug in deeper.
The pain radiated through him, causing sweat to break through on his forehead and the back of his neck. The slight movements of millimeters felt like miles, as he let the tip of the tweezers make contact with the loose chips, he grabbed them and yanked them out as quick as possible. More often than not, the chips of bone would rip through tissue to get their way out, he let out a scream of agony each time.
Ten minutes passed and Victor felt like he’d ran a marathon. Exhausted and drawn, he laid down the tweezers on the table next to the three pieces of bone that he had found as he’d rooted around within his open wound.
"Oh, God," Victor sighed. "That never gets easier."
He patted his right hand along his right knee, remembering the time where he had had to extract a bullet from himself after a fight that he’d partnered with Nikolai on. That day Nikolai had saved his life, allowing the shot to enter his leg rather than his head. The comradery and the friendship that the man had felt with his old partner had now vanished in the years that had gone by.
Wrapping the open wound with clean gauze, and closing the hole with a stretch of silk thread, Victor finally felt some relief from the pain.
"If that bitch wasn't out there, I'd drink some of that Jack Daniels," he muttered to himself. "She'll be back soon though, and I'll take care of her."
Retrieving the cellphone satellite from his backpack, Victor pumped out the numbers for his home office in the KGB.
"Hello, this is Victor. Entrance code 47329. Entrance," Victor said to the machine that initially heard him and patched him through to the next security level.
Through twists and turns within the phone system, Victor found his way locking in to the main group of supervisors within the KGB unit.
"Pulski here," came the voice at the other end of the phone in a no-nonsense tone.
"This is Victor," said the man sitting in the living room of the man he had just killed earlier in the day. "I need resources in Northern Chile."
"Victor, are you free to speak?" Pulski asked on the other end of the phone.
"We are on a secure line," Victor confirmed with authority. "I have used an encrypted mode to get me through on a different circuit. I have found the Mantis."
Sound went silent on the far end of the phone. Pulski knew that the Mantis had been searched for, for many years, but to no avail. The Mantis, in some circles, was thought to be a mystery and nothing but a fallacy. But now, one of the top agents in the world was saying that he had her cornered.
"How can you be sure it's her?"
"Because I've been doing this all of my life, and I know the woman," Victor argued. "She's been trying to live the quiet life here in Northern Chile, I'll send you the coordinates. I need about a dozen agents to get down here as fast as possible, so that we can flush her out. She broke from the location that I'm in, but she won't be leaving. I have her dead husband's body."
"Victor, you're asking a lot. Manpower is something that we're always short on, it's not like the old days."
"Do you want the Mantis?" Victor asked.
"Of course we want her, but you have to understand, we don't have people just laying around to send out to you," Pulski explained. "We have to be reasonable with these things."
"Reasonable?" Victor snapped. "You're looking for reasonable? Was it reasonable when I was ordered to track my partner? Was it reasonable when you told me to kill my partner after interrogating him? Was it reasonable when you plucked me from my family as a child to train me? Don't speak to me about being reasonable."
"Victor, I understand your position of being one of the greatest agents in KGB history, but you can also hold your tongue to who is your superior." Pulski left no question of who was truly in charge.
"It's an attitude like that that gets men killed," Victor growled with a deepened tone to his voice.
"Are you threatening me, old friend? Are you forgetting your rank?" Pulski asked. "You forget, I helped train you. I brought you from nothing to something grand. A man who sits atop the KGB ladder. Despite his many indiscretions on the job."
The words hung for Victor to hear. He wondered whether Pulski knew the truth about the diamonds. Was he setting himself up for attack by calling in the KGB?
The desire to catch the woman that they once held in esteem could all be a front for getting Victor himself.
"I have no indiscretions. I have completed every mission I have ever been on. Match my record against anybody, please, match it against anybody."
"What if we just match the parts where you stole for your own good and didn't turn it in at the end of your missions." Pulski drove directly to the point. "Do you think we didn't know? Did you think Nikolai turned you in? Well, he didn't. We saw it many times from when you were young, until now. We've allowed you to keep those items, because we realized that sometimes a man just needs a memento beyond his government salary."
"That's all ridiculous." Victor shook his head at the fact that the KGB had known what he had been doing all along.
"Don't lay me with such theatrics, sir," Pulski admonished. "What we have here, is me with an abundance of evidence that shows what you've done, I'm locked into every bank account you have a world-wide. So, we need to come
to an agreement that what you've done is real, but that I don't care."
"You don't care?" Victor asked, shocked at his superior’s admission.
"A million dollars means nothing to me in stolen items if we have the greatest agent who ever lived. I'll send you a team of six, send me the coordinates and we'll nail this bastard. The Mantis… so cute."
Chapter Eighteen
The old Ford pickup looked just as it had when it left the showroom floor. It still held the body shape, except for a few dents on the side, and the engine sounded no different than when it had been first driven into the northern Chilean mountains by the young couple. But that was all a disguise for those who ventured to talk to the young couple, leaning their arm on the vehicle as they exchanged the news of the day.
The engine had been built for street driving and some light farm work, until Antonio had got a hold of it and changed the torque and the power on the vehicle. Not an easy task for any man, even under the best of conditions, but Antonio knew that in the line of work that he and Gabriella were in, the adjustments needed to be made.
He’d hollowed out the bottom of the bed to allow room for survival equipment, including ropes, flares, MRE meals, and various weapons, from handguns to bows to rapid-fire semi-automatic machine guns. Antonio had felt he’d thought of everything, all the equipment one would need if they had to flee into the mountains. The plan had always been the same, get to the pickup and get out of the range of the homestead, once out of range, aim for the mountains. If someone were slick and cunning enough to track them through the mountains, then they would have earned their keep.
Slipping out of the driver's side door, Gabriella worked her way to the back of the vehicle, feeling under the bumper, under the body of the car, looking for the latch that would pop the bed of the truck up.
