"Damn, they're done. Toast, an' all because we underestimated him again,″ cursed Zak.
'I'll stay here in the back. You go in the front on my comm. Ready," ordered Kefira.
Then they heard it, a seaplane motor. It revved fast and picked up speed. The plane banked and took no chances by not passing over the house. It was gone. They knew that they had missed him and they were even more leery of traps and mines. Kefira cursed and communicated with Zak around the front of the house.
"We have to go in the second story windows. Wait. Even the second story might be booby-trapped. Stop. Make your way back here. Now," she said emphasizing her role as superior officer despite Zak's field experience. Kefira had asserted control. Zak came around. Kefira climbed a tall, hardwood, oak tree, and lunged into the second story window feet first. At the sound of Kefira's landing on the floor, a dog barked and ran upstairs. He was wearing a tall, human-shaped, mannequin made of rubberized heat retaining material. The dog was the heat signature that their eyewear had identified earlier. Upon seeing Kefira, it started wagging its tail. It was a house pet, not a guard dog.
"Come in the same way I did," ordered Kefira.
Zak followed and cursed as a pointed piece of glass cut his arm just above the wrist. He stopped the bleeding by putting pressure on the wound and then applied Crazy glue, which he always carried with him for just that purpose, after which he covered the wound with gauze and tape. Zak walked forward, his weapon extended in front of him, at the end of half-bent arms.
Kefira was kneeling in front of the dog. In the hallway, Kefira had unclipped the mannequin and was inspecting it, when Zak held her elbow and told her not to move. A bead of sweat dripped down his face. Together, they looked at the LED timer, flashing the seconds in a less than three-minute total, with wires running out of it towards the head of the mannequin. The dog did not protest as they re-attached the contraption and made their way back to the window they had earlier entered.
Kefira uncoiled a hand-held device with snap-open clips on one end. The serrated clips were meant to attach to a branch of a tree or other object. The piece of equipment operated on a cable that wrapped around a branch and used gravity to enfold itself around the limb, and then the snap-open blades set it in position with a hard tug of the cable.
On the first throw, the apparatus dropped to the ground. The clock was running down. Innocent of its condition, the dog came back into the room and looked at them, its tail wagging. Kefira pulled the equipment back up. The second time, she succeeded. She then secured the cable to the water filled radiators in front of the window. Holding a pulley, they left the house one-by-one and made their way down the backside of the tree.
Once on the ground, both of them ran for the lakeside of the peninsula in search of any remains of Aden and Sarah. They would find nothing. Behind them, the dog exploded, setting the house on fire and starting a process that complicated their escape. Getting back to their car and leaving the scene would become more problematical. Both Zak and Kefira shook their heads, the adrenalin wearing off. The loss of their team members and MacAuley's uncanny good fortune had blunted their usual positive demeanors. "That bastard MacAuley seems to be five steps ahead of us, all the time," uttered Zak. Kefira told him to snap out of it, because they had to move fast to get back to their vehicle. They left at a sprint, skirting around the growing fire and making their way through the forest.
RUSSIAN OLIGARCH
January, 2012
The mausoleum atmosphere was not lost on most visitors, especially Russians. Behind the desk was an old-world map filled with a multitude of pins headed with diverse colors. Beside the desk was a single bed, covered with a down comforter. On the table beside the bed, a votive candle in red glass cast an eerie shadow on some yellowed paper, covered with indecipherable writing in red crayon. The red crayon used for the writing lay beside a plain envelope.
Jutting angularly out of the envelope was a letter, hand-scribbled in the same crayon. A large magnifier, including a light, sat perched over the letter like a bird of prey. To read the letter, it was necessary to turn on the light. The letter itself was encased in an oak-sided, glass-topped cover, complete with a pressure-sensitive, thumbprint reader to secure the contents. The desk along the center of the wall was made of beautifully polished hardwood inlaid in the same pattern on every side.
Beside the bed was a black leather couch. President Rutin sat on the couch. He was a short man, accustomed to power. Yet in this room, in the green stone building that echoed the past, he could not help but feel in the presence of a deity. Rutin's host, Doctor Rostov, thrived on power. Every minute of his day was contrived to gratify his need to be respected. On this day, the president of Russia sat on a couch that Rostov had re-designed.
The purpose of the oligarch's re-engineering was to humiliate the president of Russia, to make him feel small. Doctor Rostov stared through a spy hole in the wall at President Rutin, sitting with his legs dangling in empty space over the edge of the sofa, feet not touching the floor. The oligarch made a mental note to reward the minion who had suggested re-designing the chesterfield, chuckling at his petty achievement. The Russian president, for his part, sat rather awkwardly on the black leather couch and waited. A manservant, who spoke only when spoken to, stood beside the president of Russia, holding a samovar.
"You may pour my tea," said Rutin, having already tried several times unsuccessfully to indicate his needs by gesturing to the servant without speaking.
The young man seemed for the first time to notice the pair of glasses, holding long silver spoons and sitting beside a small silver topped glass jar filled with very sweet, homemade, black current jam.
"Doctor Rostov instructed me to await his arrival before serving the tea. He said he has timed its steeping to be perfect at ten forty-one exactly. It is now ten thirty-nine, sir."
Rutin ground his teeth, making a hollow in his cheeks. A wall to his left, previously unremarkable as a door, slid into itself, noiselessly. The sound of the door's arrival at the end of the track, guiding it to its closing point, interrupted the conversation between the manservant and the President.
"It's uncanny the effect he still has on us, isn't it?" said Rostov from the door where he was standing, holding a pipe, wearing a uniform from the Great Patriotic War. He also had a moustache just like Uncle Stalin's moustache.
"I never took you for a fool. What is this charade? I am a busy man," said Rutin.
A bell sounded in the oligarch's pocket. He laughed in a mischievous tone and broke into a classic Cossack's dance, his legs squatting under him as his feet strutted out in front of him in alternating thrusts. Rostov's knees were bent; his arms were clasped in front of him, fingers over elbows. Music filled the room.
"The tea, pour the tea and bring in the vodka. Today we celebrate victory for the Rodina," shouted Rostov.
Rutin stumbled into the coffee table in front of him because he misjudged the height of the adjusted couch. His knee struck the table, hurting him. He uttered, "Yob tvoyu mat," under his breath, meaning ′fuck your mother′, a common Russian expletive. The president ground his teeth together while he rubbed his bruised upper shin, just below his kneecap. As this transpired, the manservant had effortlessly held up the samovar, bent at the waist and scooped up the President's falling glass, all without spilling one drop on the pristine, crisp white tea service cloth.
"Your tea, Sir," he said without any judgment in his tone.
Rutin looked up to his left and took the proffered glass of tea.
Responding to a nod from Rostov, the manservant spoke out of turn, "Perhaps Your Excellency would care for homemade black current jam to flavor his tea?" added the manservant, never looking directly into Rutin's eyes.
"I'll serve myself," said the President, still rubbing his shin, but now more comfortably seated in the back of the couch.
"Leave us," said Rostov, flicking his fingers in dismissal. The manservant exited with the finesse and speed of a profess
ional dancer, all the time carrying the heavy, antique samovar. The sliding door clicked closed after him, its movement activated by Rostov using a remote control on his desk.
Rostov walked around his desk. He sat and Rutin had to crane his neck to see him clearly. Rostov looked forward and spoke as if on the stage in soliloquy.
"It is all an exact replica. I own the drawings for the summer dacha in Sochi. Some of the furniture is original. Money buys anything today. Some of the pieces are copies made to my exacting specifications. Look on that table. Do you know what that is under the magnifying glass? That is the hand-written note that ended Trotsky's life. Imagine Stalin governing an empire from this exact desk, using red crayons."
Something broke the trance. Rostov stood up and reached into his chest pocket. His cell phone was on vibrate.
"I am truly sorry, Mr. President, I must take this,″ said Rostov as he strutted towards the door, sliding open, in front of him. The phone made an unusual noise, which the president recognized as the sound of an encrypted device.
"We must encourage them to bring their drilling equipment here. Once they are established and at work, we will find a way to break our agreements. Leave that to me," continued Rostov, but the closing door muffled the rest of the conversation.
When he came back into the room, he was wearing a grayish-blue, hand-tailored, made-to-measure Anderson & Sheppard of London suit. The actor was gone. Rostov was all business.
"Red crayons and no telephones. How on earth did they do it?" said Rostov, sitting opposite the president on a chair that he had dragged across the room. "More tea?" he asked.
"No, you said you had news of the drilling rights' documents that British Petroleum falsified," said Rutin, looking around as if worried about the security of speaking in Rostov's home.
"This place is better than an embassy. There is electronic noise in the walls and the windows are actually the highest quality flat screens money can buy. You are watching live video. Not even parabolic microphones can penetrate into here," said Rostov, as if understanding Rutin's unuttered fears.
"The drilling rights …" repeated Rutin.
"Falsified is a strong word, Mr. President. My 'suits' prefer the word ′adulterated′. It casts less illegality while having the added benefit of spreading mistrust. To make an omelet, you have to crack some eggs, don't you?" said Rostov, winking at his allusion to one of Uncle Stalin's favorite expressions, which was a play on the Russian word, yeiko. In Russian, the word transliterated as yeiko could mean either an egg or a man's testicle; hence, the notion in Stalin's Soviet Union that making things happen required crushing some testicles.
"Don't tell me about details. I have plausible deniability then," said Rutin.
"Once they are successfully bringing the oil to the surface, we will introduce an element of mistrust into our studies of the original documents pertaining to the acquisition of drilling rights during perestroika. It will become abundantly clear, with your agreement, Mr. President, that the rights were bought at usurious rates during a devastating period of our history. As we all know, my predecessor was a traitor and thanks to you, Sir, he is now behind bars. He tried to sell off the Rodina for his own profit. He was, after all, a Jew, wasn't he?"
"You still haven't answered my question, Doctor Rostov."
"It is a delicate matter, but the long and the short of it is this: when the oil is successfully drilled, a feat our technology could not achieve, we will declare their drilling rights invalid and throw them out of the country. We then continue to reap the benefits. What is it the Americans say: a win-win scenario. Good for you and good for me."
″A win-win situation would include both parties, them and us winning, not you and I, Mister Rostov. But, your ability to use Americanisms is not the subject of our discussion today, is it?″ said President Rutin.
"Just as a point of order, Mister President, there is a Ph.D. after my name, but never mind. I must have misspoken. At any rate, two parties win, n'est-ce pas?″
"The other oil companies will boycott us. We will have trouble raising capital in the markets. They will spread rumors of the old Soviet Union coming back to roost."
"Let them, Mister President. In a short time, their greed will overcome their fear and we will shift our partnership to Exxon or Royal Dutch Shell. In addition, our next topic of discussion will guarantee their culpability. Thanks to your moves, Mister President, in Syria, the price of oil will be rising again."
The sliding door clicked open and the manservant stepped into the room. This time, the samovar was replaced by a silver tray containing two iced vodka glasses and an ice bucket. In the bucket perched a bottle of vodka, a special golden yellow bottle made by the armored-car maker, Russo-Baltique, in collaboration with Princess Regina Abdurazacova of Kazakhstan. The manservant manipulated the tray effortlessly. It seemed to rest in the air unaided as he used slight-of-hand to hold and pour the vodka while an unseen clasp held the tray to his chest. The clasp had disappeared when he again held the tray. He slinked out of the room silently, tapping his toe behind him to the tune of an early 20th century tango from Argentina called Cholo. As the manservant left, walking in time with the music, the two lifted their glasses.
"To our new Rodina," they said in unison.
OLIGARCH IN DUBAI
March 2, 2012
Dubai International Airport sparkled in front of her as Ms. Michael MacAuley cleared customs. Ms. MacAuley was travelling first class and her customs inspection reflected her obvious privilege. The flight from Buenos Aires had stopped in Rio de Janeiro, where she had a short layover and a connection directly to Dubai International Airport Terminal 3.
In an effort to follow her older brother's explicit instructions, she was dressed in a culturally sensitive manner. Her thick, mahogany-colored hair was completely covered by an emerald green silk sari top, delicately threaded with gold filament.
A close inspection of the garment would have revealed Celtic runes, but a cursory glance might have mistaken the filigree for stylized Arabic script. She was very uncharacteristically timid, intentionally, not drawing attention to herself. Her older brother's instructions had been unconditional and clear. "Take the perks, but don't let anyone remark your passage. Just be understated. Our lives may depend upon it," said Michael MacAuley before Michael, the sister, left Argentina. He had gone on to explain that she would be his artifice, distracting those who scoured international databases and wanted him dead. In fact, her name had raised red flags in all of the passport stations where she passed. Even her fawning gestures, lowered, sparkling, green eyes, pale regal-looking skin, and curvy shape could not belay detection.
In Dubai International Airport Terminal 3, electronic scans of her hands and passport perfunctorily acknowledged the name Michael MacAuley. Her retina was not in the database, precluding a retinal scan.
An apparently oblivious bureaucracy quickly passed her through to a waiting Rolls Royce rental, arranged by Doctor Rostov's staff, and a scenic drive through the stunningly lit city of the future, before finally crossing the small bridge to a Panoramic Suite at the Burj Al Arab. The less evident bureaucracy was alert to her movements, exactly as Michael, her brother, wished, leaving him free to move as bureaucracies were paying attention to his sister with the selfsame name.
Her brother, Michael MacAuley, arrived the next day by a more roundabout manner. He was packed into a house-moving container. In effect, he was sealed into the storage place that Air Freight paid for in fifty one-ounce, Platinum Platypus coins from the Perth mint in Australia.
MacAuley's storage place was a state-of-the-art hiding place. When he exited his Air Freight container, he did not pass customs. The security man, near his means of transport, conveniently looked the other way as a reasonably dressed man with a dense dark beard, straggly long hair and dark aviator glasses, left the cargo hold of the plane carrying a suit bag flopped over a suitcase and a set of golf clubs on his left arm. He was remarkable only for a pronounced limp. Hi
s trip took place in the relative comfort of a sealed container with all of the conveniences of home, including an inside lock on the storage place. A coded knock by a mute security guard on his box, using a specially designed hammer, signaled to MacAuley to open up. Platinum bought silence. A pre-ordered taxi was waiting for MacAuley near the airport exit.
MacAuley stayed at The Fortune Classic Hotel Apartments, on the corner of Damascus Street and Al Nahda Road. He was an ordinary tourist with a paid up United Arab Emirates Visa billed on the Internet in Burnaby, British Columbia. Michael did not use his fluent Arabic. He knew where he would meet his contacts, not where they expected him.
Doctor Rostov was waiting for Michael MacAuley when she arrived at the Panoramic Suite. He appeared a little impatient. Rostov was not used to changing his plans. People changed for him, not the other way around. Michael waited as the bellhop opened the door for her. She stepped into the suite and the view astounded her. She reached for a tip in her purse, but the young man bowed and gestured toward the L-shaped leather sofa and coffee table near the enormous floor-to-ceiling, plate glass windows.
Dr. Rostov stood up and eyed Michael MacAuley from top to bottom. She had loosened her wrapped, over-the-shoulder robe to reveal half of her body, one breast and one exposed leg, covered by a silky skin-toned, finely woven under wrap. The thread in it matched the green of her eyes and the red of her hair. The tension of the material against her skin left nothing to the imagination.
"You are not the Michael MacAuley I was expecting. Since you conveyed the correct password to the driver, I let you come forward. Now is the time for explanations. You have sixty seconds to live,″ said Rostov.
Michael walked calmly toward the older man. She did not speak. As she reached into the folds of her inner garment, Rostov could not help but take another glance. Her skin was pearly white; her veins etched fine blue patterns on her neck. Her abdomen, of which he now caught a glimpse, was taut but supple. She produced a white ticket. It had the letterhead of the Dubai Creek Golf and Yacht Club marked discreetly on its left corner. Rostov, a member, recognized the shape of the insignia.
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