by Mark Nolan
“Abhay, be a good lad and find me a Greek restaurant nearby,” Banks said. “I suddenly have a craving for grilled lamb riblets, octopus salad, goat stew, and some of those fried zucchini cakes with pickled cucumbers and tzatziki dressing.”
“Very good sir, there is a good Greek restaurant here named Kokkari, over in the Financial District,” Abhay said. “I’ll call them now, and if their reservations are all taken, I will stand out in front of the restaurant and purchase a table reservation from a young couple who are walking up to the door and about to go in.”
“Yes offer them a generous sum, as usual, money is no object. They can come back another time and spend some of the extra money on the dinner of their dreams, and have plenty of cash left over to buy new furniture.”
“As you wish,” Abhay said, and he placed a call to the restaurant.
In the back of his mind, Abhay thought that he was growing tired of answering to Banks. One day he might shoot him in the head, take his money and live like a king. But that time had not come yet—someday soon perhaps, but not today.
Chapter 21
Ivan Zhukov arrived at an old warehouse that was in need of a coat of paint. He stopped in front of the building and pressed a command on his phone that caused a large overhead garage door to rise up at one of the ground-level bays. He then drove inside the warehouse and used his phone to close the door behind him.
Once the door was closed he carefully drove the car up a concrete ramp that was designed for forklifts to get up to the loading level of the dock. Reaching the top of the ramp, he drove out onto the elevated dock that was used to load and unload freight trucks. A rat ran across the dock but he ignored it. Years ago when he’d spent time in a prison camp in Russia, he’d seen plenty of rats and sometimes he’d eaten them to survive. He kept driving until he reached one of the truck-height bay doors He stopped in front of the door and got out of his car, then removed his backpack and a duffel bag from the vehicle and set them aside.
He pressed a button on the wall to make the large garage door rise up and open on automatic gears. There was an empty freight truck parked outside the door with its back bumper up against the loading dock. Zhukov opened the doors on the back of the truck and then drove the Toyota SUV off of the elevated dock and into the truck’s empty cargo area, in the same way that forklifts drive in and out of freight trucks all day. Once he was inside the truck cargo box, he turned off the car and left the keys in the ignition. The truck box was a tight fit for this particular vehicle, and he couldn’t open his car door, but he climbed out through the moon roof and then exited the back of the truck. He closed the back doors of the truck, engaged the latch mechanism and added the padlock that had been hanging on the latch unlocked. With that done he pressed the button on the wall to make the large garage door of the warehouse bay descend on automatic gears.
As soon as the door was completely closed, the driver who was sitting in the front of the tractor trailer started the engine and drove off with the automobile hidden away in the enclosed cargo box. No words had been spoken, no faces had been seen, and it was all pre-arranged and handled with a minimum of personal contact. This compartmentalization of information kept many details on a need to know basis and created protective layers of security. The tractor-trailer that had just left was the type with a live-in cab. It had a small RV-like living area where the driver could sleep and eat and spend days waiting for cargo to be shipped or received.
Zhukov picked up his backpack and duffel bag, and he walked down to the other end of the loading dock. He stopped in front of another overhead door and pushed the button to raise it. A similar truck was parked there, backed up against the docking bay. This time he opened a locked padlock on the truck and swung the left and right doors open. Inside the truck cargo box area was a new Mercedes-Benz.
He set down his bags and looked in the car’s trunk to make sure the unique weapon was there. This was one of his favorite weapons. It was elegant and extra quiet, and few if any people would hear it except for the one who was killed by it. This custom made device would create a spectacular, clean kill, and the murder would go down in Assassin history as a work of art by a genius of death.
Satisfied that all was in order, he climbed into the Mercedes through the open moon roof in the car’s ceiling. The interior of this vehicle was nicely appointed with soft leather seats and Zhukov smiled as he sat down. He backed the car out of the truck and onto the dock, then got out and closed the truck doors and locked them. Next he pushed the button that lowered the warehouse bay overhead door. The truck drove away empty, and the driver had never seen Zhukov or the new car.
Zhukov drove down the ramp, exited through the ground level garage door and used his phone to close it behind him. He drove through the city streets and enjoyed the ride in his luxurious and anonymous new vehicle. Once he reached the news station where Jake Wolfe was employed, he drove slowly up and down the parking area but he didn’t see the Jeep parked anywhere. He tapped an icon on his phone to scramble the secure mobile device, and he called his computer hacker Elena at a number he’d memorized but had never written down.
A tired female voice, scratchy from unfiltered cigarettes and vodka, answered the call and said, “What can I do for you?”
“I need some information,” Zhukov said.
“Yes, of course, Ivan,” Elena said, suddenly wide awake.
“Find the home address of a photojournalist named Jake Wolfe,” Zhukov said. “He works at a television station in San Francisco so he must live somewhere in the city or nearby in the bay area. I need it quickly for my… work.”
“I’ll call you right back.”
Zhukov drove away from the news station, and he took a wandering route through San Francisco as he waited for Elena to find the home of his next murder victim. He saw a cable car rumble past, and he drove alongside a row of Victorian houses with panoramic views of the city and the water. Tatiana would have loved to visit here. His phone vibrated and he answered the call
“Da,” Zhukov said.
“I’m sending you Wolfe’s home address, his fiancée’s name, their vehicles and license plates, phone numbers, friends and relatives, all of it,” Elena said.
“Good work, those credit bureaus and social media websites are better than the KGB secret police files.”
Zhukov watched the data appear on his phone, and then he double-checked his weapon. The reliable .22 pistol was fully loaded with hollow point rounds, and the suppressor was firmly attached. He then began driving toward the condominium building where the problematic man Jake Wolfe and his fiancée were living and would soon be dying.
Chapter 22
Jake arrived at his building and drove underneath it, into the ground-floor parking area. He parked the Jeep, walked to the elevator and rode it up to the second floor. He went down the hall to his condo, paused outside of his front door and stood there thinking for a moment. He couldn’t go on like this any longer. He had to tell Gwen that he was postponing the wedding due to their irreconcilable differences. She would not take it well. A few days ago, after drinking too much wine, she’d lost her temper and had started throwing things like dishes and coffee cups. But he had to say the words and get it over with.
He took a deep breath, put a smile on his face, opened the door and walked inside. The kitchen was on his left, the living room was to his right. Gwen was pacing back and forth between them, yelling at someone on her phone. Jake was surprised to see a brand new large screen television on the wall of the living room. The receipt was on the counter, and he saw that Gwen had charged the high ticket item to one of his credit cards without asking him first. There was a newly opened bottle of wine on the kitchen counter that was nearly empty. That was a lot to drink before dinner. Was Gwen turning into an alcoholic?
He tapped his phone and set it on a small shelf above the sink. If she was already drunk and angry this early in the evening, he wanted a video recording of their conversation just in case she had an
other one of her temper tantrums.
Gwen ended the phone call and came into the kitchen, crossed her arms and glared at Jake. “We need to talk. Why couldn’t you be here this afternoon to help me pick out our wedding favor gifts?”
“Honestly Gwen, if this arguing every day is what married life is like, I’m just not cut out to be married,” Jake said.
“You couldn’t care less about what I want, that’s what you’re really saying. Maybe we need to rethink our relationship and whether or not you and I were even meant to be together.” Gwen glared defiantly at Jake, lifted her chin and stared down her nose at him, believing he would cower to her implied threat of breaking up.
Jake thought to himself that this was his cue. The time had come to say goodbye.
A mile away, Ivan Zhukov was driving fast toward Wolfe’s home. He had various plans to kill the man. He could park across the street and shoot him when he entered or exited his building. Or he could shoot him through a window; he’d done that to some other targets. He knew to fire repeated rounds in that scenario; several rounds to break the glass and several more to kill the target. A third option would be a home invasion attack. He could wear a disguise, knock on the door under a false pretense, and then force his way inside. In that scenario, if any other people were at home he’d have to kill them too.
As Zhukov turned his car onto the street where his target lived, he smiled at the thought of killing the man who had dared to challenge him and cause him inconvenience. Being paid a generous sum for this murder would make it all the more satisfying. His bipolar mood swing was moving from depressed to manic, and he was feeling elated at the prospect of making Wolfe suffer and die. He started whistling a strange tune.
Jake took a deep breath and let it out. “Gwen, I’ve come to a decision that I want to explain to you.”
“I’ve come to a decision too Jake. I’ve decided that settling for you as a fiancé might have been a big mistake when there are plenty of better men out there.”
“Well in that case, the good news is you won’t have to settle. I’ve decided to postpone our wedding. I want you to move back in with Marcie, your old roommate, while we think things over.”
Gwen slapped Jake hard across the face, leaving a red hand print on his cheek. She put her whole body weight into it and hit him with all of her drunken anger. Jake was caught by surprise, and he reflexively raised his hands to defend himself from the assault.
If a man had hit Jake in the face that hard, Jake might have punched him in a military-trained reflex, with enough force to knock the man off his feet and break his jaw. But he used pure willpower to stop himself from retaliating against Gwen in what would have been a perfectly legal act of self-defense.
Gwen saw Jake raise his hands and then lower them, and she said, “Oh so you want to hit me, is that it? Why don’t you do it then? What’s the matter, are you scared of a woman? Go on and hit me you big pussy. Show me how tough you are; do it.”
“No, I’ve never hit a woman, and you know it; you’re the drunken, abusive partner here, not me.”
“Well I’m going to tell the police you hit me unless you do what I say,” Gwen said. “You will go through with this wedding. You will not postpone it and humiliate me in front of everyone I know. If you don’t agree with me, I’ll call 911 right now and tell the police you physically assaulted me. I’ll say that I want you arrested for domestic violence, and I want to file a restraining order against you.”
Jake’s heart went cold, and he stood very still. He’d seen these kinds of false accusations ruin the lives of some of his friends, and he didn’t want to be the next victim of the trend. He picked up his phone off the shelf, tapped the screen and sent the video to Terrell, then sent a copy to Gwen too. When Gwen’s phone buzzed and she looked at the video, she got so angry that she picked up her empty wine glass and threw it into the kitchen sink, causing it to shatter.
“I’ve already sent that video to Terrell,” Jake said. “Now a police officer has evidence of you threatening to lie and file a false police report, which is a serious crime that could send you to prison.”
Gwen cursed at Jake and called him every dirty name she could think of. She opened the refrigerator and took out a bottle of Cristal champagne and slammed it down on the counter.
“We were saving this for a special occasion, but I’d say it’s pretty damned special when your fiancé postpones your wedding,” Gwen said.
“Sorry Gwen but at this point I’m not just postponing the wedding; I’m leaving you,” Jake said. “Our relationship is officially over. I gave it my best shot, but if I can’t trust you, I can’t be with you.”
Gwen stopped cursing and she stared at Jake in disbelief, with her mouth open in surprise.
“What did you just say to me?”
“I wish you all the best in your life Gwen, but I won’t be a part of it anymore. We’re done, this is goodbye.”
Jake turned his back on Gwen, opened the front door and walked out. He held his phone up with the front facing video on so he could look at the screen and see behind him as he left.
“Nobody leaves me!” Gwen said, and she grabbed the full champagne bottle and threw it at the back of Jake’s head. The heavy bottle slammed hard against the edge of the door as Jake was closing it, nearly hitting him.
Jake saw the incoming bottle on his phone screen, and he closed the door as fast as he could. He winced when he heard the loud impact of the bottle right near his ear. He knew that if the bottle had hit the back of his skull instead of the door, it could have killed him. His phone had recorded the attempted murder, and he paused for just a moment in the hallway to send a copy of the video to Terrell. He also forwarded both videos to his sister Nicole and to his attorney friend Bart Bartholomew.
Unknown to Jake, Ivan Zhukov had just arrived in front of his building. Zhukov pulled over and parked illegally in a loading zone across the street. From that vantage point, he could spy on his target’s ground floor garage as well as his second floor home. Wolfe’s window curtains were open, giving Zhukov an unobstructed view through the sliding glass door and into the living room and kitchen area. He used military grade binoculars to look into the condo and he saw Gwen there, upset and crying, but he didn’t see Wolfe. Next he studied the garage, and he spotted Wolfe’s Jeep in a parking space. The man was home, and it was time for him to die. Zhukov got out of his car, jogged across the street and into the garage, opened the stairway door and started climbing the stairs two at a time.
In the hallway, Jake pushed the button for the elevator and stood there waiting for it to arrive. He got impatient and decided to take the stairs instead. As he turned and began walking toward the door to the stairwell, the elevator doors opened. A woman walked out, carrying two bags of groceries. Jake turned around, said hello to his neighbor, and then got into the elevator and pushed the button for the ground floor. Just as the doors of the elevator closed, Zhukov opened the door to the stairwell and stepped into the hallway.
Zhukov saw a woman opening the door to her condo. She set one bag of groceries on the carpet, used her key to unlock her front door, and went inside. While she was preoccupied, Zhukov went to Wolfe’s door and reached out his left hand for the doorknob to see if someone had neglected to lock it. The doorknob turned slowly in his gloved hand, it was unlocked. His right hand drew the pistol from his shoulder holster, but he kept it hidden inside his coat.
He was about to quietly push open the door and step inside the condo, but then the neighbor woman came back into the hall to grab her other bag of groceries. She looked at Zhukov in curiosity, and he thought of the old saying that curiosity killed the cat. He had his pistol in his hand, hidden inside his coat, and pointed at the woman. He could fire a suppressed round into her head, by shooting through his coat, just like he’d done so many times before. Her life depended on what she said or did in the next few seconds.
“If you’re looking for Jake you just missed him,” the woman said. “He went
down the elevator a minute ago, just as I got home.”
“Thanks but I’m looking for a unit that’s for rent; the realtor told me it was on the third floor,” Zhukov said. “And now that I look at the number on this door, I realize I’m on the second floor, how silly of me.”
He smiled and shrugged, put his pistol back in the holster, then walked to the stairway door and hurried downstairs. He ran through the garage toward where he’d seen the Jeep parked, but it was gone. Zhukov cursed in Russian as he ran across the street, got into his car and drove off. He went around the block at high speed, hoping to spot the Jeep as it was leaving. He saw a black SUV down a side street, and he gunned his engine and raced toward the vehicle. When he caught up with the SUV he saw that it was not a Jeep, and he pounded his fist in anger on the dashboard.
Zhukov drew his pistol and held it in one hand while his other hand held the steering wheel. He drove in a crisscross pattern through the neighborhood, searching for Jake Wolfe.
When he’d looked at the condo window and had seen Gwen crying, he’d guessed that the couple might have had a lover’s quarrel. There was a good chance that his prey was somewhere nearby, having dinner at a restaurant with a sympathetic friend or drowning his sorrows with alcohol at a bar.
Zhukov took out his phone, called Elena and said, “Jake Wolfe left his home a moment before I arrived. I want to know where he is, and I want to know now.”
“I’ve been hacking into their checking accounts and credit cards, Gwen’s passwords are a joke,” Elena said. “I see that today Gwen bought a Samsung smart TV that’s connected to the internet. This particular television has a built-in camera with facial recognition software and a microphone with voice recognition capabilities. It’s like voluntarily installing a giant spying device in your home that allows strangers to watch and record you day and night.”
