Love Is for Tomorrow (9 page)

Priya recognised a tattoo on Khabib’s chest partly hidden under his shirt. It showed the face of an ugly man. 

Olga slid the envelope across the table to Khabib.

The waiter mixed the drinks, drowning out what Khabib and Olga were saying.

“Mini, can you get a shot of the tattoo?” Priya asked.

“I will,” Mini replied. “Save it together with the facial recognition.”

“We’re running a scan,” Priya heard Rose say. “Right now, we still don’t know who we are dealing with.”

Khabib opened the envelope and leaned back to see what was inside. He slid the papers out a sliver and waited till the waiter left to speak.

“I have to get this painting for our client,” Khabib said in Russian. He had an accent, perhaps Chechen, Georgian or Dagestani. “It’s some part of a payment or a sign of good will, you know? There’s this guy who recently got it on the black market. Name’s Nate Bellic. He has the art piece stashed in a warehouse in Belgrade, right beneath an old fortress. Kalemegdan, yeah, that’s what it’s called. But he refuses to bring the painting to our first meeting. What do I care about it? It’s a painting of a pipe with some French text under it. I don’t know what it says, but it’s worth a lot. So I have to go to Monaco, to Hotel de Paris, where he wants to meet first. I tell you, we’re wasting time here. I need to deliver the painting personally to our client soon. He’s growing impatient. That first bit was not part of the plan.”

“I’m just delivering the message,” Olga said.

Khabib turned his head away and frowned. He seemed to soak in the dancers and think about what he would be able to afford, when the job was done.

“I hope I get a premium for missing the Barca play,” Khabib said. “This to do is very boring.”

“Friends,” Kovac said through her earpiece. “This is going to be tough. I caught the man’s tattoo from Mini’s camera feed. I have seen it before on some pretty nasty guys. Khabib could be hardcore. You should be very careful.”

Priya grimaced. “Understood.”

Mini moved further away from Olga and Khabib. Only Priya could afford to watch them from the safety of the bar.  

“Tanya did not prohibit killing, right?” Khabib said.  

Olga shot him a glare.

“I don’t care how you do it,” she said.

Khabib put the glass to his lips and took a large gulp.

“Then consider him a dead man.”

He put the printouts back into the envelope, before tucking it into his jacket. Then he left, leaving Olga alone.

A cold shudder ran over Priya’s back.

“More ice?” the barkeeper asked her.

Priya rubbed her shoulders with her hands and tried to fake a smile. “No, thanks.”

***

After the club operation, the team returned to
Hotel Duquesa de Cardona
. It wasn’t far from the sea promenade and port. Priya entered the luxury hotel and walked around on the penthouse terrace with Salim. She soaked in the view over the city’s harbor.

“
The Treachery of Images
,” Priya replied, seeing the picture on the screen in front of her. It depicted a big pipe with a French line beneath.

“Ce n’est pas une pipe,”
Salim read out loud from the screen on Priya’s phone and nodded.
“
Rene Magritte surrealism. A picture of a pipe does not make it one. It’s just a painting.”

“Right,” Rose said. “Estimated worth ten million. It was stolen three months ago.”

“We’re not going into stolen art, are we?”

“Only when the people trading in it are also involved in arms dealing.”

Rose sent Priya the picture and file of a man. He was already known to them.

“The art dealer is one Nate Bellic. Our analysis on the guy shows possible Russian and Chechen connections.”

“I’m going to hack his phone,” Priya said.  

“Let me know if you need anything,” Rose said. “Under different circumstances, this would be a kill mission. But we need Khabib alive. Intercept the meeting between Khabib and the art dealer. Find out how to get to the source, even if that means following him back to the buyer.”

“Sounds like that’s exactly what it means,” Kovac said with a snort.  

“How do we get there?” Antoine asked.

“You can borrow the Corvette
,” Salim said. “But make sure the tank is full when you bring it back.”

***

Vienna, Austria

It felt good to be in his own car again, racing through Vienna’s familiar streets. Antoine compared it to having a normal life, the grey working days of people who lived a safe distance away from the edge.

He was just driving home from a normal day at the office.

“Did you see Khabib’s tattoo?” Kovac said from the passenger seat. “A very old and ugly man, with his beard twisted and winded over his bulging veins.”

“Do you know what it is?”

“Yeah,” Kovac said, “Koschei the Deathless. He’s a figure out of Slavic folklore and horror fairy tales too dismal to tell to children.”

Antoine revved the engine. He kicked the accelerator. As if on cue, the traffic lights switched to green.

“In the stories, Koschei abducted the hero’s wife, but the real problem was that he was hard, almost impossible to kill. It’s like the cause of the terrorists. They won’t be eradicated by taking only a few of them down.”

Antoine passed the junction and pulled right. He drove along Danube canal, on the ring street. They evaded trams on the multi-laned boulevard and raced over the rails no one else used.

“The hero had to go after Koschei’s soul, but his soul was hidden, separate from his body,” Kovac said.

Antoine got past Schwarzenbergplatz. A huge fountain sprayed up into the city’s night air, guarded by the half-ring monument of pillars and the statue of a Soviet occupation soldier looming over the place.

“It is said that Koschei held it hidden inside a needle. This was then inside an egg, which was in a duck, which was in a hare, which was in an iron chest, buried under an oak tree, on the island of Buyan in the ocean.”

“I don’t know why he swallowed a fly. Perhaps he’ll die,” Antoine said.

“What?”

“Never mind. So, how do you find it?
” Antoine asked.

He raced past the Opera house. Its halls were now silent but the majestic veneer still illuminated the dark of night. He sped towards the Hofburg Palace.

“As long as his soul was safe, Koschei the Deathless could not die.”

Antoine banked hard right and barely made the curve. His wheels squealed and black smoke rose from burnt rubber on the tram rails. Then they shot past the museums’ quarter, leaving the historic part of town behind in the blink of an eye.

Antoine looked at Kovac, seeing the parallel in it.

“Even though it’s now in the hands of others, if we don’t find and defuse the bomb, the world is in danger.”

Antoine pulled left, drifting from the oncoming lane to the outmost right. He rushed past the Parliament, then pulled the handbrake full stop, propelling him in a one hundred eighty degree turn on the opposite lane. Antoine felt his tires spinning and looking for grip on the tram rails. They stuck to the road and brought them forward. Antoine headed into the driveway of the Parliament’s arrival. He left it again through the exit, a curved ramp downwards that spat them back onto the ring.

He decelerated the car and punched the remote control of his garage panel.

“I think you got it now,” Kovac said.

Antoine turned into his driveway, hiding the black car in his garage. A platform rose, its surface covered with gravel like a Japanese zen garden. The platform lifted higher than the car. Underneath, a door opened slowly. Antoine rolled in and killed the lights. The door closed and the garage sank, lowering the car below ground.

The house was new architecture, built in the last two years. The design was a cube artistically placed on another cube with a big window into the back garden. It was a new home for a new beginning to leave things behind. It was no coincidence that it reminded him of a bunker.

Antoine deactivated the alarm and unlocked the door. He slipped out of his shoes, leaning his back against the closing door. He let the keys fall onto a small table. It was just the same as when he left; modern, classy, but spartan and tidy with nothing beyond what was necessary. It was just another means to withdraw. You couldn’t plan for years with a dangerous life like this.

“And what do you know about the tattoo’s origin?” Antoine said.

Antoine let himself fall onto the couch. He turned on both music and tv, not intending to concentrate on either. His head sagged back.

“You don’t let everyone in here, do you,” Kovac murmured, looking at the pictures, then turning away.

It hadn’t always been like this. On the walls, bins and shelves held the remnants of another life. Pictures like portals to the past or another place, his son’s being the most painful.

Antoine went to the bar. He took out a whiskey glass and a bottle of bourbon. He returned to the couch, putting the glass on the table and poured himself a drink. Instead of sitting, he paced slowly around the living room.  

“The Koschei tattoo is used by Russian Special Forces,” Kovac said. “Khabib being Chechen narrows it down to one. I had to deal with those guys, but I wish I hadn’t. So you know how you say I have been shaped by the war? Well, that just lasted two years. Imagine one that lasted four hundred years. Then I would be Chechnya.”

Antoine took a sip. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand without putting the glass down.

“The Russian military intelligence GRU founded two Spetznaz units in Chechnya, callsigned Vostok and Zapad, meaning East and West. The overwhelming majority of personnel were ethnic Chechens, while the command personnel were mixed Russians and Chechens. Vostok and Zapad were organized at the end of 1999, initially as two special companies formed in the structure of the Mountain Grouping of the Russian Ministry of Defence. While servicemen of Zapad were loyal to the Russian government, the core of Vostok was made up of former separatist fighters of the second Battalion of the National Guard of Ichkeria from Gudermes. These are the same types of turncoats that fit Khabib’s behavior. They fought against Russian troops in the First Chechen War, then switched sides to the federals and swore allegiance to Russia. Which brings us now back to Khabib. We don’t know who this man is loyal to, but his background gives us an idea about where his allegiances lie. He changes them like underwear and puts his gun where the money is. You say I’m not scared of anything… but that scares me. This time, I do not want to be the target. They shoot first and do not miss.”  

Antoine took his phone out and looked at the display, running over names and numbers.

“You know, it’s people like him that stop me from getting back to what I want,” he said.

He stopped at one name. His college love, wife, mother of his child. His fingers glided over the display, to take the call. She wouldn’t know his number. Antoine had played it through in his head many times. It almost felt like another lifetime when he last spoke to her. She wouldn’t even know him anymore and he would be at a loss for words, hanging in the line speechless and freaking her out. That’s why he decided to let it be and not make her life any harder than it already was. It was his son’s birthday today. He would turn four. It was that special time of the year. Everything was worse in it.

“I have to spy on my own family, trying to get connected through video games, buying art from my wife, and drinking my father’s whiskey. That’s all I have left.”

He just couldn’t go back to seeing their faces. There had been a time when his room was full of pictures and reminders of them. Those were gone now, for his and their own good. He wore no rings on his fingers. Not the ring that symbolized the love they had sworn each other, nor the one he earned with blood and sweat from Westpoint. They were gone, just like he was. It was better to stay gone for all of them. If they found out who he was, they would go insane.

He looked into the warm-colored bourbon, thoughts already focused on the next sip.

“When we get Khabib and leave this behind us, I will help you get your reunion,” Kovac told him. “I promise.”

Antoine led the glass to his lips but stopped when they touched.

He let his hand down and put the glass as far away from him as possible. The tip of his index finger drew circles along the rim of the glass. He swirled the bourbon to let the liquor cling to the sides.

The separation from his loved ones turned him into a collector of memories. He looked to the wall where paintings hung in frames. His wife’s art was the only connection he could keep. He made sure to get her paintings and attend the auctions every couple of months to support her. They were dark and depressing but turning brighter over time.

Antoine walked along the gallery of pictures. “Tomorrow we go to Monaco and find that bastard.”