Chapter 1
While Marjorie Mayfield waited for Milosh to answer her call, she passed the seconds by mouthing at her two captives, “Suffering,” then “You,” then, “Painfully,” then “Slowly,” and at last “Death”” Finally she said aloud, “Ah, Milosh.”She gave her Geoffrey and Andreas a knowing look. "That’s right, Milosh. I think that this is the one you want.”
She held her iThing up to the unhappy zip-tied pair and watched as they focused on the face appearing on the little screen.
Out of the handheld sounded a voice not unlike the first cracking of the ice in Siberia during the spring thaw. Milosh said, “Von Bockenrod.”
Andreas nodded at the shimmering little screen before him, “Bogdanovič.”
As if meeting the new husband of his mistress, Milosh asked through the screen, “How is my Lombardi?”
“The car runs well,” Andreas reported. "The sole success that Soviet mechanical engineering has given the world.”
To this, Milosh answered with a semiquaver of silence, a caesura ensuring painful tidings in time.“Mrs. Marjorie,” he said and Marjorie turned the device to herself with a smile. "I am grateful for this gift. But now I possess three small problems. Allow me to share educational lesson from many numerous years of finding self possessing persons no longer alive, which English language calls ‘bodies.’ One body I call ‘work.’ Two bodies I call ‘project.’ Three bodies is ‘thankless chore.”’
Seeking to maintain her role as mistress of ceremonies, Marjorie corrected the dour Slav. “Sorry, but I have two bodies for you to chuck into your lime pit.”
Milosh explained, “You have captured Correct Old Man for me—I thank you for this gift. But this leaves remaining two bodies.”
“I did pass kindergarten arithmetic,” Marjorie countermanded. Swerving the screen of her handheld up to Geoffrey, she said, “One body,” and moving it over along her row of kidnapees, hovered it before Andreas and said, “Two. Only two bodies.”
Milosh was amused. "As beautiful royal personage in beloved cartoon feature film says to glass for looking, ‘Mirror, mirror on wall.’Please consider what this means.”
Since Marjorie did not have a convenient looking-glass on hand, she turned the little screen to herself and with a mortified expression beheld the sagging mask of Milosh Milenko. His eyes met hers for the merest moment, then looked aside at something else. She guessed the shot-put finals between Belgrade and Kosovo, until he told her, “I am looking at my device for tracking. What do I see?”
Recognizing more than subconsciously that the walls were closing in and that a shark was in the pool with her (for Marjorie, metaphors were like a soft-serve ice cream swirl, all mixed together), she burst out at Milosh, “You are severely underestimating Marjorie Mayfield, my good man. This is the United States of America and here crime does not pay and criminals receive what they have coming to them. So, don’t even imagine there’ll be any escape for a degenerate, bottom-feeding, carp-eyed, predatory, parasitic, beet-sucking reject from the collective potato farm like you.”(Geoffrey gave Andreas a look beribboned with a smart smile, to give the old gal her due, since she could deliver the verbal goods when it came down to it.)She lobbed another ICBM over the Iron Curtain." I have a special relationship with the authorities and they will happily grant me, Marjorie Mayfield, what we in this great country call immunity from prosecution as soon as I tell them that Milosh—”
At this the fun ended. She saw on the screen Milosh raise a silencing hand. As if laying out a sturgeon upon a stone cutting board, he gave his rejoinder. “Milosh? Who is Milosh? He does not exist.”
“But I know who you are, Dragan—”
“Dragan Bogdanovič? Or Stefo Marek? Or Dima Sidorychev? Or Mihai Komaly? Or David Yeghiazaryan? Do these men exist? Sometimes they do exist. But Mrs. Marjorie, she always exists. She has her website and her German car and her condominium and her public business. Mrs. Marjorie cannot disappear because she is very large and cannot run very fastly. But Milosh: he is like mist that disappears on morning in summer. And he is not innocent woodland creature from Komsomol nature booklet. He leaves no tracks to follow.”
Despite a lifelong impatience at board games (preferring to bow-hunt in public parks by night) Marjorie recognized a check when she saw one and now had to endure several seconds of silence as she watched Milosh stare again at another screen in whatever criminal nerve center he was then occupying.
He drew an expectant breath. “Mrs. Marjorie, I am not tracking you.” She saw him still staring down at something. Then, “No, Mrs. Marjorie, I do not track you. I track them, who now arrive.”
And Dmitri and his goons burst into the room, forcing themselves en masse through the doorway, then grinding to a gritty stop mere inches away from Marjorie Mayfield.
She held up her iThing with the nonchalant world-weariness of a socialite interrupted during the cocktail hour and told Dmitri and the other peaks in his mountain range, “Oh, you’re here. I have Genghis Khan on the line as we speak. Everything is all ready for you. Here you go." Stepping aside, she opened a hand at Andreas in his chair. "The Right Old Man, right here, right now. Take him away, boys.”
Dmitri did not move to take delivery.“Mrs. Marjorie,” he said, “we are not like bears in glorious Moscow circus at call and beck of woman who holds whip and hard candy as reward for balancing on striped ball. We know that we are to take ancient foe of Milosh. But also, we will take new foe of Milosh.”
“That would be that other fellow right there,” she said, indicating Geoffrey with a slightly gesture.
“No, this is not new foe. But since he has used eyes and ears to learn about Milosh, he may someday use mouth to talk to men with guns and jail cells, so we shall deal with this man, too. But first, we do thank you for the Right Old Man.”
Dmitri gave out a sophisticated grunt to his subalterns and two of them ground across the floor to fix themselves at either side of Andreas. With a snippy cut to the zip-ties binding him in the sitting position, they hoisted him upright and allowed a passing second or two for him to straighten his spine. In this ripple of time, Andreas turned to Geoffrey, still bound, and said with a bow of his head, “Mein Herr.”
Geoffrey, scarcely meeting the old German’s eyes, nodded and mouthed to him something in the private patois of two men who had passed day after day in one another’s company for almost sixty years.
Once this pale ember had gone dark, the delegated goons began toting Andreas toward the door, while two other geologic features closed in on either side of Marjorie. A last unnamed heap of humanoid rock went to Geoffrey, slipped the bungee cord from about his neck and cut at the zip-ties at his wrists and feet, and pulled him up. With a grunt from Dmitri, victims and thugs commenced a solemn march to the exit.
But Dmitri, his goons, Andreas, Geoffrey, and Marjorie suddenly found themselves forced to move in reverse, for an opposing force was blocking the exit.
Through the doorway and into the room (Marjorie chuckled that this was giving Dmitri & Co. a taste of their own medicine) was spilling a masculine panoply of armed figures, all in camo pants, Kevlar vests, no-slip black shoes, and gun holsters, men-for-hire arraying themselves in a veritable gun-totin’, slick-haired, hard-jawed spectrum of threat that gave all witnessing their three-deep phalanx a static moment of dread—that is, until from the left and right flanks of these condottieri poked out the heads of both Marco in his festive checkered rayon number and Michael looking like a particularly well-groomed clerk from a museum cataloguing office. The last dramatis personae to crowd the stage ended up being Una and Olga, waddling into position and squatting jauntily next to Marco and Michael like a Sung dynasty bookends.
Forth from the midst of the well-armed newcomers sauntered two suited figures, both clean-shaven and clean-cut, as if ordered by express delivery from G-Men-R-Us®. Both were clad similarly in suits of a nighty blackness, while their shirts between the isosceles angles of their lapels were glacially-white, and their ties glimmering like onyx. In unison each unbuttoned his jacket with a studied casualness to reveal that he was, as the ancients were wont to say, packing heat. The most notable difference between the two was that the anonymous agent on the right was shorter, grimmer in face, and thicker-of-hair, while his counterpart looked to be a cast-off from a Major League training camp, with hair as yellow as wheat over the rolling plains, a gaze as authentic and blue as the high summer sky over a Nebraska cornfield, a chin cleft like a hickory burl cut by a pocketknife, shoulders broad enough for two men, his cheeks dimpled and winsome, and a smile, once he deigned to speak, as brilliant and architectural as a national monument.
And at this point, on cue, he spoke: “Gentlemen, I am Cameron Callahan, with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Our associates accompanying us are with Interpol, the CIA, the National Security Administration, and the former KGB. This, my colleague from the great country of Russia—”
At this, the shorter fellow with the grim face and the thick hair announced, “Boris Bezobrazny-Blinnikov, with Foreign Intelligence Service of Russian Federation.” (Hearing this Dmitri & Co. whined like wolfhounds.)
Agent Callahan went on. "What we are witnessing is a rare case of interdepartmental and international cooperation. We hope that you appreciate this happy circumstance as much as we do. With that said, we know what you are about and would stress the point that you are outnumbered and outgunned. We know from long and detailed surveillance that you understand me perfectly, but Mr. Bezobrazny-Blinnikov will now address you in your native language so that you will more deeply appreciate the gravity of what may befall you and so make the best choice for your survival and for the continuance of positive international relations.”
Bezobrazny-Blinnikov stepped forward 1 & 7/8 steps. Drawing his shoulders back a few centimeters (Russians using as they do the metric system) he commenced with Dmitri and his beetling attendants a curt exchange. At the end, though, Bezobrazny-Blinnikov drew himself up again and quietly commanded them, “Так, ребята, руки назад. [1] ”
And at this, Milosh’s hatchetmen dropped Geoffrey, Andreas, and Marjorie Mayfield, from the opposing sides emerged automatic and semi-automatic firearms of assorted national origins, and the bullets started flying across the chamber like angry bats, their shells clinking and bouncing like hollow metal hailstones around the heads of the cowering non-professionals shaking in fear and dread upon the floor.
Marco and Michael, clutching the shell-scattered floor like geckos, opened their eyes, met the buggy stares of Una and Olga, and without waiting for the all-clear, pressed themselves up and looked about through their fashion lenses. Through the gray nebulae of gun smoke and cement dust floating about them, they saw Cameron Callahan sliding his weapon back into its holster and calling up to the surface for some medical intervention, Geoffrey and Andreas creaking upright, and Marjorie Mayfield brushing off the plaster dust and straightening the neo-hippie felt hat over her hair. For their part, Boris Bezobrazny-Blinnikov and a pair of surviving rescuers were wading through the pooling blood that was making a warm red fen around the steaming heaps which had been Dmitri and his subordinates. They knelt by them and felt for pulses. None was in evidence.
But then, from Marjorie Mayfield’s iThing, lying face-up the gritty floor, a gravelly voice spoke.
They all heard Milosh philosophize like a bear from his cave. "Messy, messy. Mistakes and bodies." And up from the same iThing sounded the revving of a many-valved engine and the skidding of rubber. Then the iThing’s screen went dark and it sounded no more.
Bezobrazny-Blinnikov neatly informed the living, “That individual who was to us just speaking will not escape far,” and he gave a look of command to a handful of his countrymen, who expeditiously turned about and left for the upperworld to snatch Mr. Milosh.
Cameron Callahan added solidly, “We sealed off the entrances and exits to the senior residential community already.”
Andreas, however, doused this professional aplomb with, “What of other individuals who should not also escape?”
“Yes, sir, we know,” said Agent Callahan. "I say this for the sake of our international partners here present. But on the American side do know our mission.”Bezobrazny-Blinnikov gave a formal nod to his opposite number. Callahan went on. "Our primary target will not evade us. But our agency was initially tasked, you will want to know, with finding a Mr. Geoff Durant.”
On hearing this, Geoffrey brushed down his muumuu, stowed his more cosmopolitan airs, and stepped forward with a firm, “Here in the flesh, Agent Callahan." They exchanged pleasantries and handshakes. “So, tell me, whose intervention brought about this miraculous deus ex machina?”
“You’ll have to forgive me, sir, I do not speak any French, though I can manage a few phrases in Santee Sioux.”
“I expect you can manage all sorts of things. Well, in translation, how did you know that I was here and what merited such an aggressive response?”
“We received word of your kidnapping from Von Bochenrod.”With the reverence accorded to war dead, Cameron Callahan said, “That man is a legend.”
“Then maybe you’d care to make his acquaintance?”
Bezobrazny-Blinnikov asked, “How can one ever meet legend?”
At this Geoffrey looked to Andreas, who interposed himself among the men and with an extended hand to whomever would claim it said, “Von Bochenrod.”
Cameron Callahan said, “Von Bockenrod?” Andreas nodded and the American, seizing the outstretched hand, said, “Sir, I’m proud, darn proud to make your acquaintance.”
Bezobrazny-Blinnikov clarified for those of his Russian cohort who had survived the firefight the identity of this German and his lieutenants murmured among themselves with subdued awe. Bezobrazny-Blinnikov said to Andreas, “Your exploits are mythologically legendary for two generations of agents of KGB.”
Maintaining Andreas nom de guerre, Geoffrey said, “Von Bochenrod then led you here?”
Now the man-of-the-hour contributed some light. "But in part. For me, it would have been an impossibility to gather all of the elements of this plot and to capture both targets, had it not been for the assistance of: young Michael Paysleigh.”He indicated the youngster with a gesture.
A bank of mature and professional faces turned to Michael, who began nervously to stroke Una, whom he clutched in his arms.(Marco was doing the same to Olga, out of enjoyment at her silky coat, while for Michael this repetitive tenderness was to abate the overflowing dread that he felt at being the center of attention. The dogs themselves were just glad to get a nice view of all the action.)
“Mikey,” Marco whispered to him, “tell them all how you made this all happen." But Michael, a bespectacled mule deer facing the headlights, said nothing. “Mikey, your therapist says that you need to talk more and I think that this is a fine opportunity." Finally, scarcely bothering to pin a fig leaf on his threat, he said, “If you don’t, no Antiques Roadshow.” (Unkind voices might suggest that Marco was just hoping to bump his roommate away from the big-screen so that he could laze about with a bowl of low-fat microwave popcorn and watch the WWE “best-of” grudge-match retrospective. We hope that he had higher motives.)
With a voice like a mouse in dry grass, Michael said, “Um, we had a pretty good idea of what had happened to Mr. Durant.”
The grown-ups in the room felt like an audience at a school recital, and Marco, in the wings, had to prompt him with “But...?”
“But that was as far as we could go, since we did not know where Mr. Durant might be. But the dogs kept staring down the vents, and I thought, where do the vents go? So, I asked about a map for the HVAC system for the complex and pretty soon we were able to narrow down just where Mr. Durant should be, if my guess was right.”
“Good,” whispered Marco loudly to him, “you’re using your I words.”
This therapeutic fluff went over the heads of the motley battle-scarred skirmishers, but Cameron Callahan and Boris Bezobrazny-Blinnikov apparently wanted to hear more of the workings of this young savant’s mental machinery.
“Um, it should have been that easy, but there was something else. Based on other murders...”Andreas cleared the throat again—genius does not prevent one from misspeaking. “I mean, deaths in the complex, this did not fit the pattern. There was no body and also there were no close heirs, which meant that Mr. Durant maybe, you know, wasn’t dead, he was alive, so I already guessed that, uh, I guessed he’d been kidnapped.”
Cameron Callahan advised, “Then you should have pursued it as a kidnapping.”
Bezobrazny-Blinnikov verbally noted in the margins, “But you involved KGB, also.”
Callahan said, “And a good thing that he did.”
The Russian agreed, “Our countries should be friends.”
Geoffrey murmured to Andreas, “Until the next civil war in the third world.”
Like an impresario eager to keep all attention upon his man, Marco said, “Gentlemen, I think that Michael will get to all that in time.”
And Michael said, “I’ll get to it right now, if everyone will let me talk.” A squeamish embarrassment overtook all present. Michael went on. “The red flag for me was that there was no reason for anyone to kidnap Mr. Durant, especially since there was no demand for ransom. So, I figured, he wasn’t the target. That left Mr. Stackenwalter. Mr. Stackenwalter’s problem is that he does not talk very much, as a rule.” Both Geoffrey and Marco pursed their lips at this, the former because from protracted contact with the old Goth he knew that he could be a real raconteur once the northern ice was broken (and the Schnapps flowing), and Marco because he knew that their storyteller had no room to cavil. “So, I knew something else was going on. Um, it took a little while to piece it together, but this is what I came up with: Mr. Stackenwalter had a connection with the old European nobility because of all the pictures on his walls, but also there was his car, the Lombardi.”
“What is a Lombardi?” asked Cameron Callahan.
Boris Bezobrazny-Blinnikov, like an overgrown teenager, said, “Everyone has heard of famous Soviet Lombardi.”
“The Lombardi,” Michael said, warming at last to his professorial role, “was the Soviets’ attempt at a sports car. I wondered why in his box of physique magazines—”Andreas smirked dismissively and with one hand a negligent gesture, while Geoffrey looked away at the bullet holes in the walls.“—Mr. Stackenwalter had a copy of Motor Design Digest from 1959.This was the last year that the Lombardi was produced, since the economy in the USSR couldn’t support a high-ticket item like that. So, to get rid of them the KGB gave them as prizes to successful foreign agents.”
“Better than opium balls,” Geoffrey reminded Andreas once more.
Michael proceeded as if showing the class his ant farm. "That meant that Mr. Stackenwalter was either a Soviet agent or in counterespionage. And since Mr. Durant said that Mr. Stackenwalter got to hang black crepe on the door on May Day, that meant he didn’t have a warm spot for the Soviets, and since he was connected to the old nobility, I guessed it was counterespionage.”
At this point, seeing that reporting every left and right turn of Michael’s silent cerebrum would be as effective as an over-the-counter sleeping pill for putting the audience out, Marco wound things up. "And you were right,” he said. “Von Bochenrod was the target of the kidnapping. But given what we knew about the deaths at Summerfield, we guessed...”He shared a concealing look with Andreas.“...who might be involved. So, we dropped a line to the Russian consulate, the FBI, the CIA, and National Security, to get as many interested parties involved as possible.”
“Fascinating,” said Bezobrazny-Blinnikov.
“Good detective work,” Andreas said..
“Still waters run deep,” Geoffrey opined. "An Art History degree is good for something after all. But the caverns under Summerfield are a labyrinth. How did you know that we were in this particular hub?”
At this Andreas held up one hand and with the other reached into the half-zipped top of his sweat suit. He drew out on a pewter chain fine example of a 1930s Deco athletics whistle. The assembled showed no reaction to this collectible (Andreas had been using it for decades at wrestling matches at the community college).
“Es tut mir leid. Mein Fehler, [2]” he smiled sheepishly and having second go at it brought to light (on a lanyard) a soft-cornered plastic pendant of light institutional-hallway green.
Michael said, “It’s a global-positioning system tracker.”
“GPS,” said Marco to elucidate the elderly and the foreigners, who only stared patiently at him.
“We just synced it to our handhelds and followed him right here.”
The American contingent, personified in the form of the corn-fed Cameron Callahan, added, “It was fortunate that you only went one level into the earth, otherwise we might have lost you.”
“Does that explain everything?” asked Michael, eager both to be done with his performance while draining one last precious dram of wonderful, affirming attention.
Bezobrazny-Blinnikov said, “Yes, very much. We thank you for your prowess in intellect.”
But as young Michael stepped backwards to escape the limelight, Agent Callahan asked, “Mr. Paysleigh, I fail to see the connection. Russia is a large place and the USSR was even larger. How do we know that this particular cell of evildoers had any connection with this kidnapping?”
Michael was spared having to exploit his powers of speech again by Bezobrazny-Blinnikov.“Since resurrection of Holy Mother Russia from satanic wilderness of Communism,” he said, “government and KGB like tailors with sharp scissors have been snipping and cutting away any string which is loosely hanging.”
Geoffrey said, “You are liquidating your old operatives. "But you wasted a good deal of lead on these thugs there. Aren’t they just the muscle?”
Bezobrazny-Blinnikov said, “The brain will not cause us trouble, Mr. Sir. Like said Mr. Cameron, the exits from this strange land of wonders…”
“Summerfield, you mean.”
“They are closed. He will not escape. He must be near to this place to take possession of captives. It is irony that now he becomes our captive.”
“Then how exciting it is to be on the sidelines of an international manhunt,” Geoffrey said. "But, you mean to say that catching Milosh was just an exhibition game?” The Russian did not appear to understand his expression and Geoffrey (who should have had more sense) dilated his error by asking, “Was Milosh the only black hat you’ve drawn a bead on?”
Cameron Callahan said, “Sir, I should avoid too-frequent use of folky expressions with our friends from the steppes.”
“Agent, In my day you could not enter the field without a minimum level of fluency.”
“As long as they understand some English, we’re happy. I myself will digest all the geopolitics over a ginger ale later at the base commissary, but for now, sir, I can assure you that no, this Milosh Milenko was not the primary objective for the American contingent. She is.”
At this, our man Callahan turned about to the lady in the easy chair, Marjorie Mayfield, who during this exchange had been enthroned with what was left of her Ace-Of-Spades Licorice Lickity Banana Split for a last scavenging. Now she was left with only a well-licked spoon and limp cardboard tub bereft of any contents.
Callahan stepped up to her. "Miss Sandra Summerfield? We are here to see you. Your father Sam Summerfield is, like Von Bochenrod here, a bit of a legend in our field and I must say that this is a real thrill to be able to meet the apple who fell from that tree.”
Marjorie pshawed, “Oh, agent. "She gave her spoon a last ceremonial lick and tucked it away.
“No, no,” said Callahan, watching to see where her hand might go. “I’m only speaking the truth. You may not know it, but your father did a fine thing in building Summerfield Lawns.”
“Estates,” she flirted with a fluttering girlishness that might have worked about twenty-five years ago.
“Yes, ma’am. From what I understand, he meant Summerfieldland to be a kind of pasture for the old warhorses of our profession, a quiet, safe sort of place.”
Marjorie giggled, “No one is every unhappy at Summerfield.”
The American agent gave a half-glance at his associates. These approached the lady, but before the para-judicial laying-on-of-hands could commence, Callahan found himself observing, “Ma’am, you do not look well.”
Marjorie did feel that her focus was a bit off and she panted, “Oh, just one of those things. You know, if this is going to last all night, could I have something to drink?,” and she licked her lips.
Now Bezobrazny-Blinnikov, casting personal safety to the billowing waste air from the HVAC units, stepped in and knelt before her, his already small Asiatic eyes betokening thought. The Russian said to Marjorie, “Your breath possesses decided quality of fruit.”
Much to Marjorie’s confusion, she had lost her train of thought and said, “I’ve been…I’ve been gargling with nail-polish remover. Anything for a girl to get her fix, you know." She realized that she did not know what she had just said or what she might mumble next.
Taking advantage of this lull, Geoffrey asked Callahan, “Agent, do you think you could come by for a drink some time?”
“I am sorry, sir,” Callahan said quietly so as not to distract the Russian. "No drinking on the job.”
“And you’re always on the job, aren’t you?”
“Yes, sir. "Callahan ticked up the volume and asked Bezobrazny-Blinnikov, who had placed the back of his hand on Marjorie’s sweat-stippled brow, “Maybe we could move things along?”
At this physical contact Marjorie Mayfield reacted, weirdly shaking in revulsion. Even as her vision began to cloud over, she drove her hand to a corner of the easy chair, lugged up to her lap her shoulder bag, slid from it her bear repellant, and held it up like a domesticated cobra prepared to lunge or spit—whatever cobras do—for its mistress.
But then, in the sight of Marco Panzi, Michael Peighsley, Geoffrey Durant-Dupont, Andreas von Bochenrod Stackenwalter, Cameron Callahan, and even Boris Bezobrazny-Blinnikov, as noisy emergency workers began to pour in through the doorway to haul the injured off the government hospitals, Marjorie Mayfield, red in face, breathing deep and expelling hard, and blinking her eyes as if staring into the sun, suddenly slumped over into unconsciousness.
[1] “All right, guys, hands behind your backs.”
[2] “My mistake.Sorry.”
