Counterplay

birds and walked toward them.

Marlene smiled when she saw the old man, but it was with a small feeling of guilt. Vladimir was a little older than her own father, and she found herself looking forward to visiting him more than she did Mariano Ciampi these days. Where the old Russian was still sharp, engaged, and living in the real world, her father seemed to be slipping more and more into doddering senility.

The other day Mariano had given her quite the start when he “confessed” to killing his wife, Marlene’s mother, Concetta. I’ve lived with the woman most of my life, he cried as she stood behind him, cutting his hair at the kitchen table. I used to know if she got up in the night or was having a restless sleep. I knew the sound of her heart through the mattress. I should have known, even in my sleep, that she was in trouble. I failed to take care of her.

Relieved that her own worst fears had not suddenly been realized, Marlene had rumpled his hair and kissed him on the top of his head. Nonsense, Poppa, she said. Mom had a stroke, there was nothing you could do.

It unnerved her to watch her father’s decline. He was often weepy over the smallest things. A memory. Or losing something. Or something as silly as a television commercial for diapers. I remember when I used to change your diapers, he said. Funny how cleaning up such a horrible mess was such an act of love.

Occasionally, he called her by one of her sisters’ names, which frightened her as that had been one of the effects of Alzheimer’s on her mother. But it was more how he refused to take care of himself, or the house- content to watch television for hours at a time amid a heap of television dinners, potato chip bags, and empty beer bottles. She even had to clean him up and chase him out of the house to the VFW post four blocks away- something neither she nor her mother, who’d always known to look for him there, had ever had to do before.

Meanwhile, Vladimir was still the emperor of his empire even if the heir apparent, Yvgeny, ran much of the show. He was up on world events, played chess, could identify obscure operas, and loved to debate the meaning behind the meaning of Anton Chekov.

Marlene waved back and started down the steps, when Yvgeny suddenly grabbed her by the arm. “Wait,” he said. “Those women-the vendors-what are they doing?”

Marlene looked where he was staring and saw that the two women were walking away from the stand, toward a park that ran parallel to the boardwalk. Then she noticed that one of the women was wearing a sling, as if she’d injured a shoulder or an elbow. The woman looked back at the hot dog cart and Marlene caught a brief glimpse of her face…most notably, the mole on her face.

“It’s Azzam!” she shouted and began to run down the stairs, her eyes on the women and the cart where the young couple was still fixing their hot dogs, just as the woman with the stroller was passing. Vladimir was still twenty feet away but closing fast on the cart.

Above her, Yvgeny also saw the danger. He’d also recognized Azzam, as well as the woman with her, Nadya Malovo. “Stop!” he shouted at his father, pointing at the cart. “It’s a bomb!” He started to shout again but was cut off by a loud bang and a blow to his back. He tumbled down the stairs.

Standing at the top with his gun drawn, Boris tried to draw a bead on the tumbling Yvgeny. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to happen. He was only supposed to keep track of the Karchovskis and report back anything unusual. There had certainly been enough of that over the past few months, which had helped his bank account swell many times over. After all, young prostitutes were expensive.

The string of unusual events began when he recognized the district attorney of New York as the dinner guest of his employers, the Karchovskis. That alone had been worth more than Vladimir paid him in a year. There had been an additional bonus when he reported that, according to the butler, who’d been eavesdropping but innocently as he simply liked to gossip, the Karchovskis had given a photograph of a woman named Azzam to the woman, Marlene.

Today, he’d called the telephone number he’d been given for such things to report when the old man was going on his walk and who would be with him. The implication was that he shouldn’t expect the old man to return…ever. The son would then die in an apparent “mob shooting” that the police would write off as a battle between rivals. But the arrival of the woman had caught him by surprise, as had their sudden decision to walk to the boardwalk to find Vladimir. He’d called on the way to the boardwalk to relay the news.

You’ll have to kill him, the man on the other end of the line had said. He can’t be allowed to interfere.

Nyet! Boris, frightened, had said. I would be a dead man.

You will be a dead man if you don’t, the other man said. Kill him and then go to the house in Brooklyn and await further instructions. We will take care of you then.

What about the woman? Boris asked.

The other man was silent for a moment before sighing, Well, she was supposed to live a bit longer…but this is as good a time as any. She is too great a threat. I don’t know what she has been told by your target.

Boris had weighed who frightened him the most-Yvgeny Karchovski or the man on the telephone-and decided that at least he could kill Yvgeny and maybe survive. Betray the other man and death would not only be assured, it would be drawn out and painful. So when Yvgeny yelled his warning, he’d pulled his gun and shot him in the back. He aimed again to finish the job when his attention flicked to the woman at the bottom of the stairs. Too late, he realized she was pointing a gun at him.

Marlene pulled the trigger, killing the big Russian at the same moment that the hot dog cart exploded. Surrounded by a case filled with thousands of ball bearings, the C4 plastic explosive tore the young couple and the mother with her infant apart.

Twenty feet away, Vladimir would have met the same fate, except that hearing Yvgeny’s shout followed by the gunshot, the first of his burly bodyguards had grabbed the old man and thrown him to the sand off the boardwalk. The bodyguard had jumped on top of Vladimir, while the second bodyguard turned his back to the hot dog cart, both men using themselves to shield their boss.

Marlene wasn’t knocked off her feet by the blast but had heard the deadly missiles as they’d whistled past her. She saw the two women running across the park and took off after them. However, they had too great a head start and reached a car that was waiting for them, jumped in, and with tires burning, took off down Atlantic Boulevard.

Everywhere was pandemonium, some cars had screeched to a halt on the street. People were running in various directions, most away from the explosion, but many toward it as well. Screams, shouts, sirens shattered the boardwalk’s usual serenity.

Cursing, Marlene turned back for the boardwalk. She saw that Yvgeny had already reached the spot where she’d last seen Vladimir. He was kneeling in the sand as she ran toward him; he’d removed his coat to place it under his father’s head and that’s when she saw the body armor. She paused only long enough at what remained of the young woman, her infant, and the young couple to see that they were beyond help, and kept running to Yvgeny.

The first bodyguard was dead. His pants had been torn off by the blast and his legs looked like someone had put them into a meat grinder; however, the fatal wounds had been to his head. The second man was severely wounded and moaning on the sand as Yvgeny turned him gently over, speaking softly in Russian. Even their heroics might not have been enough, except that both men had been wearing Kevlar body armor, which had absorbed the worst of the ball bearings and blast.

Other than a hard fall for an old man and some scrapes, Vladimir had survived the blast. With his bodyguard no longer weighing him down, Vladimir was picking himself up off the sand.

“I am all right,” the old man said. “You two must leave. Yvgeny cannot be here when the police arrive and neither can you, Marlene. It would be too hard to explain. But first here…” The old man reached into the inside pocket of his linen suit and handed her a note card on which was written an address. “If it’s not too late, I believe that you may find Mr. Kane at this address in Aspen, Colorado. But hurry, Marlene, events are moving quickly and as you can see, these people will stop at nothing.”