Counterplay

level, then we must stoop and become like them.

Then I will stoop, Yvgeny insisted as he walked over to plead his case. What do I care what people think of me, even though this would be for their welfare as well as my revenge. I will risk that the entirety of civilization does not follow me down this road to savagery, but sometimes only violence is capable of stopping the violent.

This is true, Vladimir had said. But there are differences in how violence is administered. Was it in compliance with the rule of law? A policeman who shoots a man about to kill someone, for instance. Or an army fighting to end slavery, which reminds me of a quote attributed to the great American president Abraham Lincoln: “Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.”

Might for right and my duty is to kill Kane, Yvgeny growled, but his anger had gone from a hard boil to simmering.

And you may still be required to do your duty, Vladimir said. But first we will allow this system of justice to do its. However…he said, turning back to Marlene, …if your friend and his FBI are not up to the task, then I give my son permission to seek justice in his own manner with this zasranec, excuse my language, Marlene, but this zasranec Kane-an appropriate surname, as the mark of Cain, the killer of brothers, is upon him.

As Marlene turned to leave, Yvgeny’s scarred face had softened and, surprising her, he’d reached out and hugged her. Forgive my outburst, he’d said. You saved my life, killing the traitor Boris, and I repay you with a tantrum.

Marlene hugged him in return, then stood back and smiled. It’s okay. Kane has a way of putting everyone on edge and wondering who to trust. Maybe that’s part of his plan. But it won’t work with us, will it?

Yvgeny shook his head. No, not so long as cooler-and prettier-heads prevail.

Marlene punched him on the arm. Flattery will get you everywhere.

Everywhere? Yvgeny said, theatrically raising an eyebrow.

Well, how about a kiss on the cheek…between cousins by marriage, Marlene laughed.

Yvgeny sighed dramatically. I believe the saying is, “Beggars shouldn’t be choosy,” correct?

Close enough, Marlene said and gave him the promised reward.

On the way home, she called Jaxon and gave him the Aspen address and its importance without telling him the circumstances of its discovery.

That evening when Butch got home from work, she told him about what had happened. He’d wondered when Murrow came rushing into his office with news of the bombing if she was somehow involved. But seeing her face when she described what happened, he’d forgone any lectures on leaving the scene but won a promise from her to give her statement to Fulton, who passed it on to the detectives investigating the bomb.

She’d left out how and why she happened to be at the boardwalk other than “to meet an old friend,” and just happened to be “in the right place at the right time” to shoot one of the terrorists as he fired at members of the public. Her target had been identified as one Boris Nabakov, a Russian national in the country illegally. What his connection was to the terrorist bomb remained unclear, according to the press.

Citing safety issues for a witness to a capital crime, the police had refused to disclose the name or even gender of the armed civilian who’d shot and killed Nabakov. Witnesses had told members of the press about seeing an armed woman chasing two other women, possibly the terrorists responsible for the bomb. Meanwhile, the National Rifle Association had jumped at the chance to laud the mystery woman’s actions as a victory for the Second Amendment and urged all citizens to be ready to join the War on Terrorism by being ever vigilant.

Four days after the bombing at Brighton Beach Jaxon turned his field glasses on the SWAT teams making their way toward the mansion, dashing from one place of cover to the next. One team had already reached the guesthouse but reported it empty. Agent Hodges had confirmed Marlene’s information; he’d seen Kane in the house within the past week.

Speak of the devil, he thought as he looked behind him and saw Hodges trotting down the gravel road away from the house. Jon Ellis swore by the guy, but there was something about him that Jaxon didn’t like. It went beyond the Southern accent that he obviously laid on a little thicker whenever he was around Marlene or her daughter, Lucy, who’d driven up from New Mexico with her boyfriend. The guy’s just a little too slick, he thought. Maybe that came with the territory of being a deep plant; maybe you had to have a plastic, malleable personality to fit into whatever situation arose, but Hodges seemed to think this was all something of an amusing game.

The object of Jaxon’s inner debate continued jogging down the road. Agent Vic Hodges, aka Andrew Kane, found that he enjoyed keeping in “fighting trim” and took daily runs, which seemed to help him think more clearly.

It also seemed to help with his migraines. The headaches were nothing new-he’d had them off and on since puberty-but they’d been increasing in number and severity since his arrest the previous fall.

Kane giggled as he thought about the headlines in the Aspen Times back in June when the body of noted Aspen plastic surgeon Andre Buchwald had been found in his Mercedes off a mountain road. The body, according to the newspaper, was badly decomposed, but the good doctor had apparently been stabbed to death. The town worthies speculated that Buchwald must have picked up a hitchhiker who wasn’t quite “all there.” A side story noted that serial killer Ted Bundy had once been a prisoner of the Pitkin County Sheriff’s Office until he escaped by jumping out of a second-floor window of the local courthouse.

Wait a little longer and they’re really going to have something to talk about, Kane thought and laughed out loud as he ran past the mailbox next to the long driveway leading up to Prince Bandar’s house. He wondered how the prince was faring. Bet he never thought that he’d end up a hostage of al Qaeda…not a pleasant prospect for him or his pathetic little family.

The arrival of the federal agents had caught Kane by surprise and would have messed up his plans if he hadn’t received a warning. Somehow that fucking bitch Marlene Ciampi had figured out where he was hiding. Probably those fucking Karchovskis, he thought. Should have killed them sooner…after that idiot Boris told me about the photograph of Azzam.

All such photographs were supposed to have been purged from federal files, yet one had suddenly appeared in the hands of some grubby Russian gangsters. It had become much more dangerous for Azzam to walk the streets, especially after Karp made copies and had them distributed to the police and federal agencies.

The Russians were proving to be a bigger thorn in his side than he’d anticipated. It had taken many years, but Kane had managed to find someone he could compromise close to the inner circles of most of the big gangs in the Greater New York area. Mostly, these people were kept on “retainers” to feed him information on their employers’ business interests, weaknesses, and peccadilloes. Humorously, Boris Nabakov had a weakness for young girls, but it was an expensive habit, so he’d agreed to spy on the Karchovskis for him. He’d been pretty much worthless until the day he’d called to report that the Karchovskis had a photograph of Samira Azzam, and… oh it’s almost too delicious to contemplate…had given them to their relative, Roger “Butch” Karp. The frickin’ Boy Scout of the NYDAO was related to a member of the Russian mob! Kane had yet to decide how best to use that information. But he just knew he’d find a way to work it into his vengeance.

For the most part, the plan had been a thing of beauty. The death of the Indian cop was wonderful. He had been afraid of the man, who’d shown up out of nowhere…a fucking third world Indian reservation for God’s sake… like some sort of avenging angel. His death had been almost too good to believe. But his spies had reported that the Indian had been given some elaborate funeral ceremony, full of wailing and superstitious nonsense; then he’d had the Ciampi woman followed, but again his spies told him that her grief was real-that she’d actually been seen on a park bench near her home and then again on the Coney Island boardwalk in tears. He didn’t understand such emotional reactions to somebody else’s death. He wasn’t even a lover, he thought. Women are such idiots.

The cowboy, too, though perhaps due to his age and relative inexperience, was not quite as dangerous, and therefore, Kane had not been as disappointed that he lived.

Kane had hoped that the teams sent to Taos would also abduct Lucy Karp. They’d been under orders to