The barroom was crowded, as always, on a Saturday afternoon. There was much drunken talk about politics and the state of the country.

“The damned government won’t just give us what we want”.

“More beer!” The room cheered.

“Ay, Seamus, I just noticed that little bugger in the back. Ever seen ‘im before?”

“Nay, Conor, and even if I did, I wouldn’t ta recognized ‘in the second time”. He set down his beer and yelled, “Ay, you, what’re ye doin’ here, ye pasty little bugger?”

This solicited snickers from the men around him, because anyone could tell that the man was the tannest in the room. He had been sitting still for a very long time. He seemed to be made of wood, with his long, bony fingers and his army cut hair, he was very much like a tree in winter.

After a couple seconds, he answered, “I’m not at liberty to tell you”.

“Whatsy’re name, little man?”

“I’m not at liberty to tell you”.

“Oh really?”, Seamus said, “What if I just made you tell us. With a li’l friendly persuasion, I’m sure we could come to an agreement”. He smiled wickedly.

“That, my friend, would be a mistake”. He too, smiled, but with an air of sadness and disappointment.

“You gettin’ cheeky with me, little man?”, the man said, “‘Cause if y’are, I may ’ave to teach you a lesson”. He cracked his knuckles menacingly.

“Ay, Seamus, lay off or ye’ll be picking splinters out’n yer face fer months”. A man had just come through the door. He was built like a wrestler, barrel-chested, with stubby, strong fingers. The other men instantly noticed him and backed away. He signaled the bartender, calmly ordered a Guinness, and sat with his back faced pointedly at the man called Seamus. He took a heavy draught of his beer, then spoke to the smaller, wooden man to his left.

“Nice tae see you again, Piero”. He smiled surprisingly easily and clapped the smaller man on the back, “‘ow long’s it been? Three, four years?”

“Six, actually, Ciaran”, came the reply.

“What’re ye doin’ here?”, Ciaran asked.

“Investigating”.

“Now, what would SISMI want that’s in Ireland?”

SISMI was the name of the former Italian Intelligence Agency, which was active until earlier that year. Piero used to be a surveillance specialist there until the government inquiry ordered it disbanded.

“You know that there is no SISMI anymore, Ciaran. And no, this is no concern of the Italians. I was asked for help by another larger, more powerful Agency”.

“Who?”

“Give it a guess”.

“Who is it Piero? Ye know I don’t like games”.

“Guess, my friend”.

By now the big man was getting a little annoyed with his old friend.

“Why do you torture me like this Piero? Am I nay a good friend to you?”

“You’re not going to like it”.

“Oh, I figured that out alright”.

“Well…”

“Piero...”, Ciaran said testily.

“Alright”, Piero said. He leaned in close and said, “It’s the Germans”.

“The Germans?! Oh ye've got tae be pulling’ me bloody leg. The Germans?”

“Yes, and I was going to ask you if you wanted to help me”.

“Help you?! Never in a million…”

“Ciaran, I’m asking you as a friend”.

He mulled it over for a couple seconds, then said, “Oh, alright. As long as there’s nae any Germans on the team.”

“Well…”

“Oh, ye’ve got tae be kiddin’ me! Fine, I’ll help you”. He laughed in a couple short barks.

“By God, I’m helping the Germans!”

Piero smiled winningly, “Good, let’s go”.

“Where’re we goin’?”

“You’ll see”.

“Piero, sometimes…”
 

In the desert surrounding Haifa, a beige Subaru skipped along a dirt road used mainly by goat herders. The car swerved to avoid foot-deep potholes on the side of the road. The temperature is easily one hundred degrees.  

“It’s bloody ‘ot! Somebody crack a window!”

“We’re almost there, my friend. Just a few more minutes”.

“Israel. Of all bloody places to bloody meet: Israel!”

“Stop complaining, Ciaran. You get used to it.”

“It better be bloody soon!” Just then the car lurched to a stop.

“We’re here, Ciaran. Get out of the car”.

“Finally! Where’s the water?”

“You drank it all. There’s a tap inside”.

“Thank God!”.

He stumbled into the low brick building in front of them. As he did, he passed a woman with dark hair and olive skin. She looked on with her expressionless eyes while he guzzled water from the sink. When his thirst had been quenched, he turned to find her staring at him.

Then, she identified herself, “My name is Sabra Tzipora. I am pleased to finally meet you. Piero has told me so much about you. Ciaran, yes?”

She had an unnervingly perfect accent that made it sound like she had learned English from a recording.

“And ye presume correctly”. He shook her hand. It was dry and cool. “What’re you contributing to this team of ours?”

“I know weapons”, she replied coolly, “ I will be providing you with the ones that you will require for the mission ahead”.

Just then, Piero came in, “Oh, there you are Ciaran. I see you’ve met Sabra. Shall we begin?”

“Aren’t you missing someone, Piero?”

The voice spoke from the doorway of a larger room to their right. It belonged to a woman with icy-blue eyes and long, fair hair. She had a strong but slender athletic build. She stared unblinkingly at the others.

“Ah yes, of course!” He put his hand on the newcomer’s shoulder and said, “Everyone, this is Adriane Jager. She will be helping with this operation. She is a martial arts specialist, schooled in Berlin in the ways of Krav Maga”.

“Krav Maga, eh? Well, I nay think that yer ‘Krav Maga’ can match up to ma Jiu Jitsu”, he said sarcastically, waving his outstretched fingers in the air.

Her eyes flashed, “Why don’t you come closer and find out?”

“See now, I ‘ave no qualms against fighting a girl. Especially if she’s German”.

“Ciaran”, Piero warned, “I wouldn’t be picking a fight with her. Don’t underestimate the brutality of Krav Maga. She’s a specialist for a reason”.

“No, no. Leave him, Piero”, she said playfully, “How about I just show him instead of you vouching for me?”

“I’d love to see you try, cheeky little…”

“Ciaran, if you can’t get along with others on the team, I advise you to go back to your beer-drinking and selfishness”.

Ciaran glared menacingly at Piero, then at Adriane, then stalked out of the room.

“Charming”, Adriane said, “What’s his problem?”

“Just leave him be, Adriane. He is scarred by some bad experiences with the Stasi”.

“Why does he blame it on me?”

“He just doesn’t know who to blame it on”, Piero said sadly, “He needs to find an outlet for his anger”. The sound of dishes crashing came from the next room.

“Sounds like he’s found one in the kitchen”, Sabra said simply.

Piero sighed, “I guess we’ll just have to wait until tonight to get everyone briefed. Until then, no one leaves the house. I trust the pantries are well stocked?” He looked at Sabra.

“There’s enough food to feed a small army for a week”.

“Good, we’ll need it. From my experience, Ciaran likes to eat his feelings, too”.

After a surprisingly tasty dinner, predictably eaten mostly by Ciaran, the team retired to a small, darkened study. Using an old-style slide projector, Piero told the team of the Russian plot to invade Moldova by purchasing missiles with the help of a Swiss businessman named Karl von Ulft.

“My intelligence sources told me that the Russians will stage an auction to enable the sale of some of von Ulft’s paintings. An auction will ensure that they will receive the maximum amount of money possible”.

Piero explained that, if they could kidnap Sarah von Ulft, Karl’s wife, they could try and get her to help them foil her husband’s plan. Here, Ciaran interrupted.

“How can we be sure that she’ll ‘help us? And nae go squealing back to Karl?”

Piero answered truthfully, “We don’t know if she will help us or not. She could expose us and the operation would be over. We would be arrested and sent to jail, which would expose all of our separate agencies and our employers, the Germans, possibly causing a war across much of Europe. But, hopefully, that will not happen. We have reason to believe that she will help us. My sources tell me she grew up the the slums of East Germany, but escaped poverty by becoming a successful speed skater. She moved to Switzerland after her mother died. She then caught the eye of a certain wealthy businessman who decided to make her his wife”.

“Lemme take a wee guess”, Ciaran cut in, “Our man Karl?”

“That is correct, my friend. Since then, she has acquired a large number of paintings, especially those by her favorite artist, Titian. If she learns of her husband’s plans to sell her beloved paintings to fund Moscow’s adventures, we believe she will side with us”.

“Sounds like ye’ve got everything planned out except the grab”.

“Yes, we will need to figure that out soon as she will be leaving in seven days with Karl on a holiday to Sardinia”.

“You expect us to come up with a solid plan in seven days?”, Adriane interjected, “Piero, you ask too much. It is impossible.”

“I am not asking you to come up with a rock-solid plan. It just needs to work.”
Sabra said, “We can’t afford any mistakes. We will just have to trust him”.

“I’m nae taking part in a crazy suicide mission”, Ciaran said, “You said this would be easy!”

Piero sighed and said, “ If you don’t want to help, then leave. If you want to stay, then do what I say. Now let’s go. We’ve got some planning to do”.
 

Aigle was a speck of a town, with a population of around 8,500. Most days, not much seemed to happen there. But today was not one of those days.

What a dreadful day, thought Sarah. Nothing seemed to be going right. First, one of the servants spilled coffee on her favorite dress, then made it worse by ruining her white shoes when he tried to wipe it off and it spilled down the front of her dress. Enraged at not getting her daily caffeine boost, she had to hire a taxi to take her to a cafe in the village. She would have used her own personal driver, but he had become suddenly ill. On their way to the cafe, an Irishman in a truck suddenly pulled out in front of them and yelled at the driver for nearly causing an accident. They were forced to take a different route through backstreets by the construction work that seemed to have sprung out of thin air. Then, the driver, swerving to miss a woman crossing the sidewalk, drove the taxi into a tree. So, there she sat, dazed, but otherwise unhurt, with her shattered phone in her lap.

Two kindly women approached, asked if she was okay, and gingerly helped her out of her car. But, as soon as they got out of sight of any other people, they thrust a funny-smelling cloth over her mouth and put her in a van.

“What a dreadful day”, she mumbled to herself as her vision swam, then darkened. Then her mind was blank.

Sarah awoke to find herself in a quaint little room with a fireplace. The brick seemed to be made of liquid. Her head hurt. She closed her eyes and groaned. She tried to get up, but something stopped her. Not in her mind, something physically stopped her. She was tied to a chair. She opened her eyes and saw her taxi driver sitting across the room. But this couldn’t have been her driver. Her driver had been clean-shaven. His hair was a different color. But the face, the face could have been him. Kind, easy to forget, not homely, but not handsome either. He was anonymous. He could be anyone, do anything, and no one would know how to describe him.

He sat in the tattered green sofa next to her and smiled. He addressed her by name.

“Hello, Sarah”.

“Who are you?”

“Who I am is not important. What is important is who you were”.

“My name is Sarah von Ulft. I am married to Karl von Ulft. I live in Switzerland at the Chateau de Schlange. I am 48 years…”

“Perhaps you didn’t hear my question correctly, Sarah.”, Piero interrupted, “I asked you who you were, not who you are”.

Sarah looked confused. “I don’t know what you mean…”

“Oh, but you do, Sarah”.

“How did you know my name?”, Sarah demanded.

“I did a little research”, Piero said.

She said suspiciously, “What do you want from me?”

“We need some help”.

“Who’s we?”

Piero took a deep breath, “I’m not going to lie to you, Sarah. I was hired by the German government to stop your husband from selling your Titians to the Russians”.

She paused for a few moments, staring at the fire. “You are lying to me. And even if you weren’t, I wouldn’t help you”.

“Sarah, I’m not lying to you. You have to trust me”.

She glared at him, then her gaze softened. She took a deep breath.

“What if I say no? What if I refuse?”

Piero replied instantly, “You will be returned to your home unharmed, in time for your week-long trip to Sardinia in two days. After a quick debriefing, of course. To make sure you don’t tell anyone about this meeting”.

“And if I agree to help you?”

“Then we will explain our plans, then return you to your home. We will be sure that you are ready for the job ahead. But we will not be able to help you on this mission. You will be entirely on your own. What is your decision?”

She thought it over for a good minute or so. Piero didn’t mind, he was patient. He could wait.

Finally, she simply said “I’ll help you”.

“Good” Piero said, “I hoped that you would agree. Before we get started, call your husband and tell him that you will be out a little later than expected. You are at a friend’s house”.

“But surely someone has told him about the car crash? Aigle is a small village”.

“Don’t worry, Sarah”, Piero said, “We have taken care of it”.

Sarah proved to be a surprisingly quick learner. In less than five hours, she was able to repeat back to Piero the entire mission from start to finish. They offered her dinner, but she politely refused. She went outside to find a taxi that looked exactly like the one that had crashed into a tree, but undamaged. A driver was there, with his hands on the wheel, ready to go. The driver in the seat was Ciaran, the Irishman who had cursed at her on the road that morning. Her real taxi driver stared out the window at her. As she got in the car, she glanced up to get one last glimpse at the man with the indescribable face, but he was gone.

~~~

By the time the taxi arrived at the Chateau, it was nearly midnight. It had taken them roughly four hours to drive back from the safe house outside Switzerland. Throughout the whole drive, no words were spoken between the driver and the very rich, very determined woman in the back seat. Sarah had recited the mission in her head more times than she could count and was thoroughly mentally and physically exhausted when they arrived. She slowly got out of the car, and then remembered her shattered phone. She reached into her pocket to retrieve it, but when she pulled it out she found it in perfect condition. She turned as if to pay the driver, but Ciaran just rolled the window down, gave her a wink, and drove off. She stared after him for a time, then walked briskly up to the house.

She called out a greeting to her husband,

“Karl, I’ve had the worst day. Be a dear and make me a drink”.

As he went to retrieve one, she went into his open office, and quickly and quietly hid the objects Piero had asked her to. She stepped out of his office, walked up to the minibar and accepted a vodka martini from Karl with a weary smile.

“By the way, Sarah, are we still planning to get the paintings cleaned while we’re gone?”

“The Titians, only the Titians”, she answered, “the others were cleaned last year. But they must go to the professional in Davos”.

He nodded. She sipped her drink silently, then kissed Karl’s forehead and wished him goodnight, and went to her room and closed the door.

There was much to do while the von Ulfts were still at the chateau. The two devices Sarah had placed inside von Ulft's office not only downloaded data from his computer, but also recorded conversations. The team 300 kilometers away could listen in on his conversations as clearly as if he were sitting right next to them. The combination of the data collection and the listening devices gave them a lot of information about the deal with the Russians, but one name came up more than any other, and it sent a chill down Piero’s spine.

“Boris Kadzovsky. Russian commander. Infamous for his role in the invasion of Ukraine. And for his brutality”.

“Ye’ve ‘eard of ‘im before?”

“I had the pleasure of meeting him personally… from an interrogation chair”.

“Yikes”, Ciaran pulled up a picture of him from the files, “charming fella, ain’t he?”

The picture was of a bald man with a long facial scar running from his forehead to his chin in a wide arc. His cheekbones were Slavicly high, and he had a permanent scowl on his face.

“If there’s a hell on Earth, that man is the gatekeeper.”, Piero said, “He is not morally bound. He would sell his own mother for the right price”.

“If he hadn’t killed her at the age of fourteen”, Adriane said, matter-of-factly.

“My God, this man is a monster”, Sabra said horrified.

“And now he has the opportunity and means to buy and use long-range missiles”.

He looked around the room and took in the determined looks around him.

“Which is why we have to stop him”.

“What d'ye want us tae do, Piero?” Ciaran surprised everyone with his gesture of faith.

“What I want you to do”, Piero said, “is find this bastard and stop him from killing thousands of innocent people”.

None of the team slept for two days. They were too focused on their goal and too hyped up on adrenaline. They cleaned out their stock of five cylinders of cheap coffee in the first day. The team rehearsed, trained, and rehearsed again until the mission ran through each of their heads the same way with the same outcome: no mess-ups, no blood, no problems. Fake passports were created, and money was collected from the small bank at the end of town. If the need arose, they would put Sarah under the protection of the Italian government and give her a new life elsewhere, out of the reach of her husband and his powerful friends.

The couple’s conversations were dull and uninteresting, but the email address registered to Karl proved more useful. A message from an encrypted Russian account was intercepted, bearing only a single line:

“Davos. Conference Center. Three o’clock. Don’t be late”.

Ciaran said, “We got ‘im!”

Piero responded solemnly, “Not yet, my friend. Not yet”.

~~~

Davos was 370 kilometers away from Aigle, which was an eight-hour drive for the team. The team would need two hours to prepare for the mission ahead, so they left before dawn. Sarah had instructed her servants to pack the six, two-meter long paintings into a large lorry. After no shortage of groaning and splinters, the paintings were ready to be delivered.

People started to arrive around quarter to two. The actual auction was to be held at three to give the auctioneers time to make the paintings presentable. The buyers who arrived were very high-profile and richly dressed. Princes, sheikhs, and dictators passed through the doors to the Conference Center for a chance to make their bids on the paintings. There were fewer bidders than there would be if there was a real auction, as the Russians were very selective about the types of people they wanted to fund their missiles. They chose only the big fish, the ones who had shown interest in Titian paintings before, and were willing to part with a large sum of money, quietly, to obtain one. Hopefully, Piero thought, none of them would get what they wanted.

Boris’ security stood out from the well-appointed guests because of their black clothing and military-cropped hair. There were eight by Piero’s count, one beside each entrance. But Piero lost them in the growing crowd.

As the clock crept closer to three, the quiet murmur in the small crowd was replaced by a growing chatter as the Titians were set up in their glass display cases. A man stepped up to the podium on the raised platform.

“The bidding will start at…” he began, but he was interrupted by a loud crash from behind the audience.

The crash was immediately followed by gunshots. Three people wearing balaclavas raised their guns in the air and fired one shot each. They then each grabbed the nearest person to them and started yelling in a language that sounded a lot like gibberish. The three then pulled out smaller weapons and pointed them at the security guards around the room. There was no loud bang, only a whoosh of air. One shot for each of the six guards positioned around the room. As soon as they were hit, they fell to the ground. No one even got a shot off at the trio.

With rich men and women screaming and pushing to get out of the way, Piero, the man on the podium, said, “Just go grab the paintings and we can be done with it. Sabra, help them please”.

With the hall cleared, they loaded the paintings into the waiting van one by one. Sabra and Piero struggled to lift one, but both Adriane and Ciaran could each pick a painting on their own. They were loaded in less than half the time it took Sarah’s servants. They secured them very carefully, with each painting having its own cradle, which would absorb the brunt of the bouncy road ahead. The team climbed into the van, Piero driving, Sabra next to him, Ciaran in the back seat, and Adriane in the back of the van with the paintings to ensure their safety. The last thing they wanted was to damage the priceless paintings.

“Alright, Karl will not receive news of his paintings’ disappearance, as the Kadzovsky band oddly disappeared before the auction started, which gives us time to…”

“Look out!”

Too late the team saw the heavily armored Hummer driving perpendicular toward them, and as the vehicle t-boned into the side of the van, Piero caught a glimpse of the grim-faced man steering the Hummer expertly, and also saw the long scar running from his forehead to his chin. Then everything went black.

Piero opened his eyes slowly. He only had a hazy glimpse of the darkened room before he slid back into unconsciousness.

He woke again a few hours later, this time to the cold rush of a bucket of water being thrown at him. A second was thrown right after the first, to make sure he had woken up sufficiently to lift his head, only to have the third bucket catch him square in the face. His tormentor wore a balaclava, so he saw only the cold eyes and the cruelly-set mouth. He braced himself for a fourth ice bath, but was greeted by only the dripping of water onto the concrete floor of his interrogation room. When he looked down at the floor, the water had intermingled with blood flowing warmly from the back of his head. It must have coagulated slightly, the wounds only reopened by the splash of icy water. He heard a groan to his right, and saw that Ciaran had been next to him the whole time. He was tied to a chair and was bleeding from a deep gash in his cheek. The gash was obviously made by a vicious blow. The blood on his captor’s knuckles confirmed his theory. A fit of coughing to his left revealed the position of Sabra, similarly tied. He tried to formulate a word of encouragement to his teammates, but his captor would have none of it. He slapped Piero across the face so hard that he began to fall over backwards. He would have, if a hand had not caught him at the last moment. The hand had long, bony fingers, which were attached to a thick, muscular forearm. Piero’s gaze crawled up the man’s arm to his face. It was the face of his nightmares. The face he saw whenever he thought of Russia, or the operation in the forests of eastern Germany, where he had watched the most hardened of operatives fall to the will and cruelty of that face. He had listened to their screams, had thought of the day when it was his turn to surrender to this man. He held out for three days, until the Israelis found him and released him. Of the twenty members of his team, he alone survived. They scoured the whole place and found no trace of the man responsible. He had vanished into the night. Now, Piero came face to face with the monster. When he spoke, he did so in Russian.

“Hello, Piero”, Boris smiled, exposing his perfect teeth, “so nice to see you again”.

“Hello, Boris”, he replied calmly, “Where is the last member of my team?”

“Safe, my friend. Safe”. His voice was monotone, it had no emotion. It was like talking to a machine.

“Boris, they had nothing to do with this, I told them what to do. I can give you what you want. Release them”.

“We have saying in Russia, my friend”, paying no heed to Piero’s request, “smert'ne beret staroye, no spelyye. It means ‘death takes not the old, but the ripe’”.

He walked in front of Piero and grinned maniacally, “And you and your team, my friend, are ready for harvest”.

He threw his head back and laughed. Not a light, infectious laugh, but a dark chuckle that, despite his surprising degree of calmness, made Piero’s hair stand on end.

Boris switched to broken English. “I think that you will be happy to hear that I lied about your last teammate. I know she was at the auction, my video cameras spotted her carrying those paintings. But she was not in the crash. I would bet that she turned tail and ran after she tipped me off”.

“What?”, this was the first word Ciaran had said since the conversation started, “that treacherous piece of German…”

A brutal slap to the face silenced him.

“Well, to be honest, the woman had a German accent…”

“That’s all the evidence I need. It couldn’t ‘ave been anyone else”, Ciaran was red with rage. He started slamming the chair up and down.

“Dammit! How could I not ‘ave guessed it. I told ya not to trust her, Piero”.

This time his fit was answered by a solid punch to the gut that knocked the wind out of him, leaving him scrambling for air.

“Looks like you’ve lost, Piero. Your team is separated, you lost paintings, and you are tied to a chair in an empty wine cellar in Switzerland”, Boris said, “But, there is still a world of pain waiting. You must be prepared before you die”.

He grabbed Piero by the throat and thrust his head back, “And I can’t wait to continue my interrogation that had been interrupted so rudely all those years ago”.

He let go of Piero’s head and walked out of the room, with the masked interrogator in tow. After they left, Sabra, who had been silent throughout the entire exchange, began to shiver uncontrollably. Piero hung his head and stared at the puddle of water and blood at his feet.

Adriane raised herself out of the bushes. She had seen the Hummer approaching through the side window of the van, and had been able to open the back door and jump clear just before impact. She had trailed the damaged Hummer back to the nondescript grey building that she now crouched defensively in front of. Adriane walked slowly and carefully towards a guard stationed outside the building. He was armed with an AR-15 rifle and a large hunting knife. Adriane approached him slowly from behind, grabbed his hunting knife and thrust it into his lower chest. She was very precise, so that the only sound that escaped his lips was a quiet groan and then silence. She dragged him into the rocks and took the assault rifle. She then started across the wet snow towards the compound.

Once inside, she silently dispatched two other guards. She followed Russian voices to the room where she suspected her team was being held. After the voices had moved on, Adriane quietly entered the cellar and began to cut the ropes securing Ciaran. With his head down he looked unconscious and she worried he might be dead. As soon as she had cut through his ropes, however, Ciaran swiftly sprang into action. He swung at her so hard that if the blow had connected squarely with her nose, it would have forced it into her brain and killed her instantly. Adriane was caught off guard, but ducked before the punch could land cleanly. It glanced painfully off the top of her head and knocked her to the ground. She looked up at Ciaran with confusion.

“What the hell was that for?”

“Ye know what’ya did, traitor!”. He came at her again, but this time, she was ready. She ducked under his right hook, then grabbed his arm, and using his momentum, she slammed him headfirst into the wall. He sat, dazed, with his head resting on the wall.

“What are you talking about?”

“Donnae give me that crap, ye filth. The Russian told us everything. About how you ratted on us, how he got an anonymous call from a German girl…”. Ciaran stayed on the ground, but glared up at her with pure hatred.

“And you just assumed it was me? Do you have that little faith in your teammates?”

“I don’t trust na one. ‘Specially Germans. For good reason, too”.

“So you would take the word of a madman over mine? Just because I’m German?”

“Gladly”. He heaved himself off the floor and bull-rushed her. She sidestepped and stuck her foot out. He tumbled head over heels onto the hard floor.

“Stay down, Ciaran! I don’t want to do this”. She moved to untie the others.

“Please, Ciaran. The more you fight her the less time we have to get out of here!”, Piero said, “Just trust her”.

“A’ll never trust her”. Ciaran said menacingly, but he stayed put.

“I didn’t tip off the Russians! I swear!”

“What good is the word of a German?”

“You know what, Ciaran? You’re not the only one with a reason to hate the Stasi”. She had finished cutting Sabra and Piero loose and now walked slowly but purposefully towards Ciaran, never breaking eye contact.

“When I was a little girl, they killed my father for trying to escape East Berlin to give my mother and me a better life. We were sent to different detention centers. I didn’t see her for ten years. When I was finally let out, I traced her to a dreary apartment, where she was still in shock from the death of my father. She didn’t remember me”.

Adriane cried openly now.

“Can you imagine not seeing someone you love for ten years, and when you finally see them again, they don’t know you, Ciaran? There were days when she would cry for my father and threaten to kill herself. But I couldn’t let her. She was still my mother. And I loved her with all my heart”.

She collapsed onto the floor, and added her tears to the pool of blood and water that soaked through her pants.

“I...I’m sorry, Adriane”. She looked up at Ciaran to find him fighting back tears. “If I had known… I didn’t think…”

“We have to go”, Piero said gently but firmly, “Now, before he comes back”.

Adriane got up slowly and lead the way out of the cold Swiss cellar. They found a Hummer that was hidden in the rocks, and drove slowly west.

The team had very narrowly escaped being tortured and killed one by one, for not two minutes after they had driven away, Boris came back to the room only to find three empty chairs and four sets of footprints leading out into the snow. He was disappointed, but he knew he would see them again.

~~~

“The paintings were fake”.

“Impossible!”.

The team was sitting around a small, cozy fire back in their safe house in Switzerland.

“They were fake. There’s no way they would have risked damaging them when they rammed us”.

“That’s true, but when could he have switched them out?”, Sabra said.

“They could have been fake the whole time”, Ciaran stood and paced, “He must have known this whole time what we were planning”.

“I don’t think so, because who could he have influenced into switching out the paintings?”

“It couldn’t have been that hard to bribe a servant. Or even a couple servants”.

“He didn’t have to bribe anyone”, Piero said, with his eyes fixed on the flames, “She already had motive”.

“What are you talking about, Piero?”

He looked up at his team and simply said “I know who it was”.

~~~

“Would you like another drink, miss?” A waiter disturbed her thoughts.

“Oh no, I think I’ve had quite enough.”, Sarah said, her face still gazing on the last rays of sunlight coming down over the ocean.

The waiter backed away respectfully and Sarah was again alone. She thought of how stupid the Italian man had been to believe her story. How she was determined to do anything she could to stop her husband from selling her Titians. She smiled when she thought about how relieved he was when she accepted his offer. But little did they know just how much she had played him. She wanted her husband to sell those dreadful paintings. They had been stolen from a Swiss bank vault solely for the purpose for which they were being used now. Russia would use the missiles to destroy what remained of any resistance in Ukraine. But what reason had she for hating them so much? Piero’s source had not been very specific. Yes, she had been born in Germany in the late sixties, and yes, she was a speed skater. But most of the details had been left out, with a little help from Mr. Benjamin Franklin and his friends. She had shown incredible promise in skating at an early age and her parents put her into a government-run skating academy, where she spent most of her youth. She quickly became one of the best in her class and competed in the Olympics in 1984. The team had even won gold and she came home a hero, with her parents immensely proud of her. Then, everything fell apart. Her teammates tested positive for steroids and the entire team was stripped of their medals. Sarah’s father, who was a member of the Stasi, was killed by West Germans during a prisoner swap. She tried to earn a living by opening a private speed skating academy, but no one wanted to take lessons from a cheater. She blamed the West for all of her problems and came to hate them with all her heart. And if Ukraine wanted to become a part of this, then they would burn. 

She called the waiter over and said, smiling, “Actually, I think I will have one last round”.

She ordered a vodka straight up, and waited for him to walk away again before taking a large gulp. As the fiery liquid rushed down her throat, she thought about how much Boris must have hurt the Italian and his stupid team before they died.
smert'ne beret staroye, no spelyye. Death takes not the old, but the ripe. She raised her glass in salute, then downed the rest.

The team did not know they had just been toasted, for they were hundreds of miles away and focused on how they were going to find out where the paintings were. They would have need a plan that took advantage of the information they had not shared with Sarah. They were lucky she did not know the location of their safehouse. It was their base for planning and was stocked with everything they needed to go to war with Boris. The listening and recording devices in Karl’s office had all gone offline while they were being held in Boris’ interrogation chamber. This was to be expected now that the von Ulfts were in Sardinia. The team would have to find new ways of acquiring the information they needed. And that way was with the help of one of Boris’ henchmen. He would have to be snatched and questioned.

They found a weak point in Iosif Vyacheslav. Only twenty-two, he had been recruited by Boris the previous year. His young wife was expecting a daughter. On his off days, Iosif was known to hang out at a small bar in a town not far from Aigle. On Saturday, Iosif was stopped on his way back from the bar for what appeared to be a routine inspection. The road was secluded and there was not another car in sight, so it was easy for Piero and Ciaran, posing as police officers, to force him into the back of the car and sedate him. He woke up handcuffed to a metal chair with a halogen lamp close to his face. The rest of the room was dark so he only saw the hand loom out of the darkness and place a picture on the table in front of him. It was a picture of Boris Kadzovsky. The young man put on a convincing poker face, but his heart was racing.

“Who is this?” he said.

“You tell me, Iosif”.

“I have never seen this man in my life”.

“You’re lying, Iosif. We don’t like it when people lie to us”.

“Who’s ‘we’?”

“I will be the one asking the questions, not you. Now tell me, Iosif: who is this man?”

“I don’t know”.

The hand placed another photo on top of the first one.

“How about now, Iosif? Maybe this picture will jog your memory”.

Iosif looked closely at the photograph then recoiled in horror. What sat in front of him was a cleverly edited photo of someone who appeared to be his wife, bound and gagged with a cut on her cheek.

“What have you done with my wife?”

The shadowy figure ignored the question, and instead said, “I hear she is expecting a little girl. Wouldn’t it be a shame if she was born a little too early”. The hand then placed a third photograph on the table. It was another edited picture of his wife, except now there was a man in a balaclava holding a knife to her round abdomen.

Iosif glared up at the halogen lamp with tears in his eyes and said, “What do you want from me?”

“I want you to tell me where Boris put the paintings”.

Iosif regained his composure.

“He doesn’t tell his guards where the paintings are. I don’t know where he put them”.

The figure said coldly, “Lie to me one more time and you will never see your wife again”.

Iosif said very quickly, “Okay, alright, I’ll tell you, just please don’t harm my wife”.

He proceeded to tell Piero and the rest of the team standing quietly behind him all that they wanted to know and more.

“The paintings in the rich man’s house were fake. When the Boss captured you, the German lady told him where they could be found”.

“And where was that?”

“A vault in the Bank Raiffeisen de Monthey”.

“What was he going to do with the paintings after he collected them at the vault? Stage another auction?”

“No, it would be too risky now. He will sell them on the black market. He won’t get as much money as he would have if the auction had been successful, but he would still have enough to buy the missiles”.

Piero bent and put his face close enough to Iosif’s that it was illuminated momentarily by the glow of the halogen lamp. It was not the face Iosif had expected to see. When the man’s gaze had softened, he looked like he should be out strolling along a village street somewhere, with a newspaper under one arm, not in a dark room making threats.

“You’ll be a good father if you stay away from people like Boris”, Piero said.

Then Iosif felt a sting on the back of his neck and he was lost to the world once again.

Iosif was carried into his home where they explained to his beautiful and unharmed wife that he had fought with a man at the bar because the man had said something foul about her. There was even a convincing bruise on his cheek that Ciaran had happily applied. He may not remember this when he wakes up, they explained to her calmly, but he will be fine. They then congratulated her on her pregnancy and went back to the safehouse to develop a plan to steal the paintings. Now they had the crucial information they needed to really get started: the paintings were in a small Swiss bank vault where they would be picked up by Boris and his bodyguards. They did not think Iosif would tell Boris about his kidnapping, but just to be sure, they put him under surveillance. Only once did he give them a scare when he called Boris on his mobile. But all that Iosif told him was that he was sick and would not be available for at least the next two days. It seemed that he did not want be present when the bullets started to fly.
 

Piero’s team arrived at the Bank Raiffeisen de Monthey about a half-hour before the Boris and his men were expected to arrive shortly after eight a.m., when the bank opened. From their van they surveyed the front of the bank for people coming in or out. Iosif had informed them that Boris’ men would come in separately, at different times, and all disguised so as not to arouse any suspicion. The first bodyguard arrived fifteen minutes after the bank opened. Then another arrived precisely three minutes later. Then another. Two men went in at the same time, disguised as two quarreling businessmen. Piero had recognized these men from the auction. Then, two more, then another three. This went on for another fifteen minutes or so until some twenty bodyguards had entered through the bank’s tinted glass doors. But Boris himself did not appear.

“What if he doesn’t show?”, Ciaran said.

“Patience, Ciaran”.

Boris finally arrived, nearly an hour after the time given. He was simply but cleverly disguised, in an expensive gray Italian suit, wraparound sunglasses, and a dark blue fedora. To the untrained eye, he looked like a regular, well-to-do businessman coming for a withdrawal from his Swiss Bank vault. Moments after Boris entered the bank, bright flashes of light appeared behind the bank’s darkened, floor-to-ceiling glass walls. The team recognized these flashes as gunshots. They waited several minutes, then entered the bank quietly with their weapons concealed but ready. The lobby of the bank was spacious, about forty-by-thirty meters in area, with the teller’s windows to the right of two large, steel doors that protected the vaults. It seemed to take forever for the team to cross the lobby. They found five bank guards, stationed at different positions around the lobby, but now all dead. The tellers were nowhere in sight. The team members took positions with their guns drawn: Piero kneeling beside the teller’s windows, Adriane and Sabra hidden behind two large desks, and Ciaran behind a large potted plant. They did not wait long for the first guards to walk out of the vault on the left, carrying the six long paintings protected in black, military-grade Pelican boxes. Piero’s team stayed put until most of the guards had exited and were in full view. Then, with a silent signal, they opened fire. Thirteen were dropped in the first volley. The rest dove for the cover of the door. Boris and his bodyguards had not fired a single shot and they were already down to only seven guards and one Boris. The bodyguards summoned their courage and rose to fire back. Many of the shots hit the thick front windows, which were bullet-proof and so remained intact. Piero and his team returned the favor with a furious volley of gunfire. Four guards, one Boris. One of the four was shot in the leg and cried out in pain. He put his hands in the air, and stood and limped slowly towards Piero, but he was shot in the back by one of the other guards. Adriane dispatched the shooter. Two guards, one Boris. Sabra and Ciaran were reloading. Piero and Adriane had only a few shots left. Piero decided it was time to try and end this without any more bloodshed.

“It’s over, Boris. Give us the paintings, and you and your guards can return to Russia”.

A dry chuckle came from the door.

“We will not give up so easily! I cannot fail, or my masters will have my head on a silver platter”.

“What happens after you surrender is your problem. Surrender now or die cowering in a bank lobby”.

“Never!”

With that, Boris and both remaining bodyguards rushed out and opened fire. Piero’s team had little time to react. With a battle-cry, Adriane bull-rushed the closest guard and threw him into a wall. A final spray of gunfire escaped his weapon as his finger involuntarily closed on the trigger. Adriane was temporarily deafened by the blast. With no bullets left, the guard drew a knife and swung in a wide arc at Adriane’s torso. She backed away just enough that the knife missed her. She came at him with fists flying. Three connected with his stomach, two with his head. Somehow, he stayed up long enough for Adriane to deliver a roundhouse kick to his jaw, easily shattering it and breaking multiple teeth. He fell next to his comrade on the floor. Adriane did not see the machine gun swinging level with her head. Luckily, Sabra did, and fired three quick rounds into the last bodyguard’s chest and neck. Adriane turned in time to see him fall with a gaping hole between his clavicles. All was quiet except for the groaning of the man with a broken jaw. Adriane mercifully knocked him unconscious, and silence reigned.

The team watched the man standing in front of them with his arm dangling, limp and bloody, at his side. Here was the brutal man responsible. Here was the evil man who cared more for money than life. Here was Boris Kadzovsky, the man without a soul. He yelled and raised his weapon for one final shot, but Piero already had his Colt .44 up. There was a roar as the deadly weapon released its projectile at 520 meters per second.

No guards, no Boris.
 

The Swiss police arrived at the scene to find twenty-nine people in a Swiss bank, twenty-five of which were dead. The living included three traumatized tellers locked in the bank’s other vault and a Russian man who would never be able to speak again. The six Titian paintings had miraculously escaped any damage. The police eventually concluded that it was a foiled robbery. The Russians had killed the bank guards, locked the tellers in the vault, and disabled the surveillance cameras. They were about to escape with the paintings, but they were stopped by what must have been a small army of unknown individuals who had somehow vanished without a trace.

The story of how a small Swiss bank turned into a war zone surprisingly did not get much attention in the press, and within a couple of days, the incident faded into history. Of course, the police were quite false in their reasoning. They assumed that it must have taken at least thirty men to stop the robbery. They would never have guessed that a mere four people had been capable of taking out twenty, highly-trained bodyguards, in a matter of minutes, before escaping.

The persons in question were now several hundred miles away, in a small, sunny cafe, drinking tea and coffee over a light breakfast.

“What’s next, Piero?”

Piero just smiled sadly and said two words:

“Unfinished business”.

~~~

Sarah was sad to leave the islands. They had relieved much of her stress. The dark circles under her eyes had faded. She looked in the mirror and saw for the first time how beautiful she looked in her red velvet dress. She stepped out of the master suite, blew a kiss to the islands, then stepped back inside the yacht. Suddenly she heard a muffled sound. She stopped. She heard it again. Thump. She walked carefully towards Karl’s cabin. Thump. She looked inside and found Karl bound with rope and duct tape. He was squirming with a mobile phone taped to his forehead. She bent to untie him, but before she could, the phone rang. She hesitated, then ripped it from his forehead. He groaned and tears welled in his eyes. She tapped the call button and raised the phone to her ear.

“Who is this? What did you do to my husband?”

The answer stopped her heart.

“No one messes with my team”.

“Piero, is that you? I thought you were…”

A sound, like a match being struck, then a searing heat, then nothing.

Piero watched from his rented Land Rover as the yacht was swallowed by a ball of fire. The sound of the explosion came a split second later. He watched as the flames engulfed the ship’s hull, and then slowly sank. He started the car and drove away, the last blood-red light of the day sinking beneath the horizon.