Tal Klein - The Punch Escrow

“And then what? They’ll just find you in the glacier, Bill.”

He chuckled, as if indulging a child. “Is teleportation not the literal manifestation of God’s gift to mankind? A human disappears from his burial tomb, then appears somewhere else. Mary Magdalene can’t believe her eyes. Luke is dumbfounded, he thinks Jesus is a ghost, and so Jesus challenges him, ‘Look at My hands and My feet; it is I Myself. Touch Me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones.’” Taraval stared out at the rainy shipping yard, and the river beyond it. “Not quite the Garden Tomb outside Jerusalem, my dear, but one generally does not get to choose the site of their resurrection. They won’t find me until I reemerge. For that, I took a page out of the Gehinnomites’ book. When I researched this Pulsa D’nura , I discovered gematria. Ever hear of it?”

Thanks to me and my love of trivia, she had. Gematria was an old Jewish system of assigning numerical value to letters and words, for the purposes of divining a thing’s “essential power.” “You’re going to encrypt yourself, Bill?” she asked. “Is that what you’re saying?”

“Clever girl!” He laughed. “None shall find me until the day, many months or years hence, when I shall reappear, resurrected from the glacier. My very own Second Coming.”

A BORROWED SWORD

THE LEVANTINE SEDAN pulled to a stop outside the Central Park Zoo. A large black luxury van was parked out front. This being July Fourth, the zoo entrance was crowded with families and kids all wanting to see the animals.

“Zaki, clipboard!” Moti yelled as he exited our car. Zaki followed, holding out the antique item as he made his way to their welcoming committee—a detachment of seven Levantine operatives who emerged from the back of the black van. They all wore tactical operations vests and had the faces of seasoned experts. Further evidence, as if we needed any, that Joel 2and I never really had Moti; he’d had us all along.

I wondered just then how close we had come to death. If we hadn’t figured out what Moti was up to, would he have kept us alive?

“Come, come,” Moti said, ushering us toward the van. Joel 2and I got out, walking to the nearly bus-sized transport. The inside was lined with at least a dozen seats against the walls, as well as a command center with plenty of consoles. Unlike the LAST Agency office where I had first met Moti, there was no attempt here to deceive any visitors. The van’s interior had all the trimmings one would expect of a high-end spy operation.

Zaki handed Moti his clipboard, then quietly conferred with a stern-faced raven-haired woman at the command console. After they seemed to agree about whatever she’d told him, Zaki announced to the group, “A male and female matching William Taraval and Sylvia Byram were recorded near the Chelsea Piers freight TC.”

“Time to departure?” Moti asked.

“Five, ten minutes,” Zaki answered.

“Make it five!” barked Moti. He took a drag of his cigarette and turned to us. “Good suggestion. Now you wait here and—God willing—we will return with your wife. In the meantime, you two have much to discuss.”

“Hold it,” I said. “Are you seriously trying to feed us some variation of We’ll take it from here? You really think we’re going to stay here with the red pandas while you take out Taraval and try not to get our wife killed in the process?”

“Nobody is killing anyone,” Moti said conclusively.

“We’re coming,” said Joel 2.

“No.” Moti shook his head.

“We are coming,” Joel 2reiterated. “In the past forty-eight hours, we’ve been killed, resurrected—”

“Replicated,” I added.

“Kidnapped,” Joel 2said.

“Poisoned—”

“And bludgeoned.”

“We’re coming,” I stated.

Moti took an impatient drag of his cigarette, then exhaled a plume of smoke in our direction.

“Team, to me!” he shouted.

Is that supposed to be a yes?

Zaki, Ifrit, the raven-haired woman, and the other seven Levantine occupants of the van gathered around him. It was a credit to their training that not one of them did a double take at me or Joel 2.

“Our target, as you know, is a man named William Taraval,” he said, sending a dossier to their comms with a gesture. “If you have ever heard the term mad scientist , that is who we’re looking for. But make no mistake: mad or not, he is a very smart individual. He knows how to play the game, and if we find him, then we must assume it’s because he’s not hiding. Expect him to expect us. What we have to be careful of isn’t some weapon that he may be brandishing, but this man’s mind. His mind is his weapon. And speaking of weapons, use yours only as a last resort! Killing someone will not only end this mission; it will end our mission. We need this man alive. I don’t need a dead body: I want a live mind. Without his capture, we fail.”

“What about Sylvia?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Joel 2said, “didn’t you just say—”

“We leave in two,” Moti said, releasing his staff back to whatever they were doing. He eyeballed us. “Gentlemen. Have you ever considered the possibility that your wife played a bigger role in this than you would like to think?” This was phrased as a statement, not a question. “Do you wonder what else she’s been keeping from you? My wife thinks I’m a travel agent. What sort of business is your wife really in? Do you know? Because I am not willing to risk the lives of my people to find out.”

No , I thought fiercely. I can’t be distracted by that kind of doubt. Joel 2’s already sinking in that emotional quicksand; there’s nothing to gain by speculating about any bad shit Sylvia might have done right now. Right now we need to get her back .

“You need us,” I said.

“Why is that?” Moti asked, checking off boxes on his clipboard.

“Because we’re unexpected,” I blurted, making it up as I went along. “I don’t have working comms, so Taraval can’t detect me. And,” I said, pointing my thumb at Joel 2, “Taraval thinks that he’s still in Costa Rica, maybe even dead. He’ll never see us coming. And if he does, we’re the ultimate distraction. In his mind, we’re the entire reason he’s in this mess. We’re the reason his career and his science is at risk. We’re an affront to his ego.”

Both Moti and Joel 2seemed impressed at my ad-libbed rationale.

“Okay,” Moti relented. “But you’re both under my direction, right next to me the whole time. You don’t sneeze without my permission. Understood?” He looked at both of us, his gaze serious.

We nodded in unison.

He jerked his head toward the van. Joel 2and I climbed in after him, taking the first available seats. The rear doors closed and the van pulled out, heading west through Central Park.

Moti went over to Ifrit and whispered something in her ear. She motioned to a compartment by the aft door. The ride started getting bumpy as we went off-road briefly to pass a slower-moving vehicle. Moti put his hand against the roof of the van to balance himself as he opened the compartment. He pulled out a couple of matching black T-shirts, pants, and tac vests.

“Put these on,” he said, throwing one set to me and the other to Joel 2.

“You mean just drop trou and get naked in front of everyone?” I asked. “I am currently without underwear.”

This amused Zaki. Through deep-throated laughter he quipped, “Then please, don’t spend too much time being naked!”

“Why do we have to change?” Joel 2asked Moti.

The spy stretched a hand toward Joel 2’s face. He flinched and tried to dodge, but Moti caught the back of his head and ripped off the bandages covering both his temple and his right eye. “Because if he thinks one of you is dead, it’s better if you are both the same you ,” he said, throwing the bloody dressings to the floor.