MANHATTAN
“Who’s Fuzz… ?” Donovan Rourke asked on his cell phone as he sat in Heltberg’s Bar, sipping his second beer.
“BUZZ!” Tish said.
“Oh… ”
“Buzz Lightyear!”
“Who’s he?”
“He’s a space ranger!”
“Wow!”
“And he’s at Macy’s. Can we please go get him?”
“Hmmmmmm… ”
“Tonight, please?”
“Hmmmmmm… Well, okay.”
Her squeal might have injured his eardrum.
After hanging up, Donovan admitted yet again that he was a push-over when it came to his beautiful, five-year-old daughter. Tish was the love of his life. He’d do almost anything to make her happy, and help make up for the loss of her mother.
Donovan looked around the bar. Some New York University students drinking pitchers of beer. A businessman nursing his third scotch. A fat guy sleeping on a barstool who hadn’t moved a muscle in thirty minutes. The guy could be dead.
Dead like Benny Ahrens, Donovan thought. Benny, his friend, was killed because of a piece of paper. The same paper Donovan now held in his own hand.
A cute, green-haired waitress walked by and winked at him. He smiled back and figured he must not look too bad for a thirty-four-year-old guy who’d spent the last ten years of his life avoiding people trying to end it.
So far, no bullet scars above the neck. Four limbs that worked. The family jewels intact. And a six-foot-two inch frame that could still run five miles in thirty-six minutes, and even faster if he was being shot at, which was quite likely because of the paper in his hand.
Green Hair placed a bowl of roasted peanuts on his table.
“Peace,” she said, winking and sashaying away.
And may Benny Ahrens rest in peace.
Yesterday, Benny, a Mossad agent, had discovered the deadly note. The message on it was written in some ancient cryptic symbols that meant absolutely nothing to Donovan.
But meant death to Benny. And Donovan feared it could mean death to Professor Sohan Singh who was meeting Donovan here in twenty-five minutes, unless Donovan phoned him and told him not to come.
But Donovan had strict orders – Give the message to Singh. He’s our best shot at translating it. And orders must always be followed, right?
Wrong. There’s a time to screw orders. Like when his gut told him to. Like now. He pulled out his phone, dialed Sohan’s cell and was bounced into voice mail and left a message saying, “Sohan, everything worked out. We don’t need your help now. But thanks anyway. I’ll call you later.”
It bothered Donovan that he lied so easily. But then his job paid him to lie.
As he hung up, the bar door opened. A strong blast of Manhattan bus fumes swept in… along with Professor Sohan Singh, twenty minutes early. Singh, a slender, well-dressed man in his early sixties looked around and smiled at Donovan.
Donovan waved his former NYU French professor over. They shook hands and sat at the table.
“So,” Singh said, “you’re going to beg me for another racquetball rematch?”
Donovan smiled. “I’m going to beg you to walk back out of this bar.”
Singh stared back.
“This thing is too risky, Sohan.”
“A translation thing?”
“Yeah.”
Singh glanced down at the note in Rourke’s hand.
“Would that be the translation thing?”
“It would.”
Donovan scanned the bar and made sure no one was paying attention to them. No one was.
“Sohan… this note is deadly.”
Green Hair appeared. Singh ordered a Heineken and seconds later she set a frosty bottle in front of him.
“Why so deadly?”
“We don’t know yet. But my Mossad friend was just killed a mile from here because of it. He intercepted the message and told me it was very serious and very urgent. The NSA cryptographers are at a loss to translate it. They’re convinced the symbols are some very ancient Middle Eastern language. They say you can translate it much faster than they ever will.”
Singh sipped his beer.
“But Sohan, trust me, this note is – ”
“Very.”
“And one’s buns are still pro-choice, right?
Donovan nodded.
“And this note is important to our country’s security?”
“Benny Ahrens said it was.”
“So give me the damn message or I’ll bore you again with amazing but true saga of how my poor dear mother scrubbed floors on a Calcutta steamer coming to this land of the unwashed masses yearning to be free.”
As Donovan started to protest again, Singh snatched the paper from his hand and began studying it. Singh sipped some beer. A drop splashed onto the message, but he didn’t seem to notice. Donovan studied his former professor. Still scholarly and relaxed. Maybe a bit more gray around the temples, another crinkle around the eyes, an extra liver spot on his hand. His brown tweed sports coat matched his turtleneck. And his pipe ashes, as usual, had sprinkled onto his Hush Puppies.
Donovan worried that Singh was helping.
But then the CIA paid Donovan to worry. And lie. And get shot at.
“The NSA is right,” Singh said.
“Very old symbols?”
“Old as dirt. In fact, they were first written in dirt. I’m quite certain they’re Sumarian, maybe Mesopotamian. Around 3,500 B.C. Each cuneiform pictogram, or mark and symbol represents a word.”
Can you translate it?”
“Depends… ”
“On what?”
“On whether certain symbols are in some old books at my apartment. Which reminds me, I have to get back there. My daughter, you remember Maccabee, she’s coming in from Princeton tonight and I promised to cook dinner. I’ll call you as soon as I have something.”
Donovan nodded and remembered Singh’s daughter. Singh had been incredibly proud of her when she followed his footsteps and became a professor of foreign languages.
“How is Maccabee?”
Singh smiled. “Beautiful, and smart like me.”
* * *
“Dumb like you!” whispered Milan Slavitch, a thickset man, sitting in a dark blue Toyota van ten feet from Heltberg’s Bar. He’d listened to Rourke’s conversation with Singh through a laser eavesdropping device that picked up their voice vibrations from the bar’s window.
Slavitch sipped absinthe from a silver flask, then rubbed the flask down his five-inch facial scar, the relic of a Serbian bayonet. The man who held the bayonet died quickly when Slavitch slit his neck with a razor-sharp Yemeni jambiya dagger.
He punched in a number on his cell phone, relayed what he’d overheard and hung up.
Moments later, Rourke and Singh stepped outside the bar and got in a taxi.
Slavitch followed in the van. Singh was dropped off in front of a five-story brownstone on 73rd Street and went inside. The taxi drove off with Rourke.
Slavitch parked, but as he started to get out, a woman and two small kids walked out and began playing in front of Singh’s apartment. Slavitch decided to wait.
A half hour later they left.
Slavitch shoved a fifteen round magazine into his prized Croatian Army Beretta that he’d smuggled into the states years ago.
He got out of the van and strolled toward Singh’s apartment building.