T
he cafe served strong coffee in tiny delicate cups.
The caffeine content alone had his heart racing and Brill wondered why it didn’t eat through the delicate aged paper thin porcelain.
He took a small sip of his third cup and listened to the thudding beat of his heart accelerate.
It made him smile.
Constant training, running eighty miles or more per week and daily meditation kept his normal heart rate in the low range, but add a jolt of java to his system and it took off like a jackrabbit jumping.
He was waiting for a man to join him.
Not at the table, but in the cafe itself.
The man was late, which was why he was on his third cup.
It pissed him off just a little.
He had learned long ago to just go with the flow, and his laid-back attitude developed in a surf van life on the coastal wilderness of South Africa was at odds with his look.
Buzz cut hair, sharp jawline, sharp cheeks and a plain face that was completely forgettable except under the most extreme circumstances.
He looked like he was former military, and carried himself with discipline.
It showed in the precision with which he lifted the tiny cup from the saucer, from the eyes that never stopped roaming, taking in detail after detail of his surroundings.
“Another sir?” the waiter asked with a strong accent.
Brill waved him off.
One more and his heart might explode.
After he was finished, he planned to hole up in the safe house and do a movie binge while running the treadmill just to run off some of the energy.
It was a habit he had developed in South Africa before joining the Recce, the special forces of the South African Defense Force.
He needed a special dispensation and dual citizenship, both documents made simple with a call from a cabinet member Brill was happy to call friend.
The habit probably kept him alive, he thought.
He worked to keep his mind from wandering on the wonders of running, and was mostly successful.
The appearance of Avi Goldstein brought him right into focus.
The Israeli ex-pat was short with curly black hair that ran from his head down to his chest and arms.
Every exposed inch was curly black hair, and the arms dealer liked to wear his custom made shirts with almost all the buttons undone.
The fabric stretched over his expansive stomach which exposed even more of the hirsute chest.
“Booby,” Avi embraced the waitress. His hand wandered down her back and across her buttocks.
Brill watched her face blanch in disgust before she hid it behind a beaming smile.
Avi was a big tipper, he knew from observation and the waitress his regular. She would put up with a lot for what he would put on his American Express Black Card.
“Right on time,” he whispered as Avi shouted out his order.
Brill could almost repeat it with him.
“Cafe au lait, perrier and a Stella,” Brill’s lips moved as the Israeli ordered.
The man settled into his chair and pulled out a small cellphone.
He slid through a number and started talking into it.
The waitress brought his order on a silver tray and set it in front of him.
He patted her on the small of her back and let his hand slide down lower.
She smiled and extracted herself with a little grace.
Brill was impressed.
Avi was meeting Bashar Al Assad a terrorist leader of the Lions of Arabia in the cafe in Athens for the express purpose of selling him an arms package of used Soviet weapons from a warehouse in Belarus.
How Avi was connected to Belarus mafia was a dot for someone else to connect.
As was why Mossad allowed him to operate for so long unimpeded.
Brill suspected that the arms sold to the terrorist were used to overthrow or destabilize other governments in the Middle East, which took pressure off the Jewish nation clinging precariously to land on the edge of the Mediterranean.
His instructs back in Virginia had suggested he read about history and geography, and Brill had planned out a course of study.
It had yet to touch on the politics of the region where he found himself operating as of late.
His specialty was Africa.
But politics in the desert seemed pretty much the same as the jungle or even the civilized shore of America.
People struggled to get what they wanted and have their way, and damn the consequences or innocent bystanders.
A black armored Mercedes rolled up to the sidewalk entrance to the cafe and disgorged two bodyguards, giant hulking men with black hair and dark glasses.
They were fat over muscle, giant bellies overlapping their belts, and relied on size instead of speed.
Brill knew there was a third guard in the back seat of the car who covered Bashar’s back as he exited and lay in wait just in case he was needed.
The man himself stood up from the vehicle and stretched in the sunlight.
He was lean and hard looking, a patron of the desert sun that tanned his skin into a leathery sheen.
He had three fingers on his left hand from a small bomb explosion as he built a suicide vest, and scars along that same cheek and side of his face.
It was hidden now behind black sunglasses that matched the bodyguards.
Brill watched him walk over to Avi and embrace the man, kissing both cheeks as was custom.
He wanted to marvel at the action, since an Arab man sworn to remove Israel from the map was expressing affection to a Jewish arms dealer.
This proved to Brill that circumstance not only made strange bedfellows, that if the bad men in the world would stop trying to put one over on the rest of society, everyone could all pretty much get along.
Common goals meant common sense should take over.
On the other hand, hatreds ran pretty deep and Brill knew a thing about rage.
It was a potent fuel to get a mission accomplished, one he tapped into himself often.
Bashar sat across from Avi and accepted the coffee and water.
Avi nursed the bottle of beer as the two men began to negotiate.
Showtime, thought Brill and stood up.
He pulled a couple of coins out of his pocket and left enough on the table to cover Avi’s bill and tip for the waitress.
With his back to the bodyguards, he lit two small M-80 firecrackers from his pocket and rolled them under the tables toward the road.
Each firecracker had a ten second fuse so he counted down from nine as he pulled a Glock 19 from the waist of his pants.
He didn’t need to rack the slide or check the chamber because he had done it a dozen times in the hotel room and on the way to the cafe.
The M80’s explosion echoed up the narrow stone streets the sound bouncing off the walls to amplify the effect.
The two bodyguards by the car jumped and flinched.
They spread out and pulled pistols from shoulder holsters and searched for the source of the sound.
Brill marched across the twenty feet of the cafe toward Avi.
He raised his gun and sent two shots through the man’s heart.
He shifted the gun to the closest bodyguard and dropped him with a round to the forehead and repeated the action to the second man.
Bashar screamed and cowered under the table mewling in fear.
Brill didn’t have him on his list, but the man was a terrorist and killer.
The world would be a better place without him so he took a shot and drilled him through the nose with a hollow point.
Another man screamed in the new silence.
The backseat bodyguard scrambled out of the car, still yelling as he fumbled for his pistol.
Brill dropped him with a round to the chest and a second to the head just to be sure.
He bent over grabbed Avi’s phone and attaché and walked calmly away from the crying and befuddled patrons of the cafe, twenty seconds after he stood up from his table.