Russian Revenge

"NO TRAIT IS MORE JUSTIFIED THAN REVENGE IN THE RIGHT TIME AND PLACE." Rabbi Meir Kahane Never Again CHAPTER THREE LONG BEACH CITY ONE MONTH EARLIER Pedaling his blue and white customized Trek bike, a man coasted along the resurrected Hurricane Sandy-demolished boardwalk. Long Beach City Fathers, fed by a smorgasbord of FEMA dollars, rebuilt a state-of-the-art boardwalk. Planks, laid in a diagonal pattern, met at a center lane running east to west like a backbone, restricted to bikers, joggers, and skaters. Bicycle-man spotted his bench-sitting friend lounging at a midway rendezvous point, on one of 700-plus identical memorial benches erected following the Al-Qaeda 9/11 terrorist attack. Most of the World Trade Center victims were vaporized, yielding few dead bodies. With no grave to visit, families purchased benches, each adorned with a brass plaque, commemorating the life and death of a loved one. Exactly 1.8 miles from the start of the boardwalk, bench-sitter waited on a tropical hardwood bench, bolted to the boardwalk, under the Lincoln Boulevard light pole. It was morning on April 15, Income Tax Day. Weather reports predicted an unseasonably mild, balmy day. Bicycle-man's friend, 44 years old, was outfitted in expensive beachwear, a Tommy Bahama short-sleeve palm-tree shirt, tan shorts. A Panama hat matched his shorts. Ray-Ban aviator sunglasses masked his eyes. Birkenstock sandals, without socks, completed the outfit. A gold diamond encrusted Rolex watch and diamond ring decorated bench-sitter's left wrist and pinky. He had developed a middle-age belly with a 44-inch waistline to match his age. A tern hovered on soft spring updrafts. Light gray upperparts, a black cap, and orange-red legs camouflaged his murder weapon: a narrow pointed bill. Eyeballs alert for a reckless fish swimming near the surface. Precise as Robin Hood's arrow, the tern dive-bombed two feet under the water and speared his breakfast, which was nearly twice his size. The predator made off for the Lincoln Avenue jetty pursued by a posse of his fellow creatures, seagulls and terns. Arrow tern chomped on fish gut as he flew. Within seconds of landing and one more greedy mouthful, the rest of the tern's meal was torn apart amid the screaming and flapping of his pursuers wings. Bench sitter watched the massacre in progress. The biggest of the gulls tried to gulp down fish remains. Nothing doing. Half the gull's size, the tern stood his ground and hacked into the gull's beak. Surrendering, the gull went aloft on the hunt for less adversarial prey like slow-moving crabs and clams. Coasting alongside the bench-sitter, bicycle-man lowered his kickstand, waiting for a sign of recognition from his Russian comrade. Bench-sitter never moved his head, gazing at the beach activity over the boardwalk rail. Wet suited surfers paddled dangerously close to rock jetties. A daisy chain of cargo ships and oiltankers waited their turn for entry to the Port of New York. First come, first served. Sand, taken over by lightly clad young mothers carrying blankets, coolers, pails and shovels with preschool-age children in tow were in abundance. Bikini clad teens frolicked on the sand, tempting teenage hooky-playing boys, who hovered like the terns, hoping for whatever gifts the girls might bestow. Lincoln Avenue's section of Long Beach's ocean water is off-limits to all but the surfers guaranteeing safety for toddlers. Six-foot-long surfboards, propelled by waves, could mangle a child. Non-surfers understood the danger and either built sand castles or caught rays of sun. As the kickstand clicked into place, bench-sitter heard a voice from over his right shoulder. "Dobraye ootro, tovarich, good morning, comrade." "Zdrastvooyte, hello, General Stankovich," Oleg Petrovsky said, and smiled. Oleg's visitor's skin smelled of suntan oil, but his breath reeked of vodka. Without shifting his head, Oleg said, "I admire the surfers. They take risks and dare the rocks to do their worst. I'm here at your command, General. What do you want with me?" "I remember those days, General. The best years of my life. We did a great job for the Rodina, the Motherland. We recaptured Grozny and there was peace for a few years." Passersby watched two men stand and embrace. Bear hugs and cheek kisses demonstrated the friendship two Russian warriors had for each other. "For your information, Oleg Arturovich, the brave surfers hug the rocks on purpose. They allow themselves to get sucked out to the ocean by an undertow. They don't expend energy battling the breaking waves to make it to the spot where the waves crest. Surfers are smart. Look at the closed circuit television camera near the Aqua's boardwalk. Surfers dial it up every morning to get a view of the breaking waves. On rare occasions, the ocean is calm so they stay home. They know how to exploit their environment," Stankovich said. "Then let's consider them both brave and smart, like us in Chechnya," Oleg said. Stankovich smiled and said, "Oleg, your clothing testifies to an assimilation into the American culture. If I didn't know better, I would think of you as a Yankee tourist, or worse, a capitalist. You look like a 44 year-old-stockbroker, rather than a veteran of the Federal Security Service. Your outfit makes us look like the prince and the pauper. You didn't dress like that in Chechnya. Russian KGB men don't dress like playboys." "Tovarich, you haven't come to Long Beach to interview me for Gentlemen's Quarterly, have you? Your Soviet Union and the KGB is history. We now work for the Russian Federal Security Service. What's going on?"