Good and Dead (An Avner Ehrlich Thriller Book 2) by E. L. Pini

Author:E. L. Pini [Pini, E. L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-06-05T16:00:00+00:00

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28 A “tin neighborhood” – a slum comprised of tin shacks, or colloquially any run-down or miserable place

29 A shitstorm (lit. “headache”)

32.

VALE TUDO, MOSCOW, 1992.

The Cyrillic letters flickered on the screen for a moment and were gone. From the quality of the black-and-white video it was clear that it was a pirated copy someone had made of a screen it was being projected on.

The literal translation of Vale Tudo is “Everything Goes.” Any and every kind of punching, kicking, biting is permitted; anything someone can do to someone else without weapons or props. It is originally a Brazilian full-contact combat sport in which fights, at least traditionally, are fought to the death. In Russia, the fight usually ends when the referee declares one of the fighters “Good and dead.”

The video showed a young Rasputin dressed in a black ninjutsu uniform, first destroying an older competitor, then the reigning champion, Gregor the Grizzly. In the last round, after Gregor has proven his absolute superiority, Rasputin managed to poke a finger into Gregor’s eye. Seeing an opening, he then repeatedly stabbed Gregor in the eye, over and over again with a hidden blade – the metallic glint of which could just barely be noticed in the grainy footage, if you were looking for it, which we were. Gregor signaled his surrender but Rasputin kept going, kicking him in the temple again and again, like a man possessed, until the ref cried out “Good and dead!” and Rasputin was crowned the champion of free Russia, 1992.

After the fight, Rasputin went into a vehicle, and as he took off his uniform, he also took off the icepick hidden in his sleeve.

“Christ, what a piece of work,” said Nahum. “And what is it that he does today, exactly?”

“Special Operations Advisor to President Putin, and his personal representative at RET,” said Nora.

Nahum gave his customary low whistle.

Froyke gave me a distant sort of look. I remembered the motherfucker waving smugly at me from the helicopter skid back in Phicardou.

“What’s there to smile about, Ehrlich?” asked Moshe.

“Nip and tuck and no holds barred,” I muttered, for a moment visualizing Daniel Webster fighting Mr. Scratch in the snowfields of New Hampshire.

“What?”

“I guarantee you that’s from a Tarantino film. His mentor,” Nora said.

“Almost, but not quite,” I corrected. “The Devil and Daniel Webster is a famous American short story, a kind of modern Faust.”

“And it ends,” Anne-Marie interjected, “just where we are now. Don’t let this country fall into the hands of the devil again.”

An old photograph came up on the screen: a group of Spetsnaz fighters in combat gear. In the center were the three officers: on the right Lieutenant Sergei Naryshkin, our dear colleague from the FSB; in the middle, surrounded by the red halo of Anne-Marie’s laser pointer, was CO Yuri Rasputin, and to the left an unnamed officer who was very reminiscent of Vladimir Putin.

“They took this photograph in Grozny, following what was basically a genocide – he received a special citation after that, and a promotion.

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