The office for the Corinthian Rug Company was on Walker Street south of Canal. It was situated in a ground-level storefront with a couple of faded geometrically patterned Turkish rugs and goat hides in the window. Yuri slowed as he approached. The door had lettering stenciled in gold. It was closed, but Yuri knew that didn’t mean anything. When Yuri had initially scouted the concern by making innumerable drive-bys, he’d always found the door closed.
Pulling into a loading area across the street from where he could watch the entrance, Yuri put his car in park. He’d decided to wait although he didn’t know exactly what he was waiting for. Somehow he had to find out about Mr. Jason Papparis’s state of health. Yuri was certain the man had gotten the ACME Cleaners envelope on Friday at the very latest.
The waiting calmed Yuri, and the thought of the next step in his grand scheme excited him. He’d be able to tell Curt Rogers that the anthrax was potent. That would mean that the only thing left to test would be the botulinum toxin. For the fateful day, Yuri had decided on two agents rather than one. He wanted to eliminate any possibility of technological screw-ups. The two agents killed in completely different ways, even though both were to be aerosolized.
Reaching under his seat and pushing his defensive tire iron out of the way, Yuri pulled out his flat pocket flask. He deserved a shot of vodka. After making sure no one was watching, he took a quick slug of the fiery fluid. He breathe out a sigh of relief as a sensation of warmth spread deliciously through his body. Now he felt even calmer. He was even capable of appreciating that there had been some recent bright spots in his life.
One of the luckiest things that had happened to Yuri since his arrival in the U.S. was meeting Curt Rogers and Curt’s buddy Steve Henderson and striking up a relationship. It had been this relationship that had turned Yuri’s fantasy of vengeance into a realistic possibility. The initial meeting had occurred purely by chance. After a very long day of hot summer driving Yuri had stopped at a hole-in-the-wall bar called White Pride in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. His flask had long since been drained, and he needed a shot of vodka so bad he couldn’t wait until he got home to Brighton Beach.
It was after eleven at night, and the local hangout was crowded, dark, and noisy with the heavy metal beat of Skrewdriver reverberating off the walls. Most of the customers were tough working-class white youths with shaved heads, sleeveless T-shirts, and a profusion of tattoos. Yuri should have guessed the kind of clientele he’d encounter. Outside he’d seen a number of gleaming Harleys emblazoned with Nazi decals nosed in against the curb directly in front of the bar’s open door.
Yuri could remember hesitating on the threshold while debating whether to go in. His intuition told him that danger hung in the air like a miasma above a swamp. People eyed him with hostility. After a moment’s indecision Yuri had taken the risk to enter for two reasons. One was the fear that fleeing would have provoked a chase just like running from a vicious but indecisive dog. The other was that he really needed the vodka and that all the other bars in Bensonhurst would probably have been equally intimidating.
Yuri sat on an empty stool, hunched over the bar, and pulled in his elbows. He kept his eyes straight ahead. As soon as he ordered his drink, his accent caused a stir. A number of the youths with supercilious expressions closed around him. Just when Yuri feared trouble was about to occur, the punks parted and a clean-cut man in his late thirties or early forties appeared whom the youths seemed to respect.
The newcomer was dirty blond, tall, and lean. His hair was short but his head was not shaved. The style was more like a military man’s. He, too, was wearing a T-shirt, but it was clean, had short sleeves, and looked ironed. There was a small image of a red fireman’s hat high on the left side of the shirt. Below that it said Engine Company #7. In sharp contrast to the skinheads, he appeared to have only the one tattoo. It was a small American flag on his right upper arm.
“I don’t know whether you’re brave or stupid for coming in here uninvited, friend,” the blond-haired man said. “This is a private club.”
“I’m sorry,” Yuri mumbled. He started to get up. The blond man put a hand on his shoulder to keep him in his seat.
“You sound Russian,” the man said.
“I am,” Yuri admitted.
“Are you Jewish?”
“No!” Yuri blurted. “Not at all.” The question surprised him.
“You live over in Brighton Beach?”
“That’s right,” Yuri said nervously. He didn’t know where the conversation was going.
“I thought all you Russians over there were Jewish.”
“Not me,” Yuri said. The man knew what he was talking about. The majority of the Russian émigrés in Brighton Beach were Jewish. It was one of the reasons Yuri had so few friends. There were all sorts of Jewish organizations that welcomed their fellow religious refugees. The Jews had been the only people allowed out of Russia during the Communist regime, so there was already a sizable community there by the time of the fall of the USSR. Because of his lack of religious affiliation, Yuri had been ignored.
“Do I detect a negative attitude about the Jewish persuasion?” the blond man asked.
Yuri’s eyes darted around at some of the slogans adorning the fronts of many of the skinheads’ T-shirts. He saw things like The Holocaust Is A Zionist Myth and Down With The Zionist Occupied U.S. Government. Accordingly, Yuri wisely deemed it opportune to confess his current antisemitic bias.
Yuri had never thought much about Jews one way or the other until the most recent Russian presidential election. It was then that he’d been acculturated by neo-fascist Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s and neo-communist Gennedy Zyuganov’s rhetoric. Because of Yuri’s toska and his wounded nationalistic pride, he’d been an easy target for both demagogues’ hackneyed scapegoat theories.
“You know, I think we’ve misjudged you, friend,” the blond man said in response to Yuri’s racist admission. The blond man patted Yuri on his back. “Not only are you welcome to drink here, you can have another one on me.”
The blond man snapped his finger at the bartender, who’d moved away when he’d suspected a conflagration. The bartender brought the bottle of vodka over and filled Yuri’s glass to the brim.
“My name’s Curt Rogers,” the blond man said. He eased himself onto the stool next to Yuri. “And this here is Steve Henderson.” Curt gestured to a red-headed fellow who took the seat on the other side of Yuri. Although Steve was much more heavily muscled than Curt, he resembled Curt particularly in regard to his dress. His T-shirt had the exact same insignia.
The first meeting had led to several subsequent ones, since the three men found that they shared similar opinions on issues beside antisemitism. There was a particularly strong meeting of the minds concerning their respective views about the current U.S. government.
“The whole goddamn mess is illegal, oppressive, and unconstitutional,” Curt had whispered when the issue first came up. “And there’s only one solution. The U.S. government has to be overthrown by force of arms. There’s no other way. And it’s got to be soon, because the Zionists are getting stronger every day.”
“Really?” Yuri had asked. He’d been shocked to hear that there were Americans who disliked the government. And according to Curt, who was an authority on all aspects of the U.S. government as well as U.S. history, the malcontents weren’t just a tiny minority. The patriots, as Curt called them, were sprinkled all over the country. They were all heavily armed and waiting for the sign for them to rise up in revolt.