Target Omega

EPILOGUE

For the first time in longer than Dmitri Chernin could remember, he didn’t feel like a character in a Chekhov play. Rather, he felt… optimistic. Content, even. A rare feeling, perhaps a first. He took another sip of Smirnoff, sat back in the lounge chair, and opened his senses to the ambient sights, sounds, and smells surrounding the open-air beachfront bar on a spit of sand between the Costa Rican jungle and the Pacific Ocean.

The light mist from the surf spray did little to temper the heat of the midafternoon sun. Still, Chernin declined an umbrella from the beachboy as he had every day this week, spending hours in the sun, luxuriating in the tropical heat. As a result, he sported the only tan of his adulthood. It looked good. He looked good. In fact, better than at any time in his life. He had grown a closely trimmed beard; his thick graying hair was combed back from his face and fell below the collar of his white linen shirt. His features appeared roguish, a dramatic contrast to his ascetic appearance over the last several decades. It was a look that during the Soviet era would’ve been considered decadent.

To his delight, the seemingly limitless supply of beautiful women sunning themselves on the startling black sands of the beach also found his new appearance extremely attractive. Women of every hue, age, and nationality. The tall blond Dane, for instance, who was doing a swimsuit layout for a sports magazine declared he had “a look.” Not that there weren’t scores of handsome, roguish men populating the miles of beach between Dominical and Ciudad Cortés. But they, she said, almost invariably wore insufferably vapid expressions, an observation that Chernin found had something of a pot-kettle quality about it.

Presently, he was involved with a woman named Marisol, the stunning, fortyish ex-wife of a Mexican telecommunications magnate. She had introduced herself after listening to him hold forth on Cold War politics during an impromptu party of vacationers at a cantina in town. She had pronounced him fascinating and invited him up to her estate in the hills approximately three kilometers from the beachfront. He emerged three days later utterly spent. It had taken the physicist nearly six decades to learn he was “fascinating” and had “a look.” Given the rewards those attributes had conferred upon him in the last few weeks, he was determined to cultivate them over his remaining years.

He would have an opportunity to do just that later this evening. Marisol was throwing another of the interminable string of parties that seemed to be this corner of the earth’s purpose for existence. She delighted in showing him off to her guests, all of whom were card-carrying members of the Union of Beautiful People and who, among them, may have read an entire book. Marisol was distinguished from the rest of them by Chernin. His presence at her side said, “See, he is smarter than all of you put together, and his brilliance chose me.”

The last of the partygoers would filter out shortly after two A.M., and then Marisol and Chernin would retreat to the master suite with its spectacular view of the ocean for another exhausting round of bedroom gymnastics. The next morning Chernin would steal back to the beach for a morning swim and breakfast at the beachfront bar. He would then spend late morning and early afternoon exploring the edges of the jungle and marveling at its flora and fauna before wandering back to the open-air bar to gaze upon acres of tanned female flesh while sipping from a large frosted glass of Smirnoff.

Eventually, he knew he would tire of the routine. He’d been here only a few weeks and already he sensed stray tendrils of boredom creeping into his brain. The rich dilettantes and aimless surfers who lazed about this place appeared comfortable with idleness, with purposelessness. He was not. Chernin’s life had had purpose and direction up until this point. He had accomplished notable things in his life, even if only a handful of people understood or even knew about them. Indeed, perhaps his most significant accomplishment was known only to himself. An encrypted file containing hundreds of photos he had taken of the project had been sent to an Internet account Mansur had given to Chernin as they had sailed the Caspian to Baku. He knew only that it was an account accessible to a friend of Mansur’s Israeli contact and that the release of the photos would mute opposition to the bombing campaign he hoped would ensue.

When he finally became bored with paradise, Chernin would retreat to the small home he had purchased on a hill two kilometers from the beach. There, he’d keep up online with the latest scholarship in physics and continue challenging his mind. He would still make occasional forays to the beach, go sailing on a sixteen-foot dinghy he’d spotted up the coast that he intended to buy, and do a little fishing. He had more than enough money to last the remainder of his lifetime, however long it might be. And Chernin was increasingly confident that it would be a very long time. He had covered his tracks well. All evidence of Dmitri Chernin’s existence had been erased. He was now Vladimir Petrov, retired mathematics professor from Novosibirsk.

Chernin would refrain from traveling and would remain vigilant. Despite having employed his prodigious intellect toward ensuring that Dmitri Chernin had disappeared from human existence, there was always a possibility, however small, that an assassin would find him. Consequently, he always examined the new faces that showed up at the bar.

The Russians might send anyone. Perhaps it was the frail, bookish man in his late sixties speaking to one of the waiters at the far end of the bar. Or maybe it was the robust younger man with the J-shaped scar along his jawline who had been sitting alone on the veranda for the last few hours. Of one thing Chernin was sure. The cold, bleak existence of his previous life was gone forever.

Chernin finished his Smirnoff and got up to leave. The remainder of his life promised to be an adventure.