Blaze (13 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

THE OVAL OFFICE, THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON DC

I
t had been quite a long time since President Jack Fitzsimmons had attended college. It was soon after grad school that he met Emily. At the time, she rendered him smitten and beholden in just a few short weeks. That magical glue of infatuation had lasted for the majority of their marriage. The strength of that infatuation served to totally transform in Fitz the houndish sexual behavior that typified his early collegiate years. For the most part.

He sat sternly and quietly at the Resolute Desk, staring pensively into the corner of the room that at one time, prior to Obama's presidency, hosted the famous statue of the bust of Winston Churchill. As he stared, Fitz agonized in prayer with open eyes over his teasing yearnings to be with a woman other than the first lady. Fitz still found Emily extremely riveting in appearance, and quite the lover when he did manage to get her focused in the bedroom. But it was her other traits that erected barriers against their marital intimacy. Like the permanent scowl that plagued her demeanor towards him in private. Or her incessant soulless ambition—that very easily had eclipsed his own—that left him starving for her affection. All of this had left him seeking, at least in his imagination, a different bed to lie in.

Fitz did not have the brazenness, nor the tactical sense, to actually act on his wandering desires in the form of an extramarital affair. That said, he readily confessed to God his shame and regret for looking at internet porn sites in his weaker, albeit infrequent, moments. In fact, it was the crushing guilt of one of those moments that had prompted his current prayers as he sat at the Resolute Desk. A prayer that was cut short by the ringing of his landline.

Fitz rolled his eyes as he reached for the phone. He knew who it was. “President Fitz. I trust you are having a productive and efficient morning. This is Maksim Koslov. Do you have some proper time to talk?” It was clear that Russia's new strongman was all business this particular morning. Certainly not a deviation from the norm for Koslov.

The Russian Czar had not yet been outfitted by the media with his proper functioning title. But President Fitz sensed full well the inertia that was pushing Mr. Koslov towards increasing grips on power. Power wielded by a Czar. It was this inertia that gave Mr. Fitz a bit of the nervous shakes upon hearing Koslov's voice.

“I'm doing quite well today sir. How are things there in Russia?” Jack knew that things in Russia were just fine for Koslov. Maybe not so much for the people of Russia.

“Well, I'll tell you, I'm well. My staff is well. And the people of Russia are full of hope and promise. This is what I have always promised, and they now know I am delivering.” Koslov's voice exuded with pride. He had more than a high opinion of himself.

“I gather that your sense of your own approval rating is rather high. I wish I could speak of myself with such pure confidence.” Fitz attempted to deflate Koslov's over-confidence. The Russian President decisively ignored the comment.

“Mr. Fitz, you and I have always agreed more than we have differed. It's the bedrock of our understandings that I wish to continue to develop as we speak even today.” Koslov wasted no time to get to the heart of his call.

“I feel the same way Maksim. What exactly do you have on your mind today?” Fitz's eyes rolled again. He wasn't sure if he felt the same way at all, but didn't know what else to say. He was curious to hear Koslov's perception of their overlapping mutual understanding.

“You and I have often spoken about our sense that the world is becoming a smaller and more integrated place every day. We both agree that in the future we'll see proper nation states become almost obsolete. The world already possesses a slew of travel and communication underpinnings that will make it natural to move into a new structure of continental states. This, in time, shall give way to a global government acceptable to the citizens of the world.” Maksim aimed to instantly engage Fitz with his broad-brush strokes on globalism. A deceptive tactic coming from a man hell-bent on reviving the Soviet Empire.

“Maksim, you and I share much of the same vision in terms of the broad framework of a global future, but we do have many differences about certain movements, methods, and detours along the path to that end. Where is this line of thinking going exactly?” Fitz leaned back on his office chair as he swirled around to face the window, scratching his head with his free hand all the while.

“You Americans are always so eager to jump to the bottom line so quickly. No appreciation for the art of conversation I suppose. Well, I will tell you, that as much as I share this vision, I don't think it will happen without the ability to make decisions along the way that otherwise would not be made.”

“What kind of decisions are we talking about?”

“I speak very much here of the countries of the Middle East. Israel. Our Persian friends.” Finally, Koslov hit the heart of the matter.

“
Your
Persian friends, not ours.” Fitz straightened his posture as he made his point.

“You don't need to posture with me. I know the official position of the United States. Your Secretary of State has been very clear about this. But I also know that you have larger goals that may supersede your desire to punish the Iranians.”

“Maksim, no one here wants to attack Iran. That's the farthest from our intentions, but we also can't allow their nuclear activities and incessant threats to continue. We need unified international action. We need some sanctions with teeth.” This was about as hard as Fitz ever got.

“That's why I'm calling. I'm not asking you to share my position that the Iranians need the bomb to be an equal deterrent to the Jewish strength in the region. I still believe a cold war posture of mutually assured destruction will work just as effectively with Muslims and Jews as it did between atheists and Christians.”

“Are you asking me to back down on the Iranian sanctions?”

“I'm making the case that such sanctions won't neutralize the problem or bring us any closer to our vision of eroding national borders. They won't advance us towards the eventual installation of a peaceful global government. We've not always been the best of friends with the Iranians either. They still haven't forgotten when my Scythian ancestors repelled the invasion of King Darius in 513 BC. History sticks with the Persians. For this reason, we always tread carefully with them.” Now he was speaking truthfully. Russian-Persian history was full of issues.

Jack Fitzsimmons' voice stiffened as he found his spine and replied, “I've not decided how I'm going to proceed with Iran. The fact that there is ample evidence emerging that suggests that your country is working in absolute tandem with them isn't making my decision any easier.”

Koslov face turned red with frustration as he struggled to keep his cool. “Again, may I remind you that some decisions will need to be considered, by all of us who share this vision, that would otherwise not be made. If we don't employ such flexibility for the greater long term good, the world will always be divided and at war. This goes to the heart of the Israeli difficulty. They've been a clear and regrettable stumbling block to the world for years and years. A counter-balance is needed.”

Fitz was never one to be accused of being a Zionist or warmonger. In fact, it was a miracle he got the Jewish votes that he did. It was his conviction that because Christ chose to be of meager means and to die violently on the cross in a victim's posture, that it was God's intention for Christians to champion the cause of all victims. Fitz didn't see Israel or the Jews as victims in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. His sympathies were strongly aligned with the Palestinians and Israel's Arab neighbors as a whole. This sensibility also extended to his complex feelings about the Iranian issue. He always secretly felt as if the Iranians were behaving the way they were because of some wrongs somehow done to them in the past.

“I appreciate the call Maksim and I understand your concerns. I will consider your suggestions.” His mind was now fully considering the implications of Maksim's words.

“Enjoy the rest of your day Mr. President. I'll wait eagerly for your further thoughts as you wrestle with these issues.” Koslov knew he had made an impact. He sensed the change in Fitz's tone by the conclusion of the conversation.

Fitz hung up the phone. He was no longer in a mood in which he could resume the prayer he had started prior to Koslov's call. He felt as if he should focus his prayers on the Middle East instead. Yet he couldn't get any real focus to engage in prayer. He didn't know why, but he always felt it tough to pray about Middle Eastern affairs.
Where would one begin anyhow?

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

FEDERAL CORRECTION INSTITUTION, FAIRTON, NEW JERSEY

Z
ack was happy to see Chuck, even with having to endure the obligatory ball breaking. He went back to his lonely cell looking forward to getting sprung in the next day or so per the old man's promise. He reflected.
What a helluva journey. This life I've lived. Who knew? A skinhead thug rises from the projects and the streets and ends up being on the CIA's short list of third-party mercenary assets.

His motto was ‘if you can't grow hair right, don't grow it at all'. But despite that motto, and the stark reality of his receding hairline, Zack Batt would have shaved his head anyhow. From the days in which he dropped out of high school, at the age of seventeen, in his hometown of Charlestown, Massachusetts, to the current time in which he spent his days trying unsuccessfully to stay out of prison in between obliging to covert CIA missions as a highly paid contracted mercenary, Zack Batt was a skinhead.

He sported a crisp, shaven head that sat atop a long sinewy body—a body strewn with muscular striations and scars of both the intentional and unintentional variety. He stood a towering, six feet three inches and had a chiseled physique that drew immediate attention, and usually fright, from most onlookers.

On the side of his neck was a wonderfully colorful and detailed tattoo of a roaring Lion. A menacing image of the angel Gabriel, sporting a fedora hat, and manning an AK-47 lay tattooed upon the top of his right hand. Spider webs adorned his right elbow, as well as one tattooed awkwardly upon his inner ear. Across his knuckles, one word per set, the words ‘SKIN' and ‘HEAD' were etched in traditional tattoo script.

On days that he wasn't locked up wearing a bright orange jump suit, he was decked out in the requisite skinhead attire: ten hole Doc Martin boots, Levi's blue jeans, polo shirts and plaid shirts made by brands such as Fred Perry or Ben Sherman, and a variety of attire made by the English boxing company Lonsdale. To the uninformed, he was a seemingly walking paradox. Zack Batt was indeed a skinhead with Jewish blood.

Zack grew up in Charlestown, Massachusetts. He grew up hard. He grew up fast. At a very early age, he was ostracized for having no Irish blood. He lived with his mother in the projects. No matter how hard he tried he could not get along with the hoodlums in the neighborhood. His father had left when he was three, and the memories Zack had of him were not worth recalling.

Drugs, crime, a widespread plague of moral depravity and the terror of youth violence ran rampant through the projects that young Zack called home. Zack was often the victim of mocking, teasing, and randomly issued beatdowns by the strong Irish contingency in the neighborhood. This was most the case in his pre-pubescent years before his physical strength, and subsequent confidence, grew immensely.

His mom worked days in a factory and waitressed most nights at the local bar. Guidance was minimal at best, and usually non-existent, for young Zack. Zack never took to drugs because it was the drug users, and their predatory dealers, that made his life a living hell. He wanted nothing of it. But what he did want, was revenge.

He immersed himself in punk rock and hardcore music as a means to vent his angers and frustrations. It became a sonic backdrop that served to increase his confidence levels so he could bravely face each hellish new day in the concrete jungle that surrounded him. In this culture, he found friends. These friends became like family.

He discovered two strains of this counter culture that he chose to embrace simultaneously: the puritanical rhetoric of straight-edge hardcore punk which preached clean living and abstinence from drugs, alcohol, and tobacco coupled with the working class, street anthems of Oi! skinhead music. Zack married the two ideologies and styles and made them his own. He was as comfortable and zealous with the straight-edgers, as he was complicit with the skinheads.

He upheld his straight edge ideals in terms of his lifestyle practices, but over the years he began to more and more identify with his skinhead side. When he was eighteen he joined a group dubbed SHARP or
Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice.
The group was adamant about repairing and reshaping the image of skinheads in the media. Their mission was to wipe out fascism and Nazism from the skinhead motif. Combatting years of narrowly reported media coverage of sensational events surrounding racist skinheads, this proved a difficult task. From the Nazi skins beating up Geraldo on his talk show set in the eighties, to the images of the movie
American History X,
the average man on the street had only one impression as to what a skinhead was: Nazi.

For Zack, joining SHARP was more about channeling a general boredom and lack of direction into something somewhat organized than it was about any real passion for high ideals. Being part Jewish, it was easy for him to embrace the goal of wanting to stomp out racism and clean up the image of what a skinhead was, but truly he just wanted some like-minded friends to hang out with and roam the streets, clubs, and pubs of New England.

SHARP was big on trying to educate the public on the true roots and culture of skinheads. They emphasized the role that Jamaican immigrants to Britain played in the creation of the skinhead phenomenon in the UK. They traced the fashion trends of the skinhead lifestyle. This originated with the British mods (moderns), who were known for sharp dressing, riding scooters, and listening to soul, ska, bluebeat, rocksteady and early reggae music.

SHARP would denounce the unfortunate infusion of politics and race into skinhead culture and site it as the regrettable divisive wedge that had spoiled the skinhead image. Originally, skinheads were apolitical and racially tolerant, made up of black Jamaican immigrants as well as British nationals. Over time, skinheadism became a broader and broader tag that applied to a variety of related strains.

Skinhead groups representing politics both on the far left and the far right and everywhere in-between emerged, both in Britain, and eventually in the US and worldwide. Music and fashion preferences were also diverse. The one seemingly consistent thread for most skinhead groups was an identification with the street-tough sensibilities of the working class and an obsession with skinhead fashion: boots, braces, Harrington jackets, Fred Perry polos, bomber jackets, sideburns, tattoos, and plaid shirts.

Zack's unexpected slip into the never-ending vortex of CIA covert recruitment was born out of the fallout of his first significant prison sentence. He was contacted by Chuck Gallagher while serving three to five in federal for paralyzing a neo-Nazi at a punk rock show in New Jersey where the internationally renown non-racist Oi! band, known as The Business, performed.

The victim had shamelessly been sporting a tee shirt with the logo of the band Skrewdriver on it. Skrewdriver had been the seminal neo-Nazi skinhead rock band from England that was mandatory listening for any neo-Nazi recruit. It had been rumored that before the band went public with their abhorrent ideology, that they had toured with mainstream rock bands such as U2 and Motorhead.

Zack was taken up in the wild spirit of indignation that he and his fellow SHARP friends were feeling. They were appalled by the audacity of this Nazi to so obviously make known his beliefs. But Zack's reaction was far more extreme than any of his SHARP friends. Zack once again drifted into his untamed violent nature. It wasn't long before words flew, pushing and shoving proceeded, and ultimately, Zack got a hold of a nearby folding chair. That folding chair took on a life of its own in Zack's hands, and became the near-death instrument that repeatedly pounded the skull of the neo-Nazi.

The crowd scattered and Zack paid no mind to the emptying of the room. He only proceeded to beat the Nazi harder and harder. Zack's internal justification was based on the notion that he was defending his Jewish heritage and fighting the forces of racism and evil. This was indeed part of the truth.

The other part of the truth, was that Zack struggled with an unhealthy pleasure in committing violence for the sake of it. This part of the truth drove him to continue swinging the chair long after his point had been made. And long after the Nazi was rendered powerless. The victim was beaten to the point of paralysis by the time Zack caught his breath and came to his senses.

Zack looked around and saw that his friends had split. He did the same. This time though, unlike in the past, he didn't get very far. He was captured and arrested within an hour of the incident.

Chuck Gallagher was given a dossier on Zack by a buddy of his within the agency who knew Zack's family. The dossier was complete with the clippings from the Rolling Stone magazine article written about the chair-beating incident. The article showed a picture of Zack shackled in an orange jumpsuit as he appeared in court. Gallagher was taken back by Zack's appearance in the photo.
What the hell are these jackass kids thinking when they get tattoos on their necks?
Gallagher read the article and it intrigued him as much as every other bullet point he had read on the subject's dossier.

Gallagher was told of Zack's tenacious fighting skills and his misguided love of his country. It was too late to get Zack into the military given the mess Zack had made of his life. It wasn't too late to offer Zack a deal to get out of prison, entirely expunge his record, and mold him into one of the deadliest and effective mercenaries the CIA had in their arsenal, but denied ever knowing. That's exactly what he did. And Zack thrived with the new identity and renewed purpose.

Zack's first mission, after Gallagher bailed him out of jail the first time, was to assassinate a radical communist activist in Argentina that was gaining far too much influence in the South American continent as a whole. Zack's approach was pragmatic and direct. He studied the movements, patterns, and habits of his target. He did his due diligence thoroughly and applied his natural gift of extreme situational awareness. Once the building blocks had been arranged correctly, the hit was easy.

Zack's marksmanship was like a heroic verse from a Marty Robbins ballad—impeccable and executed with an appearance of effortlessness. The most troubling observation Zack made about himself, after his first hit, was how much he enjoyed it, and that the event left him completely without inner conflict and at perfect peace with himself. This lack of guilt puzzled Zack, but also confirmed that he was made for this.

Gallagher thought of Zack as one of the biggest blessings, and one of the best-kept secrets, that the CIA had ever been given. And he also felt often like the gift of Zack Batt was the biggest curse the agency ever received.

To the point, the ramifications of Zack being a curse largely fell into Gallagher's lap to manage. He was Gallagher's project. So it was, of course, Gallagher who had to continually clean up Zack's messes. Gallagher had run the cost / benefit analysis on Zack a million times and every time he swore to himself when he concluded that Zack was still too valuable to abandon.

In-between missions, Zack inevitably wandered back into gang life, succumbing to his unhealthy addiction to danger and violence. This concern never left Gallagher's mind.

SHARP had long ago ostracized Zack because of his uncontrollable violent nature, so Zack naturally embraced his straight-edge sensibilities to compensate. He moved out of Charlestown, MA to the lovely streets of Kensington in Philly. A prominent

CHAPTER of the nationally syndicated, radical straight-edge street gang known as FSU was situated in Philly, specifically Kensington. FSU was an acronym for many things. Publicly known to mean
Friends Stand United
but privately, on the streets, and painfully felt by the group's enemies, it stood for
Fuck Shit Up.

The group held high virtues of straight edge living and anti-racist ideals. Of course, these were fine attributes and admirable in and of themselves. Unlike a biker gang, the IRA, or a neo-Nazi gang, FSU did not deal drugs, run guns, promote prostitution or engage in the traditional revenue-generating activities of the typical street gang.

FSU largely subsisted by running extortion scams. They reveled in a sadistic desire to apply their boiling, testosterone fueled machismo violence senselessly to as many as possible. Backed by an extreme Puritanical philosophy, no one was really safe—because few could measure up to their high standards of behavior.

Drunks were routinely beaten. Drug dealers and defenseless addicts were damn near killed. Frat boys, out for a good time and few hits from the beer bong, found themselves in the hospital.

FSU's notoriety reached such heights that they were rewarded with their own special on the History Channel's
Gangland
series. Luckily for Gallagher, Zack never appeared in the final edit. Apparently the History Channel heard Gallagher loud and clear on his informal, confidential request.

It took Gallagher years of stern lectures, idle threats, physical confrontations, and aggressive prayer to a God he struggled to belief in, to finally see the day that Zack left gang life. Since then, Zack's relapses into jackass tomfoolery had been minimum, and his contributions to the CIA's needs had been maximum and fruitful.

Gallagher was thankful beyond belief that the only reason Zack had landed in prison this time was because of a tiff-gone-wrong with one of his nut-job girlfriends.