Honorable Assassin (23 page)

“I assure you, sir, there was no such
operation planned. I will adjust the meeting place and contact you
with the details tomorrow.”

“Do not mistake satisfaction for
complacency. If I feel my life is being threatened, there is not a
volcano in New Zealand you could hide in that I could not find
you.”

“Threatening me on my continent is a very
bad idea, Mr. Glasgow or should I say Mr. MacMaster? I do not
suffer threats gladly, nor do I forget easily.”

“I do not bother threatening anyone. Why
would I? It is a waste of breath. I state the facts as I see them
and follow through when necessary.”

“There will be no need for follow through.
Everything will go as planned and you can go back to Europe with
your rewards.”

The following day, outside the stadium, in
the heart of a weekend soccer crowd, Henry Cuthbert personally
handed Gordon an aluminum briefcase full of money. The crowd was
moving into the arena, through the metal detectors. It made for a
tightly packed crowd on the outside, not the kind of crowd one can
move through easily. By the same token, not the kind of crowd that
a man can open a briefcase full of liquid funds in.

Gordon MacMaster swam against the tide like
a spawning Atlantic salmon and emerged into the road. The
automobile traffic was not moving as well as the pedestrians
were.

From the third floor balcony of the hotel
across the street, a business suited Terry Kingston watched the
transaction through the scope of a Remington. He did not keep the
weapon trained on his erstwhile mentor, but on the head of his
superior within the organization. If Henry had made a misstep, it
would have been his last.

Terry did not like the possibility of taking
a target in a crowd this size. Even if it had been available in the
time needed, the .50 caliber Barrett was out of the question. It
was too unique and would have left too much collateral damage.

The plan had been for MacMaster to join
Kingston in the hotel room. Terry saw the man enter the hotel and
relaxed. He lit a cigarette and sat back, away from the door. The
door should have opened before he finished the cigarette, but it
did not. Another 10 minutes went by and the door remained closed.
Gordon had promised Terry a bonus but it was not this that
motivated him. He had learned a lot from the Scotsman and wanted to
contact him outside of the country. He suspected that the day would
come when he would need to flee the country and it is always good
to have friends in new places.

Terry broke down his rifle and stored it in
its suitcase. He took off his rubber gloves, put on driving gloves,
made sure he had his key card for the room and slipped very quietly
and carefully through the portal. The door closed quietly behind
him and he moved to the end of the hall, feeling a little foolish
and at the same time knowing he might never get out of the hotel if
he wasn’t careful.

The stairs were deserted, as hotel stairs
usually are, and the lobby held only the staff. Gordon MacMaster
had disappeared like a puff of smoke.

Terry pulled his driving gloves tighter and
considered his next move. The traffic was starting to move a bit
freer now, as the crowd filtered into the stadium. There was a
public rest room on the ground floor he realized, and entered it.
There was no one else there. He went back into the lobby and out
the front doors, making a show of lighting a cigarette while
looking both ways down the street. There was no evidence of a large
assassin or, indeed, of anything untoward. He stood there and
smoked his cigarette, knowing he had been deserted and
double-crossed and not caring much. What caused him the grief was
not the money; it was the trust. He knew, or should have known,
that there is no honor among thieves. He should have expected his
mentor to disappear like this. There was one other course of action
he could have taken but Terry did not think it was in the plan.

By the time Terry finished his cigarette, he
was thoroughly convinced that Gordon had headed for the airport or
the docks. He shrugged his shoulders and walked back inside, taking
the elevator to the third floor. Inside the room, there was a stack
of money sitting on his suitcase. He could not believe he had been
duped so easily. He actually laughed when he discovered how he had
been misled.

“God bless you, Gordon MacMaster. May you
live a thousand years and breed a thousand sons.”

~~~

Chapter Ten: Misgivings

Uncle,

It has been an intriguing and exciting few
months. I was instrumental in the capture of the Irishman. He was
captured post-mortem. I met and said goodbye to an extraordinary
man with worldly acumen and microscopic insight. I was sorry to see
him go and while I was unable to give him a proper send-off, he has
my best wishes.

I have been having some misgivings about my
current activities. My resolve has not so much flagged as taken a
back seat. I have come to understand the lure of the illicit
lifestyle. I do not sympathize with the strata of society with
which I have associated myself but I have come to understand them.
I have found myself becoming more and more drawn to what I am
doing. In short, I am becoming what I pledged to fight against.
This realization has caused me incalculable grief and will require
a catharsis of some sort, an exorcism.

I have advanced my position due to my recent
activities and expect to be engaged in more appropriate actions in
the immediate future. I have nothing outlined regarding our
previous plan. While it caused some damage, there was always
another load right behind it, always another driver, always another
gangster. Our activities were nothing but a bump in the road; an
expensive bump but nothing more than annoying.

I fear there is nothing I can truly do to
stem the tide of corruption that invades this great land. I will
continue to work behind the scenes at present but in the long run I
may simply retire from this business and perhaps from society as
well.

Sincerely,

Terry

Ginger read the letter, amazed at the
clarity and presentation. He could not help but wonder where Terry
had gotten the style that the letter displayed. He could not take
credit for it. The tone of the letter was something entirely
different, however. A loss of faith in the innate goodness of man
is the top of a long and painful slippery slope, the bottom of
which is the loss of faith in one’s own goodness, and that is so
often self-destructive. Many good men have fallen into the abyss
while brooding on the shortcomings of mankind.

Ginger wanted a drink very badly at this
point. He actually wanted to get stinking blackout drunk. If he had
a bottle of rum on hand, he would have downed it in short order and
damn the consequences. Instead, he braced himself and fired up the
truck, leaving the letter smoldering in the wood stove.

The nearest pay phone was a good way off and
Ginger never used that one. When he finally got through to his
nephew, he asked if it was clear to talk. Once he was alone, Terry
told his uncle about using a woman for his own purposes and
discarding her. It stuck to him like nothing he had ever done
before. He had no guilt over delivering drugs. That was part of his
cover. There were very few men he regretted killing; they had
needed what they got for the most part. He did not even feel bad
about misleading his last mentor. He had great respect for Gordon
but had still manipulated circumstances to fit his own needs. What
was really bothering him, and he had not known it until he spoke
with his uncle, was the fact that he would never be able to have an
honest relationship with a woman. He did not know how his father
had pulled it off in the exact circumstances he found himself in.
He had a loving wife and son, blind to his shadowed second
life.

Terry got furious when Ginger started
laughing on the other end of the line. What kind of cold-blooded
warrior gets all oatmeal mushy over a woman he pleased and pushed
away? The line went dead quiet when Terry reminded Ginger that he
had almost killed himself after his wife had passed away. A few
moments of silence went by and then Ginger told his nephew to come
home or get laid or jump into the damn river, but to stop pissing
about like a schoolboy. Then he hung up. Terry began to wonder if
he’d fallen in love with Linda Pierce and didn’t know it. He shook
his head and went to the pub to get pissed.

When Terry woke the following day, he could
not remember how he had gotten back to his apartment or who he had
spoken with. This bothered him in the extreme. He could have told
anybody anything while he was completely blacked out. He could have
done God knows what.

He stood in front of his toilet with a
tongue that tasted like fish guts in an ashtray and a headache that
flared beyond the boundaries of his skull. He was trying to
remember what had happened. He recalled being angry at Ginger and
walking to the pub. He could see himself sitting at the bar and
drinking some vile liquid of some sort and not caring what it
tasted like. He checked his face in the mirror to see if he had
been in a fight but there was no physical damage to his face. His
knuckles were skinned and bruised but it looked more like he had
fallen on concrete or punched a wall than hit anyone. He recited a
drunkard’s prayer,
“God, forgive me for whatever I did last
night, I promise not to do it again.”

He knew the only cure for a hangover was to
get drunk again but his stomach felt like he had been drinking
battery acid so he dismissed the idea and went back to bed.

The phrase “In Vino Veritas” had never been
brought to Terry’s attention but he had heard “Loose lips sink
ships,” and he knew the best way to learn something short of
torture was to get drunk with the holder of the secret. When he
awoke, still feeling like he had been kicked in the stomach he
decided that he had better curb his appetite for strong drink or he
would end up dead. As drunk as he had been, he could have said
anything to anyone. This led him to a further examination of his
situation.

The truck driver that Lee Pierce had shot,
just before succumbing to the Scotsman’s bullets, was an innocent
man as far as Terry knew. He might have a wife and a brood of
children left to fend for themselves. He might be supporting his
aged mother in a nursing home somewhere or paying for the
treatments of his Downs Syndrome brother. He might have… Terry
brushed his teeth again and spit in the sink. He might have raped
his little sister when he was young or tortured cats in the barn
too. Nobody is completely innocent. Nobody is pure as the driven
snow. He might have been cheating on his wife and not acknowledged
a half a dozen illegitimate children. He might have been a serial
killer himself.

Terry lit a cigarette and cleared his throat
noisily. He was getting sick of playing the game. It was time he
took a more direct action. He had come to realize that nothing he
did made any difference in the long run. It was just a short-term
scarcity of supply and replaced in no time. He was doing the same
work as the police. He also came to realize he was striking at the
wrong end of the supply chain. The supply did not stop. He burned a
truck load and another comes in right behind it. If he kills, or
sets up a gangster for someone else to kill, there is another right
behind him with his hand out and a hungry wallet.

Terry was wasting his time attacking the
drugs, he might as well try to stop the river. What he should be
doing is going after the money. He had tried to hurt the Troy
Brothers by destroying their shipments and then delivered more for
them the next day. Somehow that didn’t make much sense to him any
more. He was close enough now, or almost close enough, to inflict
some real damage but as an insurance man himself, he didn’t want to
do the wrong people any favors. He could not see torching a
warehouse full of goods that had already been bought and sold once.
That would allow the Troy Brothers a free ride to a massive
insurance settlement. Plus, the Irishman was dead.

The syrup in Terry’s head allowed him to
think through all this but slowly, one piece at a time. The drugs
had been an easy target once he knew where they were, but aside
from a sense of moral righteousness that disappeared quickly, there
was no payoff. But he hadn’t expected a payoff. He was not doing
this to help himself to anything; he was doing it to hurt someone.
But it was awfully tempting to take care of himself. After all
there was cash in abundance and it was flowing to those he wanted
to hurt. Why should he not take advantage of it?

Action was always close behind decision with
him, but without information he was swimming blindly. He needed to
get closer to his target. He had complained to his uncle that he
was becoming that which he detested but this did not seem so to
him. Money has a way of blinding people.

It took a few weeks after he broached the
idea with Henry Cuthbert before he got a chance for a guard
position. He had requested to be assigned to the clandestine cash
delivery portion of the business. He had been told it did not
exist. He was told it was all done with wire transfers and checks.
He knew that was a lie. Drug dealing was always a cash business and
always would be.

Terry only got the position because one of
the long-term employees on the cash run got prostate problems. He
needed to piss every 10 minutes and it became a problem on the long
runs between cities. That man was given a less restrictive position
and his job was given to a younger man with a good record. Terry
took the job as Thompson Barber.

The van was not exactly armored in the
traditional sense but it was reinforced. Steel plates and sand bags
protected the passengers and there was a barrier between the driver
and the back of the van. Terry would have expected to get the
driver’s position but he got lucky. There was little protection for
the driver and he would surely die in an attack. The main security
of the run was in its anonymity. The labels on the van said
“Proteus Armed Security” and for all intents and purposes it was a
transport van for security guards. The runs were unpredictable as
was the amount of cash transferred and it was not always in cash.
The crew always knew what day to be ready but not always what time.
One of the benefits of this position was that they never
transported contraband of any sort.