Honorable Assassin (38 page)

“Oooh, nice and sharp,” she purred as she
closed the razor and slipped it in next to one breast. Then she
turned and said, “Linda, you’re riding with me,” and stalked back
out the door.

Two miles down the road Gordon MacMaster
pulled over to the side as he saw the line of bikes coming the
other way. He noted that two women were riding together in a
protected position at the front of the group. The gang all wore the
colors of the Valkierie Motorcycle Club. He did not personally care
if Linda lived or died, there was no percentage in it for him, but
Terry cared.

Up the road, there were still motorcycles in
the Pettigrew driveway. Gordon did not care what happened there as
long as nobody knew the trap had been sprung. He could not risk
having anyone see him who might recognize him. The fact was that
now action had been initiated, it must be followed through.

Terry was still feeling quite emotional. He
knew that a professional never made it personal. He also knew that
he had been exposed. He could not show his face in any of the usual
places. To take action now would be tantamount to suicide. His only
reasonable course of action was to leave the country. If he wanted
to complete the mission he had set for himself, he needed to
distance himself from the affair and slip back in later. His
thoughts whirled in his head like the chatter of a crowd.
Individual reason was forced out as one train of thought was
overwhelmed by another. The guilt of having been responsible for
Ginger’s death burned. The required cold-as-steel attitude was
melted away by the red hot fires of rage and shame. He wanted a
drink but did not want to leave the hotel and feared to allow
himself to get drunk. He did push-ups and sit-ups until he was
sweating from every pore. Then, even though he had already
showered, he drew himself a hot bath and sat in it breathing deeply
and trying to meditate. The hot water helped relax him, but he
could still not clear his head.

The phone rang and he waited a minute then
checked the message. Linda had been removed from the clutches of
three wise guys. It did not look as though they had contacted
anyone else. Evan owed the Valkieries a favor now, and by extension
Terry owed Evan a favor. Terry promised to come through and Evan
promised to protect Linda for a few days.

Gordon called. He was in Terry’s room in
Orange. Terry had still not installed the dead bolt he should have.
When they spoke, the two made plans to meet the following day.
MacMaster loaded the arms into the back of the Land Rover that
night, cursing himself for getting in this deep. Everything he knew
told him to turn and walk away. The profit margin had disappeared
when Terry made it personal. He didn’t need to pad his reputation,
he was already well respected in his field, and he did not need an
apprentice. It had always been his policy that friends would get
you killed in this line of work. The fewer who knew who you were
and what you did, the less likelihood of someone squealing. So he
repeatedly asked himself what he was doing and what was in it for
him. The risks far outweighed the rewards, especially when the fact
that Terry was an emotional amateur was factored into the equation.
He was torn. He did not do charity work, nor did he decommission
men frivolously. There was always an angle to be played, and it
usually involved cash. Honor was a factor but seldom a deciding
one. It was honorable to always complete your mission. It was
honorable to never target women or children. If an employer
attempted to stiff you for the money, it was honorable to leave his
head on a post in the town square. But, jobs were not initiated for
the sake of honor or moral indignation. That turned one from an
honorable assassin into a mad dog serial killer. At least that was
Gordon’s feeling at that stage of his life. He felt that many men
acted tough for no better reason that to convince the world at
large that they were not homosexual.

He almost headed for the airport when he
thought of an angle.

Terry knew he was wanted for questioning. He
did not know what the questions were. He also knew he was needed to
identify his uncle’s burned body if he could. The only reason he
did not go to the morgue was he didn’t want to be taken into
custody. What he did not know was the extent of the
interconnectedness of all electronic data. He did not know that
when a man bought a pound of butter, the dairy league knew that
butter had been sold before it left the store, and if it was paid
for by a credit card, they knew who bought it. The loopholes would
be closed before long, but shortly after the turn of the century,
the computer revolution was flooding the advertising and
manufacturing sectors with unbelievable amounts of free data. The
point here is that it was becoming more and more difficult by the
day to disappear.

Terry had taken the hotel room as a safe
place to meet and plan, but he had gotten stuck in there by the
knowledge that his cover was blown. Young and brash he had almost
thrown caution to the winds and gone down to the warehouse on
Elizabeth Street to decommission everyone in the place. He had
thought better of it since they were lower-level thugs and goons
without the pull or the time to order things done. He knew he
wanted to eliminate Jimmy Cognac, but Jimmy was not settled into a
routine that could be predicted. He might be in a place for two
days and then not return there for weeks. Jimmy was also sharp and
observant. He had no problem sanctioning somebody’s decommission on
the basis of suspicion. Of course, the Troy brothers were the real
target.

Once his head had cleared a little, Kingston
picked up the phone. “Mr. Glasgow?”

“Ah, Mr. Tarrytown. I was just thinking
about you.”

“I hope that’s a good thing. Look, I have an
idea. It’s certainly not a novel idea, but with Uncle Ginger gone,
I have no need to stay. I have a business. I can sell the business
for a tidy profit or I can milk the parent company for a lump of
cash.”

“We need to discuss this further. Take no
such action and allow me to tell you why. The company you so aptly
described as “parent” has one reason for being and that is to make
money. If it allows an affiliate agency to rob it, then they pave
the way for anarchy. If you milk them for a lump of cash they will
be willing to spend 10 times that lump of cash to find and
prosecute you. There will be no shallow, unmarked grave. It will be
a full-blown media circus whereby your picture is broadcast all
over the world. It will be ‘look at this fool who thought he could
pull one off on the Helping Hands.’ Even if they never catch you,
your face will be published and you will be worthless to me and a
pariah for anyone in my line of work.” Gordon had rattled the
speech off as if it were a long practiced soliloquy on Broadway. He
needed a deep breath when he was done.

“Well the truth is that the money was going
for a good cause. I need a partner if I am to begin an endeavor the
scope of which I have in mind. Partners of that caliber cost a lump
of cash. I am willing to pay that lump of cash for the services of
such a professional contractor.” Terry’s speech patterns were
improving some. His written style had been first and his spoken
language skills had followed.

“That we must speak of later. We may find it
to be unnecessary. I will join you in the morning. Get some
sleep.”

With the morning came the grinning Gordon
MacMaster with a bag of breakfast, some coffee and a collection of
guns in the back of the Land Rover. After breakfast they sat
smoking and talking.

“Are you absolutely sure you wish to pursue
a life that will leave you with no home and no family? You’ll have
no friends for long and may need to eliminate them when you leave.
Are you sure you care for that? And I want to know why.” Gordon got
deadly serious very suddenly, throwing a wet blanket over the
camaraderie of the morning.

Terry caught the sudden change of attitude
and adjusted his manner accordingly. “Mr. Glasgow, I have no more
family since Uncle Ginger died… was killed. I have no friends and
never really have. While some people will be happy spending every
day on the farm with the sheep shit and the cackling chickens, I
want more. I want to see the world and experience life.”

“Become a truck driver. You’ll see the world
that way.”

“I have driven a truck, remember, I saw
nothing but the miles of blacktop before me. I never saw the
country, just the road.”

“True. Well then, what did you have in
mind?”

“I can commission my solicitor to sell my
business. The profit from said sale would be sufficient to retain
your services for a few days, yes?”

“Yes.”

“Then I will work on that. I have some other
small resources I will need to access. That will only take a day or
two. I will get a forward from the solicitor, enough to pay you a
retainer. Then we can get to work.”

“You still haven't told me the details.”

“It’s a matter of self preservation now and
I can’t perform the surveillance I could before. They know my face
now and yours as well. I played the game as far as I could go and
now I need to end it.”

“Obviously, but have you given thought as to
how deep you need to go? There may be men you have never met who
would take it personally if you decommissioned their superiors. On
the other hand, they may thank you for it as they cut you down. How
well do you trust the bikies? If you put this Evan McCormick into
power, how long will he let you live? Are there enough of them to
storm the castle, so to speak? I’m only asking these questions
because I wish to leave the country upright and breathing.” Gordon
watched Terry very closely. He had a nagging fear that Terry had
lost something when Ginger had died, something inside. It could be
caution, it could be the will to survive, but he had seen men who
had lost this preserving instinct before. Raving berserkers seldom
lived long.

“I’m thinking the best way to take out men
like these is to turn their own force against them. It works so
nicely when properly done, but we don’t have time. Yes, we did have
some small desertions over the past couple of years but nothing on
the magnitude of a full-scale revolution. Now there is no time for
the subtlety and subterfuge that would require. We will need to hit
them from afar in a way that they do not expect or see coming. We
need to block them off from support and eliminate them quickly,
together before they know they are under attack.”

That was the sort of answer Gordon MacMaster
wanted to hear from his young associate. Too many men would be
leading with their chin at this point and get their bells rung in
the first round, so to speak. Terry had not only retained his spark
but was keeping his head.

Any criminal underworld is a many-headed
hydra and even when the heads are turned against each other, two
will eventually sprout for every one that dies. It can be made to
hide, it can be made to temporarily shrink, but it cannot be
killed. The best that can be hoped for is a temporary lull in
activities while a restructuring and regrouping is accomplished.
Gordon was pleased to find that Terry had come to terms with that
and had no illusions about being some medieval Galahad assaulting
the towers of injustice. Terry assured his senior that had lost
those illusions when he became part of what he assaulted. Later
that day, MacMaster went out and got Terry a nondescript Toyota
with tinted windows to assist in their endeavors.

~~~

Chapter Sixteen: No Cover

“Oy, I see you’re back.”

Billy’s voice was not unexpected, Terry had
seen him pull in, but it still sent shivers down his spine. He
stood stock still with his hands at his sides. His revolvers were
in their holsters under his arms as usual and he had them covered
with a vest that did little to conceal their presence.

Billy continued, “What’s with the Japanese
car? Where’s the Monaro?”

“It sucked a valve into the head. I wrung it
out a bit too high on a back road, lost the retainer and dropped
the valve into the piston. I couldn’t get parts for it right away.
A valve I can get, but a new piston’s not so easy. Computer says
there isn’t one in the bloody country and I need to wait for a
shipment from America. You know what they would have charged me to
ship it on a plane?”

Terry was standing in front of the charred
remains of his deceased uncle’s farmhouse calmly discussing the
price of air freight. That might have struck some men as being
unusual, but Billy had known him a long time.

“So, you coming down to the morgue to
identify the body?”

“Aye. I suppose there’s no getting around
it?”

At that minute, James pulled in the driveway
in his personal car and Terry knew that there was only two choices.
He could go with them or he could decommission both of them. He had
known both of them most of his life and did not like the idea of
shooting them for more than that reason. It was terribly bad policy
to shoot the police and they had no doubt radioed in their
location. He was wanted for questioning at this point but not for
capital murder. If he had thought for a second that he would be
identified and cornered on the farm, he wouldn’t have come here,
especially during the day. The location was remote enough that he
thought he could slip in and out again.

“The chickens have not been fed in two days
and the sheep are still in the pasture. I can smell the barn from
here, so I need to get out a shovel and take care of that as well.
Can you give me some time before you haul me in?”

“Jerry Junior will be coming by when he is
done with his own chores. He sends his condolences, by the way. We
cannot let you go. We are under orders to retain you for
questioning and to get you to identify your uncle’s body.”

“Oh, aye. Is it him? I mean you’ve known him
your whole life, you could have identified him.”