The Assassin's Gift

by C. P. IRVINE, IAN

  She knew how to do it.

  And she knew now why she was here.

  As a child, her mother had taught her that if someone gave you a Gift, you should be grateful.

  That was then.

  Now she was a grown-up, and she had discovered, as all 'big-people' do, that things are often never as simple as your parents tell you.

  This was one present she had never accepted, and no matter how rude it was to do so, she was going to give the gift right back.

  Standing up, she crossed the corridor and pushed the door open into the room with the Monk in.

  The light was off, only the dim green lights from the bank of electronic equipment lighting up the room with its eerie hue.

  Crossing the room, she saw that the monk was now heavily wired up, with cables coming from electrodes attached to his chest and temple.

  A drip was working overtime delivering fluids, or perhaps more morphine, into his veins.

  His eyes were closed. Peacefully.

  From looking at the equipment around him now, all connected up, counting every heartbeat, every breath, she guessed that he had suffered a heart attack.

  The Abbot had gone.

  According to the clock on the wall, it was almost 4.30 a.m.

  The dying time. The time of the day when a human body is at its lowest ebb, and when life is most likely to slip out of a body and return to the cosmos.

  Or as in her case, to hell.

  Except, for Brother Mathew, the dying time would not apply.

  What she was about to do, she wanted more than anything else in the world. She would will it with every ounce of her life.

  In this case, there would be no compassion. No desire to help. And no tears for the other person's suffering.

  She was doing this for one reason only.

  To make herself better. Not the other person.

  But it would happen, of that she was sure.

  Gently placing her hands on the man's chest she closed her eyes.

  A picture of the monk, once a teacher, entered her mind. She focused on it.

  In her mind's eye, she heard him speak. She heard him stutter...

  Opening her eyes briefly, she looked at his face, now relaxed and gentle.

  She hated weakness in herself, despised it.

  But in spite of it, she raised her left hand from his chest and placed it gently on his mouth, ensuring that his breathing was not obstructed.

  Closing her eyes again, she focussed. She pictured the monk standing upon the wall of the cloisters, talking freely to another tour-group. She pictured him speaking fluidly, without a stutter. She imagined him to be smiling. Happy. Strong.

  Full of life.

  She saw the cancer in her mind... large, grey and dark.

  She applied pressure. Crushing the cancer. Shrinking it. Starving it. Killing it.

  Her speciality.

  Then she opened her mouth and sucked air into her lungs and blew it out, upwards, towards Heaven.

  As she did so, the warmth within her grew.

  It flowed down her arms, danced across her hands, sunk through her fingers, and jumped from her to him.

  She felt the heat leave, flushing the cancer away.

  Pouring into his torso. Into his mouth.

  The world began to spin. A hole opened up, a darkness, a black void, deeper, wider than any she had ever experienced before. It pulled on her, sucked her in, ... and she fell into it, falling, falling, falling.

  When she opened her eyes, the clock on the wall told her that she had been unconscious for forty minutes.

  Holding on to the side of the bed, she pulled herself up.

  She felt weak. Dizzy. Nauseous.

  But the tingling in her fingers had gone.

  "Alice?" she heard a man's voice speak.

  She looked down at the man in the bed.

  His eyes were open. His face was devoid of the stress. He stared at her.

  "What have you done?" he asked.

  "I returned your present. I didn't want it anymore."

  "But it doesn't work like that? The Gift wasn't yours to return!"

  "Tough. I did it. Repeat after me, 'Peter Piper Picked a Peck of Pickled Peppers."

  The monk hesitated, then repeated it error free.

  "Try that again a few more times, and faster."

  He did.

  Alessandra turned to leave, intending to just walk out, to walk away, but at the last moment, she turned in the doorway.

  "Bless you, Brother Mathew. For you are now blessed. Your God has given you a second chance at life. Don't lock yourself away in the Monastery. Live again. Go see the world. Learn to sing opera. Tell poems. Scuba dive. Fly. Learn to ski. Just get the hell out of here and enjoy your life."

  She smiled at him, winked, then closed the door behind her.

  As she passed the new nurse at the reception desk in the middle of the corridor, she leant across the desk.

  "Brother Mathew in Room 7 is ready to go home. You'll find that there is nothing wrong with him now. His God has cured him, and now he's just wasting tax payers' money."

  The nurse looked confused.

  "Who are you?" she asked.

  "I'm the ungrateful brat who didn't like the party and gave her Gift back."

  Then she turned and walked out of the ward.

  Just before the door closed behind her, she heard footsteps and the monk calling after her.

  "Thank you!" he shouted. "Peter Piper who ate the Pickled Pepper says 'THANK YOU!'"

  Chapter 29

  Inverness

  Tuesday

  7.35 a.m.

  Alessandra awoke to a sharp banging on the car window.

  A policeman was staring in at her, indicating for her to wind the window down.

  Blinking and trying to sit up straight, but realising that she first had to raise the car seat back into its normal position, she struggled to clear her mind.

  Eventually, she was sitting back up straight, and she pressed the button to lower the window.

  "Are you okay Madam?" The police officer asked.

  "Yes, Officer. I'm fine." Her heart beat increasing. She was off-guard, she felt terrible, and she was groggy. She had to be careful. She took a few deep breaths.

  "May I ask, why are you parked here in the car park? Are you sleeping it off?"

  "May I open the door and get out?" Alessandra asked, not knowing if she would be allowed to. In America, you always sat in your car. Getting out was an open invitation to be shot by the officer, who might fear he was just about to be attacked.

  The officer stepped away from the car and indicated it would be fine.

  Alessandra opened the door and stepped out, stretching.

  Her car was parked just off the main road on the way back to Fort Augustus, inside the entrance to a Forestry Commission car park.

  "I'm sorry. I was c...called to the hospital late last night to visit one of the m...monks from the Monastery in Fort Augustus who is dying. I left at about 5 am, but when I s...started to drive, I realised I was too tired. I was worried about driving further and causing an accident, so I pulled into the first car park I could find, and I fell asleep. Have I b...broken the law?"

  "No. But sleeping in the forest car parks is not advised. Were you drinking last night?"

  "Luckily I wasn't, otherwise I would never have been able to get to the hospital. I'm feeling a lot better now, I can get on my way if you wish?"

  "Are you American?"

  "Y...Yes."

  "I thought so. There's a McDonalds about five minutes down the road. You can get a coffee there. I hope your friend in hospital gets well soon, and drive carefully."

  Alessandra nodded and smiled and thanked him for the suggestion. She watched as the officer got back into his car, where his partner was waiting for him. She waved as they drove off, then climbed back into her car, shut the door, and lowered the seat back down.

  She felt awful.

  Dizzy. Nauseous.
r />   Exhausted.

  And why was she stuttering?

  Two minutes later she was fast asleep again, oblivious to the other cars that began to gather around her over the next few hours as the sun climbed the sky, and hikers arrived to start making their way up the mountains beside Loch Ness.

  --------------------

  Slovakia

  Poprad

  1.00 p.m.

  Copernicus opened the email he'd just received from Colonel Alexei Zhirov. It contained three files. Opening the first, he began to devour the intelligence report the Colonel had forwarded to him from the Russian SVR.

  Although three weeks old, it was nevertheless a comprehensive report on Salvador. As comprehensive as was possible. Details of all the assassinations that had been credited to him in the past ten years, along with the SVR file on everything they knew about him.

  Which wasn't much!

  There were no photographs. No personal details. No witness statements.

  According to the report, only twice had the authorities ever arrived in time to speak to a target before they had died. In both cases the only word they had been able to issue before they quickly succumbed was, 'Salvador'.

  Reading the very thin SVR file, Copernicus's respect for Salvador increased.

  He had not expected it to be so bare. The SVR files were normally full of detail, providing everything you could ever wish to know about a suspect.

  In general the SVR would usually know more about a target person than the person himself, and what wasn't in the file wasn't worth knowing.

  Copernicus had always known that it was going to be a tough job, but after spending several days doing his own research and making enquiries through his own network, he'd come up with far less that the SVR had achieved.

  In fact, anticipating its arrival, he'd been relying upon it to give him the information necessary to start tracking Salvador. So far, there wasn't anything else to really go on.

  The world was a big place. Salvador could be anywhere.

  Copernicus was good, but he was not psychic.

  Feeling slightly despondent, he clicked on the second file, typed his credentials into the security challenge he was presented with, and unlocked and unencrypted the information within.

  It was a report from the FSB, detailing assassinations which had taken place around the world within the past twelve months.

  Copernicus sat up straight, staring at the top ten which had been listed.

  One of them had taken place only the day before, in Stirling in Scotland. In a prison. Full details were not yet fully available, but from what the FSB had learned, an important Scottish crime lord had been found dead in a locked cell, his head blown off by an assassin's high-velocity bullet. The internal confidential Prison report which the FSB had accessed and copied, disclosed the initial suspicion that the crime lord had been shot by an assassin who could only ever have taken the shot from a hill over a mile away from the prison. It would have been an impossible shot. Enquiries had just begun, but the report already included a statement from a police firearms expert who said the shot was so difficult that it was more likely that there had to be another explanation. No one could take such a shot and succeed.

  Reading the report, Copernicus laughed. The so-called firearms expert they had initially consulted was a fool. Of course the shot was possible. Although only a few people could ever achieve it.

  Salvador was one of them.

  By itself, this information was interesting. However, given that Kuznetsov had just been killed in Scotland the week before, - the most recent details of which were also listed in the FSB report - with the prime suspect for that assignation already being Salvador, the obvious assumption was that Salvador was possibly responsible for both of them.

  Copernicus smiled.

  A moment later he opened the third file within the email.

  It was another report from the SVR.

  Copernicus laughed aloud.

  It was exactly what he needed.

  The file contained an analysis of all the assassin websites the SVR had been monitoring on the Dark Web. It listed the contracts which had been put up for offer and the known details on those which had been accepted. It also cross-referenced known information on targets who had subsequently been killed. Copernicus could immediately cross-reference this one to the FSB report. They backed-each other up.

  However, amongst all the information it contained, there was one jewel.

  In the past six months, ten contracts had been offered within Scotland.

  Two of those which had been completed, were for Kuznetsov and the crime lord Tommy McNunn.

  Four were still outstanding.

  Copernicus immediately lost interest in three of them. The contract sums which had been offered were trivial, all of them less than ten thousand pounds each.

  They were obviously local contracts, offered and accepted by petty criminals.

  One of them however stood out. It was for a large sum of money, for the assassination of a top police-officer, a DCI Campbell McKenzie.

  The contract had been assigned but not yet completed, and before it had been accepted, the offer had stipulated that the target had to be terminated within a short time period.

  Copernicus's heart began to beat faster.

  He laughed out loud.

  Instinctively, and above all the odds, he now knew where Salvador was.

  Scotland.

  The bastard was in Scotland.

  --------------------

  Loch Ness Hilton

  Scotland

  8.00 p.m.

  At eight o'clock precisely, there was a quiet, but firm knock on the door.

  Alessandra laughed.

  She took one more look around the caravan, checking that all the candles were lit, and that her clothes were smoothed down.

  Alessandra had a good figure. She had been blessed with a body that had curves in all the right places. Most of the time she hid her figure, from force of habit not wanting to draw attention to herself. Tonight however was different. Without being overtly too sexual, - her cleavage was not on display - she had deliberately dressed to accentuate her breasts, her curves, and her slim figure.

  Neither had she forgotten the finishing touches, applying make-up which brought her face alive.

  She knew the effect it had on her, and she knew too, the effect that all this self-centred attention had on others, especially those who were already interested in her, despite her otherwise drab and rather boring attire.

  Opening the door, Gavin was about to step up into the caravan when his eyes caught sight of Alessandra, who was paying particular attention to how he would react.

  He stopped in his tracks, one foot raised in mid-air, and his jaw quite literally dropped.

  "Wow!" he said, then smiled. "Is that really you?"

  Alessandra stepped backwards away from the door and let Gavin step inside.

  He was carrying a bottle of wine in each hand, and he handed them to her as he entered the caravan.

  "I bought white and red, because I didn't know what you were going to cook."

  She smiled, leant forward and kissed him on the side of the cheek.

  "Thank you. That was very thoughtful."

  Gavin was looking around the caravan, glancing at the candles and the decorated table.

  "Is it too much?" Alessandra asked. "I hardly ever make an effort, because I travel so much, but when I eventually find the time to cook, I admit that I like to go all out. I haven't had the time or opportunity to entertain anyone special for a long time, so actually, I won't apologise for this evening. It's thanks to you that I'm living here just now and this evening will be my way of showing my gratitude..."

  She spoke the words with just the right amount of innuendo. Just an edge, a hint, but nothing more.

  "You look amazing..." Gavin said, turning back from the caravan and focussing all his attention on her.

  Alessandra smiled and looked straight back
at Gavin. "Flattery..." she said... but then omitted to finish the sentence, leaving the unspoken "will get you everywhere" resonating loudly within Gavin's consciousness.

  Gavin nodded, and for a moment there was silence. There followed a few seconds, just one or two, which Alessandra knew would be indicative of how the rest of the evening would go.

  There were three options. Firstly, Gavin would politely make his excuses and leave. Secondly, he would noticeably become more reserved and back-off slightly.

  Thirdly, he would relax, possibly even flirt back.

  On the phone Gavin had clearly laid his cards on the table and expressed his interest in Alessandra, and now she was only replying in kind.

  "I was worried we may not see you again." Gavin said, but quickly corrected himself. "Actually, I was worried that I might not see you again. I was hoping I would."

  "Thank you. And I'm pleased you decided to risk your life and let me cook for you." she joked.

  "From what I can smell, I don't think I'm in any danger. It smells wonderful."

  "Good. Anyway, I'm reasonably confident that you might enjoy the main course. Hopefully you'll enjoy it, and you'll decide to stay for dessert..."

  Handing Gavin a glass of red wine, she noted his momentarily raised eyebrows as he played with her words in his imagination and wondered just exactly, what that dessert might be.

  "So, have there been any more sightings?" she asked, clicking her glass off his and taking a sip, then waving for him to sit down while she busied herself producing two plates of food.

  "No. Not since Megan."

  "And did you take my advice, about maximising the opportunity her sighting has given the community to help defend itself?"

  "I did. At least, I passed it on to the management team here... the group of volunteers that run and coordinate everything, and as far as I know they've been on to the local papers and have arranged some more photo shoots and press support."

  Alessandra brought two plates of food over and put them down gently on the table. She sat down opposite him and raised her glass again.

  "Thank you for coming."

  Gavin laughed. "The pleasure is, or hopefully will be, all mine." He replied, rising to the challenge and replying with some subtle innuendo of his own.