by Bill Brewer
“So what’s your story?” Diegert asked the African man sitting across the table from him at the cafeteria. The man was like Diegert in many ways, twenty-something, athletic, stoic and resigned. Yet he exuded a friendly spirit, his confidence showing in the way he sustained eye contact. The bandage over his right ear became a curiosity to Diegert.
“I come from Nigeria.”
“Oh yeah, but I was wondering about your bandaged ear.”
Nodding, the man said, “An unfortunate training accident.”
“It’s gonna heal up?”
“One hundred percent.”
“So you said you’re from Nigeria, let me guess, a child soldier trained to kill as a young boy who gets plucked from the jungle to serve Crepusculous.”
The dark man held Diegert’s gaze as his face altered from an engaging smile to a doubtful scowl before replying, “You think you know me because you saw a movie or read an article in a magazine. Your assumptions demonstrate your prejudiced thinking that all black people are alike.”
Realizing he’d stepped in dog shit, Diegert raised both hands as he said, “You mean I’m wrong?”
“You’re limited. Your vision fits whatever assumptions support your perception of the world. You see what you want to see, and you don’t question it. Many white people think as you do.”
“Well then, how about you enlighten me.”
“I saw you on the shooting range,” said the dark man waving his fork as his smile returned. “I was impressed by the push-pull action you used to rack the slide of your Glock.” The inquisitor pretended to handle a pistol in the manner he had seen Diegert practicing on the range. “You’ve got good hands,” he said as he pointed at Diegert’s hands folded in front of him.
“I shoot to kill.”
“Ha ha ha, don’t we all. I’ll tell you my story, but you must then share yours.”
Diegert nodded his head without saying a word.
“No, no, no, you must state your promise,” scolded the big man as he wagged his finger at Diegert.
With a snorting chuckle, Diegert agreed, “Fine, I’ve got nothing to hide, but first are you a member of Cerberus?”
“Oh, that Avery, he has to have a special name for everything. Cerberus! Yes, I am a member of Avery’s inner circle. We are the best of the best, and I’m surprised you even know about us.”
“Yeah Avery told me about it, but he left me to discover the members on my own.”
Leaning forward, the African smiled as he said, “You found one, my name is Tiberius Duprie” he broke into a laugh, which coaxed a smile out of Diegert. As they shook hands, the Cerberus operator said, “You’ve also found a Nigerian Prince. I am the son of a man from the ruling class.”
Diegert was unable to stifle his laughter. “Wait, I’ll give you my bank account number so you can deposit a million dollars.” Continuing to laugh at his own joke, Diegert could see that Tiberius didn’t get it. “It’s an American thing,” he said laconically.
Moving past this strange diversion, Tiberius said, “My family’s history extends back for generations. My father was the Director-General of the Nigerian Military. He was in charge of the entire defense forces. A very powerful position. As his son, I was privileged and respected. I went to private school, had servants to care for me while we lived in a big house. My four brothers and two sisters all enjoyed the best of everything. Life was very good.”
“The African elite,” summarized Diegert.
“Yes, I suppose so.” Tiberius was lost in a wistful memory before tapping the table with his fork and turning his gaze directly on Diegert. “I must tell you though that I learned the hard way about my family’s history.”
“How so?”
“My great-great-grandfather was a slave trader. He and his father before him were very wealthy. They would raid villages, gather the people and sell them to white men. We are Yoruba and would capture Nupe, Edo and Igbo people and sell them out of Lagos to be taken away as slaves.”
“You sound like bad guys.”
“I’m afraid many feel the same way. As the market for slaves dissolved, my father used his wealth and position to become a Military Man and eventually became the head of the Army.” Tiberius grew silent with a downcast look that seemed sad.
“And then what happened?”
Without raising his eyes, he said, “The rebellion.”
With memory came a pool of tears, adding a liquid sheen to the dark eyes of this pained man. He sniffed once as he continued his story.
“My father was killed, but not until after being humiliated and tortured. The video was viewed a million times. I never knew there were so many who hated him. Three of my brothers were killed, the other I do not know where he is. Both of my sisters were abducted, and I shudder to imagine what has become of them, but I do not know. I was taken by some loyal soldiers to a camp, but when my location became known I was kidnapped and held for ransom. Boko Haram beat me and made me fight every day. I was the training fighter for the sad boys they were turning into soldier slaves. They told all the recruits about my family history, even though they were doing the same thing, turning these boys into slaves.”
“Was there anyone left to pay the ransom?”
“My mother.”
Both men fell into silence as Diegert felt the sting of the other man’s pain.
“What was the ransom,” Diegert asked softly.
Placing his brow in his hands, Tiberius whispered, “Her life.”
A maternal sacrifice thought Diegert. He held his tongue and waited for Tiberius to gather himself.
Tiberius picked up his table knife and twirled the serrated point on the tabletop. “Boko Haram was going to broadcast my execution. They announced it on their website, and they were whipping up the people to watch the Evil Prince, as they had named me, die.”
Anger and sadness creased the brow of Tiberius’s pained face.
“My mother pleaded with the local BH leader, Chibueze Ozinwa, to spare me and sacrifice her. Before she did this, she’d reached out to our friend Gunther Mibuku.”
Diegert had to stop his face from reacting when he heard the name Gunther Mibuku. His first mission in Europe flashed through his mind. He killed a ‘drug dealer,’ by the same name, in the Hotel Lambert in Paris. He was helped by a prostitute who betrayed the target, allowing Diegert to enter the room and shoot him. Together they both escaped the scene.
“Uncle Gunther, as we used to call him,” said Tiberius with a warm smile. Diegert smiled as well, to hide his reaction. Tiberius went on, “He worked for SSI, Strategic Solutions Incorporated. They were an arms supplier to the army, and my father and he were good friends.”
The smile broadened as Tiberius recalled his family friend.
“Uncle Gunther would always bring gifts whenever he visited my father. I had a fine collection of pistols that he would add to every visit. He and my father taught me to shoot and made me practice breaking down and re-assembling my guns. I got very good at it and set records while blindfolded. I loved my gun collection.”
Diegert squirmed in his seat.
“I now know that SSI is a dark subsidiary of Omnisphere and through them, Uncle Gunther arranged for a Special Forces team to rescue my mother and me. She gave them the intel on my location, and a team struck early one morning. It happened so very fast, the door to my cell blew open, two men entered, announced they were liberating me and hauled me to a helicopter. I was airborne in minutes. Chibueze Ozinwa was so angry, he immediately slit my mother’s throat and posted the video before she could be rescued.”
Tiberius’s look of denied retribution confirmed Diegert’s perception that this man was a formidable foe.
“I was flown out of Africa, brought here to London where I’ve been serving as an operator ever since. My mother’s death haunts me, and I will avenge her sacrifice by killing Chibueze Ozinwa.”
“Your mother sounds like she was a brave woman.”
“She certainly was. She loved me, and in
the end, she did a very brave thing. A mother’s love knows no limits.”
Diegert hesitated on his next question since he already knew the answer. He recalled, in vivid detail, shooting Gunther Mibuku. Diegert also remembered sassy Shei Leun Wong. She was the one who betrayed Mibuku by helping Diegert pull off the hit. Although he was offered additional money to shoot her, he refused to kill the woman. “Do you still see your uncle?”
Tiberius’s head snapped at the question, his gaze on Diegert intensifying. The reaction was unsettling. Tiberius projected a desire for vengeance.
“Gunther was murdered by a whore.”
Tiberius drew silent as the loss softened his features. “Gunther was a lady’s man. He would say, ’I’ve always got one waiting.’ Well, this one shot him, robbed him and left him dead on a hotel bed. I was so sad. He was all I had left of a family. He would take me out on the town and show me a great time in London and in Paris. He was generous with his money and treated me like a member of his family.”
As Tiberius spoke about Mibuku, tears formed in his eyes. His voice wavered as his nose began to run. He used a napkin to blow his nose and wipe the droplets off his cheek. Here was a man, whose physicality and demeanor impressed David Diegert as being one tough hombre, crying in public over the death of another man. Diegert felt an immediate kinship with this man. He was coping with the emotions of death and loss, a very painful part of an assassin’s life. At the same time, Diegert felt a sense of embarrassment as the man before him wasn’t covering up his emotions. Right here in the cafeteria, he was revealing his weakness, his need to cry, his feelings of love, tenderness and concern for another. All the things Diegert consistently kept clamped down and hidden within him, until they burst out in the warm embrace of a loving woman. Diegert was confused and impressed. When Tiberius’s napkin was saturated, he handed him another.
Desperate to move the conversation forward without acknowledging the crying, Diegert asked, “Did they catch the girl?”
Tiberius suddenly changed back to an ominous, dangerous man as he pounded his fist on the table. His bloodshot eyes revealing his violent tendencies. “I caught her, I killed her, and I dumped her in the Seine. That whore’s lifeless body floated right through the middle of Paris. She was a thief and a junkie and a murderous bitch. I took her life for Uncle Gunther. She deserved to die as she did.”
Diegert sat in silence, recalling the actual events surrounding Mibuku’s death. He could see Tiberius’s anger and grief. He saw how the man channeled his anger into misguided beliefs which led to a violent death Shei Leun Wong didn’t deserve. Diegert was to blame, and Shei Leun paid the price.
“Did your revenge feel good?” asked Diegert.
Tiberius looked at him strangely. “What?”
“You seem really angry. Did you feel better after killing her?”
“When someone you love is violently killed, the only thing that makes you whole again is to see the person responsible completely destroyed. This is why I am an assassin for Crepusculous. Vengeance for the rest of my family will be achieved when I return to Nigeria. It is a need more powerful than forgiveness.”
The guilt for each of the deaths for which Diegert was responsible weighed heavily on his shoulders. Not killing Shei Leun initiated the formation of his code. Tiberius seemed to be free of this weight. He expressed such certainty of purpose and determination to carry out more violence in the name of revenge. He also seemed to have no qualms about killing women. Diegert realized that Tiberius was someone with whom he would try to build an alliance, but like so many other people in his life, he would be reluctant to trust or be completely honest with him.
Was it so difficult to justify killing when you are not committed to what you are doing, versus fully embracing the role and feeling as if it is a fulfilling purpose in life? Diegert’s perception that Tiberius had this all figured out left him thinking that maybe he should more fully accept his plight as a killer of men. He should admit that he was good at it and strive to become better. He should cast off concerns that he was a sinner and a wrongful murderer and instead embrace the fact that he was adjusting the balance of power in the world in a way that has been a fact of human life for millennia. These abstractions were always wrestling in Diegert’s thoughts, but seeing the ease with which Tiberius described himself as an assassin for Crepusculous, with such pride and assurance, made Diegert once again mull over the consequences of the choices he’d already made.
Tiberius’s voice broke Diegert’s thoughts. “So I am a hired gun, a killer for payment, a private contractor of assigned death. It’s a dangerous job, but I have a dark heart,” with his fist, Tiberius thumped the middle of his chest, “under my dark skin. I am what I am and will continue to be. I will die by the bullet, but not until I have taken the life of my enemy,” he extended two fingers from his fist like a gun, “with the power of explosive propulsion fired from my hand.” He suddenly extended his arm, pointing his finger at Diegert while flexing his thumb and audibly emitting the sound of a suppressed pistol, “pfft, pfft, pfft.” He then flexed his elbow, retracting his arm as he burst out in laughter.
A slow smile crept across Diegert’s face as he looked at the perplexing man laughing out loud with a winning smile full of perfectly aligned gleaming white teeth. This man’s mirth was infectious, and soon Diegert was also laughing as he hadn’t done for quite some time. Anyone who can make you laugh with such abandon is someone whom you would be wise to make a lifelong friend.
When the laughter subsided Tiberius made his request, “Now you tell me your story.”
Diegert nodded. “I’m from Northern Minnesota, my father is a tow truck driver, my mother is a waitress, and my brother is a low life drug dealer. I got kicked out of the Army and then framed for murder by the Russian mafia. I had to run for my life, and I escaped into the arms of Crepusculous, for whom I have become the… the assassin that I am. I’m not so sure I embrace the role with the assurance you do, but I don’t deny it.”
Tiberius sat in silence with a look that expressed disbelief in what Diegert was sharing. Diegert reacted to his doubt with, “What?”
“I told you the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”
“Yeah, well everything I’ve said is true.”
“Perhaps, but it is not the whole truth. Rumor has it that you are a far more important person than you are telling me.”
“What rumor?”
“The one that says you are the son of Klaus Panzer.”
Diegert was non-responsive. The turmoil in his mind kept him from finding his voice. This was the first time his status as Panzer’s son had been revealed to him by someone who had heard it from an unknown source. At the moment he was still struggling with a “father” who drugged him and kidnapped both he and his mother. A man who was holding him against his will, considering him a guest but treating him like a prisoner. He knew Panzer was powerful, but he felt like a victim, not a son.
Tiberius grew impatient. “Did you not know your father was the most powerful man on the planet? Which makes you the heir to his empire. You are not only wealthy beyond measure, but you will possess the power to rule the world.”
Diegert was well aware of the power of Crepusculous, and he had heard these grand statements before, but they always created in him a sense of righteous indignation. From his position as a servant, he felt like that much power, outside the confines of a government, was improper, primarily since it was maintained through lawless violence. Carolyn, and the threat to blow up the United States, both pointed Diegert’s mind toward using his position within the organization to disable it, dismantle it, destroy it. Now he was being challenged to consider that all that Panzer had built could be his. The possibility of inheriting Crepusculous was still beyond Diegert’s comprehension. Yet here he was being asked to react to that very scenario.
“I know that I am his biological son. He and my mother confirmed that, but I am not so certain he has any plans to groom me to be
his heir. So far I feel more like a prisoner.”
Tiberius’s smile brightened the room as his lips revealed his dazzling teeth. “Do you know the story from the Bible about the prodigal son?”
“Is that the one about the son who comes back, and they kill the fatted calf?”
“Yes of course,” laughed Tiberius, “The fatted calf. Do you know the meaning of the story?”
“What?”
“It is the tale of the love a man has for his children no matter what they do. The prodigal son did not leave his father on good terms, and he did not act honorably while he was away. But when he was desperate and returned destitute to his father, the older man was overjoyed and given to celebration. He loved his son, forgave him and shared his abundance. That son grew to love and honor his father for the rest of his life. It’s a parable about God and sinners, but it’s also an allegory of your life.”
Diegert began his protest, “But-”
Tiberius interrupted, raising his hand for silence, “I know there are differences. It is not what is different that is important but what is similar.” He smiled at Diegert as he lowered his hand, palm up inviting a reply.
Shifting from protest to acceptance was straining Diegert. He dropped his head and scratched his temple. “Do you mean that as the son he never knew he had, I will be given a place of prominence in his life?”
“Yes, of course! Why is it that the obvious is always so hard to see? Has he not said this to you?”
Diegert sat quietly as his perspective shifted. He could be the wealthiest, most powerful man in the world. What a contrast to the rest of his life. Did he want that? Could he handle that? Could he trust Panzer to really follow through on this promise? He looked at Tiberius who seemed so happy to have enlightened him to what was right in front of him.
“I’ll have to think about it.”
“Of course you will, how can you think of anything else? Your future is coming at you either way, but I can tell you as the son of a formerly powerful man, life is better with the strength and privileges that power grants.”
Tiberius’s gaze turned inquisitive.