by Jason Kasper
My jaw dropped. The one glimmer of hope in my favor had shone and faded in the same breath, and the proceedings continued marching toward their inevitably disastrous conclusion.
“The chief vicars have spoken,” Ishway announced. “Sir, would you like to call upon the counsel of anyone among the assembly before reaching a decision?”
“I would,” the Handler replied.
“Yes, sir. Please state who you wish to—”
“Let us continue with you, Ishway. What is your judgment on the man before us?”
Ishway froze for a moment, visibly taken aback. He was used to being an aide, a personal assistant, absorbing the tasks that no one else wanted to do. Why was the Handler asking for his opinion?
“Very well, sir. I would contend, as I always have, that we are all making the best decisions we can with the information we have available. We are all products of our upbringing, our circumstances, our desires and demons both.” He glanced to me with a blink of consideration, then continued, “David is no exception, and be what may of his decisions and his…methods, however unorthodox and however beneficial or detrimental to this Organization at times, one fact cannot be denied.
“He has proven that he will either serve the One or the One’s enemies to save a friend. I suspect”—he eyed me for another long second before resuming—“that the threat to others’ lives played a pivotal role in his decision to stop the conspiracy and return to us today. So I will offer no verdict on what to do with him now, only ask that those qualified to decide do so with the full awareness of what lies at the core of David’s character. I have withheld nothing from the assembly.”
The Handler leaned over his desk and said, “Micah.”
Parvaneh’s personal bodyguard stiffened. His auburn hair seemed to have thinned considerably since our return from Rio de Janeiro.
“Sir?”
“You have firsthand experience with David’s conduct in Brazil. I will now hear your counsel on what becomes of him.”
Micah cleared his throat once and swallowed, pausing to consider his words. “During our plight in Rio, David’s responsiveness and tactical decision-making were of high caliber. He proved that he was willing to accept great risks on behalf of Parvaneh, risks that ranged from singlehandedly going against multiple enemy fighters all the way to taking three bullets to prevent her from getting shot.
“But I’d caution you, sir, that these decisions were not made out of calculated risk-taking. They were made out of a reckless disregard for his own life. From my observations, David’s character is rooted solely in self-destructive tendencies.
“Finally, I agree with Vicar Watts on the matter of David’s psyche. He’s been formally diagnosed with depression, suicidal ideation, posttraumatic stress, and alcoholism. None of these have been treated formally or, to our knowledge, even informally. If he’s going to be employed at the Outfit, it should be in a highly supervised capacity, not in a position of leadership that he’s neither earned nor demonstrated any aptitude for. That is my opinion in full, sir, and I have withheld nothing from the assembly.”
“Parvaneh,” the Handler said abruptly. “David has been touted as your savior—have you anything to say for or against him?”
A stab of shame speared through my chest. For all the pain of listening to these men discuss my every fault with the full knowledge that my life and Ian’s were trending toward disaster, it couldn’t compare to the dread of Parvaneh’s judgment.
Unable to face her, I looked down only to see the horror of my right boot. It was soaked in the blood of a man whose life I had extinguished by stomping on his skull, the remains of which were now drying a brown shade of crimson on the suede.
I forced my gaze back up to Parvaneh. She didn’t stand, instead looked strangely conflicted from her seat. Strong, thick eyebrows and smoky eyes were marked by bright green irises, and her lips twisted with carefully concealed emotion.
Finally Parvaneh replied, “David has saved my life. Were it not for his intervention in Rio de Janeiro, my daughter Langley would be an orphan. I will never deny this, now or in the future.”
I felt a rush of elation, tempered by the reality that she still wouldn’t look at me. Her voice was flat but determined as she continued, “But David Rivers has also served on a team that brutally executed the father of my daughter. He has lied to infiltrate our Organization, and he tried to kill our leader.”
I opened my mouth to call her name but stopped myself before the word could leave it.
“As for what becomes of him now, I must recuse myself from judgment. My decision would be made out of personal emotion, not professional necessity. I have withheld nothing.”
She directed her eyes downward, saying nothing else.
The Handler nodded to Ishway, and Ishway looked to me.
“This assembly draws to a close. We will now hear from the accused. David Rivers, speak the truth.”
I took a shuddering breath, then pushed myself to my feet with a jingle of chains against my handcuffs and leg irons. I looked over the faces present—Ishway unmoved, the Handler curious, Parvaneh blank, the three vicars unapologetic after unanimously condemning me, each in their own way, and finally Racegun and Micah vigilantly guarding the leader and heir of the Organization.
“Every time I set out to assassinate the Handler,” I began, “I end up saving his life instead. You people should hire me to kill him more often.”
Pausing, I observed everyone except Parvaneh watching me tensely.
“You’ve heard many things about me. That I’m a liar, a killer, a suicidal alcoholic. That I lied to infiltrate your ranks so I could kill the Handler. And these things are all true. But know this: my every action since crossing paths with your Organization last year was done not out of a desire for power but for vengeance. The Handler has killed everyone I cared about except one person, who has since been enslaved. What would you become capable of to stop someone who inflicted that kind of destruction on your world?
“Now you’re wondering what brought me back here under those circumstances, so here it is. I just discovered that Sage was going to slaughter countless civilians in Rocinha, the slum in Rio where Parvaneh was very nearly killed. That loss of innocent people isn’t worth my friend’s freedom or his life, least of all mine.
“So you’re right, Vicar Omari: I didn’t stop her plot out of a compelling loyalty to the man who’s taken everything from me. I did it to stop a greater evil. But my motivations shouldn’t determine whether my terms are honored—only my results. And the Handler is alive, and the conspiracy against him dismantled.
“Vicar Watts and Micah have both expressed well-justified concerns about my leadership capacity in the Outfit. On this point, let it be known that I spent over six months sober in the wilderness before prevailing against great odds in Myanmar while leading men in combat. So while I can’t negate the findings of my psychological tests for the Outfit last year, I can tell you that I am a different man than the one who entered Sage’s control.
“I admit that I’ve done everything I stand accused of. Now you understand why. And there’s only one person in this room that I owe an apology to.”
I looked to Parvaneh, her eyes averted, her face marred with a suppressed agony that I alone had inflicted.
“Parvaneh—I’m sorry. I’m so very sorry for the pain I’ve caused you.”
Then I swung my gaze to Yosef, the glint of light on his glasses blocking his eyes from my view.
“To Vicar Yosef, my career as a deep-cover agent is over. As I told the Handler when negotiating my return, I am no longer a puppet performing to save Ian. His freedom was earned when I ended Sage’s conspiracy. This much was guaranteed to me by the Handler. For all our faults and allegiances, or as Ishway put it, ‘our desires and demons both,’ we are first and foremost men and women of our word, devoted to a personal code of ethics that serves us in the professions we’ve chosen.”
I looked to the Handler, seeing only comp
lete composure in his face, no concern and not a hint of surprise.
“We’ve had our issues, you and I. But here in this room and before Parvaneh, I’ve put aside our differences and spoken the truth. Now I look forward to seeing that you have done the same.”
I lowered myself into my chair.
“Sir,” Ishway asked the Handler, “would you like time to—”
“Silence,” the Handler commanded. “I have reached my final decision on the matter of David Rivers.”
I couldn’t breathe as I waited for him to speak again, his golden eyes watched by everyone in the room.
With a slight tremor of his shoulders, the Handler issued his orders.
“Avner Ian Greenberg is hereby released from servitude to this Organization. He will depart today and, since I cannot permit a resurrection of the conspiracy between him and David, will remain under passive surveillance for the remainder of his life.”
I blurted, “I want to see Ian before he leaves. Even an hour—”
“Your request is granted. Five minutes, supervised to ensure no breaches of operational security occur, and that will be the last time you ever see him. Now on to the second matter at hand. I hereby grant David Clayton Rivers command of an Outfit team, effective upon his arrival in South America within one week’s time. His performance with this team will determine whether he is suited for higher levels of command in the future. This ruling becomes final upon David’s compliance with revealing the remaining conspirator.”
Watts looked mildly alarmed that his counsel was ignored, but said nothing.
The Handler looked to me with a stern nod. “David, you have heard my rulings before an open assembly. I command that you reveal the remaining conspirator now.”
I didn’t break eye contact, my stare locked onto the Handler’s amber irises.
“Parvaneh, will your father honor these terms if I speak?”
His eyes began to blaze with fury.
“David, I caution you that I may just as easily alter my rulings until you have upheld your end—”
“Parvaneh,” I called, louder this time, staring at the Handler in a battle of wills. “Will your father honor these terms?”
“David!” the Handler shouted, his face flushed, “reveal my enemy now or you and Ian will join him IN DEATH!”
Parvaneh’s eyes shot my way, her green irises blurred with tears as she gave a slight nod.
“Yes,” she half-whispered, then looked away.
I breathed a sigh of exhaustion both physical and emotional, then turned my head to the conspirator.
“Ishway,” I said, “Sage was going to kill you afterward. Her plan was to become the Handler herself, not to serve under you. She just couldn’t place the instrument of death without your help.”
Ishway didn’t flinch, didn’t sag—instead he stood as regally as ever, watching me with an air of nonchalance as the Handler spoke to him.
“Do you deny this?”
Ishway swallowed and said, “This journey could end only one of two ways. I understood both alternatives well, and chose to forge onward. My only regret in life would have been not attempting to assume the position I know I am capable of. More so than you, sir.” Then he addressed Parvaneh. “Long may you reign, and return this Organization to the glory it once had.”
With that Ishway angled himself away from the nearest guard, then placed his hands behind his back.
“Interrogate him,” the Handler commanded as a guard stepped forward to handcuff Ishway. “Quickly. Find the instrument of assassination—”
“The instrument is your pen,” I said. “The fountain pen you’ve been using to sign operations into existence, including my mole hunt against Sage. I don’t know where it is now, but the one sitting on your desk is an identical replica.”
“Poison,” he said simply.
I nodded. “The grip section beneath the cap has been coated in an advanced fentanyl derivative recently created at a laboratory in China and smuggled into Myanmar for application. It’s currently undetectable to your most advanced sensors. Skin contact results in death, which, if Sage’s demise is any indication, takes three to five seconds’ worth of horrific screaming.”
The guard swept out of the room with Ishway captive.
The Handler casually leaned back. “This assembly is closed. David, let us continue this conversation in a private venue.”
I was led into the Handler’s office without handcuffs, shackles, or blacked-out goggles—unspeakable privileges given the Organization’s security protocol, but I didn’t care. I only wanted to see Ian, and he wasn’t present. The visitor’s chair in the office was now empty, its leather cuffs hanging open as if in deference to the Handler’s wide, ornate desk facing it. The desk was adorned with computer monitors that the Handler undoubtedly used to spin his web across oceans, trapping prey and expanding his reach.
There was something else now too, behind the desk—a tall cabinet, its walnut surfaces lavishly carved with the spiraling shapes of oriental dragons. It was a masterpiece, and one that I was seeing for the first time.
I stopped abruptly, Racegun’s eyes locked on me as I pointed to the cabinet.
“That wasn’t here before.”
The Handler breezed past me. “Would you like to see what is in it?”
“You promised me I’d get to see Ian before he’s freed. Stop stalling.”
“See him you shall. But first we have one—no, actually two—matters to attend to. Come. Please.”
I followed him to the cabinet, and he elegantly pulled the handles apart to reveal a lining of deep purple silk. The smell of richly oiled wood and leather billowed out as the interior was slowly illuminated by the gradually brightening display lights within.
I felt my stomach twist with strange pulls of emotion that had been dormant since childhood—the awakening of faculties I didn’t know I had upon seeing my first pornography at age eight, the unrealized dimension of consciousness that unfolded within me the first time I got drunk four years later. Emotions I didn’t know I had, perceptions I hadn’t been able to conceive of until I’d felt them.
Like then, the sensation bubbling in me was a strange mix of shame and exhilaration and enlightenment, a cocktail too powerful and unnerving and unsettling for me to ever become remotely comfortable with, and yet there it was all the same.
And I couldn’t take my eyes away from the object inside the cabinet.
The Handler didn’t speak. He was respectful, allowing the moment to be, allowing me to form my own relationship with what I now stared at.
“My God,” I stammered. “That’s it, isn’t it?”
“You brought the heart back from Somalia, David. And now, she lives.”
I tried to speak, but all the air seemed to have been sucked out of the room. And I was floating, alive.
I could sense him smiling. “She was going to use this.”
“On Rocinha,” I managed. “As a demonstration of…oh, God. Look at it.”
He stroked the top gently, his fingers dancing along its surface. Then he took my hand and placed it on the device in the cabinet. In that moment, no ancient artifact or alien life form could have commanded my attention to the same degree.
I felt his hand atop mine, and mine atop the object, my entire body tingling as if energized by a current that the device was emitting.
The Handler spoke quietly. “This is what power looks like, David. This is power.” He removed his hand from mine, took a step back, and raised his voice to an authoritative tone. “And projecting it upon innocent civilians is a macabre performance reserved for those who mistake mayhem for righteousness.”
“For once,” I said, “you and I are in agreement.”
“I sincerely believe that the more you see the way things work from my viewpoint, the more you will understand my rationale.”
I took my hand away from it, breaking my stare and directing it to the Handler.
“Don’t get carried away and think
we’re going to take warm showers together. You still created a nuclear device. And you almost lost goddamn control of it—that’s not a wise execution of responsibility over this power you speak of.”
“To the contrary, being in personal possession of such a monument is the ultimate responsibility.”
“Not if you lose control of the device…or yourself.”
“Control is my specialty, David.”
I ignored his comment and glanced at the red pipes lining the ceiling, the self-constructed incineration system Sage had told me about. An eight-digit code known only to the Handler and his personal bodyguard would destroy the Organization at its core—a tantalizing possibility. I wanted to ask him what would happen if the nuke was set ablaze in the process but decided not to tip my hand.
Instead I asked, “Then what do you plan on using a nuclear device for?”
He responded coolly, “The usefulness of such a device is in the threat, not in its employment.”
“You’d better be right.”
Racegun said into his cuff, “Copy.” Then he announced, “Everything’s ready when you are, sir.”
“Wonderful.” The Handler beamed. “David, please follow me.”
We walked down the corridor outside his office and through a heavy metal door leading to a familiar sight: a short hallway with three doors on the wall to our left. The middle one was open, and the Handler swept into it.
I knew what I’d see before we entered.
The room was built like a giant shower, with tiled walls and a floor beset by a large circular drain. The primary fixture was a throne of sorts—the electric chair in which I’d seen the Indian die, and had subsequently been placed in myself.
It was occupied, of course, by Ishway.
Gone was the sleek black hair swept into a high bun. They’d shaved his head just as they had mine before sending me to Rio, and Ishway was now strapped to the chair with the metal crown adorning his bare scalp. As before, the long red cable emerged from the cap and ran down his side and behind the chair.