The Perfect Weapon

by Christopher Metcalf

  Lance spoke his next words in Russian. He said them with remorse. “Comrade. You have failed. This was a test. She sent me here, like she has Munich, Milan, Prague and Amsterdam. Some remained resolute in their duty. Others have not. You have chosen your life over hers. You made your choice.” Lance tossed the gun into the man’s lap and turned again for the door.

  Outside in the corridor, Lance delayed his departure. He stood thinking of how Seibel would react when word of Marshon’s passing reached him. He leaned against the wall in the hallway and tapped his foot to the song by Genesis that had started when Marshon first reached for the gun.

  The single gunshot from the apartment was not loud. It sounded like a tenant had dropped a book to the floor. Lance looked at the scene in the apartment from above the now deceased spy. In his mind’s eye, Lance saw that the power of suggestion had worked on the elderly KGB operative. Back in his head, Lance examined himself for some emotional residue from the encounter. There was none.

  This was business. Felix Marshon chose both his life and death. He had provided extensive classified information about France, the West and NATO back to the Soviet Union for decades. The information he passed had killed dozens. He earned this death. This is how spies should die.

  “So you did not take his life with your own hand?” Marta broke into his narrative, there in the apartment hallway in Paris.

  “No. I used yours.” Lance pushed some loose strands of hair behind her ear.

  “He made his own choice. It was not a bad way to go.” She nodded.

  “That’s exactly what I thought. I hope I get that choice.”

  “Don’t speak of such things.” Marta pulled back to look up at him. He met her eyes. “I don’t like to think of that.”

  In this moment, Lance changed yet again. He had spent the first 24 years of his life in exile from the confusion of human emotions. His subtle separation from other homo sapiens was resolute. He’d often felt more alien than human. Like a scientist watching subjects go about their lives as part of a grand experiment. He was fully aware his view of life was the product of a psychological makeup comprised of various disorders. Among them were narcissism, anti-social disorder and general psychosis. Reading about these mental abnormalities had been akin to reading his biography. But he was comfortable in his solitude. It was simply who he was.

  But now, looking into Marta’s eyes was like looking into a live, interactive mirror. She was a screwed up reflection of his unique package of psychoses. She was also beautiful and lonely and exposed. He lowered his lips to hers and cradled her head in his hand. She rose to her knees to straddle him. Her lips moved from his lips to his neck, cheek and then she kissed the small gash above his right eyebrow. She ran her hands through his hair. His hands fell from her shoulders to rest on her hips. She pulled back to sit on his lap and look into his eyes.

  “How am I doing?” She smiled. She was just a girl.

  “Very good, actually.”

  “You will need to show me what to do. I have never.” She was shy and vulnerable and honest.

  “You are doing fine.” He wove his fingers into her hair falling across her face and moved it behind her shoulders. Now, this was truly the most intimate moment of his life of emotional solitude. “Are you ready?” He had never asked before, just taken charge in the moment.

  “Yes.” She bent again to kiss him and then abruptly pulled away. “And then you will finish your story. You have four more days to tell me about.” She moved off of him and stood. He took her hand and followed her upstairs where they shared the most intimate moments of their lives. Those moments stretched into hours, and were followed by the rarest of things – peaceful sleep.

  Chapter 14

  Angry is a word. Mad is another. Pissed, ticked, livid, incensed; they all worked to describe Kirill Cherzny's mood. He had not built a vast empire in the past decade to see it threatened by the KGB, or FSB, whatever they called themselves these days. Least of all, a woman, a KGB renegade, was not going to take what he had earned, what he had won.

  "This is very quickly moving past an annoyance Gregor Ivanovich." Cherzny stirred his tea and then tapped his cup. He made a performance out of the act and followed it by taking a delicate sip of the steaming beverage. "I had your assurances that you could control this situation, this woman."

  Smelinski sat across the table from Cherzny. They'd met maybe a dozen times in this out of the way diner. It was really just four tables in a back room of a store. But it offered the thing Cherzny prized above all else – privacy. He could conduct business here without intrusion, without the fear of detection. Smelinski truly hated coming to the place.

  He'd met in far worse places, scarier, dirtier. It wasn't the place; it was the company. He disliked Cherzny more than he detested the room. But his preferences were of little concern to Cherzny.

  "I told you from the beginning that she would be challenging. She is not like others. She can't be bought or bribed or bargained with. She doesn't see the world the way you and I do."

  "I know, I know. You've said it all before. She is special," Cherzny took another sip of tea. "I can certainly see what you mean. Very strange, she left that fool alive this time. Why do you suppose she did that?"

  Smelinski smiled. "Because she knew you would finish the job for her."

  Cherzny smiled. "And you are positive, absolutely sure we can not convince her to change her mind, to join my team?"

  "If she joined your organization it would only be to get inside so she could kill everyone and take everything. You would soon be a distant memory." Smelinski had a difficult time keeping his mouth shut around this prick. Cherzny's arrogance was such an affront. But if he wasn't careful, Smelinski would end up dead, with his beloved KGB gutted by Cherzny.

  His position in the duma, the Russian parliament, and his appointment to the executive committee, with oversight of the former KGB, gave Cherzny power. Add to that his hundreds of millions, maybe billions of dollars, that he had amassed and it was easy to see the writing on the wall. Do what he says, or else.

  Cherzny had made it very clear to Smelinski several years ago in their first meeting in this very room that a revolution was coming. Gregor the Terrible, and the other vestiges of a bygone Cold War era, would be swept aside. Smelinski could not allow that to happen. He had fought for too long to protect his homeland to see it dismantled, bought and sold like so many other institutions the oligarchs were collecting. He chose to play along.

  He hadn't gone quietly into the night. Marta was his creation, his weapon against the endless corruption. Smelinski, like his counterpart Seibel, always saw the strategy through the forest of tactics. He would never admit it, but Smelinski knew full well, knew it when he gave her the orders to infiltrate, dismantle and assume the resources of those doing harm to Russia. He knew it would lead to Cherzny.

  But he was forced to disavow her, to abandon her. All the while hoping, praying that she would complete this mission; that she would do to Cherzny what she had done to others. For Cherzny's prying and omnipresent eyes, Smelinski had thrown Marta to the wolves. He had sent other resources after her, hunted her. If she were killed, all would be lost. Cherzny would win.

  Gregor the Terrible had indeed done something terrible to Marta. But he knew deep in his empty soul, if any one human could survive, overcome any obstacle, it was her. Smelinski walked a razor's edge. Death waited on one side and another death, at the hands of a vengeful Marta awaited him on the other side. But that death would mean that Russia, and all he had worked for, would survive. He prayed for that death.

  "Then, I guess we shall see won't we," Cherzny downed the remnants of the cup of tea and poured another cup from the small pot on the table.

  Chapter 15

  The light of morning beyond the drawn curtains breathed life into the room. Unspoken words during the night, and now morning, told of their union, their met needs. This brief moment amid years of dark and lonely lives was a vacation. This was a holid
ay. Their time together, today and with any luck, in the future, would bring a respite from the demands of their chosen lives. What exactly that future would bring remained a mystery. But this thing between them, whatever it is, it was real. It now carried demands of both of them; demands that would supersede orders and missions. This was a life sentence.

  Each of them rose, he after her, to use the bathroom. She was fastidious in brushing her teeth and left a new toothbrush on the sink for him to use. She returned to the bed naked and he used the toilet and brushed his teeth. As he returned to the bed naked, she watched his approach and threw the blankets aside to welcome him back into the warmth. They made love again with renewed exploration.

  Afterward, they lay together beneath a sheet. The heat, the sweat between them, was something new and exhilarating, and delightful. That was again the word that came to Lance’s mind. Damn.

  “I would ask you how you feel, but I have a fairly good idea,” Marta's lips moved against the skin of his shoulder as she spoke. Her left finger making circles on his chest.

  “Your idea is correct, if it assumes general and specific satisfaction.” His arm wrapped around her allowed his hand and fingers to caress her waist and hip.

  “Thank you.” She moved her leg on top of his. A full-body hug.

  “No, thank you.”

  “But I insist,” she smiled and kissed his shoulder.

  “Can we both agree on general and specific gratitude?”

  “Agreed.” She moved her face to his chest. “I’ll remind you that you have more story to tell me."

  “I remember. Would you like me to continue now or after breakfast?”

  “Now please. I am going to need you to perform other duties after breakfast.” Her smile was again, delightful.

  Lance squeezed her tighter as they laughed together. “Okay then, where was I?”

  “Marshon had just shuffled off this mortal coil.”

  “Indeed.” Lance closed his eyes and returned to Paris and his next moves. He told her of his train ride to Milan, and his quick tracking and brief visit with a man known to the art world as a collector and historian. To the world of espionage, he is known as a reducer. His job is to collect data, information and rumors from various disparate sources and compile it into useful facts and figures that add value to data collected from general field sources. His true value is the sheer number of contacts from both sides who trust him to relay information. His life and career had been well-defined during the Cold War. Now, he was basically a mercenary working for all sides, protected by the impartiality he maintains. He was a one-man Switzerland in the heart of Milan.

  Because Lance was off mission and several thousand miles away from his assignment in the Philippines, he could not contact resources he would have normally accessed to uncover what he needed to know in advance of meeting with the man in Milan. So he chose to do the next best thing. He lied. Lance drew the man in with a phone call, met him in a darkened smoky room while disguised and left him alive to live the remainder of his life. Lance was somewhat pleased he didn’t have to kill him or encourage him to commit a life-ending act. The information he took away from the meeting pointed to Vienna. That was twice the Austrian capitol city had been mentioned in 24 hours.

  The next morning, Lance walked into an upscale department store in Munich and asked the woman behind the perfume counter if he could speak with the Geschäftsführer -- the general manager. Because there were cameras mounted on walls and in ceilings, Lance was disguised again. His choice of disguise for this meeting was spur of the moment and the result of a brief shopping trip in a secondhand store on the seedier side of town an hour earlier. The 'woman' who asked to speak to the manager was dressed in a long coat, slacks and flats. Her hair, a deep red, flowed down onto her shoulders. Her eyes hidden behind sunglasses.

  The general manager walked up to the woman. His eyes squinted when Lance turned around. It was immediately obvious to the manager that Lance was a man. It was probably the stubble of facial hair. But Lance didn’t much care what the general manager thought, he just wanted to fool anyone else looking on. And the cameras watching from above.

  Lance took the man’s arm in a very professional yet affectionate manner and steered him slowly toward the main entrance. Along the way, he spoke to him in German about duty and respect and responsibility and commitment amid the disintegration of the Union. Their conversation continued as they walked out to the street, across, into and out the back of a café. In the alley behind the small café, Lance released the man’s arm and told a few convincing lies about Marta and the need to contact her immediately on behalf of several reigning members of the former KGB leadership. He mentioned a couple of names to cement the lie.

  “I know this all comes to you as a surprise, but my time is limited, non-existent really. I must make contact with Ms. Sidorova within a day or two.” Lance watched again as the mention of Marta's name brought a physical reaction from this experienced espionage professional, just as it had Marshon in Paris and "Mr. Switzerland" in Milan. He was amazed to see grown men quiver at the mention of Marta and the thought of her retribution. Lance needed to offer superseding levels of punishment for non-compliance.

  He continued in flawless St. Petersburg Russian. “My orders are simple. I am to meet with you and three others over the next two days to determine her location or to pass along a message that we must speak with her directly.”

  “I am truly sorry,” the manager replied in German. “I do not know either the woman you mention or her location.”

  “Of course. I understand that this kind of information would be valuable to those in possession of it. But I must be very truthful with you; your name has been mentioned by three of the four people I have spoken with in the last 36 hours. I have been told that you are indeed a trusted resource for Ms. Sidorova. You and another in Vienna.” Lance let the last sentence hang as a lifeline for the scared man. He bit.

  “Vienna, yes. Vienna is what I have heard on several occasions. Rumors only, but from reliable sources.” He smiled as he said this.

  Lance decided to take it to the next level. This required some violence. He spun rapidly away from the man and then back to him, the movement gave the manager time to take a defensive position. Lance lunged with a slow roundhouse punch. The manager, a lean man in his late-fifties who stood 6 foot 2 inches, deflected the punch and spun to deliver a chop to Lance’s neck. Lance absorbed the blow but fell to the ground. He got back up, somewhat wobbly, and threw a left punch that was again deflected and followed by a kick that sent Lance sprawling. The manager followed the kick with a knee in Lance’s back. Lance gasped and remained on all fours as the manager stood back up preparing for his next attack.

  As the man stepped toward him, Lance held up his hands and pleaded in German. “Please, no more. I apologize for my actions. I am under extreme pressure and obviously acted inappropriately.”

  The manager straightened from the crouch he had assumed the moment before. “You are an amateur and you have placed me in danger with your novice actions. You have no idea how much damage you could cause me and others with your bumbling approach. You are very lucky I do not kill you now. I would be saving you from certain and painful death if you ever did find her.”

  Lance whimpered. “I’m sorry. I will leave. I am off to Vienna this evening to meet with Alexi. I will not mention your name or that we met.”

  “Jesus. You don’t know what you have done. You don’t know the players or the complexity with which she has built her network. Who is this Alexi?”

  “He is her primary contact in Vienna. He is at the Hotel Imperial. You must know the place.”

  The manager shook his head. “Again, you are out of your league. I don’t know anyone named Alexi in Vienna.” The manager took a step forward. It was his last.

  Preacher shot up out of his crouch with such lightning speed, the store manager did not see it coming. The blow Preacher delivered to the man’s throat made a sickening s
ound. Before the man could fall, Preacher grabbed his left arm and delivered a blow with his knee that removed the remaining oxygen in his lungs. Preacher held the man gently and lowered him to the filthy bricks lining the alleyway. He lay there quivering, stunned and sputtering, looking up at Preacher unable to bring in enough oxygen.

  “Shh. The next few moments are mine my friend. I need to know the correct name and location for the contact in Vienna. You confirmed Alexi is wrong, so now you will provide me the correct name. I’ll remind you, time is of the essence. I understand your fear, but I must convince you that retribution from Ms. Sidorova pales in comparison to the vile, deadly and unrepentant acts I have committed and will commit. You and your life, and that of your family, are nothing to me. I’ve killed dozens of wives and children. Yours will be forgotten moments after I stop their hearts from beating. Please, now. I can either help you and then leave this alley and travel to Vienna, or I can leave you here to die a slow suffocating death then pay a visit to your home and then to the homes of your grown children and their children. Death comes to us all. The choice is yours.”

  Lance closed his eyes and drifted out of body to look down on the scene. He was not pleased with himself. He was embarrassed to have resorted to a threat of violence toward a family. It was not him, not his way.

  He would never.

  But time was collapsing around him. He needed to move faster. He needed results, and this method is very effective. Still, he was embarrassed as he looked down on Preacher and the heaving individual he crouched over.

  The store manager was a proud veteran of two-plus decades of clandestine service on behalf of his homeland. This was the closest he had come to death, and the second time in two years that his life and those of his family had been threatened. He looked up into Lance’s eyes, but instead he saw another set of eyes. The young woman who sat across from him at a café was so absolute in her conviction that nothing would ever stop her. He could not protect his family from evil like this. So here again, this young man looked down upon him with the same eyes, that same complete absence of empathy. The source of this kind of evil escaped him. He had killed men. Seen others die before his eyes, but he never felt the emptiness this man, dressed as a woman leaning over him, expressed through his words, actions and his eyes.