“Where we’re going is a very interesting place. It is between countries, outside international law. It is a place outside the jurisdiction of any sovereign nation. Really doesn’t exist, not on any map or in any phonebook.” He turned away. “In Western religions, it is commensurate with Purgatory, the place between Heaven and Hell. Do you know about Purgatory?”
He waited. Kamil had spoken very little. After knocking him out, Preacher dragged him off the street into a travel agency. He convinced the woman at the front desk not to call the police, because he was Egyptian secret service and his bloody, incapacitated companion was a wanted criminal. He used the lady’s phone to call a local number that was relayed to another local number and connected with Cairo CIA operations. He requested immediate ground transportation, and to have air passage arranged for later in the evening. It was 4 a.m. when the plane took off from a private airport outside Cairo. That gave them time to bring in a doctor to dress Kamil's wounds. Overall, a fairly smooth operation.
“Yes. I know of this place, Purgatory.” Kamil finally answered.
“Good, then you understand the basic concept. Now, what is interesting about this particular Purgatory, is that it is a black hole. Do you know what that is?”
“In space, a black hole, yes.”
“Yes. Well this black hole we are traveling into is notorious for welcoming in humans of all kinds but never letting them leave. It sucks in bad guys, their friends and families and children and grandchildren. Most are never seen again. It is a little like all those people killed in that market last week. They were there one minute, and gone the next.”
“It sounds frightening.” Kamil smiled while saying this.
“I don’t know about being scary. It is just inevitable. People like you made the choice to kill others, not thinking about what it means for families and loved ones. You consider their deaths acceptable in the eyes of Allah. So, in the same vein, the deaths of your family and friends are justified. They are demanded really. I have personally travelled throughout the Holy Land and through Persia and Indonesia, all the way to the Philippines, to gather family members and bring them back to this place so that they can share the same fate as your murdered masses. It is really quite beautiful, especially the children. Their faces, their minds, become so clear in those last moments. You’ll enjoy pulling the trigger or slicing their throats with your blade. After the first few times, you realize you are relieving them of the burden of living in an unjust world.”
“Pull the trigger? What do you mean?” Kamil asked.
“Oh, I’ll hold your hand while you put the barrel of the gun to their heads or put the blade across their neck or hold their head under water. It is always the same, you’ll fight at first, and then you’ll look forward to it and even begin to exalt Allah as you dispatch those you love. You’ll know you are sending them to a better place, a place you will never go, of course.” Preacher smiled up at Lance whose hair was whipping every direction.
“You can try to place fear in me. Attempt to force me to confess and give you information about others. It will never work.” Kamil was agitated, his fingers gripped into a tight fist.
“You’ll talk. You’ll tell us everything. You’ll do it gladly. It’s never failed. You will ask, beg me to kill you. I’ll tell you no dozens, maybe hundreds of times. You’ll devise very creative ways to kill yourself, including running headfirst into your cell wall or stuffing a towel down your throat. But you’ll always pull back just a tiny bit. You won’t follow through. Just like you weren’t going to pull the trigger and kill yourself back there in the street. You just wanted me to act. I did. You lost.”
“I’ve already won. Our victory is guaranteed by Allah. We are righteous in our actions.” Kamil spoke assuredly.
“No. No. Don’t confess now,” Preacher put his hand on top of Kamil’s. “Wait till we get there. You will see righteousness and true commitment to Islam. I forgot to mention, everyone working at this place is Islamic. They are brothers who know the true word. They are pure in their beliefs. And they are sure, 100% positive, that you and people like you, are wrong. Your precious al Qaeda is nothing but a disease, an infection.”
Preacher turned away. That was about 10 minutes solid of lying. He’d made up every single thing he’d just told Kamil. But man, it was good stuff. Lance smiled down at him from up on top of the world.
Chapter 28
Account 347A: Message, Jan. 3 – Yodel mountain, rain preemptive.
Account 347A: Message, Jan. 5 – Onlooker rearview.
Account 347A: Message, Jan. 6 – Last bastion. Brick. Roll.
Seibel wanted to see him. It was January, 1992, five and a half months since the debacle on Tapul. He was back to full strength, injuries healed. All that was left were scars. No big deal, everyone has scars.
“Braden is pissed at you.” Seibel sat across from him in an Augsburg bierhaus they had frequented over the years. Preacher's boss took another swig of his large mug of a local lager. “Says he hasn’t seen you since last April. Has it really been that long?”
It had been all small talk so far. News, politics, even some sports that Preacher had no idea about. He was out of touch when it came to American sports. In the corner, a two-man oompah band started up. The noise was a relief. Lance, ever floating overhead, started nodding his head to the cacophonous beat. Preacher cracked up. Seibel took his laughter to mean general satisfaction with the music and environment. He smiled as well.
The music also meant the small talk was over. Seibel leaned in close. Preacher leaned in to hear him. “She’s changed.”
Vague, yet direct. The 'she' was Marta, of course. “I know.”
“What, no denial?”
“Why bother. You know everything, right?” Preacher’s smile was not one Seibel had seen before. It was jaded, well, more jaded than usual.
Seibel sat back and took another drink from his huge beer mug. The waitress took away their plates and offered another round of beers. They accepted. There was no rush. “You’re different too.”
This brought another burst of laughter from Preacher. “That’s what Foxy said.”
“He was right. It is obvious that she has had an effect on you. Well, her and spending a little time with the angels.” Seibel was gifted at getting to the point without using concrete language. He was referring to Lance’s near-death experience.
“Those angels were awful gnarly, wearing dark robes, with black eyes and a fiery smoke trailing behind them.”
“Damn. You made some interesting new friends.” Seibel could keep up with anything Preacher threw at him. Lance even laughed at that one from Papa.
“So, you were saying…”
“Our mutual friend has changed from the person she used to be, from the person I’ve known for years.” Seibel looked off for a moment, seeing something other than what his eyes took in.
“So you saw her?” Preacher pulled him back with the words.
“Yes. Two days ago in Prague. Just for a few minutes. She was off to another appointment. Didn’t have much time for me.”
“How was she different?” Preacher asked.
“It was obvious. Didn’t take any deep observation to see it.” Seibel leaned in even closer; he wanted Lance to join him. He got Preacher instead. “She was not all there, holding something back. She was always so utterly focused, scary focused. The kind of focus that cuts through you.” Seibel looked away again, remembering a young girl he met for the first time. “So seeing her now with her focus shattered, her attention somewhere else. It was obvious. It was you.”
Preacher had been watching him and listening as best he could with the oompah twosome blaring and Lance up there bopping his head, tapping his foot on nothing. He shook his head to clear it, “So you’re sure it’s me and not something else, maybe the fun stuff she’s dealing with.”
“Jesus, you too.” Seibel pursed his lips.
“What?” Preacher reached out and jokingly pushed Seibel’s should
er.
“I knew I was playing with fire, mixing up some unstable chemicals in a lab that I might have to pay the price with a shitload of collateral damage, but...” he shook his head again.
“But what?”
“I didn’t expect this -- this change, this complete loss of focus. Damn.”
It was Preacher’s turn to laugh. He did so and slapped the table along with the rhythm of the music and raised his mug to toast and cheer the scene. “Here’s to complete loss of focus.”
Seibel was not amused.
Preacher finished the beer and brought the mug down to the table with a loud thud. “Let’s go.” He stood and threw a few bills on the table. Seibel finished his beer and followed.
They walked several blocks through a cold German night and ended up in the basement of a small apartment building. They sat on a bench in the hall outside a small laundry for tenants and continued their conversation from the pub. “What do you know about her current situation?” Preacher asked.
“Not much, other than she got herself into a never-ending shit storm with Cherzny.”
“What do you know about him?” Preacher leaned forward, his elbows on his thighs.
“Quite a bit, but I’m sure it’s less than you, and a lot less than she knows.” Seibel leaned forward also.
Preacher needed more. “What do you know that I don’t?”
“Probably not much, except that he is high value and protected.”
“Protected? Why?” He raised his eyebrows.
“Interests, Lance. Lots of interests in lots of markets and market segments.”
“Money. We want him protected because some people are making money off him?” Preacher shook his head.
“Not some people, everyone. He and his corrupt regime have brought a semblance of stability to Mother Russia and we want that to continue. That is the party line.”
Preacher was a little agitated. “That your line?”
“I don’t have a line. I follow orders.”
“Crap. That’s crap. You could turn this, work your magic.”
“Nope. This is above my limits. Cherzny touches everything. He's built a web that we don’t even have a 20% grasp on. It’s everywhere. And you don’t have any idea how it affects me to know she's caught in the middle of it.” Seibel's head and shoulders drooped.
“You can get her out, you know you can.”
“How? Smelinski was her bankroll, her firewall. He has dropped her, even more, he’s been active in assisting Cherzny’s operatives. Never thought I’d see that happen, but he, like everyone, is caught up in this web. No way out.”
“So, he just cuts her loose. That’s it, she’s done.” Preacher already knew all this, just wanted to hear Seibel’s reaction.
Seibel was ahead of him, as usual. “Don’t go where you are about to go.”
“What, where?”
Seibel sat back, crossed his legs and turned to him. “I guess we should get to the point, right?”
“That’s why you’re here.”
“Let it go. Don’t continue down this path. You need to step away, convince her to run away, get out of the line of fire. There is no protection I can offer her now.” His words were a scalpel cutting skin, exposing organs below.
“You’re serious. You won’t fight?”
“Can’t fight. Not now. This is not one of her compartmentalized operations to take down a business unit or regional office or even a network. She signed her own death warrant the moment she uttered Cherzny's name to Smelinski.”
It was Preacher’s turn to get serious. Lance even lost the smile on his face sitting up there on a fluorescent light tube. “Then I’ll have to.”
“Preacher, don’t do this. Convince her to stop, and maybe this will die down.”
“That’s why you’re here isn’t it? You came to tell me to end this or end up like all the others who’ve challenged Cherzny.” For the next three minutes, Preacher recited the names of no less than 43 people who no longer breathed air or exhaled carbon dioxide because of Cherzny. He detailed types of death and the likely reasons. He did indeed know more about the man than Seibel. “He is mass murderer just as much as Anwar. He’s a friggin plague spreading through Europe that will make its way to America before long.”
Seibel was not moved by the soliloquy. Impressed, but not moved. “Cherzny is off limits. No more discussion. You need to understand that.”
“Cherzny is dead.” Preacher didn’t miss a beat. “He was dead the moment he assigned resources to terminate her. And you know who is next.”
“Smelinski?”
“Da.”
“And then me?” Seibel saying this should have been a surprise, a shock. But Preacher wasn’t playing games.
“Everyone dies.”
They sat in silence for half a minute. Seibel returned to his elbows on thighs position. “It wasn’t supposed to go this way.”
“What? Your experiment?” Preacher knew exactly what Seibel meant.
“Yes. My little experiment and our government’s multi-million dollar investment.”
“You always knew that you were playing with fire, with her and me. We are who we are. You can try to repackage and repurpose, but Einstein’s theory is difficult to refute.”
“I’m not here to debate quantum physics, so let’s get to the heart of this little matter and maybe you will open your eyes.” Seibel stood for the next part of his speech.
“Please, go on.” Preacher sat back. Lance leaned back against a stud in the wall above the ceiling.
“What do you know about her?”
“Come on, don’t go with the ‘you don’t know her’ line. That is cheap, so beneath you.”
“Shut up, let me speak. You need to hear this.” Seibel turned and stepped away to organize his thoughts. “You met someone named Marta Sidorova in Baghdad. You shot her a couple of times. You wanted to kill her, should have killed her. It would have been easier, but you didn’t and here we are.”
“Here we are.” He couldn’t help interrupting. Seibel ignored him.
“You went to see her in the mountains and from there, you two have become some kind of team. You’ve formed an alliance, but that alliance is built on lies, all of it. I’ll ask you again, what do you know about her?”
“You know what I know.”
“I don’t. She is as gifted a liar as you, better in many ways.”
Preacher recited the details he knew of Marta. He held back a few particulars, of course.
“Okay, not bad. Not a bad story either. You won’t be too surprised to learn that most of it is false.”
“Which parts?” Preacher sat forward.
Seibel leaned against the wall. He took a deep breath and began. “How did we find you?”
“The questionnaire. T-12A.” Preacher referred to the single page form he filled out when he applied to take the Foreign Service Officer Exam back at the University of Tulsa in 1987.
“That’s what we told you. And you believed it.”
“How then?”
“You remember, I told you that you were and are still the only person to get a perfect score on that screwy thing”
“Yeah.”
“That’s true. But I fibbed a little when I said no one else ever came close. A 16-year-old girl completed the questionnaire and got an 87%. The highest score we had ever seen. So we looked into her. It was an amazing story, shocking really. She had killed her brother at the age of 11.”
“Come on, this is ridiculous. It’s reaching, weak.” Preacher interrupted more forcefully.
“Please, let me finish. The girl was institutionalized, where she killed another child, a boy three years older than her. She was moved into a more secure setting where she proceeded to kill two male guards who tried to molest her. She was 15 by then. An instructor who worked with the girl found her to be gifted in a number of areas, but completely cut off emotionally from the world; an introvert in every aspect of the word.
“She was gi
fted at languages, reading comprehension and intricate math concepts. So the instructor had her take a number of assessments and tests. One of these was the Foreign Service Officer Exam and before that, she completed the questionnaire.”
“So, you’re saying Marta took the U.S. Foreign Service Officer Exam in Russia, the Soviet Union. Why would they do that?”
“I didn’t say the girl took the exam in Russia.” Seibel kept his eyes steady. Waiting for it to sink in. He didn't have to wait long with Preacher.
“Where then?”
“The girl was from western New York, right outside Buffalo.”
It was Preacher’s turn to sit forward with elbows on thighs. “What are you saying? Be clear.”
“I don’t have to tell you anything. I'm doing this to help you, to protect you from something you can never control. The girl in question, completed the questionnaire, took the exam, and three weeks later killed a seventh person. It was a fellow resident of a youth corrections facility. The killing was the state’s last straw. They were set to turn her over to adult corrections. That’s where I come in.” Seibel adjusted his lean against the wall and crossed his arms. Lance, hovering just a few feet over his head, stared at the guy. This was one amazing story.
“Seibel to the rescue, right?” Preacher kept his eyes on the floor.
“That’s right. I stepped in and gained her release into my custody.”
“And then you shipped the little murderer off to the Soviet Union to become a double agent in training.”
Seibel broke out into a broad smile. “Here’s the kicker. You won’t believe this, but guess what language the girl’s parents and grandparents spoke around the house every day of her life?”
“Grandparents? You didn’t mention them.”
“They died by the time she was 8.”
“And you’re going to tell me that her parents and grandparents spoke Russian.”
“Indeed. She spoke Russian as naturally as she did English. Maybe better.”
The Perfect Weapon Page 18