The Revelator

by D W Bell

  John pulled the photograph from the sleeve of the sweat suit that all assets wore while within the compound. He slid it, face up, across the desk.

  “What’s this? Keeping mementos for your scrapbook? Naughty. All materials should remain with the mission file.” Boudreaux picked up the image and looked at it briefly before setting it back down, “Pretty, one of the victims?”

  “Two of the victims.”

  “I don’t follow, are you saying she was a twin? How oddly random.” Boudreaux looked down at the picture again, genuine confusion screwing up his face.

  “No, sir. This little girl was also featured as a victim in the Hong Kong mission, my first mission. I’m sure of it. The things I did for her and the others make their faces impossible to forget.” John’s voice trembled as scarred over memories tore and bled again.

  “Ah, I see.” Boudreaux relaxed back in his chair again, sipping his drink, pondering over Smith as he sat before him, “John, I am truly sorry.”

  Boudreaux grounded his drink on his desk and leaned all the way back with his hands clasped behind his head and eyes lifted to the ceiling, “It’s just bad form on my part. We’ve been having a very successful year, vengeance is a recession proof industry; our numbers actually go up in times of financial uncertainty.”

  “How foolish of me, I shouldn’t make excuses, but with the increased domestic sales and the stress of expanding markets I have been working my tail off! I must have let that detail slip by me. Just piss poor planning, and you deserve better than that. Mea culpa, John. Mea culpa.”

  Boudreaux’s genuine, sincere contrition dumbfounded Smith, couched as a simple clerical mistake rather than the larger issue at hand. The matter-of-fact accounting of something that had shaken the pillars of his belief system, twice, left John slack-jawed and speechless.

  Boudreaux chuckled at Smith’s paralyzed consternation, “You always were a man of few words, John.” He rose from his chair, picked up and downed John’s bourbon, and got them both a refill. Leaning against the bar, he smiled slyly at the other man as if finally sharing a private joke. “Everyone catches on eventually. Well, that’s not true exactly. I would say most of our assets are used up before enlightenment occurs, but I like to think the realization strikes them just as they cross into eternity. It’s the romantic in me.”

  “Who- What are you?” was all John could squeeze out as Boudreaux rejoined him across the desk, only to have his burning question glibly addressed.

  “I am a man of wealth and taste.” Boudreaux chuckled to himself as he lightly sang the line. “I should point out that my offer of a semi-permanent command position still stands, with benefits. It’s actually better this way now that you’ve seen behind the curtain, and don’t go thinking the Redshirts are a professional dead-end. There is some upward mobility to be had. Old Charlie has lost a step and he ain’t gonna live forever.”

  “What have you done to me?” Smith’s already battered and tenuous hold on his mind began to falter and fail.

  “What have I done to you?” Boudreaux exploded in mock exasperation, “I found you wallowing in that little mess you made back home and saved you from yourself! I took the formless clay you had slumped to and sculpted you into a thing of worth! And when I saw it was good I tossed you into the fire and you were born again and hardened by it! A pure force of nature, without the constraints of morals, feelings, or social norms! You were beautiful, my clumsy butterfly.” He stopped his tirade and giggled a little, “The fire of which I am speaking of in this case is metaphorical, I had nothing to do with you blowing yourself up.”

  Both men sat in silence, staring into each other’s eyes, one blankly seeking understanding, the other coldly calculating profit and loss.

  “Still stupid, boy? That is disappointing, I thought I had beaten a modicum of sense into you during our time together, at least an understanding of how the world truly works. Tragic. Leave me.”

  Body running on conditioning alone, Smith stood and walked wobbly-kneed out of the office suite and made his way to the barracks. Once he was gone Boudreaux clicked his intercom and addressed his secretary without the usual niceties, “Send me Charlie.”

  Chapter 20

  “Preacher! So glad you could make it.” Boudreaux was his usual immaculately smiling self that he presented when it was time to give the tour. The reverend had been ferried to the Eagle’s Nest in one of the beat-up farm trucks, not because his money wasn’t long enough or his organization influential enough to warrant a luxury helicopter, but to appeal to his ridiculous “country pastor” self-myth. The arduousness of the journey seemed to vouchsafe a greater reward, in his mind. A leftover from America’s puritanical upbringing.

  “Nice to see you again, Boudreaux. Beautiful country out here! Ride in was a little bumpy though.” The pastor exited the rusty bucket with his suit jacket folded across his arm and stretched his weary back. Having limbered sufficiently he donned his jacket, buttoned the top button, and smoothed his hair, putting on his own brilliant, white smile.

  “Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain.” Boudreaux smirked at his quarry and turned to lead him inside, “Let’s get you something cool and spirituous to wash away the sins of the road. You must be parched.” He looked up and shaded his eyes to take in the clear, sunny sky, “Lord knows I am.”

  “Get thee behind me, Satan!” the pastor quipped and both men laughed. The blaspheming reverend knew not what he did, nor how right he was.

  ―

  John was a true Redshirt now. Once his epiphany came to light he became truly worthless for any work outside the compound. But he was still a strong and skilled fighter so Boudreaux refused to purge him from the training program, thereby staining his company hoodie with the bloody trickles of constant injury.

  He was a living, breathing punching bag for the rest of the assets, but he wallowed in the bloody role. What was left of his mind viewed the beatings as cathartic, a punishment for his unknowing sins. If they wouldn’t kill him or let him die, he would suffer as a pious flagellant until his final damnation. It was what he deserved for his deal with the devil.

  It was then that John began to get angry. He hadn’t felt true, unfettered emotion in so long that at first it went unrecognized. During a two-on-one training fight, he was the one, he was always the one these days, he lost control and brutally dominated both opponents, even cracking the jaw of one adversary despite several layers of protective equipment.

  The incident went unmarked by most, at this level of training these things happened, but Charlie seemed to focus his solitary eye on Smith in a peculiar way. It wasn’t until John lay in his rack waiting for sleep that night that the true significance of the event became apparent.

  As a beast of burden only fed to train the others, he was given no commands or duties, only kept on a leash until it was time to be beaten. He had gone mute under the crushing weight of the truth Boudreaux had burdened him with, so he was no longer seen as a cognizant being, his mind presumably broken. He was free, after a fashion.

  ―

  “So, rev, you’ve given our little philosophical exercise some more thought?” They sat across from each other at Boudreaux’s imposing desk inside the subterranean equivalent of a penthouse office suite.

  The slaughterhouse façade was not large enough to fully contain the square footage required to suit the staffing and development needs of the organization within its crumbling walls. Therefore, since a skyscraper in the middle of nowhere would negate the subterfuge inherent to the abattoir, Boudreaux had commanded the designers to dig down. An added bonus of which was the necessity of an air handling system, which was a boon to the company’s penchant for the use of various gases and vapors for command, control, and killing.

  By necessity, but appropriately, the finished Bond villain-worthy lair rounded out at ten levels, counting the extant slaughterhouse, nine underground.
When Boudreaux selected the lowest level, the ninth, to house his office and personal living quarters, the irony of the sunken structure coinciding with the circles of Dante’s Inferno was not lost on him.

  Actually, he delighted in the fact when he overheard employees begin to surreptitiously refer to his office as The 9th Circle of Hell when they were summoned there. He wasn’t as keen on them referring to his assistant, Lilith, as The Whore of Babylon, but not even he could exert complete control over watercooler talk.

  “You don’t disappoint, Boudreaux. This facility of yours is truly impressive,” he sipped his vodka and soda with a lemon twist, “and that Lily of yours is really quite something.”

  Both men exchanged a shared, lecherous grin, “Yes, she is an indispensable part of my team. Very important to my work, and quite easy on the eyes.”

  As if on cue, the scarlet-haired temptress quietly entered the office suite, her walk alone a study in seduction, “May I get you gentleman anything else?” She was doubtless Boudreaux’s creature, adopting a breathy southern lilt to enhance the scene and beguile the pastor.

  “No. Thank you, Miss Lily. That will be all. The reverend and I have much to discuss, please see to it that we are not disturbed.”

  “Certainly, sir.” She turned with the casual, studied grace of a runway model, smiled at the pastor, and touched his shoulder as she passed by on her way out of the office, “You boys play nice now.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Blush rushed to the pastor’s face with the touch, blood thinned by drink, as he turned to watch her sashay out the door.

  “How’s your wife, pastor?” The red-faced reverend jolted in his chair and looked around for his spouse as if he was already caught fulfilling what he had been thinking. “I’m sure she doubly feels the loss of the only child, what with the possibility of another precluded by her age and general health.”

  “Even another daughter would carry the possibility of a grandson that would carry on your blood, if not your name, but time makes fools of us all. As men we are fertile, virile, and desirous nearly to the grave to comfort us that something greater shall come after. It must be heartbreaking for her to fail in giving you the legacy a man of your stature deserves.”

  The wounded man downed his drink and gestured, questioningly, for another. Boudreaux nodded and directed the preacher to the bar to help himself. “You certainly cut to the quick, Boudreaux. The old lion perisheth from lack of prey, and the stout lion’s whelps are scattered abroad, Job 4:11.”

  “Very good, pastor. That is how I know simple revenge is not enough for you. What intrigues you about my offer is your desire to leave your mark on history. It shall be written that you, single-handedly, halted the decline of an inherently wholesome America, saving it from the evils of so-called progressive permissiveness, and returning her to the path of glory. The White Lion of the Lord who made war on the degenerate legions of wolves and jackals, so our women and children can sleep safe at night under his eternal vigilance.”

  “Eternal?” The preacher chortled into his rocks glass, “Surely you don’t deal in immortality? Or is this turning into some zombie situation like the youth are all into these days?”

  Boudreaux allowed a disingenuous courtesy laugh, “Of course not, pastor. Any eternal, spiritual life is strictly His purview, as the scriptures tell us. No, what I propose is a more tangible, earthly legacy.”

  “Our organization has been operating in the shadows for centuries, and we have the training and wherewithal to continue your work after you’ve gone to your reward, many years hence we all hope. With the lasting financial prowess of your wonderful church, which already carries your name, we would have the revenue stream to continue your crusade in perpetuity. Long after you and I are gone and replaced by better men.”

  “Reclaiming our own Holy Land through a homegrown crusade, and forever defending it for future generations of good, wholesome, God-fearing families. Until the trumpets sound.” He sipped his drink and waited.

  The inebriated evangelist sputtered in his drink, “Goddamn, Boudreaux! You ever thought of becoming a preacher? You’ve got quite a gift for persuasive oratory.”

  “You ain’t just whistling Dixie, pastor.”

  ―

  John was a beast. Not one, two, or even groups of three of the current crop of operators could take him down in direct combat. He was a wild beast caged and ferocious when turned loose, but perfectly trained in the fighting arts of men. All animal fury and practiced precision.

  Smith technically still obeyed Charlie’s commands, but those were delivered with liberal use of the cattle prods, so it could not be said whether the words or the current coerced submission. The slaughterhouse bit had been a cute idea for a setting to intimidate and dazzle recruits and clients alike, but now the gory drains and sluices drank daily, once more performing their long neglected intended functions.

  Although he never laughed, some misread the new glint as humor in Charlie’s eye as he oversaw the combat training, which was actually a look of intense contemplation, but it was hard to judge with just the one eye. On his orders, Smith was no longer beaten by the staff instructors, any wounds that diminished his performance would be suffered solely at the hands of the operator trainees, and it was few who could touch him.

  Having once been a top asset himself until his own injuries forced him to the rough and active retirement of the Redshirts, and then further crippling relegated him as a physical wreck into the chief instructor/warden role, some thought Charlie’s actions were a ploy to exact revenge against those assets that were still perfect. The ones who viewed the old, broken man with open disdain. A way to assert the superiority and prowess of his lame Redshirts, if not their elite mission feasibility.

  He did laugh, when pressed about the preferential treatment being extended to an obvious liability in Smith that was costing more in asset damage than it had ever produced in profit, but Charlie reassured his concerned colleagues that Boudreaux would be pleased.

  Certainly not pleased, but Boudreaux was genuinely amused. He dressed Charlie down for pampering and petting the already partially burnt sacrificial lamb but gave no direct order to cease doing so. Most of the trainers who had been around for a while knew that Boudreaux liked to shake things up from time to time, keep the talent pool fresh and hungry while taking the prima donna operators down a peg. Some thought he viewed addressing the issue as beneath his station. A very few thought maybe the weird and dangerous little fruit was losing his touch. Only Charlie, body broken but mind sound and cunning, knew the real deal. Smith might have what it takes to buck the tiger.

  ―

  The men sat in the control room’s antique balloon chairs overlooking the training facility nosing the noble, rarefied atmosphere of ancient cognac from the pure, crystalline confines of ballooned snifters, safe behind the hermetically sealed glass.

  “Pastor, if you’ll direct your attention down to the rings of our little circus you’ll get a fair sampling of the rogues’ gallery we will pull from to satisfy your mission objectives.” Boudreaux had ordered all but the very best assets culled from the training floor for the purposes of this little show-and-tell, and those that remained had been ordered to perform in a choreographed manner, more style than substance, for the benefit of the buyer who would not know what he was looking at anyway. Therefore, it was with angry annoyance that Boudreaux marked Smith being led onto the killing floor and directed to begin warming up against the back wall near the center ring. What in Hell’s name was Charlie up to?

  “Good looking group.” The pastor slugged back the ridiculously expensive liquor and gestured sloppily with the empty goblet, “Good God! Who’s that monster? Looks like that burnt up Freddy Krueger from the horror movies.”

  “Ah, yes. Bless his heart. He’s a former asset that assists in our training program. We like to get the most out of our investments, so when the reasoning for his employment became untenable we created a job he could manage in order to keep him in our l
ittle flock.” Too cool to be taken aback or shaken by a little bump in the presentation, Boudreaux deftly changed the subject.

  “Speaking of shepherding the flock, you know our mission planners have become quite fond of you and your cause. They’ve even given you a codename to use: Crassus.” Boudreaux gently pulled the stopper from the ornate decanter holding the precious liquid and liberally splashed another double into the reverend’s palm-warm chalice.

  “Crassus? What’s that about? They think I’m crass?” Boudreaux almost laughed out loud at the suddenly bellicose preacher’s face flushing blood red with anger as he aggressively swirled and gulped at his drink. Those that portray confidence for a living are often the most insecure.

  “No, sir! It is a way to honor you and your ideals. Crassus was a great Roman general, a prætor of his own privately-funded army. Probably the wealthiest man in Rome, he hitched on his sword and fielded his own personal legions to answer the call of an empire in distress. He put down the famous slave revolt led by Spartacus. Surely you have heard that name, I rather like the film that cast Kirk Douglas in the Thracian role, which has your man, Marcus Licinius Crassus, played by Sir Laurence Olivier.”

  “Praise the Lord! That is a bit like what we’re doing, isn’t it? Crassus… I like it.” Ignorant ego firmly stroked, the reverend sank back calmly into the cushioned chair.