Most of the hundreds of collected pieces from an exploded missile gave up no details. They told no stories.
But a few of these fragments of twisted and scorched metal held markings that if researched and traced back to their source of origin, indicated the missile fired into Paris from a winged vehicle nearly 40 miles to the north and east was manufactured in the U. S. of A. This missile was sold, along with hundreds of others, to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia two years ago.
Damn.
Chapter 48
Wyrick stood behind a security technician working the controls of an extremely technical video recording machine. It had hundreds of buttons and knobs and switches.
"That right there. That section, move to delete." Wyrick ordered.
The technician did as he was told and grabbed the 31 seconds of video showing two women walking down a hallway and entering a door. "Done." The technician whispered. This session was into its third hour and the guy was well past nervous working this close with Wyrick. Those at the agency who knew anything about surveillance also knew a master was in their midst. Wyrick never talked about his skills. Others did. He left it to them.
"And this section should be the last of it, correct?" Wyrick said as the blond woman walked out of a door and down the hall past the camera. "You already have the entry and exit footage captured. So I believe we are done."
He watched as the technician moved this last piece of video footage to a folder and then deleted the folder. Since this was the control unit for the entire Langley campus, no downloads or backups were made. Every bit and byte of video backed up and sent to storage from this day at the CIA's headquarters would tell the story of another boring day at work. No images would be retained, either still or video, of the arrival, visit and departure of a blond woman wearing sunglasses. She was never here.
"Good work." Wyrick patted the tech on the shoulder and turned to leave the video control room. Rules and laws broken during the preceding three hours be damned. Some things, some people, are too dangerous to be captured, either in person or on tape.
Wyrick walked out of the darkened room and down the hall to a stairwell door. He was dressed fairly casually today. It had been a long couple of nights going through a treasure of files uncovered in Broley's secret stash. The packet of files and reports he'd been holding in his hand for the past few hours contained just plain deadly stuff.
Broley was digging through top-secret files without permission. It looked like he'd been at it for years based on some of the items Wyrick found. Most of it was harmless. But the stuff he carried with him descending several flights of stairs was quite harmful. Deadly if it ever saw the light of day.
It wouldn't. Wyrick stepped out of a door several floors below ground. He walked down another hall, waved his badge in front of a card reader and entered a large room with an interesting machine over against the wall. It was an incinerator. And inside this machine had gone some of the nation's ugliest secrets never to be seen, heard or read again.
Wyrick was about to place the packet on the metal shelf and shove it in the oven, but he stopped. He turned to a table next to the incinerator and set the packet down. He opened it and pulled the many pieces out. After half a minute, he found the folder he was looking for. He opened it and leafed through the pages.
He stopped on the one he wanted and shook his head as he read the printed words.
"Schizotypal personality disorder. Damn." Wyrick whispered the printed words and a scribbled note out in the margins and shook his head. He rifled through a few other folders and opened the one he was looking for. After leafing through dozens of pages, he came to the one he wanted. And here again he shook his head while reading the printed words and another scribbled note. "I'll be damned."
Frank Wyrick stepped back from the table with a sheet of paper held in each hand. He looked from one to the other and just marveled at the workings of the universe. How could the cosmos create the things it did? How did protons and electrons and carbon and proteins and DNA and everything that comes together to create life coalesce to end up with Lance Priest?
"Son of a bitch." Wyrick smiled, shook his head and chuckled and then belly-laughed. He took those two sheets of paper and laid them on the metal tray.
He stepped over to the table and flipped through another folder, looking for a sheet of paper he'd reviewed before. He found it after a bit and just shook his head and smiled again as he read it. He turned and lay that sheet of paper next to the other two. He then grabbed all the other pieces from the packet and put them in. He pushed the tray forward and brought down the heavy door. He latched the door closed and pushed the large red button to fire up the machine.
A few seconds later, the folders and papers and bound materials he'd placed on the tray were gone. Nothing but ashes remained. He'd done this a few thousand times before.
Wyrick finished laughing and turned to leave the room. He placed a good many items in this incinerator over the years. A significant portion of the objects he turned to ash were related to one Lance Priest, aka Preacher. Recruitment, training, operations, everything related to this individual was either burnt, erased or deleted. Did the same thing with anything related to Marta years before that. He wondered if he'd be doing the same for anything related to Abbie in the years to come.
He stopped halfway across the room and dropped his head while still shaking it. He muttered to himself, "How the hell did he do it?" How did Preacher find Abbie, steer her to the CIA and have her do all his work for him by digging into any and every detail related to Marta. Just plain brilliant. Only one other person he'd ever encountered who could manipulate other humans like that. "Like father, like son."
He looked back over his shoulder at the incinerator. Never again would anyone in this world see the three pieces of paper and other documents Wyrick just turned to ash. If they did, they would have seen three very different pieces of information separated by years with no connection to each other. One of the sheets held the typed up psychological evaluation notes on a young CIA recruit. Another contained the written diagnosis of a psychiatrist. The final sheet contained the operation summary following the death of an agency operative.
The psych eval was done on Preacher by Braden the first time he witnessed Lance in person in Tulsa. Wyrick was actually there as well that day watching their future recruit on video. He recalled Braden jotting down notes in his notepad about the kid.
The operation summary was written by a director from another section of the CIA. It was just a compilation of details about the operation that concluded with the murder of an operative in Paris. That operative was an experienced agent with years of service who also did good deeds in his private life. He stepped in to help raise his brother's children after he died. Especially after his brother's widow fell into depression and eventually committed suicide.
His help was vital for the eldest daughter. His niece.
She was a very sweet girl who had trouble dealing with her parents' deaths. Her uncle arranged for his niece to see several specialists and psychiatrists. It was the written diagnosis that was on one of the sheets of paper just incinerated.
Schizotypal Personality Disorder.
This rare diagnosis just happened to be typed onto both pages. That in itself is strange coincidence. But what made it all the more crazy was that note scribbled out in the margin next to the underlined three word diagnosis on each sheet of paper. It was the same note:
F. W. - how bout that?
It was Lance's handwriting. And F.W. is Frank Wyrick.
Friggin' Lance Priest somehow got hold of both of these documents somewhere along the path. Wyrick continued to smile as he walked down the hall to the stairwell door. Preacher never would tell Wyrick or Fuchs or Seibel how he picked Abbie.
Now he knew. Preacher picked her because of his screwed up mind. He was looking for someone somewhere in the world who could maybe, just maybe, understand him. The unfortunate teenager suffering terribly after the deaths of
her parents and dealing with a strange psychological disorder just happened to fit the bill.
Amazing really. But of course, that's not all.
The now burnt third sheet or paper with the operational summary following the death of the CIA agent in Paris held another tidbit of information that only a few humans in the world could decipher. The deceased agent, Abbie's uncle, was killed by a mysterious KGB operative - an unidentified female Russian ghost suspected of involvement in multiple operations and the murder of dozens throughout Europe in the late 80s and early 90s.
Yep.
Marta killed Abbie's uncle.
"Damn." Frank Wyrick whispered as he opened the door and began climbing the stairs. "Unfriggin' believable."
The Earth rotates and races around an exploding ball of hydrogen in an elliptical orbit. The solar system rides along with millions of others in a galaxy hurtling through space with billions of other galactic bodies. The universe expands ever outward from an unfathomable beginning that started time. We're just along for the ride for a blink of the universe's eye. Enjoy your blink.
Epilogue
What could stop one of the world's preeminent killers? What could cause the nation's most secretive and valuable assassin to walk away? What could possibly bring Lance Priest, Preacher, to his knees and make him change literally everything?
Only one thing.
A sick child.
The end was always out there. He thought it was violent death or crippling injury or permanent incarceration.
Turned out, the end was really the beginning.
A tiny hand in yours. A brilliant smile asking nothing in return. Laughter that infects and delights. A glance shared between lovers who brought love to life.
The courage to fight, to hope. To live and fight and hope another day and another and another.
About the Author
So, here is where you read interesting information about Christopher Metcalf. He is married to the beautiful Diana. They have five incredibly bright and good-looking adult children, and a wonderful grandchild. Most of the family lives in Oklahoma. You can learn more about the author or contact Chris by visiting his website: www.christophermetcalf.com.
Thank you for reading The Perfect Teacher. Chris really appreciates your time. Hard to believe this is number seven. This story is something of a bridge. Knew it needed to be crossed at some point, but had to build it first. No such thing as the end. But this feels pretty close to it. Only natural for Lance to feel the need to pass along some of what he's learned to another.
If you haven't read the others, The Perfect Candidate was the first book in the Lance Priest/Preacher series. The Perfect Weapon was the second installment. The Perfect Angel was the third. En el Medio was the fourth, and first Lance Priest/Preacher episode or short novel. The Perfect Instinct, another short novel, was number five. The sixth story in the chronology of the series was The Perfect Patriot.
The very best thing you can do to help an author nowadays is to write a review on Amazon of the book you just finished reading. We hope you will take a couple of minutes and write a review for this book and any others you have read.
Thanks again for your time and for making room in your cranial repository for Lance.
On a personal note - if indeed you have read all of my Lance Priest books, I truly want to thank you. I like to think of you sitting somewhere right now - at home on a cozy couch or chair, in a not-so-comfy chair in a waiting room, on a plane (where I do most of my reading). Thank you for sharing your valuable time with me. I truly hope you enjoyed reading these books. I'll get asked every now and then about Lance and what is happening with him, when the next book is coming out. It makes me very happy and very proud that thousands of people all around the world know about Lance and Preacher and Marta and Seibel and Wyrick and Fuchs and others. These characters are part of me. And I love that they are part of you. Thanks for reading.
The Perfect Teacher Page 23