by Greg Curtis
Perhaps it wasn’t the lawful thing to do, but it was at least a form of natural justice, and try as he might Mikel had never felt guilty for their pain. Sometimes he worried about that, his lack of remorse. But every time he thought of it, the image of Samantha’s body swam before him, and the cold hatred returned. Time would pass and hell might even freeze over, but he would never forgive them.
Perversely the hardest thing about it all had been finding the self-control not to kill them. For with his talents he could easily have destroyed them all a thousand times over. A bomb, poison, bullets, drugs or fire. Any and all of them he could have used. And he had wanted to. He ached to see their blood run down the streets, to hear their screams as their bones snapped and laugh in their faces. He craved the thought of them knowing who it was that had destroyed them, and why so that they could beg for mercy as he laughed in their faces. Yet on some fundamental level he’d known that if he ever gave in to his rage, if he ever let it loose, he’d be lost. He’d have become what they were, and everything his father had feared in him. It hadn’t been easy facing down the burning hatred that consumed him. But he had done so, time and again. Not for their sakes, but for his own.
None of the family had ever known who had torn them apart but they all spent long, futile hours swearing endless vengeance regardless. That still brought a smile to his face. There they were, a family of murderers, rapists, drug dealers and thieves, and yet somehow they felt they were the ones who’d been wronged? Go figure.
No sooner had one crime family departed however, then another moved in, and then another and another. It was a problem without end he realized, and also a source of revenue without end. A clean source of revenue, and that was suddenly important to him. Banks and people he might have qualms about stealing from, but these guys, never. And above all else it gave him a chance to take out his rage on them. For Mikel had a hatred of them, like nothing else he had ever known. It was nuclear hot and at the same time, icy cold and logical. It consumed him, paradoxically fuelling him as it did so. His revenge would never end he had sworn, not until either he or all of them were gone.
His life from that time on had found the one thing he’d never known, a purpose. He had started specializing in taking them down. Learning how they operated, identifying their weak spots, and then going in for the kill, while at the same time stealing everything they hadn’t nailed down. He stole their money and then their liberty.
It had been a busy time, the challenge forcing him to improve his skills as never before. He’d learned how to find and crack the most advanced private safes, how to overcome every security system known to man. He’d studied every type of con known, and practiced most of them. Electronics and intelligence had become his stock in trade, while secrecy became the air he breathed.
He’d also determined to improve his mind and body through the martial arts and education, ultimately taking three black belts and a Ph.D. in sociology. The irony of the subject appealed to him, the study of society, which was something he lived completely outside of. He wondered what his lecturers would have made of him, had they ever known what he did. Perhaps they would have understood; academics were always the most understanding of people, but he could never have trusted them enough to find out.
He’d found satisfaction in his abilities, and in the adrenaline that came with each job. Destroying the evil that they were was good, but over time its reward began to fade. In time even the strongest hatred can die, or at least burn a little lower. But the satisfaction from knowing he was protecting the weak from their evil endured, as did the rewards of giving to those who needed it the most.
In memory of his father, he never again tried to punish the guilty himself despite the anger, or perhaps because of it. From there he knew it would have been a short slide to becoming a vigilante and murderer, one of the very creatures he was trying to destroy. Instead he always arranged for the right information to land in the hands of the law. Justice could then be done, while his hands were relatively clean.
Charity, always important to him, became a way of life. It wasn’t just the guilt, though that was there. It was his certain knowledge that there was so little worth saving out there, so few decent people mixed in with so much evil. They had to be protected at all costs.
He had long since accepted that there was no God to look after the good people of the world. If he existed then he’d never given a damn about Mikel or any of the other poor souls on this pitiful hunk of dirt. The law was also a pitiful defence against organized crime and its agents were often criminals themselves. There was no one and nothing to stand between the darkness and the light. There was no afterlife to reward those who suffered now. Therefore Mikel had to be that. He had to protect and encourage the lives of those that lived now, and leave the question of souls for priests to play with. He hadn’t been in a church since he’d been driven from his family.
It was a view that was now suffering a horrible demise as he spoke with an angel of the Lord.
From those early days it had been a simple progression to the present. The scale and complexity of his crimes had grown over the decades, as had the profits, but he’d kept little of them back for himself. Once he was housed and fed he found he had little use for the excess money. Some people, he knew, would have spent every last cent on a magnificent edifice with countless servants, but it just wasn’t him. His own modest home on the island was more than comfortable enough for him, and he had lived here for so long he couldn’t have faced the thought of living anywhere else.
He kept a modest cash reserve for himself, a just in case fund, and an operational budget, but that amounted to the tiniest fraction of his takings. Then again he had to admit looking at the angel, that he was by no means poor either. That tiny fraction he’d kept back for himself, amounted to multi-millions in anyone else’s books. He had bought himself some expensive toys, an E type Jaguar housed in his Paris apartment, and a fleet of other expensive cars that he never used. He had other houses and apartments all over the world. Partly they were convenient, but still all were much more luxurious than he really needed. He had a yacht, something he’d bought on the spur of the moment and then never really felt at home in. Crime had done well by him also.
Yet if he was rich, then those he stole from were often richer still, and their money was steeped in the blood of the innocent. Many times he’d stolen hundreds of millions from single crime lords who’d lived like kings. They had so much money they scarcely knew what to do with it. Yet they still wanted more, and the innocent would have to pay for it. All things were relative.
As a result he found he had an enormous amount left over to give to those more in need, and that did appeal to him. He knew too well what it was like to be poor and homeless, never knowing where your next meal was coming from, or if you’d find shelter that night. And there was a certain justice in taking the profits of his crimes and giving them to the victims of those he stole from. Besides, somewhere along the way he had found there was a greater reward in giving than in spending. And he needed all the reward he could get. Rage couldn’t keep a man warm all the days of his life.
In memory of Samantha he had started with alcohol and drug programmes across the world. And for her sister he had started sponsoring women’s refuges. Third world countries had needs all of their own and so benefited accordingly with hospitals and schools by the score. School had been his refuge as a child so it seemed only fitting he should return the favour.
In fact, his biggest problem of the last decade or so had been how to donate such enormous amounts of money without being spotted. For even though it wasn’t a crime to give, not paying tax was, and worse it was highly frowned upon by governments. Meanwhile the fame might well give away his novel revenue collection methods. Spreading his donations across hundreds of charities had helped a lot for the first few years, but now the funds were so large that even individual daily donations were significant amounts, while all the while the number of extra charities he could
contribute to were reducing.
In time he realized with shock, he’d saturated the market.
In desperation he’d created new identities, Sheiks and Princes with more money than brains, and each in existence only for the few short months needed to distribute the hundreds of millions he had to get rid of. Each new identity had had a shorter and shorter life, as the taxman started spotting them more and more quickly. They sensed escaping revenue faster than a hawk, and tracked it better than a bloodhound. If it weren’t for the Swiss banking system and a thousand capable lawyers, he would have been in a huge pickle.
Then only a few short years ago, he’d hit on a new scheme, blackmail. Though not blackmail in the usual meaning. He might be a criminal, but it had finally dawned on him that he was also an international economic power. By then he was donating more in charity than any other nation on Earth. That had to count for something.
Assuming the persona of Screaming Lord Byron; he’d always liked David Bowie, he’d called off many of the dogs through their countries’ leaders. In any democracy the political cost of stopping a multi billion dollar charity would be too high, while at the same time the moneys for the charities would still have to be found elsewhere, and the war on drugs fought with ever more of the countries’ own resources. Surprisingly many leaders were pragmatic when they saw the costs of catching him. Life was still a risk, but not quite in the same way it had been before.
Now at forty seven, Mikel was a spectacularly accomplished thief, an academic and athlete, a martial arts expert and saboteur, a multi billion dollar per year charity and champion in the fight against crime. He was also, he found, rather lonely. It was only the truth. He’d found quickly that while there was a huge freedom in being completely outside every system of law and ethics known to man, in being able to do nearly anything he set his mind to the price for it was terrible loneliness. In all his days, he’d never found a love to compare with Samantha, and even to her he’d never admitted his true nature, choosing instead to live for the moment, and simply love. In retrospect it had been a mistake, one he could never correct.
As he spoke, Mikel found himself in the position of a dying catholic in the confessional, and he spilled everything as though from a burst dam. In nearly forty years, he’d never told a soul what he admitted to her and the relief at finally letting all his secrets out to another was immense. But he had no fear. Deep down he knew that whatever else she had in mind for him, Sherial had no intention of sending him to the slammer.
More over there was something in the way she listened, that said she understood him, even if she didn’t agree with everything he’d done. And that grudging acceptance was more precious than all the money in the world.
“And your family?” As always he sensed what she said rather than heard it.
“I tracked them down later, much later. Always wanting to know why they hadn’t come for me when Aunt Mabel had died. I suppose I was bitter, angry. Still am a bit. But the truth was anything but what I’d imagined, and there was too much water under the bridge to repair things.”
“Turns out dear old Aunt Mabel told them she’d put me in a local monastery after I’d been so evil. Apparently I’d been stealing, getting into fights, and nearly killed some poor boy in a brawl.” Even after all these years there was still an echo of bitterness in his voice. He could forgive his family, for what they hadn’t known, but not her. Never her.
How he wondered, had his Aunt gotten on in the afterlife? Somehow, looking at Sherial, he knew both that there was one, and that it was probably nothing like he or anyone else had ever imagined. But that was an area he didn’t even want to think about.
“My father had come looking of course, months later when they found out about Aunt Mabel’s death. But that was many months later. Aunt Mabel was a recluse. No-one even knew she had family, not even her beloved priests. My family had no idea of the true situation. They started hunting down monastery after monastery, never knowing the truth.” What hell it must have been for him, Mikel had thought, to send your own child away for what you thought was the best, then never to see him again. Always wondering whether it had been the right thing to do, where their son now was and how he was faring.
“I should have told them the truth I suppose. But how? They believed so strongly in what she’d said, that what they’d done had been the right thing to do. How could I tell them the truth? That I was an abused child thrown to the wolves, who had graduated to become a world-class thief? It would have destroyed them. And me. I told them the monastery had moved on, that I’d become a teacher in Africa, that I’d had problems but sorted them out. I think those lies hurt me worse than any others I’ve ever uttered.” It was only the truth and yet it had been said with the best of intentions, and even now he wouldn’t dare undo them.
“We didn’t keep in touch.” And they hadn’t. He couldn’t have kept up the pretence of his lies to them, not for long. Not without giving something away, or feeling something in him give way. Lies had kept them apart, yet the truth would have torn even what little they did have to shreds.
“Did you find love?” Sherial didn’t say this so much in words as allowed for a gentle flowering of God’s concept of love to flow into his mind. It was a revelation to him, surely to anyone. Before Sherial had shown him, he’d never understood what love was, what it should be. It wasn’t even something that could be explained in words. It involved sharing - on every level. It involved giving, giving everything and knowing that you would receive it back with interest. There was passion and friendship, agreement and variety and harmony. There was the living of lives, by both parties for each other.
But above all he knew it wasn’t for him.
“Who could I love? Who could I place in that danger? Who could I ask to live with the knowledge of what I am, and lie for me? Else who could I both love and lie to?” And it was true. In order to love he had to trust. In order to remain as he was he couldn’t afford to trust. He couldn’t even retire, needing the reward of his good works to keep him running. His love life since Samantha had consisted of mere torrid interludes, none lasting more than a week and none giving him the satisfaction he craved. Instead he buried himself in his work. It was all he was, and perhaps who he was as well.
“I am like nobody that has ever lived. I don’t just steal, I deceive, I lie, I cheat, and I hurt people. Yet for all that I am a criminal I also stand in judgement over so many. Mankind’s laws, God’s laws - every law, I have broken them all and will do so again. Crime is more than just work for me, it is my life. I am caught in its trap with no way out, and I’m not sure I want to leave. I don’t believe what I do is all that wrong. But I know it’s not right.”
“I also take risks, sometimes terrible risks, and I can’t stop that either. I need the challenge. I need the rewards too. One day I will simply not come home. It is inevitable. But how could I leave someone else to deal with my fate? Perhaps never even knowing what had happened to me. I live outside of society, apart from everyone and everything else, manipulating so many to my ends, somehow believing myself to be above all their pettiness, even when I know I’m not.”
And yet while what he said was the truth, it wasn’t the whole truth. For he did desire. He would have given his life, his career for love. Yet millions would suffer for his love. Whom so ever he loved would also suffer.
“In all my life I’ve never told anyone what I’ve told you. I could never dare.”
The angel of the lord smiled at him then, knowing that what he said was the truth. Her love, her heart and soul told her that he was a good man, and more than that she didn’t need to know. It was a smile, a love, an understanding that wrapped Mikel up in it, completely overwhelming his paranoid defences, leaving him as a small child begging for the love and forgiveness he had lost so long before. She gave them all to him, as he cried out his pain.
CHAPTER FOUR.
"It was pride that changed angels into devils; it is humility that makes men as angels."
~Saint Augustine:
A dark man walked across a marsh lands trail. The night was cold, and by the light of the full moon, the cold mist from the bogs could be seen to steam. About the man there was nothing that could be told. He wasn’t particularly tall nor short, neither fat nor thin, and in the inky blackness that surrounded him no face could be seen.
Unable to make out a single thing about him, Mikel would still have described the dark man as evil, if that word could have truly explained the feeling that emanated from him. The short hairs over every inch of his body were on edge as he watched him, his body recoiled instinctively; there was a foul stink in the back of his nostrils and an unpleasant aftertaste in the back of his throat. Evil was the only word that could describe what he saw in that creature, and he was terrifying.
The dark man moved quickly through the marshes heading towards a gloomy dank hill, with a clear sense of purpose. He looked neither right nor left as he marched, seemingly unconcerned about thieves or wild animals. Indeed Mikel knew, nothing else would be out that night. Nothing else would go near this creature.
Quickly the man approached the hill, and once there, along a narrow trail which wove its way around one side and past a huge rock to the cave entrance. For this particular hill was hollow. The man entered the cave with a speed that was surprising. There was almost no light, the path was both narrow and invisible in the dark, and the man never bothered to look at his feet and the path they trod. He knew the path well.