by Jamie Smith
“Lie still, it needs to be cleaned.”
“It hurts, Colonel.”
Klitchkov grabbed Nikita by the collar and pulled him up, rage in his eyes.
“Listen boy, to be KGB is to conquer pain. Today you failed. You missed your helicopter; a flesh wound is no excuse to be late. You are weak. I will not accept another failure; you would do well to remember your family’s safety is in your hands.”
Nikita said nothing but turned on his side and lifted his leg. He bit down so hard that he drew blood from his lip as Klitchkov worked on fixing the gash, and salty tears poured down his adolescent face.
Through the tears, he saw on the floor just behind Klitchkov an unfamiliar-looking bullet which had fallen down from a half open, unmarked ammunition box on a table by the wall. He reached for it under the guise of reaching out in pain and grasped it tightly in his hand.
Later as he lay back on the bed in the darkness, he inspected the bullet in the moonlight streaming through the window behind him. Along the side it said .45 ACP. A bullet made for the Colt 1911 pistol. He looked over to Klitchkov’s sleeping form, his body rising and falling gently, and hatred burned through Nikita such as he had never known. He pocketed the bullet. One day he would have his revenge.
***
Nikita snapped back to the present, but the memories continued to course through him as he knelt on the floor of the secretary’s bedroom, breathing deeply as he worked to conquer the pain.
“Down on the floor, you Russki scum,” said the voice of Conlan above him. He laughed loudly. “I’ve not felt this alive in years. I can’t believe they sent such a young amateur, to not even guess I’d have a gun under my pillow.”
Nikita inwardly berated himself for his lapse and looked up at the man standing above him laughing, a gun pointed at him and he remembered the sound of Klitchkov’s laughter as he pulled him into that Kamtchatkan hut, remembered the bullet on the floor and remembered the Colt, just the same as the one above him.
He closed his eyes and focused. The pain was in his shoulder but he had endured worse. He could endure more.
There was a knock on the door and a voice said, “Sir, is everything OK, sir? I thought I heard a gunshot or some such.”
“Everything is fine; leave me alone, Amancia.”
“Yes, sir, sorry to bother you, sir.”
Looking back to Nikita he said, “See. Why couldn’t you have just known your rightful place in the world like Amancia? Bottom feeders, not spies.”
“OK, OK, I’ll do whatever you ask, just stop talking,” Nikita said, putting a hand to his injured shoulder, feeling the bullet grind against the bone.
“You goddam Russkis are all the same, spineless to the core. Now lie down, I won’t ask again,” he said and took another swig from the bottle of whiskey, which was now two thirds empty, before slamming it down on his bedside table.
Nikita nodded, and hand on his left shoulder, moved sideways to ease himself onto his right shoulder then onto his back. Suddenly he fell sideways and swept his leg up, kicking the gun from Conlan’s grasp and rolling backwards and propelling himself back onto his feet. His shoulder protested loudly and he physically felt a pump of blood splurge from his shoulder, as a dark stain worked its way across his black top.
Conlan threw himself forwards to grab the gun from the floor, displaying impressive athleticism for a man in his seventies, but he was no match for a KGB agent honed to optimum physicality, even one with a bullet wedged in his shoulder. Nikita stood on the old man’s hands as he stretched for the gun. With his good arm, he reached down and picked up the gun and aimed it back at its owner.
“You see, Secretary, I’d really wanted to do this the easy way, but you’ve just made life a lot harder for yourself.” He awkwardly shoved the politician and threw him back onto the bed with his working arm, and grunted heavily at the exertion. “How will it feel, I wonder, to be killed by someone you think so far beneath you?”
“I’ll die a patriot.”
“You’ll die a racist, pathetic, old man.”
Conlan slumped and suddenly looked every inch the old man as he lay back, jowls around his neck engorging his face. Just another rich, white landowner living off his power. Never had Nikita wanted to shoot someone so much, but he knew he couldn’t. Out of his pocket he pulled a tub of sleeping pills that he had swiped from the bathroom along the corridor.
“Now, how about you wash a few of these down with that lovely bourbon?”
Conlan looked up at him pleadingly. “Please, please, I’ll do whatever you say.” He moved his hand towards his pocket and Nikita took aim again, but Conlan pulled out his wallet. “I have money, much more than this and you can have it all.”
“You goddam politicians are all the same, spineless to the core,” snarled Nikita, mimicking the secretary’s southern drawl. “I’m afraid you’ve found yourself up against someone who can’t be bullied, bought or overwhelmed by power. Now, either you take the sleeping pills, or I make you. Your choice.”
“You planning to let me sleep it off?”
“You could say that.”
Conlan’s hands shook as he took two pills and put them in his mouth, and washed them down with the bourbon.
“I think you can manage rather more than two; it’s been a long day and you’ll want to make sure you sleep well, Secretary.”
Tears now formed in the old man’s eyes as he took two more pills and washed it down with the last of the alcohol.
“Any regrets?” asked Nikita.
“Not having a better aim,” he replied, without an ounce of humour as he turned his face to the barrel of the gun. “I’m guessing the sleeping pills weren’t to soften the blow of a bullet, so what’s the plan? Four pills won’t kill me.”
“True, but enough to find them in your system, enough that you won’t throw up everywhere.”
“So this is all what, part of the grand Soviet plan?”
“This isn’t the movies, Secretary; I’m not going to reveal the whole dastardly plan,” said Nikita, and then he pounced.
Using his good arm, he pushed Conlan down on the chest and grabbed a pillow with the other one and pulled it over the secretary’s face, before putting his whole weight on it. He could see droplets of blood running down his arm onto his leather clad hands and his face was scrunched tight in the agony of the pressure on his shoulder. He wanted to keep the blood from getting onto the pillow but it was unavoidable. Better the pillow than the bedspread.
Conlan’s yells were muffled and his legs kicked but in his drunken state he was uncoordinated and lacked the strength to overcome the young KGB agent. Nikita felt as if he were looking down on himself committing the murder and felt a chill in his core. Then he thought of the stable boy, of the house staff, of the condescending disdain with which Conlan had looked at him and put aside his reservations. He pushed down with renewed vigour.
Nikita knew the slightest reduction in downward pressure would allow a pocket of air to get in, buying Conlan another minute or two. Conlan was a military veteran and a rancher who had kept himself in good condition, and he didn’t give up without a fight.
It took almost four minutes for him to die.
Nikita leant back and internalised a yell of agony as he again felt the still-hot metal of the bullet grinding and grating against his shoulder joint. He withdrew the pillow and checked Conlan’s pulse. The United States secretary of defense and billionaire oil tycoon was dead, his eyes wide open in a look that was far from peaceful.
The pillow was soaked in blood, and some had gone onto the bedside table also, but mercifully none had gone onto the bed covers or Conlan himself. Nikita used the pillow to wipe the small pool of blood on the table and carried it to the en suite bathroom through a door just behind him.
Over the sink was a large wall mirror and he was shocked as he looked at himself. He looked pale and gaunt, his eyes hangdog and deadened. The face of a forty-year-old on the body of a twenty-one-year-old. He put t
he pillow in the sink and pulled his shirt down to reveal the wound in his shoulder. It was a small bullet hole leaking dark red blood. He ripped off a clean strip of the pillowcase, ran it under some water and held it to the wound. It hurt like hell but would do some sort of job temporarily. Ripping another strip of cloth, he wrapped it around his shoulder and under his arm to hold it in place. Enough to not drop blood through the house on his escape. There must be no sign he was ever here.
He pulled his t-shirt back over the wound, wiped down his gloves thoroughly, returned to the bedroom and inspected the dead politician.
His feet were lying over the side of the bed so he picked them up and swivelled him around to lie on the bed properly, before gently closing his eyelids. He checked him over quickly for any sign of a struggle and seeing none, placed the bottle of Very Old Fitzgerald next to one of his hands. Then he prized open the dead man’s mouth and pushed his tongue back as far as he could to cover the throat.
He stepped back and surveyed his work, before inspecting the rest of the room. He emptied a dribble of the whiskey onto the bedside table and again wiped it down before returning the bottle to Conlan’s side. He returned to grab the pillow, wiped down the sink and made his way to the door. He opened it a crack, holding the gun to the pillow and made his way down the darkened corridor and down the stairs.
He returned to the dining room and grabbed a bottle of whiskey, an Old Forester. Nikita didn’t have to be an expert to know this was not of an Old Fitzgerald vintage.
He went back through the kitchen and out through the garage, thankful that he would not have to escape down the drainpipe.
The blood was beginning to pump harder out of the hole in his shoulder as his heart beat double time to keep his blood pressure up. He made his way across the prairie towards his car, much slower than his earlier sprinted approach had been. His legs felt weak and he could taste bile, sour and burning at the back of his throat, whether from blood loss or from his latest assassination, he was not sure. His mind was clear of everything other than making it back to his car as quickly as possible. He put his hand under his shirt and tenderly felt the hole where the bullet had entered. It was slick with blood, which was spilling out in pumps. Grimacing, he put a finger gently into the hole to try and plug the stem of blood.
Clouds now covered the sky like inky silhouettes and there was little risk of moonlight revealing his presence. It was nearly half an hour later that he arrived back at the copse of trees where his rental car was hidden.
He clambered behind the wheel and sped off across the prairie due south. The interstate lay some three miles away which would allow him to enter Odessa from the south. Time he could ill afford to waste, but it was essential to him to maintain what the KGB always referred to as ‘plausible deniability’. As Nikita reached Interstate 20, he saw a sign pointing south to Toyah and his eyes flashed. The town was famous for only one thing — the brutal lynching of J. I. Pitts. The whole town had turned out, late at night, to drag Pitts from his bed through the streets as he begged for his life, before stringing him up to the sound of cheers. All for the crime of being in love with a white woman.
The pain brought Nikita back to the present and he veered onto the interstate, ploughing in the opposite direction to Toyah. As he approached the edge of Odessa, the pain became unbearable. He pulled over to the side of the road and leant his head on the steering wheel, breathing deeply, drenched with sweat.
“Focus, Nikita,” he said to himself loudly, again inhaling deeply and exhaling slowly. He felt his heart rate slow slightly and the pumping of blood sensation in his shoulder ease just slightly. He looked around him, and saw that he was on what could only just be described as a high street, in a downtrodden area on the outskirts of Odessa. In the dark night the street was deserted but he could see a flickering neon sign about fifty yards away.
He quickly checked himself in the rear-view mirror, and using some tissues from the glovebox, wiped away any visible blood as best he could. He would have to trust to darkness to disguise the rest of it. He knew he needed to call in the completed mission to his superiors, who would be anxiously waiting, but he had to make sure he survived first.
With a groan, he climbed out of the car and made his way towards the bar, reminding himself that he was Nathan from Daytona Beach, and adjusted his gait to a relaxed swagger, trying to block the pain from his mind.
As he approached the bar, he saw the buzzing sign saying Paddy’s Irish Bar, with a green shamrock flickering next to it. He pushed open the door and entered the gloom beyond.
The room was long and narrow, with a bar stretching out on his right with stools beside it and tables beyond. It looked like St Patrick had thrown up, with green paint splashed over every door, and pictures of Guinness, bric-a-brac and hurling sticks inauthentically plastered over the walls. Nikita doubted an Irishman had ever set foot on the premises, and as he looked around the bar he wondered if a black man had ever entered either.
Conversation had stopped as he entered, as a sea of white faces all turned to look at him with a mixture of rage and disbelief plastered across their faces.
He walked cautiously towards the bar and conversation seemed to gradually begin again. As he reached the bar, the bartender walked over.
“You lost, boy?” he asked gruffly, a bear of a man with a greying beard and tattoos on his forearms.
“No sir, I’m here to drink.”
“Look around you, boy, you’re on the wrong side of Odessa,” said the barman again in a slow Texan drawl.
Nikita glanced around, aware of a fat man with a thick black beard sitting on a stool just to his right, glaring coldly at him, a cigarette hanging loosely from his lower lip. Further up the bar another man, who looked similar but slightly younger, with a grey-flecked red beard and squinty eyes, bared a toothless grin at him.
“I can see you serve whiskey so I can guarantee I am in the right place,” replied Nikita, trying not to grimace at the icy agony now coursing through his shoulder as he signalled to the line of bourbons on the wall behind the bartender.
“I don’t want no trouble here, son,” the barman said.
“Unless that’s the name of a whiskey, I don’t want none either.”
The barman grunted and turned to pick up a bottle of Wild Turkey. He slammed down a grimy glass on the bar and poured Nikita a whiskey, which he drank whole immediately, feeling the burn run through his body and numb his senses.
The barman turned away, but Nikita grabbed his arm and said, “Leave the bottle.”
The barman looked down at his hand with disgust, pulled his arm away and held the bottle away from him.
Nikita cocked his head sideways, “How about the bottle to go?”
The barman grunted again and relaxed slightly, slamming the bottle down and taking the twenty dollars Nikita held out to him.
“Thank you kindly, it’s been a pleasure visiting the asshole of Ireland,” Nikita said. He pushed himself up, a slight groan escaping from his lips but fully aware of the rage in the barman’s eyes, and the continued glare of the man sat at the bar, his face now mostly lost in a cloud of reeking smoke.
Nikita walked from the bar unconcerned; a room full of white people hating him was nothing new. He knew going to a bar had been reckless, but he needed to clean the wound and a bar was his only option at this time of night.
He swaggered out but as soon as the door closed behind him, he fell to one knee, the pain coursing through his veins. He felt dizzy and lightheaded from the blood loss. He vomited straight onto the sidewalk outside the bar.
He pushed himself up, wiped his mouth roughly, and started to stagger towards the car, but spotting an alleyway half shrouded in darkness, the other half luminous in the moonlight, to his left, he veered down it and allowed himself to fall to the ground. He produced his smaller knife from its black sheath on his calf and ripped open his shirt. He took another swig of the whiskey and then poured some over the bullet wound, letting out a low cry
as the alcohol seared the wound.
He glanced skywards briefly, looking to the gods he was not sure he believed in, and plunged the knife into the hole.
Initially he felt the point of the blade push the bullet hard against the bone and stuffed a piece of his shirt into his mouth to stop himself screaming. Moving the knife around he managed to get underneath the bullet and began to ease it out, feeling the razor-sharp knife slicing into the skin and sinew, widening the wound. He slowly eased the blade out, bringing with it the bullet, which mercifully had stayed whole and not fragmented.
He spat on the ground in pain. How can something so small cause so much pain, he thought through the throbbing.
Returning to inspect the wound, he saw that it looked like the profile of an aeroplane, with the hole in the middle and thin slits either side from the knife cut. It needed stitching but he had no needle or thread, or any way of getting any until the morning. He knew what he had to do.
He again poured whiskey on the wound before wiping clean the knife and pulling from his inside pocket a lighter which he held underneath the blade of the knife until it glowed red hot.
He looked again to the skies. “Lord, if you’re there, please give me strength.” He thrust the flat of the knife against the wound.
Pain such as he had never felt overtook him. White hot, searing agony burned through him. He struggled to hold onto consciousness, but held the knife in place as long as he could before releasing and falling back to the ground, tears of pain falling down his cheek as the knife clattered over to the wall.
He was dimly aware of a shadow falling over him as he lay back, something blocking the moonlight which had been bathing the alleyway.
He didn’t have to look up to know what was coming. Training with the KGB instilled a sixth sense in recruits, not through the training itself but through some other means that Nikita was unclear about, but not a single recruit came through without knowing exactly when danger loomed.
He ran the calculations quickly in his head and cursed that he had let his knife fall away. The barman, while insulted, would not leave the bar behind, but Black Beard and Red Beard would allow themselves to be separated from their Budweisers for a couple of minutes to beat down a black man who insulted their favourite watering hole. He doubted they would be the only ones wanting to get involved; this was west Texas after all. He reckoned four in total, but kept his eyes half closed and his hand clutching the Wild Turkey as he weighed his options and waited to decide his move.