by Jason Kasper
“Who is he?” I asked, hoping my question came before a pause could give me away.
Ignoring my question, the Handler simply continued speaking, untouched by the macabre sight we’d just stumbled upon. “But to the eternal—to nature—storms purify, enrich; they replenish the earth with an order that seems chaotic until understood as part of the sum total of life.”
I cleared my throat uneasily, trying to continue the dialogue against a rising swell of fear. “The healing qualities of the storm weren’t the first thing that came to mind as I was freefalling through lightning toward a million bad guys.”
“A lightning storm. How appropriate to our current situation.”
“How so?”
“Lightning only appears with imbalance. The volatility of a storm cloud causes it to gain a negative electrical charge. But the universe is interconnected, so the ground beneath the storm becomes positively charged in return. Nature’s response is lightning. An instantaneous flash, hotter than the surface of the sun, containing a billion volts of electricity moving at three hundred million kilometers per hour, and yet representing the ultimate symbol of harmony. The ability to maintain harmony creates true power. In nature, and in human affairs.”
“Who is this man?” I repeated.
“Upraj Raza Sukhija,” the Handler said, somewhat sadly. Then he placed a hand on my shoulder and addressed the Indian. “I believe I have one of yours here beside me—David Clayton Rivers.”
The last threads of my deception had finally unraveled to their inevitable conclusion, and yet with my hands bound to the chain encircling my waist, I was utterly helpless to act. Of course I was, I thought. The Handler wasn’t in the habit of being reckless with his safety.
I watched the Indian. Was he about to crack?
Had he already?
But the Indian shook his head to the extent possible within his restraints, speaking quietly with his jaw limited by the leather strap. “I am afraid I have disappointed you once more. This is not one of mine.”
The Handler released my shoulder. “I think he is. We had an amenable arrangement, Upraj. I pretended to believe you dead, and you funneled would-be assassins to the Outfit in the hopes that one would kill me someday. But you finally overstepped your bounds with this recruit. You told him of Khasham Khada, didn’t you?”
“I have told many. But I do not know this young man, so do not let my guilt cloud your judgment.”
“I did so enjoy your aggressive recruiting efforts for my warrior caste. So long as I never visited the Complex, there was no reason for me to stop you. But I must, dear brother, draw the line. At. You…COMPROMISING”—he shouted this single word so loudly that I jumped beside him, but his voice returned to its low cadence after a slight pause—“what was once a shared code of honor.”
The Indian’s response was spoken with an increasing quaver of fear. “The greatest honor of all would be succeeding in having you killed.”
“Look at me now, David.” The Handler lowered his eyes to mine, the amber tint of his irises dotted with gold flecks as he drew close. “Speak the truth. Do you know this man?”
Behind him, I could see the Indian watching me closely. And in that moment, the weight of the entire world descended upon my shoulders, my every action from the night I met Boss’s team to slaying Caspian to my present situation compressing in a split-second response.
I smiled. “He’s strapped to an electric chair, and I’m in handcuffs. Pretty sure I’m gonna go with ‘never seen him before’ no matter what. But the truth is”—I turned my gaze to the perspiring Indian, who stared at me in return—“if I’d seen this man so much as once before today, I’d be sweating bullets worse than he is.”
I met the Handler’s stare again, gazing coolly into the fiery depths of his eyes, which were now watching me for any sign of deception. Lowering my voice and leaning my face toward his, I continued, “Do I look like I’m sweating bullets?”
The Handler continued to watch me, the vaguely discernible tremor in his head increasing until his face contorted into a momentary grimace.
And then he began to laugh.
It started as a slight chortle and then extended into long, rolling bursts of laughter that echoed in the chamber. I turned to my side. “How about it, Racegun? Do I look scared to you?”
Racegun said nothing. I could tell this wasn’t the first time he’d been a witness to whatever was about to transpire in the death chamber. Judging by his disturbed expression, though, he wasn’t any more thrilled to be present than I was, and that single fact frightened me as much as everything else I’d seen put together.
The Handler’s laughter came to an unhurried end, and he rubbed under his eye with index and middle fingers joined. I looked back at him and shrugged. “You want to fry this guy, that’s your prerogative. But don’t do it on my account.”
He sighed helplessly. “I suppose it is possible that the code has spread beyond my attempts to contain it. So I’m not going to ‘fry’ him, David.”
The Handler turned his stare back to me, the lines of his face falling long and straight save the angled bridge of his nose. “You are.”
My eyebrows shot up. “Excuse me?”
The Handler nodded to Racegun, who approached me and inserted a key into the lock connecting my handcuffs to the chain restraint belt. After freeing my hands, he stepped back, leaving me with a clear line of sight to the Handler, who gestured to the wall beside me. Beside a red telephone unit was a switch box with a long, Y-shaped assembly emerging, its handle canted toward the floor.
I remembered the young Somali woman’s words: If the opportunity to kill him seems certain, then do not proceed.
I was still handcuffed, but it would only take one violent impact of the back of his skull into the concrete floor to kill him if I was lucky; two or more if I wasn’t. Either way, his death would only take seconds.
He is going to test you, and when the moment seems perfect to complete your revenge, that is the very time you must not do it.
If ever I was facing a test, it was now.
I turned to him and said, “He’s done nothing to me.”
“If you do not obey my command, then the next body in the chair will be yours.”
I shook my head grimly and replied, before considering the consequences, “I don’t murder innocent people.”
The Handler smiled. “As you wish, David Rivers.”
Racegun grabbed me from behind, wrenching my arms back to immobilize me and rotating me sideways until I saw nothing but the sweating Indian’s paunchy frame tied to the chair, his eyes wild with fear.
The Handler pressed a button beside the switch, then raised his voice above the low, churning howl of an exhaust fan that activated in the ceiling. “You see, my friend, I am the storm cloud that terrifies those below while replenishing life.” He rested his fingertips on the handle of the switch. “And like the storm, I correct imbalances with a sudden… surge… of… power.”
The Indian chanted, “Life begins when you are absolutely free—”
The Handler threw the switch upward. A deep booming sound was followed by the sizzling hiss of an electrical current.
The Indian’s body convulsed and strained against the restraints before freezing in place.
His expression was inhuman, eyes bulging so much that I was certain one or both would burst from their socket. I watched his skin turn from earthen brown to a horrid crimson, his face swollen and warped as a froth of bloody vomit spilled down his chin. More horrendous was the grotesque smell that filled the room—burning hair and smoking flesh congealing into a repulsive stench as horrid as any of the decomposing corpses I’d pulled guard duty beside in the invasion of Iraq.
The Handler flipped the switch back and the Indian’s body slumped forward, stock-still, as if turned to stone by the jolt.
Releasing his hand from the switch, the Handler gestured to the man’s ghastly remains.
“David,” he said kindly, “the throne is yours.”<
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I threw my head back and felt it impact Racegun’s skull, but before I could resist further he swung me down effortlessly. My shoulder bounced hard off the ground, and I looked up to see him withdrawing a leather sap from his belt before bringing it down over my head with the grace and force of a pro golf swing. The pummeling impact against my head barely registered before my world turned to darkness.
I awoke to the sting of liquid against a tender welt on the side of my head, followed by the cool trickle of water pouring down my face. I realized, somewhat abruptly and with a chilling stab of fear, that it was coming from a sponge being pressed against my bare scalp.
They’d shaved my head.
I opened my eyes as a strap was tightened around my chin, pinning the sponge against the top of my head by way of the same metal cap that had served as the Indian’s final crown. Jerking my limbs, I found them already restrained by straps pinning me to the chair by wrists, ankles, lap, and chest. The sensation of the leather bindings mixed with the wet sponge on my head was enough to rile me into a near panic.
I felt a sudden twinge of regret for passing on my only chance to attack the Handler before I was strapped to the chair, but did I ever really have that chance?
“David.” The Handler stepped in front of me. “Tell me what the Silver Widow said to you. Her exact words, if you please.”
Even if the Handler somehow knew everything about my past, he couldn’t be aware of one fact—I’d never met the Silver Widow. I had revealed to no one that a young Somali woman had summoned me instead and told me exactly how to lie about the meeting.
You will tell them you met with a very old woman.
She did not remove her mask.
She did not speak.
Unless, of course, the Somali woman worked for him. Was this another test, orchestrated to assess my integrity under the most severe pressure? The Handler would certainly be capable of it. Either way, he was judging my response, and the wrong one would get me electrocuted.
I spoke in a low murmur with the strap under my jaw. “Why do you need to know about the Silver Widow?”
He spun toward the wall and raised his hand for the switch but halted as I replied quickly, “She didn’t speak.”
His hand lowered. He turned back to me, nostrils flaring, his face a volatile storm that unnerved me. But his voice was as placid as ever.
“Describe her to me, please.”
I fumbled for the right words, settling for, “She never removed her mask. But she was old. Frail.”
“You received the case immediately?”
“No. She made me smoke something from a pipe.”
“Smoke what, David?”
“I don’t know. I saw things.”
“A vision?”
“Yes.”
“David, what did you see?”
“My end.”
He screamed again, his voice a roar against the concrete walls, “What did you SEE?”
I waited for the echo of his words to evaporate before saying, “I put a .454 revolver in my mouth and blew my head off.”
The Handler looked away from me, the veins in his forehead receding into a mask of dignity once more. He stared at the wall behind me, his face contemplative, almost meditative, as he absorbed my words.
He stroked the side of his face, tapping an index finger against it three times before speaking. “It would seem the Silver Widow has saved your life, David. I need you for a mission. One that, unlike your last endeavor on my behalf, is under my direct protection.”
“You have another case to recover?”
“In a way. Your role is to protect my envoy.”
I looked to Racegun, then back at the Handler. “It would seem you’re not suffering from a lack of bodyguards.”
“Just so. But I need a guardian angel. Fail at that”—his voice was slow, methodical—“and allow any harm to come to my ambassador, and there is no intervention on this blue marble of ours that will keep your heart beating. You’ve faced death before, but never so agonizingly as I can offer it to you. Trust me when I say the chair in which you sit is the utmost mercy you’ll find me capable of. If my envoy returns alive, you and I will meet again under more agreeable circumstances. I give you my word on that.”
I didn’t doubt he was telling the truth. And at that next meeting, I would die.
But only after I killed him.
In that moment, I didn’t know how I’d be able to achieve his death—I would figure that out only in the days to follow, and under the most unusual of circumstances—but my singular thought was, Our next meeting is the last one for both of us, fucker.
I replied, “I look forward to it.”
A deep bow of his head. “Godspeed, David Rivers. Do not fail me.”
He strolled out of the room. Racegun approached, unhooking the leather strap from beneath my chin and pulling the metal cap off my head. The wet sponge fell to the floor with a sickening plop as he pulled the blacked-out goggles from his pocket, and I used my last second of sight to steal another glance at the modified 1911 on his hip. I saw the edge of a ported slide emerging from the holster before he affixed the goggles over my eyes and stretched the elastic strap backward, letting it snap hard against the back of my skull.
“You know,” I said, “that’s one hell of a gun.”
He replied with two words, his Southern accent every bit as polished as it had been before watching the Indian get electrocuted.
“I know.”
Then I heard him walk into the hall, a final snap of his fingers cracking off the tiled walls as he followed the sound of the Handler’s departing steps.
REDEEMER
Sua Sponte
-Of their own accord
2
January 2, 2009
Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, Washington
“Double Woodford on the rocks,” a woman said.
The sleeve of a blue service uniform took the empty glass beside me and set down a new one.
“You’re an angel,” I said to her, fishing another $100 bill from my pocket.
In the course of making travel arrangements that included the procurement of a new passport with my real name, the Handler’s people had given me a generous stipend. I had no intention of returning change.
A far better use of the money was purchasing a one-time access pass at the priciest airport lounge I could find by my gate and tipping generously enough on my initial glass of bourbon that I wouldn’t have to sit at the bar and interact with the loafer-wearing business elite in order to drink. I’d quickly reached a verbal arrangement with the server, and then retired to a comfortable, secluded seat facing a tall window and the overcast view of the Pacific Northwest. Unbuttoning my suit jacket, I stared into the mist, drinking alone.
“How much time do I have?” I asked as the bartender began walking away.
“Forty minutes to boarding.”
“Let’s do a refill in fifteen.”
“Certainly, sir.”
Then, reconsidering, I called after her, “Life is short. Let’s make it ten.”
I lifted the new glass and sniffed the surface of the dark liquid. Then I took a sip, welcoming another wave of slow, rolling warmth spreading throughout my chest. Lowering the glass to my lap, I closed my eyes again.
And, as had been the case since his bodyguards escorted me out of our meeting, I saw the Handler’s face.
From what I knew of him and his procedures, there was no question that his mind and reputation alone had compelled countless trained killers to do his will in a war that only he understood. Based on what I’d personally witnessed at home and abroad, his operations blurred the lines between military and criminal, murderous and political. But in the brief span of our meeting, he’d swung from total poise to complete rage, from casually threatening my execution to demanding my obedience on a mission of his choosing, its relevance to my own situation beyond my comprehension.
You couldn’t reason with such insta
bility, I decided—you could only kill it, or be killed by it. No other outcome seemed possible, save a temporary alliance that might forestall one of the previous two alternatives.
Whatever made him interrogate me about the Silver Widow had been of strategic import. But judging by his cryptic farewell I had no doubts I would die at our next meeting.
The only question: could I kill him first?
By my best estimate, the flight from the Handler’s airstrip to Seattle had taken two hours, but between the jet’s speed and the opaque windows, I still knew nothing about the location of his compound. They could have launched me halfway down the Pacific Coast or flown me in circles for half the trip.
A man spoke beside me.
“When the sky’s clear, you can see Mount Rainier out that window.”
I opened my eyes to see a hand gesturing to my front, holding a glass of something clear and carbonated. Directing my gaze back to the tall window, I saw a depthless expanse of white cloud against dull tarmac, luggage trucks, and taxiing aircraft.
I lifted my glass and took another sip of bourbon. “I’ll keep that in mind during the three days a year that Seattle gets a clear sky.”
“The sky might be clearing sooner than you think, David.”
I jerked my head sideways, looking past the lapels of a navy suit jacket to a lean face devoid of its usual thin glasses. The man’s eyes reflected a smug sense of amusement.
“Jesus, Ian,” I said in a low, disbelieving voice. “You need to get the fuck out of here. Now.”
Ian gracefully leaned a small carry-on bag against the chair beside me, then took a seat and crossed a loafer over the opposite knee.
My throat tightened with panic as I considered the implications of his appearance. What was he doing here—and with the Indian dead, how could Ian have possibly found me?
Was he a deep cover agent for the Handler?
He sipped his drink, the ice cubes softly clinking together. “You’re safe until you step foot outside the Sky Club; I’ve got an informant monitoring your surveillance.”