Specialist Priest was stationed in Augsburg for the next two and a quarter years and served ably without distinction during this time. He listened intently each day to conversations between radio operators in Prague and pilots flying over the Eastern Mediterranean. And eavesdropped on static-filled commands from Generals in Moscow excoriating their inferiors in Minsk, Warsaw or Budapest. He was there to hear the increased chatter all over the region in the days and weeks leading up to November 9, 1989 when the Berliner Mauer, better known to those in the U.S. as the Berlin Wall, was breached and finally collapsed under the weight of freedom.
This record of service, while not exemplary, was impressive enough. That is if it were true.
In reality, only about 25% of Lance’s military record featured fact. Yes, he did enlist and go to “basic” at Fort Leonard Wood. But unlike his fellow boot campers, Private Priest left base for extended periods. Sometimes days, sometimes weeks. All excused by his superiors and their superiors.
He did choose DLI over aviation maintenance, but the option was never presented by a lieutenant. It instead, came from high-ranking military officials; guided by the unseen hand of Seibel.
Lance did learn Russian and Arabic at the Defense Language Institute. But again, unlike the other students attending daily classes, Lance would disappear from base for weeks at a time. Yet he always passed every class. His grades were good, in the top quartile.
San Angelo, Texas is a place virtually no one would go voluntarily. That fact may be the very best reason the nation’s once, current and future spies and snoops go there for training. Private Priest was indeed assigned to Goodfellow AFB for SIGINT training, but again was not in class for a good portion of his lessons.
His tour at Gablingen Kaserne in Augsburg was an exciting time for the world as the Cold War went through a major defrost. Specialist Priest would have surely enjoyed the camaraderie and fellowship of his Army buddies had he been there. But Preacher wasn’t around much. Aside from orientation and a few select weeks of duty with those super-sensitive earphones planted on his head, Lance was basically an anomaly to others stationed in Augsburg. Anyone who took it upon his or herself to ask questions about Specialist Priest and his intermittent appearances would be told to mind their own business in no uncertain terms.
In fact, Priest was something of a minor mystery to everyone who encountered him during his first three-plus years in the US Army. He was there enough to be remembered, but unremarkable enough to have left only a bland impression. Ask any of his basic training platoon mates, DLI classmates or Augsburg station mates and the one consistent answer would be, “He was always nice.” Never got into a fight; never got into trouble; never cost anyone extra miles running or time in the stockade. Priest was the epitome of a military wallflower. And Geoffrey Seibel wouldn’t have it any other way. He kept his pupil fairly busy training to one day save the world.
Lance did as ordered for his completely non-illustrious military career. He was present and accounted for, nothing more. He was there enough to be remembered if brought up, but little more than a face to most he met.
Instead of Missouri, California, Texas and Germany, Lance Porter Priest spent the majority of his time from the winter of 1988 through late summer 1990 in the marshlands along the eastern coast of North Carolina. To be exact, Lance was a regular guest at Harvey Point Defense Testing Activity Center. This out of the way little base outside Hertford, NC is known in certain circles as the world headquarters for US counter-intelligence training – your basic land of the CIA spook. Not those plain vanilla CIA agent types either. No, Harvey Point produced a more virulent strain of operative. Graduates of the facility were schooled in close-quarter killing, killing from a distance and sometimes just plain killing everyone in sight.
Harvey Point was the official, and therefore unofficial, proving grounds for the CIA’s National Clandestine Service and more to the point, the playground for the Special Activities Division. SAD is the home of the CIA’s black ops units who famously destabilize nations, assassinate criminals and hunt and kill terrorists. Harvey Point is where most of these operatives get their uniquely violent education. Seibel’s SAD teams receive special treatment at the Point because of their secrecy and distinctive assignments.
As one of the nameless visitors of Harvey Point, Lance was exposed to the razor sharp point of cutting edge training in the art and science of murder and mayhem. Explosives, firearms, laser-sighted munitions, radio-frequency jamming, blade-inflicted evisceration, spinal separation by way of bare hands and any number of brutal forms of pain infliction and immediate death are basic courses for those visiting the Point.
And unlike the US Army, where Private, Specialist and later Corporal Priest achieved generally unremarkable marks at every level, Preacher excelled and impressed all comers at every turn at Harvey Point. He earned a reputation among fellow nameless trainees and his instructors as a blatantly ruthless individual. The kid was scary.
Preacher, as he would again and again be referred to by those at the Point, was noted for the only recorded, which of course would never be recorded, perfect score at Harvey Point. He was a sponge for all that was taught to him. Literally, everything.
And he was downright lethal in the application of his learned skills. If only his marksmanship scores were even in the middle of the pack. Try as he might, Lance just couldn’t shoot for shit. He could hit the target, but he could count on one hand the times he’d hit a bullseye.
But in every other component of his training, Preacher was a phenomenon. His ability to immobilize, disarm and generally annihilate those positioned opposite him in virtually every drill caused concern for Harvey Point instructors tasked with producing qualified counter intelligence CIA officers. He would not just learn the tactics taught to him by some of the world’s leading lethal experts, he would absorb their tutelage. It was like violent osmosis. Lance’s abilities to mimic, to replicate almost any sequence of motions, allowed him to eventually become his instructors. He would soak up their every word, move, inflection and intent.
During martial arts lessons, young Mr. Priest would take severe beatings but then so utterly overpower and outmaneuver his counterparts, no matter their size or strength, that others would choose not to face him. Foreign intelligence officers brought to Harvey Point would take one look at Lance’s intermittently empty then explosive eyes and question his sanity. Facing someone so utterly malevolent was unsettling, even to veterans of decades of Cold War battles. These hard men, and a few stony women, took with them the knowledge that some humans are indeed to be feared. This young man they only knew only as Preacher was one of these freaks.
Harvey Point was an awakening for Lance. He had never known such freedom, such endless and boundless opportunity. His first trip to the Point two weeks after beginning basic training at Fort Leonard Wood was a metamorphosis.
It was also a close cousin to the satisfaction the first time a sniper rifle fitted with a scope was placed in his hands at a firing range situated on a gentle rolling hillside at Harvey Point. If only he could shoot the damn thing and hit his intended target. After several months and several thousand rounds fired, he at last felt the satisfaction at making the perfect hole at the perfect center of the target 600 yards away. But he could never replicate that one shot. The days, weeks, months and years to follow at Harvey Point taught Lance that satisfaction was, and is, the result of control.
Being thrown by a master Filipino martial arts instructor with decades of preparation and experience was a prelude to the satisfaction of controlling the instructor’s fall within six months. Proving the throw was no fluke in ensuing classes cemented the unreserved feeling of satisfaction found only in control. The interruptions of his intense multidiscipline education at Harvey Point in order to put in a showing at basic, DLI, Goodfellow and Augsburg were periods of frustration.
Preacher couldn’t wait to get back. He had found something at the Point that brought complete satisfaction. Something h
e had felt only sporadically during his first 21 years. The Point was both playground and kingdom.
He knew in the minutes after making the deal with Seibel that his life would never be the same. He was embarking on a journey that would lead far from home into a wilderness without boundaries. It would very likely lead to his death. But maybe, just maybe, he could do a little good along the way. Give back to his country by killing bad guys.
The road atlases he had memorized did not contain the map he was to follow. He figured because explanations were so few and vague coming from the likes of Seibel that the one thing he would sacrifice would be control. He was delighted to find just the opposite.
Control was the heart and soul of his journey. And it was the defining element Seibel had recognized in him well before the moment they met in Dallas. Lance was a disciple of control. And that made him a weapon his country could use. It was not long before he was called upon to serve.
The room was dark, purposefully dark. The meeting about to take place required secrecy. The lone man sitting in the room waiting for the other party was impatient, tapping on the tabletop. Dim light lit the features of his face just enough to show his ethnicity. He was Arabic, possibly Persian. He was an emissary for a great leader on a mission that would change the balance of things. He hated to wait.
Chapter 21
“I’m not a good person.” The short statement broke five minutes of silence. Lance had been sitting with eyes closed thinking and drifting and listening to Ike and Tina Turner sing about a river. One of his mother’s favorites.
Braden had seen this before during their sessions over the past year and a half and let Lance take as long as he needed. Braden had no idea that during this silence a disembodied Lance hovered overhead reading his notes, looking at the photos of his wife and children on his desk and working the New York Times crossword puzzle folded on the table. Three across was tricky, but Lance finally got it – seven-letter word for wholeness -- gestalt.
“Why do you say that?” Braden was willing to play along, although he didn’t believe for a moment Lance thought of himself as patently bad.
“Because it’s true. I don’t have a problem with it like others do.” Lance opened his eyes. He was calm, collected and in his element sitting in an armchair next to Braden who was seated in his own armchair. They were like co-conspirators. The office was all about comfort with warm colors, subdued lighting and the window cracked to let in a pleasant breeze. Lance leaned toward the psychologist with a new look on his face.
“How do you do that?” Braden abruptly changed subjects and shook his head. He couldn’t help himself. The psychologist was willing to go down the “I’m not good” track, but Lance’s chameleon-like behavior was on full display today.
“Do what?” Preacher was all innocence. Happy the subject had changed so abruptly, his face altered again, right shoulder sagged, right foot bounced.
“Right there, you just did it again. I’m sitting here watching you and you are the third different person sitting across from me in the last minute. Your face, your eyes, your body language, they all just changed again.” Braden had his hand up to his chin with his elbow on the armrest. “You’re obviously our Preacher, but your physical manifestation completely changed right there. Very European.”
“How so?” Lance was nonchalant in his response, even putting his hand to his chin and elbow on the armrest mimicking the psychologist. His voice a playback recording of Braden’s.
“Jesus, there you go again. You just switched to me didn’t you?” Braden shook his head.
Lance’s next move was lightning fast. He reached out and plucked Braden’s glasses and put them on and grabbed the psychologist’s notebook and pen. When he settled back into the chair, his slouch, crossed leg, raised eyebrow and tilted head were an exact duplicate of Braden. It was unsettling for the shrink.
Lance smiled gently at his patient. “Tell me about your childhood. Your parents divorced when you were three. How did you feel? What was your reaction? Did you act out in any particular manner? Wet the bed? Suck your thumb?” The words, accent, inflection and slight rise of the voice in the last question were Braden. It was eerie, freaky.
The psychologist sat back, the real one, not Lance. “Man.”
Lance laughed. “You asked how I do it. I can honestly say I have no idea how, only that I can. It’s as natural as breathing. I know that response is unsatisfying to your practiced curiosity, but it’s that simple. You, everyone really, are a culmination of a series of actions and decisions that brought you to where you are right now. You are a map of your life. I can look at you and read it, see your story. Just as you like to play your little ‘book by the cover’ game with people. I guess I can just see a little deeper below the surface, below the cover.” He said all this as Braden, still in character. It was too easy. Lance sat back in the chair and handed the glasses, notebook and pen back. He was Lance again.
“But why? Where did it come from? When did it start for you?” Braden was leaning forward on his elbow. His fascination was palpable. This was case study material.
“Isn’t that your job to tell me?” With that, Lance was done with the subject. Braden had learned in the two years he’d been involved with Lance Porter Priest that Preacher could literally turn himself on and off. And a switch had just been flipped.
Braden returned to his notes and scanned the page. “Oh, I had one more question here from last time, probably from the first time we were together really.”
“Shoot.”
“How long can you go without lying?”
Lance laughed at that but didn’t answer.
“No really. What’s the longest you’ve ever gone without lying?” Braden was casual in his delivery, but he was digging for foundational stuff here. He got more than he expected.
“Seventeen days, four hours and 33 minutes.” Lance was matter-of-fact.
Braden jotted it down but couldn’t keep from smiling.
“Really.” Lance followed up. “You think I’m joking?”
“I know you’re messing with me. But that’s just part of the game with you.”
Lance turned all serious for the moment. “I would think that as a professional, you would do better at analyzing your subject. You asked a question and I gave a truthful answer. Those are admittedly hard to come by with me, so you’d better be cognizant of this.”
“You’re serious.” Braden tilted his head.
Lance continued, “Heart attack. And I know that is longer than most people can go. Think about it, how long have you ever gone without lying? One day, two? Be honest. What did you tell your son when he stunk it up at the plate last week, fanning at everything thrown at him? What did you say to your wife after she tried to cook tandoori chicken last month? Or when Seibel asked you about me doing this session with a different shrink this time? I think it goes without saying that you told little white lies in response to each of those.”
Braden steered clear of bringing himself into it. Lance had successfully done that in the previous sessions. “Seventeen days? I don’t think you’ve ever gone 17 hours or even 17 minutes without at least a little white lie. You’re like that joke about politicians.”
Lance knew the joke and gave him the punch line, “You can tell they’re lying because their lips are moving.”
Braden laughed. “Right.”
“You know, that’s only a little insulting.”
“How so?” Braden’s eyebrows furrowed.
“For you to consign me to the category of those who betray others’ trust through lies. That is somewhat hurtful.” Lance nodded.
Braden’s eyebrows furrowed deeper. A “V” appeared on his forehead and his procerus worked overtime. “Isn’t every lie a betrayal of trust? Doesn’t every lie hurt someone just a little?”
“Ah hah.” Lance got a little excited. “I love the opportunity to educate the educated. And I’ll do that with a single question. Can you show me, in one concrete example, whe
re my proclivity for prevarication hurt someone?”
This was the most lively Braden had seen Lance. “Easy. You told your mother you were joining the Army to find yourself. A boldface lie.”
“And she was happy and protected in that knowledge.” Lance responded.
“She would be hurt to know the truth.”
Lanced raised a finger. “Now, there are your semantics at work. You perceive my telling her a nuanced version of reality, a partial truth if you will, as a potentially hurtful thing. When truly her reality is protected. She is at peace with my decision regardless of my true purpose.”
“Now that’s semantics. You’re slicing and dicing it there.” Braden chuckled.
“And the beauty of my nuanced, shaded and finely crafted fabrications is their ability to change, to grow and evolve to become reality.” Lance raised his hands for effect to complete the lesson. “I don’t lie, I tell future truths.”
“Damn.” Braden could only look down to his notes. He would give up his license and his years in the business to spend more time with this chameleon, this shape-shifter who had created his own reality. This was not schizophrenia or psychopathy. This was sheer control, power. There was no delusion here.
Braden was sitting just feet away from easily the most diabolical mind he’d ever encountered, and he’d seen his share of really messed up humans. But the undeniable truth behind the wall of lies was just that, undeniable. It was real. And Stuart Braden was proud to be part of it.
The kid was certainly messed up big time. But he was also brilliant. Scary brilliant. Braden could never tell a soul or share this experience with his peers. He could only delve into the particulars with Seibel. And Papa wasn’t buying any of it. Braden was pleased as punch to be the one probing this kid’s psyche. He was also thrilled this kid was on his side. Better to have a natural born killer on your team than against you.
The Perfect Candidate: A Lance Priest / Preacher Thriller (No. 1) Page 14