*****
Slowly the sun rose only to reveal that I was in a quite rundown sector of the city. My white skin shone like an alabaster vase set off against the mahogany background of the rest of humanity located here.
I was not looked upon kindly by those I passed in this section of the city to say the least. Up ahead I saw a street gang comprised of some young black toughs and a few Asians.
It was clear already that there was going to be an altercation at what they no doubt took as an invasion of their territory. So be it, as I was willing to walk through hell, in order to save Desirée.
I heard the screech of a car’s tires and glancing to the side I witnessed a beat up taxi cab swerve in to park just ahead of me. A black man popped out of the driver’s seat and stared at me over the top of the car with a look that said he thought I was crazy.
“Hey you fool what you walking around here in your bedroom slippers for? We don’t need no killing.”
Glancing forward to the approaching gang I said, “I’m in no danger.”
“Yeah, I can see that as I’ve got eyes enough to see your one serious dude, but ain’t none of those kids up there needs to be dying just yet when they’ze got a heap of repenting to do!” Then making a gesture he said, “C’mon I’ll take you where you’ll fit in better white boy.”
Obligingly, as I was only too eager to not have a fight on my hands, I slipped into the passenger seat and my driver drove away from the curb to the tune of insults from the decidedly delinquent pack of boys trying to be men.
Looking to my savior I said, “Thank you.”
“No problem. You look like you could use a break. Where you need to go? Seriously man you got to get a serious pair of shoes or something! It done looks like you just walked out of a prison after you was done partially burnt alive!”
I turned my face away so the irony of that statement didn’t show. I told him where to go to let me off and he stared at me askance and exploded out with, “Are you plumb out of your mind dude? I mean you’ze looks Russian, sounds Russian and look to be one tough son of a brick, but you ain’t like dem guys! They be pure evil them Ruskies! You sure I can’t take you somewhere else?”
“I’m sure.” I said.
“All right, but it’s your funeral. I just hope they don’t try to blow up this here Negro for done delivering yuh.”
The city blocks went by fast and before I was quite prepared for it we arrived at the underground rave den of iniquity that went by the name of Little Russia. The taxi driver well knew that I surely didn’t have the means to pay him and yet he’d brought me here.
Turning my gaze, from the security detail holding back the crowd of disaffected youth and bored with life yuppies, I extended out my hand to my benefactor in a rare gesture on my part to a fellow human being. He took my hand and shook it all the while shaking his head and saying, “You be one crazy dude! Sure there ain’t be anyone you be want’n me to call like 911?”
Smiling I shook my head no and got out of the car. Immediately I noticed the two toughs by the entrance straighten and glance at each other in as much alarm as their stoic countenances would allow.
I shoved my way through the crowd, who soon made way before me with wide-eyed concern. Both toughs by the door had one of their hands slipping behind their back to grasp the weapon that was stuffed there.
Holding my hands up I said in a conciliatory manner, “I come in peace. I wish to see Ivan. No need to go all American cowboy, as you can see I am unarmed.”
The two toughs truly didn’t know what to do, but a cool voice from out of the shadows of the club’s shadowed entrance said, “Since when you need weapons?”
Orlov, a fellow mercenary of death, I hadn’t seen in years stepped into the light.
My eyebrows lifted appreciably in regards to the newest element of the moment. So Ivan still had the clout to have a killer like Orlov in his back pocket or was Orlov a plant to make sure Ivan toed the line and behaved himself?
Time would tell as to the answer of that question. I said nothing in response to Orlov.
Emboldened then, Orlov inquired, “What you want with Ivan? You forget or something about what he promised you would happen if you step on his turf again?”
“I don’t forget much. Now take me to him.”
Orlov debated a moment longer before stepping to the side and saying, “After you, comrade.”
I didn’t hesitate, but stepped forward into the ringing hallway that echoed of electronica music on steroids.
Soon it was as if I was back in Russia. It even smelled like the Russia I had been raised in as an assassin.
My position in the hierarchy had been low at the beginning, but I had risen through the ranks steadily until there had been only me and Alexi at the top. It was a past I now viewed only with shame.
I made my way through the twisted weave of undulating dancers rocking out on planets of their own dysfunctional realities. Finally the gambling hub of the club came into view and I advanced with purpose through it.
One old gun hand of Ivan’s troop of killers saw me and with his florid heavy set face blanching white in alarm he went for his gun. My war was not with these bottom feeders of society and I for sure was not going to allow myself to be taken out by one.
Deftly my hand flipped up a crystal champagne glass from a nearby table and I skipped it ahead with a quick flick of the wrist that resulted in the glass shattering across the man’s face and cutting it badly. He dropped his gun and fell to the floor heavily, as he clutched at his bleeding face with his fat fingers, to the tune of Orlov’s laughing.
Orlov pounded me on the shoulder as we moved past the blubbering henchmen and said, “You haven’t changed at all Victor! That is good!”
Oh I had, actually, and being here and taking part in the mannerisms of another lifetime ago was only to painfully making me aware of just how much I had changed. How empty life was when reduced to petty power plays such as these and nights spent with whores who would be another’s before nightfall fell again.
Poker tables filled with faces of those I knew and blackjack tables full of those, who didn’t know better than to gamble in a house that always won, watched me in unison as I passed through them and down a long hallway at the back of the club. The hallway was gaily lit with overbearing light fixtures of metallic gold that were jarringly set off against a painted wall surface the color of blood.
It was ghastly in terms of taste, but it brought memories of home to me like little else could. What was home though, but a memory of pain.
Finally we reached the big doors at the end of the hall, which opened under the urging of two more sons of the motherland. All in all there were now five of them to choke the life out of me if Ivan so ordered.
Ivan himself had gone little changed through the years other than a greying of the hairs at the borders of his aristocratic face. He wore a smile, but it didn’t extend to his eyes.
He stood up from behind his massive mahogany desk and with false cheer said, “Ah the prodigal son has returned at last. Tell me is it now that you intend to complete your betrayal and kill the father too?”
There was a solitary chair before the massive desk, but instead of sitting down in it, I grasped its back and spun it backwards to the original position. The sound of drawn out weapons was loud within the stillness of the room.
With a sardonic lift of an eyebrow I viewed my five armed escorts with guns raised and pointed at my head. “You too Orlov?” I asked, as if it was a joke that they held guns upon me at all.
Orlov’s face reddened and he brought his gun down to his waist. Turning back to Ivan I jerked a thumb over my shoulder, “Is this your best? You better tell them to aim lower. All I have to do is shift to the side enough for two of them to miss my head and you would be dead twice over!”
Ivan’s face was coldly implacable as he nodded tightly and admitted, “They don’t make them like they used to. It’s this American food, it poisons the senses and al
l I’m left with is sides of beef who know how to pull triggers and little else. Now get out!” Ivan said in direction to the men behind me.
Uncertainly they drew back out of the room, but Orlov hesitated long enough to say, “What about him?”
“If he wanted me dead I’d be so already. Now leave us and attend to the children, which it seems that’s all you’re cut out to handle anymore.”
Orlov, with first-class cuffing outlined in red upon his face, hastily slammed the double doors closed. Ivan looked from the closed doors to me.
An odd look passed across his face for a moment that was hard to read. Then surprisingly he said, “It’s good to see you again, Victor. If only it were under better circumstances. You know I have to kill you. It is a thing of honor that I must do.”
“I didn’t kill Alexi, Ivan.”
“No, then who did?”
“You did. You put him in a position of having to choose between loyalty and duty. From there it was an easy progression that led him to wish to escape the game we live altogether. I thought him foolish at the time, but now I see. It is better to be free rather than chained by either misplaced honor or duty to those deserving of nothing but death. No Ivan, I may have pulled the trigger, but the system of belief we both served was who elected your son to be a sacrifice.”
Ivan kept eye contact with me for a long moment before looking away as if seeing beyond the walls of the gilded room fit for a Czar of Russia. Then he spoke, “I have had much time to think upon it and the truth is…… the truth is that you are right. Please have a seat.”
Respectfully, I sat down straddling the chair before me, as Ivan sat down upon his leather bound gilded throne. We stared introspectively at each other for a moment.
Finally Ivan spoke, “You have changed much old friend. In fact I am persuaded to believe that you are not entirely the same man. Tell me what happened.”
Looking down I gazed a moment at the crafted edge of the mahogany desk before admitting, “A woman.”
“Ahhh, it is always the case.”
“No, she was but the start. She has a born-again Spirit of God within her and being with her and seeing the difference made me wish for the same Spirit to be within me. I am truly different now, only because of the Son of God and His Father’s Spirit, which is even now within me, in place of the demons I once held.”
“I see. And now they have taken her from you.”
“Yes.” I said looking up into Ivan’s surprisingly emotional gaze.
His voice trembling with the emotion I saw he said, “It is always the way. They take away what we love most as a means of crushing us. First it was my Alexi and now my Natasha. The pressure never lets up!” He finished with by slamming his fist down onto the table. It was his turn to look down in introspection.
Softly I asked, “When did they take Natasha?”
“A year ago. I…… I cannot help you Victor.” He said looking up with misery reflected in his gaze. Then he added raising one finger into the air, “I have one weakness, my family.”
He looked away and I allowed a moment to pass before saying, “Your family is gone. If Natasha is not already dead then she at the least has been turned against all that she was. And yet Ivan you have family yet, if you but have eyes to see.”
He looked to me and pointing to myself and then to him I said, “We are brothers of the same tortured past. We were sired and bred to be steel implements of destruction with intellects as hard as ice. The honor you speak of is but the control mechanism that they installed within us. We have no honor in anything we have done! Nothing! I regret it all and I would that I had never been in existence, except for one thing. You see me as strong, but I have been a man of weakness all my life. No more! I have authority as never before, because of what my woman’s God has done in me and I will not bow down to oppression’s control and obey its orders any longer! No more!”
I stood up and leaning over the desk I pulled Ivan to his feet with one hand and said, “Brother it is time to be free of all this!” I said in a gesture with my other hand to a room filled with the vanities of this life.
“It is nothing! Can you not see that it has cost you everything of true value? Alexi and now Natasha and worst of all your own immortal soul. Have the crumbs they’ve left fall been enough to make it all worth the damage they have done to you?”
“No!” Ivan said passionately.
Pulling free of my grasp he turned and went to a wall and pulled back a painting. Revealed on the wall was a switch panel.
He flipped the switches and immediately the faint echo of music, with the echo of hell in its ring, ceased from sounding out. Pressing an intercom button Ivan said, “The club is closed. Get out!”
Turning back to me with an athleticism that belied his age he said, “Come my friend. I think I know of why you came to me. I know where it is that they have taken her and better yet I have something that you will need in order to rescue her.”
Breathing out in relief I said with wonder, “You still have it?”
Ivan nodded with a proud smile.
“How ever did you manage to hide it? They read Alexi’s mind through his host demons and yet he did not know of where the device had gotten to.”
“That is because I stole it from him. I knew it would only lead to his demise, but now I would that I had never done such a thing as he might yet be alive. No matter. The past is behind us and it is left to us to make the most of the present.”
I started around the table toward him, but he held up a hand and I stopped, “Victor I have a request, a favor if you will.”
“What is it?”
“I want revenge.” The older man said shaking his fist with sudden fury from eyes that smoked of the intense passion he felt.
Coming closer I put my hands on his shoulders and said, “I will do all that my God enables me to do to rescue what is most precious of all to me. To that end there will be much destruction I feel, but if you want true revenge Ivan, then you have the means within your own act of choice. Your soul is what they crave most and if you give it to my God then you deny them what they want above all else. Redemption is possible for even such as we. See it here in my eyes. Don’t hesitate for too long like I did before you claim the promise and the freedom that it brings!”
Staring intensely into my gaze Ivan raised his hands to my shoulders and said, “I won’t, as I feel the truth of what you speak even more keenly then you know. Even if we all die it will not be in vain, if we deny them of what they have tortured us in pursuit of!”
Smiling I said, “Exactly, old friend.”
Ivan nodded and then said, “Come let us be about it then.”
I let go and Ivan started off across the room at the same moment that Orlov burst through the double doors. Fury wreathed across his features he started to raise his gun, only to have his features go slack with surprise and have his eyes track down to the blade stuck fast within his chest where a heart should’ve been.
The pistol falling from his slack fingers he raised his stunned gazed to Ivan, who had thrown the knife, only to hear Ivan say dismissively, “You were never very good Orlov. Now go to your reward. If God will have mercy upon me then it is my pleasure to say that I won’t be joining you in the destination that you are now embarked upon.”
Orlov followed the path of the pistol to the floor already too far gone to be saved from where his life’s choices had led him. Ivan punched a spot on the wall behind his desk and a tile on the floor slid back as a pedestal rose from the floor not too far from where Orlov lay.
A black belt coiled up on the pedestal was all that was visible, but I approached it with a reverence for what it represented. I hesitated to pick it up, but Ivan said, “Take it my friend and save your woman even as you have helped me to save my life from its likely conclusion.”
I reached forward and claimed the prize that Alexi, in his desire to be free from the system of control, had stolen.
Ivan did something else at his
desk and a secondary doorway opened up off to the one side of the room. Casually he said, “I think you’ll find everything else you need in the rooms beyond. Now go.”
“You’re not coming?” I asked.
“I will be in contact with you when air support will be needed for the escape. The place they have gone to is in Colorado. I believe you know the place, as it is their primary base for the retraining and reprogramming of both existing and new field agents of darkness. Take one of the radios along with you. I’ll only be able to get her out by air, which means you will have to make it out on foot using your own devices.”
“I understand. Thank you Ivan!”
Ivan nodded and then pulled open a drawer of his desk. He took a book out that I recognized as being a Bible and said, “Now I need a little time to myself.”
I nodded and headed for the hallway that had opened up to the one side of the room.
“Victor?”
I looked back to Ivan and he said, “Remember me when you pull the trigger old friend.”
I lifted the belt in a salute of promise and continued on down the hall. The hidden wall door behind me slid shut even as the illuminated hallway stretched out before me.
As I walked I imagined Ivan turning away to sit down and complete his journey into faith. The God of my woman surely did work in mysterious ways.
Surely the most mysterious of all being how men such as Ivan and I could call upon the God in heaven and be saved of our many transgressions and become heirs of the promise of redemption that we had spent the majority of our lives in opposition against.
“Praises to Your Name, Almighty God!” I whispered out through my lips, as I stepped into an illuminated room filled with all the tools of war one could ever ask for. Looking around at the racks and shelves filled with everything a warrior could want, my sharpest regret was that I could not take it all with me.
Instinctively I felt that this room and all of its contents had once been the property of the only friend that I’d had in a hitman’s world. We’d been equals until the day I’d killed him.
Picking up a sword nearby that I’d seen Alexi wield many times I said, “Old friend it looks like I’m going to borrow you yet again. I wasted no time then, as I threw myself into donning the trappings of my former life, pursuit of seeking the deaths of others, only this time I had a purpose.
To save a life. Never had I in my former life fought for so noble an ideal, as life, had always been cheap and of little regard.
On the flip side I rather found myself wanting to keep on living right now. I knew that wasn’t possible though as long as Desirée was in the hands of my former handlers.
There would be no rest on my part until she was free. My chances of rescuing her were less than one in a 1000 and yet I’d seen quite a few miracles performed as of late.
Stranger and grander things had happened. Besides the influence of the supernatural alone I was also now in possession of the belt.