Face of the Assassin Read online

  Parking the car on the third floor of a garage and returning to the plane by foot took the Aussie ten minutes. Climbing the stairs, entering the plane and not finding his passenger triggered a head swiveling search of the fuselage. The Do Not Disturb sign got his attention and he stepped back, leaning his ear toward the door. Ricardo, the flight attendant said, “Please mind the sign.”

  Startled, the Aussie said, “I was just… you know… wondering.” Addressing Ricardo directly, he asked, “When are we leaving?”

  “As soon as we are cleared for departure,” said Ricardo. “Can I serve you a beverage?”

  “Sure, what kind of beer have you got?”

  “I can only serve you alcohol in the air. I have several soft drinks and some juice.”

  “Nah, I’ll just have water.”

  When Ricardo returned with a bottle the Aussie asked, “How long has it been since we first showed up?”

  “About fifteen minutes.”

  “Is that all?”

  “I did not record the time you arrived. I do record the time of our flight from the minute the stairs are brought up and secured. That record is required by law,” said the persnickety attendant.

  “I see. You been doing this long?”

  “I’ve flown over 1.5 million miles.”

  “Wow.”

  “I’ve been to every continent and almost every country.”

  “Really?”

  “I haven’t been to Greenland.”

  “Is there a flight there?”

  “Not one that will hire me,” said Ricardo who laughed hysterically at his own joke. The Aussie chuckled a bit, but he was surprised at the hilarity erupting from Ricardo.

  Boots pounding up the stairs of the aircraft snapped both of them out their jovial moment.

  A Chinese soldier with a military rifle appeared at the top of the stairs, stepped into the plane, and stood at attention. A middle-aged man dressed in a dark, somewhat wrinkled suit appeared next. Behind him, another armed soldier remained on the stairs.

  “Greetings, I am Officer Liu. I must inspect the occupants of this plane.” He did not ask for any credentials. He simply searched the cockpit, the passenger area, and the lavatory before reaching the sleeping cabin with its Do Not Disturb sign. Before knocking on the door, he looked at Ricardo, who shrugged his shoulders. Striking the door three times he said, “Police, open up.”

  There was no immediate response. He knocked again, much harder and shouted, “Open up, this is the police!”

  The door latch snapped, the knob turned under the Do Not Disturb sign and the wooden panel swung open revealing Javier Perez dressed in pajamas.

  Yawning and rubbing his eyes, Javier said, “How can I help you?”

  The officer stepped past him to enter the room. He noted the rumpled bedsheets as he searched beneath it. He examined the closet, finding nothing of interest. Eyes gazing around the room one more time, he returned to the front of the passenger area.

  “Jian Wong,” he said with intentional suddenness. “Do any of you know Jian Wong?”

  Ricardo and the Aussie both shook their heads.

  Javier tried to stifle another yawn as he shook his head. Appearing more wakeful he said, “Excuse me, Officer, but I do not know that name.”

  “Where’d you get that cut on your face?” asked Officer Liu.

  Gingerly touching his face Javier replied, “I was cut by a branch as I rode on a double decker tour bus.”

  Liu nodded with a gruff scowl. After one last scan of the faces, he uttered a single terse Chinese word and the two soldiers started marching. He followed them down the stairs and across the tarmac.

  Ricardo and the Aussie turned to look at Diegert.

  “What the fuck?” said the Aussie. “What do we call you now?”

  “Look, I don’t even have a name for you yet,” said Diegert.

  “You can call me Wayne.”

  “All right, Wayne, I’m Javier Perez.”

  “What? You’re like, Hispanic now? How did this happen? You were Asian when you went in that room.”

  “Appearances can be deceiving.”

  “Yeah, but how did you do it? Some kind of super theatrical, special effects makeup?”

  “Yes,” said Javier.

  He then looked at Ricardo, who was staring at him like a love struck puppy.

  “Ricardo, so good to see you. How have you been?”

  “I’m wonderful, sir. Can I serve you a beverage?”

  “Yes, of course. You know what I like. Thank you.”

  Diegert had to play at being someone else again. Javier used the jet all the time and Ricardo probably traveled with him frequently.

  The cockpit received clearance. The stairs came up and the Gulfstream taxied to the runway.

  Wayne wouldn’t let go. “How do you do it so the stuff doesn’t sweat off? That’s the biggest problem isn’t it?”

  “It’s a pixelated polymer that acts as hydrophobic ionized particles. They adhere to the skin and avoid the pores of the sweat glands keeping them unblocked. The sweat comes to the surface and evaporates.”

  “Wow, it sure is convincing.”

  “Yeah, but I’m glad to be me again.”

  Ricardo brought him a glass of red wine. “I hope you like it.”

  Taking the long stemmed glass, Diegert sniffed the aroma and took a test sip. “Yes it’s lovely. Thank you.”

  Ricardo reacted with a hint of surprise and Diegert wondered if Javier was polite enough to thank his servants. He also realized he had no idea how to tell one wine from another.

  Ricardo said, “We all have to take our seats and buckle up. The captain is ready to take off.”

  The acceleration in a Gulfstream is magnificent, and Diegert really loved the feeling of power that pressed him into the cushions of his extra wide leather seat. Getting out of China, having completed his mission, was a relief. Wearing the face of the asshole Javier Perez kind of sucked.

  CHAPTER 7

  When a steady cruising altitude had been reached, Diegert asked his passenger, “So Wayne, what more can you tell me about yourself?”

  “From what I can tell we might be in the same business. You see, sometimes when I’ve completed a job I have blood splattered clothes and I’m running for my life. It seemed likely to me that when you left that party someone else was lying dead on the floor. Am I right?”

  Diegert took a sip of his wine as he nodded his head.

  “The bloke who hired me,” said the Aussie, “contracts out jobs of a fatal nature. The work pays well, but the risk is enormous.”

  “You’re from Australia, correct?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Which city?”

  “I was raised in Melbourne but I last lived outside Sydney.”

  “How did you come to be… stuck in China?”

  “Unlike you, I did not have a reliable plan for extraction. The bugger who was supposed to get me out got nervous and left me at the scene of the crime, as it were. I’ve been living underground seeking a way out of this huge but locked down country.”

  Ricardo brought Wayne a can of Heineken beer.

  “It’s hard to hide in China if you aren’t Asian.” Wayne said as he looked at the label on his can of beer. “An Asian can hide out almost anywhere in the world, but if you’re not Asian, the Chinese assume you’re up to no good.”

  Diegert gave him a nod.

  Wayne leaned forward in his seat, “The trick is to convince those who will hide you that you are there to make trouble for their enemies. I was able to live in a family’s home for two weeks once I convinced them I was going to kill members of their Triad rivals.”

  Wayne popped the can and took a big swig.

  “I used their internet connection to find the posting for this job. I negotiated the flight out and now China never knew I was there or that I left. The only people who knew will never talk. They’re the criminals who hired me, or they’re dead. Now that’s an assassin’s
success.”

  Raising his can of beer, Wayne toasted himself and swallowed several gulps.

  Diegert looked at the man and saw a guy 45 – 50 years old, who at one time was probably considered handsome, but now looked worn out. The skin on his face was sun beaten with deep wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. His receding hairline of gray and dirty blond was kept covered by a filthy ball cap with an embroidered sailboat on the front. His unshaved face sported gray stubble and flossing was definitely not a daily habit. In unlaundered clothes, he sat in the wide leather chair with the paunch of his abdomen far more prominent than the pectorals of his chest. Well on his way to consuming his first beer, Wayne struck Diegert as both intriguing and cautionary. He looked like a guy whose skills would include fixing old lawn mowers, playing horseshoes and fishing. He did not project; international assassin. Diegert realized that only time can truly tell how life will change a man.

  Diegert began, “Can I ask how long you’ve been an… an assassin?”

  Turning to make eye contact Wayne said, “We’re going to speak plainly are we?”

  Diegert nodded. “We’re 30,000 feet up. I can send Ricardo into the cockpit and it’ll be just you and me.”

  Wayne shifted his gaze to Ricardo and nodded. Diegert pointed to the cockpit and their loyal servant took the jump seat and closed the door behind him.

  “Not counting the time I spent as a soldier, I’ve been contracting for fifteen years now.”

  “How’d you get started?”

  “The Government of Australia got me started. I was just a soldier and then they said I could be part of the Special Forces. I felt so special, and I had much cooler gear than I did as a grunt. We went on night raids in Iraq. We were searching for specific people, targeting them to be killed. We never used the word, assassinate, but rather said things like; ‘direct action’, ‘neutralize’ and ‘end phase’. No doubt though we were sent into the night to kill guys in their homes.”

  “Sounds brutal.”

  “When a government sees itself as its own authority, the rules become self-serving and the sanctity of human life is secondary to the economics of those in power. You must be aware of this?”

  “Yeah, Yeah, I know what you mean.”

  “My commander selected me for a single operator action. I had to infiltrate an estate to kill a Malaysian Army General. We practiced for a couple of weeks in a mansion that was something like his. I learned my assignments, hit my marks in practice, I was stoked and ready to go. In Malaysia I do my recon, finalize my plans and select my time. I make my entry under the cover of darkness. The mansion is different than we practiced, but I improvise. I keep my cool and move to the target site like I’m Sam Fisher himself. I enter the general’s quarters and shoot him dead in bed. Well they had some kind of surveillance, either in his bed, or on his body or in the fucking air I still don’t know, but the alarms go off and the whole Army floods into the house. Every light is on, the dogs are loose and the guns are drawn. Unlike video games I was caught with no escape.”

  “A nightmare.”

  “Worse, you don’t wake up and have it all go away. This is where the statement we all hear, but figure will never happen comes true: This a covert operation. In the event you are discovered your actions will be disavowed and all knowledge of your mission will be denied. No efforts will be made to secure your release from custody foreign or domestic. No doubt fucking chilling words when they describe your situation.”

  “You obviously weren’t executed.”

  “Close though. My captors wanted to know who sent me. As far as I knew it was the Aussie SF. These guys wanted to know precisely who, so they pressed me into service as a double agent. They kidnapped my Filipino wife Emilene and held her hostage.”

  “Holy shit, the government did this?”

  “Don’t kid yourself, governments fight dirty and consider themselves above reproach. They held her in an undisclosed location and showed me a live video feed.”

  “What did they want?”

  “They wanted to know who in the ASF ordered the strike. So they let me go. When I show up at the ASF station, they’re shocked to see me. They cover it well but I could see they did not expect me to return.”

  “Betrayal.”

  “Yup. You’ve been trained to be lethal, and you’re highly skilled, but you’re still expendable. It took me two weeks until I finally had this captain at knife point for me to learn that the contact for the job came from within the Malaysian Army.”

  Diegert leaned back in his chair and stroked the chin of Javier Perez. “A double layer of betrayal.”

  “A high ranking colonel, Nocroe Azera, arranged for the hit so he could ascend. I brought the evidence back to the people who sent me to investigate and they freed my wife. Then they asked me to kill Azera. I did. I left and I will never go back to Malaysia.”

  “Your wife was saved?”

  “Yes she was, but she divorced me immediately. Looking back now, I can’t blame her. She raised my daughter, who I have not seen since she was little.”

  “So you have an ex-wife and a daughter?”

  “Well yeah, but really I have no family. I have no contact or relationship with either of them. It’s better not to have vulnerabilities.”

  “You’re all alone.”

  Wayne raised his eyebrows as he nodded. “I have a brother but I squared up with him long ago and told him I would never contact him or my parents again. It’s like a damn penance for the sins of the profession.” Wayne swigged the last of his beer and walked over to the mini fridge to get another. “What else do you want to know?”

  “What are your preferred methods?”

  “I like guns, pistols for sure. With a suppressor it is the surest, quickest, most portable method there is.”

  “Agreed, but sometimes it’s not right or available.”

  “Well then you’ve got blades. Always a bloody mess and if you don’t know what you’re doing, you can stab forever and still not kill the bugger.”

  “It can be like… surgery though if you understand basic anatomy.”

  “Yeah, I was never good in school. I always carry a blade for back up but I try not to rely on it. You’ve got to be careful with explosives too. You can blow yourself up or a whole bunch of people you didn’t mean to.”

  “Right, you have to understand chemistry and the nature of volatile compounds.”

  “See, more school stuff. I don’t usually blow people up unless someone else made the bomb.”

  “Staged accidents?”

  “Yeah, push a bloke off a high building or drown someone, those have worked. I sabotaged a ladder once and this construction supervisor fell and was impaled on a post.”

  “Bare hands?”

  Wayne turned away to look out the window at the night sky. “Using your hands is the most intimate way of killing anyone. To feel the strength and determination in every fiber of their being. To know that there is no way they will give in. You sense their struggle to remain alive and you have to have a greater resolve to kill than they have to survive. It’s wrenching, it’s dispiriting, and it’s painfully desperate. Isn’t it?” Wayne turned to look at Javier.

  Diegert nodded. “It sure is.”

  “There are kills you can’t forget and never want to discuss. They’re shame inducing and hang over you like a curse.”

  They dissolved into silence and Diegert thought of killing Klaus Panzer, or at least the man he thought was Panzer. The intensity of the moment and the violence necessary to stop his life was cathartic, but the expelled angst left an emptiness, which reverberated in the cavern of his soul.

  “Who are your customers?” asked Diegert, interrupting the mutual moment of contemplation.

  Letting out a big sigh, Wayne began, “Governments mostly, corporations, desperate angry people who hate someone, and cowards.”

  “Not a real reputable bunch.”

  “I suppose there are elements of good in what we do, but it’s all
wrapped up in a bloody rag that no one wants to acknowledge. The goodness of your accomplishment is mired by the extrajudicial means in which it is carried out. The law is a hypocrisy that must be skirted by covert actions that are deniable, yet you are subject to prosecution if you’re caught. No acknowledgment, no accolades, just a fat envelope or numbered account and a trail that better not be able to be followed. A mystery never to be solved or even investigated.”

  “I guess you got your sense of satisfaction from somewhere other than your employment.”

  “If you feel good about killing people, then you need a psych consult.”

  “How do you cope?” asked Diegert.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like emotionally?”

  Wayne expressed incredulity at the question, “Well not like you, mate. I never drink wine. Beer, scotch, vodka, even tequila, but never wine.”

  They smiled at each other while Wayne chuckled. Diegert though remained contemplative. He felt like he could ask a question he would never ask as himself. As Javier he was less embarrassed and more emboldened.

  “Do you ever cry?”

  Wayne guzzled his beer and got up to get his third from the fridge. Back in his seat he said, “Boys Down Under don’t cry. I won’t admit to crying, but in the darkest hour and when the weight of your sins is as heavy as a millstone around your neck, the only way to release that pain is to cry like a baby. Lots of blokes will deny this, even on their deathbeds, but I believe you already know the windows to your soul need to wash out your sins.”

  Diegert’s slow nod was almost imperceptible.

  Wayne got up, walked over to Diegert and touched Javier’s face. He stroked Javier’s chin and traced the cut on his cheek. “Polymer make up is bullshit, This is real skin.” Running his fingers into the dark hair, “This is real hair, and it’s not chink hair.”

  With his gaze locked on Diegert, Wayne pressed, “Tell me the truth. I know Crepusculous is pushing the science.”

  “You know about Crepusculous?”