The Evasion

The Man in the Black Suit

The Evasion

A figure dashed from the alleyway, unaware of the crosshairs marking him for death.  Across the street, there was the stealthy spit of a suppressed rifle shot, and a shell casing tinkled on the bed of a truck parked parallel to the river.

The bullet slapped into the man’s forehead, dropping him instantly.

But there was an error: a second man followed the first from the alley.

In the truck bed, Aakil cursed profanely as he realized what had just occurred.  It was too late.

A hotwired SUV slammed into Aakil’s vehicle at one hundred kilometers per hour.  Glass shattered and metal buckled with protesting screeches.  In one car, airbags expanded with a whoosh.  In the other, a man died.

Both vehicles slid and tumbled into the water.  They sank instantly.

The body of the gunman known as Aakil floated up, but in the SUV, a man in a black suit was restrained by his seatbelt.

Even though he’d intended to take down both vehicles, the impact still stunned him into immobility for several precious moments as the metal coffin plummeted silently.  Water gushed past the gaping mouth of the missing windshield.  Fumbling with his seatbelt buckle, the man freed himself and took a last gulp from the dwindling air-pocket in the top of the SUV.  Then he swam free of the vehicle, slipping away as it sank into the murk.

The Elbe’s freezing waters gripped him as he shed his jacket and pawed off his shoes.  Taking a moment to orient himself, he began swimming.

The man who’d killed Aakil breast-stroked a hundred yards downriver and clambered unnoticed to the shore.  At the spot where the cars had gone off, a crowd was gathering.

The man surveyed faces.  Only one of his pursuers still lived, and that man was located standing on the edge of the congregation, talking animatedly into a cell.  Apparently, he assumed his target was dead.

Dripping wet and bereft of jacket or shoes, the man who was not dead hailed a cab and ordered it to an expensive hotel, creating a story for the driver’s questions.  He couldn’t risk going back for his possessions, and since his last residence had been downscale, it was best to procure accommodations on the opposite side of the spectrum.  He had enough money on him to cover contingencies of this nature.

He took a hot shower in his new room, rented under the prepared alias of Abel Falke.  After his shower, the man named Falke sipped a drink from the minibar while waiting for laundering services to take care of his clothes.  He’d need to purchase new ones.

Then he sat for a while in thought.  At last he decided: it was time for some research.

The Gunman

The Man in the Black Suit

The Gunman

The man in the black suit was no longer a tourist.  Now he was a fugitive.  The world screamed trap.

            Leather shoes scuffed on muddy brick as he sprinted toward the alley’s end.  He’d been trying to lure his followers into a choke-point.  Instead, he’d placed himself in one.

Instinct was what saved him.  Some subconscious part of his brain – the professional part – analyzed what was about to happen an instant before it occurred.

            As his foot hit the last brick of the alley before he abandoned cover, instinct forced him to hurl himself to the street.

            He’d never come so close to death.  A brick shattered as a bullet struck it.  No sound, of course.  But a sniper had been waiting for him to panic and run.

            He rolled off his shoulder and staggered back to his feet, allowing the momentum to carry him across the street.  Now the fugitive was zigzagging through more alleyways, and there wasn’t a chance in the world that the sniper would take him down from a nest.  His attacker needed to go mobile.

            There were shouts: his two tails breaking out in pursuit.  He sprinted through a backstreet, turned a corner, and ran down another.  Yells and the sound of shoes pounding pavement emanated from behind him.

Both exits from his alley led onto the main street.  Ahead, an industrial garbage bin sat against the back wall of a shop.  Racing towards it, he did some quick analysis, but his next move was ultimately a gut reaction.

The garbage bin’s lid gave him enough spring to leap up and catch the edge of the building.  Feet scrabbling for purchase, he hoisted himself onto the roof.  At a couching run, the fugitive made his way across the gently sloping surface.

His shoulder blades itched in expectation of a sniper’s bullet, but this was a calculated wager.  The gunman had likely taken to the streets already.

Leaping the twelve-foot drop of an alley, he landed on another roof and kept running, this time daring to rise a little higher.  Quickly surveying the immediate area below, he spotted none of his pursuers.  More importantly, several unoccupied vehicles were parked at the street’s edge.

Reaching the end of the roof, the fugitive hung from its sagging rain gutter and dropped.  Concrete rushed to meet him as he landed in a crouch and rolled onto one shoulder.  He ignored the stinging in his heels.  Vanishing among the pedestrians was his next move.  Straightened the cuffs on his black suit, he walked casually from the alley.

That man in the black suit is good.  A real professional, Aakil decided.  But there was one primary difference between that man and Aakil himself: the black suit was in the crosshairs, and Aakil was behind them.

Aakil was short, and he lay on his stomach in the bed of his truck.  The gunman’s rifle was mounted, trained on the alley from which his target would appear.

 Taking to the rooftops to avoid his followers; that had been an intelligent tactic.  Aakil had been climbing down from his nest when he’d noticed the figure clambering onto a roof.  The time was not sufficient for Aakil to reassemble the rifle and take a shot.  However, a bird’s eye survey of the rooftops had allowed him to predict with reasonable certainty the spot from which his quarry would exit.  Aakil had been close, and his vehicle had enabled him to arrive first.  The high sides of the truck bed prevented his being noticed by pedestrians.  Now, it was just a matter of patience.

The gunman’s patience was unwavering.

The Tourist

The Man in the Black Suit

The Tourist

 

Never purchase food from your venue of lodging.  A rule of tradecraft.  Most motels – especially those that assist you in remaining under the radar – have laughably inefficient security systems.  If they have any at all.

The man named Jameson had returned Dr. Henning’s rented car, and now he was a tourist making use of the DVB: Dresden’s public transportation system.  The tourist had taken a tram to the commercial area by the river Elbe.  He’d purchased lunch at a sandwich shop, and was now sitting on a bench overlooking the gorgeous waterway, gawking at the sights and colors of the city.

            “Gawking” was how he came to affirm that two men were watching him intently.  The tourist’s eyes were sweeping his surroundings, taking in the shop fronts and the Baroque spires of the looming Cathedral Hofkirche, where the heart of King August the strong was kept.  Large portions of the Church’s masonry had been destroyed during Dresden’s firebombing, but the East German government had paid for extensive reconstruction in the eighties.  Now it was a massive tourist trap.  And some of those tourists drew followers of their own.

Even when the tourist’s eyes picked out the figures he was looking for, they didn’t cease sweeping the streets.  He gave no inclination that he’d noticed the watchers.  They weren’t going to try anything in a public place.  But the tourist needed them to try something.

            Tossing his sandwich bag in a trash bin, he wandered away from the river, browsing the window displays of nearby shops.  These men had somehow known where he was staying.  There’d only been one follower at first, and eventually he’d switched off with a second.  A classic, professional technique.  But their actions were too similar, their presence too persistent, and their acting too bad for the tourist to be fooled.  His gawking persona enabled him to throw broad glances at his surroundings, effectively keeping tabs on the followers.  They’d joined up, which likely meant they were waiting for their chance to make a move.  The tourist intended to give them one.  He needed information.

            Wandering into an alley between two shops, he created an opportunity so perfect that the thugs wouldn’t be able to resist.
 

            There was a simple problem, however.  They did resist.  They were no longer following.



The Contract

The Man in the Black Suit

The Contract

Jameson chided himself for the loss of control.  Revealing frustration was unprofessional.

"My reasons for turning down the initial contract are irrelevant.  But I will explain my motivation in coming to you.

"My profession isn't far removed from others.  Connections and bylines are essential in any business.  Big names get big jobs, because their reputations are bankable.  Costumers, you understand, generally pay for the brand over the service."

"Well, your customer courtesy leaves something to be desired."

Aprill had lost the last shreds of professionalism.  Jameson shrugged off her comment.

"I've been working small jobs.  Enough for a living, but I could expand.  High profile cases such as your situation are a good basis on which to construct a reputation."

The distant wailing of police sirens touched their ears.  Jameson stood.

“I will be leaving now.  Provide a reason that your bodyguard wasn’t able to give the police his statement.  The contract I intend to carry out for you involves more than just immobilizing that assassin.  If you hire me, I will track down the persons responsible for this attempt, and I will neutralize them in such a way that no one will ever touch you again, and my services will become instantly associated with quality and professionalism.  After that, I will be able to choose the jobs I desire rather than scrabbling for whatever work I can find.  I’ve been waiting for an opportunity such as this.”

He handed a slip of paper to Benedict, then left the room.

Benedict looked at the paper and massaged his forehead tiredly.  “It’s a mess,” he muttered.

“What’d he give you?”  Aprill demanded.

“A way to contact him.”

“Well?  Are you going to do it?”

A desperate idea suddenly crept into Benedict’s mind.  He was a rat running circles in a maze he’d assumed to be escapeless.  But the rat had just discovered one last alley, and he was scurrying down it for all he was worth, hoping it was an exit he was headed towards and not another dead end.

Benedict dialed his mobile, ignoring Aprill.  He waited, anxiously.

“Rook?  Hi.  Yes, a man just tried to take my life, and . . . yes, yes, I’m fine . . . I need you to find out what you can about the man who saved me.  No, you heard me right.  No, not my attacker; the man who stopped the assassin.  He said his name was Jameson.  You can probably find some visuals on the security cameras.  Find out what you can about him.  Yes, that’s right.  And Rook?  I need to know where he’s staying in Dresden.”

"God Woke," by Stan Lee

This poem is the work of Stan Lee, creator of Marvel comics.  He has allowed it to be distributed freely over the internet; I do not claim any rights to its text or ideas.  

This poem grieves me.  Because the God who Stan Lee seems to observe is not the God who I know.  He's not the conversant God, not the loving God, not the God who does indeed answer prayer as He reveals His presence in human lives.  Certainly not the God who sacrificed His own Son for a flawed humanity, but gives humanity the choice whether to love Him back and accept His gift.  It makes me sad that Mr. Lee's experiences have led him to the conclusion of these ideas.  But most of all, it grieves me that not everyone has experienced the relationship of crushing grace without which I cannot imagine living.

"God woke"
He stretched and yawned and looked around
Haunted by a thought unfound
A vagrant thought that would not die
He rose and scanned the endless sky
He probed the is, he traced the was
He sought the yet to be
And then he found the planet Earth, the half remembered planet Earth
Steeped in pain and tragedy
And all at once he knew
He saw the world that he had wrought to suit his master plan
And then he saw the changes brought by the heedless hand of man
Man, so frail, so small
Yet lord of all
Striving, thriving
Hustling, bustling
Sowing, growing, ever going
Ever learning, never knowing
Less than righteous, less than just
And in the end condemned to dust
He heard the man-sounds everywhere
The shots, the clangs, the roars, the bangs
The clatter, clammer, guns and hammer
And then he found to his despair
The haunting hollow sound of prayer
A billion bodies ever bending
A billion voices never ending
“Give me…”, “Get me…”
“Grant me…”, “Let me…”
“Love me”, “Free me”
“Hear me”, “See me”
While he pondered, watched and waited
Endlessly they supplicated
Chanting, ranting
Moaning, groaning
Sighing, crying
Cheating, lying
But towards what goal? What grand direction?
This pious tide of genuflection
To please their lord, to please their god
He raised his head and laughed, laughed hard
At man, the enigma, calling for aid
Ever demanding, ever afraid
Man, the enigma, bewailing his fate
Yet plagued by inaction till ever too late
Paradoxical man, so fearful of death
Yet squandering life and lavishing breath
Wasting his hours, diluting his days
Accomplishing nothing while he prays and he prays
Hypocritical man, pompous and preening
Mouthing his rote
Just from the throat
Words without feeling
Sound without meaning
Such arrogance, such grand conceit
To think one’s self somehow elite
To demand each prayer be heard with care
While painfully, vainfully all unaware
One’s omnipotent, infinite, absolute lord
Is bored
God frowned
How dare they believe that The Way and The Light
Can be constantly badgered from morning till night?
By what senseless standard? By what senseless rule?
Do they treat their creator as if he’s their tool
While proclaiming his glory, do they think him a fool?
Who else but a fool with a cosmos to savour
Would be bound just to Earth granting boon, granting favour
Who else but a fool with a cosmos unfolding
Would linger with man ever praising and scolding
Who else but a fool with a cosmos to stray in
Would conceive him an ant-hill and like a prisoner stay in
Who else but a fool would create mortal men
And then be expected to tend them, mend them,
Cry for them, die for them over and over and over again
God sighed
I gave them minds as I recall, it was so long ago
I gave them minds that they might use to choose, to think, to know
For the hapless weak, must needs be wise, if they would prove their worth
And then I gave them paradise, the fertile verdant Earth
At first I found the plan was sound and somewhat entertaining
But once begun, the deed now done, my interest started waning
The seed thus sown
The twig now grown
I left them there
Alone
Alone, among the planets and the stars
And the endless fathomless all
Alone, bathed by light and clothed by dark
Midst the vague and the vast and the small
Alone
Alone as I have ever been, as I shall ever be
Why do they not accept it? How else can they be free?
Why do they not accept it? Why do they search for me?
Why?
When their own little lives are so barren and brief
When all of their pleasures are tarnished by grief
In the space of a heartbeat their present is past
They cling to each moment, but no moment can last
When the end comes so quickly and they soon are forgot
Why do they search for that which is not?
Like unto children lost in the night
They search for a God to guide them
Like unto children huddled in fright
They must have their God beside them
But what sort of children, from cradle to grave
Would grant him obiance and yet make him their slave?
They have conjured a heaven and there he must stay
Ever responsive, be it night, be it day
He must love and forgive them and comply when they pray
Ever attentive, never to stray
And like unto children in their childish zeal
They worship their dream thinking fantasy real
God pondered
He, The Be All, The End All, The Will and The Way
The Power, The Glory, The Night and The Day
The Word and The Law, The Fount and The Plan
Lord God Almighty, was baffled by man
He was puzzled by the paradox
By the irony there in
If only he could show them
But where would he begin?
How to make them understand, how to make them see
How to make them recognize their own insanity
They live for gain and they strive in vain
To circumvent their death
But all the gold and wealth untold
Won’t buy an extra breath
They bestow acclaim and they shower fame
On those who rise to power
But those who care, who love and share
Are forgot within the hour
They’re prone to fight, to use their might
For whatever flag they cherish
But those who cry “To arms” don’t die
Their young are sent to perish
Yes, all unsung, they kill their young
Who fall and die and then they cry
But why?
A different house of worship? A different colour skin?
A piece of land that’s coveted and the drums of war begin
Only death can triumph, there’s no place left to hide
And still the madmen ply their trade claiming God is on their side
Of all who live, who crawl and creep
Who take and give, who wake and sleep
Who run, who stand, who dot the land from shore to shore
Man, only man, none but man, wages war
Only man, eternally killing
Only man, infernally willing
To concede himself grace
To bury his race
Only man, earnestly praying to his god as he’s slaying and piously saying
As the battles increase
He does what he must for his motives are just
The mayhem, the carnage, the slaughter won’t cease
But no need to worry, God’s in his corner, he’s killing for peace
Man
His greed, his hate, his crime, his war
The Lord, our God, could bear no more
He looked his last at man so small
So lately risen, so soon to fall
He looked his last and had to know
Whose fault this anguish, this mortal woe?
Had man failed maker? Or maker, man?
Who was the planner? And whose the plan?
He looked his last then turned aside
He knew the answer, that’s why God cried

The Status Quo

The Man in the Black Suit

The Status Quo

The attacker ignored his dislocated elbow, grasping his stomach instead.  He collapsed.  Just to be certain, the man named Jameson kicked the stiletto safely out of reach.  It spun across the marble.

      There was no danger of a second attack, however.  The man in the gladiator mask was writhing, pounding at his stomach in agony.  Blood dribbled from his mouth.  Then, abruptly, the contortions ceased.

      Jameson rolled the man’s head over with his foot.  The eyes were rigid.  Warily, the man named Jameson knelt, placing two fingers to the throat.  No pulse.

      Jameson stood, satisfied.

      “He . . . collapsed?”  Aprill was asking a doubtful question, unbelieving.

      “I poisoned him.”

      “Oh, damn.”  She gulped hard.

       “Now, it is time for us to leave.” 

      The security guards were congregating, staring uncertainly at the body.

      “Mr. Benedict,” Jameson said, “I think you will now listen to what I have to say.  Take care of this.”

      Benedict was shaken, but surprisingly compliant.

      “That man tried to kill me.  Please, clean it up . . .” he gestured at the body “. . . and inform me when the police arrive.  I need a minute in private.  This is quite a shock.  If not for my bodyguard . . . .”

      “Of course, sir.  Please, follow me.”

      A security man led them to a private room.  The moment the door clicked shut, Aprill started spewing words.

"You probably saved our lives.  We're grateful, of course.  But it's illogical!  If you're some contract-killer like you claim, then why turn down an assignment to kill my father? Money is money.  And why warn us?"

Jameson observed her disapprovingly.  She was businesslike, but without a grasp of the status quo.

"You should be waiting for my explanation rather than demanding answers from me."

Aprill’s outrage mounted, but Benedict touched her shoulder.  "Honey," he said quietly, "let's hear him out."  Benedict shook his head, trying to clear away the last dregs of inebriation.

Shadow of Deceit, by Becca Anderson

Here's a review I wrote for The Aboite Independent http://v1.aboiteindependent.com
This review will also be published in the spring 2014 edition of Church Libraries, a publication of the Evangelical Church Library Association.  http://www.eclalibraries.org/  I recently had advanced access to the issue. :)

Book Review 011614 SHADOW OF DECEIT  
By Becca Anderson
OakTara, 978-1-60290-075-2, PB, 247 pages, $15.26

            Casey Ellis is discontented with her Christian walk, but the price of seeking truth could be her soul.  After stumbling upon a group of believers striving to emulate the early church, she’s certain God is calling her to join them.  However, shadows are mingled with the group’s good intentions, and it becomes uncertain whether Casey will find freedom from physical and spiritual ensnarement.

            This book offers a view of religious manipulation. There’s perhaps too much prejudice against Pentecostal-style denominations, but there’s also an important warning against unscriptural practices within well-intentioned churches.  On moral ground, it’s troubling to see Casey never reprimanded for her recurrent lying, especially since she’s fighting deceit.  The book’s beginning fails to hook attention, but the plot and style quickly grow stronger.  I recommend this for leisure reading (both sexes, specifically women) and for those seeking greater knowledge of spiritual deception.  This book includes study questions.