Honorable Assassin (20 page)

The manager had already seen the morning
news. He was waiting for the constables to contact him. Glasgow
reminded him that it would be best if he showed up on their door
first. Then the pair headed north again. The plant was closed when
they arrived in Sydney so they vowed to come back in the morning to
adjust the original manifest so it read that Byron Burger
originally drove the truck out of Sydney.

They stopped for some dinner and drinks and,
at 10 at night, they appeared at the Riggers Club, inquiring after
Mr. Randy Arganmajc. They were admitted as far as the coat closet
and asked to wait. Truthfully, they were not dressed for the
Riggers Club and should have changed clothes before presenting
themselves.

The concierge returned and as tactfully as
he was able he asked them if they could use the servants’ entrance
in the back of the building. They acquiesced and went back out.
Terry should have known they would not make it in the door dressed
as they were. He knew the long and honored history of the Riggers
Club. The Scotsman could have been forgiven for not knowing.

They waited for a short time, in the pantry,
before Randy Arganmajc joined them. Randy was wearing an Italian
silk suit. His palms were soft and limp when he shook hands.
Glasgow apologized for not knowing that the club required a jacket
and he introduced Terry as Thompson Barber.

“Ah, yes, I have heard some good things
about you,” Randy lied.

“Well, you are about to hear some more. It
may be good news but I think not.”

“You are about to tell me about the affair
in Victoria. You are going to tell me that the men involved were in
the employ of one Tony Samfier. What more is there?”

“Due to the quick thinking and sharp wits of
your driver, that load was delivered. I know your interest in that
particular load ended when it was delivered in Canberra, but if you
contact your men in Melbourne, you’ll see that the load was
delivered intact, despite the fact that the truck was disabled. I
was in contact with the top of your food chain yesterday and he
authorized a bonus, in cash. I thought it best we spoke to you
about it personally.”

“I’ll have it delivered tomorrow. I need a
couple of questions answered, however. Who sent you on this trip,
who knew where you were and who knew what you were carrying?”

“Honestly, Mr. Arganmajc the only one I can
say for sure is Victor Wellington. He handed me a slip of paper
when I stopped in to tell him about a suspicious character I caught
sight of.”

“What suspicious character?”

“This one.” Terry pointed at the Scot. All
three of them chuckled.

“Oh. So you went into the office and he
handed you a job.”

“That’s right, the pawn shop office. He said
the truck is loaded and locked and I’m to take it to Canberra and
right away. Time sensitive and I got a bonus for delivering on
time. In cash, no less. Then when I was unloaded, that’s when they
stuck the crate in the back and told me I was taking it to
Melbourne and I wasn’t going to stop till it got there.”

“That was the crew in the warehouse in
Canberra?”

“Right. Now I don’t think they had anything
to do with the ambush. They didn’t seem nervous or surprised to see
me when I showed up this morning to change the manifest.”

“You changed the manifest?”

“Just the name. It wasn’t my idea but we
changed it to one of the dead guys. The load was never officially
delivered, since we didn’t have the truck, it was stolen but you
can make the call. You’ll find that the load has been
delivered.”

“I think that is all I need to know.
Remember to wear a suit and bathe next time you come here. This
club is not for the public.”

The men that hit the truck were indeed all
in the employ of the organization headed by Tony Samfier, in
Canberra. They were lower level men, not the sort to plan out an
operation of this magnitude. It may well have been either of the
intervening layers of management that had set it up. This did not
matter to the Troy brothers. In their less pristine affairs, it was
the responsibility of the managers to ensure that their
subordinates are behaving themselves. Tony disappeared. Tony’s
family disappeared. Tony’s first assistant disappeared and several
of that man’s associates. The operation was done silently, with
precision and finesse. The bodies were never found and the
positions were filled a week later.

~~~

Chapter Nine: The Verdict

“So, Specialist, in your opinion have we
found and eliminated the Irishman?” asked Adam Troy over a snifter
of very old brandy.

“No, sir. I believe the men who performed
this operation were riding on the coattails of the notoriety. They
wanted you to believe it was the Irishman who pulled off the
operation but they were merely thugs, following orders. I cannot be
sure who hatched the plan but it was one of theft, not spite. They
would have killed the driver but not out of malice. They were doing
a job as instructed.”

“Your reputation is secured by this very
statement. A lesser man would have taken credit for the operation,
taken the payment and disappeared.”

The Scotsman smoothed his bushy red beard
and cracked an uneven grin. He took a draw from the fine Cuban
cigar he was enjoying and filtered the smoke through the hairs. “If
I had done that, you would have known. What kind of specialist
would I then be? Perhaps a deceased one.”

“You are a good judge of men. How did you
know that particular load was going to be attacked?”

“I didn’t. I was watching the driver of that
load, not the load itself. He is a very capable man, not given to
panic and is working toward your best interests. A lesser man would
have died in that incident but not this one. Thompson Barber not
only took the bull by the horns, he delivered the load. He never
asked for the bonus, that was my idea. I told him about it and he
hasn’t mentioned it since. He’s a good man and on your side.”

“But you were watching him. Why were you
watching him?”

“He’s not been with you that long, right?
He’s young and sometimes the young are ambitious, their ambition
not yet tempered by good judgment. I tested his spunk the night
before and found him not wanting in spine. He saw me watching him,
not something I would have expected of a fool. His first move the
following day was to report that he was being watched. It was
Victor I suspected, not Tommy. I realize in these troubled times
that a little bit of discretion is advisable but to send a lone man
on a mission of such importance seemed either foolishness or
cunning. It turned out to be the latter.”

Abel Troy set his snifter down on the
luxurious hardwood table and said, “There may well be a long-term
job for you here when you have completed your current assignment.
We can always use a man with a canny eye for this sort of
thing.”

“Thank you, gentlemen. I’ll consider that a
vote of confidence and return to my assessment of the crew and the
situation. I’ll assume Victor Wellington will not hamper my
investigation?”

“You may safely assume that he will no
longer be working for any of our concerns.”

“Then I thank you for your time and your
attention. And I thank you for this marvelous brandy. In my
opinion, it would be best if Thompson were given a month off and
supplied with a vacation of sorts. I’m sure you have a travel
office somewhere that would find it possible to work in a
complimentary cruise or something. Most of the attacks are done
north of the city so I will be concentrating my efforts northward
after I eliminate some of the suspects. Yes, I am still convinced
that the information is coming from the Sydney area.”

“Very well. I shall make arrangements,” Adam
Troy seemed very pleased with himself.

The redheaded Scotsman did not precisely
follow the game plan he had outlined. It had been his observation
that most men of wealth did not reveal all they might and certainly
no more than they had to. He had already determined that though
they owned many legitimate businesses, they had financed their
empire with drugs and guns. He had nothing against guns, they were
an integral part of his life, but he was not in favor of the
growing drug trade. He also wanted to find out what sort of men he
was really dealing with. Their money was good but their ethics were
suspect.

Two days later, at the end of the working
day, Henry Cuthbert showed up at the warehouse with four men in
trench coats and a hooded, bound figure. Gordon MacMaster knew then
that Victor’s time was limited. From an adjoining rooftop, through
the high-powered scope of a rifle, he saw Victor Wellington
tortured to death in despicable and unmentionable ways. He was no
stranger to torture and the extraction of information but there was
no information asked for. The man was made an example of in front
of his associates as a warning. The message was clear and
brutal.

Gordon MacMaster set down his rifle and
pulled on his beard for a moment. His senses were alert for anyone
on the roof with him but his mind was working in a different mode.
Gordon had killed many men in many different ways. He had shot them
from afar and he had felt their life’s blood gush over his face. He
had poisoned, though not often and he had thrown men off buildings
and cliffs. He thought back to a time when he was not as practiced
as now, a time when he still had the principles and patriotism of
the Royal Scots Dragoons.

As part of the United Nations force in Iraq,
MacMaster had been tasked with a specialized job. Despite being
called “The Mother of all Conflicts” by Saddam Hussein, Desert
Storm was more of a flash in the pan. Unfortunately, several men
were trapped in Iraq when hostilities ceased. They had been
inserted in pairs, as sniper teams; they were called Desert Rats.
MacMaster was one of them and while his attention was taken by a
target, he and his spotter were captured from behind.

The rules set forth by the Geneva Convention
have no sway in the Middle East. The treatment of prisoners by any
of the former Ottomans is as it always has been. Torture is as
accepted a tool now as in the dark ages and almost looked upon as
necessary. Psychological warfare is as important, or more so, than
physical slaughter. They consider an enemy who is terrified into
inaction to be better than a dead one. And so, Gordon MacMaster was
forced to watch the torture of his partner, spotter and friend.
They cut off his eyelids, they clamped a battery to his testicles,
they shattered his hands and broke his legs. Then they told Gordon
that the only way he would get out of the mud hut they were
sequestered in was if Gordon beheaded his partner and fellow
Scotsman himself. By this time his spotter was praying for
death.

They presented the battered but unbeaten
MacMaster with a shamshir, a curved Persian sword, and instructed
him he was to decapitate his partner on film or he would get the
same treatment. He looked into the eyes of his partner and saw the
pleading, the desire for death, the will to die. Four men covered
him with automatic weapons as he raised the sword high. He screamed
“For Scotland” cut the man’s head from his body, following through
with a whistling arc into his nearest tormentor’s crotch. The man
screamed and lurched forward. Two of the Iraqis didn’t even see
what he had done, they were concentrating on the man’s head rolling
on the floor.

Even with his wrists tied together, Gordon
MacMaster managed to wrest the automatic weapon from the hands of
his injured opponent. The lead began to fly and two men were down
before the other two understood what had happened. Then they went
down. Gordon cut his bonds on the bloody edge that he had
dispatched his Brother-in-Arms with and secured the remaining
weapons.

The incident never made the news because it
was so far behind enemy lines. There were no authorized missions
that far inside Iraq and no foreign soldiers were captured. There
would have been a media storm from both sides if word had reached
the networks. MacMaster had never learned the name of the town he
was held in, but when the following day arrived, there was nothing
left living in that little desert town. In a cancerous and all
consuming rage, he had killed every man woman and child living
there and he had not stopped there. He killed the sheep and goats
and chickens. The sole survivor was a dog that ran from the carnage
when it began.

That was the day the Scotsman had
compromised his principles. That was the day he learned there is no
glory in war, only in surviving. That was the day he decided that
there would be no more killing for queen and country. A piece of
Gordon MacMaster had died that day but another was born. Gone was
the bright-eyed patriotic soldier and born was the slayer. Gone was
‘My country right or wrong’ and born was The Honorable
Assassin.

Sitting on the roof and witnessing the
torture of Victor Wellington was enough. His pervasive guilt over
the slaughter of innocents was blamed on the torturers in that
little Iraqi village. He transferred that guilt and a portion of
the rage that still lived inside him like a parasite, waiting to
burst through to the surface, to the men in the warehouse. He
reserved a portion of it for the men pulling the strings.

“Well, mate, did they do you right?”

“I’ll say. A bloody European cruise,” Terry
grinned. “I’ve never been to Europe. It says a Mediterranean
playground. It stops in Spain, France, Monaco, Italy, Greece,
Turkey and then back. Ah, I think it goes to Gibraltar, wherever
that is.”

“Enjoy it, mate. There’s nothing like a
little international influence to round out a man. ‘Now is the
winter of your discontent made summer by this glorious son of
Troy.’”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Terry cast a
suspicious eye on his drinking partner. He had noticed that the
Scot was given to quoting the masters when in his cups, but he
seldom understood the quotes and seldom yet recognized them.