Honorable Assassin (21 page)

“Never mind. It’s not even appropriate.”

“Well, I’m leaving in a couple of days so I
got no jobs coming up. I’m going to drink beer and chase women
here, and then I’m going to drink beer and chase women there.”

“Capital. Sounds like a plan, mate.”

“Oy, we’ll have you sounding like a
backwoods Aussie yet.”

Ginger got the letter with the address of
the PVC factory and its adjoining warehouse a couple of days later.
Terry explained in his missive that he did not really think it was
necessary, but that he had been given the cruise by direct order of
the top men and that to refuse would be a faux pas with
long-reaching consequences. A simple explosion would be sufficient
and something indicating it was the Irishman behind it would remove
all suspicion from Terry’s head if any remained. He wrote that if
nothing happened while he was gone then he would be unable to
continue his present path. He felt sure the cruise was the
Scotsman’s idea. His respect for this “specialist” was growing.
This was becoming a dangerous game. At the same time, his
reputation was growing and his position was becoming less
tenuous.

Terry had been gone a week when the Irishman
put a bundle of dynamite under a propane tank outside the
warehouse, blowing half the building off in the middle of the
night.

Terry had the time of his life on his
Mediterranean cruise and flew back after two weeks, departing from
Gibraltar. He was surprised to be met at the Sydney airport by the
large Scotsman. He was taken to a tavern where they had a couple of
beers and the specialist told him he wanted an assistant. Thompson
Barber was the assistant he wanted and that was what he had gotten.
Terry’s acceptance of the position was all that was wanting. Terry
ran his fingers through his blond hair and asked what the job
consisted of, knowing he was going to accept it anyway.

Ginger got a surprisingly well written
letter from his nephew a few days later.

Uncle,

I wish to thank you for the details of the
endeavor you undertook on my behalf while I was on holiday. It made
for a wonderful surprise upon my return. I have been selected to be
an assistant to a specialist, who is charged with the pursuit and
apprehension of the Irishman.

I am particularly pleased with this turn of
events as it allows me to refrain from delivering loads of a
questionable nature. While I was sailing, I had serious misgivings
about my chosen path. I had visions of myself acting as that which
I have detested for so long. It is fortuitous that I have been
chosen for a calling more near what I would care to pursue.

I will be in touch but I feel it imperative
that you maintain your current anonymity for the present. My new
mentor is a man of exceptional ability and fortitude who has much
to teach me. I will visit when I feel comfortable doing so. Give my
best to the dogs.

Sincerely,

Thompson Barber

Ginger laughed uproariously when he read the
letter, then he read it again and burned it.

Terry Kingston was in high spirits. He loved
the cruise and was delighted to have been chosen to find himself.
His good humor was not to last long however. He began to wonder
what he was about to embark upon. He went to the library and began
to look through the newspapers from the past couple of years. It
was tremendously time consuming but they had not begun scanning
them into a database yet so the only way to find anything was by
hand.

The Olympics began and the city was overrun
with tourists. There were crowds on the streets all day and night,
most of them with mistaken preconceived notions of the nature of
Australian life. The police forces were kept on overtime just
controlling the crowds. The tavern owners were overjoyed. The beer
flowed freely and the influx of foreign money was a welcome boost
to the economy.

Terry was in constant contact with his
mentor by phone. It was almost the only number he dialed. They ate
dinner together nightly, in different restaurants, and coordinated
what they had learned. Terry was fascinated by the man’s methods
which combined a sort of amateur forensic science, study of human
nature and interrogation. His own research was revealing a few
things as well.

When the pair walked into The Roo in the
downtown business district, they had not been expecting anything
but dinner. Terry was thinking about the gym and his mentor was
thinking about dinner.

“God bless me, Gordon MacMaster!” came from
a man seated in a booth with a tall attractive blonde woman. The
woman started chattering in German.

“
Seien Sie ruhiger
Dummkopf. Kennen sie nicht meine Name hier,”
came from the
Scotsman’s mouth.

The man in the booth slowly and carefully
put both his hands on the table on either side of his meal. “I am
not here looking for you and I do not seek trouble. I am here for
the games. I’m sorry I thought you were somebody else. I
apologize.” His accent was thick but his diction was good. He
turned his eyes from the Scot and told his woman, in German, that
they would be leaving now and there were to be no questions.

Terry watched them closely as he took his
own seat. They waited only until the Scot turned his back on them
and then they headed for the door.

The rack of lamb was good in The Roo and
they drank it down with beer. Terry did not know how to broach the
subject discreetly so he waded in. “Where did you learn to speak
German, Gordon?”

Gordon MacMaster tossed a rib bone onto his
plate and said, “That fool was mistaken. He thought I was someone
else.”

“No worries, mate. I’ve got no secret
agenda. That man knew you from somewhere, though. He was terrified.
He thought you were here to kill him.”

“He was mistaken. I never saw him before in
my life.”

“Let’s cut the crap, Gordon MacMaster. You
might not have known him but he knew you. He knew who you are and
what you do.” The look on his face told it all. If Satan himself
had sprung up out of his dinner plate, he would have gotten the
same look.

“Call me Glasgow. Do not use my proper name
again or Satan himself will spring out of your rack of lamb.”

Terry grinned but Gordon did not; it was
clear he had issues with his given name. The two sat looking at
each other for a few seconds and Terry’s grin faltered. He dropped
his eyes to his plate and addressed himself to the remains of his
dinner. He did not know how far Gordon would go to protect his
identity and did not want to find out the hard way. He felt he had
won a round but there could be repercussions. His uncle’s words
rang in his ears, “Never leave a witness.” It was a standard of the
industry.

The next day, in the library, Terry did a
search for “Gordon MacMaster” on the computer. There was nothing
appropriate. He looked up the “Royal Scottish Dragoons” and found a
long and illustrious history of combat and honor leading back to
the seventeenth century. He studied the history of the “Royal Scots
Greys” and paid particular attention to their recent exploits. No
names were listed but the regiment was honored for their work in
the deserts of southwest Asia. There was no mention of
assassinations, but they would not have been acknowledged if there
were any. Assassination was against the rules.

After a bit more research, Terry found his
mark, his Irishman.

Indicted twice but never convicted, Lee
Pierce had been drummed out of the police department. His crimes,
it seems, were a manic desire to enforce the law by whatever means
necessary. He had beaten suspects to a pulp on a number of
occasions and even shot one to death. It was the one he shot but
didn’t kill that had finished his career. As is usual, the powers
that be had supported or at least turned a blind eye to his methods
as long as they could. He was apparently as honest as could be
desired but much too brutal to maintain his position. He seemed the
perfect candidate. This was compounded by his recent retreat into a
sort of seclusion. He had managed to get a pension of sorts from
the government and was living on it, as well as arms sales, in a
trailer north of Sydney.

When Terry suggested Lee Pierce as a
potential candidate, Gordon went to Henry Cuthbert to ask Henry to
get registration and purchase records for the ex-constable. The
records were obtained but not really necessary. Henry knew Lee and
had purchased weapons from him in the past. It was determined that
he owned not only the trailer but the land it resided on. It was
determined that Lee’s wife had left him during his legal troubles
and that no others claimed the trailer as a residence. It was
further determined that Lee was a legal arms dealer of sorts who
sold weapons out of his home and possessed an arsenal. The license
was current and his client list, though unavailable officially, was
rumored to include customers from both sides of the judicial
divide.

Terry made a convincing case for his choice
of suspect and Gordon was in agreement. The man’s history of moral
indignation backed up by force and brutality played well. The only
thing missing was proof. Terry tried to convince his mentor that
there was no need for proof. They did not need to catch the man in
the act to know it was him and they were not tied by the
government’s rules of engagement. The proof would be in the
pudding. They would take out Lee Pierce and the attacks would stop.
Gordon was not so easily convinced, however.

“Assassination is an art,” he told his
protégé. “If he is the Irishman, then, yes, the job is done but I
need to be sure. If the Irishman gets his weapons from this man,
and we decommission this man, then the attacks will stop for a time
due to the supply lines being cut.” He took a huge guzzle of beer,
belched and then continued. “If the Irishman knows this man in a
different capacity and the man has some sort of unfortunate
accident, it may spook him and send him underground, temporarily.
This would lead us to believe we had gotten our man, when in
reality all it would do is make us his next target. Or you,
possibly, since I will have been gone for other venues. Assuming he
is good enough to know who caused the accident. The profile is
undeniable, but I would like some further indications.”

Terry popped the last of his chips into his
mouth and chewed on them slowly. His mind was racing a mile a
minute. He was learning so much about what he was up to that his
head hurt getting around it all. He did not dare take direct action
without Gordon’s approval. To do so would be a fatal error in
judgment. The fact remained however that Terry was assisting with
finding the Irishman and the sooner a scapegoat was found, the
sooner the specialist, Gordon MacMaster would leave for parts
unknown and stop complicating Terry’s life. It was not that he did
not appreciate the education, but the Scotsman scared him as
well.

Lee’s business had no posted advertisement
except on the trailer itself. There was no need for him to accept
new customers from unknown regions. He had implemented a private
policy whereby he expected anyone buying from him to have been
referred by a prior customer. The laws regarding firearms had been
tightened up as a result of recent actions, some of which the
Irishman had taken credit for, but that had not diminished Lee’s
customer base; it had actually enhanced it.

When Terry and Gordon showed up at the door
with a reference from Henry Cuthbert, they were escorted in without
question. A call was made and the reference confirmed. Since it was
the first time they had done business together, it was inadvisable
to ask too many questions about unusual munitions such as hand
grenades.

Lee asked a few questions about criminal
records. He could not legally sell weapons to Gordon MacMaster
under any name since Gordon was not a legal resident, but he was
not asked to. The customer was Thompson Barber and Thompson had a
clean record. He purchased two .38 caliber Smith and Wesson
revolvers, some ammunition for them, and promised to return in a
week or so. As a stringer, he did mention that there may be some
custom orders in the future. Lee’s response was that he was in the
business of making his customers happy and that custom orders were
just part of the job.

On the trip back to the city Gordon asked,
“What did you see?”

“Well, the man had the large bedroom on the
end set up with all the racks of guns. One of the small bedrooms on
the side had the ammunition. The walls… the walls had some steel
plate on them, except for the outer wall. I’m assuming to keep the
bullets blowing out if there’s a fire, not chopping through the
trailer.”

“It was stainless. Fewer sparks and tougher
than regular plate. A bit costly but not unheard of. What
else?”

“Well, he had a fire control system set up,
sprinklers. I know they don’t make trailers with sprinklers. There
were a couple of closets I couldn’t see in. No telling what he had
in the closets. He had air conditioning set up in the trailer but
he also had it set up for the shed in the back. He probably does
gunsmith work and reloading back there. Too much heat would cause
problems.”

“He might do work back there but that was
not what the air conditioning was there for. You didn’t see the
dogs?”

“No, I didn’t see any dogs.”

“Neither did I, but I did see a couple of
large piles of dog shit out back. He does keep the area clean and
raked, but he had not cleaned these up. There is at least one big
dog in that shed to prevent sticky fingers.”

“I thought the place smelled a bit but the
smell of machine oil covered the dog stink mostly.”

“Always remember that the best defense
against unwanted intrusions is a big noisy dog. Anyone willing to
shoot the dog would shoot you on the way in too.”

A grin lit Terry’s face as he thought of
Hercules, Ginger’s new mastiff.