Dark Vessel (COIL Book 4), page 5
Recognition. Yes, he grasped that accusation. I planted the tranq into his shoulder and caught him as he slumped to the floor.
Running back to the injured man, I checked his gunshot wound. A nine-millimeter slug was buried in his left pectoral muscle, fortunately slowed after passing through a leather notepad in the man's breast pocket. Using the house phone, I called an ambulance.
Five minutes later, I was driving the general's car toward the National Aquarium. Forglade's hands were bound by flex-cuffs in front of him with the seat belt securing him in the passenger seat. I checked the mirrors a couple times, but there seemed to be no danger. No one had known my plans. No one even knew I was really alive. And on my hands, I wore epoxy with various famous deceased persons' fingerprints. Figuring me out wouldn't be easy.
In a dark alley not far from a busy intersection, I parked and squirted bottled fluid on the general as he slowly gained consciousness. Torture wasn't in my plans, but it was proven that the prospect of torture gets better and more accurate results.
"No, no!" the general screamed. "What are you doing?"
"I knew you wouldn't talk," I said calmly, then flicked a lighter between my fingers. "What do you expect? You killed my mentor. This seems like a fitting vengeance."
"No! I mean, stop! Who are you talking about?"
"Corban Dowler was a good man. Sure, he had a past of darkness, but God had changed his heart." The flame moved toward his lap. "I can't say I've made those same changes . . ."
"Wait! Corban Dowler . . ." He squirmed away, gasping at the biting stench of what seemed to be lighter fluid all over his lap. "Please, I'll talk! I'll talk!"
"Talk," I said, flipping the lighter closed, "and you might not become barbeque, if your story makes any sense at all."
"Okay, okay. Listen, it's not real. None of it! I swear! We didn't kill Dowler! It was a ruse!" The man bowed his head and sobbed, certainly thinking he was about to die. "It wasn't my call. We set Dowler up to go on the run, to isolate him. He's still alive out there somewhere, honest!"
My jaw trembled in the darkness. How could this be?
"You're lying! My friend Corban Dowler was blown up in his car! They got his body. Corban was in his car!"
"No, I swear!" He sniffed and shook his head. "It was just some guy we got out of the morgue. Please! We just followed orders. I answer to others, you know?"
"Who? Tell me!" I flicked the lighter. "You'd better talk!"
"I can't! I'm dead if I do!"
"You're dead as possum on the grill if you don't! You smell that? You like the thought of hellfire? Talk!"
"All right! All right. It was the TaTD."
"From what I hear, you run the TaTD, General!"
"No, these guys are over my head. They wanted something from Dowler, an alias, for us to use in Lebanon to do something with Hezbollah. Dowler wouldn't hand it over, so we were told to put him on the run, set him up somehow. I don't know all of it."
"A name! Give me a name, General!"
"I can't! Look, Dowler's alive! He's out there somewhere. I'll call my guys off. Just . . . let me go."
"How is pretending to kill Dowler the same as setting him up?"
"Honest, I don't know. He's in hiding. I think the TaTD was supposed to force Dowler to use his alias to do what they wanted originally to be done in Lebanon. That's all I know!"
"Exactly what did they want to do with the alias? Talk!"
"Something with Lebanon! I don't know for sure!"
"Guess! Now!"
"A controlled terrorist attack, I think? And Dowler would get blamed, but his alias has Hezbollah ties. It would look like Hezbollah did it. With Dowler in hiding, he'd be the perfect patsy. It looks like he's guilty since he's not showing himself. He's alive, and it looks like he faked his own death. You're going to get me killed for this!"
"Quiet!" I checked the mirrors and tried to manage my own breathing. The whole situation—I'd read it all wrong. They'd known I was alive the whole time? They must've blown my car intentionally before I reached it. All in an attempt to force me into hiding to use my alias. It was possible, but my overseas stunt as Muhammad ibn Affal must've thrown them a curveball. "One last question to decide your fate, General. If you guys really planned all this, and you used a cadaver in my burnt car, then what about Roy Turpin? Only one corpse was found in Dowler's car."
Forglade turned and looked me in the eyes, the reflection of the flame on our faces.
"There is no Roy Turpin. It was just a cadaver."
My whole body went cold. No Roy Turpin?
I dropped the lighter into the general's lap. He screamed and squirmed, but there was no fire. The lighter's little flame went out against Forglade's thigh, leaving a scorch mark on his pants.
"Relax, General. It was just pepper and lemon juice." I squeezed some into my mouth. "You'd better clean this mess up within twenty-four hours or I visit you again. Next time, I won't be alone. Get it?"
"Yes, I get it." He hung his head. "You're gonna get me killed."
"The truth can keep you alive. If you're vocal enough, Corban Dowler can come out of hiding, and then the two of you can put the record straight together."
Leaving the car, I walked down the alley. From my collar, I tugged at a small lens and audio receiver. The evening's events had been recorded, from the ambush and shooting to the car seat interrogation, but that didn't mean I had all the answers. In truth, I was as scared as ever that I'd been predictable and manipulated.
Danger hovered closer than I'd imagined. Though I wanted to check on my family, I dared not for their own safety.
*~*
Chapter 9
It was Sunday, and instead of racing around the East Coast to defend myself from an enemy I had yet to fully identify, I decided it best to focus my energy on the Kingdom of God. Regardless of her arguments against it, I convinced Ruth to attend church with me.
A few blocks from our squatters' building, we walked with the two babies to a basement chapel. I knew of it from a visit several years earlier. There was a mixture of lost and broken, homeless and wealthy sprinkled throughout the congregation of about two hundred.
Ruth and I sat toward the back on two folding chairs. At first, Ruth seemed very distracted. Her hands played with the hem of her faded dress and she kept glancing over her shoulder. I wasn't sure whether she was uncomfortable in her simple clothing or uneasy about leaving the two children in the crowded nursery room behind us. We were by no means the most impoverished-looking, nor was there any valid reason to be concerned about the children being left with three mothers who were seeing to the rabble of toddlers.
Finally, I set my Bible on Ruth's lap and put my arm across the back of her chair. She sat up straighter and touched the Bible's pages. At last, she started listening to the speaker—a sincere man in jeans and a collared shirt.
He spoke about Joseph in Genesis 41, how he'd been in bondage, kidnapped, and enslaved, yet he trusted God whether in prison or not. This was evidenced by how he named his two sons, born in bondage: Manasseh meant "making to forget," and Ephraim meant "fruitfulness." When we trust God, the man explained, He causes worldly concerns to be put out of mind, and regardless of our circumstances, He makes us spiritually fruitful. God was indeed the answer, not worldly circumstances.
I was pleasantly surprised to see Ruth listening attentively. She heard the message clearly that day.
After the service, Ruth made a move toward the nursery, but regular churchgoers kept intercepting us, wanting to know who we were, shaking our hands, and smiling warmly. I maintained my Russian facade and allowed Ruth to awkwardly fend off their greetings.
As soon as we could break away from an elderly couple, I guided Ruth toward a young man who I'd spotted earlier. He had a gold-colored pin in the shape of an "I" on his collar.
"This is Ruth Holland and I am Fost." I pumped the blond man's hand. He was in his late twenties and wore dusty clothes with a tape measure on his belt. Though his hands were rough and calloused, his face was bright and eager with the obvious love of Jesus.
"Ben Vitco. It's a pleasure." He glanced from me to Ruth, probably trying to make sense of our relationship. "You two are new here?"
"First time here together," I said. "Your pin—you are a Son of Isaac, yes?"
"Oh, yes!" He fondled his collar. "God guides me in my decisions, even the big ones like finding a job or a wife. You've heard of the Sons of Isaac, huh?"
"Yes, I have, and I agree with traditional courtship arrangements. It is very Russian." I threw an arm around Ruth. "Ruth is a single mother. She loves her daughter and is an excellent housekeeper."
"I see . . ." Ben Vitco grinned sheepishly and thrust his hands into his pockets. "The most important matter to me is, Ruth, are you a born again believer in Jesus Christ?"
"Well . . ." Ruth scowled at me, probably sensing I'd set her up. "I don't really understand what that means. I have no desire to be perfect because I've never been able to be. Actually, I'm exactly the opposite."
"You know, that's an important step, what you just said—realizing that you're not perfect. I'm the same way, imperfect." Ben looked at me. "Can we sit down? I'd like to show you both a few life-changing truths about God."
"Ruth will listen," I nudged her toward him. "I will check on the kids."
We were not the only ones lingering in the basement church. The regular parishioners had deployed themselves to interact with visitors in the crowd, and Ben was certainly doing his part in obedience. He led Ruth to a bench against the wall and opened the Bible that I'd left with her.
The nursery had thinned some, but the women assured me they'd stay as long as they were needed. Earl was waist deep in toys, and Jenny was somehow sleeping through the ruckus. I returned to the main room to watch Ben and Ruth from across the auditorium. Ruth seemed engrossed, and focused on this rough construction worker's words of salvation from sin. For ten minutes, I watched them and prayed that God would open Ruth's heart to see her need, and for Ben to share the message straight rather than sell her a bed of roses to get a false conversion.
To my excitement, Ruth nodded to something Ben said and she seemed to be teary. Then it appeared that Ben let Ruth pray to her Heavenly Father. Finally, they stood, embraced, and both approached me. I would've been hard-pressed to determine whose smile was broader—Ruth's, Ben's, or mine!
"Ben wants to know if we have a phone," Ruth said. I gave him the number of my second disposable phone, then Ruth continued. "And he wants to know if he can take us to dinner some night. He has a lot more to teach me."
"Of course!" We set up a date for Tuesday evening, though I had every intention of disappearing by then. I had to return to my own life sooner rather than later, or I'd have no life to return to at all.
On the slow walk back to the squatters' building, Ruth seemed deep in thought as she stared at the sidewalk in front of her. Finally, she looked up.
"What was that pin on his collar?" she asked. "You seemed to know what it was all about."
"It is a Christian fraternity of bachelors, the Sons of Isaac. They believe in biblical marriage concepts, even the idea of others in the church counseling and approving a couple before or during a courtship. They desire to serve God in their marriages. In the Bible, Abraham sent another man to find just the right wife for Isaac, his son. They trusted God to find the right wife."
"What?" Ruth stopped walking. Her face was pale. "Is that why you introduced me as a single mother? To let him know I was on the market? I just made a very important decision in my life! And you just want to pawn me off to some stranger?"
"No, but I will be leaving you soon, Ruth." I shifted Earl in my arms as he squirmed to watch a clown on a skateboard zip past. "It is my desire to see you settled in a good church that can watch over you and disciple you in your new faith. Whether a relationship develops with this Ben or someone else is not the most important thing. For you to get to know your Savior is."
"You and I are supposed to be family, Fost!" She started walking again, this time too quickly for me to catch without jogging.
"Ruth, you know I am on the run," I reminded her. "Jenny needs a father. It cannot be me. I am old enough to be your grandfather!"
"What about Earl? He gets pawned off, too?"
"Well, no, but I have considered the situation. He will have to be turned over to the authorities eventually, and he is young enough that he will likely be adopted rather quickly. If you had a way to give him a good home, Ruth, then I would agree that he should stay with you."
"Fost, it's not your say!"
"It is my decision."
She threw the door open to our building and marched across the lobby to the stairs. Wilbur saw me coming and rose to his feet behind his desk.
"I dumped that body in front of the hospital like you said." He shrugged, wearing the same stained shirt I'd seen on him the day I'd moved in. "Remember, you said if I did what you said—"
"Of course, Wilbur. I remember. I am Russian." As promised, I handed him fifty dollars since he'd taken Earl's mother to the hospital instead of dumping her in the river. "What did you think about that paper I asked you to read?"
He pushed several newspapers across his desk to find a gospel tract I'd given him the day before.
"Honestly?" He handed me the tract back. "I didn't know exactly what the cross meant, but it's not for me. I'm not going to put my sin on Someone else. I'm fine with the hot place."
"Sorry to hear that, Wilbur." I pocketed the tract. "Well, at least you have heard the truth. You've proven that you love your sin more than you care for your precious soul. God will judge you rightly."
While his mouth gaped at my harsh words, I shook his hand and started up the stairs. It was my responsibility to share the gift of God. God's grace would draw the needy heart.
*~*
Chapter 10
In the past, when serving my faithful God in one thing, He'd always prepared the next step for me to take. It was no different the following night. I had expectantly trusted Him with my predicament, and God continued to show Himself faithful. Without His guidance, I'd be lost. One wrong move, and it could mean my death, as well as my family's.
Regardless of my confidence that God would produce a result to my dilemma that glorified Himself, I felt then the loneliest I'd ever felt. By a strange twist, for the first time in my life, my enemies knew I was alive, but my family believed I was dead. This fact brought me to the back door of my trusted employee and COIL's finest operations manager, Chloe. I needed help.
Zvi and Chloe Azmaveth had recently bought a house on Staten Island. They had no children, and Zvi owned an international micron gold mining company, so he was often on the road, as he was that night. It worked well for Chloe since the COIL office downtown required her hard work, which she attended passionately.
Because of the risks involved in meeting someone I knew was under surveillance, as was Chloe, I returned to the safe house in Manhattan for a second-generation NL weapon, a machine pistol that fired non-lethal tranquilizer pellets. It held two-hundred-and-fifty pea-sized rounds with a maximum effective range of fifty yards, each pellet inducing a twenty-minute dose of sleeping toxin, if inhaled.
My caution in contacting Chloe was warranted. Both of our pasts with international agencies often brought security auditors into our rearview mirrors. As open as COIL's mission statement was, agencies still checked on us periodically. Were we a threat? Were we using our skills against the country? So, past operations and present conflict gave me reason to be extra careful.
From the hedges in the back yard, I aimed the NL-2 at the back door light of the Azmaveth residence. On fully automatic firing, the burst of water-soluble rounds shattered the bulb on impact. The back yard was shrouded in residential darkness, offering me shadows in which to approach the door, but not invisibly. Invisibility would've been nice since I'd already spotted two government agents in a town car out front.
Regardless of the agents in the car, I was more concerned about being tranquilized by the forty-six-year-old ex-Mossad agent I was trying to speak to. Chloe and I had a hundred ways to send secret messages during a field deployment, but our domestic system was somewhat wanting. With so much at risk, I couldn't enter the house and risk a directional microphone that could eavesdrop on our conversation—through dense walls or windows.
Anticipating these dangers, I set a disposable phone on the doormat and knocked loudly on the door. Without waiting to see how many lights came on in the house, I bounded over the hedges and vaulted over a neighbor's fence. After avoiding a doghouse that reminded me of my escape a week and a half earlier, I reached my car. Chloe certainly had the drop phone by then, but I needed to give the agents in front of her house more time to settle into their seats after seeing a little activity in the Azmaveth house.
The phone on her doorstep alone could've caused Chloe to suspect my presence, but such was her caution, I guessed, that she'd need to meet me in the flesh to be convinced I was really alive. And I couldn't wait for morning.
An hour later, I stood on the rocks of Jeffrey's Hook beneath the George Washington Bridge. The Little Red Lighthouse stood dark on my left, the narrow passage between Manhattan and New Jersey as calm as I'd ever seen the water.
I texted Chloe an encrypted message only she would know: "Meet me. Bait the hook. Miss. in Laos last year. - A.B. Leever."
It was clever enough to make me smile. We'd smuggled Bibles the year before to Jeffrey Parker, a missionary in Laos. A.B. Leever was a pen name under which I published a children's adventure series. The government would take days to track down our friend's name in Laos, but Chloe would figure out in a couple minutes that she was to meet me at Jeffrey's Hook.
Two hours later, she finally showed up—and not in her own car. It was borrowed, probably from a church friend or neighbor, someone whose car the Feds were sure to not consider bugging, if they were following her to that extent.
