Love or Hate?, page 21
Michael studies his father’s face in the reflection of the glass. He has a determined nose and a determined jaw to fit his image. Michael knows the Senator’s eyes will be welled up while he studies the photograph, and he also knows the Senator won’t turn to face Michael until they have dried up.
His father believes his son is a mature student who will one day run his international conglomerate. But he won’t. He is far from being a student, and his qualifications make him totally unsuitable to run a local gun store, let alone an international arms conglomerate. If only his father knew the truth.
Michael’s attention shifts beyond the dining room to the kitchen. It is vast. Vast enough to house an entire family rather than prepare food for just the Senator and his wife. There are the sounds of someone putting together the last few finishing touches to tonight’s dinner. He knows the person preparing the dinner won’t be his mother. The person in the kitchen will be a maid and, new or old, she will be Vietnamese. And for that, she will be treated the best of anyone in the house by the Senator.
The Senator finally turns and looks at his son.
*
The Professor turns to Natalie. They are sitting on the sofa in front of the bay window, hand in hand, sipping their hot drinks. He is deeply in love. She is deep in thought. He knows she has pieced together who her real father is, and he knows it has thrown her emotionally. But she hasn’t been in any physical danger—the Professor has. On the way back from the picnic, the Professor told Natalie about the Mercedes trying to force him off the road. At the time, she reacted more than he thought she would.
Now she just squeezes his hand for comfort.
“Are you okay?” she uses sign language instead of her laptop.
“Yes.”
A nod of the head from the Professor. There is a pause, then Natalie indicates to the telephone fixed to the wall halfway down the corridor.
“You know it is time to call your son.”
Sign language from Natalie again.
The Professor’s eyes drop. He looks forward to this day all year, and when it actually arrives, it fills him with apprehension. The reception from his son each year is frosty, at best. What if this year he is openly hostile and says he doesn’t want to be contacted again? The Professor wouldn’t blame him. A son doesn’t always understand why a father does what he does. The Professor thinks of the organization his son works for and realizes a father doesn’t always know why a son does what he does.
The Professor indicates he should ring his son from an untraceable line as always, but instead, he will finish his drink and use the home phone. No harm in that, surely.
It is Natalie’s turn to nod. She leans back—out of view of the window—and thinks of her father—her real father.
*
Senator Doyle is still standing. He always wanted a daughter, but has a son instead. He surveys his son as a chairman of a company would survey the latest set of accounts. Michael is physically a superb specimen, and the Senator should be proud of him, but he is very secretive, and the Senator thinks his son has a dark side. It is one he rarely reveals to his father and one the Senator doesn’t want to find out about—not now anyway.
Michael sits at the table. It is long enough to seat twenty, but rarely sits more than two—the Senator and his wife. Lately it has been the Senator and no wife.
There is a letter on the table. The Senator takes one last look at his watch.
“A letter came for you.”
The Senator liked to open most conversations with a simple statement, then wait for the other person to respond. Michael looks at the letter, then back at his father.
“Don’t bother looking at your watch. You know it hasn’t worked in years. I was only a few minutes late,” Michael says, knowing the effect his response will have on his father.
The Senator grips the watch strap tightly against his wrist.
“Time is important to some people. If you’d stayed in the army long enough, you would have learned a few minutes can be the difference between life and death.”
The Senator still feels the need to lecture his son. He wishes he could love him, but he has loved two people in his life, and they were both taken from him. His brother was killed in the back of his helicopter. And the only woman he truly loved, he stopped seeing because she was the wrong color for his political career. And then, before he realized what a monumental mistake he had made, she was then trapped and killed in the burning wreck of her car.
The Senator thinks about the day she told him she was going to have their child. It was the same day he told her he could never see her again. The Senator regrets every second of that decision, and he regrets it was his brother who was killed by the VC soldier instead of him. If he could have traded his life for Mikey’s, he would have.
Michael shifts impatiently.
“We have dinner once a month, and you can’t even be on time for that.”
The Senator expects an apology.
Michael’s cell phone beeps.
He recognizes the text tone and knows the message must be read instantly. Now the Senator shifts impatiently. Michael looks up.
“Let’s not argue. I’m sorry I haven’t got much time,” he says.
“I can see that,” his father snaps back.
It is now Michael’s turn to survey his father. The Senator is dressed smartly—for most other people, too smartly for a Sunday. But not for Senator Doyle. Appearances are everything, and everything about him is perfect. On the outside, everything is perfect. He has the perfect career, the perfect family, and the perfect mansion, but underneath it all, the Senator’s life is far from perfect.
He built up his business driven by hate and revenge. His family despises him. His son was thrown out of the army and won’t tell his father who he works for. He has an illegitimate Vietnamese daughter somewhere he thinks no one knows about, and his mansion houses a wife who has refused to share the same bed with him for longer than he can remember.
For all his possessions, the one thing the Senator treasures is his watch, and Michael is right; it hasn’t worked in years. It hasn’t worked since the day he flew the last US helicopter out of Vietnam. The watch strap has had to be repaired several times, but for all intents and purposes, it is still the same watch he traded for his life thirty-six years ago.
The Senator turns his attention back to the letter.
“It came hand-delivered from the university and addressed to you. I opened it.”
Michael purses his lips together and nods. “I can see that … what does it say?”
The Senator starts to tell his son, but Michael’s cell phone beeps again. Same tone—same sender. Michael doesn’t bother apologizing this time. He knows he must go even though it will probably be the last time he ever sees his father.
“It says you assaulted a Professor and advises you your best option is to return to your previous employment, wherever that is … you could say it means you are surplus to requirements.”
Michael remains impassive. He doesn’t need it spelled out. His father still talks to him as if he is a child—if only he knew what he really did for a living. But Michael has other things to think about right now. He weighs up whether or not he has time to return to his apartment for his revolver before he attends to his duties. He decides not. He has another weapon—also lethal—and that will have to do.
“Is this about that Jewish lecturer—Professor Cohen?”
The Senator now has Michael’s attention, but for the wrong reasons. Michael thinks carefully before answering.
“It was hardly an assault. It doesn’t matter now,” Michael states.
He has information to find out. And he needs to find it out immediately. He needs to know for sure if Natalie’s father is the man standing in front of him now—his father. He stares at the Senator’s watch, and it is a reminder to him that timing is everything. He can only get information from his father once he gets him off guard, so he does just that.
“I know you are returning to Europe next week for something critical.”
The Senator was going to join his son at the table, but now decides against it.
“Did your mother tell you?” he asks defensively.
Michael stays calm.
“No, she didn’t … Dad, who gave you your watch? You never did tell me.”
Michael tries to sound nonchalant. His father takes a long good look at him before saying anything.
“I never told you—I never told anyone,” the Senator says.
“Well, tell me. What name is on the back of the watch?” Michael persists.
The Senator runs his hand over the watch again, anxious this time.
“The man whose name is on the back didn’t ‘give’ it … he ‘traded’ it,” his father corrects him.
“Okay, he traded it … for what?”
They are both fully aware whoever asks the questions in a conversation controls the conversation. And this is one conversation they both want to control. The Senator tries, unsuccessfully, to change subjects.
“Tell me about the Professor. Is he going to Europe?”
Michael nods. “Father, you know he is.”
A short delay, then, it is Michael’s turn.
“You flew the last helicopter out of Vietnam. Who else was onboard?”
The Senator does not answer. He turns his back and focuses on the photograph again.
“Was it the man you made the trade with?” No answer again. “and, what else did you trade?”
Michael guesses his father has never told anyone about this, but also guesses he needs to tell someone. Few people can hold onto a secret forever. It is against human nature. People don’t like the thought that if they die, something of such importance dies with them.
The Senator hesitates. His voice is suddenly raspy. “I traded my life … I traded a box full of sacred documents. I traded the dead bodies of our entire unit … I traded my brother’s body …”
The Senator’s shoulders drop as if a burden has suddenly been taken off him. Michael takes a deep breath as he takes in what his father has just confessed.
“Did you save that VC soldier?” he asks.
A pause.
“No, I saved his wife. He died holding the documents … she came with me, and that was the end of it.”
It might be the end as far as the Senator is concerned, but it is only the beginning for Michael.
“That’s not true, Father, is it? You had an affair with her, didn’t you? And, the two of you had an illegitimate daughter … and this daughter lives right here in Boston and—”
The Senator suddenly moves forward and looks as if he will strike his son.
“That’s enough, Michael!”
The Senator doesn’t have to admit anything to reveal the truth. It is simply enough he doesn’t deny what his son has accused him of. Michael’s cell phone beeps three times in succession. The sender is becoming urgent. Michael is needed right now.
“Son, can’t that wait?”
Michael stands up. “No, it can’t.”
He goes over to his father and touches his wrist and the watch. He wants to show more affection, but it’s all he can do.
“Be careful in Europe … you hear me?”
The Senator wants to look at the photograph of his brother, but instead stares at his son. He and his son had never before showed any concern for each other like this.
“Dad, you watch your back.”
The Senator looks as if he has nothing to say, so Michael heads towards the exit.
The Senator whispers: “Chuong …”
Michael stops.
“You asked what was the name on the back of my watch … it is Chuong.”
The Senator could leave it like that, but decides he must tell his son more.
“Chuong—that was the name of the VC soldier who killed Mikey.”
Doyle looks at the photo of Mikey before continuing. “As for his wife—my mistress—she gave birth to our daughter … and I never saw her again. She died in a car crash six years later. As for the sacred documents, they have resurfaced in Geneva … in a high-security bank. An impregnable bank. And that’s where I am going in a few days’ time.”
The Senator has said what he needed to say. And Michael has heard what he needed to hear.
Michael takes one last look at his father, gives a simple nod of his head, and leaves. The door clicks shut, but the Senator knows he is not alone. He turns towards the glass doors leading into the kitchen. He hopes it is the maid standing there—but it is not. It is his wife.
At first, neither can say anything.
Then she speaks. “You’re not coming back, are you?”
His throat is dry, but he manages one word. “No.”
He says this at the exact moment a high-powered rifle is breached in an apartment looking straight into the Professor’s.
*
A high-powered telescopic sight rests on this high-powered rifle. And the rifle rests on an old man’s shoulder. The old man was the oldest living tenant in this apartment block until a few minutes ago. He remains perfectly still, and his head lolls conveniently out of the way. It lolls at a very unusual angle. It is perfectly broken, and the tenant is perfectly dead. He fought and won his last battle with the janitor, but lost the one against the man standing behind him holding the weapon.
The man holding the weapon ignores the dead tenant and admires the silencer he has attached to the rifle. It is a state-of-the-art silencer. The rapport from a weapon of this caliber would, under usual circumstances, be deafening. This silencer will reduce that sound to a harmless-sounding hiss, but the effect of a shot will be anything other than harmless. It would not deviate more than one millimeter as it fired straight through a man’s skull. It would penetrate a target with a perfectly round entry hole, but exit it with a much larger, messier one the size of a plate as the bullet in the chamber was designed to flatten on impact and take a suitable amount of the target with it.
The sights focus eighty yards beyond the silencer to an infrared dot on a man’s face. Such is the power of the telescopic sights the crosshairs can be aligned perfectly on the bridge of the man’s spectacles. The assassin has seen this face on many occasions during the last week—mostly from a distance, once up close—but a face always looks different through telescopes, he considers. The image doesn’t look real. That is until the trigger is squeezed and the red dot becomes a bullet hole, the neck breaks, just like the tenant’s, as it jerks back, and the brains and splintered skull splatter against whatever was behind it. The face in the sights belongs to a small, intelligent-looking man. It belongs to Professor Cohen.
He will soon be dead. That is the assassin’s priority. And so will the girlfriend next to him. That bit will be due to his own initiative. The assassin likes to think of himself as an individual and prefers not to do exactly what his brother tells him to do. They are identical in many ways, but this brother likes to think of himself as an artisan. A lethal psychotic artisan, but an artisan nevertheless.
He swivels the rifle over the tenant’s shoulder until Natalie’s face is in view. The red dot comes to rest on her forehead. He adjusts the focus slightly. He is confident he will be able to fire the second shot into her head before she registers the man sitting next to her has lost his.
The assassin takes a couple more snub-nosed bullets from the black case beside him. He will only need two, but might fire a third because he enjoyed this part of his job so much. He would also fire the third bullet because he adored the feel of this Heckler and Koch—and the noise the silencer spat out turned him on.
Killing the old tenant and the janitor provided little satisfaction. The neck of someone the age of the tenant is so brittle it breaks easily. The way he killed the janitor was far more rewarding. He inserts the bullets in the magazine, breeches the rifle again, and refocuses the sights. Yes, he is a genius artisan.
*
The Professor stares lovingly into Natalie’s face. He wonders what she is thinking. Does she really love a man almost twice her age? Can she really see a viable future in their relationship? He hopes so, as he has convinced himself he won’t be able to live without her.
The red dot moves back onto the Professor’s face. She can’t see it. If she looked at the reflection in the window, she would then be able to see it, but her eyes do not leave the Professor’s face—not until he leans slightly forward and stands up.
“You must think I am a fool,” the Professor says.
Natalie lip-reads, and her face immediately shows confusion. She shakes her head, a compassionate: “No, that is not what I think.”
“One minute your life can be perfect … and the next it can be taken away.”
The Professor doesn’t have to explain this to Natalie. They have that particular experience in common—both of them were orphaned at a very young age.
“I know … it is time for me to make the call,” the Professor adds, then walks slowly down the corridor towards the telephone.
The corridor has several windows, and the red dot follows the Professor from one to the next. It remains perfectly on the side of his head as the Professor makes his way to the telephone. The old tenant is proving to be an excellent rigid support for the modern, high-tech sniper rifle.
The Professor picks up the receiver, turns away from the window, and dials the only number penciled on the wall. It gives the code for Geneva and is written next to a solitary glass photo frame. The glass frame is similar to the one hanging on the Senator’s wall. But the photograph is very different.
It shows a boy in the foreground. He is running down a dusty alleyway towards the camera which snapped the photograph. The boy is half looking back at the two men he is running away from. They are the Mujahideen and are silhouetted ominously against the entrance to the alleyway. Few people have to experience what the little boy went through. Even fewer have the exact moment captured on Polaroid.
The photograph perfectly captures the expression of a frightened fugitive in the precise moment he realizes there is a chance—albeit a slim one—that his life might actually be saved. It shows everything in that split second—fear of being captured and killed eclipsed against the hope of escaping and survival. For the Professor, the photograph encapsulates both love and hate—the love of life and the hate of those who revel in taking it away. And it is a photograph the Professor will treasure to the end of his life.
