Falling Star (12 page)

The third man, Bill Sorenson, looked through Winslow's wallet and picked out a snapshot of a young blond woman in her late twenties with two small children.  The color photograph, obviously taken in a studio, seemed to be of recent vintage given the clothes the subjects were wearing.

"Lovely family, Mr. Winslow," said Sorenson. "Just help us and you can go home to them soon."

"Look, you've got the wrong guy.  I haven't done anything to you.  Look, if it's money you want, I don't have much, but what I have you can have -- just let me go."

"Don't toy with us, Winslow," said Walsh.  "We know you're with CSAC and that you have information critical to us.  We want it.  What is so damn important about that information that you're willing to die for it?"

"Die?  Look, I would tell you everything you want, but I don't know what the hell you're talking about.  What the hell is this Seasack?  I've never heard of it.  All I know is that I was answering a message at the Minneapolis airport when I passed out.  Somebody grabbed my arms.  The next thing I know, I'm tied to this chair.  I'm blindfolded, and you two are asking me crazy things.  Give me a break."

"Mr. Winslow, let's review the facts.  First, you're a special courier carrying a message of the highest secrecy.  Second, we know that you boarded Northwest Flight 8 at SeaTac Airport in Seattle at 11:40 a.m. destined for Minneapolis/St. Paul Airport, where you were supposed to board Northwest Flight 361 for Washington National Airport at 6:05 p.m.  It was almost five o'clock before we were able to catch up with you at the airport.  Finally, the message that you're carrying is of vital importance to my leaders."

Winslow vigorously shook his head in denial and in doing so his blindfold came undone, falling to his lap in a loose pile of cloth.  Blinking from the light in the room, Winslow was startled to look into the pale blue eyes of his tormentor.

"Fool."  Walsh abruptly turned to Sorenson with a cold, violent stare.  "I told you to tie that blindfold firmly."

Sorenson stood silently.  Walsh was his commander; he knew that protesting would have little use.

There was little more that could be done.  A thorough search of Winslow's clothing and briefcase had revealed nothing to suggest that Winslow was anything but what he said he was.  While Winslow was unconscious, Sorenson had the abominable job of conducting a complete body and cavity search of Winslow.  The search had revealed nothing more than the body of a normal middle-aged Caucasian male with the usual bumps, bruises and scars one normally accumulates after more than forty years on this Earth.

Maybe they had taken the wrong guy, Walsh thought.

Another thought entered Walsh's mind.

Maybe this was a trap.  By allowing him and Sorenson to take this agent, the Americans might already be on their tracks.  After all, the enemy could have set up the leader.  Maybe he was already under custody -- maybe even dead.

In retrospect, Walsh decided that the operation had gone far too smoothly.  This had to be a trap.

Walsh turned to Winslow.  "So the enemy has made us, have they?"

"Look, buddy, I really don't know you or anything.  Please let me go."  Winslow strained at his bindings to no avail.

Walsh walked across the room, entered the adjacent bedroom, and went directly to a dresser.  He slowly drew on a pair of leather driving gloves.  From the top left drawer Walsh picked up a Smith Wesson .357 Magnum revolver.  He then loaded six hollow point shells into the weapon.

Seeing what Walsh was doing, Sorenson took him by his arm and whispered, "Wait a minute.  We're supposed to question this guy, not kill him."

"He knows too much.  Besides, this is a trap.  We've got to cut our losses.  Know your place!  I'm making this decision; you have no basis to question my judgment.  Just do your job."

Sorenson knew that Walsh was right.  He could not question his leader; he had to do his job.  His throat felt parched as he watched Walsh walk out of the bedroom.

Walsh walked into the room in which Winslow was tied to the chair and said, "Mr. Winslow, I'm afraid that you have become a burden."

Winslow looked up into the pale blue eyes that showed no emotion.

"I'm not who you want.  I don't know what you want.  Please let me go, I've got a family, really."

With studied indifference, Walsh placed the muzzle of the revolver to Winslow's left temple.  Winslow, tears forming in his eyes, made one final plea.

"Why are you doing this to me?  Why?"

Walsh gently squeezed the trigger sending a .357 Magnum hollow point slug racing down the barrel of his revolver.  The bullet crashed into Richard Winslow's left temple, jerking his head rightward -- a look of utter surprise on his face.  The shock of the bullet ripping into Winslow's temple caused intense pain.  Each synapse screamed terribly as it went through its death throes.  The pain -- the utter pain, the likes of which Winslow had never known and would never know again.  Winslow looked as if he was about to say something, the only sound emitting from the screaming hole that was his mouth being, "MAAAAAA!" 

As the bullet shattered Richard Winslow's skull and penetrated the subdural membrane of his brain, he briefly experienced an intense bright light.  This was followed immediately by a flood of red as the blood vessels in the retina of his eyes exploded from the pressure.  As the bullet, now deformed by its collision with Winslow's skull, crashed into Winslow's left frontal lobe, the instant flash of red was replaced by blackness.  Richard Winslow no longer existed. 

The bullet continued its deadly course, tearing a wide path through the grayish white tissue of Winslow's brain and finally blowing a large portion of the right frontal portion of his skull and facial skin away from his head. Blood, grayish white brain tissue and small shards of what was formerly Richard Winslow's skull blasted out of the cavity that used to be his face, leaving the characteristic exit crater, spraying the floor and the adjacent wall in a grotesque, red, white and gray Jackson Pollock design, a brilliant abstraction of Navajo sand art.

The bullet finally came to rest in the wall of the room directly across from the now fatally comatose man.  His body remained seated on and bound to the cold, metal kitchen chair.

As the bullet completed its grisly task, the body of the former Richard Winslow slumped forward, held to the chair by the ropes that held him in his final hours of life.  His arms remained tied behind him.  Although his brain had ceased to function, his heart continued to spasmodically pulse, sending waves and waves of bright crimson blood gushing from the gaping head wound.  The spreading pool of thick, slippery blood quickly expanded its grip on the dirty wooden and torn linoleum floor.

"Bill, get some gasoline from the garage."

Sorenson was overwhelmed and sickened by what he had just witnessed, but was conditioned to comply with Walsh's orders.  He staggered out of the room.  Reaching the front door and grabbing the doorframe with his left hand, Sorenson doubled over and retched, convulsively.  His head buzzed from the loud report of the .357 Magnum revolver.

Nauseated and sweating profusely, Sorenson walked slowly over to the garage to find the five-gallon gasoline can.  Nothing in his training had prepared Sorenson for this situation.  His training had included dealing with death and even having to take a life, but that was all theoretical.  He had never seen death and certainly not violent death.  This was supposed to be a game, like a chess match. As an agent, his duty was to serve his rulers in their territorial goals.  Goals not meant to be questioned.  Goals to be sought blindly.  His mission was to execute the plan.  The plan and the metrics of its success were for others -- the leaders, the planners, not Bill Sorenson.

Even so, Sorenson had found that this alien place was not as evil as his overlords had claimed.  There was certain gentleness to the land, a certain sense of opportunity that he had never experienced at home.  Home -- that notion seemed more foreign each day that Sorenson lived his American existence.  Sorenson had sensed changes in his attitude about this place and the effect those changes had on his every thought.

Sorenson had become increasingly concerned about these changes.  He worried how they affected his mission and the life he had molded for himself in this strange world.  Sorenson even had harbored a hope that the lessening of turmoil might give him an opportunity to fade into the fabric of American society.  These people were not the monsters that he had grown up hating.  So far, his duty to his own people had been a contest of will, strength, and intellect with the enemy -- not violence.  Was this death necessary?

Sorenson walked as if in a slow motion trance. He had to get to the gas can.  He had to get it for Walsh, his group leader.  He had to get the hell out of here.

Composing himself, Sorenson found the gasoline can and returned to the kitchen.  By now twilight had overcome the scene and the kitchen was cast in dark shadows.

Walsh stood in the doorway, calmly smoking a cigarette, his pale blue eyes surveying the results of his handiwork.  The corpse lay prone on the kitchen floor, having been cut free by Walsh.  A pool of dark red blood continued to spread from his shattered skull.

Whatever secrets you may have carried, Sorenson thought, we will never know them now.

Walsh, upon hearing Sorenson re-enter the kitchen, abruptly turned to face him.

"Let's get moving.  For all we know, Winslow's fellow gangsters may be searching for him.  Let's get this house burning, right now."

Without comment, Sorenson mechanically splashed gasoline around the room.

Meanwhile, Walsh methodically wiped the revolver with a cotton handkerchief to smear any fingerprints or other identifying marks.  A cigarette dangled from his mouth.  Walsh then tucked the revolver under his belt.  He would get rid of it later.

After he finished his task, Sorenson quickly walked out of the farmhouse.

Walsh lingered for another moment, making one last inspection of the room.  He casually flicked his lighted cigarette into the kitchen as he walked out of the farmhouse toward the Jeep Grand Wagoner parked in the drive.

Sorenson, already in the driver's seat, had the car started.  After taking one last look, Walsh sat down, put on his shoulder belt, reached into his shirt pocket for the cigarette pack, took a cigarette out and lit it.  Sorenson drove rapidly down the farm road.  Through the rearview mirror, he watched the old, abandoned farmhouse explode in a fireball.  Walsh sat calmly in the passenger's seat, drawing on his cigarette.  Neither man spoke.

About ten miles northeast of Mankato, they encountered volunteer fire trucks racing southward toward Mankato.  This event provoked no comment.  About twenty miles out of Mankato, Walsh quietly asked Sorenson to stop the Jeep.  The empty field was marked by a sign that declared: "State of Minnesota -- Department of Natural Resources -- Protected Native Prairie Reserve."

Walsh walked slowly across the native prairie to the river bluff amid the evening din of insect songs.  He stood there for some time, quietly looking at the Minnesota River, which by now had turned from a sleepy creek to a modest river.  Walsh took the revolver out carefully with his handkerchief and tossed it into the dark, muddy waters of the Minnesota.  He calmly returned to the Jeep.

Walsh announced he would drive and Sorenson shifted over to the passenger seat.  For the remainder of their trip from Mankato the two were quiet.  Sorenson mostly looked out the passenger window into the night and the occasional passing light of a distant farmhouse.

Finally, the two reached the center of Minneapolis, the City of Lakes.  Stopping at the corner of Hennepin Avenue and Lake Street, Sorenson disembarked without comment and faded into the shadows.  Walsh turned right on to Hennepin Avenue and headed home.

1993: Call to Duty

0900 Hours: Friday, June 11, 1993: New York, New York

Fifty stories above the streets of New York, the dark, wood-paneled office projected the prestige and power of being a managing director of Franklin Smedley Associates.  Smedleys, as the firm was known on the Street, was one of the leading investment banks in the world.  Beside the large mahogany desk and leather chair, the office had a comfortable leather sofa and armchair, mahogany coffee table, dark Chippendale side chairs, and expensive oriental lamps.  The dark red, hand-tied Oriental rug on his floor had been handpicked on a trip to Istanbul.  An oil painting of a delicate, blossoming dogwood branch stretched out across a brilliant blue sky sat on the wall directly across from his desk.

The dark mahogany bookcase and window ledges were crowded with Lucite, glass, and brass flotsam and jetsam: silent memorabilia of a long and successful investment-banking career.  Though of nominal value, the odds and ends of plastic, wood, brass, and crystal represented the aspirations of many would-be fortunes.

The office was quiet, but for the soft hum of the ventilating system and the dull background noise of the city in perpetual motion countless stories below, the honking of a frazzled motorist or the loud noise of a muffler-less diesel truck roaring up the busy streets.

Even the Quotron computer on Mike's brilliantly polished mahogany credenza made no sound as it chronicled the rise and fall of million-dollar fortunes on its green-lettered screen.

The banker was dressed in a dark blue cotton shirt with white stripes, starched white collar, and white French cuffs anchored by simple gold links, bright red paisley braces holding up custom tailored gray pinstriped suit pants, and a blue and red-patterned tie.  He wore a gold school ring with a garnet stone from Mr. Jefferson's School for Boys on his right ring finger.

The arduous climb to the top had its price, which the banker had paid, though it was not readily evident in his outward appearance, or even to him.  He enjoyed his office, his position, and his attainments.  He lived for the power and prestige that these things brought to him.

This morning, however, there had been a strange feeling, a gnawing sensation; a premonition that something was not right, that something had been left undone.  He had shrugged off the feeling as simply lack of sleep.