The First End (22 page)

A second man had appeared from the other end of
the alley and was calmly watching the lopsided battle. “Take your
time, Ming. Make him feel it,” he said to his partner. He held a
gun in one hand, but at the moment he held it idly by his side. His
attitude and demeanor shouted boredom. “Make him feel every punch,
every kick.”

That infuriated Bill. He would not be a
spectacle for anyone. He grunted and shoved himself forward, taking
another kick in the process. But this time he was able to turn his
body and take the blow on the side of his meaty thigh instead of
the knee where the blow had been aimed. The kick stung, but the
lawyer was able to shunt the pain aside. He hit the assassin a
glancing blow to the side of the face, rocking the man back on his
heels.

Bill tried a kick of his own, but his acrobatic
assailant suddenly dropped to the alley floor and swiped Bill’s
legs out from under him. Bill fell heavily, landing on his back,
and striking his head. He gasped for breath, and tried to blink
tears out of his eyes. A punch to his left eye closed it in a burst
of pain that shot all along Bill’s body. He tried to move, but some
weight atop him prevented it. Two more punches to the face nearly
sent Bill into unconsciousness.

A voice, deep and sonorous, brought him back to
reality. He blinked, and realized he could only see out of one eye.
His attacker’s faces swam into view dizzily. He shook his head,
trying to clear away the cobwebs.

“Mr. Gardner, can you understand me?” the second
man with the gun asked. He wore a business suit and had the face of
a statue. Not a single expression seemed to cross the man’s
features.

Bill nodded.

“Good. You are about to die, but before you do,
I need you to tell me something, Mr. Gardner. You are a murderer,
Mr. Gardner. You attacked my homeland, killed my countryman, and
subverted others. Here is what I want to know. Who sent you?”

Through a split lip, the battered lawyer,
whispered, “Wastend.”

Another blow to his head had the world bursting
into an incredible display of radiant stars.

“That is a lie. We know the US Government sent
you. So tell me the truth.”

For a split second, he almost did. He almost
told them the whole story. He was going to die anyway, and the
people who had sent him to his death would hardly care. Why not
make them pay too. He opened his mouth to confess, when a nugget of
loyalty settled into his heart.

He couldn’t do it. No matter the justifications,
right or wrong, he couldn’t betray his country. The fact that he
almost did, infuriated him more than anything else that had
happened to him. In betraying his country, he would be betraying
everything he believed in. It didn’t matter if his nation held the
same values or not. It mattered if he did. And no matter what the
official reports said in Washington, he was fighting for those
values.

A burst of strength infused Bill at that moment.
The man straddling him with his fist cocked to deliver another
punch was only half watching Bill. Most of his attention was on his
superior, waiting for instructions to either continue the beating
or simply finish the American. Bill’s mind needed something more
concrete than abstract stereotypes to focus his rage on. So named
him this one Toast and the other Deadmeat. He then willed it to
happen.

He twisted his body violently, taking Toast by
surprise and knocking him to the ground. Continuing his swing, he
cut Deadmeat’s legs out from under him in a similar move as Toast
had done to Bill just moments earlier. Deadmeat let out a cry of
shock and fell backwards.

Scrambling, Bill pulled Deadmeat close and laid
into the man with furious punches. Somewhere in that, the man lost
his grip on his gun and it skittered out of reach. Bill hardly
noticed, but his attention was firmly acquired by Toast who tackled
him from the side.

They rolled around on the alley floor, biting,
kicking, punching, and doing anything else they could do to each
other. Bill’s hand suddenly found a beer bottle sitting next to one
of the dumpsters. With a cry of rage, he smashed it over the head
of Toast, who rolled away from the shattering glass with a grunt of
pain. The lawyer wasn’t going to give him the change to flee. He
scrambled after the man and still holding the jagged remains of the
bottle, he stabbed the man in the neck with it.

Blood squirted all over Bill. He fell away as
Toast went into violent convulsions, clawing futilely at the glass
shards in his neck. The man was a dead man, so Gardner ignored him
and spun about to find Deadmeat. But the only thing he saw was the
man’s back as he ran out the far end of the alley, having abandoned
the fight.

Cursing, and still on his hands and knees, Bill
finally found the gun that had slid under one of the dumpsters.
Armed, he climbed to his feet, thinking to pursue Deadmeat and make
him in fact what he had so frivolously named him. A death gurgle
from Toast arrested his attention. He looked on as the man took his
last breath, bubbles of blood forming on his lips. Bill felt a
giddy elation at having survived the attack. He quipped, “You’re
toast!”

It suddenly dawned on him how much trouble he
was really in. He started to walk out of the alley, but staggered
against the wall as he almost blacked out.
That demon sure beat
the fire out of me,
he said to himself. He took several moments
to regain his composure before limping out of the alleyway.

Fortunately for him, few pedestrians walked the
sidewalks at this time of day. The few he did see, hardly took
notice of him—a skill of blindness that most city folk developed.
After all, best not to get involved in something you may regret
later. Staggering down the street, he made for the car garage where
he had parked his car, a Scion tC that he used occasionally. He
needed to get out of here. He couldn’t return home, that would be
suicide. He needed somewhere else to go.

Digging his cellphone out of his pocket, he
called Karen.

“Bill? You okay? You never call me at this time
of day.”

“Karen? Can you meet me at your place?”

His tone of voice must have tipped her off.
“What’s wrong?”

He swallowed and looked around. No one seemed to
be following him. “I can’t explain it over the phone right now. I
just need you to meet me. I’ll explain then.”

“Bill, you’re scaring me.”

“I know. Can you do it?

“Yes. Where are you right now?”

“Downtown, near my office. I’ll see you in a
bit.”

“Okay.”

Days flowed by. Bill tried to get back to his
normal life, but remained always vigilant.

Spanning an athlete jump the few steps to the
entrance of the building, Bill felt full fitness. After his
adventure, he appreciated all details of life and never complained.
He took the elevator and when he arrived at the eleventh floor, he
passed through the empty hall and the office of Cassie. The
assistant greeted him quickly and smiled. He was apparently
concerned about the customer who could be waiting. Cassie always
got to the office first. She had prepared coffee and arranged some
documents. Of his arrival in the office, Bill noticed that the
expected client wasn’t there yet. He served himself a cup of black
coffee and took a few minutes to talk to Cassie, before releasing
his first file and study the case.

Bill was not quite at ease to keep working in
the same office. He couldn’t concentrate. He was walking around and
from time to time, he stopped to scan the walls. His assistant
Cassie was watching him closely without saying a word. Bill
approached the wall and asked Cassie to take a look “Is what you
see, what I see?”

“You worry too much, Mr. Gardner, I see
nothing.”

Bill asked Cassie to step back and with his
elbow he hit the wall hard, leaving a large hole “I knew it!”

Cassie was still stunned by what she saw. Bill
pulled out a tinny microphone attached to a set of wires. “Damn it!
I knew it, we’ve been bugged.”

He rushed immediately to his phone and
dismantled it. Another microphone was placed inside the device. He
went around all the office and whenever he saw a suspicious spot,
he left a hole. There were wires everywhere. “They will never let
you go off” said Cassie with concern.

Two officers were assigned to protect him. Bill
never knew who sent the agents, and was not sure of their true
purpose. In his mind, the agents were there to monitor his
movements rather than to protect him. They followed him wherever he
went. Anytime he returned home, they would head up first and made
sure he was safe.

It all quickly grew tiring. Finally he had
enough. One day, as soon as he got in his apartment, he slipped
out, using the stairs and the emergency exit without being noticed.
He walked to 5th Avenue and ducked into a liquor store to get a
bottle of wine. Before returning home, Bill called Karen and
invited her for dinner at a busy restaurant for the next day.

Once at the table with Karen, Bill couldn’t keep
himself from looking around from time to time. He felt on edge,
jumpy. Except for one person who ate alone on the next table,
everything looked normal. The man coughed from time to time and
whenever he did, he would glanced towards the couple. Suspicious,
Bill asked Karen in an undertone voice, "Do you know that guy over
there?” He nodded in the man’s direction.

"I don’t think so" replied Karen.

"He keeps staring at us in a strange way."

“So what?”

“He looks familiar.”

“Do you remember from where?”

“It could be anywhere, China, Dubai, Hawaii, I
don’t know, I really don’t know…”

“Try to remember!” asked Karen.

“Forget it! It could be my paranoia rearing my
head. Just forget it!”

The man got up to go out for a while, probably
for a cigarette. The couple continued to talk, but Bill listened
only halfheartedly to what Karen was saying. The presence of the
stranger still bothered him. He was not an Arab…he was a Farsi,
Bill thought, he was almost sure. Most people couldn’t tell the
difference, but Bill definitely could. He had seen Iranians in
Dubai. He had seen Wong Lee speaking to this tall Iranian in the
exhibition. The man in the restaurant looked like him, but he
wasn’t him, that’s what really bothered him.

As with the Chinese he had battled in the alley,
the man on the table had a face with no name, so his battle mind
automatically applied one. Given his size and way of walking, he
wanted to call him Scissors, then he settled on Caesar and decided
to call him by this name in case the entire thing was nothing more
than a mistake.

Finally, he managed to get his mind off the man
and was back to Karen. They both continued to eat, drink and talk
like nothing had happened. For Karen, it was the time to talk about
their relationship, a difficult one to secure.

The evening was quite pleasant. Sometime later,
Bill and Karen decided to leave, making plans to see each other
soon. Bill accompanied Karen up to her car in the parking lot. He
held her between his arms and kissed her twice. He opened the car
door for Karen to let her in and left to find his own car.

Taking another look around, he scurried as
quickly as he could towards the parking lot. He never saw Caesar
standing in the shadows, watching a block back.

Bill reached his car without incident. He
fumbled around with his keys only to drop them. He cursed and bent
over to pick them up. That’s when he saw Caesar standing at the
entrance of the restaurant with a cellphone in hand. For one long
terrible moment, they just stared at each other.

With a burst of speed born of desperation, Bill
bolted away from his car as fast as he could possibly go. At nearly
the same time, Caesar pushed a button on his phone, and Bill’s car
exploded.

The force picked the lawyer up like a kitten and
slammed him forward into another car. Something broke—or more
appropriately, several things broke—upon impact. Glass, shrapnel
and fire rained over Bill. He had a fleeting look as Caesar
disappeared in a swirl of black smoke, and then darkness claimed
him.

Sound returned to Bill first. He heard voices in
the room. He couldn’t understand what they were speaking about, but
the fact that he could hear them brought some comfort to mind. He
groaned and tried to open his eyes. When he did, a stab of light
caused him to wince. He tried to bring his hand up to shade them,
but he couldn’t move either.

“Steady, cowboy,” a rumbling voice ordered.
“You’ve been battered about like a flower in a tornado.”

“General Hynes?” he whispered. Bill licked his
lips and tried to blink. A blurry blob slowly resolved into the
General. “What happened?”

“You got blown up,” he chuckled. “If you must
know, you look like it too.”

“You really look in bad shape.” Hynes
noticed.

Bill groaned, in no mood for frivolity. “Where’s
Karen?”

“She’s outside. The hospital staff are giving
her the run around. In a moment, you’ll be dead.”

The lawyer didn’t even feel anything in reaction
to that statement. “Is it that bad, or do you intend to finish what
you started.”

Hynes grinned. “Oh, I intend to finish it.” He
pulled over a chair and sat down. “Just not in the way you suppose.
This little explosion has offered us an opportunity and granted me
a way to actually help you.”

“How’s that?”

“As I said, you are going to die—not in a
literal sense, though your injuries are still touch and go. No,
we’re going to give you a new name and a new life.”

Realization dawned on him. “You’re going to put
me into witness protection.”

“More or less. The Chinese will think you are
dead, which only helps us both. They will stop coming after you and
have no proof of our involvement in China. It works for both of
us.”