Russell Twyce

On the Meaning of Life

Complete happiness and ultimate longevity are the achievable result of simply understanding why you are here. The mountain guru’s answer to the ages-old question is simple but fully comprehending it a bit more complex.

[private_Chevron]The Mountain Guru answers the question on the meaning of life question with just one word – “Freedom”.[private_Chevron]

[private_Chevron]You suppose that you live in a ‘free’ society now but you don’t and you can’t gain the many benefits from the Mountain Guru’s word untl you fully grasp what real freedom is.[private_Chevron]

And as the mountain guru points out, it is just that easy.  Your life can be extended by centuries, as your seeming age drops to whatever your optimum appearance is.

This IS Fiction, or at least it’s the product of my imagination. It doesn’t matter which Pope, nor even when. Like lawyers, Popes haven’t changed basic ideology, or undergone a fashion change, in hundreds of years. So this story is timeless, as are the Akashic Records.

The Akashic Trial of a Pope Short Story by Russell Twyce

It came to pass that a Pope and a pauper died at the very same instant. In life, the circumstances and the treatment of the vacated bodies could not have been more different. In the Pope’s case, the seconds after his passing were frantic with activities. The death was long expected, planned for, and each priest, nun, cardinal and staffer had a choreographed series of functions to complete on schedule. The pauper’s body just waited to be unceremoniously disposed of, as soon as someone noticed that the spirit had vacated it.

But we’re really not exploring the events in life that anti-dated the instant of the two coinciding deaths, because the pair of spirits entered eternity at precisely the same time and our story begins there.

Ultimate Conversational Hypnosis WILL Change your Life Prospects

“I am THE Pope.” Bereft of his vestments and valuable baubles, his holiness had only the strength of his conviction, and a vicious set of spiritual elbows, to push himself to the forefront, when they had arrived neck-and-neck.

“I will inherit the earth.” Said the pauper meekly. But true feelings are not easily concealed in the beyond and the poor man’s thoughts were gleeful. ‘I’ve got a ringside seat to witness a Pope’s ultimate justice! It’s just too bad that a lawyer didn’t keel-over too: I might have seen if that well-worn joke was based in truth.’

In the 4-d theater of the afterlife, the lives of both men began to replay. The pauper’s story was short: he had not been able to afford enough to make for a feature-length life screenplay. When his show was over, the Pope had just graduated from seminary school. From there, the scenes switched to the exploited alter-boys and young nuns the Pope had sexually molested during his formative years as a rising priest.

“It wasn’t as bad as it looks here.” His Holiness said in a mortified undertone. “I elevated some of those people to prominent positions within the church hierarchy.”

“After you had emotionally scarred them and made them unfit for life outside of the church.” The pauper retorted in disgust. ‘You then promoted them to where they could pass on your instruction to a next generation of exploited young.”

“YOU are not my judge.”

“Now I’m wondering if that first lawyer to reach lawyer joke was off the mark. Seeing your Akashic record replayed has made me doubt if all hundred and however many Popes really did make it through the pearly gates of Heaven.”

“Very few Popes have made it to paradise.” A third soul’s voice resounded.

“Jesus!” The Pope and the pauper exclaimed in unison.

“I did some good things too!” The Pope protested and he wished he could shut off the projection of his sins. And as if in response to his desire for secrecy, the Akashic Records player stopped.

The Akashic Records are the ULTIMATE Read

“You do know that you will have to watch the effects of your sins in its entirety.” Jesus said with a sneer in his voice. “Some of your predecessors still haven’t finished absorbing the full impact of their self-serving acts. But it’s bad enough that you and I have to screen it all: we don’t have to co-punish your friend here with that too.”

“You will be watching it with me?” The Pope internally cringed.

“That’s my punishment.” Jesus said. [private_Chevron]“By committing your disreputable acts in my name, you involved me in them. I have to atone for your misdeeds and those of the rest of the Christian leadership. Each time you sold forgiveness, you indebted me further. It’s ironic, isn’t it, that some of the Christian nonsense that was started long after I was crucified, have the Christian’s icon figure trapped endlessly in purgatory?”[/private_Chevron]

“You should go back for you second coming? You could set matters right.” The poor man suggested, and then he chuckled. “You’d be well stocked with hot and cold running nuns, each of whom is technically already your bride.”

[private_Chevron]“Would I walk into the new Pope’s office and tell him I want my old position back?” Christ’s spirit asked. “How do you think that would turn out?”

“I suppose they would just see you as one of many impostors.”

“Even if I performed a few miracles, they would be discounted as magician’s tricks. So I just do my job here in the Akashic afterlife, showing dead popes, priests, & pastors the errors of their ways.”

“I did most of what I did on behalf of the church.” The Pope’s ethereal voice was now meek.

“No.” Jesus retorted. “You hid your actions from your conscience by pretending they were hidden behind a cross. How often did you preach on the ten-commandments, without ever once questioning why the church was continuously in breach of the second one? Thou shalt NOT hold graven images before me!”

“The cross isn’t considered a graven image.”

“The ability to forgive yourself sins, by blaming them on an ideal represented by a symbol, like a flag or a cross, is exactly why the second commandment is in the number 2 spot. It is even ahead of murder.” The spirit of Jesus gestured towards the Akashic Records screen and the Pope’s long list of sins began to run again. “Did you really enjoy pleasure as Pope?” The current scene was of the Pope extorting more money than a man could afford after a confession, though the man’s family would suffer for the lack. “What real joy is there in money?”

“There is no real joy in money.” It wasn’t the Pope but the pauper’s soul answering. “I had no wealth in my life but I lived and I loved. Can I go on now?”

“Certainly.” Jesus made an ushering gesture with his ethereal hand. “Enjoy the Heaven you’ve earned and when your soul is ready for your next life, I expect it will be in a wealthier existence.”

“I’m sorry.” The Pope said.

“It’s too late to be sorry.” Jesus sternly said. “Repenting only counts up to the threshold of death – just like the false forgiveness you flogged to your flock to the staggering enrichment of your utterly false faith.”[/private_Chevron]

The End

Short Fiction on the Akashic Records by Russell Twyce

This is a work of FICTION, but it is based on my personal beliefs and my first-hand knowledge of the Akashic truth. If you infuse the moral into your life, it will improve your standing in eternity.

Chapter 3 of Shiva’s Messenger

Pilgrimage of a Leper

As soon as he had been old enough to fend for himself in the woods, his father had often taken trips on his own, sometimes for up to several months. John had never felt excessively lonely during those periods because he knew his father would always come back. Now his absence was a vacuum and a sense of isolation threatened to pull the air out of his lungs.

Pushing out from the bank, he started the boat’s motor and the sputtering cough of the outboard engine built to a roar. He watched back in sadness as the craft rounded the bend. Then, as suddenly as the view of his boyhood home was gone, so was his pervading melancholy. It was replaced by a growing sense of anticipation. His childhood and schooling were finished and his post-graduate work was ahead.

He transferred his gear up the slope to the hidden pickup truck. Then before driving, he looked at his phony but very convincing identification. The set of ID was painstakingly created around a real person that would have been roughly John’s age, if still alive. It was identity theft but that person didn’t need the name anymore.

The fledgling assassin had training in how to craft up ID but not like this gem. Created by a forger extraordinaire in Toronto, Sam Levi was a man his father considered a dear friend. This set even included a credit card that currently held a positive balance. Bills went to a rented mailbox that Sam handled as part of the expensive service. When he saw the counterfeiter again, John would have to invent a story about his father’s death.

“Maybe I can even squeeze some information about my father from Sam.” The young man glowed at the pleasant thought.

John studied counterfeit driving license and he memorized the date of birth and address. This exercise was one he had practiced with his father many times. The pivotal key wasn’t to just know the information but to become the person. After assuming the persona, his mind would live in a mental compartment housing the personal history he would construct for his character. John gazed at his face in the rearview mirror and allowed the change to fully take hold.

“Hello, Roger Connors,” he grinned and Roger smiled back. He tucked his cards into his wallet, shifted the truck into gear and spun his first wheels in the direction of his new life.

It took over an hour of bouncing on the barely passable dirt track just to get onto the Alaska Highway. From there, the first stop along his travels was the Liard River Hot Springs. Many times, he and his father had stopped there to bathe in its soothing waters.

“A good soak is exactly what I need to seep out my tensions.” Roger pulled into a parking lot at the entrance to the springs. There were very few vehicles, since it was a weekday and late in the tourist season. Autumn was so close that a few stands of poplar trees had already changed colors.

A grove that was yellow first, when the ones around were still green, was likely all one single organism. Poplars did produce new offspring with pollen and seeds but they also replicated by sending up shoots from the roots. The suckered-up trees were not a new generation. They were simply an addition to the existing plant. The best description would be like they were men cut on a folded paper. Each looks separate but they’re joined at the feet and are all made from the same page.

“Perhaps a family is similarly conjoined amid a thicket of other people—but I have none.” Roger spoke with himself as he strolled boardwalk to the lower springs. His statement didn’t hold a ring of finality so he tried another. “Or I’m looking for one.”

After stripping in the changing room, he put on his shorts. Bathing suits were mandatory when other people were present—as there were today. The springs were even better without but the water in the hot pool still felt wonderful. Splashing and soaking, he luxuriated in the relaxing warmth. A two-foot waterfall poured over a weir between two levels of the split pool. With the surge flowing on his neck and shoulders, Roger closed his eyes in utter tranquility and the heat cleansed away his recent sorrows.

“The who and why are only the smallest part of the lesson.” His dad had provided a cheat sheet for those two. I only held the gun steady for him to pull the trigger yet it wasn’t suicidal. Finding morality sufficient to act was the real problem. The father’s ethics acted like a refracting diamond transforming ambient light from a situation into a focused laser beam of murder—but of pure intent.

“That’s why the Kennedy assassination plagued him so.” The inspiration struck. He had a pollution to expunge. “Foulness had raped his inner mechanisms.”

Roger’s relaxed eyes scanned his surroundings with lowered lashes. As an impressionist’s watercolor painted with a thick brush, the forested hills were blurred swatches of orange and green. He pondered the comparison of his relationship to his father with a poplar tree. His genetics were distinct from his dad, like a seed planted and grown but his training had suckered up from his dad’s roots. The pupil yearned for a deeper tap in the sap of his mentor’s knowledge. Not to peek at memories, those would be his reward when due. I need the enabling jewel that let my father retain honor while also being a killer. The water ebbed his strength and wholly relaxed him. He slipped into a state of slumber.

In a vivid dream, the young man saw himself standing behind the fence on the grassy knoll in Dallas. He was in his father’s body with vision through the assassin’s eyes. The assignment was going as smoothly as it had in 1963. With precise movements, he drew his carbine and brought it effortlessly to the ready position. The scope’s crosshairs swiftly panned over the assembled crowd and found the open-topped limousine. He aligned the sight at a precise kill spot on Kennedy’s forehead. Inexplicably, the magnification of his target zoomed so fully that the face filled the viewfinder. Roger squeezed the trigger but the gun wouldn’t fire.

Time slowed to a dirge tempo. Tugging again, the metal appeared to be jammed solid, yet it still jiggled. His own finger was refusing to obey his command. ‘Shoot now!’ His father’s voice screamed in his ear but the sound was slow and distorted as a dragging cassette. ‘This is who and why.’ Oswald opened up with a Gatling gun: his rapid-fire flurry was all over the place, with no apparent hits. Roger tried to take his one shot again but it was to no avail. His finger would move but his brain lacked a key and refused to transmit the command to kill. The limousine drove safely away.

Suddenly in his dream, Roger knew his sniper position was being closely observed. Even immersed in the flow of water, the skin of his neck became goose flesh under the intense scrutiny. Slipping out the dream’s threshold, he felt someone so close to him that a slight movement of warm breath was on his chin.

[private_Chevron]Roger’s lids flickered and he saw another pair of eyes a scant inch away. They were so near that he couldn’t even focus on them. He jerked alert and his hands went up automatically in defense. His fist struck something soft as his eyes snapped fully open. He found himself looking into the face of a very young girl. Her tears were already welling up and her arms were clutching at her stomach, where he had inadvertently punched her.

“Aeeaaa! Maamaaa,” the girl screamed. Her slightly turned up nose was sprinkled with freckles and wet hair was splayed about her brow. Half of her face had almost disappeared behind the wide mouthed wail and she was missing at least two front teeth. The girl couldn’t have been more than five years old. Turning quickly to find her parents, she slipped on the gravel bottom and stumbled into the arms of the stranger.

“Oh, I’m so sorry.” Roger tried to console the child that was now clinging to him as the closest person for comfort.

Her mom and dad, having only turned for a moment to fuss with their picnic, heard the scream and rushed towards their daughter. Roger tried to wipe the tears away and smooth her straw blond hair from her face. The girl’s sobs made her also cough.

“I was dozing in the pool.” He explained in a halting voice. The parents were now very close now.
“She came up and looked at me so close that it startled me awake.”

“Was geschieht?” The girl’s father missed all but a few words of the apology and responded in his native tongue.

What is happening? Roger translated in his mind and realized that this must be a family of German tourists. He repeated his explanation in their language. Apologizing again in words she could understand, he stood the girl up from his lap and in doing so he noticed her chest and cheeks were covered in angry red pimples. Her sobbing subsided as she pulled away to receive consolation from her parents.

“~I don’t think I hit her hard.” He explained in German. “~It was a reflex action.”

“~Hanna is touchy about everything right now.” The mother was a curvy woman. “~I’m sure it was just a tap but she’s hurting with her Measles and so it was just a reason for her to cry.”

“~I know she does look very closely at people.” The girl’s father added. “~I’ve had her wake me like that.”

“~Join us for some sandwiches.” The woman offered but any refusal would’ve been difficult as she was dragging him by his wrist.

“~I think you’re from the north part of Germany,” the tourist man tried to place the accent, “~perhaps Bremen or Hamburg?”

“~I was born here and only visited there once.” Roger added a new snippet to his character file.

“~Your fluency seems good enough to be your mother tongue.”

“~My mother was German.” A fictitious mom was better, as the ‘Connors’ on his ID wasn’t Germanic. Roger picked the name Helga for his mother, in case asked and an imagination’s picture formed of her looking very similar to Hannah’s. “~We often spoke it at home.”

“~Would you have a pickle?” The woman was more interested in being a good hostess than further inquiries. She offered the jar and her guest pinched one between his thumb and forefinger.

“~Are Measles serious?” Roger casually examined the pickle’s sickly-green skin and the bumps reminded him of Hanna’s affliction. He was aware that it was a childhood disease but hadn’t studied extensively on the subject of medicine.

“~The symptoms are quite mild for young children but can be more serious for adults.” The mother explained as she doled out the luncheon from a large cooler. “~It’s contagious but people catch this disease only once and then they’re immune to it.”

“~It’s good that Hanna has it now. Catching it when she’s older would be worse.” The girl’s father chuckled. “~Some mothers try to expose their children to communicable families to get it over with sooner. It’s like that also with Chicken Pox and the Mumps.”

“~You’ve had them?” The mother expressed concern then her attention turned to Hannah. “~Stop scratching them! We don’t want your pretty face still marked when you grow up.”

“~I think so.” Roger lied. He’d rarely even had any colds. It was doubtful he’d ever had any viral infections any kind. They chatted over lunch but the guest ate slowly. His usual buzzard like appetite turned to that of a wren’s, as he worried about the exposure.

“~I’m going to swim in the upper pond.” Roger really felt a need to rinse off. “~Hannah, I really am sorry for slugging you.”

The access to the other pool was locked. Years ago, there hadn’t been a barrier at all between upper and lower springs. Then a bear attacked a tourist and decapitated a man who went to her rescue. The black bears were vicious around there. Now, the park wardens only opened the gate when close at hand with rifles.

“A barred gate only means privacy beyond.” Roger jumped the fence and climbed to the deeper pond. He stripped before diving in. His father’s code certainly applied here. Breaking the rules doesn’t necessarily mean wrongfulness. “In fact, it should be illegal to wear aught but skin in this natural place.”

“How could it kill me?” He scrubbed without soap in the hot water and hoped he was young enough still for the disease to be safe. Maybe it was a good thing to catch them now. The man had said some people deliberately exposed their kids but Roger was certain his dad would’ve told him that. Anecdotes of his childhood were not on the top-secret or even the restricted list.

As it was now late afternoon, the young man decided to sleep over in the park. The outlet stream from the upper springs could be measured with a lumberjack’s axe: it had the handle’s width and the bit’s depth. His mattress was comfortable squishy mud. With his body in the warm water and his ear cushioned on a big clod of turf, Roger could sleep without fear of drowning. A few times, he awoke for long enough to roll over. The exposed wet skin got quite chilly, even when the parts underwater were as warm as in a womb.

Roger roused fully in the pre-dawn. As he left the springs, the night’s cold turned the warm moisture-laden air of the springs into a thick fog. Moonlight couldn’t penetrate the mist and his journey to the parking lot was a blind creeping along the walkway’s handrails.

“This stop was enjoyable yet ominous.” Back at his truck, he found an unusual pairing of adjectives were applicable to his springs visit. He cranked his heater to maximum to quell his shuddering. “I should add that it was warm while also being cold”

“Stop being such a baby!” Roger scolded his mirrored image. “Remember when we swam in the springs at forty degrees below zero?”

Having left the Liard River Springs very early, he arrived in the next town south before noon. He’d often been to Fort Nelson with his father on trips for both supplies and fuel. This time Roger’s only need was in a bank’s safe deposit box. Gaining access to the vault room was accomplished with a flash of fake ID, a signature and his power-of-attorney letter. He used a key his father had provided. In a room no larger than a pantry and with hands nearly trembling with anticipation, he opened the long thin metal box.

Five packets held Canadian $100 bills, fifty thousand dollars in total. Another smaller pouch contained U.S. currency equaling $20,000. Several envelopes each contained a brass key and signed but blank attorney forms. Each was for one of several other safe depositories. One bank was in Eastern Canada and the others were in the States. The final item was the prize that checked his breath. It was a letter from his father with a small sheaf of notes.

He stuffed the bundles into his pockets and waistband. His t-shirt covered the flagrant transgression of another inane decree. Although storing cash in bank safety boxes was technically illegal in Canada, it was practically unenforceable. The law was founded on a sound rationale though—the tax department can’t abide storage of cash, where they can’t just reach in and snitch some.

The Alaska Highway flows like a river through the heart of Fort Nelson. Narrow green belts of lawn and trees buffer it from access streets on either side. On a picnic table on the shore of the road, he opened the note from his Dad.

Dear Son,

Welcome to your new life. I know I’m speaking now from my grave but I know you well enough to envision the details. My belief is that my end came in the clearing. My last happy day spent with your mother was on a picnic there too. No, don’t even think it! That wasn’t what happened to your mother. If you’re entertaining sorrow, banish it now. My last day was blissful. Your final duty preserved me from any future temptations of ending my own suffering.

Moving on to the business of your inheritance. The other safe deposit boxes also hold minor amounts of currency and other things you may need. The one in Idaho has the most, $500,000.00 in US funds. You also have a numbered Swiss account with two million dollars. Sorry there’s not more but I lost my best source of revenue in 1976. You may have to employ more thrift than I did taking you on all our vacations.

I’m sure you’ve thought seriously about the task I‘ve set out for you. Plan your moves. There’s no schedule. Spend some time just living in the outside world, encountering and interacting with people. I’ll end with a reminder that my confidence in you is as boundless as my pride has always been.

Love as ever from your father

The other papers contained inventory of materials caches and contact information for specialized services. Roger couldn’t imagine anything else he would possibly need. In fact, he couldn’t yet think of uses for most of the resources he’d been given. He smiled and shook his head on his reflection. Dad wasn’t frittering any time on his solitary trips.

Roger kicked around the dusty streets of Fort Nelson for several extra days and found he liked a small town like this. Really, it was only slightly larger than a village. In larger centers, certain types of people tended to group together. Here, with a smaller population pool, everyone mingled and it was refreshing. Bikers sat in the bar with cowboys. Office clerks could be seen chatting over coffee with oilfield roughnecks. Longtime residents had experience in welcoming newcomers, as there was a constant turnover of new people, with staff relocations and transient workers. Friendly as it was though, this still wasn’t getting him any closer to his objective.

Unless the President visited the northwestern noncontiguous State aboard Recreational Vehicle One, he wasn’t likely to be coming to Fort Nelson. It would be hard to spot him anyways. So many of the numerous other Alaska or Bust RV’s were bedecked with enough bald eagle and stars & stripes regalia to make one with only a presidential seal look downright unpatriotic. After buying a road atlas, Roger drove south but pulled off fifteen minutes later beside a borrow pit.

The dugout was initially created as heavy equipment borrowed clay fill to build the highway roadbed. Yearly rainfall and the snow pack runoff were sufficient to keep the pond filled to overflowing. A two-storey building could likely be submerged but beavers were still greedily trying to gain a few more inches of depth. Their dam was at the outlet stream on the bank furthest from the road. A local anglers club had stocked it with trout and it seemed a nice woodland spot to fish, picnic or swim. Roger stopped only because it was a quiet place to consult the map and decide where to go next.

“Spend time interacting and living.” Roger paraphrased a part of his father’s written advice. Fort Nelson was too remote to suit his purpose but a temporary stay in a small town would acclimatize him from his wilderness life. The atlas book showed the location of his father’s cabin as a text box with map scale and other cartographer’s information. He traced a fingernail over the map and tapped at a point far down the page from where he was now.

“Creston.” The tiny community was at the extreme south of the province and it seemed geographically suited for his needs. The village was equidistant from either Vancouver or Calgary. It was also close to the U.S. border and the safe box & equipment cache his father had placed in Idaho. With his destination fixed, he sat on a fallen log to enjoy the serenity before pressing onwards.

“A man that terminated his father can’t seem to even kill an already dead president in a dream, much less in reality.” Showing his frustration, Roger misquoted his Dad’s last maxim to better suit his current dilemma.

“Ah-choo!” On looking up, he found his loud sneeze had drawn unwelcome attention from the opposite shore.

The same sub-species of black bears found at the hot springs and at his father’s cabin existed here too. It’s never a good idea to take any wild predator lightly but people elsewhere generally think of black bears as being rather docile and easily chased away with a shout. For these bears, a hoot intended to frighten is just translated as dinnertime. He had killed many that had become too familiar with the vicinity of his home and Roger knew their manners or rather the lack of them.

The bear stood glaring menacingly but since there was a body of water in between, the young man wasn’t overly worried about a potential attack. Nevertheless, a refreshing swim was now out of the question.

“How can I overcome my qualms about killing?” Since the bear had interrupted Roger’s thoughts on the matter, he posed the query that boreal Poplars had declined answering. A predator also had a better topical knowledge than a grove of trees since it killed without compunction. The aquatic rodents now swimming safely out of reach had probably lost some of their family to this interloper. The bear doesn’t seem willing to answer either. It looked both ways to determine the shortest way around pond, to dine on a human dish.[/private_Chevron]

“I’ll leave the rest of my sandwich if you tell me.” The human sweetened the offer but he really couldn’t use the bear’s motivation anyways. An omnivore, the bear ate anything from a tasty mouse dug from under a tussock to an old sock nosed out in a rubbish pile. Roger’s intent wasn’t to devour his presidential prey after the hunt. That’s both cannibalistic and flavorfully of poor taste.

“Nasty!” Roger vocalized his reaction to his last thought and the beast suddenly charged. It took the most direct route.

“What bee is up your butt?” This late in the year it was unlikely for it to be a hornet stinging that ring of exposed skin. Roger was in no great peril. By the time the animal could swim the distance, he would be safely in his pickup truck. Still, initiating an attack from the far side of a body of water was especially aggressive behavior even for this type of black bear.

“Should I shoot it to prevent an attack on the next pond visitor?” Though a rifle in his truck was in handy, Roger decided against the kill. The bear was cantankerous but posed no imminent threat. The minor incident that started by his asking the bear’s advice hadn’t gained an answer. In fact, it underscored his mental impasse. Though he had hunted and killed many animals, it was always for valid reasons. “Even if the president’s head sported a rack with trophy points, it still wouldn’t be enough.”

“I hope the next person here has a can of pepper spray.” The young man backed his vehicle onto the highway. A shot of the bear defense aerosol might convince the marauder to reconsider before charging.

“On second thought, the irritant squirt could just make him twice as mean.” Painful deterrence can cut a double swath and one only needed to look at American foreign policy to effectively illustrate the concept. Assassinating the bear may save a potential victim. Hunting a president, before he could declare an ill-considered war in response to wasp-stung buttocks, could save a death toll that numbered the lives of both soldiers and civilians. This episode with the bear hadn’t solved anything but the visualization of an antlered president charging blindly with a hive on his tail, evoked a chuckle.

[private_Chevron]

…

‘There’s no schedule’. The small notation in the Fort Nelson letter seemed a trifle but the protégé had long since realized that instructions from his grandmaster always turned out best when followed as if lettered with a stencil. Roger intentionally slowed his pace to drift as if carried on the tide.

“Is employment the only activity around here?” He inquired in a Fort St. John men’s clothing store. The bulk of the sales area was taken up by steel-toed footwear, coveralls and a wide assortment of work related apparel. Tucked away in a forgotten corner, he found some pants without stitched in chainsaw safety pads and a jacket that someone missed sewing reflective tapes onto.

His moderately short drive from Fort St. John to McCloud Lake took all day. It was lengthened by a scrambling climb to the very top of a waterfall near the highway. An invigorating dip in the numbingly cold water was worth the effort but the view that stretched to forever didn’t overlook his future.

Several roadside inns along McCloud Lake were in the fall lull between the tourists of summer and loggers of the winter. He stayed over for a few nights. The body of water was miles long but a return crossing of the width was a nice swim with clothing left on the far shore. Once while nude, he nearly bumped into another black bear but unlike its more northerly cousins, a yell sent this one scampering.

“Clamshells?” Roger examined a find at a small sandy beach. This was fresh water and there were apparently even at least two species of them. The interesting discovery didn’t hold any insight into his mental turmoil but he didn’t have that puzzle in his active thoughts anymore either. That quandary was slowly percolating in the mental background while he concentrated on enjoying himself, despite his coughing and runny nose.

“I should trim back on the swims.” Canadian standing waters held particular appeal for him this late in the year. The sun warmed the surface but the water was bone chilling below. Roger’s skin appreciated the variety of temperatures experienced at once. It was as his night sleeping in the hot spring but not quite so pronounced.

The young man hadn’t known a mother, much less a grandma but he’d been flagrantly flouting almost every piece of matronly health advice ever given. The admonishment was his getting sicker each day. Between bouts of coughing at a tightening congestion, he was feverish and achy.

Today, he went only as far as the small city of Castlegar. A sign on the outskirts called it ‘the best dam city’ for the number of nearby water weirs but Roger’s condition was the worst damn horrible. He should go to a clinic or at least get some medication but that was out of the question. Universal health care didn’t extend to someone with no official status at all: so how was that universal? He made do with over-the-counter remedies but soon felt he was getting more calories from the additives in the pills than from real food that he wasn’t eating much of. His appetite was all but gone.

The sick traveler spent the balance of the day in a public library finding out about the town where he was headed. The reference section included microfiche of the Creston newspaper. Browsing idly through past issues, he focused primarily on front-page items.

“Malpractice results in Nil-practice.” Roger read an interesting headline. He searched both forward and back to track the thread of a story triggered by a sensational trial. Scribbling notes, he delved deeper into the personalities involved and the aftermaths.

Finally, Roger arrived in Creston. He suspected autumn had snuck a lift down in the box of his pick-up but his shivering gave the impression that winter was closing the gap on a fast dogsled. He staggered into a motel room and ran a steaming bath. Within moments, the hot water brought out the same inflamed pox that he’d seen on Hannah at the springs.

Each angry red sore yearned for a fingernail’s urgent attention but he held back for fear of scarring. They also reminded him that he hadn’t been scratching hard at his itchy question either. Tasking his mental fingers with the perplexity, quelled his physical ones from their desires. As his dizziness spun the bathtub under him, the mission also spiraled in a vortex of thoughts. Then one idea put a stopper in the drain and he struggled out of the now cooled water.

“My father’s written advice was to live among people.” Surely the Kennedy assassin had killed other men first. The son knew so little about his father’s life prior to 1963 or post then for that matter.

“Friedrich Nietzsche said, ‘One cannot fly into flying’, and just now I can’t crawl into staggering.” Roger supported his weak and wobbly knees by creeping his hands along the vanity counter. Then he collapsed the final distance from the bathroom door to the bed. Could that be the illusive possibility? Should the reluctant killer just live normally until he found someone for whom death became?

If he could find the morality in himself to murder a lesser mortal, then he might have the resolve and rationalization to take that to the next plateau. He might have that victim picked already but short of coughing on him, to slay by deadly infection, the young man was in no shape to do much else.

“I’ve been stupidly neglecting my deteriorating health.” The now seriously sick boy took an overdue assessment of his condition and it wasn’t overly optimistic. A Nietzsche quote of more pressing concern said, ‘What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.’ Roger realized he had but one choice to make. This one was critical and it was immediate. Did he want to live or die right now?

To survive, he had to fight back against his illness and his body needed energy to carry the battle. Maybe his physique was already neglected past the point of recovery. It was almost midnight but he hadn’t had a meal in days. Roger struggled into his rumpled clothes and fighting vertigo, he made it to his truck.

…

Was this yet another drunk? Almost ready to close up shop for the night, Cindy Smart sighed slightly at the tone of the door buzzer. When the door opened slowly, it made that long sound and it usually meant someone intoxicated was entering the convenience store she managed. She watched the young man stagger in.

He didn’t have the expected droopy face. On casual second look as she walked to the front counter, Cindy decided his condition wasn’t alcoholic in nature.

She watched as he steadied himself against her coffee bar. His face was greasy, sweaty and marked with pimples. His long hair was matted to his head and looked like he had last cut it himself with a pair of pinking shears. He wasn’t drunk so he must certainly high on drugs. Cindy made a cautious move to the till. She wanted to be close to her panic alarm button and intended to phone the police as soon as possible after his departure. A stoned person wasn’t safe to be on the streets, for his own sake as well as others.

The boy took a ragged breath. He crossed the entrance aisle to lean on the counter with shuddering hands. Abruptly, his body convulsed and he was wracked by a coughing fit. Most people who hacked in her store had self-imposed emphysema and were there to buy more cigarettes.

“I think I have Measles,” his voice was trembling, “stay away from me if you haven’t had them. I have to find—” He didn’t finish the sentence. The eyes rolled back as he collapsed to the floor.

“The facial blemishing isn’t acne. It does look like Measles.” Cindy rushed around the counter and knelt beside the downed man. Her observations spoken aloud was a habit formed during her prior employment. She placed a hand on his forehead. Any hotter might spark a spontaneous human combustion! His breath was shallow. “The cough sounded like pneumonia.”

His eyes flickered open and Cindy Smart stared into blue. The pupils were neither dilated nor constricted and the C-store clerk surmised the stricken young man wasn’t drunk or on drugs. He really was ill and desperately needed a doctor.

“I’ll call you an ambulance.” She tried to rise.

“No clinics!” He gripped her wrist with strength surprising for his condition. “Please, I think I just need some food.”

“You require urgent medical attention.” From his symptoms and appearance, she wondered if he could be dead by morning.

“I can’t go to a hospital.” He struggled to sit up but she gently forced him back onto the floor.

“Let me guess,” she hummed in mock thought but pursed her lips in disgust, “you’re an American boy and you don’t have private health insurance?” Her flippancy was a bedside manner to put the boy at ease but this was an acute situation.

“Cindy?” Roger looked up at the distinguished looking woman maybe in her early forties. She was at the time of her life when age is only able to creep up if allowed or encouraged to do so. She didn’t smoke or drink and so her appearance could be placed anywhere in at least a 15-year span.

“Stay here for a minute.” His grip had weakened and her wrist pulled away as she stood.

The shopkeeper switched off the ‘open’ sign and locked the door while wondering about the peculiarity that caused him to say her name as if he knew her. She glanced down to see if something on her clothing indicated the name but she knew there was nothing. Perhaps in a delirium he had mentioned the name of a girlfriend? Cindy wasn’t an uncommon name. Whoever he was asking for, there was only Cindy present and that one had to do something. “I may be running a convenience store now but I swore an oath.”

“You’re too big for me to move. Try to stand up and I’ll help.” Cindy roused him with a firm shake. Assisting the young man onto his feet, she walked him to the back of the store. It was another struggle to get up the stairs to her living quarters but despite his weakened state and her small stature, they managed. She put him down onto her bed and was mildly concerned about taking a stranger into her own home—but this was small town Canada, eh?

“You’re right.” She noted palsied shaking in his limbs. “You require food, liquids and meds. Most of all you need a doctor.”

“No,” he insisted weakly, “just you.”

“That’s funny.” She smiled ironically. “I’ll make some soup.”

Cindy propped his head on her lap and helped him to finish the broth. In her Florence Nightingale role, she knew his body required nourishment and rest. His eyelids drooped and he drifted away. While he dozed, she stripped the clothes that reeked of stale sweat.

“I’ll bet you gave the girls a delight when you suntanned in the raw.” While sponging his body clean, Cindy couldn’t help noticing his lean musculature was toned to perfection of function, instead of trained to excess of bulk. His skin was uniformly bronzed and he didn’t have pale flesh where his briefs should have lent modesty. The much lighter color in his armpits contrasted sharply with his exposed limbs and torso. She covered his splayed limbs with damp towels to bring down the fever.

“You may even need more than I’m equipped here to provide.” There was still a slender hope his illness could turn back. She monitored carefully for the critical juncture.

“Father!” A weak coughing jag disturbed him at about three in the morning. At this time, in the wee hours, the body is at its lowest ebb and many natural deaths occur then.

“That’s unusual.” Most badly hurt boys called for their mother. The boy in the motorcycle accident certainly had done that.

“I really should call for an ambulance.” They wouldn’t turn him away, despite his lack of medical insurance: would they? Creston was almost on the border of the United States but this was still Canada. Canadian hospitals didn’t send people out onto the streets to die. Well, maybe now they did. The medical board had shunned her for Americanized legal and financial ideals.

“If your refusing medical aid hadn’t been both lucid and definite, you would be going to the infirmary.” This presented a dilemma. A convenience store obviously didn’t have the equipment needed to keep him alive: she needed oxygen and antibiotics. To leave a patient alone in such a critical condition was a risk but she didn’t have much choice. “You won’t go to the hospital but I can.”

Ventilating equipment was in the emergency room and a supply of medications could be found in the pharmacy. Her practice wasn’t current but Cindy Smart was still fully licensed. She still knew the duty nurses and could inveigle the required items.

“Don’t you die on me while I’m gone.” Cindy wagged a warning finger. Her footsteps traced a staccato blur as she hurried down the stairs. The patient couldn’t hear or heed her final instruction. His oblivious toes were already inching over mortality’s threshold.

John Fitzgerald awoke in a room as silent as a sepulcher. Heaviness gathered in his limbs like liquid lead was pulsing through his veins. That same molten metal in his bloodstream fired his fever beyond the dampers of his internal thermostat. With lungs slowly filling up with fluid, his body now lacked the strength to cough.

I was so unbelievably naive. His father trained him in many ways of protecting himself. With confidence, John could face almost any attacker and stand a very good chance of prevailing. Yet now microbes had overwhelmed his body’s defenses. I’m dying and powerless to prevent it. Of all foreseeable demises, succumbing to a childhood disease was almost last on the most likely list. It was saddening because his life had proved pointless. He whispered voicelessly into the quiet darkness, “I’m sorry, Father.”

Resigned to his inescapably impending death, John felt a new potency. It wasn’t physical but rather the energy of his soul welling up. He allowed his breath to slowly exhale. The movement was only constriction of his lung tissue around a semi-solid mass within. Alveoli were too packed to take in life sustaining oxygen. There was no corresponding inhale.

His chest seemed to expand but it wasn’t with the action of taking a fresh breath. Instead, his soul carried consciousness out of his body while his perspective shifted to look back. The view of his naked and splayed body was through eyes vastly superior to human vision. Cloths covering were transparent to his all-encompassing eyesight and his earthly physique was over-laid by a visualization of his whole life, displayed in one infinitely detailed vista.

It didn’t matter what was done or unfinished because each myriad snippet of his life’s threads fused into a complete cable. A flood of knowledge gleaned from connection with the network of souls, pointed to where answers to every question ever asked could be found. Flickering at the edge of cognition, unseen but absolute, he felt his father’s love unwearyingly waiting. Where is my mother?

Another presence, like a spirit comprised of passion, uncoiled as a snake. Shiva? I’m not a Hindu. When a tendril touched him, he understood. My pilgrimage is finished. His fresh wisdom lent a fervent desire to be born again. The afterlife was a wondrous new avenue to explore but an irresistible earthly errand needed fruition.

A boy’s soul said a wordless prayer to a mother he didn’t know.[/private_Chevron]

Chapter 2 of Shiva’s Messenger

An Old Torch and a Young Flame

From his vantage point inside the small grove of paper birch trees, John Fitzgerald watched his quarry enter the tiny sunlit glade. This hunter is not the Dallas assassin but his appearance is quite similar to the way Jeff looked on that day many years ago.

Having found this game trail and seen that the spoors along the way were recurrent, he has waited patiently for almost five hours waiting for it to return. The bull elk was maybe too young to be legal to take but the meat would be tender and tasty. What was the point of adhering to strict regulation, when John didn’t possess a license anyway? Besides, his location was so remote that the odds of a game officer within even 200 kilometers were long to the point of non-existence. This wasn’t sport but survival in the hinterland. The meat was to restock the larder after the long winter.

John took several slow breaths and a scent of leaves decaying after the retreated snow filled his nostrils. He attuned his senses to all of the forces of nature that surrounded him, including the buck that was his brother. Leveling the rifle at his head, the hunter tucked his cheek behind the back sight. His practiced blue eyes calculated the range and read the whispers of wind in the grass.
He knew how to kill in ways that would cause no suffering. The deaths he provided were never lingering. His finger firmly squeezed the trigger and with scalpel-edged clarity, polished on many such kills, the rifleman took the one shot. ‘It’s one for a rifle and two for a gun’. Past the ball of the foresight and the wisp of cordite smoke, John saw the animal drop without a stagger. Once again, the young man felt the euphoria of performing at the peak of excellence.

The hunter emerged from his concealment and ran to the still twitching young elk. In a windswept tangle behind, his hair was the color of a baked loaf streaked with sun-bleached butter. He was six foot three and naked except for a home-stitched leather pouch with knife scabbard around his narrow waist. His tanned skin glowing in the bright morning, the young human looked natural to the forest except for a Weatherby bolt-action in his hand.

Before gutting and dressing the carcass, the young huntsman opened the rifle’s breech and extracted the spent brass. Digging out a divot of forest duff, he carefully buried the spent round. Another round from his pouch refilled the magazine. ‘Never be caught with an empty weapon’. His dad had sermonized many rules and John could recite them by rote.

It was late spring and John, in the early cusp of manhood, was probably 19. Whenever he asked that particular question, his father told him. ‘You have never been born. The incident of your birth has never been recorded. In the ledgers of the bureaucracy, you don’t exist—and that’s to your benefit’. John’s father refused to tell him about his family history. He didn’t know his ethnicity or even his true family name. ‘I’ll tell you what my name was when it’s time. Now I have none, just as you don’t either. Names are only chains. Under the guise of recording a birth, the lords assign a number and a collar to the newborn serf’.

With seemingly unlimited funds, John’s father had spent his life continuously home-educating his son. Learning textbook subjects and the specialized skills that were his father’s specialty, John spent part of each year in the wilderness where he was born. When not at the remote cabin, they lived months at a stretch in other countries, studying languages and cultures. The pupil got to the point where he and his father could converse in six different tongues, switching back and forth between.

With his canoe loaded with meat, the young man heaved it into the brisk current and headed for home. As he rounded the last bend after a long upstream paddle, his arms found renewed vigor. Their other boat was pulled up onto the bank and his father’s mysterious six-weeks errand was finished. John whooped and the older man emerged from the log cabin to watch the canoe’s prow touch the mud. Overjoyed to see him again, the hunter couldn’t fail to notice how markedly gaunt the old man looked after his absence.

Following supper that night, John’s father selected a favored cognac brand and poured two drinks. Seated opposite in identical plush chairs, the two seemed almost as one man looking at himself across a low coffee table that spanned a half-century. After handing a glass to his son, the father swirled the amber drink in his snifter.

“One part of my trip was consulting a doctor.” The father took a sip and sighed. He had taken appropriate precautions against his being identified. “Even if it were my manner, I know of no way to soften this blow. I underwent numerous tests and the results are as conclusive as I felt they would be. I have cancer. It is malignant, it is virulent and it is terminal. The tumor is inoperable even if I would submit to a procedure, which you know I wouldn’t. Under the most optimistic prognosis, I’ll be dead within a year at the outside.”

[private_Chevron]“Surely they can—.” The young man’s words were faltering. The permanence offered by his father’s guidance and love was the central supporting column of John’s existence.

“I accept my death’s onset.” The father interrupted and held a hand up for silence. “It’s better than others that could’ve befallen as I still have sufficient time carry out my plans.” The man paused for a shallow cough. “You need to know why I’ve raised you as I have.”

“You’ve taught me to be like you.” For the devoted son, that had always been more than enough.

“With however our chat turns out today,” the father felt a rush of pride, “I’ve given you skills that should serve you well.”

John shoved the ill news to his mind’s backburner. His breath checked in eager anticipation akin to the feeling of Christmas Eve. He felt some new information of his father’s life was wrapped under this tree.

“A turning point in American history occurred on November 22, 1963.” The father leaned forward on his chair, hands clasped in front. “President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated. I was in Dallas when it happened.”

“Hey, am I named after Kennedy?” John joined the dots of his familiar but unofficial name and the air of importance his father had just placed on the event. “I never thought of that before.”

“As a matter of fact, that’s exactly who you’re named after.” His father continued with a twinkle of amusement in his eyes that his normally quick-witted son had never made that connection. “Many people still don’t believe the government’s version of what happened in Texas. They suspect that Lee Harvey Oswald didn’t act alone. The other assassin is rumored to have fired the shot that counted, from the grassy knoll.”

“Was that your position,” the predominant subject matter of the young man’s training fit this conversation like a knife in a sheath, “or were you in the curbside drain?”

“I’ve taught you too well and can’t lead you around the pasture anymore.” The older man smiled at his son’s quick deduction of a right answer. As he spoke, the father dug an empty brass casing from his shirt pocket and casually flipped it to his son. “I’ve kept that memento from the headshot that killed JFK.”

John had handled innumerable similar spent ammunition but the gravity of what his father had just said made this one feel almost too heavy to lift. His fingers tumbled it over as if mentally weighing it against the described history.

“If Lee Harvey Oswald had been in the street gutter location, he might have struck only his target.” The older man kept speaking, as his son was absorbed in studying the spent cartridge. “Jacqueline was lucky she wasn’t hit as Governor Connally was.”

“I have many questions I could ask you right now.” John’s eyes were still busy on the brass but his mind had queries stacked up higher than the split cordwood he had piled in the shed out back. “My first would be if Connally was involved your conspiracy.”

“My conspiracy.” The man mused as if chewing those words. “Whether I conspired is a tough call. My preferred description is that my mission was betrayed by the conspiracy. Oswald and I were set up to do the job and then to take the fall. I dodged that bullet, but Lee didn’t. I’ve continued to evade the ricochets ever since.”

“Who sent Jack Ruby?” John pulled one from the top tier.

“I’ll tell more about what I know later. The critical questions just now are why was Kennedy killed, who ordered it, and, who profited by it.” Sitting back in the chair, he folded his thin hands into his lap. “First of all, you have to know who I was and to a lesser degree of Oswald. Technically, I was part of the KGB with the rank of Colonel. More specifically, my services were at the exclusive disposal of a very highly placed individual in the Soviet government.”

John watched his father swirl his cognac in the snifter.

“In October 1962, Russia placed nuclear warheads into Cuba, and Kennedy took that as an excuse to flex his military muscles.” The man savored the aroma before wetting his lips with a sip.

“The Cuban Missile Crisis.” John volunteered. “For days, the world hung under the imminent threat of radioactive annihilation.”

“The Russian government was finally able to defuse the situation by proposing a sane conclusion.” The man took over. “My superior feared the firebrand president’s posturing would build to a nuclear exchange over another issue. Next time a Soviet leadership might not be able to avert it.”

“The Americans brought the resolution.” John jumped in again, spurred by the deviation from history texts. “JFK had his brother Bobby initiate the back channel discussions to avert escalation.”

“Did they really?” His father responded with a wry cock of his eyebrow. “That wasn’t the way it was portrayed in my country. I did have access to top echelon information in the USSR.”

John made a quiet decision to refrain from interruptions. The words from his father’s lips were more reliable than mere books.

“There are at least two ends of a negotiation avenue and two sides of a strife. Each historic account has been seasoned to flavor one opinion. If Kennedy was the one that desired peace, then why did he break international law to blockade the sovereign nation of Cuba? He also let the Bay of Pigs invasion proceed. I’ve come to regret pulling the trigger in Dallas but I’ve never doubted the validity of my motivation at the time.”

“May I ask just one?” John couldn’t resist and on receiving a nod he queried. “Were you assigned to Nikita Khrushchev?”

“Yes but as often there is much I won’t tell you on that subject.” The father wished it didn’t have to be so but it was. “Nikita wished the American president dead. I possessed the skills to accomplish it for him—and for myself. I worried though, that if a KGB agent was caught, tensions between the two superpowers couldn’t help but escalate—perhaps even to war. I agreed on the condition that they destroy all records of my existence and sever my connections to the Soviet Union. Khrushchev agreed, the Kremlin didn’t want possible repercussions, either. I left the USSR in the spring of 1963 and I ceased to exist.”

“You’ve always told me you had no name,” John noted, “and I’ve often wondered how that could be.”

“Despite my not being able to disclose everything, I pride myself in never having lied to you. My name is to me, as yours is to you.” The father winked. “It’s just something my parents called me.”

“How did Oswald enter in?”

“You defended Bobby Kennedy’s back channel a moment ago but few know exactly who that really was.” The father smiled but without mirth. “There was a back channel and I knew it was highly linked in with the American government, as it had participated in the international stand-off. That flow’s western end was planning a cure for their JFK flue with a similar remedy and the disgruntled marine was their physician’s prescription. The opposed ends of that back channel decided to double up on the dosage.”

“Lee Harvey Oswald doesn’t really seem like he had the talent for the commission.” The opinion was based on his knowledge and his father’s earlier description of the shots.

“Lee wasn’t my equal but whether he could’ve done it alone is moot. He was an idealist undertaking a cause—just as I was. He was certainly maligned more than his due. I’ve often wondered if his portrayal with a smattering of incompetence wasn’t in posthumous reprisal for his death’s ultimate failure to finish the intended task.” The father’s face took a set of grim determination. “The results the back channel wanted were never fully realized because I wasn’t in front of Ruby’s gun along with Oswald.” The man paused and his somberness softened slightly. “The Kennedy assassination has remained with an unfinished air, like a prayer without the amen.”

To young John, the depiction of the partner as not being equal seemed a very generous understatement. The meticulously trained son didn’t feel up to his father’s talent and couldn’t even imagine achieving it—without substantive practice of the real variety.

“Retrospective lenses give a crisp focus on should’ve. Here’s a toast to might’ve but didn’t.” The man lifted his snifter in salute and took a drink. “With Oswald’s inclusion, so came the unwanted input from the Americans. My naivety was no longer damp behind my ears but humility wasn’t applied liberally on sensitive skin either. I pushed aside my reservations but I did install some safeguards. My demand for leadership in the operation was met and Lee’s handler now dealt directly with me. The Americans provided the information I wanted but I only used Russian contacts for my logistics. I assumed this would be separate enough for safety.”

“What went wrong?” John wondered. Soviets and Americans didn’t share much information back then. It should’ve been fine.

“Our CIA contact was a personable man and a rapport grew between us.” The father nodded to acknowledge his son’s question but the answer would soon emerge of it’s own. “He supplied schedules of the president’s moves and there were indicators of full approval assigned to each possible location. I had a number to choose from and it didn’t have to be in Dallas either. At Dealey, the one block vehicle jog was that signal.”

“Who was he?” John tried another and hoped the pending pile for answers didn’t come to rival his ever-growing tower of queries.

“It doesn’t matter.” The father then relented slightly to ease his son’s curiosity. “I terminated that friendship long ago.”

“On November 22, the Soviets had stomach butterflies.” The Dallas gunman suddenly had lung moths and retelling had to await the end of a coughing jag. “An event of extraordinary proportions was set to occur and the Russians were in a panic over any possible connections. I quelled the concerns by agreeing to several minor seeming details. The weapons were to be collected and forwarded to Moscow by diplomatic bag for utter assurance of destruction. The other was for Oswald and I to rendezvous.”

“Was there a reason given for that one?”

“No but there were numerous possible ones. The Soviets were our source of logistics and documents.” He took a sip of his liquor as he recalled the lead-up events. “In truth, I had a greater concern over the handing off the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle, as it was potential evidence. Again with the crystal clarity of the past reexamined, in the last days, the assassination had unstoppable momentum.”

John could imagine how foreshadowing might’ve been palpable to the point of surrealism.

“On the morning of November 22, I had one more meet with my now late, unlamented American friend. Something he said slipped past my cognizance during the conversation but my subconscious mind heard it and reminded me in time. He said, ‘I’m off to Pic-a-Dealey circus’. He wasn’t privy to which location I had selected. Even Oswald wasn’t certain until later that day.

“How could you possibly miss a blatantly bizarre quip like that?” John chuckled. That was so unlike his father’s keen observation.

“Of course it looks that way standing alone on a bald hill.” The father chortled as well. “He had a quirky manner of saying goodbye. He always gave his next location as somewhere highly unlikely as, ‘I’m late for my meeting at the Taj Mahal’ or ‘Once more up the Nile.’ A mispronunciation of Piccadilly Circus was only an odd phrasing. When I later confronted him, he didn’t even recall it himself. It was a tiny slip of his tongue and the resulting fall proved mortal.”

John nodded knowingly. His reverence was still intact.

“Shiva the destroyer is one of three main Hindu deities. John Kennedy had an annihilation button positioned to close to his eager hand.” The assassin beheld his son’s eyes. “At the appointed time, Operation Shiva broke off the finger to launch a thousand nukes.”

“I believe it was 12:30 Post Meridian in the Central Standard Time zone.” John glanced at their wall clock to note the time he even heard this, as it being significant of remembering.

“The passage of time was measured in tire rotations bringing my assignment into position.” The Dallas assassin smiled. Time is seemingly more crucial to the young. At his current age, he could be comfortable wearing a watch with hands sweeping twelve months.

“As ordered, I dropped off the rifle but acting on a premonition likely spurred by the Pic-a-Dealy quip, I didn’t go directly to the rendezvous. Instead, I crept up to it for a reconnaissance and that prudence paid a dividend. I found agents, including my friend, were waiting with the Dallas Police. The Americans couldn’t know where we would be without complicity from the KGB.”

“So Oswald shot the Dallas policeman and then escaped to the Texas Theater, where he was later captured.” The boy commented quickly but then realized the other point raised was far more critical. “The overriding plan was for you and Lee Harvey to be captured.”

“The plotline wasn’t to my pleasure so I didn’t remain seated to watch the final act. Oswald’s fate was beyond my assistance.” The man paused in silent apology for his abandoning a comrade. “The duplicity initially seemed unfathomable. A Russian KGB Colonel combined with defector to the Soviets conjoined the USSR with the murder of the American President. Catching both of us or even just me completely nullified my reason for the assassination. The killing was to prevent World War Three but this exposure would evoke an escalation of hostilities even up to a possible nuclear exchange.”

“It held no logic for either government.” John thought out loud on the befuddling twist. “The treachery was senseless.”

“That’s right. It made no sense to them but it made dollars and cents to another group that I hadn’t known was involved until then.” The father looked appraisingly at his son like professor about to give his pupils a pop quiz. “Have I given you enough clues to now solve the riddle of who or what the back channel really was?”

“The military industrial complex in the United States stood to make trillions of pennies from an intensification of hostilities.” The exam query really wasn’t that difficult.

“The power elite had reared one of its ugly hydra heads.” The instructor confirmed the pass mark but wasn’t pleased by the test.

“I understand.” John reached to rest his hand on his father’s arm at the realization of how badly he had been deceived.

“I grasped it also.” The older man faced the thought with grim determination. “Instead of double, I was an unwitting triple agent. I was working for both sides, which were in fact controlled by the real third one. The exemplary service I performed was so appreciated, it was to be recompensed with infamy and death.” He looked at his son and spoke very seriously. “Son, I vowed my life and even yours to ensure that my error was corrected.”

“I’ll do anything for you.” To an outsider it might seem odd that a young man could take his father’s confession of a crime heinous to most, as calmly as he did. The young student had long since known that his training regimen was far out-of-the-norm. John reconciled this with his father’s high sense of morality and his code. ‘When you choose to live outside of the laws then it is necessary for you to have your own rules of what is right and wrong. Legal in the eyes of the government is not necessarily upright and illegal is not always wrongfulness’. The son knew his father had done things contrary to the law but he could never picture his dad doing anything unjust.

“I won’t hold you to that until I’ve explained exactly what I want you to do.” The man recalled his spoken vow in the Houston motel room. “I was rash to commit you to my selfish pledge. You have the responsibility for your own life and the right to make your own decisions. I’ll finish my full elucidation and then ask—but I won’t think ill if you choose not to accept.”

John nodded but remained silent with his lips poised eagerly.

“I disappeared.” His wry smile hinted at ingenious methods. “I used my skills to find ways of operating and funding myself. As time progressed, I followed the subsequent events. Dallas left a power vacuum and certain people had pre-positioned themselves to be the optimum beneficiaries. They must’ve had prior knowledge. My act proved to the rotten underbelly of power that they could do anything. I watched as they flouted their newfound impunity and that wracked me. I had done the U.S. and in fact the world a grave harm, all the while believing I was doing good.”

“Did you put a pesticide flavoring on some of those ripe new plums?” John asked but already really knew the answer.

“Some spraying was so lavishly applied that crops were wiped out.” He chuckled and blessed the lighthearted analogy that broke his melancholy. “Always though, I was hampered by one impairing burden. My escape put the one big crimp in their success. Without me to prove the USSR connection, Lee wasn’t enough. He was icing but he wasn’t a sufficient ingredient to bake a cake. There was no absolute proof, so the reason has remained nebulous. The industrialists got L.B. Johnson and the conflict in Vietnam but they didn’t get the big kewpie doll.”

“If you had been discovered any time between when Kennedy died and when the Berlin Wall fell,” the young man could easily picture a dark menacing cloud over the man’s head. This also helped explain the need for the shrouded mystery of his past, “the Cold War might not have remained chilly.”

“Even today, delivered up in handcuffs or more likely in a body bag, my identification would have detrimental effects. A previously misplaced file might suddenly be found along with a rifle matching Oswald’s. The Soviet government destroyed my records but did the Russian back channel retain a copy? All they need is my corpse to link me absolutely to the grassy knoll. The whole incident could be put to rest without anyone ever knowing the truth. I couldn’t risk it. I’d already done enough harm.”

“Your revealing would invalidate enough history texts, to fill a certain schoolbook depository building.” Despite the gravity, the son couldn’t resist a grin. “I still can’t picture you as simply watching.”

“I did what I could and they know that I still exist.” The father’s tone, spoke tomes. “I attempted one concerted recompense. It met with failure but I’ve never rued that near catastrophe, because it blessed me with you. You’ve been my greatest joy but I realized my Houston vow was prophetic beyond my intent when I spoke it. You existed outside of both the structures and strictures of society. I could infuse you with the tools to hazard anything without the peril that I’ve carried.”

“What would correct your error?” John harkened back to the point implied earlier in the conversation.

“A solution has to fit the problem.” The father quoted a phrase already ensconced in the litany book. “The death of a president was a trouble so immense, that only the slaying of another can fix it”

“You’re asking me to assassinate the president?” John asked incredulously. “The one that’s in office now?”

“It really doesn’t matter which. It could be him or another ten years from now if that’s how long it takes. They are all corrupt. The same corporate elite owns them all. The people and families who were pre-positioned to fill the power void left by JFK are still there, so the next batch of leaders will still be as depraved.”

“So how will killing another one correct your mistake, if the one following will still be as bad?” John asked.

“It’s a stern reminder that governance is by the consent of the people. It won’t solve all of the ills but then problems existed before Kennedy also. However, the President of the United States is still a focal point between the ordinary citizens and the powers that really run the country. Kill another president for the right reasons and in such a manner that it hurts the evil on the other side. It would, at the very least, even my score and balance off my harm. I can tell you this: There is nothing in life that will set you as free as killing the man who holds the most powerful office on earth.” He drained the remains in his snifter and set it down.

“Yes I’ll—” John solemnly began.

“Wait,” the man held up a hand for silence, “I still haven’t asked you yet.” He took a long slow breath then began on a new train of discussion. “I’m aware of your boundless devotion but I’ve only yet presented one side. I didn’t raise you up to be a puppet, even my own. I’ll give you a compelling reason to refuse, so the choice will be truly yours.”

John looked quizzically but held his voice. He moistened his lips on the cognac and prepared to answer the inevitable ‘yes’.

“If you decide not to undertake my task, I’ll spend the rest of my days giving you the one thing you’ve wanted the most. I’ll tell you every minute detail about my history and how you came to be. Each query I’ve refused before, I will answer fully.”

“I want both!” The impact of his father’s offer had resounded as a misaimed spiking hammer on a steel rail.

“Of course you do, you’re my son.” The man chuckled slightly, and then his expression went earnest. KGB Colonel Antenenko sat back into his chair and viewed his heir. The goal he had worked towards most of his life and to which he had dedicated everything, came down to this one question. “John, now I’ll frame my request. Will you mend my harm by assassinating a president?”

John was intent on instant acquiescence to his father’s wishes only a moment ago. Now a tomato, the produce more likely than an apple on Eden’s forbidden tree, hung ripe for his starving grasp. He stared at his father’s face. You would love me just as much with either selection. John knew intrinsically that he would.

The son gazed into his father’s eyes. In those blue depths, his life was reflected from his earliest memory. John had his father’s eyes. He knew better than anyone what was behind them.

“Yes.” John finished his drink. “This is what you trained me for and I’ll do it.” He lowered his voice by a few decibels. “But I would still love to have both.”

The son watched the relief and joy sweep over his father’s face and was glad he had agreed. Then with a chill, he realized he had just freely accepted a thorny rose-handled torch that had wicked his father’s life to feed the flame.

“If you can accomplish the one, you’ll obtain the other as well. I spent the years of your early childhood writing an autobiography of my turbulent life. It’s too much to absorb and yet retain your focus. I’ve made provisions towards that eventuality and you’ll receive it when it’s due.” The father saw a wide-eyed look of concentration on his son’s handsome young face. “As I worked towards this day I expected to offer help and advice but my cancer will prevent that. We’ll have to go forward on the assumption that you’ll be working alone. On this last trip out I prepared for that contingency.”

“I can do it.” John pressed a hand to his forehead in an attempt at cementing his resolve. “At least I’ll try my best.”

“If you do employ your toughest means then you will definitely succeed.” The father felt his earlier pride now redoubled. “I know this one thing exquisitely well—your best is extremely good.”

Where John’s grasp on his decision had faintly wavered, the spoken confidence bolstered it to chiseled granite. One cavernous breath entrenched his new reality into the reaches of his being.

“I’ve more things to teach you but right now it’s naptime for the decrepit.” The old man’s difficulty rising from his chair proved just how far his illness had already affected him. “Tomorrow we’ll begin anew but only with the specifics, as you already have the basics.”

…

The moments that are the most precious flash by the quickest, and so those few weeks shot by as if Einstein’s relativity theory had engaged a hyper-drive. As a naturally quick learner, John absorbed his father’s new guidance. The time appeared to be coming swiftly when his father would have taught him all he needed to know.

John wondered at what would happen when he was finished. His father’s condition rapidly waned and his complexion paled to the color of a sunset fog. How could he go on a quest and leave the weakened man in this state of health? Yet, how much more could the lesson plan hold?

The next morning the young man arose at dawn as usual. He slid from the thermal cocoon of his blankets and stealthily walked onto the stoop. The crisp air hinted that autumn was trekking down from the far tundra. John lazily stretched his tendons and craned his face skyward to the iridescent blue of a summer sunrise. His nude body quivered lightly and the furze of body hairs prickled as his flesh adjusted to the chill of the outdoors. The morning was cool but soon enough his skin would be sweating and attempting to throw off excess heat.

“Wake up sleepy squirrels. You need to pack a lunch for winter or you won’t see spring.” John leapt off the stoop to begin his naked, barefoot run along his oft-trod forest trail. The tree rodents chirped their displeasure at his regular intrusion.

“A special occasion?” Two hours later, John was back at the cabin, slick and shining with perspiration. An aroma of coffee had been detectable after he passed the generator shack. Now, he saw Eggs Benedict and hungrily slid into place for it.

“No shirt, no shorts, no service.” The father pulled back the dish with a chuckle that ended in a weak cough.

John returned in a flash, wearing the stated minimum attire.

“Let’s go for a walk.” After the meal, the father feebly pushed back from the table. “Fetch your rifle and meet me out front.”

Taking a gun along in the remote woods was always a wise precaution. They meandered together for a time and stopped where a small stream poured into the river. It was a beautiful spot in nature but the trek had taken an effort. John had assisted the once mighty man over tougher sections where the path traversed fallen logs.

“This is the spot I selected.” The father sat down on a stump to regain his breath. “I’ve brought you out here for one final duty.”

“Why here instead of back at the cabin?” A duty? Prickling of impending dread began to travel up and down John’s spine.

“I have a subject to teach and this place is appropriate—it is lovely here.” The father smiled around at the peace of this pristine glade. “I’ve taught you many methods of killing. You know the how, where and when. Now, we’ll tackle the questions of who and why.”

“You’ve told me before those can’t be taught.” John nervously spoke. He had a bad hunch, even if it seemed like teaching. “The decisions come from within and all depend on the circumstances.”

“I was wrong about not being able to impart the knowledge.” The father was grave. “I didn’t have the lesson plan before and the instructor can only give the final quiz once.”

“I don’t care how sick you are.” The last statement nailed the spike into John’s peaked concern. He suddenly knew what an exam would involve. “I’ll give you the care you need. We can—”

“I’m wasting away by large increments.” The father didn’t have the strength of voice to override his son anymore but in this instance a weak one sufficed. “I would prefer your not watching me wither to a sickly skeleton. I want your recollections of me to be as I was when I was strong, or at worst as I am now.”

“I have memories to last my lifetime and nothing can diminish those thoughts of you.” The set of his father’s face told John he was loosing this argument regardless of any valid points raised.

“The eyes are the memory’s camera and I vainly wished to look my best for my son’s lens.” The father grinned. He hadn’t counted on that angle being likely to work. He gave another. “Dying in my sleep would be an insult to all the men I’ve killed.”

“That ploy of yours only works if I don’t see it coming.” The son knew that particular grin. The weaker shots were intended to brace John up for the haymaker to follow.

“When a virgin presents her cherry it’s a gift of immeasurable value. She has only one but it also represents a long fruitful life to come.” The man’s blue eyes met his son’s of identical hue. “I have only one life and though I’m fading, my existence still has meaning.

“Your life will always be precious to me.”

“Your first kill will be the hardest so I’ll be your icebreaker.”

“Why now?” How like his father—even his own death should have a lesson. As John studied the resolve on his father’s face, he knew that the man had known it would come to this one day. Time’s drive had been on a collision course with this moment.

“Allow me to give you my life while it’s still worth something.” He didn’t need to add the rest. His son would understand that after the pain and cancer damage became worse a mercy killing would be as slaying a truck-struck deer in a ditch. Worse then, would be making him live on in continual torment. “Bury my discarded shell in an unmarked grave. Look back on me only with pride and love.”

There are times when a pupil has no pertinent questions left to ask. As a squirrel that frittered a summer away without storing nuts, He wouldn’t last a winter and there would be unavoidable hardships. Conflicting emotions squelched his voice and John’s eyes sought for advice from his mentor.

“Embrace me now.” The faltering man took his son’s arm for assistance struggling to his feet. “Then go up to those trees. Get yourself settled while I enjoy the beauty and silence of this spot for a spell. My finger will point the target.” Ever the instructor, he added. “I’ll watch that your bullet finds the mark.”

“I love you too much.” John hugged the withered man but too firmly as he felt softness of atrophied flesh pressing against barely padded bones. He relaxed his grip but was loathe of fully letting go and they stood just holding each other while long moments ticked. “I don’t know if I can do this.”

“Then we’ve reached a final quiz of who and why,” the old man squeezed with his meager strength and then let go, “but this one doesn’t come with a pass or a fail grade. If you choose not to shoot, it only means you’ve changed your mind about my mission. We can go home and I’ll spend all my days telling you everything. I suspect though,” the man held his son’s shoulders at his arm’s extension, “a man who can terminate his father can kill anyone.”

“You know it was a pledge.” John knew the chance to recant was genuine and the sentiment behind the words tipped his balance. I’ll be stalwart for him. The boy’s eyes locked on his father’s. He knew it was a final time. “That maxim is of your last lesson but it can’t sum up your life. I want better feeling words to remember as your last.”

“Deadly force in abeyance is mightier than it is in actuality.” A line came instantly to the old assassin’s mind. It seemed in sharp contrast to the moment and perhaps that was a comfort to both.

John snatched up his rifle and jogged to the firing position as indicated. Of course, it was the perfect vantage point. His dad was the consummate professional to the end. The assassin’s protégé stretched prone in the grove and steadied his weapon with a cupped palm. He wished he could envision this as one of his many hunting trips but he knew it was impossible. This was not a stag or a bear. It was cherished man that meant everything to him. Tears welled in his eyes but he let them flow. His vision could still permit the shot.

At the stream, KGB Colonel Vassily Orestovich Antenenko, AKA Assassin Jeff Thomas, also known by other inconsequential names, watched as the lithe, well-knit frame of his son ran gracefully up the hill. I’ve superbly trained him. He watched his boy adopt the ideal sniper’s posture.

Vassily looked at the lovely azure blue of the heavens with only several small scudding clouds to mar the perfection. The glade was verdant, serene and a bumblebee buzzed at a nearby flower.

“No, it’s not a bee.” It was a hummingbird moth. If there could be any omen of the right thing, this was it. Young Vassily had seen a Snowberry Clearwing like this, on the day his father was killed so many years ago.

If John had refused my task, I would’ve enjoyed telling it all. The father had shared many of his past experiences. He only withheld what he couldn’t divulge. All the rest is too much for now.

“Thank you for accepting my gift.” He smelled the freshness of the air and it was a treat. My life is still precious so I’m freely giving my last treasure. Few men have the honor of choosing their death’s instant. The Dallas assassin breathed deeply and his skin tingled afresh as he entered his zone. How better to die than while alive? [/private_Chevron]

“Forestall your son’s suffering.” Vassily issued a last command and his self-discipline crisply saluted. He put his fingertip gently to the center of his forehead and tapped once lightly. A bullet was so precisely placed that its passage burnt the tip of his fingernail.

With the clarity of a self-induced trance, John intensely felt the rifle’s recoil. In slow motion, he tracked the twirling metal streaking along the appointed path to its ultimate vocation. He watched the bullet coming and didn’t even flinch. John’s final vision of his father would ever endure as the picture of his calm but resolved face. A red-petal flower blossomed on his brow with his finger as the stem.

[private_Chevron]The gun tried to lurch but he held it steady. The body crumpled to the ground. The once pastoral setting screamed in protest at the violence of the instant past. The gunfire’s report diminished to a rumble of echoes.

John stood, only because it was better than plunging his face in the forest duff. His mind was a tangle, as string falling away from a suddenly lost kite. Paying no attention, he stumbled on brambles to stand next to where his dad last had. He couldn’t look down just yet but a movement to the side caught his attention.

“That’s an unusual bug.” The insect was flying like and also acting as a hummingbird. It was larger than a bumblebee but its striped body resembled one. Intrigued, he looked closer. Its tail was shaped as a lobster’s. “Its the Snowberry Clearwing!”

“Today was my father’s destined day.” The rare creature has a very widespread range. They’ve been seen throughout the northern hemisphere but few people will spot one in a lifetime. My father saw his second today. Though how John’s grandfather died wasn’t part of the retelling, his dad told of a sighting long ago. Until now he had wondered if the description was an imaginative exaggeration born in a young boy’s grief. “It’s just as he said and history has repeated.”

John sat beside his father’s corpse and watched as the moth hovered at flowers. The bug’s beak was like a coil that extended. It seemed to sip away his sorrow with the nectar. What my father and I both did today was necessary. Each taking was also a bestowal. The father gave a life in a lesson but received final dignity in return. The son gave angst in a bullet but took from it an undimmed legacy.

“I would be getting an earned verbal whipping right now.” He laughed in spite of his hurting. His rifle had been left in the dirt and he jogged back to collect it. John knelt beside the body and opened the breach. Out came the old and in went a fresh round from his pouch. He slipped the ejected brass into his father’s shirt pocket but it clinked against something else metal. John
Fitzgerald Kennedy’s assassin had brought his memento to his own Dealey Plaza.

The casing for a slug that killed his father could enjoy no better companion. One page-marked a next chapter for a nation. The other spelled a sharp coming of age transition for a ghost’s writer tasked with the purpose of dotting the final punctuation.

Running back to the cabin to fetch a shovel, he wondered if he should’ve carried the body back to bury him next to his mother. She had been a junky prostitute. His father wouldn’t discuss that topic and it was odd that he wouldn’t. John vaguely knew her in a faint edge of a child’s memory but another hazy notion was there too. It never quite materialized into his mind but it always succored his loneliness. It was needed today and as usual it helped.

“No, he chose his place and I’ll put him where he fell.” John dug the internment then rolled the corpse in. He briefly thought of arranging the finger at the bloom of his fatal head wound but he cast the dirt back instead. This wasn’t his father anymore: the life spark had departed.

“It’s done but what could adequately say a tribute?” Suddenly he had his answer. It wasn’t much but it would be enough. He lit a fire on the mound and stoked it to an inferno. Emptying bottles of his dad’s favorite Cognac into the blaze, John watched as flame devils swirled and tried to remember all the many good times.

“Could kill his own father but the why and who came from without.” A thought of the final examination intruded before he could push it to bay. His dad said the instructor could only give one quiz. Yet the man had confidence so John must also, even if he couldn’t comprehend it. Hopefully, he would stumble on the test’s internal answers. For now, I’ll just follow his instructions. That constant had never once faltered.

John returned his mind back to the present and the past. He screamed to the aurora borealis as he had as a lad, when his dad teasingly told him loud noises made the lights dance. Back then he believed the atmospheric phenomena were enemy ghouls haunting his father. He pictured them here now to pay their respects. When exhaustion caught up with him, the boy in a young man’s body rolled up in a blanket to sleep by the graveside.

In the cold pre-dawn, when tendrils of mist rise from the night dew, John awakened shivering. The fire was now glowing embers. After the smoldering died completely, the first plants to grow would be fireweeds. The wild forest fescue would follow.[/private_Chevron]

“Your mound will be a grassy knoll.” John reverently folded his hands. “It’ll be smaller than in Dallas but of no lesser stature. One oath I gave you in life. I swear this one in death. I’ll pull your name from the shadows and light it up like a beacon.” A final tear traced a searing trail down his cheek and fell sizzling into the shimmering coals of his father’s pyre.

“I am my father’s immortality.” The man’s earthly life was ended but his spirit would live within John. He turned and left without uttering a goodbye. “You’re not gone if I carry you with me.”

Chapter 1 of Shiva’s Messenger

Operation Shiva

From an elevated vantage point behind a slatted wooden fence, Jeff Thomas looked over the moderate-sized throng assembled to watch the motorcade pass. A few hands held small flags poised. Casual faces turned his way occasionally but none obtrusively watched him. Jeff scanned above to an unseasonable bright day for conducting a darkly cloaked operation. The sun filtering through the leafy canopy of a large bole tree cast mottling shadows with only his silhouette observable from the plaza below.

He cocked a cheek over his left shoulder. Further back from the concrete and stucco pergolas, no one was close. As a golfer’s on a tee-off swing, this pro’s eyes followed through to a look at his right rear angle. Cars filled the parking lot behind but the drivers and the passengers were all down below the grassy knoll on Elm Street, as a gallery to watch the procession. All here was quiet and still. Was it that time itself had hesitated, to allow a generation to gather an awareness, of where they were at this juncture?

The crowd’s attention was fixed away when he returned his gaze. They were watching where the president’s appearance was anticipated at any moment. A check of the sixth floor window of the brick Schoolbook Depository building showed it was open. That confirmed his partner was in position and ready. Jeff’s blue eyes checked his watch in a habitual manner without even noting the time. It was of no matter. The zero hour would strike soon and the world would soon remember, precisely when it had been.

Jeff took several relaxed breaths and a faint smell of creosote reminded him that railway tracks were nearby. He affixed attention onto a single point of null space slightly ahead of his eyes. The man found his zone, as he called it and he entered it with his skin tingling as if freshly scrubbed. Whenever he achieved this state, Jeff felt the most alive. His perception became so much greater than his normal state of being. His vision sharpened and time seemed to slow—or perhaps it was simply his brain was processing faster. This was the mode where he always performed his very best work.

Intently, he shifted his focus up Main Street as the presidential motorcade slowed at the corner. Like a parade of black ants moving up the shaft and onto the base of an arrowhead, the motorcycles and escort cars turned right into Dealey Plaza. Jeff fixated on the target vehicle and followed its acceleration. His eyes didn’t have to glance up. A heightened perception allowed the peripheral vision to detect a flutter in the window of his teammate bringing a carbine into position. It’s a perfect shot for Oswald now—but don’t let him shoot yet. Jeff could hit from here if he must, but waiting was better.

The president’s open-topped limousine was now pointed at the Depository building. If Jeff hadn’t been ordered to use Oswald as a co-conspirator, he would’ve been in that sixth floor window. The one shot would have already been taken and the job finished. Two shooters weren’t required for this operation. That wasn’t his call.

As the motorcade reached the junction of Houston and Elm, it slowed again to bank the left turn. This one-block detour from the obvious route was the final proof to Jeff that ‘Operation Shiva’ had not only the tacit but full approval from the highest levels of the United States government. The condemned car turned for the final time in this president’s life. It curved towards the arrow’s tip.

Quickly and smoothly, movements drilled to muscle memory, Jeff pulled his Mannlicher-Carcano firearm from its cradle under his jacket. The gunman knew the reasons or at least he believed he did. I couldn’t be better prepared for this action. Pulling the rifle butt into his shoulder, he canted his head over the weapon to bring his eye directly behind the gun sight. His index knuckle tensed on the trigger. He was aware even of the knurl ridges, like a course fingerprint in the metal. With a steady eye and finely tuned hand coordination, Jeff tracked a bead on President Kennedy’s forehead.

Oswald opened fire from the Depository but with less than half of the finesse of an amusement park duck-shoot hawker. Over the gun sight, Jeff could see a flurry of reactions in the car but he couldn’t determine if Lee’s barrage were hits. It appears he’s not struck his target: as I could’ve expected. Jeff required only his one meticulous kill shot. He squeezed the trigger with strait-blade razor professionalism that was stropped on other lives.

So finely attuned to that instant, he nearly saw the blunt tail of the bullet streaking away. John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s head recoiled sharply from the impact of a bullet on a skull. In the president’s last gleaming his crown was as a crimson corona of blood mist. Jeff felt washed pristine clean by a wave of freedom—he had never felt so completely satisfied.

The sound of my one report was likely buried in an echo of all of Oswald’s. The assassin didn’t chamber another round. The job was finished and that action would only eject the spent cartridge he would then have to retrieve. Instead, he slipped the carbine back under his coat and felt the euphoria of closure. As the man strode purposefully away, his gait betrayed no more guilt than to an expired parking meter. He retraced almost the exact steps he had taken on the way to his firing position. The gunman’s execution and attention to detail had once again been calligraphy perfect.

As he slipped behind the wheel of his car, Jeff placed the carbine into his lap with the muzzle pointing towards the rubber mat of the passenger’s seat floor. He ejected the spent brass, then inserted the single round he carried loose in his pocket. Never be caught with an empty weapon. That maxim was one he could never forget. The assassin set the gun down on the seat next to him and concealed it with his jacket.

“Now that’s a souvenir!” He stuffed the spent brass cartridge into his shirt pocket. Normally he would find a place to tuck it where it would never be found. This time I’ll keep it. The shining brass was a coin to pay all debts to both his old country and his new one.

Jeff slipped the shifter into gear and drove away using the route he had planned well in advance. Stopping only once, he deposited the incriminating weapon in the pre-arranged dumpster. Another member of the non-requested support team would be responsible for the final disposal. It was yet another complication in the plan that was neither necessary nor of his choice. The assassin was fully capable of ditching his own evidence.

Simplicity in a strategy is a thing of ultimate desirability. His plot had been exquisitely straightforward. One shooter and one shot. That’s the way it should have been. The inclusion of Oswald and these other impediments to his effortless stratagem had been requirements directly from the clients. Jeff never liked any of them.

Oswald loved the Depository sniper’s nest and wanted to use it even though his shot from there would be at a difficult angle. He bragged about his targeting skills even though the positioning for a right-handed marksman was the worst possible. The staccato of ineffectual shots Lee had fired only showed the folly of his position. The fact that Oswald had even been able to strike in the vicinity of the president was proof of his skill.

No matter, Lee Harvey Oswald was the redundant understudy. Jeff Thomas was the headliner. He had delivered his performance as a virtuoso. His lanyard tug made the curtain fall on the American President. What critic could ever mock the show?

As Jeff drove on, he pondered again whether the next stage of the plan was essential or wise. The objective was terminated and it was sure to be a momentous event in the country. Should they not just quietly disappear? What was the point of meeting up with Oswald? Why not at some later date and as far as possible from the turmoil of this historic event? Linking up on this day, in this city was more the client’s recklessness.

[private_Chevron]On thoughts of the foolhardy next stage, the hairs on Jeff’s neck bristled. A chill traveled his spine like a sword-length icicle was being stabbed down his collar. An intense shudder jerked his hands on the steering wheel and the car lurched towards the oncoming traffic. He pulled the vehicle back into lane but the effort drained the strength from his arms. Prudently, the assassin pulled over and stopped haphazardly on the side of the road.

He looked at his hands. The skin on the backs was goose-fleshy and his fingers were jittery. Why was he having this uncharacteristic body reaction? Was his subconscious telling of a detail overlooked or was it adrenaline? The odd sensation passed and he went on.

Acting on his premonition, Jeff veered off route to park four blocks away from the rendezvous point. On foot, he traversed the remainder of the way and waited at a distance to observe. If things were fine his arrival would only be delayed. He could explain that trifle away with a lie about traffic chaos owing to the event. He crouched behind a hedge and surveyed the scene.

Something definitely isn’t right. Oswald was at the bus stop on Oak Street as he was supposed to be. However, hidden on a side avenue a block from the transit stop, a black sedan sat in front of a Dallas Police cruiser. A man in a dark suit holding a radio was standing beside the police car. Another stood in an alcove where he could discreetly observe the nervous Oswald and traffic approaching in the direction Lee’s teammate was supposed to be arriving from.

The assassin watched as several pregnant moments passed. Lee anxiously fidgeted and was doubtlessly experiencing a similar trepidation about the meeting that Jeff had felt only moments ago. Unfortunately, it was too late for him to take any precautions.

The man with the car and the one in the alcove also appeared fretful. The first paced the length of the car and the latter rocked on the balls of his feet. Both were smoking one cigarette after another. Jeff could plainly deduce that the police car was positioned to follow and stop Oswald and himself after they had made their connection.

Lee impatiently consulted his wristwatch and looked up the street. He even stepped onto the asphalt to get a better view. With his nervousness apparently edging into medium panic, Lee Harvey turned to start walking away. The observer in the semi-concealed recess put his radio to his lips. This seemingly required a change of plans. The police car pulled around the sedan and wheeled the corner to slowly follow the lone conspirator.

“This paints pastel to plaid.” The observing assassin bit down hard on his teeth and pursed his lips tightly. His eyes narrowed to a squint as he focused his thoughts. Jeff and Lee were betrayed by the organizations they were serving. Unwillingly cast in the role of sacrificial goat, this performer wouldn’t follow the stage cues to the priest’s alter. “Lee Harvey Oswald is to his fates, as am I to mine.”

Jeff edged cautiously back from his concealment. He briefly considered going back to the car and then thought better of it. The vehicle was as compromised as the whole escape plan. All of his names, both real and fictitious, were also now marked. He used his well-trained and practiced skills to melt as refined sugar does in hot coffee, into the now very dangerous city of Dallas.[/private_Chevron]

…

From a hotel room in Houston, rented under an undocumented name, the man who was no longer Jeff Thomas watched the rest of the riveting story unfold. Glued to the television, he saw Oswald gunned down while in custody by some nightclub owner.

Bullets fired into his co-conspirator carried twinges of empathy into his own belly. The entirety of his desperate situation seared his stomach lining like the shots felt in sympathy had melted in a forge. “I need to disappear into the world as if I never existed.”

The assassin closed his eyes and reviewed the scenario. As a mystery novel’s ending shows how the reader missed noting the pivotal clues, so was the assassin able to now find the obscured elements in his. The betrayers will not survive. On that thought, he monitored his emotion’s temperature. Cold would be vengeance and he would not allow himself that. The deception’s perpetrators could savor the profits but greedy tongues would experience a bitter aftertaste. A reckoning was required but that was warm like a body.

“Amends will be made,” he spoke to his soul, “even if it takes my life and the lives of my unborn children, this I swear.”

[private_Chevron]Some say time heals all wounds and it was an assisting balm but this malady’s cure would await the invention of a new medicine.[/private_Chevron]