Russell Twyce

Chapter 24 of Shiva’s Messenger

Nataraja and the Bull Nandi

From his vantage in a void space behind a mechanical room, the assassin Dimitri Petrov watched the tiny dials. They were his only real view of anything happening outside of his enclosure. Was this vertical shaft originally to house a large dumb-waiter, or just the current pipes and conduits? It ran from the basement to the upper floor as a cobra’s lair.

“This space is a claustrophobic’s worst nightmare.” He was at the top of a ten-story well that was only 4 x 4 feet. Two large cylinders were chained in place, further cluttering his section on the upper level. Directly ahead was the back of an air-handling unit, as the duct doubled as part of the ventilation system. Dust of decades coated the walls. Suspended now in a fall restraint harness, Shiva’s Messenger was like a spelunker in an artificial cave.

He closed his eyes and imagined the link between his sniper’s blind and the one behind the fence in Dealey Plaza. His father was alive and standing with his carbine under his jacket. Dimitri took a deep draught of the fresh Dallas air. Thank you, Carl.

Silently, he watched and listened for the infinitesimal sounds that would signal the beginning of the endgame. In his mind, he circulated his plan again, avoiding the myriad of latent disasters. His confidence needed to remain doubt free. The skills his father had instilled in him were running at peak efficiency. Shiva’s Messenger was dangling in limbo and the world took a deep breath in anticipation with him.

…

The President of the Ukraine was at Boryspil Airport to greet the U.S. President when his foot touched Ukrainian soil. There were the customary handshakes and welcoming words. Weeds performed the rituals with his usual panache. This type of formality looked good on the newsreels but it took no special effort. The toughest job was for his stylist to make him look good after his long flight. Weeds would have time to relax and have a good night’s sleep before the grueling stuff began. Good thing, too, because he felt a major dump coming on and Larry hated airplane crappers.

He slid into the limousine amid a knot of Secret Service. Their heads were craning, ever watchful for an out-of-place move that signaled danger. The motorcade whisked him through the streets of Kiev, to his waiting hotel suite. Motorcycle escorts blocked the side traffic while they swept past all lights. His guards and the Secret Service would have already checked everything. He was probably safe but alone in the passenger compartment. Larry Weeds watched the crenellated building tops, for a sniper’s outline.

“Anyone standing on a roof would only appear to be a chimney pot, until a shoulder-fired missile contrail pointed him out.” Images accompanying that thought sent Larry sliding into the corner of the limo seat, out of sight. Weeds felt the familiar knuckle of fear grip and begin to twist intestines behind his belly button.

The POTUS detail was dedicated to his protection, and they performed as well as any agency ever could. He had appropriated a vastly increased budget for his personal safety but he didn’t feel any improved comfort level. “Could any extra spending ever keep me completely safe?” The law of diminishing returns said emphatically, no. A tiny risk must be overlooked. A dedicated assassin, like the innovative Shiva’s Messenger, could always find some way. Weeds gave an involuntary twitch, at the thought of that name.

“I felt so confident of my safety in Kiev but now I’m uncertain.” The president hoped beyond dread that the assassin would show up at the Washington lure but he hadn’t. Nick Taylor must’ve been confounded by that too because Larry’s buddy hadn’t been quite the same man since. Something was different about him and it was uncomfortable. “I didn’t even want Nick riding with me in the limo.”

Under a screen of American agents, the president was ushered to his suite. It was comforting as always to see Marine guards in the corridors. There aren’t many of them: perhaps they’re tucked away out of sight. Standing back a pace, he gently lifted the shade to peek out the window. Could Shiva’s scope see through the glass? Nervously, Larry tucked the curtains, so no daylight could peek in.

“With one outcome or another,” the president referred to his alternate plan, “at least it’ll all be over.”

…

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The End

Chapter 7 of Shiva’s Messenger

Reflections of the Ferryman

There was room in the drive behind the two prestigious cars but Romero parked on the street instead. He pressed the doorbell and received an almost instantaneous response. Watson’s nose must have been behind a curtain. The young Columbian was ushered into the living room.

The lawyer already does quite well for himself but he obviously yearns for more. The whole house was luxurious and very well kept. Watson’s wife, whose striking face he could see in a picture on the mantelpiece, had done a nice job of decorating. They could be standing in a page pulled from a home décor magazine. Seated on the stuffed leather sofa was a balding, overweight, middle-aged man: he wouldn’t have been pictured in any stylish publications.

An enameled coffee table held a bottle of cognac, three brandy snifters and a huge ashtray. Four legal documents were arranged with caliper precision around a golden penholder.

“Mr. Romero Escobedo,” Watson began a formal introduction, “I’d like you to meet my very dear friend and business associate, Dr. Frank Thomson. Please call him Frank or just Doc.”

“I’m pleased to finally meet you.” Romero extended a hand still wearing leather driving gloves. “I’ve heard many things about you.” None of them were complementary.

“All good things, I trust.” Frank Thompson’s hairline appeared frontally assaulted by the opposed team of male pattern baldness. The few remaining hair follicles were protected behind defensive halfbacks of protruding ears leaving a tonsure like laurel wreath made of steel wool. The man obviously cherished what was left and allowed it to grow long and bushy. The wild tufts at his temples gave the doctor’s head an apparent football shape, with his joined eyebrows as the stitching.

Watson motioned everyone to sit. The lawyer took his seat on opposite end zone of the sofa from Frank. That left the large leather upholstered chair as Romero’s bleacher seat.

The host poured cognac into the three snifters. They talked casually for the first few minutes. William and Doc each had several belts of liquor while Romero deferred. Instead, the Columbian in the audience attempted to steer the conversation to Dr. Thompson’s medical practice and his other exploits. Frank wet his mouthpiece with some alcohol and tooted his own horn.

“So I gave the guy the purgative,” in expounding some unsavory anecdotes, with himself in the lead role, Doc intentionally portrayed himself as moderately reprehensible, “and she had the aphrodesiac. Then the girl spent the night in my bedroom while her fiancé was back at the hotel seated on his toilet.”

“That’s interesting Frank.” Romero commented on the last story told but it was also to himself. Due to my being a drug lord, he believes that the worse person I think he is: the more I’ll like him. Doc Thompson was making the evaluation far too easy.

“Shall we get on with business?” Romero ended the small talk. Please cease the color commentary now Frank! The newest player had enough marks posted on the plus/minus board, for the ringer to happily zero the Doctor’s balance.

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“I’m Shiva’s Messenger.” On seeing a puzzled expression, John added. “At your final destination you’ll understand perfectly.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of.” Even a cold wetness in his trousers was bliss compared to the prospects awaiting him. “I haven’t lived a very good life and I’m sure where I’m headed won’t be pleasant.”

“You don’t have to fear death or what’s beyond it.” John’s consoling voice was as unwavering as his gun hand. “We all go to a better place, no matter what we’ve done. I’ve been there and back, so I know this to be true. That is also comforting to me because I can hasten your mortality while still retaining my morality.”

“Can I talk you out of it somehow?”

“We both know how this conversation has to end. I doubt you would enjoy your continued existence very much, even if I allowed you to live. Two dead people are in your home and you’re the focal point of the drama. But I’m not speaking with you now to negotiate for your life. I’ve only given you an opportunity to prepare yourself.”

“Thank you.” William couldn’t quite rationalize why he’d just thanked the man who was about to kill him. Somehow, it seemed appropriate. He thought about the inevitability of his death. There was no way to dismiss the specter. It was now upon him. Would it be a good place—even for him? Why would the messenger lie now, when he had dropped his other pretenses?

Glancing one final time at the murderer, the lawyer thought about his money in the case. He’d paid a dear price for a smooth crossing of the River Styx. But as his fear of the unknown ebbed away, he felt the Ferryman was delivering a fair exchange.

“I’m ready now.” William Watson looked back down the barrel of the handgun. He briefly registered the first muzzle flash but was oblivious to the second.

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Chapter 4 of Shiva’s Messenger

Nursing Mom and the Apron Strings

Returning from her late night mercy mission, Cindy found her worst fear confirmed.  The young man wasn’t alive.  She knew on only a glance but wouldn’t give up yet.

“Wake up!”  She yelled at his slack, peaceful face.

Cindy pinched his nose and tilted his lifeless head back.  Sealing her lips over his, she blew a breath into his lungs but felt the resistance of the fluid inside.  Her fingers groped his neck for the pulse point to prove his flat-line.  She pounded her fist down onto his chest in a hard pericardial thump.

“Breathe!”  Cindy resonated to the newly deceased.

She slapped his face and pinched him.  Listening to his chest, she could detect a flutter of a heartbeat.  She blew him another life-sustaining breath but this time she forced as much as she could into his lungs to dislodge some congesting phlegm.

“Where’s that will to live?”  Picking up the bucket used to wash him, she dashed it over his upper body.  The water had now grown cold.  He convulsed and the next shallow breath he took on his own.  Her fingers found the carotid artery again.  The throb of life was there but tentative.

“Show me some backbone.”  She spanked his cheeks hard enough to make them pink.  “You’re not going to die on my watch.”

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A visit to a hairstylist had his hair dyed jet black and groomed meticulously into a ponytail.  Spending some time each day in a tanning shop had darkened his skin tone to suit the role.  Outfitted, as a model stepped from a style magazine’s cover and pampered with a manicure, he now looked the part.

“Hello, Romero Escobedo.”  He examined his appearance in premier hotel suite’s mirror and deemed the effect was perfect.

One week earlier, a Caucasian bush rat boy arrived in Calgary with his beat up pickup truck.  Now a chic Latino man drove from a temporary base in Cranbrook, in his expensive BMW Z5 sports car.

Having already checked his hair in the car’s mirror and done a fast buff on his shined shoes, Romero tugged at his cuffs to smooth the fit of his charcoal suit.  His slightly pointed lapels and the tailored cut of his jacket lent a semi-formal hint of a tuxedo.  He took a deep breath on the sidewalk to enter his sphere of awareness and looked though the glass doors at the client service counter.

[The daughter of the mountain is Parvati.]

“Wherever that came from—knock it out of your head.”  I don‘t need the complications of a hitchhiking spirit, mooning for his consort from another life.  Blocking out any thoughts, Romero found his zone of perception and stepped within.  “Focus!”

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.

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…

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.”

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