David Baldacci - Deliver Us From Evil

In truth, he cared little for his current life. He was rich, but money had never been a primary goal. He had been born poor, grown up in poverty, and joined the ranks of those defending his way of life. Yet even those in the highest levels of the Communist Party typically only had “luxuries” such as a flat with its own bath and a car. It did not pay nearly as well as capitalism.

Yet now that is what I am. A capitalist. The same thing I fought against all those years. Well, I have to admit, the Americans probably had it right.

The trafficking of young girls for prostitution bored him. He had entered into negotiations with the Muslims to sell them nuclear weapons capability principally because it allowed him to recapture a little of his past, when what he did, what he ordered, affected thousands. Now he was just a businessman, like so many others. He made a lot of money, he lived in great luxury, but if he were gone tomorrow who would care? No history book would hold his name. His superiors in the KGB had earned much of the credit for his work. They were immortal. By comparison, he was quite ordinary. Yet there were those who knew what he had done. And that was why he’d had to run, hide like a mouse in a wall. He’d had little choice if he wanted to live. He had seen what happened to comrades who were not so nimble. Some were torn apart by hordes of angry people who had spent their entire lives imprisoned while living in their own country. He understood the emotion perfectly; he just didn’t want to suffer the consequences of it.

He opened another drawer, pulled out an old book, and leafed through it, revealing page after page of drawings, in his own hand. He had always been a good sketch artist, having learned the skill from his mother, who had earned her living as a street artist first in France and then in Kiev before ending up in a fishing village that was icebound five months of the year, married to a man who did not love her. Even now Waller did not know the full history of the pair and what had drawn them together. Reproduced in this book were many of the people he’d killed, their dead or dying faces done in charcoal, black ink, or pencil only. There was no color in this book. The dead did not require it.

The next book he slid out of his desk might have surprised some people who had known the old Fedir Kuchin. He hefted the Bible in his hand. The Soviet Union of course had been vehemently opposed to organized religion of any kind. “The opium of the masses,” as Marx had pointed out. Yet Waller’s mother had been French and a devout Catholic. And she had raised her son in her religious beliefs even though it was a very dangerous thing to do. She read the Bible to him every night while his usually drunk father slept.

What had first appealed to Waller about the readings was how much violence was contained in a book purportedly espousing peace and love. Many people were slaughtered in ways even the grown Fedir Kuchin would not have employed. Reciting the Lord’s Prayer with his mother each night, she had always emphasized one phrase above all others, lingering over it as though giving it its due.

“And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”

Waller well knew the evil she was referring to: her husband.

His poor mother, good to the last. Yet what she didn’t understand about evil, her son clearly did. Given the proper motivation anyone was capable of terrible cruelty, baseless savagery, horrific violence. A mother would kill to protect her child or a child his mother. A soldier kills to protect his country. Waller had killed to protect both his mother and his country. He was good at it, understood quite clearly the mind-set required. He was not desensitized to violence; he respected it. He did not use it cavalierly. Yet when he did employ it, he couldn’t say that he didn’t enjoy the process, because he did. Did that make him evil? Perhaps. Would his mother have considered him evil? Clearly not. He killed for his country, his mother, and his own survival. When people struck him he struck back. There could be no fairer set of rules ever conceived. He was who he was. He was true to himself, while most people lived their lives as a façade only, their real selves buried under a platform of lies. They would smile at their friend before thrusting the knife into his back. Under those parameters who was truly the evil one?

The lion roared before it attacked, while the snake slithered in silence before sinking its fangs into unsuspecting flesh.

I am a lion. Or at least I used to be.

From a storage locker he pulled an old projection camera, set it on his desk, and plugged the power cord into an outlet. He opened his desk drawer and took out a projection reel with film wrapped around it. He snapped it into place on the camera, fed the film through the machine, pointed the camera at a blank concrete wall, turned down the lights, and flicked on the projector switch. On the wall appeared black-and-white images from over thirty years ago. Striding into view was a young Fedir Kuchin in full uniform. The present-day Kuchin smiled proudly when he saw his younger self.

On the wall the young Kuchin marched to the center of a compound with high fences of concertina wire and guard towers visible all around. He said something and armed men drove a dozen people forward into view, forcing them to kneel in front of Kuchin with thrusts from their gun barrels. There were four men, three women, and the rest children. Kuchin bent down and said something to each of them. Sitting in his desk chair, Waller mouthed these same words. This was one of his favorite memories. On the wall the black-and-white Kuchin led the children off to the side, away from the adults. From his pocket he took out candy and gave it to the frightened kids with rags for clothes, even patting one little girl on the head. From the pocket of his uniform the present-day Waller withdrew a decades-old disc of stale chocolate from that very occasion.

As the starving kids hungrily ate their treats, Kuchin walked back over to the adults, pulled his pistol, and executed each one of them with a bullet to the back of the head. When the screaming children rushed forward to hold their dead parents, Kuchin shot them too, sending his last bullet into the spine of a little girl who was cradling her dead mother’s head. The final image was Kuchin taking a half-eaten piece of candy from the dead fingers of a boy lying sprawled in the mud and devouring it himself. When the film reel finished playing and the wall became light again, Waller sat back with a level of pride and satisfaction that had once been his on a daily basis. That had been his job, and he had done it so well. No one in Ukraine had done it better.

He took off his uniform and hung it carefully back in his locker, smoothing out a few wrinkles in the fabric. Before turning out the lights and exiting, he glanced back at the flag and the photo of his mentor.

I just want something worthy of me again. Something that really matters.

He turned out the light, secured the door, and returned to the only life he had left. He was leaving for France shortly. Maybe he would find something there to make him care again.

REGGIE HEARD the horn toot from outside. She checked her watch. She was running late. She peered out her window and looked down on the street below. Shaw was sitting on his Vespa near her front door. He was dressed in khaki pants and a white cotton shirt he wore untucked. Loafers minus socks were on his feet. She tapped on the window, got his attention, and held up two fingers.

She hurriedly finished dressing and clipped on her earrings. Next she tidied her hair in the mirror, though it wouldn’t make much difference after the ride on the scooter. She smoothed down the front of her dress. She’d chosen a formfitting one because of their mode of transportation. She didn’t need a skirt billowing over her head as they raced along the rural roads of southern France.