The Assassin Who Gave Up His Gun

By Howard Fast

A target’s wife makes a cold-hearted assassin question his work
The hitman adjusts his rifle sight in an apartment across the street from his mark. For thirty minutes he peers through his scope, watching the man he is about to kill. He waits patiently, for assassinations demand focus. One bullet is all he needs. When the job is done, he disappears. This is an ordinary working day for Richard Breckner, a hired gun on the payroll of one of America’s enemies. He kills for the money, holding no allegiance to his country and no scruples about murder. He will kill anyone, no matter whom, from an American reverend in Miami to his superior at the department. But then, on a job in Geneva, he kills a target who dies unafraid. Unnerved by the dead man’s steely confidence, Breckner turns on his employers. If he wishes to survive, the world’s finest assassin must remember how to care. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Howard Fast including rare photos from the author’s estate.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Media
• Release date: Dec 20, 2011
• ISBN: 9781453235270

Howard Fast

Howard Fast (1914–2003) was one of the most prolific American writers of the twentieth century. He was a bestselling author of more than eighty works of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and screenplays. The son of immigrants, Fast grew up in New York City and published his first novel upon finishing high school in 1933. In 1950, his refusal to provide the United States Congress with a list of possible Communist associates earned him a three-month prison sentence. During his incarceration, Fast wrote one of his best-known novels, Spartacus (1951). Throughout his long career, Fast matched his commitment to championing social justice in his writing with a deft, lively storytelling style.

Book preview

Chapter 1

THE first one was a long shot, with a Doppler, which is our own weapon and perhaps the best rifle in the world for long-distance shooting. Even the Swiss make nothing to match it. We stopped making it thirty years ago, and for that reason they’re as rare as hen’s teeth. A man I knew found one in Tangiers two years ago, and he paid twelve hundred dollars for it. He was a rich sportsman; and I am neither rich nor a sportsman, and while they gave me the gun, they didn’t leave it with me for an hour after the job was over.

The distance was eight hundred meters, eight hundred and thirty-two—to be exact—a figure they supplied for me. There is an uncannily accurate distance gauge on the telescopic sight of a Doppler, and when the distance is measured and supplied, half the job is done for you. The Doppler is not a repeater; it has no magazine; it was conceived as a sporting weapon for marksmen who did not miss and I suppose that if you are of that frame of mind and kill for pleasure, a single shot adds to whatever the pleasure is. I don’t know. I don’t kill for pleasure. But I am a good shot, and it made sense for them to give me a single cartridge. The gun and the sighting stand were in a violin case, and I remember their poor joke about my thinking of it as a Stradivarius.

The place was a woman’s apartment on the twenty-sixth floor. Who she was I don’t remember, if indeed I knew at the time. I think they removed her name from where it might be, and I imagine she was connected with The Department in some way, as I was. The place was full of her smell and the smells of the various perfumes she used, and to this day I will pass a woman, smell perfume, and be put back there, doing it again with her pinks and purples and cheap opulence all around me, and the white carpet—slightly stained—and in the bathroom a nightgown and a robe. There was nothing to delineate her; the pictures on the walls were wretched German imitations of Renoir and Degas, and in the bathroom there was a picture by some Dutch artist in the style of Beardsley of a fat man with an enormous penis.

The virtue of her place was that it put me on a level with my mark, and people who are not marksmen cannot imagine the difficulties of a very long shot off the horizontal, high up or far down. He was on the twenty-fifth floor, in a corner room, and he sat facing the harbor. After I set up the sighting stand and fixed the rifle, I adjusted for almost a half hour. They gave me the wind velocity and direction over the telephone. It rang three times, and each time a thin, apologetic voice said something like, North by northeast, one point seven knots. I was not too concerned; I had used a Doppler before, and the wind would not bother me, and anyway, it was hardly a wind at all. But I spent a half hour sighting and watching him through the telescope, and he did nothing but sit very quietly facing the harbor. That put his left side to me, and I put the cross hairs under his left arm. Then I squeezed the trigger. He slumped forward and lay with his face on his desk, his gray hair covering his features. Then I unscrewed the sighting stand from the window, packed gun and stand into the violin case, went into the bathroom and then into the kitchen looking for some milk. She had no milk. Then I left.

When I returned to The Department, they had me sit in one of the board rooms for almost an hour. I asked no questions of anyone I met, which was the way it was done. You didn’t ask questions, and no one volunteered information. It was getting dark when Cleaver came in and said that I might do best to talk to the psychologists now. I suppose they were really doctors; to call them psychologists was to maintain one of the many small fictions in The Department. I nodded and followed Cleaver through the long corridor with its bright lemon-yellow paint.

No one told you? Cleaver asked me as we walked along.

You know that.

Of course. You do want to know?

I know. I saw him fall across the desk.

He could have been wounded.

Not the way he fell.

Then Cleaver thought about it for a moment and said, You have an instinct for death, don’t you, Breckner?

Don’t we all?

I never really thought about it, Cleaver said pleasantly. But you are quite right. He died instantly. That should please you.

Drop dead, you filthy bastard, I thought, but said nothing aloud; and then we were at the elevator and took it up to the roof, where the three psychologists were drinking tea and munching sweet cakes in The Department’s garden restaurant. Everyone else had been cleared out. The five of us had it to ourselves.

Tea? Coffee? Or a brandy? Cleaver asked me. Do sit down. These are the doctors. No one was introduced by name.

I’ll have some warm milk if you don’t mind.

Oh? He poured from a pitcher on the table.

A sour stomach.

Of course. The milk is boiled, you know. A bit of coffee will take the curse off it.

No, thank you. He was dwelling on the milk, and the psychologists were watching. Just as it is. They were all bearded. It was the style in the mental institutions; I suppose it was expected. But these were people on the inside; whatever they did with their spare hours, they were as much of The Department as Cleaver and myself, and I imagine that was the reason for calling them psychologists.

I drank my milk and asked Cleaver what I should call them.

Why don’t you ask us? one of them said.

Call us doctor, said another.

You don’t have to call them anything, Cleaver said, and don’t be snotty, Breckner. Being a wiseass doesn’t endear you to The Department. They will ask you questions. Just answer.

How do you feel? asked a doctor. They began, they were asking questions.

I don’t know.

That’s odd. Why don’t you know how you feel?

I mean, I can’t say I feel good. I don’t feel good.

What does good mean? Do you often feel good? This was another psychologist, but it makes no point to try to remember who asked what.

Not often.

But sometimes?

Yes, sometimes.

When?

I can’t say when. I mean, it’s not something you write down in a book.

It was getting dark, and the lights in the roof garden came on by themselves, controlled, I suppose, by some sort of light-sensitive cell, and the lights were coming on in the high buildings across the river. From where we were, I could see the building where he had his office, but not the building where I had been. The doctors watched me.

Do you feel good when you have a woman?

I looked at Cleaver.

I told you to answer questions, Cleaver said. Any questions. What the hell kind of scruples do you have about talking about getting laid?

Let us do it our way, a doctor said gently, patiently.

Sometimes I feel good, I said. Sometimes I don’t.

And with men?

What do you mean with men?

When you have sex with a man, how do you feel?

I don’t have sex with men.

I think you’re lying, said one of the doctors.

Let him lie, said another. People should lie when they have to. Lies are also a part of the truth. Have you ever killed a man before?

One yes—others maybe.

What do you mean, maybe?

I can’t be sure. It was in the war. You’re not sure in a war unless you do it with a bayonet or a trench shovel or a grenade. I mean the way war is now.

How do you think about that?

I don’t mostly. It was a long time ago. It was like a dream—I mean it doesn’t seem real any more.

What seems real?

I don’t know what you mean. Real is real.

Does it seem real to you that you killed a man a few hours ago?

I thought about that for a while.

Real or unreal?

I don’t know.

Why?

You keep asking me how I feel. I can’t say how I feel.

Why?

God damn it, I don’t watch myself. I do what I do.

Why?

Why does anyone? For money.

There are other ways to make money. You choose this way. Why?

I told you.

No.

That’s all I know. What I told you.

How long did it take you to fix your sight?

About half an hour.

What did you think about during that half hour?

Finding the mark.

Nothing else?

What else? It’s precise. Did you ever watch a diamond cutter study a diamond? What does he think about?

Very good, said a doctor.

And after you pulled the trigger. Did you know that you killed a man?

I knew.

What did you feel?

Nothing.

You went into the bathroom and you vomited.

Oh.

You did, didn’t you?

Yes.

Why?

I don’t know why. I felt nauseous.

Do you have ulcers?

No.

Did you want a woman then?

No, I wanted a glass of milk.

But you said you didn’t have an ulcer?

I have a sour stomach.

What you did today—are you sorry you did it?

No.

Glad?

No.

Would you do it again?

For the money.

You are convinced that you do this only for money?

Yes.

Then they were silent for a few moments, and I glanced at Cleaver, who was watching me. A plane was coming into the airport, and it caught my eye; as it got lower, I recognized it as one of the C-46s that the Americans had given us during the war.

Are you a patriot? one of the doctors asked suddenly.

A patriot?

Precisely.

I don’t know what you mean. What’s a patriot? Every lousy crumb you meet is a patriot. Was it Clemenceau who said that patriotism is the last resort of scoundrels?

A patriot is someone who loves his country, a doctor said pleasantly. Do you love your country?

I was born here.

"Let me