Bad Vespers: A Novel of Assassination

By Stephen Schnitzer

The deadly assassin, known as the Hun, is a stone-cold killer. He has his own set of rules, and he reserves the right to change them whenever he pleases. He doesnt torture. He doesnt steal art or papers. He simply killsand for him, that is enough.

The Huns past has shaped him into the lethal instrument he is today. He trained under his father, and his extreme intelligence made him a quick study. He learned how to survive in the wild, how to hunt, how to kill. When he joined the US Marine Corps, they turned him into a machine. Eventually he became the personal bodyguard of the President of the United Statesbut still remained most comfortable out in the field.

The successful assassination of Congressman Blackwell, one of the presidents close friends, forces the Hun out of minder mode and back into killer mode. He embarks on a journey of intrigue to find the culprits and to mete out his perfect brand of justice. This time, though, new technologies and ruthless enemies may make the difference between his life and his death.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Aug 3, 2011
• ISBN: 9781450292917

Stephen Schnitzer

Stephen Schnitzer has been a practicing attorney for more than forty years. Now handicapped, he suffers from chronic pain and uses his personal experiences to write his debut book. He currently lives in New Jersey.

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Contents

Dedication

PART I

The Nature of the Assassin

Preface

CHAPTER ONE

The Persona of the Assassin

CHAPTER TWO

Rules of Engagement

CHAPTER THREE

The Nature of the Kill Itself

CHAPTER FOUR

Death Itself: The How of It

The Ordinary Weapons of Single Destruction

CHAPTER FIVE

You Don’t Learn Killing Alone

CHAPTER SIX

The Young Assassin

CHAPTER SEVEN

Becket Years Later

CHAPTER EIGHT

The New Career

CHAPTER NINE

Detail at the White House

CHAPTER TEN

Principles of the Assassin

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The Biggest Client

CHAPTER TWELVE

The Double Assassin Problem

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The Good Dogs

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Collars On, Collars Off

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Other Addictions:

Drinking, Drugs, and Mostly Sex

PART II

Moving On

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Zurich, Switzerland

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Follow Up

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

POTUS’S Protection

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Bog men

CHAPTER TWENTY

The Bog Boy Take Down

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Old Problems

PART III

Time To Be Careful

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Be Careful

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Reporting Back

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

There Are No Real Forgeries

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Popping Up and Getting Ready

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Eddie Egypt Again

Epilogue

Dedication

To my loving wife JoAnn and my educated daughter Jennifer and their invaluable advice and patience without which this book would have never been possible.

To the faithful encouragement from my loving dog Bentley who lent his spirit while he slept throughout this entire project.

PART I

The Nature of the Assassin

Preface

The assassin had finally begun. He was back to lurking in the shadows. He had been returned to his one true love. No longer was he a minder; no longer was he a cleaner; now he had become a watcher, but soon he know he would be back to being a good assassin. He pondered the age long history of his profession.

The wind was blowing heavily off the Zurich zee and beginning to chill even though he was at least half a mile away. The whores were beginning to appear in their upper windows reminiscent of their decorative personal sales made only elsewhere with such panache at the reeperbahn in Hamburg which had long since been closed at the outset of the AIDS pandemic. Zurich however remained a more civilized place and was able to license control and see to the health of its prostitutes who had long remained the assassin’s lifeline for friendship, information, and the occasional night’s comfort. How better it was, he had often thought, to pick your own company among people with whom he was completely comfortable rather than seek out those public people of high society that others vowed were so acceptable as they hid instead in their big homes in alcohol and drug induced states. Now give him a good whore any day.

As the wind drew in ever colder the crowd started thinning ending up mostly with what were beer halls of another day, come to eat sausage and fritters and to drink themselves at least half blind, whether locals or tourists. Dogs roamed through the upper square keeping each other company and coming close to the dozen of outdoor stalls selling sausage and kraut and hot cider together with all kinds of baked goods and hot pies for the hurried. The few stores and boutiques which are mostly sex shops were open while all of the rest of the low-fashion boutiques catering mainly to schoolgirls had long since closed. It was an easy place for a watcher. If you understood the crowd and the low-lives that circulated among the poor Swiss themselves including Spanish laborers, sales girls, French girls selling drugs, and the already disabled punk Swiss teens who had taken to life on the streets and deed their habits. What seemed like chaos was to the eye of the assassin a place of firm order. The outsider and the non belonger particularly the non-Swiss stuck out. Even easier revealed was the high-class Swiss who absolutely didn’t belong late at night in this milieu. At best they would be coming across the high town turning down at the age-old church to find their way to the low street where there was no more carnival but only women for sale lurking in the allies.

While passing on for dinner at the Kronenhalle few dallied. It was too early for pleasure and becoming too late for dinner. Better first to be fed and then return to thoughts of a new bed. It made the assassin-turned-watcher’s job easier. He knew where to go and who to follow in seeking the mark. This guidance was developed by years of patience and practice, and not an accident. You stumbled on. He remembered his high school football coach which mustered only a very small team repeatedly telling him that it was a mistake to think that practice makes perfect. Rather he cared to understand his better advise that practice makes permanent. How fitting for an assassin! The coach had meant to indicate that if you practiced it wrong, it’s still wrong but ended up conveying that if you practiced it properly you end up conveying the gift of permanency which in his chosen profession was death itself. There is no more permanent human condition.

One of the two marks appeared shortly after 9:20 P.M. and was walking steadily in the direction of the old church obviously on his way to the Kronenhalle bar where he regularly appeared every night about 9:30 P.M.. The assassin knew where to find him but as a watcher he wanted to follow him in to see who else thought he was important.

As usual, the old man was well dressed, wearing a tanish water-repellant Burberry overcoat coupled wit a cane and a slight distinctive limp. It was a put on. The old man didn’t need or regularly use a cane, and his shoes were ankle high walking boots which had obviously been adjusted with a small lift on the left rear heel to give him a broken gate requiring the can in the old man’s right hand. The old man, the watcher knew from the days before of watching, was right handed. The left-side limp to help it all required a left-handed cane. The old man had armed himself most probably with a gun cane which told the assassin that the peaceful winds surrounding the old man were changing and the game was heating up. He knew the old man had good reason to be afraid for his life, but it wasn’t from him yet but instead others with whom he had argued, threatened, and failed in his persuasion.

The assassin had made the game far more interesting. He gave them more pleasant choices. He could kill the old man, but why be the first? He could kill them all and then retire or best of all he could kill the competition and impress the old man and see what else there was to be learned before he decided with to kill him. Happily he thought the fear was for the better and there was more to do on his plate, more killings rather than less. Oh happy days. It was time to get along, to watch the old man drink and join him in spirit from a few spots down the bar before they both ended up sitting at the common table where he could watch him not enjoy his meal and begin to see how much the fear had marred his appetite. Childishly, he thought that perhaps he might cross his legs under the table, kicking the old man in the left ankle helping to verify his limp and his disguise. Maybe it would lead to conversation. They hadn’t talked yet, but he knew that they would well before the old man died. Good conversation always helps and it would aid in his decision on how to help the old man across the river of death: quick or slow, nice or ugly, painless or not.

Just as he was about to rise from his bench, near his favorite sausage wagon, he saw them. One at either end of the marketplace. Both of them moving slowly and not communicating with each other except visually. Both had the old man in toe and impossible to determine if there were any others ahead of them. One was dressed in the overall garb of a common laborer, mostly a street worker. The other was dressed most appropriately as a Zurich banker able to get access into the Kronenhalle or any upper-class establishment in his finer clothes. Neither looked Swiss and both looked brawny and over muscular. It was impossible to tell how they were armed. Zurich was not where you wanted to be caught with guns but on the other hand not having one when you needed it invariably became a particular evil which could easily lead to the loss of your life when you were just out about town. His bet was something small and good, probably in the .22 caliber range but could easily have been knives or electric stun batons. The assassin could case less. They hadn’t spotted him and he repeatedly had done over permanently those people who had wished or conveyed him harm on a person-to-person basis. Since he could and would kill you in a heartbeat without any personal fear of harm, whatever they were carrying was only a risk to them and likely to the old man. As they moved slowly in front of him, he stood and reluctantly discarded his Davidoff Maduro blunt that he would have preferred to finish. He knew better because scent is a warning sign and there was no reason to help the watched along. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be a very good assassin but at best and untrained watcher.

Atilla Kroger’s reprieve would be the return to killing. Only God and the faiths knew when that would come but he knew it would. It would not be denied him. He would soon be proven correct sooner than even he had thought.

CHAPTER ONE

The Persona of the Assassin

A good assassin is not squeamish. He does his work and that’s enough, particularly if he does it right and there is no opportunity for a come back. If he doesn’t, the all proverbial Murphy’s Rule kicks in and shit happens.

In the measure of the assignment when you raise to the ranks of the truly accomplished killer, there are certain privileges. The primary one is deciding the rules of the killing game. The assassin had long since developed a sharp menu in this area of what really becomes self-protection. The real assassin is not discriminatory. He kills the good, the bad, and the ugly. It doesn’t matter. He kills women and children. Indeed, he kills any nature of man for whim he thinks it’s justified which becomes a test of the character of the assassin himself. In making his rules as a much younger killer, the assassin read the history of mankind and thereby principally its wars and palace intrigues.

He had often pondered how after the death of Caesar, Mark Antony had sought replacement so successfully with Cleopatra. What Caesar knew and Antony ignored was that she was already an established assassin refusing to share the thrown of Egypt with either her younger brother or sister as the reagents required because none of them were adults and the power struggle had not resolved itself. Except to place her on the thrown itself, Caesar failed to remove the competition of Cleopatra’s siblings regardless f how she begged for their death. Dead only a few years later in 44 B.C., Mark Antony became Cleopatra’s savior and in exchange for her bedroom loyalty and as ruler of Egypt he dispatches her slightly younger sister to a monastery beyond Egypt known for its sanctity in protecting the rich. Shortly thereafter, she is assassinated as final interference of Mark Antony and the vindication of Cleopatra brayings for her death at any cost. The assassins have emerged! Gender is unimportant. Together they seek to overthrow Rome and the appeasement of each other’s desire, twelve years later when unsuccessful, in a suicide pact. The wisdom of it touched the assassination. Killing for political reasons was always a respectful good idea. It was the suicide part that was fetted. He could never reconcile why a killer of talent would attempt self-harm. Better to kill those who are bothering you or who suggested drag you down into the depth of such a devil’s agreement. He would rather be shot dead by others that do it himself. Even to think of it seriously he regards as a sign of mental weakness and likely disease. He had never had such thoughts but only repulsion for the concept and knew that if ever suggested to him he would kill the person from whose lips it fell and not politely. His own rules were such that he found them completely non negotiable.

He did not do torture. He did not steal art or papers. He killed. This was enough. It is what you paid for and what you got. If you wanted more than death in your pound of flesh he was not your boy. Do it yourself was his never varying reply. He was never challenged. He wasn’t often turned down but oddly he was never offered more. In earlier days it caused him to question why. Years later he came to understand it better. They had seen him face to face and he had seen them. They were not weak people but invariably rich, self-assured, and usually powerful in their own arena of life. Nor were they stupid or uninformed about his reputation. You did not find him in the Yellow Pages or Soldier of Fortune. Like the best lawyers it was by word of mouth.

He did not do torture. He did not steal art or papers. He killed. This was enough. It is what you paid for and what you got. If you wanted more than death in your pound of flesh he was not your boy. Do it yourself was his never varying reply. He was never challenged. He wasn’t often turned down, but oddly he was never offered more. In earlier days it caused him to question why. Years later he came to understand it better. They had seen him face to face and he had seen them. They were not weak people but invariably rich, self-assured, and usually powerful in their own arena of life. Nor were they stupid or uninformed about his reputation. You did not find him in the Yellow Pages or Soldier of Fortune. Like the best lawyers it was word of mouth.

They knew he was a stone cold killer. Nothing existed to argue about. It was his way only or the highway and back to the drawing board to find another willing to draw it out and give you the video of torture before demise. Not too many real clients wanted to do that once they knew they could get the best even if it was on his terms only. Indeed, he knew it!

He wasn’t stupid either. It wasn’t a sale technique. It was the bold truth. Nothing more and nothing less. He killed for you if you convinced him why to do it. Everybody else just took the money and could care less. This alone helped the client know he was the best and that he too was at least as clever as they believed that they were also. It created a special bonding in the otherwise murkey world of assassination. Both client and killer believed in the cause for death and now only death alone. Indeed this truth to the sophisticated client proved to be its own best just reward. It shall be done and for the merit alone of the reasons stated. The bond was sealed!

CHAPTER TWO

Rules of Engagement

Money was the medium of exchange. It was of substantial value but it was not the driving force. The assassin had money and what it bought including property, safe houses, other identities, friendly prostitutes, peace of mind, and a jet style life class, although he well preferred the anonymity of the back of the plane. He could have easily retired years ago but the taking of blood when needed was fixated in his own blood lust and because he believed himself valuable he could not and would not let go. His need to be in the game was that great and transgressed any realistic thoughts of self-preservation, let alone retirement. He felt that made him the assassin’s assassin. This pride led him to make his own decisions for the rules of killing designed by his experience, training, and overall intelligence which all combined in an atmosphere of a complete lack of guilt. It was well after the passage of a decade of assassination development that the light of the bright star struck him in his mind. Even if it was unavailable, you never completed every assignment.

Changing your mind was redeeming. If you killed everyone it was not a choice of your own but always the decision of others. It was like getting off a plane before it flew, you do it if the Karma is bad. He still got off planes when he saw the unpleasant crowds on it but even less often did he stop a planned killing. Both quittings were still good but just one habit (leaving the planes) got more frequent.

He remembered a mother who was to die as his first quitting. The vision of her bending to comfort her six-year old child had deeply moved him and allowed him to understand the bond of their love. He was not going to take it from them despite any paycheck. He also wondered if the clients had told him the truth which was itself a cardinal sin for which the punishment was clear. He never believed in the German expression, Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me. He had modified it, Fool me once and I’ll kill you too.

He also reserved his right to quit. He quit when he knew he should which included when he wanted to. He gave back the money and left it alone. No one would come after him because they understood to do so meant that they were to be dead and likely their family too. He was not a half-measure killer. Those who bought his services knew that much and now he told them all after the first shut down – walk away, that he reserved his choice to do so. Killing or not was his game and not theirs. No one had failed to listen. Not yet.

The treasured rule of most every assassin was never to meet the client. Never give yourself away. Use the blinds. These were not his rules no matter how many other killers believed in them. He insisted upon a partnership in the death being bought and to access the merits of each claim for death by the client. He did not do beatings or maimings. Only killings – nothing less. All money up front. No half now half later shenanigans. A deal was a deal, but if he walked away the money would be sent back. The personal meeting was to establish that the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t know. Let them see him; their killer. It led to good bonding and to their understanding the complete downside if they crossed him. They knew what they had seen was