Michael's Original Sin

By Davd Soul

Michael's Original Sin is the second novel in a trilogy of political conspiracy thrillers that centers on an untold back story to the attempted Reagan assassination. Come experience the ongoing journey of Michael Avalov to challenge an international drug cartel's aspirations to expand its world-wide trafficking operations. This time, the Chicago attorney comes to Washington to help the president's War on Drugs only to find he is reluctantly yet irrepressibly drawn into the cartel's most sinister plot yet to undermine American democracy …

"Michael's Original Sin" picks up where "Michael's Cardinal Sin" left off, i.e., after Michael helped the Justice Department and Intel Community fight a murderous Chicago-based international drug trafficking cabal, which included Vatican insiders, as well as Turkish and Mexican kingpins. As in the trilogy's first story, Michael soon learns his involvement in foreign affairs and his new fate come at a price for others as well as himself.

The first two "Degree" Trilogy novels will be followed of course by a third, i.e., "Michael's Mortal Sin" expected to be published in 2021. And, all three "Degree" novels are actually a "Prequel" to an earlier trilogy of political conspiracy thrillers centering on Michael Avalov's offspring, including Alex Avalov: One to the Nth Degree - The Code 17 Conspiracy; One to the 4th Degree - The Marian Conspiracy; and One to the 3rd Degree - The Shroud of Turin Conspiracy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Nov 23, 2020
• ISBN: 9781098347802

Book preview

1981

PROLOGUE--Dateline: Monday, March 30, 1981

MICHAEL AVALOV COULDN’T get his head around now living and working in the nation’s capital. Nor could the senior partner in the Chicago-based KATZ law firm get over how his feelings toward it had recently taken a nosedive.

For a Midwest transplant used to winter-like Springs, this pleasantly cool and cloudy March day should have been refreshing. Yet, even the sweet cherry blossom scent filling the air this early afternoon that he’d normally welcome seemed sour. Fuck me, Michael sighed without knowing why he had to silently curse. Fuck ‘em all, he thought.

Standing next to the war tested, yet younger CIA agent, James Scarsborough, 42-year-old Michael was surveying the Washington Hilton Hotel. He felt, yet would never admit, the weight of the world was upon him. Ronald Reagan, the new President of the United States of America, would be arriving soon. And, it seemed his role in protecting the threatened life of No. 40 was woefully inadequate. For now, it simply meant boxing out his turf NBA style like the former Marine Special Ops Officer he was, then, remain as inconspicuous as possible.

Positioned outside the hotel ballroom’s VIP entrance, Michael stifled a nervous yawn. Sleep deprived, his eyes felt heavy and were at times half closed. He was somewhat mesmerized by the gaggle of media reporters and photographers jostling, at times elbowing, one another for position. The several dozen excited pedestrians of all ages also strong-arming their way into the mix, many armed with umbrellas to fend off an on-off drizzle, would normally have been amusing. Not so funny now.

Michael tried to refocus by picking out the Secret Service contingency supposedly running the show. There was Jerry Parr and Tim McCarthy standing stiffly under the hotel entrance’s concrete canopy and before the stonewall on either side. He noticed nearby several plainclothes District officers as well as uniformed cops mingling about. And, Michael waved at Tom Delahanty, a veteran he knew from other official Washington events he’d attended. But, the area’s still not really secure, he decided. So. Where’s the FBI when you need ‘em? He could only watch the mounting confusion with concern, as those having been pushed to the fringes started to push back. Easy pickings for an assassin.

"Rawhide is arriving in ten. Scarsborough said with his familiar confidence, even now looking his usual debonair self. Ready to rock ‘n roll"?

Ready as I’ll ever be, Michael replied. How can I not get super pumped, he wondered, at the thought of helping Scarsborough foil the plot that only we together had discovered and the FBI and Secret Service no longer take seriously: A foreign drug cartel’s attempt on the president’s life.

Just remember, Scarsborough reminded for the umpteenth time, stick to our plan.

Michael didn’t think another reply was necessary. Our plan is perfect.

At least, the plan was perfectly simple. Nab the disguised foreign-born killer before or after the president keynoted an AFL-CIO convention in the hotel’s main ballroom. With our own handpicked team of trusted CIA and DEA agents, the usual Secret Service protective bubble be damned. The elusive stalker would soon be in their sites, being stalked himself as it were. Even before the assassin made his move, he’d be caught weapon in hand. After interrogation and a fair trial, a lifetime jail sentence was a cinch. The international cartel that had hired him might even collapse like a house of cards.

Still, Michael again sighed, Fuck me, fuck ‘em all. No matter what the day brought, he knew that by tomorrow things between him and live in partner Maria will never be the same. After all Maria and I went through in Chicago. We stopped her cousin Raul, Mexico’s Ambassador to the U.S., and the Cordero family drug cartel he led. Some godfather he’s been to her. Some lover she’s been to me. First she betrayed me to Raul. Then, she saved my ass from him. How did that work again? I start a new life in DC and the Cordero clan is back in my life pulling the same crap.

I’m fucked no matter what, Michael spewed yet again.

Huh? Scarsborough asked. Who you talkin’ to?

With a shake of the head and wave of the hand, Michael continued to argue within himself. So, we couldn’t have stopped the cartel without Maria. Hell, Raul’s Vatican allies, Sorrento and Padua, were gonna kill my client. Chicago’s Cardinal, no less. And, why? ‘Cause he was turning on them and going state’s evidence. Was he or wasn’t he for years on the take? Maybe he still is. I may never know. All’s I know is Raul’s men tried to take out the Cardinal in Grant Park when the Pope visited Chicago. It’s already been two years since my best friend was murdered instead. But, now…now, Raul got Maria’s brother, Miguel, to target POTUS for pretty much the same reason, only this time, to stop his War on Drugs. Fuck me. Fuck ‘em all.

Scarsborough knew the Bloody ‘79 memory was still cutting deep into his friend’s heart. He turned to Michael and scoffed in his usual blunt way: After we bag Miguel, things can never be the same between Maria and you. But, this is no time for revenge. We stick to the plan. You’re still ok with that, right?

Michael nodded, then, bit his lip until skin was broken and a trickle of blood could be tasted.

MIGUEL CORDERO CARESSED the Heckler & Koch P30L holstered under his fine woolen suit jacket. My bitch, he thought as if the weapon were a sexy feline. Fitted with a custom compensator, the firearm was the drug cartel’s weapon of choice when it came to assassinating its enemies, real or imagined. And, Murder, Inc. it was, as the body bags generated by sicarios like Miguel on both sides of the border piled up. Known as Animal Salvaje, Maria’s brother alone had been involved in more than 100 kills by the time he turned 21. He was said to never have looked a victim in the eye…or, cared if they had suffered at his hands.

The usually ragtag Miguel smiled. He loved being in disguise. Incommunicado was another weapon in his arsenal. The dark blue wool business suit and tie atop a white silk dress shirt today was an aficionado's touch. So was a newly minted full if light beard. Short and broad-chested, yet having slimmed down for the assignment, the hooded black eyes in his ruddy round face stayed fixed on the Connecticut Avenue sidewalk. Superstitious and once a wannabe Major League Baseball player, Miguel had let his natural athleticism avoid stepping on any crack that could have triggered bad luck. Proud as always of the trust placed in his skills as a psychopath gladly killing without mercy, he recalled how years earlier El Compadre and cousin Raul had personally trained him in the deadly arts.

Various memories rushed in. Especially when 16 and during the days he attended the family’s mountainous training camp in Mexico’s central highlands. He had relished the early morning marathon runs, grueling afternoon field exercises, and evening target practice. Here, the most violent martial arts and the arts of disguise, deception and camouflage were staple courses. Sniper proficiency and Inca scouting skills, too. The idea, Miguel knew, had been to turn him and the other students in the class of ten into rabid, conscienceless killing machines. Stealth without mercy was the watchword of every day.

One night Miguel was tasked with gaining entrance to the cartel’s compound as if a black masked Ninja and morphing within seconds into just another recruit who was positioned to cut Raul’s throat. He succeeded, if with a rubber blade. Another especially impressionable moment was the machete exercise, in which the students were ordered to dismember a fresh corpse. The first student vomited when Raul pointed to him and handed over his blade. Escorted roughly away by two co-instructors, all realized the demurring youngest would never be seen again. When Raul next passed the machete to Miguel, he surgically passed the test, some said with a sadistic glee. As hoped, the remaining students zestfully mimicked him. Like all graduates, Miguel, would be tattooed on his forearms with the cartel’s moniker, matching red and black horned lions. You will proudly wear these, Raul had told his charges, until your inevitable death.

Shaking off his revelry, Miguel smiled again as he picked up the pace of his walk in a northerly direction toward the Hilton. My death may be inevitable, but not today, he thought. Miguel took comfort instead in thinking he would be silently backed up by a team of militarily trained comrades who had been carefully embedded in the crowd waiting for the president.

Miguel’s own mission this day was to mingle amongst onlookers there and either kill President Reagan when he arrived or wait for him to finish his speech inside the ballroom. He was to shoot the President outside the hotel’s VIP doors as many times as possible, dropping the weapon before anyone had time to react. Miguel, just another man in a suit, would then calmly stroll a half block to where a white truck would be waiting for him, keys in the ignition.

Once having turned into the Hilton garden, Miguel heard a roar of applause and feared the president had already arrived. He headed for the crowd now gathering around the hotel’s VIP entrance. It’s only a Secret Service SUV. The advance guard. The presidential limousine will be coming soon. Our timing was perfect. Now, all I need to do is be patient. Pick my spot. He looked about for his comrades, but saw none. That is good. I should not see them.

Hey, when’s the president coming? Miguel asked a jacketed man who was stepping on his toes as if trying to see above the crowd.

Any minute now, pleasantly replied the man. Brushing back a shock of long light brown hair, he added: It’s gonna get really crazy, man.

Have you ever seen the president before? Miguel wondered.

No. You?

Me neither. Wish my sister were her to see this and what’s about to happen here.

Me too. I wish Jodie were here. I hope she’ll be impressed.

Your wife? Miguel asked.

No, Jodie Foster, the man replied. The actress. A Hinckley can only hope to make her his wife one day…

Chapter 1 – Dateline: Monday, March 2

"GET UP, SLEEPY HEAD,’ Maria purred, you’ll miss your meeting.

Michael feigned a deep sleep, despite the enticing smell of the woman’s apple blossom perfume.

Come on, the petite bed partner insisted. Andale, she chirped, blowing back a strand of her long flowing black hair. You made me promise to wake you. Don’t make me make you regret it.

It’s still early, the awakened lawyer groggily pleaded his case. Lots of time before I have to be at the office. Still, he used 40 plus years of acquired sleep-in skills to fall back into playing possum.

Ok, you asked for it, Mr. Avalov, Maria laughed while pouring an ice-cold pitcher of water over her prostrate lover.

Ugghhhh!!! Michael yelped as he bound upward, coughing while laughing. Is that what Momma Cordero taught her daughter to do to her man to make him obey?

Yes…she…did, Maria chortled, then, flung herself over Michael’s neck until she was draped over his torso.

Michael could feel her supple breasts squished on his muscular shoulder blades. He was aroused when Maria’s hardened nipples pressed through his cotton pajamas.

This is a man who reminds me of my father, Maria thought with a smile. He’s kind, yet strong. Too honest a man for his own good. And, that’s what has always worried me … Papa also tried to do the right thing. He fought his way out of poverty, struggled farming the Oaxaca hill country. He tried to work with the coyotes, then, fought them when they demanded his soul. The cartels destroyed what he loved most, his family … And, now, I see how Michael fights. He does whatever it takes to protect those he loves. Madre de Dios, let it not be his death sentence, too.

Michael thrust his head back so that they rested gently on Maria’s high cheekbones. She gladly allowed him to bury her face in his short, closely-cropped light brown hair and pretended to kiss every strand.

Michael glanced at the digital radio clock telling him it was 6 a.m. Yeah, that meeting. Still time for a shave and a hot shower. Michael waxed how he would soon be taking the 38B Metra Bus from his tony Georgetown townhome around the corner from the Catholic University of that name to the FBI’s J. Edgar Hoover Building downtown. His home’s grey brick façade in this morning’s drizzle reminded him of his former two story, multi-unit condo in Chicago’s Old Town. He missed that old barn so close to the Lincoln Park Zoo and Second City Comedy Club yards from the Lake Michigan beaches. Missed, too, was Booker’s pancake house serving up his favorite all day breakfasts, not to mention the Earl of Old Town bar a few doors further up Wells Street, where some of America’s great folk singers performed nightly.

Yet, there were many compensating advantages to take the sting out of Michael’s life-changing move. Found just a stone’s throw away from his new digs was the oft-congested M Street and Wisconsin Avenue shopping district, where dozens of high priced boutique shops, Irish bars, bakeries and yuppie restaurants were found. His frequented Chadwick’s Bar & Grill was only a couple blocks beyond on K Street and below the Whitehurst Freeway. And, just feet away facing the Potomac River and a tree-lined boardwalk was a popular movie theatre.

From here, Michael often took extended walks along the river, using the paved shortcut from Georgetown to the George Washington Campus and national monuments beyond. The Lincoln Memorial and National Mall were an easy 15 minutes away on foot, while the White House itself was another 600 seconds, if one walked briskly. Nor did Michael mind being able to say at the firm’s frequent business-generating cocktail parties how he lived a mere block from the Exorcist Steps, so named after the horror movie scene in which the devil tossed a Catholic priest down 75 stairs to his death.

The capital area’s rich history had proven to be yet another magnet for Michael. Being raised in the Land of Lincoln, he could never get enough of the subject. Even after obtaining a degree in Political Science with honors from the University of Illinois at Chicago, then, his juris doctorate at the Golden Dome’s law school. Politics and law had come to be an important part of his life. A short if storied career as an officer in the U.S. Marines’ special forces would make that attraction bloom into a full-blown love affair. Now, everywhere he walked, biked, or drove, Michael was reminded by some monument of whatever patriot trod there or yet another museum housed the Americana of game changing events that forged the nation.

You get dressed, Maria shouted as she bounded out of the bed and onto the floor toward the kitchen, I’ll get breakfast ready.

Oorah! Michael shouted back with a Marine’s guttural command, the equivalent to a Calvary man’s charge. Yet, Michael silently griped: Hell, Maria, they can wait for me this once, huh? He still hadn’t been able to banish the troubling thoughts behind being transferred by his international law firm known as Katz, Avelini, Tomasso & Zale aka KATZ. What a difference a day makes from working in the Windy City home office to the satellite office a block away from Ford’s Theatre. Michael still often asked, Why? The answer was, as always, painfully obvious: My boss Steve Castleman thinks I’m needed in the DC office to be nearer the national security agencies headquartered here. And, yeah, my claim to fame now was in helping them disrupt that global drug cartel, the Chicago Outfit. Made a name for myself in getting the hometown’s Cardinal off from criminal drug and murder charges, too. Even though the old buzzard was probably as guilty as hell.

Oh, God no, Maria suddenly cried out.

The sudden, muffled cry jarred Michael into the here and now. He bolted out of bed and threw on his Levy jeans, while in one motion loped through the bedroom door and into the living room. He froze. On the couch he saw Maria’s normally gay coal black eyes filling with tears, a look of fright distorted her usually placid countenance.

What’s wrong? Michael asked.

Maria continued to unnaturally grip and stare at a wrinkled piece of paper in her hand.

You’re shaking.

Maria pointed with her one free hand to the door under which the paper had been slipped and handed it to Michael with the other.

Michael studied the letter. He recognized the same red ink his client Cardinal Schubert had once gotten in his Chicago Archdiocese mansion. The earlier version had also been slipped into his secured office … but, only after his right hand man and confidant, a priest, had been brutally bludgeoned with scores of machete cuts. It read now as then: "It is up to you whether Sebastiani’s end is your own."

Dumbfounded, Michael looked into Maria’s terrorized eyes and she into his deep blues. He reflexively returned his gaze at the paper. Pull the pieces together. Michael recalled the warnings the archdiocese’s accountant Joe Mantua had given to him nearly three years ago. Joe was the first to tell me about how drug cartel chiefs were after HIM for skimming profits … Michael still remembered the look of horror on the man’s face and sweat pouring down from his disheveled white hair that was normally slicked back 1950’s style. Mantua had tried to explain while sitting awkwardly on the Earl of Old Town bar, dribbling whiskey off his chin as he talked. Father Sebastiani, Michael’s mentor and friend, was said to be up to his neck in a drug trafficking scheme …and had paid for it with his life: Listen, Mantua had pleaded. The cartel’s first pipeline extended from the Mexican boarder to Chicago. But, there’s an even bigger operation between here and Europe … it grew so fast it now dominates its kid sister. You’d never know it though. Hidden in plain sight. And, I’m not sayin’ the man was the only priest in the cartel’s drug distribution channel that supplied the Midwest and parts of Canada. Bishops … and maybe even the Cardinal himself … were not only in the know, but calling the shots.

Maybe the Cardinal of Chicago? an incredulous Michael had asked.

I was paid to keep the books. I wasn’t allowed to see anything behind them.

But, you know about the drug trafficking?

I know the money-trail leads all the way to Europe.

To the Vatican?

Maybe. And, beyond.

Beyond?

Istanbul.

And, Father Sebastiani was killed, why?

The answer is there, in the diary … and ledgers, Mantua had replied.

Indeed, the answers were found there. And, the coding within would eventually lead Michael, his KATZ comrades, the FBI, CIA and federal prosecutors on a wild paper chase to not only mortally wound the international drug cartel supposedly based in Chicago, but foil an assassination attempt on Cardinal Schubert’s life during the Pope’s history-making visit to the city.

But, why would Maria also get a threatening Red Letter from the drug cartel? And, why now?

You see what it says? a still rigid Maria finally asked, her voice shaking, her eyes furrowed.

Michael read the words out loud: "It is up to you whether Sebastinai’s end is your own."

It’s the Red Letter. Just like Cardinal Schubert, Maria cried. Why would they say this to me? Why would Raul let them?

Michael knew, as did Maria, the extent to which her cousin and Mexico’s U.S. Ambassador Raul Cordero had been involved in the cartel’s international operations. While vehemently denied by Raul and family members publicly, it was no secret between Michael and Maria that the Cordero was now the undisputed king pin of the cartel south of the border. We expected Raul to be pissed when Maria helped me and Cardinal Schubert fight the cartel assassins in Chicago. But, we all agreed to live and let live going forward. His powerful government position had shielded him since. He’s been working his drug operation from the shadows, using third and fourth parties as well as a legion of loyal lieutenants to do his dirty work. And, Maria was able to make the move to DC with me because she’s now working for the Mexican government in his embassy, right where she could be watched.

Raul may have had no choice, Michael softly said.

What? Maria demanded as much as asked.

Remember my friends Sorrento and Padua…from Italy, Michael sighed.

I don’t understand.

"Remember, Maria, how