The Perfect Teacher Read online

  "Wait." She sat up in a hurry. "You said the man I killed was a murderer. You said he's killed men, women and children. How did you know that?"

  The look on Preacher's face said it all. He thought he was done here.

  "You've seen that man before? You know who he is, or was?" Abbie pressed him.

  Preacher sat back in the chair, brought his hands up and laced them behind his head. The movement allowed him to expand his lungs and take in a big breath and smile.

  And in a tiny hotel room three floors below, Frank Wyrick and Mikel Fuchs, each wearing over-the-ear headphones, just shook their heads and chuckled.

  Chapter 24

  He slipped out of the room as quietly as possible. Abbie was asleep in bed. He'd been on the floor with a blanket and pillow until a few minutes ago. The alarm he set in his mental clock allowed him to enjoy a couple of hours of emptiness.

  Down the hall and down the stairwell two floors, out into another hall and to the door of a room he went. He knocked three times and waited. Twenty seconds later, Fuchs opened the door and stepped back to let him in. Looked like Fuchs was asleep a few moments earlier. Preacher walked into the tiny room made even tinier with two full-sized beds squeezed into the space. Wyrick was passed out on the bed on the right.

  Fuchs flicked the lights on. The bulbs illuminated the high-tech listening equipment on the tiny desk in the corner. Preacher recognized most of it. He'd seen Wyrick's setup dozens of times over the years. He was old school when it came to secretly eavesdropping on others. Some of his equipment was decades old. He did like the newer, smaller bugs that could be placed in tight little hidden spaces. Three of the little radio transmitter listening devices were positioned in the room Abbie lie sleeping in upstairs.

  Preacher kicked Wyrick's bed. The old guy in the room stirred. He reached for his glasses on the bedside table between the beds.

  "Hey, why didn't you get her to tell you about her audit activity?" Wyrick asked a second after putting his glasses on.

  "Oh, right to business, huh?" Preacher stepped over to the swivel chair at the tiny wall desk and sat. He turned to Fuchs, "How's about a 'nice job fella' for that little thing across town?"

  Fuchs was still wiping some sleep out of his eyes. "Nice job. Nobody does that stuff better."

  "Learned from the best buddy."

  Just a nod from Fuchs.

  "That would be you sir."

  "I get it. Nice compliment, I suppose." Fuchs hunched his shoulders.

  "Yes, great job. Well executed. But what about her?" Wyrick butted in. He held his left pointer finger up in the air, obviously pointing a couple floors up at Abbie. "Job there was to get her to fill in the gaps."

  Preacher just shook his head. Wyrick had indeed filled in the gaps in Seibel's former operations by assuming the role of the overbearing, demanding authoritarian leader. Preacher didn't much care for it, but a few months of this gig were bearable.

  "I think you need to cool it for a bit. She came up here a few hours ago thinking she was going away with a dude to move their budding relationship to the next stage. Now her world is rocked. She saw a bunch of people killed in front of her and had to finish one off herself."

  "Bad people." Wyrick butted in again.

  "Really bad." Fuchs added.

  "She saw some very bad people get killed right in front of her, including one by her own hand, and she is shaken. Probably going to be freaking out for a few days. And you want the first thing I talk to her about to be for her to fill in the gaps in what we don't know about Broley's investigation?"

  "This is your plan. You came up with it. You obviously have your reasons for bringing her here and bringing her into this. You won't share what exactly you have in mind with all this, but here we are. And you were going to work this resource to uncover additional information. Remember?" Wyrick was fully awake now. He was measured in every word spoken.

  Preacher shook his head again. "I just love that I'm working 'this resource' to find out what she knows about activities inside Langley and meanwhile, you basically live there now. Still can't believe you don't have Abbie and Broley's desk and phone and conference rooms and bathrooms and cars and homes and pets bugged to gather what you're looking for."

  Wyrick looked from Preacher to Fuchs and back.

  Preacher nodded. "Uh-hmm, got it. Already done." He looked from Wyrick to Fuchs and back. "Hence the gaps I'm supposed to fill."

  "So, can we talk about it?" Fuchs asked.

  "What's that?"

  "Why you took her with you? Why you brought her in?" Fuchs sat on the end of his bed. "Hell, I still don't quite know what you did tonight. You moved on bin-Sultan ahead of plan. It's obviously connected to al-Fayez week before last. Sounds like you put a gun in her hand during the exercise and she had to take care of one of the wounded guards."

  Fuchs shook his head and rubbed the back of his neck. Preacher noticed the greater accumulation of wrinkles, the looseness of the skin at his knuckles. Fuchs was showing his age. Had to be 53 or 54 by now. Preacher made a point the past decade to leave Fuchs out of it. He invaded the personal lives of Seibel and Wyrick, and Marta, of course. But he left Fuchs to his own. Let the quiet man in the group remain a mystery when out of sight.

  "Go on. Get it out." Preacher responded after a few seconds of silence.

  "I'm done." Fuchs sighed more than spoke.

  "No, come on. There's more."

  Fuchs sighed some more. "What the hell. I don't know why I would think you could change. Thought maybe a few years later you'd mellow a bit. See things differently. Do things differently."

  "Fuck that." Preacher smiled. The other two smiled and shook their heads.

  Wyrick sat up in bed and threw his legs over the side to the floor. "I'll ask it in another way."

  "Go ahead."

  "What are you doing?"

  "The mission. Scratch that, the missions plural."

  "Tonight. Upstairs. Right now. What are you doing with her?" Wyrick leaned forward for effect. Preacher was glad the old guy had a t-shirt and shorts on while he was sleeping. "Really. No B.S."

  Preacher just shook his head. These guys will never get it. He will never change; has never changed; ain't ever gonna change. Never. "No B.S. You think any of this isn't B.S.? All of it is. Everything. It's all made up, everything. Literally everything is bullshit."

  "Come on, enough." Wyrick cut in.

  "Nope. Listen, you want to know the truth?"

  "Yes, how about we start with that."

  "I'll do better. I'll show you the end."

  "What?" Fuchs this time.

  "Both of you, close your eyes."

  "Christ." Wyrick huffed.

  "Man." Fuchs added while rubbing his face. "What now?"

  "Close your eyes." Preacher responded. The nicest of smiles on his face.

  Wyrick just looked at him. "I'd like to close my eyes and go back to sleep."

  "Sure. Just a couple of minutes. Please."

  "Okay, okay." Wyrick closed his eyes and brought his elbows to his knees so he could rest his chin on folded knuckles.

  Fuchs looked up at the ceiling before bowing his head and closing his eyes. "Ready."

  "Clear your minds. Just see black. Frank, stop looking at that. Clear your mind."

  "What?"

  "You're looking at a picture of Seibel. A framed photo of him. I can see it clear as day."

  "Get the f-"

  "Clear your mind. Let go of that image."

  Fuchs stopped chuckling. "What am I seeing right now?"

  Preacher squinched up his face. "I see a road. It's a mountain road leading down to a desert."

  No reaction from Fuchs.

  "Come on, is he right?" Wyrick asked.

  "I,"

  "I can do this all night guys."

  "Foxy, was he right or not."

  "Hell I don't know. I wasn't looking at anything really. Now all I can see is the road down from Durango to the desert in New Mexico."

>   "So he is just playing one of his games and doing a little power of suggestion." Wyrick added.

  "Okay, your minds are clear now. I can see the black."

  "Hey." Wyrick, the lone black man in the room, objected.

  "Okay, the nothing then." Preacher cleared his throat. "Good. Now, look ahead. See next year, a year from tonight. You're at home watching TV or reading or sleeping. Move into the future ten years. Look in the mirror. You're old, grey, wrinkled. Skip forward a hundred years. Your children and most if not all of your grandchildren are dead. The generation alive and running things knows nothing of you or this night or the current problems we face. Make the leap a thousand years forward. Walk outside the structure into the heat, the dust and wind and burnt decay. The generation alive and running this village lives apart and separate from the nearest encampment a hundred miles away. The language spoken is broken English and Spanish and Chinese. The dream of utopia faded generations before. Trip forward a hundred thousand years. The earth has reclaimed that which was scorched and been born anew. Step outside the structure over to the fire and look up at the night sky. It is clear, brilliant."

  Preacher dropped his head and stretched his neck.

  Fuchs opened his eyes. "And?"

  "Did the boy get the girl?" Wyrick opened his eyes and asked. "How did it end?"

  "They all die." Preacher smiled.

  "I get it. We all die. We all turn to dust. Can't stop that from happening. So what?"

  "Nothing. That's it."

  "What's it?" Fuchs asked.

  "Nothing. That's it. It all means nothing. That's the first lesson Seibel taught me. I'll bet he taught you the same. All of this is useless and impermanent and totally forgettable." Preacher nodded. "We are right next to nothing in the grand scheme, yet here we are."

  "It's late Preacher. You brought us here tonight."

  "I didn't bring you here. I told you I would be here and you came. Your choice." He got up and walked to the door and turned around. "The man who can envision the future sees only dead people around him."

  Chapter 25

  "For every action..."

  "An equal reaction."

  Preacher and Abbie stood at the window on the second floor of a Manhattan drug store. The store was two blocks south of the hotel they visited the night before as a masked father of modern psychology and masked former first lady. On the street in front of the hotel, four police cars occupied the best spaces and valet lane. But Preacher pointed out six other unmarked sedans parked all around the scene.

  "What do I call you? What name do use?"

  "I like Neil. Call me Neil."

  "It's a lie. That's not your name."

  "Everything we tell ourselves and others is a lie. It's all made up. Everything. Neil."

  "Ok. Neil. For now."

  The FBI agents weren't too hard to spot. Some even wore the distinctive blue windbreakers with large yellow FBI lettering on the back.

  "They are canvassing, surveying the area." Preacher whispered.

  "Fanning out in a grid." Abbie replied.

  "Actually they're collapsing back from the grid. They've already been in here. I noticed an FBI business card sitting on the register when we walked in."

  She turned to him. He had a Yankees ball cap and sunglasses on. "You notice everything. And you seem to recall everything. You definitely have a photographic memory."

  He smiled at that and turned to grab another birthday card from the large greeting card rack beside the window. "Something like that."

  "Must come in handy."

  "Yep. I'm heading down and then outside. Wait a couple of minutes and follow. Buy a bottle of water or gum or whatever. Pay with cash. See if you can snatch the FBI business card off the register drawer when the clerk bags your things."

  He put the greeting card back in its slot and turned to walk away slowly. He rode the escalator down to the first floor and walked out of the store. His scarf pulled back up over his mouth as he headed for the door. Couldn't be sure, but it looked like he stopped and said something to the clerk as he passed.

  Abbie stood and stewed for fifteen seconds. Blood boiled in her ears. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. She exhaled a cleansing breath and turned toward the escalator. She rode down and stepped over to a row of glass door front refrigerators with an astounding variety of cans and plastic bottles full of liquids of all the world's artificial colors. She grabbed a bottle of water and a single can of Coke. She stopped by the candy aisle to grab a pack of gum and a bag of red licorice then the next aisle for a small bottle of aspirin.

  She carried her goodies to the front counter where the clerk greeted her with a non-verbal half nod. She set her items down and casually stepped to the left where she could get a view of the other side of the cash register. Sure enough, a business card with the three-letter acronym for the Federal Bureau of Investigation in one corner and the distinctive Department of Justice FBI Seal in the other corner rested on the register shelf above the cash drawer.

  She glanced around and saw her best option back behind the clerk.

  "Um, can I get a pack of Marlboro Reds? In the box if you have them."

  The clerk turned to the wall of cigarettes behind him and quickly found the brand and type. While his back was to her, Abbie reached around a magazine rack on the counter and snagged the FBI business card. It was quick. She surprised herself a bit with how easy it was. She stuck the card in her pocket and stepped back over to where the clerk turned back to set the pack of cancer sticks on the counter next to her bounty. He proceeded to ring up the items on the bar scanner and place them in a plastic bag.

  "That's $14.17." He stated. Totally committed to excellent customer service.

  Abbie handed him a $20 and stayed cool. She got her change and the bag and turned for the door. She thought she was in the clear as she reached to push the door handle.

  "Hey, she took something." The voice came from behind her and to the left; the opposite side from the counter. A store employee in a red polyester vest stepped out of an aisle with a variety of chips. "I saw her grab something from the register."

  Abbie turned and looked from the clerk behind the counter to the other employee and back. "I didn't take anything. I paid for my things." She turned back to the door and pushed the handle to open the door and walked out.

  Less than ten steps out the door, Abbie heard the door open behind and the same female employee calling out to her. "I know you stole something. I saw you stick it in your pocket." The woman yelled after her.

  Abbie kept walking. Kept her head down.

  No go.

  "Police. Police!" The drug store employee called out.

  Just happened that there were three patrol cars a couple hundred feet down the street. They were there because of the investigation underway following the murders of six people in the hotel another block away. Three officers were standing beside their cruisers. They looked in the direction of the yelling.

  "She stole something. That woman right there." The woman pointed at Abbie walking away in the other direction. "Police, help!"

  Abbie was pissed. She shook her head ever so slightly as she looked down at the sidewalk.

  She made it to the corner of the building when she heard a man's voice from a good distance. "Miss, stop."

  "Damn." She whispered to herself as she stepped around the corner. Abbie reached into her pocket and pulled out the FBI business card and looked around. No trashcans or sidewalk grates nearby. She did notice that the side of the building had vertical metal pillar at the corner and again eight feet over. The material between looked like vinyl. She jammed the business card into the tight little space where the metal support and flat vinyl wall met.

  She then turned and stepped back around the corner. As a police officer came jogging up to her. She held out the plastic bag in her right hand and empty left hand as he reached her.

  "Officer, I apologize for not stopping. I have a terrible headache with my ears poundin
g and I couldn't tell what that woman was saying." Abbie gestured at the drugstore employee standing outside the store's front door 50-yards away.

  "Why didn't you stop when I called you?" The officer demanded.

  "Again, this headache. That's why I went to the store. To get some aspirin and a soda." She held out the bag to him. "See for yourself. My receipt is in the bag."

  The officer took the bag and looked in. He was completely uninterested in its contents.

  "Why does the store clerk think you stole something?" He asked.

  "I have no idea. I've never stole anything in my life. You can check my pockets if you want." Abbie shook her head ever so slightly.

  The officer looked from Abbie to the store clerk and back. He obviously had better things to do. "No, that won't be necessary. Please listen better next time when a police officer asks you to stop."

  "Thank you. I will." Abbie turned and walked away. She kept her pace steady even with her heart racing, ready to explode her sternum and burst out of her chest. She walked to the end of the block and across the street to keep moving straight ahead. When she reached the next intersection, she looked to her right and saw Preacher standing in a doorway on the other side of the street. Couldn't be certain, but it sure looked like he was smiling.

  Chapter 26

  "Where did this come from?" Broley asked.

  Two weeks had passed since New York. Abbie was getting back to normal. Whatever that is.

  "Zaragoza, Spain." Abbie answered.

  "When?"

  "Eleven days ago."

  "Tell me again. How did we find this image? You said facial recognition?"

  Abbie placed the photo on the table in front of them. She had been holding it up close and squinting at the slightly blurry image.

  "Yes. Facial recognition software. Video footage or photos are being captured around the world brought into databases where the images are run through the FERET system. It is still fairly new, but already proving to be beneficial." Abbie sat back in her chair.