The Perfect Candidate: A Lance Priest / Preacher Thriller (No. 1) Page 3

  Lance couldn’t help his next action. He leaned in close to Seibel’s ear. But before he spoke, he did a strange thing. He winked at the clock on the wall, particularly the small round hole where the 12 should be. From the angle, Seibel couldn’t see the wink.

  “I should pull the trigger,” Lance lied. He had no intention of making a mess like that. “I don’t know who you are, but you are one messed up dude for doing this. Let me get this straight, you watch me for two months, invest hundreds of man hours, record my movements, follow me down here to Dallas and then decide to sick two killers on me to bring me back in a body bag. Seems like a waste.” He smiled at the clock, “I think I might be doing folks a favor by putting one in your brain.”

  Seibel was not shaking, not nervous. “You need to be challenged right? Well this little test will challenge you. Especially your survival skills.”

  Lance leaned back to look Seibel in the eye. “You can stop this. Pick up a phone and make a call. Stop it.” Lance raised his voice well beyond a whisper.

  “No stopping. Operation is live,” Seibel removed the smile from his face for this last part. “You need to think through your next actions. You need to be gone, now. These men are not known for their mercy.”

  Lance’s next action was decided for him by something and someplace deep inside. He didn’t know its source. But this unpredictability, this embrace of chaos, this need for instability, was a vital and driving force in his life. Always had been. Lance thrived in unsettled situations.

  He moved the gun five inches from Seibel’s temple and squeezed the trigger. The clock took a direct hit. A pretty good shot for him. The explosion in the small room was deafening. Seibel’s eardrum took the brunt of it. He cringed but took no aggressive action.

  Preacher also got the proof he needed. The gun was indeed loaded with real bullets.

  Lance stood up while keeping the gun leveled at Seibel’s head. He gestured to the clock with a nod. “No witnesses now. I should do it.”

  “Go ahead. No one’s stopping you.” Seibel was serious. “You can surely make up a beautiful lie about shooting in self-defense. I have no doubt.”

  Lance smiled down at Geoffrey Seibel, super spy. Top secret and classified CIA legend in his own time. Master of his own universe. “Bang. You’re dead Geoffrey. Enjoy your time in hell. I’m sure I’ll be joining you soon.” Lance smiled for another reason as well. The song was finally over.

  Seibel could only shake his head. He was the sole witness to the birth of something special, something truly unique. Something he would have to harness and train and release into the world. But something he knew he could never control, never break.

  Lance grabbed the folder from under Seibel’s hand and stepped back from the table. He shook his head and jammed the gun into his pocket. The expected footsteps ran down the hall. Who ever it was, took a position just outside the conference room. Lance stepped sideways and raised his hands. The door smashed open and the man playing the role of Grisham expertly entered the room by rolling to his right. He rose with both hands holding a gun pointed directly between Lance’s eyes. He didn’t look much like a State Department trainer.

  “Stand down,” Seibel held out the palm of his left hand. Grisham looked from Lance to Seibel and back.

  “Where is the gun?” he demanded. A strange accent accompanied the question. Sounded a little like German.

  Seibel spoke in a voice irrationally calm for the situation. “There’s no time for that now. He needs to be out of here in four minutes. His clock has started. He is active as of now.” Grisham lowered his gun a few inches. Lance somewhat brazenly walked directly at him, stopping just an inch from the gun.

  “What the hell did I get myself into?” He asked. Grisham only looked over Lance’s shoulder at Seibel. Lance leaned his head to the left to block Grisham’s view and continued, “I came down here for the Foreign Service Officer oral assessment and now I’ve got four minutes head start on a couple of European killers.”

  Recognition flashed in Grisham’s eyes and he lowered his gun. “Krachovs?” he asked Seibel.

  “Yes.” Seibel nodded. “No time for chit chat.”

  Grisham stepped out of the way and holstered his gun. Lance noted that he had missed the bulge of the gun during the day. How did he fail to spot that on both of these guys? What else had he missed? No time now to be ticked off by this oversight; but he told himself it wouldn’t happen again.

  Grisham motioned to the door. “Then you’d better run kid and don’t stop. Get out of this building and out of town. Stay low, keep running. They never stop tracking once they have a scent and they don’t have the word quit in their vocabulary.”

  “Great, friggin great. Thanks a bunch, assholes,” he pushed Grisham aside with enough force to nearly knock him to the floor. He turned back to Seibel from the doorway to give him a middle-finger salute. He was a 21-year-old kid after all. “Just be by the phone Geoffrey.”

  “Three minutes 20 seconds,” Seibel tapped his watch.

  Lance took off down the hall like a bat out of hell. People stood in doorways and at the front reception desk. Everyone on the floor had undoubtedly heard the gunshot. He saw someone else with a gun and was even more pissed at himself for missing all the hardware. He hated missing details.

  When he burst out the door into the waiting area, Sarah, or whatever her real name happened to be, was seated in the same chair she sat in this morning as they chatted. Except now she was white-knuckle gripping both arms of the chair. This was out of her league and pay grade. “Oral assessments!” he huffed as he ran out the door and down the hall to the elevator. The surprised and shaken look on her face told it all. She only thought she was in the know on this exercise. It looked like the rules for the day’s session had changed. Still, she bit her lip.

  Lance kept the count going in his head as he reached the elevator lobby. Seven years of running track and cross-country in middle and high school had given him a fairly static cranial timepiece that counted off the seconds quite accurately. He could do it in the background while his mind wrapped around other issues, like how to stay alive. He counted 22 seconds since running out of the conference room. That meant just under three minutes until Boris and Boris get their assignment. He turned from the elevator and threw open the door to the stairs. Five flights should take about 30 seconds. They actually took 28. Two and a half minutes to go as he burst into the mostly empty ground floor lobby.

  He didn’t have time to pause and think and examine all the angles. If this was a normal situation, he would stop someone, maybe the security guard, ask for the time and comment on his watch or shoes. He’d start a conversation that led to a stranger telling Lance everything he needed to know about him. He would catalog the story, the details, and use them somewhere with someone else, as someone else. It wasn’t stealing. It was borrowing. Telling lies was all about the details.

  But he needed to move. No time for spinning a web of lies. He’d gotten himself into something that he couldn’t bullshit his way out of. Words wouldn’t do it this time.

  He should have been scared, petrified even. He felt anything but. Instead, from the moment he’d grabbed Seibel’s arm and put the gun to his head, he’d never felt more excited, more alive. This was indeed real. This was a challenge, something he’d been waiting 21 years for. No time for grand statements and eloquent thoughts. Damn. This was fun.

  Chapter 3

  Out the front doors and onto Commerce Street, no time to get to his car out of the lot across the street. Too risky.

  He recalled his reconnaissance of the area the night before and maybe more so, the OU-Texas weekend a couple of years prior. If only that crazy thing were going on now, he’d have no problem melting into the crowd of thousands on Commerce Street the night before the big game.

  He knew that diagonally to the left he could make his way to Dealey Plaza where a certain president met his untimely demise. Not good karma right now. Further to his left were the spire
s at the top of the Old Dallas Court House, but that area was too wide open. He needed crowds and walls and windows to look through. Two blocks west, the Greyhound bus station offered a crowd, but was way too obvious.

  Three blocks to the right was the incredibly over-priced Adolphus Hotel where he had party-crashed that night before the big game a few years ago.

  He went right. Figured to stay on Commerce for a block and then cross and go north over to Main where he could get behind a wall or a car or tree and still see the entrance of the federal building. The slow jog and jaywalk across Commerce took 26 seconds. If Seibel was correct. The two hunters would be given their mission within a minute. They would likely come storming out of the building two or three minutes later.

  He took Griffin over to Main Street and positioned himself beside a short wall just east of the intersection. Two female office workers sat 20 feet away solving the problems of the world and complaining about their bosses.

  From his vantage point, he could duck down and still see the front doors of the building. He opened the file folder and re-examined the faces of the two gents who were supposedly out to capture or kill him. He closed the folder and folded it into his pocket. He rolled his neck and exhaled all the nerves out. Well, most of them at least.

  He couldn’t stop his mind from going out of body to look down on his position from a couple thousand feet. The aerial view put a little mental red “you are here” circle at the northeast corner of Main and Griffin. He could see the streets going in all directions like asymmetric arteries. He had originally memorized downtown “Bid D” several years earlier when he and a small group of teenagers drove down for a ZZ Top concert at Reunion Arena just a few blocks over from his current location. He knew his immediate surface road options and maybe a few secrets hidden in the urban terrain. He returned to his head at street level.

  Another minute passed and he allowed himself to think maybe this was just a hoax or some screwy test or possibly even one of those dinner theater murder mysteries where everyone in the audience plays a part. But this little respite from reality was quickly shattered by the emergence from the glass double doors of a man he had just seen in a photo folded in his pocket.

  What happened next was definitely not cool. The guy, instead of scanning the horizon and looking up and down the street, put a walkie-talkie to his mouth and did the most amazing thing. He looked directly at Lance from over 250 yards away. No mistake; he picked him up immediately. Impossible, but true.

  Boris Number 1 spoke into the walkie-talkie and glanced up at the building before jogging toward Lance. Preacher glanced up and couldn’t be sure from this distance, but he thought he could make out someone standing in a window on the seventh floor with a pair of binoculars. His best guess was it was Boris Number 2. He looked back at the hunter heading directly his way and stuck his hand into his pocket to grab the handle of the gun. Boris would reach him in about 30 seconds. Lance thought of the odds. Here’s one guy coming at him. Likely armed and more than likely skilled in weapon use. Boris probably wouldn’t let Lance walk up to him and put a gun to his head. Better to move.

  He turned from his perch and walked briskly to the north. His brisk walk rapidly evolved into the jog of a young businessman late for a meeting. His sightline of the building on Commerce was lost when he rounded a corner of another building, which meant the watcher in the window could not see him either. Behind him, Boris crossed Main a block and a half back. He could follow Lance, but he didn’t know the secret Lance knew. And he hadn’t run at least five miles virtually every day of his life since he was 13.

  Preacher broke into an all-out sprint, which immediately put distance between him and the hunter. No contest. After turning another corner, Preacher came to the intersection of Main and Field. For the briefest moment, he thought of stopping right there and plastering himself against the building with the gun aimed at the corner, at the height of a man’s head.

  He could put a bullet in the guy’s brain and turn and run. But the problem was witnesses. There were no less than 50 people within view. Shooting a guy right there on a downtown Dallas street corner would likely raise attention. He’d have a hell of a time getting out of the area without dozens of witnesses identifying him.

  He stuck with his plan formed the minute prior. He crossed Field diagonally and ran into a parking garage entrance. His visit to Big D for OU-Texas weekend had left him with more than a few bits of precious information. One of these little jewels happened to be a secret back entrance into the aforementioned Adolphus Hotel.

  He had been introduced to the virtually unknown and totally discrete entrance by a bellman who appreciated a $50 bill and no hassles. Lance had made a little wager with the fellas he had come down with that he could not only get into the heavily-secured grand dame of Dallas hotels; he would stay the night with one or more of the guests and meet back up with the guys at the game the next day. As usual, Lance came through and had another great story to share with the gang. Always leaving out the intimate details. He was a gentleman, of course.

  All of that fleeted through Preacher’s mind as he ran through the parking garage and out a back door into a tiny alley between tall buildings. He stepped into a doorway out of view if Boris happened to see him enter the parking garage. Not likely though, he had turned on the burners pretty good and left the hunter in his dust back on Main Street. But still, he listened for footsteps and the crackly voice on a walkie-talkie. Maybe, just maybe there were more of them out there hunting him.

  He thought about walkie-talkies and how he and his little brother had played with them as kids. They usually didn’t work very well, but damn they looked cool tucked in your belt while you pointed your toy machine gun at the bathroom mirror. “Roger that, over and out.” He whispered.

  He leaned against the wall beside the door and jabbed his hand back into his pocket. The gun calmed his nerves. He stayed out of site and listened for any sounds in the alley. None came. Approximately four minutes later, a door with no outside handle opened and an employee stepped out for a smoke. Lady luck shone on Preacher yet again. He didn’t believe in luck. It was being in the right place at the right time. And lying helped, a lot.

  The employee’s name was Philip, the hotel’s French-Canadian concierge. Lance put a hand on the man’s bicep gently forcing him back into the building. The cigarette would have to wait.

  Lance was quite convincing as an anxious assistant to a Texas businessman who needed to arrange special accommodations that required absolutely secrecy. He implied he had been watching the facility for a couple of days and knew Philip would be stepping outside for a smoke at this location and time. Lance was very persuasive, as always.

  He lent a great deal of credibility to his story through his in-depth knowledge of the facility. Lance led the way, walking the concierge down the hall, up a flight of stairs he shouldn’t have known about and onto an elevator restricted to VIP use. He kept eye contact and often put a hand on the Philip’s arm or shoulder. He so completely took the concierge into his confidence that he was able to tell him a couple of highly personal and completely fabricated facts about Lance’s fictitious employer. Lance convinced Philip that room 614 would be ideal for his employer’s needs and would greatly appreciate it if the concierge could use a house phone to confirm the availability of that particular room.

  Lance described the suite’s layout, traditional American furniture and priceless chandelier over the conference table as the perfect setting for his superior’s needs. Philip was quite taken with Lance’s details of both the room and his employer’s delicate situation. Philip was fairly certain the room was unoccupied and used a house phone on a table near the elevator to confirm the fact. He asked the registration staff member to send up a key immediately. Lance interjected to ask for three keys. Details. It’s always in the details.

  Lance pulled out an American Express card belonging to Jimmy Lee, the car dealership’s owner. He had been given the card under the table becaus
e of his exceptional sales performance the previous quarter. Jimmy was particularly impressed with Lance’s handling of a long-time family friend going through a delicate personal situation.

  Lance had made a point of using the card several times so as not to appear rude. He wasn’t concerned that the card had someone else’s name on it. If anyone was alarmed enough to call American Express, who would in-turn call Jimmy, the dealer would simply tell them Lance was using the card with his permission. Lance didn’t know the card’s credit limit, but assumed a few thousand dollars over the next few days wouldn’t break the bank.

  But a credit card may be called in for verification and a computer record generated. Anyone who knew much about Lance Priest, and it appeared Seibel knew just about everything, could possibly see a charge for Jimmy Lee at the Adolphus. He needed to delay card verification for a little while.

  He inched closer to the concierge, took the man’s hand, affected a conspiratorial tone in his voice and a look of utter and complete trust in his eyes. Lance asked Philip to handle all pertinent details but not run the card because that might trigger an action that could bring unwanted attention for his superior. He told Philip a cash payment that would cover all expenses as well as a generous gratuity would arrive in two days.

  Lance added, if anyone, anyone at all, asked about room 614 or its occupants, Philip was to report this to Lance immediately. There could be no leaks, no loose ends. The concierge assured him these situations happened all the time at the Adolphus. Confidentiality was the hallmark of the institution.

  As they stood outside room 614, Lance piled detail upon detail and added elements of intrigue that captured Philip’s imagination. The hairs on the back of the concierge’s neck stood at attention. He was sold.

  Lance informed his new confidant that if anyone came looking for someone resembling himself, it would be rival interests who had only cracked the code up to Lance’s level. “Do not divulge anything about me to anyone.” He grasped Philip’s upper arm to emphasize the point as they shook hands.