“I don’t give a shit if you’re sorry. Gone? Where? He needs to be taken—”
“He’s dead. I couldn’t convince him to keep going, not with the stakes he faced to remain alive.”
She shook her head, stared around the room in shock. “You let him commit suicide?” she finally breathed.
“No. He couldn’t do it; it was against his programming. I had to—”
“You fucking murdered him.”
“I had no choice!” Max raised his voice to just below a shout.
“No choice? Which one of you was a machine, Max? Is your trigger finger on autopilot?”
“Just shut up and listen. It was his request, and I had to honor it. Humanity isn’t ready for intelligence like his. He knew it, and he decided it was for the best. And I’m sorry, but you’re gonna have to deal with it. Do you think I enjoyed—”
“Get out! Get the fuck outta my sight, or so help me I’ll send you to join him.” Her purse and the sidearm within sat on the nightstand in easy reach.
“Fine.” Max went to leave yet turned halfway around as he headed out the door.
“You forget something, asshole?”
“You know, you’ve scolded me a couple of times about losing my bearing. Well, you need to find yours and accept Shai’s final wish. It’s over, Margaret, and it was for the best. I wish you could see that, but I don’t need you to.”
“Get out!”
Without a further glance backward, Max did just that.
***
Max hadn’t been on a working farm in decades, not since his grandfather’s passing. This didn’t stop him from spending the afternoon helping Otto slop hogs, feed chickens, and pick apples. He was still pretty banged up from the mission, but he knew that lying in bed would only delay his recovery. The chores were the definition of drudgery, just the sort of grueling work he needed to take his mind off Leet and Shai, though he couldn’t call his efforts totally successful in that department.
“She’ll come around,” Otto said as they sat on his deck having a beer at the end of the workday. “You did the right thing. I’ve done a lot of research into AI, and that boy was light years ahead of everything else produced to this point. Hell, I still can’t believe I didn’t recognize an actual android when he was staying in my house.”
“He was way past that. Maybe not human, but I can’t think of him as an android. He had emotions, maybe even a soul, whatever that is.”
Otto shook his head. “It never fails, Max. They take everything they can and destroy what they can never possess.”
No need to ask who they were. “They only destroyed him in the metaphorical sense. I was the trigger man, like so many times before.”
“Somebody had to do it. Stop misreading your moral compass. True leaders accept and move on. I know it’s easy for me to say, but you know the truth. Hell, I learned it from you.”
“I can’t argue with that.”
Otto gave a curt nod. “Stick by the decision. She’ll come to accept it.”
“I sure as hell hope so.”
“Count on it. She’s a good one; she’ll figure it out.”
Though the conversation turned to lighter things, Max only hung out for one beer, guilt still lingering in his mind. He went inside for a shower to wash off the stink of the barnyard.
His phone vibrated while he was drying off. Marklin. Out of dire necessity, Max had phoned his most powerful ally on the way to North Carolina, though their dilemma might be something even he couldn’t resolve. “Good evening, General.”
“You sound a little depressed, son,” Marklin said. “Buck up. One of us shot eleven over par today, you know.”
Max hadn’t known. And he didn’t give a shit about Marklin’s golf game. “My condolences. I hope that was after you spoke to the senator.”
“You know I’m business first, Ahlgren. And I have good news. The charges and warrants on you and Special Agent Leet have been dropped. Good thing the senator likes you; she had to kiss ass and whip ass to get it done. She also alerted the FBI and CIA directors regarding the activities of these operatives who were after your project. What will come of that is anyone’s guess, but you two are off scot free as long as you keep this matter private.”
“That won’t be an issue. I can’t thank you enough, General.”
“Save it. Thank the senator next time you see her, and remember you owe her one… hell, maybe half a dozen.”
“I figured we’d be about even. But I guess we both know that’s never the case.” The senator had been indebted to him for saving her son from Gideon Wilde, but gratitude only went so far, especially in the halls of government. Max hated owing anyone anything; however, the senator had pulled off a miraculous feat. If she ever needed his services again, he would be there with wings on his heels and a smile on his face.
“Now go on back to Vegas and stay the hell out of trouble. I don’t want to hear from you again for a long time… unless you want to try me on the skeet range.”
“Maybe so. Somebody has to humble you, eventually.”
“When I want to be humbled, I play golf. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to my regularly scheduled life.” He terminated the call.
Maybe that’ll cheer her up. Something had to, eventually. But Max was in no mood to tell her just yet, knowing full well that she would tongue lash him again if he entered her room.
And he had other business to take care of, a pressing matter that he’d been forced to put off for far too long.
Max got dressed, opened his laptop, and took a seat at the small desk in the guest room. He plugged in a flash drive with the Tails operating system, a necessity for accessing the dark web. Once online, he logged into his TorChat profile. Only two emails awaited him. The first was from a private investigator in Australia, whom Max had retained to check out a lead pertaining to his family’s killers. The man had produced no new results and demanded a deposit for further work if Max wished to keep him on. Max messaged back, thanked him for his efforts, despite the lack of useful information, and released him from service.
The second was from a user he didn’t recognize: Wunderkind_16037. Max opened the email.
Max:
I hope the attached files will be of use to you. And if you must act, I know it shall be with a prudent and measured sense of justice and not merely a raging thirst for revenge. Be warned that this is bigger than you could have imagined.
Give Margaret my love…
Shai
I won’t let you down, Shai. Max considered the files: two jpegs sandwiching a website link. Assuming that Shai meant for them to be revealed in order, he clicked on the first jpeg.
Even via the ultra-fast satellite internet system custom built by Otto, the picture took a few seconds to download. Must be super high-res, Max mused as the photo took shape, gradually crawling down and filling the screen. When finished, the photo shrunk to smaller proportions. He clicked on the photo to enlarge it. High-res was an understatement; the picture measured several thousand pixels per side. Max dragged it around the screen and studied each individual portion in detail. It looked like a mug shot, only the brown-haired young man in the gray suit was not a merc or a criminal, at least according to the government. This was an official CIA photo taken at the beginning of this operative’s career. They had taken Max’s photo as well, as they did with all new operatives. Pertinent information about the agent was listed beneath the photo. Jonathan Horace Godshall, born 3 March 1973 in Boston, Massachusetts. Other information followed: social security number, CIA ID number, fingerprints, physical statistics such as height, weight, hair and eye color. The photo dated from September 1997.
Max studied the photo again, paying particular attention to the man’s physiognomy. I’ve never seen him before. He could have sworn it on a stack of bibles; nevertheless, he saved it to a file he kept specifically for his quest.
He moved on to the link, a line of garbled
letters and numbers followed by .onion, which linked to a page on a dark web site titled Stooges of the Statists. “Isn’t this interesting…” The page’s stated purpose was to out known operatives of covert intelligence organizations worldwide in the ongoing interests of, “Killing one-world government before it starts, one agent at a time.”
Sadly, despite having known a few upstanding men in the Agency, it sounded to Max like a noble effort. Indeed, one in which he’d unwittingly participated—he had personally tortured and then murdered the second man on the list, Chris Darling, aka Charles Dawes, right-hand man to Peter Banner. I should let them know so they can update the page. He smiled, remembering the satisfaction and sadistic glee he’d taken in making Darling’s final moments on earth a waking nightmare. He bookmarked the page; the information might come in handy sometime.
More names and photos of agents followed, running the gamut of world intelligence organizations: CIA, MI6, Mossad, BND, and a couple of others. Two of them looked vaguely familiar, yet none were Jonathan Godshall.
Max found him at the bottom of the page, the literal last man.
He studied the grainy black-and-white shot of a man who had raised his jacket slightly too late to avoid his face being photographed. It looked as though he was walking down the steps of a courthouse or some other marble-covered government building. “Whoa…”
Max often thought of General Marklin as the man who had inducted him into the CIA, yet that wasn’t entirely accurate. Marklin had been the Marine Corps liaison to the CIA and had given Max the option to join in lieu of a death sentence. The company man who had actually inducted him—and given Max his first lesson in effectively and efficiently torturing a man—looked out wide-eyed from beneath a flapping coat.
The caption beneath the photo read: “Photo taken 7/23/2004 Washington DC by a Washington Post photographer, as Jonathan Goadish—his name at the time—departed a hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee. The photo was never published and was ordered destroyed. True name unknown. Aliases: Jacob Goodman, Jerome Gamble, Jonathan Goadish, John Goebel.”
Along with inventing several aliases, Jonathan Godshall had received plastic surgery at some point between 1997 and 2004 and barely resembled his induction photo. Differences included his hairline, a slight widow’s peak of black hair in the second photo replacing the straight line of brown at induction, along with cheek implants and a nose job. Beneath the caption, the writer listed various crimes attributed to Godshall, who had been Mr. Goadish when Max met him in 2006. Most allegations involved attempts to overthrow Third World regimes around the globe, some of them successful. This man had operated around the globe, and where he went Hell followed. The governments of Yemen and Eritrea had warrants out for his capture, dead or alive.
At least I know where not to look for him. But where the hell is he now?
The last piece of information provided by Shai, a Brazilian driver’s license issued only three months ago, provided Max with some particulars, though he did not expect to find a man as elusive and shady as Goadish at the listed address in the city of Belo Horizonte. He called himself Johannes Gutmann these days. He’d put on a little weight and undergone more plastic surgery. His nose appeared to have been broken once or twice. His once-luxuriant head of hair had been sacrificed in the interest of national security, diminished to a sparse ring of gray surrounding the bald crown Max had seen fleeing the warehouse.
Goadish soldiered on beneath the façade.
That Goadish was involved with the plot didn’t surprise Max, and he wondered how he’d never considered him before. He could only chalk it up to unfamiliarity. Max had only met him one time. Yeah, but the son of a bitch was unforgettable.
“Christ, you are a hard-fucking sell, you know that?” Goadish had told Max on that long-ago day, after which he’d whipped off the hood covering the face of the man in the chair, Max’s first torture victim.
And fuck did I enjoy it.
Whitbeck had been his name, Max’s superior officer on his last mission as a Marine, the man who had accidentally killed their commanding officer. He blamed it on Max, calling it murder.
Max could only remember feeling thankful to Goadish after he’d revealed Whitbeck. Perhaps that was why he had never considered him. That’s not a good enough reason. After serving for a couple of months in the Agency, he’d learned not to trust anyone, no matter what favors they did for him.
But Max was done beating himself up over perceived negligence. Shai’s information had narrowed his search, albeit to an area of several million square miles. But I’ll find him. Scheming pieces of shit like Goadish weren’t that hard to locate, if one knew where to begin. Start searching in the hallowed halls of the Brazilian government, then follow the breadcrumbs.
EPILOGUE
They trudged through pine scrub and sandy soil as the eastern sky reddened before the dawn.
“This is quite a trek,” said Leet, who walked behind Max. She sounded a bit winded, still not fully recovered from the gunshot wound she’d taken a week before but getting there fast. “You’re pretty good at hiding bodies in the woods.”
“I learned many skills in the Agency, some more practical than others.”
They hiked on in silence, each lost in memory, or so Max assumed. They had been hunted for slightly over four days by the forces of multiple governments, yet Max still felt as though he’d survived a protracted military campaign. Not so much in a physical sense—he’d taken more grievous injuries on many a mission—but on a deeper mental level. Pulling the trigger on Shai still haunted him and probably always would. Leet’s condemnation of his actions had weighed on him as well, even though she apologized the next day. Though barely able to walk, she flew to Michigan shortly after that, arriving just in time to attend Don Wagner’s funeral.
Meanwhile, Max had returned to DC to make arrangements for Daniel Farber. He couldn’t take a gunshot victim to a funeral home and expect them not to ask questions, so again Marklin helped him out, arranging for a discreet cremation at a government morgue under the guise of natural causes. To discourage operatives from continuing the chase, news of Daniel’s death, again due to natural causes, had been released to the press.
Leet carried the brass urn containing Daniel’s ashes, while Max shouldered the shovel. This is the last time I bury an innocent man. He liked to think so, anyway. No, there will be others, unfortunately. I won’t get to Goadish and Jarvis without help. Max could only hope to keep friendly casualties to a minimum.
Soon they reached the stand of pines atop the low rise overlooking the cove. Leet looked around, saw the freshly turned earth marking Shai’s grave, gazed up into the pines and out over the water. “It’s beautiful. You chose a nice spot.”
“Yeah. This is a special place for me.”
“For both of us.”
Max nodded. “Yes, it is.”
He dug a hole roughly two feet deep as Leet looked on. When the time came to place the urn, Max said, “I don’t do prayers, Margaret. I’ve seen too much senseless slaughter in my life to believe they work. But if you have anything to say—”
“I will… but not a prayer. Something afterward. I haven’t had a chance to say goodbye.”
“I understand.”
They placed the urn in the earth. Max buried it, then stepped from the pines to watch the sunrise, leaving Leet alone at the grave. He wondered, as the sun breached the horizon in brilliant and blinding beams, if Janet’s soul ever wandered to this primeval place that he held so much in reverence. If so, she’ll be in good company.
As for Jonathan Goadish and Burt Jarvis, he vowed that neither would come to know any semblance of eternal peace, wherever he happened to bury them. If there was a Hell, he would follow them there to make sure they burned.
Leet came to him a short time later. Neither said a word at first as they sat watching the sunrise. “I’m sorry.” She wiped an errant tear from her cheek. “I know I said it before, but t
his time I really mean it.”
“You know that’s not necessary. I’m just satisfied that you understand now.”
“I shouldn’t have questioned your—no, his decision.”
“I questioned it too,” Max admitted. “How could I not? Hey, you feeling all right?”
“Yeah. It all feels… I don’t know, appropriate for some reason, even though it’s not right. Any of it.”
“I get it. And it won’t be the last time for either of us unfortunately. Unless you’re planning to leave the Bureau.”
Leet scoffed at the idea. “No way. I’m there for life, however long I have left.”
“Good. You’re the kind of agent this country needs. And if you’re ever in deep trouble, you know where to find me.”
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. I don’t work with just anyone, but I’d work with you again anytime.”
Max helped her to her feet, and they began the long trek back to the car. They passed the grave again, neither stopping. Due respects had been paid; time for all concerned to move on.
Taking a last glance at the final resting place of Shai and Daniel, Max noticed something bright lying atop the sand and pine needles.
A lone white rose.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ryan Aslesen is a bestselling author and security consultant based out of Las Vegas, NV. He is a former Marine officer, veteran of the War on Terror, and a graduate of Presentation College and American Military University. His military and work experience have made him one of the premier writers of military science fiction. His bestselling Crucible Series is highly regarded for its authenticity, explosive action, and sci-fi twists. When not writing or out protecting the world, you will find him spending quality time with his family. He is currently working on his next novel. He can be reached at [email protected]
Check out Max’s other adventures in the bestselling Crucible Series.
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