Grayman Book One: Acts of War

by Michael Rizzo

10

  Matt Burke:

  “God speed” my ass.

  It’s more than my reflexive dislike of Good Christian Warriors like Collins. It’s the flakiness of the whole mission. I think even Richards picked up on that.

  Michael, too. And that worries me maybe the most: if Michael doesn’t read this Hatif as a legitimate target, then what happens when it comes down to pulling the trigger? Despite what I’ve seen him do when he’s righteously pissed, I’m not sure if I see him killing just because someone up the chain said so.

  He doesn’t say anything after we’re dismissed, just goes quiet and withdraws into himself, and I don’t feel like he’d appreciate me chasing him down to talk about it. So we just go our separate ways back to our own suites and get to packing.

  They’ll fly us out in two hours. We hit early in the morning Berlin time.

  God speed…

  This shouldn’t bother me as much as it does. So the first thing I do once I’m back in my room is sit down and run Hatif’s file.

  He really is a bastard, at least according to Mossad. He’s been connected to so much senseless chaos-making in the Gulf that the Iraqis happily green-lighted what otherwise looks like an Israeli hit. In fact, if what the files claim is remotely close to the truth, I could easily add the US, Britain, Japan, France (yes, France) and even the Saudis to the list of nations eagerly lining up to off this guy.

  No. I know what’s bothering me.

  I rifle through the sloppy pile of flashdrives in my desk and pull one I got from Michael’s apartment last year. (I’ve never told him that I have any of these—maybe one day he’ll like to see them again, just for old times…) I load it and scan and watch him do his kung-fu thing.

  He’s amazing. He takes out a bunch of guys and it looks like he’s dancing. They’ve got clubs and knives and swords he takes them away and tosses them around and locks them up into human pretzels and he doesn’t hurt a single one of them. Then he shows us what he can do with his own weapons: Swords. Chains. This scary looking thing made out of three sticks chained together.

  He uses a flimsy little bamboo flute to dig pressure points and wrap joints and take some big guy down and he makes it look easy. Then he does it with a knife—a wicked long live blade—and he doesn’t so much as nick the guy. Then he does it with a sword. And a chain. He takes half a dozen lethal weapons and turns them into the gentlest and most graceful things in the world. He smiles while he disarms and immobilizes people who honestly look like they’re trying to kill him—not the Mike Ram smile, this one looks warm, gentle: Michael’s smile.

  It’s in here somewhere… Ah…

  He’s talking with his audience during a break. Some young mother—at least she looks and sounds like she is—asks about all the weapons and violence, how this can be “self-defense,” how this could be good for “character building.” So he smiles and he tells her a story:

  “When martial arts were thriving in monasteries, this was a big controversy: how do you justify practicing violence if your primary tenant is to be nonviolent, to respect all life? One of my teachers explained this in a story: A disciple of the Shaolin order—a Buddhist order—asked his master: ‘Master, why do we practice fighting and using weapons if we are taught to revere all life?’ His master explained: ‘If you are going to respect life, first you must be able to protect your own. In a violent world, simply throwing away one’s life because one abhors violence does not honor that life. Then, if one is caring and humane, one would certainly choose to defend others against violence. You cannot defend another unless you can first defend yourself well. And if you can develop your ability to the point that you can easily protect yourself and defend others, you could afford to preserve even the lives of those who would do you harm. This is the highest attainment: if you can develop yourself to the point where you can keep yourself and others safe and not harm anyone, then you truly can revere all life.’ So we don’t train for years to be able to kill more efficiently—killing is easy: get a gun; you can kill someone with two fingers and three minutes of training—instead we train so we never have to kill. That’s the hard part. That’s the part worth devoting your life to.”

  I pause him in freeze-frame. Staring at the screen, I imagine that I’ve somehow reached back and preserved this moment—this person—for eternity.

  But then I remember this person doesn’t exist anymore.