Assasin by Allan Deya (best english novels for beginners TXT) 📕

My lip is bruised, one eye is swollen. My arms are falling numb; he tied my wrists too tight. My head aches like a bitch and my good eye can barely focus; there is blood trickling in it from the cut on my forehead.

That he’ll have to pay for; my forehead is off limits to everybody but my husband- he’d had no right to touch it, let alone leave what could turn out to be a nasty bruise on it. The thought of my man brought a smile to my face and at the same time caused my brows to crease.

He would so not be happy about this. I was supposed to be on a business trip in Caracas; well I was on business in Caracas, more or less. That silent whisper reared its ugliness, ‘You are talking about what you will do when you get home as though you are going home.’

It had a valid point, I was up against the Russian syndicate and everyone knew they were some nasty mutherfuckers. Contrary to popular belief though, they are not totally unreasonable; there are some instances where they give concessions or exercise restraint.

Unfortunately trying to assassinate the czar of the Russian elite was not one of those instances. I shouldn’t have come alone, but had I asked him he would have made me stay out of it. And I couldn’t do that. Money had changed hands, my word had been given and our reputation was on the line.

I hear footsteps coming towards the room. They stop at the door, but only long enough to unlock it. The lights come on and momentarily blind me. From the shuffle of feet I can tell that 5 people have just walked in.

“So, this is herr?” asks a deep Russian accent; a female one.

“Yes.”

“This diminutive woman was able to slip through our best defenses and infiltrate Dmitri’s security detail?”

“Yes.”

“And then proceed to poison his food and God only knows what else?”

“Yes.” Answered the same voice again.

I wonder whether he knows any other English words. On the way to wherever we were they communicated in Russian- I could catch a few phrases here and there but my knowledge of Soviet dialects was rudimentary at best.

I finally give up trying to use both eyes and focus the swollen one towards the voices. There are 4 men in the room with the woman who is without a doubt some sort of authority. They are fanned out behind her; one at the door directly behind her, 2 on either side, just shy of being on the line as her- maybe 45 degree angles.

The one whose voice I now know is standing beside her; obviously some sort of upper echelon soldier- he is the only one whose gaze is meeting the woman’s, the rest are all deeply engrossed in the patterns on their shoes.

“I want the truth out of her any which way Damian.” She says.

“I will get the truth Helena.”

“Really, will you? Because I look at her face and her body and I see bruises and cuts but I do not have any answers.” She takes out a cigarette and he lights it. “I am told she did not even whimper as you did all this.” She is gesturing at my body with her cigarette hand.

“Everybody has a breaking point Brigadier, and will find hers. All I need is time.”

“Time is a luxury we just do not have!” she explodes, “You are aware, I am sure of what the Pakhan will do to all of us when he finds out that we had a security lapse.”

The threat in that statement is implied, not stated but it seems to get the desired effect.

“Then I will make it quick commander. The only men who know of this hiccup are in this room and they are all loyal to me. I will find the leak and I will plug it.”

“Well you better Damian,” another stream of smoke blows out of her mouth. “Or else...”

My watch beeps; a quiet, split second impulse, long enough for me to be aware of it but too short for the frequency to be picked up. A smile plays across my face as he moves menacingly towards me.

“Smile now bitch, but by the time I am through with you, even those lips will be off that pretty face.” He growls.

“By the time you are through with me?” I ask with a half laugh. “By the time I am through with you, well, you’ll be dead.”

The one he had called Brigadier stops at the door and turns to me. “You sound way too cavalier for a woman who is about to die.”

“That is because I am not about to die; you are.”

“Who are you woman?” she asks me stepping back into the room.

“Funny you should ask. I was just about to tell you.”

Damian moves in closer, he is brandishing a switch blade.

“That would be a bit difficult if your man here rips off my tongue, now won’t it?”

“Damian.” A call and a command, all rolled into one single word. It carried both authority and a request.

The way he looks at her; there is a fire in his eyes he is fighting hard to reign in- there is definitely more here than hierarchy.

“So who are you?”

I am starting to feel much better, well my body is still smarting from the roughhousing but I know it’s going to end well.

“Don’t waste my time little girl; I won’t ask again who you are.”

A laugh is bubbling through me, I can’t help it; I can’t stop myself. “You did it again.” She is pissed, I can tell from the way her eyes slit and her colour changes.

“The whole, Russki thing I mean. The accent is a killer, especially when you get aggravated- you sound like a ravenous Dracula.”

“Kill herr.”

“Who am I? Are you sure you wanna know?” her hand is up, signaling her man to wait. “I ask because I have a reputation; a legend so to speak. All who hear my name die.”

“Impossible!” she moves closer, “Only the angel of death is worthy of such legend and she would not be caught; she has never even been seen.”

“I agree with you on the first part, I’m not usually sloppy. The second part though is a bit of a stretch; no one, well almost no one is good enough to not be seen. I just eliminate anyone who ever has.”

She has that look in her eye; the greedy gangster look. You know the one they always get before they bite off more than they are able to chew. I tell her as much.

“You are hardly in a position to make that kind of observation, now are you?”

“Oh, don’t get me wrong my dear, you will be dead in the next few minutes,” I notice the guards change stance; they are in ‘Anything as much as whispers and we shoot the shit out of it’ mode. “Just not by my hand.”

“Not possible!” she tells me.

“Hmm, what isn’t possible?” I’d gotten distracted by the rear guards nervous tic.

“She works alone; all the great ones work alone. This is a waste of my time, Damian.” That was definitely a kill command.

“Normally you would be right; I mean you are actually correct. But you make one wrong assumption.”

“Yeah?”

“All the great ones do work alone and when their times come, they go out in a blaze of glory; but I am not among the greats, I am a legend.”

“Same difference.” She shoots back.

I notice Damian getting impatient; this whole byplay is starting to get on his nerves. One minute kill, another wait. A simple slip, just one misstep and he is bound to go off.

“Really? Because the last I checked you knew where to get all the greats. The legends though, you leave word for and they contact you. Never face to face. They never fail, because they always have a shadow.”

“So you expect me to believe that you came all the way from out there to here and were able to sneak yourself and a second party into the inner sanctum of one of the most protected outfits in the world.”

“I don’t expect you to believe it, but it’s the truth, well except for one little thing.” I spit out a wad of blood; they better not have knocked out any of my pearlies.

“I came alone; I wanted to pull this off alone, but my shadow found me.”

“He is out there now?” she asks scornfully, “So why didn’t the shadow stop all of this.” She is gesturing at all of me again.

“The shadow does not settle until the body is set.” I tell her as the second buzz comes through.

“This is dogshit.” Damian has reached the end of his tether and I can see that the woman is not willing to restrain him any further; no matter though, it’s all over anyway.

The blade is moving closer and closer to my eye, so I close it.

“For a legend you are awfully finicky about such a little dagger.” She is mocking me, but like I said the game is over.

“Don’t get me wrong,” I correct her, “I am not afraid of death, I have faced it in more forums than you have been on and been subjected to threats in more languages than you even know exist. I would just prefer not to get your blood and parts in my eye…”

I don’t get to complete my sentence. There is a whisper, like a muffled sneeze; the spit of a Remmington rifle. He just had t pull out the silver duds; that meant he was not too pleased and would not be showing any mercy.

“Like that.” I finish. “Shit honey, you could at least let me close my mouth too.”

Damian is in shock; he is on his knees staring at his hand, or rather staring at the spot where it used to be. Now it’s a mangled mess of blood and bone; arterial blood is spurting from it. I see him try to build up the breath for a scream, a second projectile to the lungs changes that to a gurgle.

Rear guard tries to make a break for it; Christopher is toying with him, with them really- he lets him open the door halfway, then sends two bullets into his back. The one that popped off his had should have been enough for a kill shot but he shoots him in the heart anyway.

Goon 2 and 3 are in full panic. They have their weapons drawn but instead of taking cover or being smart enough to deduce that the shots are coming from the only window the room had, they were firing blindly at the corners of the too small room- you’d think they were firing at some poltergeist. Come to think of it, wouldn’t it be redundant if they actually were.

A burst of jugular blood from goon 2; a gaping hole in the chest of the 3rd. they fall