Thriller/Espionage
Date Published: 07-04-2025
Publisher: Logikal Solutions
In life, the journey is the reward. Old Timer certainly has had a
journey through this life. For nearly forty years he has been both a geek and
an assassin. Despite someone at his company having given him the contract
decades ago, nobody there actually knew what he did, just that the client
paid. Had he told anyone about it, especially his coworkers, they would have
laughed in his face.
Since late January, 1992, he has kept a secret . . . and souvenirs.
Secrets were common currency in his world, but souvenirs were against company
policy and strictly forbidden.
Presented as a novel. Any names, dates, events or places that happen to
exist in the world you know are strictly coincidental. Take the journey that
is about to start. Find out how Ukraine saved the world from nuclear war in
1992 and what they did is still saving it today because nobody ever found out.
Some readers will never think about food the same way again.
Slava Ukraini! Heroiam slava!
bon appétit
Excerpt
Arrival
I have several rules about bars I go into.
· No karaoke
· No coin-operated pool tables
· No quarter drafts or pitchers of beer served
So, here we sit. This bar not only has all three, it is adding insult to injury by playing country music, at least what passes for country music these days. Basically, the industry is relabeling old rock and roll songs as country because country died a long time ago and they can’t admit the market is gone. I can remember when the Eagles were young and releasing their first few albums. They were banned from country music stations because their music was rock and roll. Now those same songs are somehow labeled country. Yes, the bull shit just keeps getting piled deeper. If it was horse shit, it could at least be used to grow mushrooms, but bull shit can’t be used for anything.
Why am I in this godforsaken place? The guy sitting straight across the U-shaped bar from me. Henry, my partner. Henry is the name he chooses to use when we haven’t been given our new names. We tended to have a different name every few weeks in our line of work. It doesn’t matter what place we end up in, Henry can find the low-life dives given no more than ten minutes to search.
You know you are in a great place when you ask for a glass of Chardonnay and the girl behind the bar asks, “What is that?” Some people might remember that scene from The Blues Brothers movie where they asked what kind of music the bar had, and the bartender responded, “Both kinds, country and western.” The scene was only slightly different here. You didn’t ask what kind of music they had, but when you asked what kind of beer they had, the answer was, “Both kinds, Hamm’s and Pabst.” Yes, we are rolling with life’s winners tonight!
They don’t even have a box of wine in the fridge or a bottle with a lovely screw-on cap. Yes, we have a wide array of drinking options tonight. Draft in a plastic cup, or you buy a can. Shots and mixers come in little plastic cups too, no glass. I guess the sink behind the bar is there for decoration? Haven’t seen them turn the water on yet.
At least this establishment had the vision to put a guy behind the bar along with what they were offering up as “eye candy.” In the dim light these women could almost pull off the Daisy Duke look they were trying to sell. At least until they smiled and made you think of hockey players and scenes from Deliverance. The guy appeared to be serving as both bouncer and brains behind the bar.
Oh, I wasn’t being cruel or demeaning. I have been here well over half an hour and haven’t seen either of these girls manage to make correct change. Most of the customers seem to have adapted to the situation by always handing one dollar more than the cost of their round and telling them to keep it.
I know people who will keep milk in the fridge well past the date on the container. Every day they sniff it to see if it is still “good enough to use.” Were any of them here tonight, they wouldn’t be able to resist walking by the cigarette machine in the back just to confirm it only had Lucky Strikes. Thankfully I don’t smoke and don’t feel the urge to look. Apparently, that law requiring tobacco products to be sold behind the counter never made it down here.
We got into this city four hours ago. The instructions were to check into a hotel and wait for a text message giving us an email account to use for further instructions. As always, we were supposed to keep a low profile. Little chance of that with Henry making the decisions. I’ve been with him six months. Only eighteen months left before I’m reassigned. I could even opt to retire if I wanted. No, we aren’t cops.
Look at the size of the woman he is talking to! She must only date guys driving a circa-1976 or older pickup truck, not because she particularly likes beater pickup trucks, but because she needs the full bench seat that era came with. A modern sixty-forty split seat with a center console simply isn’t going to let her get inside.
I had heard the rumors about Henry before being assigned to him. My guess is I really pissed someone off around the same time my rotation came up. While the rules of our organization are quite clear on what happens to someone who offs their partner, they are rather fuzzy about what happens when you maim someone in management. I do intend to find out who stuck me with Henry and pay them a visit before my time with him is over. Perhaps I’ll even have Henry cook them supper before I shoot them in the spine.
Most people don’t believe the rumors about Henry until they actually see him. Henry is a shrew, not in personality but in image. Some people used to refer to him as a Hobbit but that is being unkind to Hobbits. I have met people that don’t understand what you mean when you say someone is “mousy.” One look at Henry breaks all language barriers. He stands about 4’8” in shoes and weighs about 87 pounds soaking wet. A bald head with a short ring of hair around it and thin silver wire rimmed glasses completes the picture.
Size has little to do with Henry being “mousy” though. One look at his face and you can’t help yourself. Watch him for a while and you will notice how he curls the fingers of his hands and bumps them together like a mouse about to wipe his whiskers after eating cheese. I must admit I’ve even stopped at truck stops and bought cheese snacks for him while he was asleep. Of course, when Henry is allowed to pick the hotel, a box full of shredded newspaper would be considered upscale compared to his choices.
One might get the impression from Henry’s choice of hotels and clothing that he is cheap. That would be an incorrect impression. It has taken six months, but I’ve figured out his pattern. He won’t spend a lot on clothes because he doesn’t want to stand out in a kitchen, yet, he will dress up and drop a grand at a high end sushi place without batting an eye. Funny, I didn’t think mice liked raw fish.
Just lovely. Turns out this woman is married and her husband just got done shootin’ pool. Now he’s getting all neanderthal towards Henry. A sane man would quietly slip out of the bar and send Henry a Christmas gift every year without a return address. This guy apparently wasn’t burdened with an overabundance of education or the cerebral muscle to do even moderate lifting.
You know, times like these find me wishing I knew just exactly how many members our organization had and who they were. The rule about offing your partner is that the entire organization must hunt you down before taking another assignment. If you want to get rid of your partner you have to make sure they die during an assignment, at least then it would go to the council for a decision. I told you once already, we are not cops.
Why in God’s green Earth are the guy’s buddies coming over to help in this situation? When Henry stands up, his nose is going to be at the center of the guy’s stomach. Well . . . the center of that stomach is kind of difficult to determine . . . but the top of his head definitely won’t be chest high.
This is the third time in the past month Henry brought us to a shithole. You guessed it, the other two times didn’t go any better. The customary rule for a team is the person who did the last job chooses the entertainment and accommodations until the next job starts. Henry did the last job, not alone, but for the most part.
At least the next three minutes will be consumed by the guy’s wife trying to get off her bar stools. I thought she was only using two, but now that she is in the process of rising, I see it was three. That middle one must have . . . nah . . . I haven’t eaten yet and that isn’t an image I want in my head just before a meal.
Good thing nobody has caught onto the fact Henry came in with me. Knuckle-busting appears to be the primary form of entertainment here. The guy isn’t being that loud, but everyone has stopped what they were doing and are watching with a gleam in their eye. If anyone here puts it together, there will be three guys quietly slipping up behind me.
You think it’s an assumption? I get paid to analyze things like this. You’ve already forgotten about the choices of beverage containers here: plastic cup or can, no glass of any kind. If that didn’t spell it out for you, the fact the crowd got quiet when there was even a hint of an altercation should have spelled it out for you with sidewalk chalk. Pay attention in life, for it is the little things that keep you alive. I can only get paid if I’m alive.
Shouldn’t be difficult putting us together though. We are the only guys in this place with shirts having sleeves of any length. If this place was more accurately named it would be called The Unwashed Armpit instead of Hank’s Ranch House. No, I haven’t gone to the bathroom yet and I was hoping to get out of here without having to go. Unlike most of you, I know exactly what will be waiting for me when I walk into that fine, fine room.
This situation wouldn’t be so bad if Henry hadn’t gotten to choose the accommodations. We are at the roach trap a block and a half from here. We walked. The cameras in that place aren’t for security. Neither is the deadbolt on the press board door. The inhabitants of this establishment will be more than willing to walk that far just to continue a fight, and this isn’t the kind of neighborhood regular people consider walking in at night.
I should just get up and leave now. I should also check into a hotel of my own choosing. We don’t have to be together until the text message arrives. I know this will sound weird, given my occupation, but I never learned to fight. Members of my organization aren’t burdened with a desire to kick the shit out of someone. It takes too much time to disarm and take someone prisoner. Perhaps now you will believe me when I tell you we aren’t cops.
At this point, there are many ways this situation can go down, few of them good. I could easily kill those three guys without a weapon, but there are at least fifty people in here and they are all watching the show. Besides, this is the kind of place that has the police department on speed dial.
It’s also the kind of place cops swing past when they’ve only got an hour left on their shift and want to spend it doing paperwork back at the station. Usually somebody beaten bloody in the parking lot for them to snag. I haven’t seen them come in yet tonight, but it is too early for a shift change. I told you, I get paid to notice these things. Noticing these things keeps me alive and I can only get paid if I’m alive.
So far no need for me to get involved. The husband and wife are going at it and keeping the crowd entertained. She’s hurling the napkins that Henry had been writing on earlier in his face. Ah, now the screaming starts. Yep, nothing but recipes. Henry hadn’t been talking with her long enough to give her a disposable cell phone number. Henry is also not smart enough to slither past them unnoticed while they demonstrate wedded bliss. No, Henry is still intent on sleeping with this woman. It isn’t beer goggles making him do this, he’s still on his first round.
You see, I told you, it took me six months to figure it out but I know why we are here. In a place like this, Henry rises above the crowd. Given his stature, that is important to him. The rumors about Henry were true, for the most part. The bigger, the better. If a woman can’t sit down in the wrong place and total a sub-compact car, Henry isn’t interested.
I have no desire to find out if the darkest rumor about Henry is true. Why don’t you just think back through to the description of Henry’s size, the kind of women he likes, and just let your mind come up with something about being reborn. I’m not going to repeat that story here. I told you, I haven’t eaten yet.
About the Author
Roland Hughes is the president of Logikal Solutions, a business
applications consulting firm specializing in OpenVMS platforms and embedded
systems development for medical devices. Hughes serves as a lead consultant
with roughly four decades of experience using computers and operating systems.
With a degree in Computer Information Systems, the author's experience is
focused on systems across a variety of diverse industries including heavy
equipment manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, stock exchanges, tax accounting, and
hardware value-added resellers, to name a few. Working throughout these
industries has strengthened the author's unique skill set and given him a
broad perspective on the role and value of technology in industry.
When he is not consulting or writing geek books for his award winningThe Minimum You Need to Know technical book series or helping out on the family farm, he writes novels and blog posts. You can find him on logikalblog.com and interestingauthors.com/blog
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