Wrath Of God

Chapter 18: 'Yurov'

I sat at a diner waiting for my food. The past two days had been extremely eventful and I hadn't eaten at all. I was completely ravenous and I knew I needed as much strength and focus as necessary and I couldn't be anywhere close to full strength with a completely empty stomach. I wore an old baggy football jacket and baseball cap.

It was very different from my usual attire of custom made suits but I had to blend in and not stand out. No doubt the Gentleman had men everywhere looking for me with orders to kill me. I was a loose end and he did not like loose ends. I had phoned him after Alison had taken her life. Unlike other operatives in the firm who went through different channels and levels of management I took my orders straight from the Gentleman.

I was his creation and especially recently I had being jobs for him that nobody else in the firm knew about. I had phoned him and told him about what the Bishop had done and he lied to me and feigned surprise and told me he had no idea of the Bishops plans.

I told him about Alison and he shared fake sympathy with me. He told me he would send a cleanup crew and give her a proper dignified burial. I doubt that happened.

Alison wouldn't get the dignified burial she deserved because the man I entrusted to make sure she did was the man who sanctioned her death. I was angry, incredibly angry at this man who manipulated me with lies. My food arrived and I replaced my angry scowl with a smile and said thank you to the waitress as she put my food down in front of me. She smiled and blushed and scurried off quickly. She was young and probably new.

I had just faked a smile and I was sitting in a diner pretending to be someone else.

It seems we are all full of deceit. I sighed, took a sip of coffee and started eating. It had been an extremely long time since I had an oily diner breakfast.

In my profession it was important to be at your peak of physical health.

This meant strict diets and workouts so it was quite refreshing to sit down like an ordinary person and have what they considered an ordinary breakfast. The bacon was crispy and I distinctly taste the cooking iol it was fried in. The eggs were runny and just as oily. The rest of the meal was no better but I finished it all the same. Surprisingly the coffee wasn't bad. I finished the meal and ordered another two coffees.

One for myself and one for my father who had just walked in. He was wearing a large coat as he entered but took it off as he walked towards me. It was drenched with water, the storm was still raging heavily outside. He sat down with an exasperated sigh. He had large rings under his eyes, he to didn't sleep well last night but I imagined that like me, sleepless nights were nothing new to him.

I was continually surprised by this man. He was no longer the fumbling drunken idiot from my childhood memories. When I had seen he tied up in our old house and told to kill him by the Bishop I had looked at him and thought of him as weak.

He was old, skinny and grey. He looked extremely weak and pathetic, but now I saw differently. Prison had not made him weaker but stronger. He truly was a changed man and he had changed his ways. His faith made him stronger because it gave him purpose and without purpose we are nothing. He was in control, he was calm and collected and his thoughts were clear and his determination was strong. I couldn't help but feel respect for him. I opened the envelope and pulled out a set of keys and a slip of paper with directions on them. While I had eaten I had sent my father to see an old contact of mine.

I had to send him as it was too dangerous for me with all of the Gentleman's men looking for me. Adrian White, the contact I had sent my father to, did not belong to the Firm.

He was actually a contact I had employed to feed Alison information on Za'aphiel and help her in her career as a journalist. The keys had given us were for a car and a hotel room. We now had transport and accommodation. I couldn't go to my home as it was probably crawling with agents from the Firm and I had left my car at the graveyard just in case the Firm had put a tracker on it.