"Why can't life always be like this?"
Goupil raced lustily down the precision engineering of the nighttime German autobahn under a limitless starry sky. Who could die on a dreamy night like this? He knew in the wee hours of the morning factory supercars were put through their paces at upwards of 200 mph. Balls to the wall - just as it should be. Behind his freshly minted Porsche, Goupil fancied himself a deft racer between the stripes. The exhilaration was intoxicating.
Traveling time had always been the most favorite and cathartic period during his time as an assassin. The famously anonymous "Red Fox" loved mixing in with greasy vacationers, he alone knowing his secret missions. He sneered at tawdry tourists and bombastic businessmen and mindless minions simply trying to get from point A to point B as a matter of course. If anything, he liked the college kids, full of life, doing their own thing.
When sealed in cooled pressurization miles above the earth, Goupil imagined his own genius, matching wits with newsmakers of the day or ancient greats of the past. Detached and devoid of ugly details of reality, the untouchability of the sky freed him like nothing else. But for whatever reason, the dreaded hotel check-in vaporized his transitory dreams and life once again boiled down to dirty, little jobs in a dirty, little world.
And so it was again as he traversed through the fresh spring air, slicing through the gloom of mystic German forests that held so many tales of untold horror when the savagery of men never reached the light of day. It was good to be back in the old country among familiar feelings and seeing the familiar tail lights of passing cars. America, the land of glitzy plastic, had a newness Europe could never match. But the shallowness was tiring, like eating cotton candy, but the deep elegance of the continent fed his soul wherein the New World with its preoccupation for money left him unsatisfied.
Even so, the wretched hand of the approaching Russians reached round his throat, choking him, giving him pause. Yes, he had decided on the "Cossack animals" as his only escape and safe harbor in the world. His one hit on Russian soil had been in northern Moscow, killing a female government official. In order to carry out his deeds with maximum precision, Goupil always did a mind trick of finding something to hate about his target, to clear his mind of all compunction. But she had been a person of integrity, enforcing the laws on the books and standing in the way of powerful interests. His urge was to join her, not destroy her. But he knew what the Russkies would do if he had backed out.
"Merde, I don't want to go back there!"
It was right at first meeting he dubbed them "animals", what with their snarling attitude and surly dispositions, always suspecting everyone. Goupil knew that even through the most oppressive of regimes, criminal activity flourished as the commodity starved masses were all too eager in their complicity. But the facade had fallen with the Berlin Wall, the gangsters seizing power, running roughshod over the country. The Russians were a broken people, and like any broken person yearned for a strong leader.
Goupil absorbed the history and culture of every country where he performed a hit, blending in being more than mere choices in clothing and local accessories. It was always a huge effort of will to pull off the charade but the resulting anonymity was priceless. In America, his gait was brash and cocky - while in other countries he strolled along slow and easy. But the Russians - no matter how closely crammed together they might be - were ultimately isolationists. Having by far the highest suicide rate in the world, they sought refuge in vodka bottles, drowning wordlessly in bent, nihilistic spirits. Never had Goupil seen a country so willingly repressed.
But Goupil found himself a rather desperate and repressed being as well. Pulling into a 24 hour roadside cafe - a real one, not one with "Waffle" in the title - he collected himself at a quiet window side table and let his mind wander.
What if I just stayed here and made a life for myself? Fuck the Russians and their depressing bullshit. Look at that waitress. She's got a smile for everyone, not trapped in a web of hell like me, beholden to bastards I hate. Joubert my mentor wallowed in dullness but that isn't for me. I need something more than "the job".
I want to stay here, never leave this table, and learn how to give back a smile to the friendly waitress. I'm ready to let go and give up this life of mine. But what if I did? What if everything I did from now on was perfect, would the sins of the past prevent me from living? How does one free oneself so that one may live again? Hell, I never lived in the first place!
Like constant, rhythmic waves the desire to stop running washed over him, making him drowsy and wistful. Why had he done what he done in America? How did he end up on the run all over again? What possessed him to kill that banker in a manufactured moral rage? Why does control of his life always slip away so easily?
A trucker breezed in the front door of the diner, greeting the waitress by name in gruff German as the pair exchanged smiles. Seeing this, electric pain short-circuited through the nervous pathways of Goupil, painting a picture of purgatory of a soul who'd cut himself off from that which he desired most. Have I no control over these killing fingers? Sipping his cup of agony, for the first time in 48 hours he took a breath, held in check by the fear of what he might find.
He was soothed for the moment: he had a direction (the hell of Russia) but not the sorrow of it. And he'd freed himself from another perpetually gnawing situation (the hell of America) but was on the run once more. And as long as he never reached his destination he was fine! Something was missing. Something was wrong. What? What??
As the life changing events of the last few days caught up with him, the room turned tragic: the smile of the waitress a sly mockery, the trucker conspiring with her to engineer his doom, Goupil was a part of nothing and no one. He'd stepped inside Van Gogh's Nighttime Cafe ("A place where you can go mad!"). Staggered in labored breath, the confused assassin recounted the trajectory that had hurled him so very far out into space...
To be continued...
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