Reckoning

Chapter 1-2

“You mean, I flog his arse and he begs for more? He sucks my d**k while I tell him what a piece of useless crap he is?”

“Yes, that sort of thing,” she said brightly. “Tell me about Angel Button?”

As with his mother, Kael smiled whenever he thought of Angel, and he liked talking about his boy. “Angel is the light of my life, to use a cliché. I’ve had him for two years now. I love him with the same ferocity with which I love my mother.”

“That’s an odd phrase. ‘I’ve had him,’ as opposed to ‘we’ve been together.’ Why is that?”

Kael sat back in his chair again, comfortable talking about Angel and their life since it was confidential. He would do nothing that would ever put Angel at risk. “Do you know what b**m is?”

“Yes. I don’t practice it, but I am well aware of it.”

“I practice it. It’s my preferred way of relating to other men. Angel is a submissive who likes to call me Daddy. I’m a Dom, which will be no surprise to you. Angel belongs to me and I take care of him. I love him. He’s my sweetheart.”

“A relationship is often hard to maintain when you work for SIS because so much secrecy is involved, but in Angel’s case, he’s going to start training with MI6. Correct?”

The last thing Kael had wanted was for Angel to get involved in the type of work he did. His desire to keep his boy safe was paramount. But Angel was determined that he wanted a career in intelligence and he had a natural aptitude for detailed work, not to mention his skill with a gun and his unusually precise long-distance vision. “Yes. But he’ll do different work than I do.”

“He’s too young yet, isn’t he? You have to be twenty-one to train with SIS.”

“Angel will be twenty in a few weeks. He’s particularly good at a number of skills that will be useful to SIS. He’s highly intelligent and focused; he can spot minor changes in his surroundings. He can pick locks like the Artful Dodger. Conran wants Angel on board, and Angel wants to do what Daddy does. He’ll be an excellent operative.”

“He’s American, isn’t that correct? I assume he has British citizenship now.”

“Yes,” Kael said. He was growing bored, and he needed to move around. “I have to go soon.”

The doctor ignored the remark. “When did you first realize you were gay?”

“Why do straight people say stupid things like that? When did you first know you were straight, assuming you are?”

The doctor acknowledged the error with a small nod. “I apologize. That was a thoughtless question. I am heterosexual. I’ve been married to a man for thirty-two years.”

“Does he have a mustache as well?” The moment the words were out of his mouth, Kael thought of Angel and how the young man would tell him, in his diplomatic way, what a bad idea it was to be so honest. But he’d said it now and he wasn’t going to apologize because it was true. Before he’d met Angel, he had not known not to say things like that. Angel had taught him so much about relating to people, but that didn’t mean he always had to practice those skills.

To the woman’s credit, she didn’t blink at the insult. “I apologize, Mr. Saunders, for asking such an insensitive and, frankly, stupid question. It’s well established at this point that homosexuality is innate. Perhaps I should ask when you first began to be sexually active.”

For a moment he considered not answering because the question was so personal; however, the truth was, he didn’t care enough to keep it private. “I had s*x with my friend Freddie Merchant when we were twelve years old, but that was just playing. I was fourteen the first time I had real s*x. He was in his thirties, and he was my mum’s boyfriend. If I’ve ever regretted anything in my life, it was f*****g around behind Mum’s back. The man’s in jail now for diddling another fourteen-year-old boy. Not that he diddled me. I was a full and willing participant.”

Dr. Reynolds spent a few seconds unscrewing the lid of the water bottle and then took a long drink. She was either pausing for effect or she was deciding what to ask him next. “I suspect regret does not play a huge part in your life. Tell me, do you regret beating Stephen Conran?”

Kael shook his head. “No. He had it coming.”

“What about your work? Have you ever questioned whether or not a wet disposal was necessary?”

“No. I do the work to the best of my ability, and I have very high standards.”

“Do you know why you were sent for a psychiatric evaluation?” Receiving no reply, she continued. “You’ve been referred to me many times over the years, as have all operatives in your position, but you have never come to an appointment. Is the only reason you came today because Stephen Conran has refused to give you another assignment unless you came?”

“Yes,” he answered.

“You murdered a man. Ben Cranmore, a successful architect.”

“I’ve murdered lots of men,” Kael said, looking right at her. “And a few women. My first hit was a woman.”

Dr. Reynolds sat back in her chair. Was she comfortable again, or was she putting space between herself and him? He wasn’t sure. “I understand the nature of your work. But this was not work. You were not instructed to remove Mr. Cranmore, who had done nothing to jeopardize national security. You murdered a stranger in cold blood.”

“Cold blood?” Kael laughed. “Now there’s a cliché.” He chuckled for a minute before saying, “He was a killer. Weren’t you told that part? He murdered prostitutes.”

“As it turns out, that’s true, but you didn’t know that before you killed him, did you?”

What was wrong with the woman that she couldn’t see the value of what he’d done? “No, but he was. So isn’t that a good outcome?”

“And if he hadn’t been a murderer but an ordinary man, perhaps a husband and father. What then, Mr. Saunders?”

Kael watched her for a long moment. The wide eyes and expectant look on her face told him she genuinely wanted to know how he felt about the possibility of killing a guiltless man. Finally he shrugged. “I’ll bet half the people I’ve eliminated over the years were good husbands and fathers. They just knew too much, or saw the wrong thing, or had a conscience and threatened to blow the whistle. What’s the difference?”

“Why did you kill Ben Cranmore? Why him?”

For some time Kael sat thinking while Dr. Reynolds waited patiently. “Look, the truth is I was wound up because of Romodanovsky. When I’m in that state, I run for miles, or work out until I’m exhausted, or I take Angel into the dungeon for a session. But none of those things worked. I needed an adrenaline rush, a catharsis, a mental orgasm.” He spread his hands, unsure what the right word was. “I needed the release I get when I perform a perfect kill.

“My preferred method of assassination is a scalpel in the jugular. But sometimes I’m forced to use a gun, in which case a double cap to the back of the head must suffice. I can even do long-range, but that’s not my specialty.” Angel was the expert sniper between the two of them. “The intimacy of thrusting a sharp blade into a man’s jugular vein gives me a sense of release, a feeling of absolute liberation that lifts me above the ordinary, the mundane, if only for a while. That’s what I was seeking that night when I killed that man. Catharsis and euphoria.”

Leaning forward again, her brows furrowed, Dr. Reynolds asked, “And did you find it?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Will you kill again to get that release?” she asked.

Kael stood up and thrust his forefinger at her. “If Conran would give me a f*****g job, I could do it without resorting to seeking out my own kills. I’d been put on a security detail because that bastard Russian wanted me in particular to protect him. I began to suspect during the job that he was my biological father and it was doing my head in, so I ended up killing a man and I have no remorse and no regrets. I wanted to kill Romodanovsky. In my work there is occasional collateral damage. Innocent people have died by my hand because they were in the way. That is sanctioned by SIS. Why are you and Conran making such a fuss about me killing a murderer? Is it because I did it without permission?”

“Yes, it is,” Dr. Reynolds said. “You do not have a license to go rogue just because SIS has you take care of things for them.”

“Take care of things? Is that your sanitized way of saying kill? Why is it only murder when it’s not government authorized?”

“You know perfectly well why, Mr. Saunders. We live under the rule of law, and that includes you.”

“Get over it!” Kael began to pace again.

“And if Cranmore had not been a murderer but an innocent man who was in the wrong place at the wrong time?” she asked yet again.

Kael stopped to place one hand on the desk, leaning toward her. “He was down a back alley looking for a prostitute, and then, while I was standing in a filthy doorway watching, he f****d her and then refused to pay her. As if that wasn’t bad enough, he punched her in the face. Killer or not, he was a piece of scum. He got what he deserved. I didn’t walk into McDonald’s and wait in the toilets for some weekend dad to kill. I went down an alley, and I killed a piece of s**t. I’m not sorry.”

“You’re a natural-born killer,” the doctor said.

“Are we finished?” Kael asked.

“You were always free to leave at any time, Mr. Saunders,” she replied.

Striding toward the door, Kael said, “Tell Conran I want to go back to work or he won’t be invited into my dungeon to kiss my feet again.” He exited the room, leaving the door open behind him.