Gospel by Sydney Bauer Page B

sixteen-pointed compass star representing the convergence of intelligence data from around the world, and the shield speaking reams about their brotherhood with all law enforcement agencies who carry similar badges on ‘the job’, day in, day out.
    But Washington was different. It was the nucleus of good and evil – a place where on one hand honest men and women strived for a better America, and on the other where players with the façade of a honourable intent clawed their way to the top with no regard to the bloodbath they left in their wake.
    The irony was, of course, that Washington was born out of an ideal – a small circle of geography built on justice and liberty and purity and truth. And the fact that there were those so open to sullying her – with politics and power and manipulation and greed – was perhaps the greatest tragedy of them all.
    Ryan never understood why Tom loved it so much. But then again, Tom was cut from a different cloth and would have slipped into any town on the globe like a smooth hand into a velvet glove. But Dick had always found it harder, and even more so of late. No doubt due to the fact he was surrounded by enemies, both overt and disguised.
    He glanced instinctively to his right where a US flag stood sentry to the same eagle-bearing CIA insignia carved on a plaque behind his desk. His walls were covered with black and whites of others who had occupied this office and served their country in the process. He was late for a meeting with his head of intelligence but for some reason could not banish the philosophical meanderings from his all-too-crowded head this morning. His brain had been taking him on several similar tangents of late, as hewondered how his middle class Alabama ass had made it into this bourgeois black leather resting place and whether he was really cut out to be here in the first place.
    But he knew it was Tom – or rather what had happened to his closest friend that had started him down this road of uncharacteristic contemplation; the injustice of it, and the maze of possibilities surrounding his overdose. How ironic, he thought, that he was the first one to offer his closest friend a bullet all those years ago, when Bradshaw had hit rock bottom and Ryan, who had spent months trying to jolt his Harvard buddy out of his drug-induced haze, saw no alternative than to hit him between the eyes with his future – literally.
    He remembered that night like it was yesterday. He could see himself now, marching to his dorm, knapsack in one hand and shotgun in the other. He knew what he had to do, and nothing or no one was about to stop him.
    Ryan reached his Wyeth Hall nine by twelve dormitory and kicked down the door, knowing knocking would have been pointless. It was late and Tom would have ‘passed out’ for the night. He saw him in the corner, half in the narrow, student issue bed and half out, one leg suspended on the adjacent laminated dresser, the other hanging limply on the worn grey carpet. He moved forward quickly, kicking clothes, food wrappers, soda cans and opened books aside to grab his friend around the waist and heave him over his shoulder.
    Within minutes he had made his way through the building and out the western gates, oblivious to the stares of other night owl students who watched in reproach as the dribble from Bradshaw’s mouth fell freely onto Ryan’s coat.
    He reached Massachusetts Avenue, pulled out his keys and shoved Tom into the back of his fifteen-year-old Volkswagen. Then he squashed his tall frame into the front seat and, on the third try, started the engine.
    From Cambridge he headed north along Highway 1 towards a buddy’s weathered seaside cabin, just north of Manchester. Every few miles he would pull over to re-adjust his companion’s head so that it angled out of the VW’s back passenger side window. And then he would wait for the trail of vomit that would glow like a sickly gush of