Free The Betrayer by Daniel Judson

best to give Vitali enough work to support himself in the meantime. He
had kept that promise, had kept Vitali busy enough, and paid him a decent-enough
wage, but Vitali knew that he could earn so much more as a free agent on the
international market, in Europe and Asia. He also knew of a man — a wealthy
associate of his uncle’s — who would pay Vitali to kill neo-Nazis in Russia. That
would be work he’d very much enjoy and could be proud of, that would, in his
mind anyway, count as service to his country, the land of his father and his father’s
father, who had survived cold and starvation and Nazis only to be thrown into
one of Stalin’s prisons a year later and simply disappear.
    Now that Vitali’s
chance at vengeance was here, he wanted to get it over with. He wanted to kill
the one responsible for his father’s death, so that his father could finally rest
in peace. And once that was done, he would say good-bye to the States, exit as
secretly as he had entered, and begin his own life, earn the kind of money he
should be earning, maybe even make a lasting mark — his mark — on his beloved
homeland.
    Yes, he would
miss the freedom of travel that America offered, and he would miss the women he
encountered here, who were so easily preyed upon, so filled with a sense of
entitlement that they refused to see danger even when it was staring them in
the face, even as it told them what they wanted to hear, got them to undress,
fucked them with a violence they mistook for abandon or passion.
    He would miss
all that, but he would not miss these shitty cigarettes.
    He finished
tending to his injury, then stood by his window and looked down on Twenty-Third
Street. To overcome his bruised ego, he attempted to recall the high he’d felt
up in Portsmouth, hoped to tap into the memory of it, but all he could remember
was having been high, not the feeling of being high. It was the same for the
high he had felt in Boston as well. Long gone, and like a dream that way — so
vivid as it unfolded, so rich in sensations, but it could never last much past
consciousness.
    He had stalked
the Coyle kid, had felt the thrill of that, but he had not made the kill, so
the process he loved so much had not been completed. He’d found this deeply frustrating,
and he didn’t deal with frustration well. His entire existence was designed
around the balancing of rising tension and the eventual release of that tension.
It was like a musical note, his father had always said. Each and every note has
three components: attack, sustain, and release. Attack determines how the note
is struck — softly or hard, or anywhere in between. Sustain determines how long
it is allowed to ring, and if it gets louder or softer as it rings. And release
determines the nature of its end.
    Vitali’s life — his
inner life, anyway — was a musical note. When his tension began, it began
quietly — he never actually heard the striking of the note, just realized suddenly
that it was there, ringing steadily. And it was as much a physical sensation — a
vibration in his heart — as it was an actual sound in his ears. He could feel
the note build over the hours, and then the days, feel the rising crescendo. And
he knew when enough was enough, when to finally seek relief by killing, and at
last ceasing the ringing altogether, emptying his ears and heart of it.
    All other needs
— hunger, thirst, rest — were secondary to this.
    After his third
cigarette, he decided he’d sleep for a bit. When he awoke a few hours later, he
was thinking of working out, or maybe going for a run. He wasn’t far from the
West Side Highway, could run along the walkway that followed the eastern bank
of the Hudson River. He could watch women there — not just fellow runners but
tourists as well. And the relief that came with a hard run should be enough to
keep his mind balanced for now.
    He needed to
keep in balance, keep the compulsion in check. Otherwise, mistakes could be
made.
    He was