“I’m sorry?” I say.
“You don’t speak Russian?” he asks in English.
“No, I was born in the States.”
He holds up my passport. “It says here that you were born in Smolensk?”
Suddenly all the veins in my neck become as thick as strings on an electric Fender bass. Fuck. I gave him the wrong passport! I gave him Igor’s passport. I’m Igor now, not Friendly. Big, big fuck.
“Eh… Yeah. I was, actually, but we moved… my parents moved to America when… when I was six months old, so in… in my mind…”
“So you’ve been living in America since then?”
“Ah, yes. Yes. Exactly.”
I’m relieved.
“But you speak with a Slavic accent?” the motherfucker asks. What the fuck is going on here? This guy’s way too qualified for his job. Your average Russian physics professor working as a passport control officer?
“Eh… yeah, it’s a kind of strange story. My… my parents… I was living alone with my parents all my childhood, deep in the woods, and I learned the language from them. And they spoke English with a very strong… very strong Russian accent.”
The officer looks at me for two long seconds. Then his eyes glide down to the collar.
“You’re a priest?”
His accent is difficult to decipher.
“Ah, yes. I’m Reverend… Reverend Illitch.”
This is getting ridiculous.
“But it doesn’t say so in the passport.” Damn. He’s like some super stubborn Serbian shitfucker.
He asks me to wait and leaves his glass booth. I hear restless sighs in the line behind me. I don’t look back.
A minute later he’s back in the booth with an older officer in a blue shirt. They look me over like a gay couple auditioning for a threesome. Finally the older one says, in an accent I recognize from Wise Guy and the stewardesses, “You are priest?”
“Yes.”
“What are you doing here in Iceland? Are you here for business or…?”
Finally I find the voice of Igor. His true orthodox spirit.
“The minister’s job is all pleasure, but you may call it business if you like.”
The blue shirt looks impressed. He looks me over one last time, hands me the passport, and tells me, “OK. Have a good stay.”
Shit. How could I have been so careless? How could I… Or no. Maybe it was the right thing to do. The Feds will probably have found Rev. Friendly’s body by now. How long will it take them to identify it? When they do, it’s better they not find out that someone is surfing the northern seas on his passport. Yeah, it was pure luck.
I follow the flow of passengers deeper inside the air terminal. There is carpet on the hallway floor. And the soft-floored silence brings out the squeaking of Mr. Friendly’s leather shoes. Igor’s running shoes are inside the briefcase, along with his leather jacket. I reach the main hall and wonder what to do. I go to a desk and ask for flights to Frankfurt, Berlin, London, anywhere but here. There are flights, the blonde MILF says, but they’re all sold out. The next available is three days from now, to Copenhagen and then on to Zagreb. I wonder what my bags will say when no one claims them. I find Igor’s VISA card and buy him a ticket to Tomislav’s fatherland. Mr. Friendly looks on as Toxic signs Mr. Illitch’s name. Suddenly my simple life has become quite complicated. A layer cake of IDs.
The mature blonde recommends I go into town and hands me a hotel address. “It’s only forty minutes with the bus,” she says and smiles. Ah, well, I guess three days in Vikingland won’t hurt. Three days without a gun will be hard on Toxic, though.
An escalator carries me down one flight and I walk through the busy luggage hall. The exit gate is divided in two, for those with something to declare and not. My latest identity asks whether I shouldn’t use this opportunity to declare myself guilty of sixty-seven homicides, but I wave all the angels away, like the cloud of mosquitos.
Surprise awaits me outside the exit gate. Out in the small welcoming area, a man with thinning hair and a thick-haired woman are standing, holding a sign that reads: FATHER FRIENDLY. I seem to be out of sync with myself (too many selves, I guess) for I make the huge mistake of stopping short in front of the fucking sign. And me, wearing the fucking collar! They make the obvious connection.
“Mr. Friendly?” the woman smiles out in the more and more familiar sounding accent.
I’m about to say no, when suddenly I spot two policemen standing further out in the hall, close to the exit. So, before leaving my lips, my no turns into a yes. And I’m done for. I’m grounded for the next few hours. I’m forced to be fucking Friendly.
The killer becomes his victim.
“Very nice to see you, Mr. Friendly. Did you have good trip?” the man asks me with a very strong Icelandic accent. I notice his bad teeth when he smiles.
“Yeah, yeah, it was OK.” Suddenly I hate my own accent. Not very Virginian, I guess.
“I hardly recognized you! You look even younger than on your Web site,” the woman says. Always a big smile.
I have a Web site?
“Oh? You… you saw me there?” I mumble.
Fuck it. I’m a hitman, not a spy.
“Yes, of course!” the woman continues. “But we have not seen your TV show.”
My God. I have a TV show? I would like to see that.
“You wouldn’t like to see that,” I say.
“Oh? Of course! We would love to see that!” they both cry out loud like kids high on candy. They’re a happy bunch. God’s doing, I guess. They introduce themselves and their names are incredible. His is Goodmoondoor (must be his stage name) and her name is something like Sickreader. I wonder what their American nicknames would be. Goo & Si? Even “Tomo” was too long for the Yanks. The more people, the shorter the names. The less people, the longer the names.
Suddenly Sickreader looks me down and asks:
“Don’t you have any luggage, Father Friendly?”
I pause for a moment.
“No. The Word is my only luggage.”
They laugh like happy cartoon hamsters. I feel like an actor who has just made an important step in the development of a new character. Hallelujah!
They bring Father Friendly past the two cops (I give them a blessing look) and out on the parking lot where it’s as cold as the inside of a fridge. And me who was looking forward to the Adriatic Spring, chilling on the Riva, sipping pivo and watching the tightly jeaned asses sway by, with the sound of sandal-heels clicking against the white limestone tiles. Ah, the girls of Split…
But, no. Instead I’m standing out in some polar parking lot collecting goosebumps and watching the reflection of my bald new self (I could, actually, pass for a priest) in the window of a silver Land Cruiser two strangers are indicating I should enter. The vehicle has already been blessed by the presence of the great Benny Hinn, they tell me. It seems Goodmoondoor and Sickreader are professional televangelists. They run a small, local Christian TV channel called Amen. Minutes later we’re rolling through the lunar park with the Goodmoondoor at the steering wheel.
“We have many Christian TV show from America. Benny Hinn of course. And also Joyce Meyers, Jimmy Swaggart, and David Cho. And we also have our show, in Icelandic and also in English. We are on TV every night, me and my wife. Sometimes we are together and sometimes we are alone. You will see.”
This is the Goodmoondoor speaking in his primitive English. His nice looking wife sits by his side and smiles to me in the backseat. Her husband continues: