Time passes and death calls

Time passes and death calls.

Patience is the only virtue that matters

The night was as still as a long forgotten death, nothing stirred and no sound escaped the darkened room. To some this absolute silence would be as welcome as tranquility, to others it is one more burden in a life so devoid of interest, that the longing for any sort of action becomes a craving, even harmful action is preferred to nothing.

The figure on the bed came to awareness and slowly woke up, the movements slow but smooth. A hand reached out and switched on the table light. The apartment was empty of companionship, just as it was on every day and night. Choices had once been made and the consequences have to be accepted, you can not undo past decisions and so you can not avoid the subsequent events. Regret does not have much practical value. The man got up from the bed moved to the computer, he connected to his e mail server and received one message which brought him to full alertness. Leaving the screen on, he walked to the tiny kitchen and made coffee. No milk, no sugar, just coffee fresh from the filter machine. Back to the room that was both bed and office space. He sent a single word reply, “acknowledged”.

He dressed and drank his coffee, went back and read the message again, the message was then deleted and then forensically cleaned from his hard drive and any possible tracing. He gathered up his equipment and drove the car parked directly outside of the main door to the apartments; he drove at the speed limits, no haste nothing to attract attention, He came to a small industrial area and went to a lock up garage, one chosen for its lack of CCTV surveillance and also for the sparse population who could see his activity. The lock up was away from bored residential observers. These premises were chosen for the fact that while he unlocked and drove in one solid metal door, he could leave by another such door that opened onto a side street. He changed cars and drove the fresh one to another lock up in a small unlit back alley. He walked about half a mile to a house and checked the lines of sight for anyone who may be watching, he passed by the front entrance and strolled along the side fencing. Stopped to light a pipe that he did not actually smoke but this pretext for a pause in a walk worked every time. He used this time to check that he was unobserved. He stepped over the low gate rather than risk triggering an alarm by opening it. He crossed the lawn to the building and waited, nothing moved no unexpected sounds. He moved the rear door and used hand held gadget, that looked like a cell phone but was very different, this gadget sent powerful bursts of electromagnetic force for a short distance, it killed electronic alarms built into the door and frame but did not affect anything more than a foot away. He picked the lock and cautiously opened the door, slid rather than stepped inside, closed and re-locked the door. He used his gadget to kill off the movement alarms and settled down for a very long wait.

The phone rang but went unanswered. Bit like life really, someone called but no one knew if the call mattered to the caller or the absent receiver? probably not. So much of our world is full of things that do not really matter to any one.

The thoughts lingered, stirred in the mind of the watcher while he wondered if he should have picked up the call after all, may be an offer of a social meeting, may be the start of a new life, but in all probability no, not that. The surgical rubber gloves that he always wore when working, began to make his palms itch, he willed his mind to ignore this and slowly wandered back to the window seat, to his constant vigil and his constant pain, life was not meant to be like this, all waiting and hoping without action and without any conviction that his energy and time would be rewarded. Time passed as slowly as only time regretted can. The room was almost bare with just the minimal furnishings, a carpet to deaden sound and just enough stuff to make it seemed lived in, only just. The curtains were partly closed, they always stayed like this. The watcher was an unremarkable man, medium in just about every visible aspect but remarkable in many unseen things, this is how he intended it to be.

As darkness began to creep up on the scene there was movement, the first for many hours, a van drove into the parking slot at the front of the building and stopped. The watcher stiffened in his seat, moving just a fraction further from the window while his right hand sought the gun that was never more than inches away, he frowned with concentration as he tried hard to focus on the driver through the deepening shadow. The driver was another man who was intentionally unremarkable, slightly built, average height, difficult to judge his age. He wore a soft cap and had his jacket collar turned up. His sharply clear blue eyes were shielded by the cap. The driver waited, as patient and as practiced as the watcher, both had several years experience in an occupation where months measured the normal life expectancy. The phone rang again, and again was ignored, this time there was no need to wonder who was calling, the call was from the van.

More time passed and only the darkness grew, only the shadow cast by the street light strengthened. The driver left the van and slowly walked down beside the hedge, if he had not known that he was going to be there to see, even this watcher would not have seen him, but the watcher did expect and he did see, he waited, breathing easy and slow, silent even in this. Time passed again and nothing moved, then the faintest click announced the front door was now unlocked, the driver slid in and pressed his back to the hallway wall, unfortunately for him his back was now only a thin partition wall from the watcher. The hall did not have a carpet or anything to cover the bare echoing boards. In the room the watcher used his right hand, brought up the gun and fired six shots in a circular pattern, ensuring that at least three would find a target. The watcher heard a cry from the hall but he did not investigate, instead he silently but quickly moved across the room to a position the other side of the room's entrance door and well away from his firing place. Although the clip was not empty he reloaded the gun with a fresh and full clip. Again he waited for three silent and slow minutes before picking up a carefully positioned broom handle with his left hand and tapping gently by the door handle. The noise of the gun shots chased each other round the room. The watcher stayed couched but held his fire. The angle of the bullets flying through the door and past him into the wall to his left told him the driver was still in the place he had fired at, what he could not know was whether this was due to disablement or cunning. Such judgments mean life and death, success or failure, which in his profession are much the same thing. He heard the faintest of sounds and instantly reacted by rolling over away from the wall and laying flat, gun in front of him eyes fixed on the door, the benefits of his sparse furnishings being that he still had a clear shot at the door. Again the waiting the slow elapse of time, where every second would seem an eternity to those without experience. Impatient people die quickly in life's most deadly of pursuits. Darkness increased, the slight light from the street lamp caused more shadow than illumination, he waited and focused on the door again a faint sound from the hallway. He fired a full burst every shot in the clip, the bullets passing through wall and door in a straight line each shot a foot above the floor and six inches from the previous strike. Within a fraction of a moment a further full clip was in place and even while securing this he had rolled again back towards the window. In the fraction of a second after the last shot, while reloading, he had heard a muffled curse and gasp of pain. The driver was hit at least once. The front door was dragged open and the man struggled out. As he swayed in the entrance way clutching the door frame the watcher swiftly stepped into the hall and fired three more shots into his body, The driver was dead before he fell. The watcher stepped over the body without pausing to even glance at it.

His whole life was arranged for leaving, every thing he did, every possession, even every relationship he formed, could be left within a part of a second. Nothing slow to end, nothing calling back, move on and move fast, become the next persona, find the next target. A professional in living and dying does not have room for regrets, wants or needs. Life this near death does not have anything that can not be instantly abandoned. As the man in the film famously said- never have anything you can not walk away from in thirty seconds, the real professionals must walk away in a fraction of one second.

The watcher walked out of the front garden turned to his right passed the van and walking without haste down the street, he still watched but very few would have realized this, he did not turn his head but kept eyes moving as he turned down a side street along a further hundred meters and into a smaller back alley, no lights and no cameras. He did not need lights, this was a rehearsed exit, the keys to a garage door already in his hand and the vehicle ignition key in the ignition. The car started immediately and he left the area without fuss, without being noticed. He was away just before the first police car arrived; a neighbor had called when the second series of shots were fired.

The police investigation found a body of an unidentifiable man, found in the entrance to a house with an unidentified occupant. All efforts to trance the watcher failed, every lead was a dead end. The police had no witnesses, the body had no identifying paperwork, in fact no paperwork at all. Finger prints were taken and a few days later revealed that the person had several names which had been kept on record only because of a loose connection to known criminals. He had never been convicted and some of his records had been blocked by an unrecorded security agency. He had no recoverable history, no bank records and certainly no other known address. His DNA indicated a person from Russian roots. Examination of the building indicated that the dead man was the only person who had been there, he had a key that fitted the front door but no neighbor could recognize his photo or help the investigation in any way. The bullet holes in the partition walls were carefully recorded and tracked to show the shooter had been inside the room when the dead man had been shot. No forensic evidence to trace who this other person was, could be found. It was as if a gun had fired itself, the alarm system to the house was examined and found to be faulty, no effort was made to examine what has wrong with it. The senior detective received a message, to say an informer needed to have an off the record meet. He drove to an edge of town fast food place and sat in a window seat, as was the usual protocol. He drank coffee and waited, after 15 minutes another coffee drinker moved from a table further along the row and sat down again in the seat behind him, with her back to the detective. She used a low level of voice so only the detective could hear and whispered “the service thinks it best that this case be closed without solution”. The detective did not turn or even move his head. The whisperer left the building but did not walk past the window. The detective waited five more minutes, slowly finishing his coffee, then he left.

In a small office, that was also a bed room, the watcher waited his next assignment.