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Shadow Man.

They were always the most difficult operations, these political affairs, these grubby civilian cleanups. Somebody had to do it though, people with a precise and clinical ability to perform jobs the rest of us would be incapable of doing. It required up close and personal confrontation, viciousness and unpleasantness, and on occasion the briefest of encounters. The life of a Shadow Man was frequently filled with danger, but things were always at their most insidious within the civilian arena where such encounters occurred. And here he was, standing over a corpse with the muzzle of his handgun still hot and smoking, a direct consequence of someone else's insidiousness.

She was much prettier in person he noted when she had first opened the door and let him inside. The old surveillance photos must have been a little out of date - maybe she had changed her hair? He wasn't sure. It didn't matter. It was a shady apartment building in the more run down part of Soho, London. Soho was famous for it's red light district many years ago, especially in the 70's, where strip clubs and grubby porn shops had grown into a thriving business. Those days were gone now, but there were pockets left still, where illicit drugs and sex were sold, incongruently to Soho's more up-market restaurant crowd.

"So, Dimitry is it, luv?" she asked as she led him through a hallway into the main living area. "You Russian or somethin'?" she tacked on another question.

"Yes." he lied, giving her his best Russian accent.

"Just got into town have you, luv? On business or somethin'?" she smiled assuringly.

"Yes."

"You got a wife? Kids?" she quizzed him.

He smiled to himself. "You ask lot of questions." He fired back.

"Sorry, luv. Didn't mean to pry, just making conversation. It don't matter to me if you've got someone back home, honestly. I get all types in here. Lot's of family men who need a bit of something the wife can't give em, if you know what I mean politicians even, right respectable types." she blurted out naively.

Indeed she did, way in over her head she was. He recalled the briefing. She was shagging some stupid senior cabinet minister, which in itself wasn't a problem. The trouble was an ex-KGB agent who was a freelance operator and handling her and her Iranian born boyfriend, Firuz. The other problem was the cabinet minister, being loose lipped, who was whispering state secrets to his sweet heart, and she and Firuz were selling them to the Russian. The Russian in turn was passing

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