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 The old surveillance photos must have been a little out of date - maybe she had changed her hair?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 them to the Russian Federal Security Service, but unbeknownst to them, was also selling tit-bits to an Iranian contact courtesy of Firuz again. It was all a convoluted mess which needed cleaning up.
It wasn't pleasant though, the killing of civilians and not something he'd signed up for. However, it was the job and his only satisfaction was that some cabinet minister was getting his bollocks chewed out by someone at "Number 10." He looked at the victim now, lying haphazardly in a slowly developing pool of blood beneath his feet; two small entry wounds from pistol shots by her right temple and ear marked her quick and catastrophic demise - nicely grouped and very professional, as always.
"Poor, bitch." he said to himself quietly. He knelt down to check her pulse, her eyes had rolled back gruesomely into her head - there was no doubt that she was dead.
Some guys didn't like to look too hard, worried the images might get trapped in their heads, or haunt them in their dreams. It didn't matter to him - not that it didn't bother him though. "A glimpse was as good as a gander, mate" he'd heard an Australian say in Afghanistan, looking over a Teleban fighter with half a head and a fly crawling from a misshapen nostril stained with congealed blood. You could catch a glimpse, or stare for hours, the images didn't really leave you - you simply got on and dealt with it as best you could. Some people couldn't. He stood slowly and holstered his pistol which he would deliberately discard later not far from the apartment. It would be useful if it was found.
He studied her again, and felt a little bitter at the waste of human life. Sure, she was a prostitute, and many people - even not so respectable types had little respect for them, but it was the over educated half-wit who was really responsible for her death, and it wasn't right. So here he was - and a few others besides in the shady background - cleaning up the mess. He reached into his pocket and produced a small plastic bag containing some of the Russian's pubic hairs. He wondered how the hell they got hold of this kind of stuff and imagined some spook crawling through the Russian's dirty underwear with tweezers. He distributed them in the sheets of the bed, as instructed. An opened condom packet with the Russian's finger prints on them was casually placed in the rubbish bin in the bathroom.
"What's your name?" he had asked her, sitting in a chair watching her move about the apartment. She had exceptional legs he noted, strong and muscular. Her curvaceous buttocks were tightly wrapped in a tiny pair of shorts which squeezed extra shape into them. It seemed incongruent somehow that such a beautiful girl could be bound up in such dangerous political espionage and seedy work. She sat on a bed across from him, tantalizingly sliding one thigh over the other, emphasizing their length and shape.
"Tatyana" she replied smiling at him. She had used her real name, he wondered why.
"That is not very British name. You don't look British." he probed in his fake broken English and smiling at her. "Are you Russian?"
She smiled. "I wasn't born ere. Do you wanna' talk, or something else?" She thrust her bedroom eyes in his direction seductively. He'd seen this routine before and perhaps under different circumstances he could see himself taking her up on his offer, unfortunately for her his motives were to be far less amorous.
"You dance?" he asked. She smiled and stood up crossing to the mantle piece above a small gas fireplace and turned on a stereo system. The music began, a steady beat and she began moving playfully, and again he studied her body. In his jacket pocket he reached for a wallet and removed several 100 pound notes from it which he waved in front of him. She smiled when she saw them and slid closer to him and began removing a zipped sweat shirt which concealed her amble breast in a sort of private lap dance.
"Borodin!" he yelled at her, making sure she could hear him over the music. Her face had been turned to the floor and now snapped up to look at him flicking her blonde hair back wildly, her eyes frantically searching his face.
"What?" she uttered in surprise.
"Igor Borodin?" he yelled at her testing her reaction. He knew she must know the name. Her face now reflected the surprise she felt as her brain put the pieces together. How did he know Borodin? She was in trouble, was he here to hurt her? What was going on? The face told him everything, there was no doubt now he had the right girl and he had seconds to react before she did.
In fluid motion he stood to his feet and drew his pistol aiming it aggressively and accurately with both hands. Crack! Crack! Two shots in rapid succession found their mark and she had barely time to flinch before collapsing in a sprawled heap on the floor, air gasping quietly from her lungs for the last time. It was a movement he had practiced thousands of times before, and not just with this pistol, a Makarov variant, commonly found in former Eastern Block countries. It was used with intent to deliver a message to the Russian's handlers even if they believed he had shot the girl, which was unlikely, they would act in accordance with the rules. Their man was blown and a liability. They would wash their hands of Igor Borodin and leave him to the police and MI6: it was the same rule that applied to him also - if he was ever caught.
He moved carefully over one of her sprawled limbs. The human body shed hundreds of microscopic particles a minute and leaving traces of himself was less than desirable: the longer he loitered, the greater the danger. The high number of people entering and leaving was in his favour however in disguising his presence. Nevertheless he was running out of time and quickly took a photograph using his cell phone of the girls face and then shut off the phone immediately. He scanned the apartment carefully, making sure he hadn't left any object behind, including the spent shell casings. He had been careful to avoid traipsing about the apartment in the first place and so it was a simple procedure to retrace his steps.
He closed the door behind him and down the stairs back out on to the dim and cold street from where he'd been not long before, glancing quickly to see if he was observed. He headed for a pre-arranged rendezvous with an awaiting car a few streets away. Its' driver had the engine running and had been there only minutes: the timing was carefully planned. As he opened the door of the car and stepped half way into the vehicle, he dropped the weapon into a storm water drain over which the car was parked. The spare bullets were removed to avoid a negligent discharge, which the Makarov pistol was known to do if dropped on a hard surface. It splashed quietly, muffled by the engine which was revved slightly, somewhere into the bottom of the drain. He closed the door once inside and the car accelerated away with little fuss: no need to draw attention to your self here.
The driver cocked a sideways glance at him, he nodded without speaking, the message delivered. They would drive the vehicle to Scotland and burn it out the following night, adding it to the number of stolen vehicles taken from the streets of Glasgow and wherever, which ended up abandoned in the countryside. He knew the driver well from previous missions and assignments but they exchanged little in conversation. These kinds of missions and the time of evening somehow made conversation pointless - besides they weren't out of the woods yet.
Several hours into the journey, and well outside of London and its' numerous security camera's he sent the photo on the cell phone with the heading "jb dun." A confirmation text was returned confirming and that they were to continue to the rendezvous as planned. It was all going to plan.
"Good to go?" asked the driver, his baseball cap shading his eyes and his jaw showing the stubble of a day or two of not shaving. The Shadow Man nodded his reply, his jaw muscles flexing, a little tension in him now.
"Bugger this for a cup of tea, eh?" the driver muttered poignantly
"Yeah." The Shadow Man replied quietly. The car continued to hum further up the M1 motorway, merging anonymously in amongst the red tail lights of other vehicles making their innocuous journeys north, oblivious to the Shadow Men amongst them.