On The Edge
By Katie (Creative Writing Workshop: RPI)
He had the kind of face that blends into the background, thin and serious, not ugly, and not particularly handsome either. His eyes were brown and unremarkable, partly covered by dark hair, which looked as though it had gone too long without being cut. His nose was straight and thin, his mouth much the same. He had pale skin, smooth and cleanly shaven. The woman watching him from across the small, grimy café noted all of this, trying to commit the face to memory. She had a knack for remembering faces. She bought a cup of coffee, and then deliberately made her way across the crowded room. It was lucky, she mused, that one of the only empty chairs in the place was at his table. He looked up as she approached, and a look that could have been surprise passed over his face, and then was gone.
“Is it all right if I sit?” she asked softly. He didn’t say anything, simply gave a slight nod. She sat, and sipped her drink while continuing to look at him over the rim of her mug. It was worth buying such terrible coffee, she decided, if it meant getting an opportunity like this. The setup was ideal.
Neither person attempted to make conversation. Instead, they sat this way, with her watching, him, and him studiously ignoring her. He was eating a plate of scrambled eggs, and as she stared, he seemed to be rushing to finish, almost as though she was making him nervous. I suppose he should be nervous, she thought. Any rational person would be. Almost as though he knew what she was thinking, he glanced up for a split second, as if he couldn’t help it. Their eyes met, and in that moment, she knew that this was her man, and she knew that she had him.
He looked away almost instantly, and quietly called for the waiter to bring the check, though his plate was still half full. Hiding a triumphant smile, she got up from the table, having already paid for her drink. She felt his eyes on her back as she walked away. He would be confused, she knew. He didn’t know why she was leaving. This was the moment she lived for. The moment when the trap was almost set, when the game was nearly played out. He would never know what hit him.
The café was situated in such a way that the front door led into a narrow walkway, little more than an alley, which led to the street. Buildings rose up on either side, heavily shadowing the path. It was easy to become invisible in this place. Pressing her back into the cold brick wall in the shadow of an overflowing trash bin, she waited for her mark to come into sight. She fingered the long thin blade in her pocket. Many of the people in her profession preferred a gun, but she had always liked a knife. It seemed more elegant, less messy to her.
She saw his shadow on the wall, then. He was walking quickly, worriedly, not knowing where she had gone. The breath caught in her throat, her heart pounding with excitement. In this moment, this high that she got before the deed was done, she forgot everything else. Right and wrong blurred together, and all she saw was this instant, her personal moment of power, the moment where she would win. The shadow came closer, and she waited.
***
The assignment had been easy, really, she thought. There hadn’t been much in the way of subtle warfare, no deception, no tracking. Her mark had practically been in plain sight. All she’d had to do was pinpoint him. It was hardly satisfying. She preferred the games that were more complex, the ones that required stakeouts at three in the morning, mapped out plans, and possibly a break-in. Once they even had to burn down an entire building. But on the easy cases, when her mind wasn’t occupied, and when she quickly became bored, she didn’t know what to do with herself. It was like this: without a purpose, what good was she? She might as well not even exist.
***
She made good time getting back to headquarters. The incessant rain had let up for a moment, and there were even a few weak rays of sunshine showing through the clouds. It was always raining in London, but the winter was especially bad. In the short time that she had been living in this city, she had almost forgotten what a sunny day felt like.
Her destination was on the edge of the city, in the middle of a row of warehouses. The buildings were mostly abandoned, so the entire area was quiet and still. Headquarters was a low building, made of dirty gray brick with blacked out windows. It had been picked specifically to be inconspicuous, and to keep up this appearance, she was required to park a few blocks away every time she came here. Inside, the building was dimly lit, but was furnished nicely, especially considering the way it looked from the outside. Three doors down on the main hallway, she stopped and knocked. From inside, as, always, he took a moment to answer. She waited patiently until she heard “Come in,” in his quiet, firm voice. Opening the door to a more brightly lit room, she focused on the man behind the desk against the far wall. Henry, with his round glasses perched on his nose, his rough hands folded in front of him on the desk. He was not an old man, Henry, and with his light hair and eyes, and easy smile, he could have even been called handsome. But to her, he had always seemed tired, and the fine lines around his eyes and mouth had always made her think of him as elderly.
“Antonia,” he said, nodding in greeting. There was a question in his eyes. “Did you…?”
“The man is dead, yes,” she told him. “Here is your information.” She handed him back the manila folder of photos and statistics that he had given her to help find the target.
Henry was smiling. “I can’t tell you,” he said, taking the folder, “how much easier you made things for us. That man was being exceedingly troublesome. If we hadn’t taken care of him, well…” Henry shook his head, chuckling to himself. He patted Antonia fondly on the arm. “You’ve done well.”
She cleared her throat “Henry,” she said, “If you don’t mind me asking, what had he done? Why was he such a problem to you?”
Henry regarded her with some curiosity. “That doesn’t matter, does it? All you really need to know, I think, is that he was an issue, and now he’s out of the picture. Simple as that.”
She nodded curtly. “Whatever you say.”
“Glad to hear it,” Henry had turned back to business matters. He rummaged in one of his desk drawers for a moment, and produced another folder. “This is your next mark. Now, I should warn you, the information is a bit spotty on this one. It’ll require more work, more time.”
She could have laughed out loud. “That’s fine.” She told Henry, giving him a tight smile. Unlike him, she was not one to express any kind of joy out loud. Taking the file, she nodded at Henry, turned quickly, and left the building.
It had started raining again, and she tucked the folder under her coat to keep it dry. She didn’t look inside until she had gotten back to the car. Once she had sat down and shut the door, she opened it and quickly thumbed through all the pieces of information. The new mark was a man, as most of them were. His name was Benjamin Cormac. She skimmed through the contents methodically until she came to the picture. Then she stopped. The target was, she thought, awfully young. He had a nice face, blue eyed and with a cheerful smile. Dark curly hair fell to his eyebrows, and there was a sprinkling of freckles across his nose. She flipped through more of the information. He was twenty three, and he was living alone in England. His mother lived in Scotland, and his father was deceased. He had a sister, too. She was younger and still living with her mother. This was always the hardest part of the job, the families. She always tried to forget them, tried to forget that her target was a son, a husband, a brother, a father. Forgetting was the only thing that let her keep doing her job.
Her job. She leaned back in the seat. She had never planned on becoming a professional killer. It had sort of happened by accident; happened, really, because she made too many mistakes. She had gotten involved with Henry and the rest of the organization about eight months ago. It was soon after she had moved to England, and she had been working as a waitress at the time. One day when she was at work, at about eight o’clock at night, a young man came in. He sat at the counter, on the third stool from the end, the one with the wobbly leg. He ordered a coffee, milk, with no sugar. She could remember it vividly, like it was yesterday. He was charming, he really was. When she brought him the coffee, he told her that he liked her accent, asked where she was from. She told him Italy, and explained how she had lived in Verona for almost all of her life. He smiled at that. His name was Mario, and he told her that he had been named for his Italian grandfather. He stayed until her shift ended that night, talking to her as she cleared dishes and wiped off the chipped tiled tables. At eleven o’clock, as she was hanging up her apron in the little back closet and getting her jacket, he asked her on a date. They went out the next night, to a restaurant that was considerably nicer than the one where she worked. He made her laugh, and told her that she was, in fact, about the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. He drove her home in his car, to the apartment in Tothill Street where she had lived at the time. He walked her to the front door, kissed her goodnight, and then drove away. The next afternoon, he called. It was a Sunday, and she wasn’t working. He said he was coming over, and she didn’t see why not. He arrived at about three o’clock, and knocked on the door of her apartment. When she let him in he kissed her on the cheek. She could still picture him sitting on her beige couch, right next to the light stain from when orange juice had spilled on it. He was directly under the little window, and the blue linen curtain fell to just above his head. She sat with him for a while, leaning into his shoulder a bit. He kept putting his hand on her leg, and sliding it up her thigh. Twice, she nudged it off. The third time this happened, he became more insistent. He grabbed the front of her shirt, and kissed her roughly. Taken by surprise, she swung at him, her fist glancing off his shoulder. She remembered the look that he had on his face then. It was wild, angry. He yelled at her, and called her a bitch, among other things. She backed up, into the kitchen. He followed, telling her not to walk away from him. He hit her then, in the stomach, and then across the face. She didn’t fall. He took her by the shoulders, and pushed her backward. She remembered exactly how tightly his hands were gripping her, how the countertop was digging into her back. Then he spit in her face. She put her head down, and her hand, resting on the counter behind her, brushed against the knife block.
“How do you feel now?” he asked her, his voice a growl, “Are you still too good? Are you above the rest of us?”
Her hand closed around one of the knives. It was a big butcher knife, probably the sharpest one she had. It was hefty. She remembered the weight of it in her hand.
“ANSWER ME!” he screamed suddenly. “WHATS WRONG WITH YOU, ARE YOU TOO STUPID? ANSWER ME!”
She swung the knife then, driving it under his ribs on the left side. He seemed to choke, and he froze for a moment. Then he fell, slowly, it seemed, and when he lay on her white tiled kitchen floor, making choking noises, she smiled at him. Then she bent down, and spit in his face.
She left his body in the kitchen for the rest of the day. At about three o’clock in the morning, she wrapped it in a bed sheet, and then half rolled, half dragged it down the stairs of the apartment. She brought the body outside, and heaved it into the trunk of her car. Then she drove about half a kilometer to the bank of the Thames River, lugged his body back out of the trunk, and dumped it into the river.
Two days later, the police showed up at her door. She supposed that she should have expected it. They had footage from the security camera at the front of her building of Mario entering around three, and her dragging out something wrapped in a sheet hours later. It didn’t take much for them to know what had happened.
They took her to the London Probation Area Prisons and locked her alone in a cell there. She wasn’t sorry for killing Mario, that much she knew for a fact. She was uneasy, though, about the moment he had died. When he fell back on her floor, his blood peppering the white tiles, all she had felt was a fierce kind of joy, a rush of adrenaline and ecstasy all through her being. She was a murderer; she had come to terms with that. She had never planned it, but maybe, she thought, maybe there was no fighting it.
Prison lasted for two weeks. One day, at about noon, a man showed up at the door to her cell. It was Henry, although she hadn’t known it at the time. He introduced himself as Agent Tremaine, and told her that he was a part of MI5, the security service of the UK. He said that they could use her in a project, and that if she went with him, she would serve no sentence. She went with him.
He took her to a dark gray car parked at the side of the prison, and she sat in the back seat while he drove. Neither person said a word for the entire drive. He took her to a place that he called the Thames House. He explained, as they walked in, that this place was the national headquarters of MI5. He also told her that she should keep her head down, and not to talk unless he asked her to.
She remembered that he had led her through a dizzying number of corridors and long staircases. By the time they had stopped at an unmarked door, she was feeling disoriented and sick. She remembered how Henry had pulled her into the room, firmly gripping her upper arm. Inside, there was a man behind a big metal desk. She never learned his name, but remembered exactly how he had looked, a little man, with receding reddish hair and a pinched-looking face. He had been wearing a blue dress shirt with a dark tie, and no jacket. She never saw below his waist, because he sat at the desk the entire time.
That man knew all about her. He knew that her name was Antonia Minucci, she was twenty two, and she had only lived in England for about two months. He told her that this was an unusual circumstance, considering her age and gender, but they were in need of her specific talents. They wanted her to kill people for them. Apparently, the way she had taken care of Mario was impressive, and as a woman, she would be a much more subtle and effective assassin.
“So what do you say?” asked the man behind the desk. She hesitated, but remembered that joy she had felt looking at Mario with her knife in his side. She cleared her throat.
“Yes,” She said, looking the man straight in the eye, “I accept.”
Since that day, she had killed more men than she could keep track of. She was never told why they had to die, only that by getting rid of them, she was playing a vital role in their branch of the government. She was never told exactly what branch that was either, only that it was a part of MI5. The entire thing was exceedingly secretive, and she was under strict orders not to mention any part of it to a single person. Aside from this, she had heard the term “black ops” used now and then in regards to the organization, but she didn’t have more than a vague idea of what it meant. In any case, she figured that her occupation was not part of a widely known government project.
***
As Henry had warned, there wasn’t a lot of information in the file to work from. An address was given to a place on Stafford Street, and a grainy photo of a small apartment building was included. It was also noted that the target was supposed to be attending a formal event the following night, although confirmation of this was needed. Aside from the background and family information and a few more details about the party, this was all that was in the folder.
Antonia allowed herself a small smile. It was excellent, really; she would have to put some effort into this operation. She would be able to keep her mind busy, enough that any misgivings she had would be forgotten. She glanced back at the picture of the target for a moment, her pleasure fading briefly. It would be quick, she told herself. It was just another target. She had done this dozens of times before. She tucked the picture into the back of the file and started her car, heading toward Stafford Street.
She was planning on going to his apartment first. She had to verify that he would be going to the party the next night, and it was always good to get a feel for the layout of the building. She parked about a block from the building, and pulled a few items out of her glove compartment. She often had to change her appearance a bit, depending on what she was trying to accomplish. Today, she was a charity event coordinator. She put on a pair of round-framed glasses, and tucked her hair under a gray knit cap. After switching her heels for rain boots and tucking a clipboard and fake flyers under her arm, she was ready. She had his apartment number, and according to her file, he should have gotten home about a half hour ago. Inside, she walked through the narrow hallways quickly, smiling at the few people she saw. His apartment was on the second floor, and his door was in the exact center of the hallway. She knocked four times, and she heard a voice call from inside. It sounded like he yelled “Hang on,” but the sound was muffled. About a minute later, he opened the door.
“Hi,” he said, smiling in greeting. The smile he gave Antonia now was as nice as the one in the picture. “Sorry about that. I only just got home a minute ago. A road was flooded on my way home from work, and traffic was backed up pretty badly. I got a little wet actually, since…” he had noticed how intently she was looking at him. “So, ah… how can I help you?”
His face just looked so open, she thought. She could see that he trusted her completely. He didn’t know who she was, and yet he trusted her. She noticed that there was a drop of water clinging to a dark curl above his left eye. It caught the light for a moment, then fell, sliding down his cheekbone. His hand come up and wiped it away, then moved to his collar, which he tugged at for a moment. He had damp spots on the shoulders of his shirt, and a few buttons at the neck were undone, his tie hanging loosely.
She cleared her throat. “Hi, yes. My name is Beth O’Brien, and I work to help shelter the homeless people of London. My organization is holding a benefit dinner tomorrow night at seven o’clock, and we’ve been working to get people aware of our cause. Would you be interested in attending?”
He was shaking his head, which was exactly what she had hoped for. “I’m sorry, but I won’t be able to come. There’s an event tomorrow night that my boss is arranging, and I really should be there. Maybe if-“
Antonia had pasted a polite smile on her face. “No problem sir. Thank you for your time.” He smiled at her again, and turned to go back inside. She walked away quickly. Breathing deeply, the image of his smile still in her mind, she tried to clear her head. A few more days, that was all it would take. She would be done with this assignment then. She could move on to something easier, something less complicated. She shook her head sharply, a few strands of dark hair escaping from her hat, and she forced his smile out of her thoughts.
***
The party the following night was to be her point of entry, so to speak. She needed a chance to get familiar with the mark. Not so much to know him personally, but to learn his behaviors, his habits. She needed to know where she could find him, and there was no better way to do it than with charming words and a few glasses of champagne. Her means of being let into the event had already been put in place. A guest named Alice Lloyd had been paid handsomely for her invitation and the use of her name for the night, and paid even more to forget that the entire thing happened. Antonia would be Alice Lloyd tomorrow night, and the man named Benjamin Cormac would be in deep trouble.
It was getting towards six o’clock as she drove back to her apartment. The sky was darkening, and traffic was slow. It looked like the subject –she refused to think of him by his name, because in her eyes, that would be like acknowledging that he was a real person- had been right about the flooded road. It was going to be a long ride.
She didn’t get back to her apartment until it was totally dark outside. To add to her irritation, she’d had to park four blocks away from the building. By the time she had arrived, tired and with sore feet, the lights had already been turned off in the lobby. She groped around in the dark for the elevator, hopefully punching the button a few times. After a minute of waiting, she heaved a sigh and headed for the stairs. That elevator seldom worked, she herself had only been able to use it once in the time that she had lived in the building. Nevertheless, she always tried the button, hoping she would get lucky. She took off her shoes as she climbed the stairs, her damp stockings leaving marks on the wood. Her apartment was on the third floor, and her feet were beginning to hurt in earnest as she reached the last flight of stairs.
She had never liked this building much. It had an odd smell, like dust and mold and dog, especially when it rained. The floorboards creaked so loud that they could actually wake a person at night, and the walls were too thin, so you could hear every argument from the neighbors. She probably could have afforded nicer, but this was convenient, at least. It wasn’t far from headquarters, and was a reasonable distance from the heart of the city, so it was easy to keep an eye on most of the targets she was given. She hadn’t wanted a place that was too nice anyway. Get too attached, and it was hard to leave, and that tended to be a possibility in her line of work. No, it was better to just have a place to stay; a temporary dwelling. It wasn’t wise to have a home.
***
She started to get ready for the dinner at four o’clock. It wasn’t set to start until six, but she had always liked to be well prepared. All throughout the day she had been feeling troubled. It was irrational, she told herself. This was just another job. It could be any job. She tried to focus on her objectives. Tonight, she was not Antonia Minucci; she was not a suspicious presence in any way. She would be Alice Lloyd through and through. She would be the pretty young woman with the dark hair pulled back from her face, tall and slender and mysterious with her olive skin and large eyes. She would capture her subject with charm and alcohol, and if it turned out that it was necessary for her to end it more quickly, she thought grimly, sliding a thigh sheath up her leg and strapping her thinnest knife into it, then she would be ready for that too.
The dinner was being held at a large building on Thirleby Road, near Westminster Cathedral. Her first view of the room, stepping inside, was one of women in jewel bright dresses, mingling with men in dark suits. Food and drinks were on tables along the walls, like a buffet, and a few people were just beginning to cluster around to fill their glasses with champagne. The room was lit with softly glowing lamps, giving the space a pleasant gold warmth. Crystals seemed to drip from every surface, and sparkled as they caught the light like drops of water.
Antonia blended in well here. She had perfected her ability to walk as elegantly as any high class lady, and with her dark red dress and hair twisted back sleekly, she melted into the crowd, not being given a second glance. She held a glass of champagne, but didn’t drink it. She needed to be able to focus completely on her job tonight. Picking her way through the crowd, she kept her eyes open for her mark. She spotted him near one of the long buffet tables. He was alone and was taking quick sips of champagne. He looked uncomfortable, she thought. Maybe he didn’t normally spend time with high society people.
She stood beside him for a moment, letting him notice that she was there. When she felt his eyes on her, she turned and smiled. “Hi,” she said brightly, “how are you enjoying the party?”
He considered her question for a moment. “It’s great,” he said, and hesitated. “I don’t really go to these things much, though. I haven’t got a clue what I’m doing.”
She laughed, “Me either. I’m glad I found someone else who doesn’t know which forks to use. I’m Alice Lloyd, by the way.” She held out her hand.
“Ben Cormac. I’m glad I met you, Alice.” He shook her hand, giving her that damn smile. His hand was warm. She found him easy to talk to; she enjoyed it, even. She told herself again and again that this was just the purpose of her going to the party. She really did have to find out more about him. It didn’t matter. Even if she hadn’t needed information, she would have talked to him. She liked watching him as he explained something, the earnest expression he would get on his face, and the big gestures he would make with his hands to emphasize some point. She liked the curl that sometimes fell over his eye, and she liked the way his face lit up when she said something funny. She found herself leaving behind the carefully constructed façade of Alice Lloyd, and becoming Antonia again, in a way that she hadn’t been in months. Her laughs and smiles were genuine, and in this moment, she felt blissfully happy.
When he excused himself some time later to go the bathroom, she leaned against the wall, feeling overwhelmed. This wasn’t working. She was becoming fond of her target, and that was enough to ruin the entire operation. She took a deep breath, pressing her hands to the sides of her head for a moment. She felt like she was walking on the very edge of a cliff. It would only take one push to send her over the side, and she didn’t know what she would hit at the bottom. This man, Ben Cormac, might be that push. She felt a sudden wave of nausea, and resisted the urge to slide onto the floor. She had to end this now, she decided, ignoring the sharp stab of some feeling she couldn’t quite identify. She had no choice; it would only get harder if she waited. She felt for her knife, concealed under the long dress that she wore. Then she stood still, waiting for him to come back, and praying to God that he wouldn’t.
