In The End

By tiggy
- 625 reads
She turned the corner, and there he was again, only a few feet ahead
of her. She dropped back a bit, anxious for him not to see her. For
some reason he had slowed down, and she did the same. She busied
herself by looking at some magazines at a newsstand until he had moved
on. He had not turned around.
Slowly, at the same speed as him, she kept walking. He was being
remarkably relaxed, walking along with his hands in his pockets,
seeming in no hurry to get where he was going, and she envied him for
that. She, on the other hand, was very nervous despite the fact that
this was by no means her first time. It was her job and she had never
in all those years wasted a thought on questions of moral principles.
She did what she was told to do, no more, no less. It was dangerous,
but it paid well. That did not change the fact that on every job, the
butterflies in her stomach just about killed her.
It didn't matter. Nothing mattered. She was here to do a job and she
would see it through.
She crossed the road and started walking faster. She knew exactly where
he was going. She passed the building, crossed the road again and
turned around, walking towards him and meeting him right outside the
door. Perfect, like she had planned. He opened the door and stepped
back to let her enter first. She smiled noncommittally and mouthed a
Thank-you. At the reception desk she flashed her fake ID at the
security guard. Her heart was racing as she walked through the metal
detector, her mouth was dry and she was working hard to keep her eyes
straight ahead, not to look at the guard, and just keep walking.
The alarm did not go off. She took a deep breath and immediately cursed
herself. The last thing she wanted to do was draw attention to herself.
Adam had said that he had disabled the metal detector, and there was no
reason for her not to trust him. Still, knowing that she had got
through made her feel like she had passed one of the many hurdles she
would have to pass.
The security guard barely noticed her. "Good morning, Dr Filby," she
heard him say to the man she had been following. Filby mumbled a reply.
She opened her handbag for the guard to check and reminded herself not
to look at him. The guard took a few seconds to examine the contents of
her bag before he nodded at her and turned his attention to Filby's
briefcase.
She pretended to look for something in her bag until she was sure that
the guard had finished with Filby's case, then she walked over to the
lifts and pressed the button. Filby stood beside her. She stepped back
a little to get a better look at him. He was in his 50s, grey haired
and tired looking. His suit was crumpled and he needed a shave. He
looked like the stereotype genius scientist. She suppressed the urge to
smile and reminded herself that this was just a job. What Filby looked
like made no difference.
The doors to the lift opened and they stepped inside. Filby looked at
her questioningly, his hand hovering over the controls. "Seven,
please," she whispered, choosing the floor that his office was on.
Filby pressed the button and turned to face the door. She could feel
her heart racing and blood shooting to her face. She took the
dismantled gun out of her coat pockets and began assembling it without
a sound behind his back. Her hands did the job without her having to
take her eyes off Filby. It only took a few seconds. By the time the
lift had reached the seventh floor the assembled gun had disappeared in
her handbag.
Filby stepped out of the lift and walked to the door of his office. She
passed him as he punched the security code in, and despite her already
knowing the code she could not stop herself from looking. 5772, just
like Adam had said. She had no reason not to trust Adam, after all he
had disabled the metal detector perfectly, but having this added bit of
security calmed her nerves a little. She walked to the end of the
corridor until she could hear the door close behind Filby, then she
turned around and walked back to his office.
She stood outside his office and started counting. Waiting was the most
difficult part of the job for her. It was an old habit of hers to break
each job down into little bits, thus enabling her to tick off part of
the job as she went along, making it feel less daunting, less nerve
racking. She had been able to tick off four stages so far. She had
started to follow Filby at the exact time and place that Adam had told
her. Her ID had been accepted, the metal detector had not sounded the
alarm and she had assembled the gun. As an added bonus she had been
able to verify the pass code for the door. The next stage was to wait
for Filby to follow his normal routine until he had opened the safe in
his office.
She counted to 60, knowing through experience that exactly one minute
had passed, and started counting again. There was an outside chance
that somebody would come along this corridor and ask her what she was
doing, so just in case she bent down and spread some of the contents of
her handbag over the floor, pretending to have dropped it. Slowly she
gathered everything back into her bag. She counted down five minutes,
punched the security code in the keypad and silently opened the
door.
Filby had his back to her. He stood in front of the open safe holding a
bundle of papers in his hand. She pushed the door shut, took the gun
out off her bag and walked up behind him without making a sound. When
she stood only a few feet away from him she waited. Eventually he
turned around.
"What the..." Filby started, but the sight of the gun pointed straight
at him made him leave his sentence unfinished. He stared at her and she
could see sheer terror in his eyes. She motioned with the gun for him
to step away from the safe. There was an alarm button inside the safe
and one under his desk, Adam had told her, so she directed Filby away
from both. After a moment's consideration, Filby shuffled towards one
of the visitor chairs and sat down. Without taking her eyes off him she
walked to the safe.
"Don't do this," Filby managed to say, and let out a frightened little
shriek when she glared at him. He raised his hands in the universal
gesture of surrender. "Please," he whispered. "You don't know what you
are doing. If you take my research..."
"Shut up," she said. Her voice was calm and unemotional despite the
fact that she was so tense she was nearly shaking. She kept the gun
pointing at him while she checked the contents of the safe. She took
some tapes and a few disks. The papers where missing. She turned to
Filby. "Where are the papers?" she asked. He did not answer and a look
of defiance came over his face. Impatiently she waved the gun. "I can
make this slow and painful, or you can just tell me where they are,"
she said. He swallowed hard. He was not a brave man, and she was almost
disgusted with his fear when he passed her the papers he was holding
with shaking hands. She scanned them to make sure that this was all she
needed. When she was satisfied she aimed her gun at Filby's head and
pulled the trigger.
Almost soundlessly the bullet hit his forehead and Filby collapsed back
into the seat he was sitting on. She did not waste another moment on
the dead scientist. She checked Filby's clock and found she was exactly
on time. Quickly she took a padded envelope from Filby's desk drawer,
addressed it as Adam had told her and put Filby's research inside. She
took the gun apart and put it back in her coat pockets, then she
grabbed the envelope and her handbag and left the office. Outside she
checked the time again, hoping that the post van was not going to be
early. While she was waiting for the lift she started counting again,
trying not to appear impatient. She took the lift to the basement and
had a brief anxiety attack when she could not see the van in the
designated parking bay. Then she saw it parked closer to the exit. She
forced herself to walk rather than run.
"Excuse me? I'm so glad I caught you," she said to the van driver. "Dr
Filby asked me to drop this down to you. I thought I had missed you!
I'm not too late for you to take this, am I?" She managed a smile, and
the fact that it was a little shaky made her story only more
believable.
The van driver smiled back and took the envelope. "'Course not," he
said and winked at her.
She sighed. "Thank you so much," she whispered.
She took the lift back up to the ground floor and handed her bag to the
security guard to check. Thinking how the scientist's research had left
the building two minutes before, she barely managed to suppress a
smile. She walked past the useless metal detector and out the front
door. Outside she turned the opposite direction to the one she had come
from earlier, went to the nearest underground station and made her way
back to her apartment using a mixture of public transport and cabs.
When she got home she took her wig and her glasses off and stuffed them
into a carrier bag. At the next opportunity she would dispose of
them.
Sitting down with a cup of tea she phoned Adam. "Did it go all right?"
he wanted to know. "Nerves got you again?"
"Doesn't matter," she said. "In the end, a job is a job. Nothing
matters."
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