By A rising fear spiked Alex’s fourth nervous drink with an unpleasant bitterness. It was well past the agreed meeting time, and he had no choice but to wait, and hope. The thin late-night crowd in the dim, elegant bar would not give up its secrets. If any were noting his impatience, if any were suspicious of his purpose, they were doing well to hide it from him. The fourth drink certainly wasn’t helping.
As agreed, the meeting was being held late, in a public but quiet place, and Alex himself was doing his best not to look suspicious. An anonymous someone had been buying him these wonderful drinks, but Alex wondered vaguely if there was an underlying game at play.
Alex was seated at a corner table, back to the wall, as he had seen done in a dozen movies. Lighting was even dimmer here and he suddenly thought he might like to do the whole spy thing full-time. He was great at it.
Slightly blurred vision did its best to focus on the bar’s front door. Alex saw someone walk in with the backpack he had been aching for.
Finally.
The newcomer looked harried and nervous and took a moment to acclimatise to the dim lighting. Once he spotted Alex, quick strides brought him to Alex’s table and he slumped down in a chair opposite. His desert-camouflage backpack was casually lowered under the table, where it came to rest beside an identical one that Alex had already placed there.
“Did you get them?” Alex asked the newcomer with barely controlled impatience and slightly slurred speech.
“Not exactly. Take a look.”
Alex picked up the newcomer’s bag and rifled through the contents. As promised, there were 11 black, ring-bound folders. A quick skim through a couple showed that text on most pages was heavily redacted. Some pages were even partially burnt. Alex didn’t mind, they would do as is.
The newcomer placed his hands firmly on the table and leaned forward, “I’m done, kid, and if you want to see your next birthday, you’ll leave that bag here and never look back. And before you ask, yes, I was followed. And whatever you are doing with this sneaky, identical bags swap thing of yours won’t work. No way I’m taking one with me. They’ll get both anyway. One here and the other when they jump you in the carpark in five minutes.”
“And what if I leave them both here?”
“What?” The newcomer stared daggers at Alex, “I risked my life to steal these for you and you’re going to leave it all?”
Alex flashed a slightly lopsided and feral smile, “Yes, and don’t get too upset, you’ve been well-paid for your inconvenience and your silence. You have your payment. We’re done here.”
The newcomer stood, hesitated a moment and leaned over Alex.
“They are going to kill you, take the bags and destroy whatever little web you are spinning here. I almost wish I was around to see that smug look get cut off your idiotic face, but I plan on being a long way from here when that happens.”
Alex watched the thief leave before discarding him from memory.
Re-opening the new backpack, Alex sorted through the bound volumes and pulled out one with a large number ‘8’ stamped on its spine. He rifled through the folder and took out a couple of key pages, which he then placed on the table before him. New replacement pages, secreted within his jacket, with matching page numbers and lorem ipsum text (some parts redacted) were then inserted in place of the pages he had removed. The folder was then returned to its place in the new backpack.
Alex used his phone to scan the pages on the table. The data was automatically encrypted and uploaded to a secured cloud storage location, before being deleted locally. This act just about completed Alex’s responsibilities to his primary employer.
Finally, Alex could earn a little extra cash on the side. He neatly folded the removed pages and placed them in an envelope, which he then sealed and secreted within his jacket. This he would drop off at a pre-arranged location, where another interested party had use for the information, and cash to pay for it.
One job, two payments. Alex knew he was living the dream.
Satisfied with his work, Alex placed the bag on the ground and casually opened the desert-camouflage backpack he had brought to the meeting. Within, the small bomb sewn into the bag’s lining lay dormant. He awakened it with the flick of a tiny switch. He knew that it’s twin in the other bag had also come to life, after a digital handshake between the explosive siblings.
What he hadn’t counted on was the burst of fine powder that billowed from the bag. Seemingly ejected directly into his face, he gagged on the dirty mist and immediately felt wrong.
Carelessly, Alex threw some notes on the table and staggered from the bar. A few of the remaining patrons watched his unsteady departure but afforded him little sympathy.
Conscious of the thief’s warning, Alex searched frantically but couldn’t see any other interested parties. Through a growing fog in his mind, he wondered where they might secret themselves on an evening such as this. He raised his hands towards the night’s crescent moon overhead and proclaimed his helplessness.
A burning ache surged through Alex’s veins and exploded tenfold throughout his entire body. Sudden convulsions robbed him of mobility and he crashed to the cold ground. Night air felt like shards in his lungs as he drew laboured breaths. An unrelenting numbness touched his extremities.
As if it had been waiting eons for this moment, an entity detached itself from the nearby shadows. It slunk its way to Alex’s prone body and crouched beside him. Up close, Alex knew that his personal demon had arrived.
“Dear oh dear, looks like someone has had a fall. What a shame. Here, let me help you, old lad.” Through his dimming perception, Alex could hear the other’s wicked joy.
Confident hands turned Alex over just enough so that the envelop could be slipped from his jacket. Alex had nothing left to resist with.
The ghostly person departed as silently as he had arrived. Only a dim awareness remained to Alex. It was enough to register that the bar suddenly became much rowdier, despite the late hour and the small number of people present. The explosive siblings had fulfilled their destiny, and Alex finally went to his.
