by Cole Reid
There was the possibility the assassin wanted to get her out of the room. But it only made sense if he was waiting for her when she came back. She thought of one more place he could hide, the balcony. The truth was it didn’t seem likely. The reality was it did. Government assassins held different status than hired hitmen. The kill was more important than the cover. A hired gun wouldn’t hideout on the balcony. The risk of being noticed outweighed the risk of not making the kill. The hitman wasn’t so concerned about this job. He had his mind on the next job and the one after that. It was what he referred to as a career. Careers were defined by longevity, especially for hitmen. There were so many factors that could end his career. Being identified was worse than being killed. It could end a career without ending a life. He had to live with the consequences. But government assassins were different. They could kill and do it out in the open. If a Soviet KGB operative was following Georgia, he could kill her with a witness. He might even kill the witness. As long as he could get back on the other side of the Iron Curtain, he could leave his worries in the Western Bloc, just another wet job. If anyone, that would be the identity of the assassin—a Soviet wetworks operative. And he was good. Good enough to take the Agency’s good cards off the table. Georgia could imagine a Soviet assassin sitting on her balcony drinking black tea until he heard someone enter the room. Only then would he activate. Moscow planned ahead. That was the nature of a planned society. It gave the Soviets the balls to plan ahead into an uncertain future. It worked with a static economy. The Agency did everything in models and statistics. The models were never wrong. It only made a difference what the assumptions were. Georgia assumed a silent Soviet was waiting on the other side of the sliding glass. She got low on her knees then stomach. She crawled toward the glass door leading out to the balcony. She raised her arm and her body to unlock the door. She cracked the door wedging her fingers in it. She slid the door to the right giving herself a clear shot. She waited. No one came toward the door. Georgia waited out the assassin. She felt Soviets were patient. Americans were not. If that was meant to give the assassin an advantage, Georgia considered her British passport for the time being. It wasn’t patience but English manners that made her wait. She did her assassin a courtesy. She let him make the first move. His move took a long time. Looking at her watch, Georgia saw fifteen minutes had gone. She had been waiting awhile. Either the assassin was being more courteous to her or he was still not finished with his black tea.
Georgia stayed low and crawled out on the balcony squeezing her shoulders through the door sideways. She kept her Browning by her hip so it couldn’t be knocked away. She turned her head right and left and almost slid herself back inside, until she realized there was nothing to draw herself away from. The balcony was empty. Georgia went inside and sat down on the bed. Something she was running out of suddenly came in full supply, time. It was the time she had allotted for talking to Hagan. That conversation was supposed to color in all the gray areas. But it didn’t erase the gray shades. It erased the things she thought she knew. That conversation wasn’t going to happen now. The time had to be repurposed. That was the Agency talking, not Georgia. She had to set a new objective and start moving steadily toward it. Moving forward wasn’t the issue. Which way is forward was. Coming to Le Havre only made sense to meet Hagan. She had convinced herself of the added safety of being brought up to speed. Hagan clearly knew more than she did. He knew the others were dead. She knew about Patrick only.
Georgia’s youth began to play with her. At 24, she simply lacked the experience to directly cope with her own situation. She was highly trained but not highly taught. The Agency gave her the best preparation it could. But there were still those life lessons. The ones she had been warned about not only by the Agency. Her mother had warned her as well. Her father had left the topic alone thinking it unfair to have a baby too forewarned, afraid of the future. She was afraid now. She had made all the steps she could think to make. She did one desperate thing to make it seem as if she was still focused. She looked under the bed. The bed was too low for a body to be under. She did it to make herself think she still knew what was going on. Her eyes got wet. She didn’t do anything about it. She let the moisture run. Her mind did the same thing. Her mind pointed something out to her, an inconsistency. Le Simple had been closed for a while. The floor was clear and the window had the for rent sign. It looked more abandoned than just shutdown. That look took time to manage, like the difference between old actors and actors made to look old. You always knew the difference. If Hagan chose Le Simple as a meeting point, he knew the restaurant was closed when he chose it. If that was true, then it wasn’t a meeting spot at all. And Hagan didn’t plan to meet Georgia. It only made sense if Hagan planned to kill her. Put her on the spot. Take the shot. It was a really good idea. She would be dead in the street and he could be far away. He could retire and put Xs over the eyes of the Queen of Spades. Georgia found the idea intriguing. Even though it involved killing her. She was still young. Her death, to her, always seemed a long way off. It had to intrigue her. She was a dying breed, being hunted by her own species. But she wasn’t dead, which made intriguing the word for it. Surviving was her responsibility.
She wasn’t going to stay the night. Not because it was protocol but because the whole timeline was overwhelming. It was bigger than anything she could think of because she couldn’t think of anything. It didn’t matter how smart she was. She’d be dead before she understood what was happening. She followed the line. The line belonged to the Director. When the operation is reduced to an unfamiliar timeline, reduce the operation. It came to mind when it came true. Georgia wasn’t thinking about the timeline in particular but the only thing she could do was wait. If Hagan had killed the others, he would eventually come for her. If a different assassin had killed the others and Hagan, he would come for her also.
Georgia went to the front desk to cancel her reservation for the second night. A dark-haired woman with short hair was behind the desk. Georgia’s mind moved quicker than her mouth.
“I need to cancel my reservation for tomorrow night,” said Georgia.
“Under what name?” asked the dark-haired woman. Georgia didn’t say anything. But she had an idea that said something.
“Actually, the company might need me here for one more day,” said Georgia, “I’ll stay.”
“Very well, Madame,” said the dark-haired woman.
It wasn’t error correction or a change of mind. It was a strategy. Perhaps her assassin was scouting. It had never left her mind that, maybe, she didn’t know the identity of the assassin. It was still possible that she had been lured to the spot in front of Le Simple for identification. It was the occupational hazard of hitmen, a positive ID. If the killer was a KGB wetman, he had to see what she looked like. Perhaps it wasn’t the plan to gun her down in the street. It made more sense to kill her in her sleep. It wouldn’t look like a kill. Her death would send a signal to the Agency without signaling anyone else. Her body in the street would send signals in all directions.
She played against the idea. Her strategy was to keep her room to see if anyone came calling. She wouldn’t answer. She was headed back to Paris. But she would call the hotel to see if someone had asked for her. For the plan to work, she had to get out of Le Havre and being seen on the street would tip her hand. She asked the dark-haired woman to call her a taxi. The train station was five and a half blocks away. The cab ride took just under two minutes. It would have been under one minute but the taxi driver had to drive away from the train station to make a U-turn before heading back. Georgia tipped but not big. Not tipping would have pissed off a Le Havre cabbie. The economy was rough enough and to call a cab for a five-block fare was almost a waste of time. But tipping big would have been a talking point. Talking points were breadcrumbs. The assassin on her tail could be anyone. It didn’t have to be a direct agent of the KGB. It could be a KGB operative who was actually French. It could be a French official, a policeman or mil
itary. Such an assassin could follow her easily. He would find her just by asking. Having an official ID, and a way with people would make her trail that much more warm. She made it as cold as she could. Her youth urged her to put on her sunglasses to hide her face. The Director’s words came back to her. We don’t hide, we hide in plain sight. Georgia and the others spent months training in the distinction. Covering her face was hiding, walking at a normal pace and speaking French with no accent was hiding in plain sight. She didn’t need ID to purchase a train ticket but she needed French. Un billet à Paris was all she had to say. A ticket to Paris. She paid and went to the platform. It was forty minutes before the departure of the train, on the same rail line that brought her to Le Havre. She waited like any would-be traveler. She didn’t stare at her watch. She looked at it periodically. She withdrew into her book, the same one that helped her hide her Browning. On her way back to Paris, her Browning was in her purse. The safety was on but one round was ready. She didn’t travel first class this time around. There were more travellers in second class. It made her more normal. She stood out less. And she wasn’t worried about her Browning. She wasn’t planning on having her baggage checked but she wanted her Browning already assembled. The need to protect herself outweighed the risk of being discovered with a firearm. She halfway planned on bringing her firearm out into the open. If the time came, she would be the one standing over a bleeding body, not the other way around. Dying to protect her cover made no sense in France or anywhere else. If her identity as an American agent came to light, the light provided a lot of avenues. She would be taken into custody and possibly deported. An exchange between the two governments could be set up or she could simply go to prison. But she would live.
As the train worked against its own weight to build momentum, Georgia thought of herself. She was in the same way as the train, pulling weight. If the assassin had gotten to Hagan, before he had a chance to meet her, then she was the last card on the table. The idea was heavy. Without talking to the Director, she understood she wasn’t just responsible for investigating Patrick’s death. She would have to stand for the rest of the Peers, find out what was happening to all of them. It was more than she was trained to handle. But it had to be handled. And she couldn’t do it on her own. Operating out of a hotel room or temporary shelter wasn’t good enough. She had to go back to Paris. There was no other place for her to be at that point. But she didn’t ride back to Paris alone. The characters rode with her. The KGB assassin. Hagan. An unknown killer. They were all taking turns at the forefront in her mind. The trip back to Paris took less time than the trip to Le Harve. She couldn’t decide on a scenario. The scenarios seemed unlikely the more she tried to settle on one.
•••
Paris looked bigger than when she left it. Gare Saint-Lazare was a monument. She never took time to truly see it. But now she was seeing it. The design of the building said it was Parisian and it was public. All public buildings in Paris had the similar handsome-faced façade. It looked like a transplanted piece of La Conciergerie, the large city palace four kilometers away. La Conciergerie had been the Capitol of the Reign of Terror in Paris. Like many public buildings, La Conciergerie was mixed-use. It had been used as a palace and banquet hall for Frankish monarchs. It also had its own prison, dungeons and death row—waiting rooms for the Guillotine. Marie-Antoinette was imprisoned in La Conciergerie, writing and waiting to be beheaded. Georgia knew the history. Her mother made sure of that. Although British, Georgia’s mother had French roots. The family rumor mill held them as French aristocracy who fled to Britain before the onset of the Revolution. Her mother had always said history, especially family history, was everywhere and in everything. Georgia felt a wild-minded sympathy for Marie-Antoinette. She also felt trapped in a cell waiting to be executed. The world seemed incomprehensibly big when ready to be left behind. The city wasn’t even twenty-four hours older but had a disproportionate growth spurt. A business as simple as a shoe shop seemed vast and complicated. The feeling wasn’t that of being overwhelmed. It felt more like being outnumbered. There were too many moving parts. The movement of people and cars combined with the movement in her mind. There was too much motion for her to settle herself. She took a taxi back to her second floor apartment on Rue Monsieur-le-Prince.
It was quiet when she walked in. Although she lived alone, she expected noise. It was part of the movement she felt from one ear to the other. The thought crossed her mind to take her Browning from her purse and canvas her apartment. Her instinct told her she was alone. But the apartment was 140 square meters. She had to check it. It wouldn’t take long and it was more necessary than not, the Peers were going extinct. She cased the main area and the kitchen in one swoop. She walked toward the bedroom with her heels ringing across the tile flooring. Her Browning wasn’t held straight out in front of her. It would make it easier for her to be disarmed by a surprise intruder. She had her gun nestled against her hip in her right hand, muzzle pointed forward. Her right finger was positioned to squeeze the trigger when necessary. Her left arm was folded across her waist on top of the gun casing to steady her aim. Her positioning was similar to a gun duel in the Old West. Instead of taking ten paces away from her intended target, she was slowly stepping toward it. Her left arm was strung across her body in case of a close assault. She could push off her attacker with her left arm to create separation. And her left hand, having just been on top of her gun, would know exactly where the muzzle of the gun was pointed—where the bullet would fly. It was different than the way law enforcement agents entered a potential hot zone. Police officers brandished their guns as a warning. CIA agents wanted to proceed as if not armed at all. In the spy game, a dead agent told more tales than a live one, on occasion. A dead agent meant his cover was blown. It also meant he was getting close to something. Most importantly, it meant he hadn’t been turned. The Agency didn’t train their agents to shoot first and ask questions later. They just shot. The Agency had other ways to get answers to questions, besides asking. After clearing the apartment, Georgia had many questions answered.
Georgia stayed in her apartment for more than 24-hours. She didn’t eat much and she was suffering from mental exhaustion. She had to run scenarios in her mind. But she didn’t settle on anything, which made running scenarios pointless. And she still hadn’t been summoned to briefing. She spent much of the next day in bed. She was on high alert without knowing what the alert was for. Her heart rate was accelerated, even though she did next to no physical activity. She had to take her mind down. And she still needed to take her mind off the idea of being a target. She thought the best way to get her mind off of it was to do something she didn’t really like to do, watch TV. She spent her afternoon watching French daytime TV. There were a lot of 60’s French films that played during the day. They were interesting in the sense that it was as far away from her reality as she could get without leaving Paris altogether. If she understood French humor she would have had a complete reversal of mood. But some meaning was lost in translation. At 5:00pm, she had a plot with a twist. It wasn’t a film. It was the news. She was frustrated with the fact that she couldn’t listen to the news a second time. She was fluent in French, but she spent the past few months in the UK. She hadn’t had a French conversation, since Harvey Point. The message translation wasn’t that hard. Man. Shot. Three times. Le Harve. In hospital. Paris. She switched channels hoping she could get more details. The report was on multiple channels but the details were mostly the same. Georgia realized she had more details than the reporters were broadcasting. She knew the identity of the man. It was Hagan. Georgia ran to her bedroom and to her rucksack. She found her SX-70 camera and quickly loaded a new film cartridge. She ran back to the living room and aimed the camera at the television set in the bottom left corner. She took a picture of the TV station logo from the screen. She waited for the picture of the logo to materialize and left in on the kitchen table. She continued listening to the report and remembered the name of the hospit
al before she went to the bedroom changed into her blue blouse and went to the bathroom. She took four pictures of herself against the white wall. From the bathroom to the kitchen, Georgia started searching the drawers of the apartment for the tools she needed: Aluminum foil, colored permanent markers, a craft knife, permanent glue and plastic wrap. She only had plastic wrap. She had to go to a crafts store six blocks away to get the rest. She also bought a label maker and paper cards.