User Guide

I have an anecdote for you. Two actually.
But one is shorter, and will do for a
beginning.
I had tracked M. Chevrier and his
personal guard to the Galata Tower in the
Beyoglu section of Istanbul, not a good
place to be during the day if you weren’t
hard, or after sundown even if you were.
By the time the lights flared to life in the
exclusive tower nightclub, dusk had lured
the first resentful
shadows from the
doorways around
me. The users
and the used both
scrutinized me
with their custom-
ary interest, but
only briefly.
I was not unknown to them.
They gave way with downcast eyes as I
entered Galata Tower.
I took the lift to the top floor and
walked up to the maitre d’, a smile on my
face, my right arm concealed in the folds
of my greatcoat. He was an oily man in
evening wear, perched behind his station
at the entrance to Club Mozambique, his
pencil thin moustache twitching as his eyes
raked over my admittedly grubby coat.
“We have a dress code here, sir,” he
said. Then his eyes met my own.
He paled.
Covertly he pressed a button beneath
the lip of his station. The curtain behind
him parted, and a large Turk with an
M16 gestured for me to leave. Clearly, he
expected me to comply without fuss. He
looked surprised when I yanked the VZ 61
from my coat, until its silenced blast forever
banished any expression from his face.
The Turk was a hired killer, of course,
and death to him was an occupational
hazard. The maitre d’, on the other hand,
was a civilian, so I took the extra time to
knock him unconscious. That kindness
almost cost me dearly — he managed to
scream before dropping to the floor.
The Skorpion had a silencer, and I
might’ve gotten into Club Mozambique
without fuss if I’d simply killed him. As
it happened, one of M. Chevrier’s body-
guards within the club glanced up,
alerted by the waiter’s girlish squeal of
alarm, and saw me.
I dived for the floor as the bodyguard
reached inside his jacket. I felt the first
bullet shatter against the floor beside my
left temple as I pressed the Skorpion’s
light wire butt against my shoulder. I
felt surprise at this bodyguard’s quick
reaction. He was unexpectedly good. I
allowed him to squeeze off one final shot
as I centered my sights on his forehead.
His round kicked high, smashing the pot
of a rubber tree behind me.
I could not permit him another.
The other bodyguards, slow to react,
were only just turning around as their
friend’s head blossomed red in the garish
cabaret light. I felt a moment of pity for
M. Chevrier.
Good help was so hard to find.
I dispatched the remaining bodyguards
without further ado, the sluggish ones,
hands still inside their now rather
hopelessly stained white dinner jackets,
as they discovered
too late that their
guidance counselors
had steered them
into a very deadly
profession.
I picked up the
Turk’s M16 and
walked over to M. Chevrier’s table. His
back was to me. He peered slowly over his
shoulder, eyes wide, a strand of spaghetti
dangling from his pursed lips.
“M. Chevrier?”
The strand vanished with a slurping
noise. “Why, no. You’ve mistaken me for
someone else.”
SUDDEN DEATH •
July 2011
23
“I do not enjoy
being thought
of as a monster.
I kill, yes. But
never innocents.”
“My disappearance four years
ago seems to have inspired a
return to the corporate credo of
old, of employers who view
mercenaries as cannon fodder,
expendable and cheap…”
“I offer this
tale from my
past as an
example. And
a warning.”