Winter Journey

Poc!

1(2)

here were ten people on the elevator and he wasn't the only one carrying flowers. On the second floor some kind of security guard got on after winking at a very pretty nurse. The three people with bouquets got off on the fourth floor. As if he knew the clinic by heart, he headed down the corridor towards room 439. A woman wearing a coif and carrying a tray full of things he couldn't identify came out of the room next door. When he got to the door he was looking for, he paused for a few seconds, wiped away the sweat that beaded his upper lip whenever he was nervous, breathed out hard, and knocked discreetly three times. The voice saying "Come in" was muffled, with a note of curiosity. It seemed to him there was also a little hopefulness in that "Come in." He went in, a little formal, holding out the roses as if they were a calling card. All of a sudden he saw her there, sitting on a sofa in the ancient posture of delighted exhaustion typical of new mothers. She had obviously just nursed the baby, who was now lying in the crib. He closed the door without making a sound and turned to the woman, who hadn't moved from the sofa and was looking right at him, noticing the sweat that shone on his upper lip. Now her voice sounded cracked: "Who are you?"

The man, with a polite smile, leaned over the woman to offer her the flowers. And instinctively she took them and moved as if to smell them. That's why she didn't see the black eye of the silencer on the pistol that appeared among the roses. The bullet went in through her open mouth; there was nothing to hear but a gentle, almost sweet poc! The woman leaned back softly on the sofa, as if her exhaustion were infinite, as well as ancient. Not a whimper. Two delicately dropped the flowers onto the woman's lap. Then he looked towards the crib, shook his head, wiped the sweat off his lip with the hand holding the pistol and looked at the newborn, who was trying out his thumb. Delicately, almost lovingly, he brought the barrel up against the base of its skull. The pistol went poc!.

It wasn't until he got to the airport in Le Bourget and had smoked half a pack of Gitanes that he managed to get his heart to start working normally. And that was just the beginning.

11(1)

One had spent the flight from Paris looking straight ahead, as if genuinely interested in the folding tray on the back of the seat ahead of him. And he didn't look even once at the scenery out the window. He refused the dinner and the drink without looking the stewardess in the eye, as if he didn't want to lose his focus for even a moment. As if he wanted to do everything in his power to be in the right place at the right time with the cigarette and the whisky after work. He looked only twice at the reddish head of the man he'd been told to eliminate. Okay to kill. He was called Zero and he was very easy to follow because of the bright color of his hair. Now that he was looking at him for the second time, on the other side of the aisle, a few seats ahead, he realized that Zero wasn't hiding the briefcase attached to his wrist by a kind of sturdy-looking handcuff. He was reading France Soir and didn't feel One's glance pass over the back of his neck.

Five seats back, Two was watching One look at something ahead of him. He'd found it odd that Three had ordered him to follow One and wait; he could have finished him off in the bathroom in the airport, once his heart had started to beat normally. He leaned back; he followed orders and he'd do One in Barcelona just like they'd told him to. It was easier to obey, not ask questions, and bide his time. Natalie would be happy; as soon as he finished work he'd go back to Paris and invite her out for a great dinner. The most irritating thing was having to spend hours on planes that didn't allow smoking. He considered it insulting but was going to have to get used to it. In fact, he was already used to working like this, always being a Two in pursuit of a One. He was One once; he'd felt bad about it, really. Well, the way he felt about what happened at the clinic. But, work is work. Anyway, the thing that he… What?

"Would you like more coffee, or a soft drink, or…?"

"A whisky."

The stewardess blocked his view of One and for a few seconds he panicked. But he smiled and forced himself to relax: how could he escape? Besides, according to the complicated rules of Three's game, One had no idea who Two was. Hey, he didn't know that Two existed any more than human beings are aware of death like a worm inside them.

"Two is the death of One," he said, imprudently, out loud.

"Excuse me?" The stewardess was handing him the glass of whisky.

"No, no, 1 was…" And he made a vague gesture that meant it didn't matter. The stewardess continued on her way, and Two could see that One was still looking ahead of him, as if at another passenger.

Zero, who didn't know that's what he was called, made a vague gesture to refuse the coffee, or soft drink, or… Although the handcuff that attached him to the briefcase bothered him a little, he was absolutely faithful to the procedure he'd followed on the eighty-two previous trips. He was pretending to be a perfumier carrying formulas and samples from one branch to another so that, if he had to, he could justify taking the briefcase with him everywhere. In fact, it contained, aside from four innocent papers designed to distract any customs officials who might be curious about the contents, the notebook he'd just stolen from Three, showing the bank statements for the past five years that he'd done collection for the business, and condemning Three and all of his family to death. Because even just the first five pages of that bankbook were enough to paper him over for life.

Of course Zero was afraid. Very afraid. Because his hours were numbered: make the payment, turn the book over to the police in Barcelona, with the delayed-access system to cover his tracks, call the clinic to tell her to do what she had to do, and meet her after the eight-hour flight to Rio. Meet them. Because the three that's a crowd was what had made them, him and the woman, decide that Zero had to change his life. His wife didn't know that Zero was called Zero, of course. Or that she was called Double Zero and their son Little Zero. We are always ignorant of the plans of the gods. Very afraid, was Zero: but things had to turn out according to their very careful plans. He'd turned down what the stewardess offered because the pressure of the situation had upset his stomach.

111(o)

in the hotel dining room, Two fell in love with a table for one next to the window. He found it very strange that One, who didn't have to stay in that hotel, should be eating supper there. That's his problem, he thought. He just had to follow orders. It was irritating, but he settled down to sharing a dining room with his victim and lit a cigarette so he could hide behind the smoke. Maybe it was to avoid unpleasant thoughts that he imprudently ordered an 1864 from the maitre d' and a very rare steak to go with it. The maitre d' raised his eyebrows because it had been two years since someone had ordered a whole bottle. No doubt because One noticed the bottle ordered by the man sitting by the window, he ordered one too, and the maitre d', happy as a clam, said to the headwaiter that life is full of surprises. Yes, it certainly is. Especially if Three has planned them that way.

While One was tasting the wine-magnificent, well preserved, well aged-he saw something he didn't like at all. Zero was coming into the dining room with an unknown woman. That wasn't in the program. Zero was supposed to have supper in the hotel and then go right to bed, because the money contact was scheduled for early the next morning. But he was such a smart guy that… Oh, and the way they moved and talked, it looked like it wasn't the first time they'd seen one another. So Zero had a lover in Barcelona. Or maybe she was… One had understood that Zero had a wife in Paris. She probably saw her lover every time Zero was away making contacts. He noticed that he was still carrying the briefcase, even now.

"How about that table?" Zero gestured with his free hand.

"Perfect." The woman walked over to it, politely acknowledged a man at the next table who was working away at a big steak, and waited for Zero to pull out her chair. One, who'd observed every detail, concluded that she was a working girl. The couple sat down, the waiter moved into position with the menus, and before they started to look at them, she pointed to the handcuff and the briefcase that was supposed to kill him.

"What's that? An engagement bracelet?"

"No." He looked around, his glance passing over One and Two, and signalled to the maitre d' as he turned to the woman. "Shall we go ahead and order wine, Mary?"

"Katty."

When the maitre d' came over, Zero smiled at him. "Bring us some red wine. The best one you've got."

"An 1864, for example?"

The maitre d', when Zero couldn't see him, winked at the woman and moved away shaking his head: he couldn't believe it. The woman kept at him.

"Why are you carrying it like that, attached?"

"Secret formulas."

"Wow. So you're a spy?"

"No, the opposite: 1 don't want to be spied on." To make her shut up, "Perfume."

"And we're supposed to go to bed with that?"

Zero laughed. He liked the joke. This was the first time he was doing things a different way. Usually he waited to screw until the job was done, but because this time he had to hurry off, he wanted to do things backwards. For supper, they had a good wine and a little something to eat.

IV (2)

At the hour when dogs take their owners out for a walk, One went back to his hotel, after making sure that Zero had gone to his room to perform an uncomfortable menage a trois with the woman and the briefcase, and Two resisted the temptation to follow him and went up to his room. In the hall on the tenth floor, the maid for that floor, her cart full of those little details that make it a pleasure to stay at our hotel, gave him a professional smile highlighted by an anachronistic gold tooth, and went on her way. Two let his mind wander for half an hour, looking out the window at the lights and more lights from the nighttime traffic on the Rambla de Catalunya and thinking that being a hit man wasn't so bad if they paid you this much and you had to perform just a few times a year. And he was always covered, especially if he worked for the enigmatic Three, who had things taken care of before they even happened. He didn't recognize One as the man with the moustache who was slouching along in front of the movie theater. It was too far to be able to make him out. Nor did One, who was now heading back to his hotel, look up to see if Two was looking at him, because he didn't know he existed, any more than Three knew he was called Three, because if he knew that, then he might have guessed at the presence of Two, who was now a shadow in the window that looked at him without seeing. Another thing Two didn't know was that there, in his own hotel, Zero, who hadn't been informed that he was now a widower and the father of a dead child, was hard at it with a woman and a briefcase, and that Zero was nothing more than his victim's victim and so a victim of himself, just as my friends' friends are friends of mine.

V (1)

The payment was made in the chosen place, the lookout on Tibidabo. One watched as Zero, still attached to the briefcase, opened it with the secret combination, put the packet handed to him by an unknown man inside and headed for the phone booth conveniently hidden by bushes, paying no attention to the earlymorning panorama of Barcelona swarming below him. One had to wait for Zero to make the call, also unexpected, before going after him.

"No, connect me with room 439!" yelled Zero, irritated by the ineptitude of the operator at the clinic.

"Who's calling, please?"

"What?"

"Who's calling?"

He hesitated for a moment and then gave his name and added that he was the husband of his son's mother. He thought it was odd that the operator covered the receiver and said something unintelligible to somebody. And then, as if she were following instructions:

"Where are you calling from, sir?"

"Why do you care?"

The hesitation that followed gave him a very bad feeling. The operator, in a poker voice: "Please hold. The Director is going to take your call."

He didn't hang up because it was impossible for them to trace the call in Paris. But he could smell that something was rotten. He couldn't smell that, behind him, One was opening the door of the phone booth, bringing the silencer up to his ear, and poc! making the family complete and forcing his resignation with characteristic professionalism. From the dangling receiver One could hear the cries of the Director, who was saying Allo, allo, monsieur? unaware that monsieur was now ex-monsieur. One let the body slide to the ground, took a look at the secret combination and showed with a quick manipulation that it wasn't so secret. In the inside compartment, nine hundred fifty thousand francs in a packet and a stamped envelope ready to be sent to the Prefecture of Paris. He put these things in his pocket and closed the briefcase carefully. Only twenty-eight seconds had passed since the action began, and the Director was still saying allo, allo into the ears of a cadaver. From that moment on, Zero was zero, and One left, without looking around, following instructions, to go back to the crummy hostel he'd been assigned, to wait for somebody to knock on the door, come in, kill him, and take the two envelopes. In fact, at that moment, somebody had put the address of the hostel and the number of One's room in the slot with Two's key.

VI (2)

There were two soft taps, and One said Entrez! in French without thinking. He was curious to know who his contact was, and he was especially eager to get the francs that made up his generous salary. He got off the bed and had time to see that whoever it was couldn't get in because the door was locked. He went to open it and had time to see that Two, who he didn't know was Two, was smiling and gesturing to be let in.

"I'm Charles Beaudelaire," he said

One took off the chain and Two, after coming in and shutting the door, stood there waiting. One understood, went over to his suitcase and took out the two envelopes.

"Do you have a cigarette?" he asked.

Two said, Yeah, sure, took out a half-empty pack and offered his victim a cigarette. He even lit it for him. While One was enjoying the last few puffs of his life, Two ripped the two envelopes open, which One didn't think was right, and looked at what was in them. He made a face that meant Yes, that's fine, put his hand in his pocket, took out the pistol and made it go poc! even cleaner than the way One had done it. What a waste of a cigarette.

VII (3)

He was getting to the end. While he was handing over the new packet with the money and the secrets and the new address, also in Paris, to the hotel mail service, he made a quick assessment of the desk clerk, who was older than the ones at the main desk. He whispered his request into his ear and the man nodded his head: taken care of, he meant. Just wait in your room. Two felt a prickling of desire as he went up to wait, and he stretched out on the bed, as One had done while waiting for someone to kill him. To fill the time, he felt around in his shirt pocket. The last cigarette. He wondered if he should run out and buy some or… No. And he lit it and told himself he'd better enjoy it because he didn't know when he was going to be able to go out and buy more. He heard the knock, and to tempt fate a little he said, Entrez! because the door wasn't locked. Damn. What a drag. It was the maid, who showed her gold tooth and pointed to the minibar:

"1 have to check the drinks. I thought nobody was here."

"Entrez, entrez," he said, resigned. And he pointed to the little bottles of whisky and held up three fingers, even though he was Two.

The maid didn't protest, strangely enough, put three little bottles on the table, filled the minibar with other drinks, showed her nice solid ass and left right away with one last golden smile for Two. It was only a few seconds later when there was another knock at the door.

It was a tall woman with black hair and… He'd seen her and couldn't remember where. Oh, yeah.

"Come on in."

Now he remembered. He'd seen her last night in the dining room. So basically she worked this hotel. She was really very pretty.

He sat up in bed, put out the cigarrette and helped her out of the tiny jacket she was wearing. Without asking her if she wanted a drink, he made two whiskies on the rocks and thought of her nude. He smiled happily.

"What's your name?"

"Katty."

"Here."

She took the glass obediently, took a sip for his benefit and smiled. She obviously wanted to get down to work. But he wasn't in any hurry. So, he pointed to her purse:

"Hey, do you have any cigarettes?"

"I don't smoke."

"Well, it doesn't matter."

Two was very sure of himself with a pistol in his hand. But other times he was all thumbs. He had a good time anyway, didn't want to know how it was for her, and afterwards they lay there for a while, nude, quiet, remembering and dreaming. Then Two couldn't stand it any more and said, Wait, I'll be right back.

"Now where are you going?"

"For cigarettes. It'll just take a minute. 1 saw a machine right out…"

But he was already out of the room, barefoot, wearing only his pajama bottoms and a t-shirt, with a handful of change. Katty, from the bed, made a face to show how she felt about people who just had to smoke. Two didn't see it because he was at the other end of the hall fumbling with the coins, because he never knew which was which. Okay, how about some of these light American ones, since they don't have anything else that… That's cutting it close. Hard to believe that the change he'd grabbed was exactly enough. When he'd put in the last coin, and before he pressed the button to make the pack drop, something threw him against the machine. A few seconds later he heard a deafening noise. He looked over his shoulder, afraid, but could see only smoke, though he understood exactly what had happened. Two ran away, down the stairs, and when he realized what he was doing, he was already out on the street in a city he didn't know, wearing pajama bottoms, barefoot, and with no cigarrettes. The explosion that had destroyed his future, the refrigerator, the room and Katty, hadn't gone poc but boom.