Contract #87

It all started with an unpleasant surprise. Sure, most of you would call an unmarked envelope with twenty grand of sweet smelly cash in it everything but unpleasant - but honestly, it freaked me out on the spot. Right there, sipping my morning coffee and preparing for another busy day, this envelope in my postbox was among the worst things that could happen.

A bad omen.

First, it meant that someone out there knew where I lived and, even worse, what I did for a living. Concerning, given the fact that I had successfully hidden both for the better part of this not-so-new century.

Second, cash is not king anymore, contrary to whatever you might believe or read in trashy little stories written by amateurs and published somewhere in the weird part of the www. These are the 2020s now, for heaven's sake. We work in the digital shadows, receive payments as bitcoins, forwarded through dozens of VPN secured servers, impossible to trace. As are our instructions and the names of our targets. Usually.

The sum didn't make sense, either. Not enough for one of the significant contracts, those rare but lucrative big names with large numbers on their heads. On the other hand, it was far too much of an advance for the smaller jobs, the daily routine tasks, taken on as quickly as they were executed - or passed on to a trustworthy colleague. Not that there are many of us, not in this line of business. See, kiddo, we are not hitmen.

I don't kill. This is my #1 rule, never bent, never broken. I change my targets, improve them, uplift their behaviour, attitude, and social responsibility. Sure, the world would often be a better place if you just take them out, but that's not what I do.

RULE #1: I. DO. NOT. KILL.

Yeah, I know what you are about to say. There are others like me in the shadows who claim the same and act otherwise. Depends on the definition, I guess. Grab your targets, haul them off into the desert, put a bullet through the left kneecap. Then stop the bleeding and leave the scene. This kind of stuff, you know. Fucking hypocrites. Granted, technically you don't kill them, they die of exposure, fatigue and thirst, but in the end, it's just the same. You could have put the bullet through the forehead with the same result.

This is not what I do. My targets survive, return to society, starting a new, productive life. Hell, some even become saints after I am done with them. Remember the governor who handed out fracking permits on native land like aunt Betty candy on Halloween? Yeah, the bald guy with the juicy but unproven track record of bribery and racism? He is now a champion of environmental protection, a proud advocate for our First Nations. Did you read about the Chinese billionaire who disappeared a few months ago and now re-surfaced with a vow to pledge his life to charity? Everyone thought his government had pulled that stunt, but it was me. You're welcome. Did I get paid by the CCP? Well, that's another story. Bitcoins don't have a name on them.

Cash does, and I wanted to find out which name that was.

So, I pulled out my little black book, right from my bedside drawer, resting there under the reassuring weight of my beloved Glock. The only record of my work, the only trace of my activities all around the globe. 86 contracts, 84 of them successfully executed. Let's not talk about the other two, okay? More carefully than frantically, I went through all of them looking for any sign of 20k US$ missing, a debt owed to me.

There was none. Of course not. In our line of work, the professional gets always paid, one way or another. There was no doubt left – the money was a new contract, number 87 in my book. But who was the target? I carefully dissected the envelope, treated it with UV, lemon juice, magnesium powder, and held it up against a burning candle. You know, all those little boy scout tricks for invisible ink. A long shot, and a futile one indeed.

I checked my emails, both the semi-official and the secret ones, the message boards of our little exchange deep down in the darknet. Then I went through my burners, looking for a text message received, a call missed.

Nothing.

Perhaps I am getting old, but it took me the better part of the day to finally examine the money itself. And there it was, the name of the target, chopped into letters faintly written into the corners one of the notes. Probably with a very soft pencil, which made the message even harder to read. But in the end, I got there. I had my target, my name. And of course, it rang a bell – no, that's an understatement. Oh boy, twenty grand was far from enough for that one.

Make it a hundred, and we can talk about it if I am in a good mood.

But there was something about the notes that made me reconsider. They didn't come from a single source. And I don't mean any bullshit like traceable series of numbers. Cash tells a story, you can feel if it was pulled out from an ATM recently, stored under a pillow for years or just carried around in a wallet. This stash was neither, at least not all of it. I had the suspicion it was pieced together, from different sources, many hands pulling out whatever they can afford for one last, desperate attempt. Damn. Hard to ignore.

I googled the name of the target, although I knew who he was. Another rich jerk, another former start-up entrepreneur turned billionaire, another one of those guys paying hundreds of thousands of employees next to nothing while sailing on a private yacht in the Mediterranean.

But that was not what I was looking for. See, if you google someone, you have to do it the smart way, especially when looking for sins and skeletons in the basement. Don't put in "John Doe". Try it with "John Doe criticism", for a start. Switch to "John Doe controversy", "John Doe accused of" and finish with "John Doe lawsuit". Write down the name of the opponents, accusers, witnesses. And then google them, with "jailed", "sentenced", "found dead" or "suicide" next to their names.

That's not the end of it, it's merely the foundation. Take notes of particular details, switch over to a sandbox ran by enthusiastic students in Helsinki, emulate a Linux instance there, tunnel through the VPN in New Delhi through Mogadishu to Vancouver and enter the darknet. There, in the shadows of the shadows, you reach out. Ask for additional information, a commodity available in abundance and traded with vigour there.

That's what I did, and now look at me!

Sitting on the old wooden bench in my backyard, smoking the third cigarette in a row, my hands shaking. The funny thing is, I stopped smoking three years ago, didn't even know there was still half a pack left, carefully hidden behind the Bircher muesli and the protein shakes. I long for a beer, ice-cold and refreshing, even more so for a whisky, three fingers on two chunks of ice. No chance, no time for that, and, most important, I need a clear mind. See, I must start the planning. And this time, it is different—another approach, a slight variation of procedures, for sure an unexpected outcome.

Because it's time to break my rules.