Grey Man

Eyes looked out of a studiously unremarkable face. They tracked across the empty concern in the expressions of everyone around them, waiting patiently for something to happen that might cover their escape. The man turned his head in concert with the crowd, letting his eyes see everything that normal ones might miss. A flash of scarlet there, a subtle hand gesture, a face that turned just out of synch with the ones that surround it.

There were others out there, Others in his own line of work, after a fashion. But they were rank amateurs compared to himself, not quite truly connected to the flow of the crowd, standing out like the nose in the middle of a face. But then, they would be perfectly acceptable for the commonality of their trade, obvious only to one such as himself.

A smile was easily repressed. Years of training gave him near-total control of his body. In his line of work, one errant twitch could spell death for himself, or those around him, or untold hundreds more. Though he could feel the pride radiating in from his stomach, invisible to anyone but himself. It was open, honest pride in a job well done.

He allowed his attention to follow that of the majority, blending in as a single blade of grass in a verdant field, as flames exploded from the windows of the building before them all. Within, long dead by now, his quarry had yet to be missed, and was unlikely to be found before the rubble was cleared away. And by then, she would have been replaced – her discovered body, assuming of course they could identify it, only closing the book on her disappearance.

Nearly shattering his façade, a frown momentarily threatened to break out between his eyes. The fire had not been part of his meticulous plan, nor had the shots barely heard as he made his escape. Ultimately useful, true, but anything that was apart from the design was, of course, to be treated with utmost suspicion. In his experience, there was no such thing as a turn of good fortune. Occasionally, coincidences did occur, but they always proved to be connected if only one would dig deep enough.

Moving with the flow of traffic as the watching crowd was finally dispersed by the better late than never police, he wondered exactly what had happened to cause the fire. Certain agencies or private interests might find some value in a demonstration of this magnitude, though he personally doubted its cost effectiveness. Showing one’s hand in such a way was not an effective long-term survival technique.

The flood of humanity slowly broke apart as people disappeared into metro stations, waiting buses, or through the doors of various buildings until he was all but alone in his amble down the street. This was nothing significant; with his average height, build, and the grey dye in his hair, he was nothing more than he wanted to appear to be. An old man, quietly walking through his golden years, as some people had started to call them.

Of course, a Grey Man was never what he appeared. It was their stock and trade, after all, to appear how they wanted to appear. To be unremembered, unremarked, and unnoticed. At least, until they struck.

Names meant nothing to him, he was whomever he needed to be at any given moment and on any given day. Lost in the milieu of humanity. He almost wanted to laugh at that, lost. What hadn’t he lost since taking this job? What hadn’t he gained? Eventually, even the agency itself had been at risk of losing him. That was why she had had to die. It was a shame, really. To leave her like he had, but then, those were the risks that people took when they played the game.

Pausing before a phone booth, he switched his cane from hand to hand as he searched through his pockets. A few quick mutters, and a small laugh at himself completed the image. No one would ever remember him, save that they had seen an old man making a phone call. “No, officer,” they would say if questioned. “Can’t say I’d be able to pick him out of a line up. Just an old fellow with a hat using the telephone. Why? Is it important?”

His chuckle as he pulled a small handful of change out of exactly where he knew it would be, was real. Ever since he had been a boy, he had loved disappearing. Loved sitting so still as to be overlooked. Loved getting away with things, no matter what they were, just so long as he didn’t get caught.

Clicking a coin into the slot, he dialed the operator, remembering the day his career had chosen him. It took real skill to disappear on a sunny day, real know how to make happy people forget you were there. But he had done it, or at least thought he had. Pilfered one of everything from the school picnic before they had even finished unloading it.

Those ‘indiscretions’ had never been violent, never quite illegal. The woman who caught him with jamy fingers had explained that that was part of the reason he had been chosen. No family to speak of - dead in one of the border conflicts - and no real friends in school, he had developed his skills for his own amusement, rather than a desire for anything greater. For some reason they had been watching him for a while, and he had earned their approval.

“How may I direct your call,” asked the operator, her voice almost painfully cheery.

Without knowing he was doing it; he filed the voice away for later. If he could contort his throat to recreate it, then something like that might just prove valuable in the future. Then again, maybe not, wasn’t that the point of that day’s job? He wanted to retire, if he could. If they would let him, if he could let himself.

“Tellson and Sons please,” he said, voice pitched low and gravelly. The completely wrong voice for his face. Just another layer to the lie he was living, one more way to be lost to the world.

“One moment, please,” the voice was unchanged, almost bored, its cheeriness a requirement rather than genuinely felt. This call would be forgotten the second he was no longer on the other side of her phone line, he was lost to the wind of what must be a thousand callers an hour. She would remember nothing about either him or his call, even if she was asked. And the records kept by the phone company? Equally useless. Just so much paper at the end of the day. Paper that would only record when he had called and who he had wanted to reach.

Lost. The thought came to him as he was waited for the call to be answered. That’s what he was. Well and truly lost for the first time in his life. Well, that was not entirely true. He could have simply walked off the map after that last death, no one would notice his going, nor would they have questioned his absence. Even the Tellson and Sons would only assume him dead in an unexpected blaze, these things did happen from time to time. The fire itself might have scattered him to the wind as easily as the ashes of whatever it had been set to destroy.

“Thank you for calling Tellson and Sons,” a new voice came through the receiver and the Grey Man smiled, allowing his eyes to crinkle with the genuine pleasure that his final report gave him. “With whom would you like to speak?”

“Good morning, Hazel,” he said, even going so far as to let his own joy shine through in his voice. A voice that was without disguise. For the first time in years, he let his mask fall away, allowed himself as he truly was to shine through. “It’s done.”

“Sir,” Hazel’s voice slipped. She knew him, knew exactly what he was calling about, and she could not restrain a sudden stab of fear that shone through her words like the signal from a lighthouse on a stormy night. “I’m afraid I don’t understand. Perhaps you’ve made a bad connection? If you don’t wish to speak to one of our associates, I suggest ending the call and trying again.”

He could almost have danced. In his youth, he had never been a dancer, it drew far too much attention. Though in his training they made certain to teach him how, and he learned to enjoy the activity, a meticulous exercise in being forgotten. In being so unremarkable that no one would remember him, and many would have forgotten the dance entirely. He was already dead, after a fashion.

“You’re right, I don’t wish to speak with an associate. Tell White Rabbit that I’m done. This is goodbye.”

“Geist,” panic broke through in Hazel’s voice now as she used his code name, her character and the charade completely abandoned. “What are you talking about? Report back now!”

“This is my report,” he said, considering putting a little regret into his words. Hazel had always been kind to him, though that was also her job so it might have been just as much a lie as any false faces he chose to wear. “The job is done. Now it’s time to be forgotten.”

“Geist, listen to me. You really think they won’t find you? You have to come back. Stop this nonsense, we still need you.”

“But I don’t need you. Forget about me, Hazel. Honestly, do you really think anyone you have left will be able to find me if I decide to stay lost? I could walk right past the Office, and no one would ever be the wiser. Goodbye, my friend, live well.”

Replacing the receiver as her last desperate plea for him to reconsider was just passing her lips, he stepped out of the phone booth and back into the lie. They would never find him; of that he was deadly certain. And even if they did, what difference would it make? He was already gone, lost to the winds.

They would eventually work out what phone booth he had called from, but that was as useless to them as anyone else. Even he wasn’t good enough to track a person down using such flimsy evidence, so they had no chance of finding him once he decided to be lost. Naturally, others had tried to pull this same trick, tried to slip through the cracks and quietly misplace themselves. And they had all been caught, more than a few of them caught by his own hand. So, he knew better than anyone else how they thought, to avoid being found, how to stay lost.

Putting just a little more weight on his cane than before, he clicked slowly down the street, smiling at a young woman as she hurried past him. For a moment, something lit in her eyes, a desire to ask a question of a man who seemed to be coming from the same direction as the pillar of smoke. But it was gone just as quick, he was nothing to her and would already have faded from her memory the moment he was out of sight.

Just one more person quietly making his way down the road, nothing to mark him as distinct from anyone else. One more face lost in the mundane concerns of her every day.

He walked for a long time, slowly winding his way through the streets of a city that, for the first time, felt real to him. It was a place he existed in now, no longer just a place he was passing through, a space he occupied until it was time to move on.

Naturally, it would be unwise to stay long, but it would be just as unwise to flee too soon. His former employer knew him too well, or so they thought. He would not flee immediately because, despite what they knew of him, it was only reasonable for them to watch for his leaving. He was not so arrogant as to believe that he was completely immune to their searching eyes, but he knew them and himself well enough to know that if he played his cards right, they would never find him. He could stay lost as long as he chose.

Cane still clicking against the pavement, he hobbled into a café and ordered a coffee. For now, he would just sit and enjoy his newfound freedom, watching the world go by for an hour or so through the eyes of old man he was still pretending to be.

And after that? After that he would vanish. It was time to be lost for good. For the world to forget his name and his face. To be just another unremarkable face in the crowd with nothing more to do than simply exist as part of the masses that watched events happen. Maybe he would keep up the ruse of being old until it was time to move on before people got wise to his lies. After all, he was retired now.