Prologue

It was a chilly fall evening and there was a light fog that filled the alleys like smoke. The vehicle convoy lurched through the misty back alleys of the city and came to a slow stop in front of the office buildings. The world elsewhere was spinning as it always had but this night was set apart; the convoy's arrival was evident of that. The cars were like dark steeds; their headlights were glaring through the fog like red eyes and their riders like dark wraiths of the night. The doors of the first car and the two cars following in the back opened up and suited men stepped out and shut the doors behind them. After they had visually cleared the area, the back door of the middle car opened up and a greying head of hair atop a very tall and skeletal man stepped out. He said nothing and looked at nothing, except to size up the building in front of them. With a "clink" of a Zippo lighter, he slowly lit the cigar in his mouth.

He puffed on it and thoughtfully gazed into the blackness bookending the dark alley and started walking towards the daunting doors, the smoke rising towards the sky like a shroud. The suited men followed loosely behind the tall man who paced up the stairs, his long black overcoat flowing behind him like shadow. When he reached the top of the stairs he didn't head towards the large revolving doors that were centered in the large glass business front but instead headed towards the far left. The main doors were for everyday business and everyday people; business that was commonplace, passive, and ignorant. There was a small single bypass door where there was a magnetic card key reader attached to the door frame to the left for unintentional business, the kind that was conducted after hours.

The thin man's spider-like arm reached into his suit coat pocket and produced a worn, grey card which he slid through the reader in a very methodical manner. The reader's LED lights which were previously glowing red, like embers, turned to a sickly green and the men had access to the building.

They took the elevator to an indiscriminate floor and walked down the dark hallways to an open door where pale light was bleeding out. Three of the suited men had followed the tall man and they were the first to enter the door and took places along the wall. The thin man crept into the room at last, with purposefully hesitation and a deep exhalation of his cigar smoke, heralding his entrance.

"You're late!" whined a tiny voice from a middle aged balding man in a tan overcoat who was seated at the closer end of the table. He was seated nonchalantly in the chair, legs crossed, and overshadowed by his own troop of suited men; five in number. This man, compared to the dark suited man, was awkwardly out of his element. The balding man had small filthy glasses that he peered out with trembling eyes that were too close together. His mousy nose was turned up in a sense of false confidence and it was clear to all in the room that he was the wrong man for the job.

The cigar smoking man made no attempt to answer.

The inexperienced balding man smugly made eye contact with the man still cloaked by the shadow cast by the poor lighting. The aged wrinkles around the latecomer's jet black eyes were unnerving. They were determined, educated, informed, and domineering. The balding man quickly felt intimidated...and vulnerable.

"Well," he stammered, "I guess it really doesn't matter…timing, I mean," He said with small breathy laugh. The thin man stood still in the shadow of the door way, taking a long puff on his cigar and lowering it again…saying nothing.

The balding man, his face fully illuminated under the heat of the lights hanging from the ceiling above the table, began to shift in his seat, "My employer would like some assurance on his investment…"

The thin man was perched in the shadowy door way; his face illuminated by his cigar puffs…saying nothing.

"Can, uh," the balding man continued, "Can the material be acquired without a hitch?"

"Of course it can," The shadow man finally whispered in a gruff tone. He moved, finally, slightly into the room, but not out of the shadows, to flick the ashes of his cigar into an ashtray on the corner of the table. "I've already told your employer that I was handling it."

The balding man shifted again as he was more uncomfortable. He had heard about this man but had never really come in direct contact with him. All of his dealings with this man in the past were through a lengthy chain of anonymous correspondence; there was something different about meeting with him face to face. The man took another long drag on his cigar and, like a dragon, blew it out of his nose in a short and curt breath. More than just the cigar smoke, it was difficult to breath in the room; this shadowy character seemed to carry an aura of command.

"How can you be sure?" The trembling man asked.

The shadow man leveled his eyes, lit with a dark flame.

"I have a contact," he said with a pause, shifting the cigar to a passive position to shake off the ashes. A smile crept over the withered face of the man in the shadows. It was a smile of knowing and understanding more than amusement; it was not a practiced smile, or a smile of deception, it was cunning, assured, and terrifying.

"Someone on the inside who assures me that the material can be extracted without incident and without evidence," He said quietly, through the smile. "In fact, I believe the only question of doubt in all of this is your lack of confidence," The cigar moved back to a more active position in front of the man's mouth as he narrowed his eyes towards the coward at the edge of the table.

"...Your skepticism."

The balding man, cornered as he was, found a renewed source of defiance as he felt the web begin to close in on him.

"I don't think my employer will look kindly on your criticism" he said with a sneer.

"Your employer," the tall man replied subtly and with that familiar cold smile creeping across his face, "will never know."

The balding man's heart began to beat faster as a pillar of smoke was blown in his direction, "What do you mean?"

The shadow man began to shift slightly and advance closer to the table.

"I'm very good at my job Mr. Watkins," he said with a voice that sounded like leaves rustling on an old road, "Which is why your employer consulted with me in the first place; and unbeknownst to you, and even your employer, I have a contact in his office as well."

Mr. Watkins felt the color drain out of his face and his heart begin to pound in his chest; the room was getting smaller and it was getting tougher to breath.

"I know" the shadow man continued, "something about you that your employer doesn't even know but I'm sure would love to. I know about your duplicity and the money you stand to make if your treasonous plans work out."

He began to turn, in soliloquy, as he retreated back to the warmth of the dark doorway, "However, with the evidence that you so conveniently "forgot" to erase, the evidence I had planted openly in the bank logs, he'll understand why I made the decision I made".

The balding man could feel sweat beads racing down his face and he could smell the fear on his hired guns behind him.

"In short Mr. Watkins: yes, after tonight I can give your employer assurance that the plan will go without a 'hitch'". The man said with grave sincerity as he took another long drag of his cigar.

"What decision?" the balding man whispered, slowly rising to his feet.

The smoking man said nothing as his, previously statuesque; comrades pulled silenced handguns from their coats. There were flashes of light as the five unprepared hired men tried miserably to pull their own weapons among the hits and the balding man crippled to the floor. Still, those flashes were not nearly as haunting as the devilish hue illuminating the smoking man's face from the embers of his cigar; his satisfied drawing of a breath as his prey was exhaling their last.