"Why do we kill people who are killing people to show that killing people is wrong?"
Holly Near
I'll be honest with you. Killing isn't the hard part.
People do it every day, don't they? Anger pumps you up, panic takes away your ability to consider alternatives, you grab the gun, close your eyes, pull the trigger. Christ, children have done it every day since the dawn of man.
No, the truth of the matter is, killing is the easiest part of the job. Getting close to a target, though? That's a bit tricky. And when he's well protected and smart, that takes some talent. Making it look "natural," which just so happens to be my area of expertise, well...I've only ever known of two other guys who could do that right time after time, and I'm not so sure that they count: one of them is retired, and I killed the other one. And leaving no trail behind you once the job is done? That's not exactly easy, either.
I took a cab to the Oriental hotel and went straight to my room, shedding off my civilian garb and grabbing what tools I would need from a small travel safe that I carry whenever I need to use hotels (no sense in leaving a syringe and Glock nine on the dresser for the maid to find). Gaara would start feeling sick soon and could be expected to return a few minutes behind me, so I would need to be quick. Luckily I had kept all the stuff I needed in a small black backpack for just this occasion. Speed is a weapon.
Strapped to my wrist was one of the more high-tech toys that the Agency had let me borrow, a nifty device called SoldierVision. It takes a radar "picture" of a room through walls and feeds the resulting image back into the wrist unit. It was as close as you could get to seeing through walls.
His room would be locked, and the only keys used in the Oriental were punched-hole mechanical keycards, the kind that look like plastic credit cards with patterns of two-millimeter holes cut into them. The maids carried master keys, of course, and it had been easy enough to walk past a room that was being cleaned, pull the maid's master key from the cart, make an impression in a chunck of model clay I'd picked up in a local toy store, and put the key back, all in about six seconds. Using the impression, all I had to do was punch the appropriate additional holes in my spare room keycard, fill the inappropriate ones with fast setting epoxy clay, and presto. I had the same access as the hotel staff.
At room 818, I used the SoldierVision before letting myself in with my homemade masterkey. I moved quickly to the suite's enormous walk-in closet and did some quick inspecting: just a pull handle, no actual knob on the door. A few suits hanging on the hangar bar, clothing bags on the floor. And, best of all, the hinges were whisper-quiet. I knew that the bodyguards were likely to inspect the room before Gaara entered, but I also knew that, given his current condition, the guy would definitely want to be alone and would therefore probably order them out--if he allowed them in at all--before they could perform a professional sweep.
Still, though, Kakashi trained me to be prepared, and that was why I was carrying a CIA-designed .22 caliber single-shot pistol, artfully concealed in the handle of a Montblanc fountain pen. If pressed, I could use the disposable pen to drop whoever discovered me and, in the surprise that was a ninja's best friend, improvise with whoever might be left. Of course, if it came to this, I wouldn't get paid, so the gun was a last resort.
I didn't have long to wait. Twenty minutes go by fast, and that was how long it took before I heard to door to the suit burst open. A light came on from the outer room. Then the sound of feet, rapidly heading for the bathroom. The door to the toilet stall slammed against the wall, followed immediately by the sounds of violent retching.
Another set of footsteps. A male voice: "Mister Gaara..."
A bodyguard, I assumed. There was more retching, then the low and ragged voice of someone having a very rough night: "Get out!"
I heard the bodyguard walk off, then the sound of the door opening and closing. Gaara continued to groan and retch. After about ten minutes I heard him stumble out of the bathroom. The bedroom light went off, filling the room with darkness, and there was the sounds of an exhausted body collapsing into bed. I raised my left hand and looked at the glowing dials on my watch; another half-hour--long enough for the chloral hydrate to be largely processed through his system (and therefore extremely hard to trace) but not so long that he would start to wake up-- and then I would finish the job.
With luck, the staph infection would be blamed on the heart attack that Gaara was about to suffer.
In fact, the heart trouble would be caused by an injection of potassium chloride. I would try for the axilary vein under the armpit, or perhaps the ophthalmic vein in his eye. Both were extremely hard to detect entry points, especially with the tiny 25-gauge needle I would be using.
No worries about it being traced: even with modern forensic investigation equipment, it would be useless. After death, other cells in the body begin to naturally break down, releasing potassium into the bloodstream, and thereby rendering undetectable the presence of the very agent that got the ball rolling to begin with.
Twenty minutes passed, with no sound other than Gaara's occasional groans. I eased open the door to the closet. Just a few more minutes and I would begin preparing the injection. I had a small bottle of chloroform that I would use if he started to stir during the procedure.
There was the sound of a card key sliding into the door's lock. I froze and listened.
A moment passed, and I shut the closet door swiftly, but left it open just a crack for visibility. The front door opened, then clicked closed. The light went on in the bedroom, filling it with the soft light of an adjusted dial. I reached into a pocket and pulled out the .22 pen. I heard the sound of footsteps and Gaara's occasional groan.
A voice: "How are you feeling?"
The girl, I thought. It was her, and she must've had her own key. I gritted my teeth with the overall bad timing. Another five minutes and this would've all been over.
I watched her enter my field of vision by the bed and saw her shake Gaara's shoulder once, then harder. "Lover?" she asked. This time there wasn't even a groan.
I saw her take a deep breath, hold it, then let it out in a slow hiss. Then she strode quickly and quietly over to a wall switch and cut the lights. She moved to a desk across from the bed, and I saw Gaara's computer case, the one I had seen him with in the lobby and then again in the casino. Interesting. She unzipped the case and took out a thin laptop, which she opened.
Then she walked over to the bed, gently took one of the pillows from beside his head, came back to the desk, and held the pillow over the laptop's keyboard. It took me a second to figure out what she was doing: muffling the chimes or other music announcing that the operating system was booting to life. A nice move, which showed some forethought on her part. Maybe some practice. She wouldn't have know where Gaara had left the volume of the machine when he had last used it; if it had been left up, the loud tones would've most likely stirred his slumber.
After a few minutes, the trademark Windows logo appeared on the screen, the accompanying notes barely audible under the fluffy cushion. She paused for a moment, then removed the pillow and returned it to its original place on the bed. I noted that she hadn't tossed it on the floor, or otherwise thrown it randomly aside. She was keeping the room exactly how she found it, down to the details. Another sign that she had good instincts or was otherwise trained. Or both.
The girl walked back to the desk and pulled a cell phone from her purse. She spent a moment configuring it in some way, then pointed it at the laptop. She started working the phone's keypad.
Several minutes went by. She would input some sequence on the phone's keypad, look at the laptop for a few seconds, then repeat. Occasionally she would glance at Gaara. I could see that the laptop screen hadn't changed while she was doing all this, and contemplated what she was up to. My guess was that the laptop had a high security password protection system, and her "cell phone" was more than it seemed. She was probably using the device to interrogate the laptop by infrared, most likely trying to generate a password or otherwise get inside.
Ten minutes went by. We were getting to the point where Gaara's metabolism might have dissolved enough of the drug for him to regain consciousness. Another five minutes, ten at the most, and I would have no choice but to abort.
But how? If Gaara saw me, especially after meeting me at the poker tables not two hours ago, or if the girl reported that there had been an intruder that swiftly ran past her and escaped out the front door, I would be facing even tougher security next time. It would be a hell of a time to get a second chance.
I heard Gaara take in a sharp breath, stirring. The girl froze, glanced at him, and must have decided that he might be waking up, because a second later the cell phone was back in her purse and she was logging off, using the pillow again to muffle the departure chimes. When the screen had gone dark, she closed the lid and placed it back in the case, returned the pillow, and began to undress.
Shit.
The situation was deteriorating. I couldn't count on her to sleep deeply enough for me to slip out unnoticed. Hell, from what I'd seen so far, she looked like she might sleep as lightly as I do. Kill them both? Impossible to do "naturally." Shikamaru had stressed that payment was only available on condition of no evidence of foul play. Besides, what I do, I don't do to women or children. On the contrary, I found myself liking this woman, and it wasn't just her looks. It was her moves, her self-possession, her sharp strategic eye.
There was really only one possibility of me getting out of there. It was risky, but certainly better than any alternatives.
I waited until the girl had completely undressed, the moment where she would feel most exposed, most helpless. She was just moving toward the bed, presumably to join Gaara's side, when I opened the closet door fully and strode into the bedroom.
She startled when she saw me, but overall kept her composure. "What the hell are you doing here?" she asked in a low voice, more accusatory than afraid.
"You know me?" I whispered back, thinking, What the hell?
"From the casino. And I've seen you around the hotel. Now why are you here?"
Christ, she was as observant as he was. "Any luck with his computer?" I asked, trying to regain the initiative. My gaze was locked onto her torso, but for strategic reasons: after confirming the hands are empty, always watch the midsection, because that's where aggressive movement tends to originate. In this instance, though, the view was a little distracting. She looked even better naked than she did dressed, which wasn't common with most natural girls.
And she knew how to keep cool, too. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Really? I've got it all here on low-light video." I flashed up the SoldierVision, still strapped to my wrist. It was a bluff, but any ninja knows that any tool can have multiple uses.
She glanced at the device, then back at me. "On a SoldierVision? They don't record video."
Damn, she knew her hardware. Whoever she was, she was good, and I needed to stop underestimating her. "This one does," I said, improvising. "Prototype, fresh from the lab. So why don't we make a deal? I don't know who you're working for, and really I don't care. As far as I'm concerned this never happened. You didn't see me, and I didn't see you. How does that sound?"
She was silent for a long moment, seemingly oblivious to her nakedness. Then she asked, "Who are you with?"
"Don't ask, don't tell."
She was silent again, and my gaze dropped an inch. Her body was beautiful: simultaneously muscular and curvaceous, like a figure skater or gymnast, with delicate, pale skin that seemed to glow faintly in the light diffused through the curtains. I looked up again, and saw that she was watching my eyes. "You're probably bluffing about the video," she said, her voice steady and smooth. "But I can't take that chance. You're not leaving with it."
I nodded my head at Gaara. "He's going to come to any minute now. If he wakes up and I'm here, it'll be bad for both of us."
She rolled her eyes as if bored by the threat. "I'm going to get dressed."
I almost bought it. Natural enough--she was naked in front of a stranger, she wanted to put clothes on. But then I saw her reach for her purse instead of going for her clothes.
"Don't."
She must have had a weapon in there. I closed the distance and kicked the purse aside. As I did so, I saw her straighten up and her left elbow was suddenly whipping at my right temple. I instinctively moved in closer to get inside the blow, and her elbow missed the mark. But she instinctively snapped her hips the other way and caught me with the other elbow, on the other side of my head. Boom.
I saw stars.
Before she could whip together a combination, I dropped down, wrapped my left arm around her closest ankle, and drove my shoulder into her shin. She went down hard on her back.
"Are you crazy?" I hissed, voice still low on volume. "What are you going to do when you wake him up?" There was a dull throbbing in my head where the elbow had connected. I moved over to the purse and picked it up to make sure she couldn't get to it again. There was no telling what she had in there; lipstick Mace, razor-edged credit cards, a .22 pen like mine, maybe.
Gaara groaned again, and twitched. I was officially out of time.
"How are you going to get past the bodyguards?" she whispered.
That stumped me. I had expected them to depart after Gaara was safely in the room, not stand by the door all night like guards for a British Queen. I aimed the SoldierVision at the wall and checked; sure enough, there were two human images just on the other side of the door. Oh, just great.
"Give me the video," she said, "and I'll send the guards away. You can go."
I shook my head slowly, trying to find a way to improvise out of this.
"Look," she whispered sharply, "I don't know who you are, but you're obviously no friend of his. You've probably figured out that I'm not his friend, either. Maybe we can help each other. But show me some good faith."
"I'm not giving you the video."
Her eyes narrowed a fraction. "To tell you the truth, I don't really believe that there is a video. And when he wakes up, it's going to be your word against mine, and we both know who he's more inclined to trust."
I shrugged. "And if I told him to check his boot log on the laptop? Or tell him to take a good look at you cell?"
She didn't have an answer for those.
"But I agree, we can help each other, and here's how we're going to do it. I'm going to hide again. You get the guards in here, tell them Gaara seems really sick, he's been throwing up and is barely conscious and you need to get him into a hospital. You all walk him out of here. As soon as you're gone, I'll be gone too. You can have the video after that."
She was silent for a long moment.
"How do I contact you?" I asked, closing the deal.
She pressed her lips together tightly and rubbed her head in aggravation. "Look for me in the casino at eight tomorrow night."
"What do I call you?"
She looked at me, her eyes angry. "Sakura."
