The small apartment they were currently staying in occupied the second floor of an old house in a narrow alleyway not far from the center of the town. The ground floor was occupied by a different tenant whom they had never met for the two months they had been living there.
Robin went out of the apartment and headed towards the staircase to climb up it. The third and the fourth floor were unoccupied, but she was not interested in them. She went up all the way to the open rooftop, where she knew she could get a better look.
She opened the door leading to the rooftop and noticed immediately the light illuminating the night sky. She walked nearer to the edge of the rooftop and saw that a large fire was raging at the north section of the city. She stood there at the edge, savoring the contrast between the coldness of the early spring night air and the hotness she knew the fire she was looking at would feel.
"I think we could safely conclude that the building has been burned down to the ground," a man's voice spoke from behind her.
"The fire is spreading," she said without turning around.
Amon walked towards her and stood beside her, staring at the same view. "They'll put it out before sunrise," he said, nodding towards the burning buildings in the distance. He turned to look at her. "You'll catch a cold, being out here without wearing a coat. Go back to bed."
Instead of heeding his words, she asked him, "Where are we going tomorrow?"
"Away," was his answer.
"A mission for you," the man sitting at the table said. He was known as Jan, the supervisor to the little operation they had in the facility. He held out a thick folder in his hand.
"Just for Henrietta and me?" the man standing by the window asked. His name was Jose. His partner was called Henrietta - a small girl with a machine gun inside her violin case. He reached out and took the folder from Jan's outstretched hand.
"Yes. The request came from an institution linked to the Defense ministry. The targets are deemed to be very dangerous. These are the files. We think it would be easier and safer to have only one fratello to do this. The targets won't have a reason to be suspicious of a pair of brother and sister."
"Who are they?" Jose asked, picking up the files.
"The defense ministry has a strong suspicion that they are behind the recent fire in Florence."
Jose flipped through the files absent-mindedly. "As I recall, the fire started in a building that a university research facility? It spread and burned the building next to it, though. An office, I think."
"You're right. The press was told it was caused by an electric failure. But the truth is, nobody knew how the fire started. There was no clue at all. The 'university research facility' was actually a research facility owned by the organization who commissioned this mission to us."
Jose looked up and frowned. "What organization is this, Jan?"
The older man shrugged. "All I know is that it's called Solomon. No one knows what they do exactly."
Jose looked down on the open folder in his hands again. Two slightly blurry pictures were clipped to the first page. In the first picture was a pretty young girl with blond hair. In the second picture, a dark-haired man with shoulder-length hair and wary expression, as if he knew his picture was being taken without him knowing. His next targets, the two people he must tell Henrietta to kill without mercy.
They stood in the middle of a piazza, tourists milling around them. Amon had been staring intently at an unmarked building among a row of old buildings flanking one side of the piazza. He nodded imperceptibly at it and said in a low voice, "The building at the right end has an emergency stair at the back. We use it tonight to climb to the roof."
That night, they exited the building the same way they came in. In Amon's hands, a thick account book detailing every single Solomon property in Italy.
TBC
Notes:
I've been cleaning up my old laptop and found this unfinished chapter I wrote as a continuation of the previous drabble I wrote And ... this is turning out to be a Gunslinger Girl crossover!
