1997 was incredibly slow in the world of flashy assassinations. At the beginning of the year, Jackson and a team of managers from around the world laid out the framework for the massacres of the Algerian Civil War; groups of the best assassins from each region including Lyna were sent to oversee the progression. Starting in March, Jackson was assigned a new assassin partner, Ian Dower, who only took jobs on the American continent. There were only two assassinations that made any news feeds that year, however: the murder of Houston socialite Doris Angleton and the New Year's Eve death of Michael Kennedy, which Jackson assured himself would be at the top of his all-time favourites list for many years to come—there was nothing better than blackmail and an eventual well-planned 'accidental' death.'

Around his twenty-first birthday, Jackson began planning the death of Sani Abacha, president of Nigeria. As soon as college was out for the term, Jackson jetted off to spend the summer in Berlin fitted with the identity of a South African graduate student. He lived in an apartment on the outskirts of the city in the neighbourhood of Mariendorf, about a ten-minute walk from the Alt-Mariendorf U-Bahn station. Lyna lived two floors down and diagonally from his apartment, but she would disappear for long stretches of time, and they rarely saw each other. It was really only on the day that he showed up see her off to Benin that they had a chance to speak.

'Where's your luggage?' he asked, giving her a glare as he stepped up.

'You've been overruled,' she said sleekly, smirking. 'The patron wants you to handle this yourself.'

'That wasn't the plan.'

'Sometimes plans change.'

'Well…' he replied, looking around wildly. 'I—'

'You're a good-looking boy, Jackson. I'm sure you know what you're supposed to do in this situation.'

Pressing a folded piece of paper into his hand, Lyna leaned forward and kissed him, pulling on his hair harshly as she did so.

'I hope I've trained you well,' she muttered, pinching his earlobe before turning and walking out of the Tegel airport.

He watched after her for a moment until an announcement for the boarding of his flight to Paris came over the intercom. Grumbling, he crunched the paper before shoving it into his briefcase and blustering over to the ticket counter, putting down his South African passport and ticket with a smack. The ticket agent gave him an uncomfortable smile before looking at the name.

'Mr Plaatje,' she said, scanning his ticket. 'Enjoy your time in Paris.'

'I won't be there long,' he snapped back in a heavy South African accent, glaring at her. 'Paris to Lyon, Lyon to Casablanca, Casablanca to Lomé, and Lomé to Cotonou.'

She just gave him the same patronising smile. 'Enjoy your flight.'

---

At four o'clock the next morning, Jackson laid awake in his hotel room exhausted from his travels but unable to sleep. The hotel phone was pressed to his ear as he looked up at the ceiling, studying the stucco. The connection beeped over and over again, a tone rather than actual ringing, until there was a little click on the other end and an exhausted voice answered.

'Hello?'

'Hey.'

'Jacks?' Melissa asked, her voice hoarse. He could hear her turn over in her sheets and pick up her watch. 'It's eleven at night.'

'You go to bed too early,' he replied. 'I'm in Benin.'

'Benin… why are you in Benin?'

'I have an assignment in Nigeria.'

'And they made you go?' she asked softly, and he could tell she'd laid the receiver on her face so she didn't have to hold it anymore.

'Lyna told me that headquarters changed my plan,' he replied, looking over at the pile of papers he'd been working with until recently. 'I've had to scrap it and redo it from scratch.'

'They do that,' she sighed into the receiver. 'It tests how well you can think on your feet because things can go wrong at any time and you may have to improvise. You wouldn't believe how many times Mum would disappear in the middle of the night because Poulain called her personally and told her to come deal with things on her own.'

He grumbled. 'Wonderful.'

'So what are you going to do?'

Jackson reached over and picked over the piece of paper that Lyna had put in his hand at Tegel. 'Well… Lyna gave me the address of a brothel in Abuja and wrote a name under it: Surabhi Kharbanda.'

'I used to have a friend named Surabhi,' said Melissa lazily. 'She said her name meant "a wish-granting cow" or something along those lines.'

Jackson was quiet for a second. 'You're exhausted.'

'Really,' she replied sarcastically.

'I'm going to Abuja tomorrow,' he said. 'Lyna told me to use what she's taught me, so I'll probably work on seducing this Surabhi. I know that Abacha likes Indian girls from the profile Robert sent me, so…'

'Be careful,' she said softly. 'Goodnight, Jacks.'

'Goodnight, Peach.'

And he went back to staring at the ceiling.

---

Despite being under a dictatorship, the Nigerian capital of Abuja was very lively and festive on weekend nights. In the northwest district, Maitama, the NICON Hilton hotel stuck out majestically, a lush lawn around it and a golf course nearly adjacent. Directly east was the Wuse district, a sharp contrast from the beautiful, well-groomed Maitama. When Jackson had given the driver the address of the place, the man had asked Jackson if perhaps he'd written the wrong address, and now that they were actually in Wuse, he was beginning to wonder if Lyna had given him the right location. Blue eyes looked questionably out at the women walking along the Addis Ababa Crescent at the late time, watching carefully to assure that the driver hadn't missed the location written on the paper.

'Here it is, sir,' said the driver, looking back at Jackson and handing him the paper with the prostitute's name on it. 'Are you sure you want to be dropped off here?'

'Yes,' said Jackson, but really, looking at the streetwalkers, he wasn't that sure.

'When you need to go back to the Hilton, please just call the hotel and they'll send whoever's on duty at the time.'

'Thank you,' he replied, pressing some paper Naira into the driver's hand before stepping out to the sidewalk and looking up at the building in front of him.

He stood there until the car drove away and a man walked out with a nearly diseased-looking prostitute. Jackson almost recoiled, but rather just moved far out of his way to get into the building, his obsessive childhood tendencies pulling themselves out again. He waited until someone else opened the door and then walked in, making sure to not touch the door. Once inside, he was displeased to see there was, in fact, another door to go through, so he pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and opened it as daintily as possible.

Inside, the main lounge appeared slightly less terrifying. It was much like any normal club: music thumping, people socialising around high tables, drunks flirting badly at the bar. Jackson frowned—would this really be the place for a military dictator to acquire his prostitutes? He walked cautiously around, receiving a couple of interested head-to-toe looks from scantily clad women that he completely ignored. Dropping his handkerchief on the floor (after all, how would he justify using it anywhere near his face after using it on that door handle?), he turned his head and watched in interest as a well dressed woman crossed the dance floor and went in a door by one of the huge woofers against the far wall. Raising an eyebrow, he walked over to the door and tried the handle, only to realise it was locked. As he took his hand off of the handle, a hand clamped onto his shoulder.

'Do you need something?' asked a female voice, and Jackson froze.

Expecting a brawny female bouncer, he instead turned to see a short, black woman dressed in very skimpy clothing. 'Pardon me?'

She gave him a toothy smile. 'A foreign boy, hm? Here for the nightlife?'

'No, I'm…' he started, pulling out the piece of paper with the address and name on it. 'Well… actually…'

The woman looked down at the paper. 'Ooh, big spender.'

'Do you know who she is?' he asked, and the woman gave him a questioning half-glare. 'I'm up from South Africa and one of my friends in Benin has had her escort him before. She comes highly recommended.'

Her face melted into a smile again. 'Of course she does, but you'll have to pay upfront.'

'I wouldn't do it any other way,' Jackson replied smoothly.

'What are you wanting?'

'Just the company.'

The woman laughed heartily. 'Sure.'

Jackson gave her an uncomfortable and slightly disgusted smile. In response, she reached forward and unlocked the door, allowing him to walk in to the much nicer antechamber of the Abuja underworld. As the door closed, the loud music faded to a pounding bass line and the woman walked past him, going up to the prostitute that Jackson had seen a few minutes earlier.

'Is Surabhi back yet?'

The prostitute looked at Jackson with a demure smile. 'If this is the guy she'll get, then yeah, she's in.'

'Well then get her,' said the woman, obviously their pimp.

She nodded and disappeared behind a curtain, leaving Jackson alone with the pimp. The woman was overtly looking him over, taking in his appearance from the stylish glasses to the pressed suit and shined shoes.

'So, what do you do?'

'I'm in graduate school,' he replied, putting his hands in his pockets.

'Pretty well-dressed for a student,' she said, raising an eyebrow.

'My family's in diamonds,' he said with a smile.

The woman's eyes sparkled. 'How lovely.'

The curtain pulled open again and an Indian woman looked out. She was wearing a choli blouse and a zadosi-embroidered red lehenga that dragged on the floor behind her. As she came through the curtain, she wrapped a gossamer dupatta around her upper arms and looked between Jackson and the woman. Flexing his jaw, Jackson looked from her strong Indian-featured face down to her stomach exposed between the pieces of the ghagara choli. She looked at him with familiar detachment before flipping her dark brown curly hair over her shoulder, her long jhumka earrings swinging.

'This is him?' she asked in a heavily accented voice.

'Yes, this is…?'

'Daniel Plaatje,' Jackson responded.

'South Africa,' Surabhi guessed accurately.

'His family's in the diamond industry,' the pimp said.

Surabhi's disinterest faded completely and she suddenly moved over to Jackson, lacing her arms around his neck as she gave him the same demure smile the other prostitute had. 'So, Daniel… what are we going to do tonight?'

He awkwardly reached down and placed his hands on her hips, looking into her heavily made-up eyes. 'I was thinking we might just go back to my hotel.'

Her eyes grew dark. 'That will cost you.'

'To sit around and talk at the bar?' he asked with an innocent smile.

The lusty woman reappeared. 'That can be arranged very easily.'

Jackson's smile widened and she ran her hands up through his hair. 'Do I pay you or her?'

'I'll take it,' the pimp said, holding out her hand. 'For a night in the lovely Surabhi's company, 68,500 Naira.'

Surabhi stepped to the side and watched with greedy eyes as Jackson pulled out his wallet, opening it to reveal masses of bills and South African-issued travellers cheques. Mixed in were both Naira and Rands. When the pimp saw this, she reached out and put a hand over his.

'We'll also accept Rands,' she said, nearly frothing at the mouth over the possibility of taking a stronger currency.

'In Rands then,' he replied, fishing out 3,500 Rand. The woman took it from him quickly.

'A pleasure doing business with you, Mr Plaatje.'