Lust
Part One
It started off as surveillance. He was a threat to me, to my team, so I set
Prodigy to watch him, to record his every move. Every time he walked past a
security camera I knew it. Whenever he bought anything not with cash I knew
it. At first Prodigy would prepare me a monthly report of what he did and who
with. Then it became weekly. None of what he brought me was any use. He had
bought a CD by X artist. He had bought such and such a book and read it in the
park with a cup of black coffee. It became apparent he bought the important
things with cash.
He wasn’t an enemy, he was an inconvenience. But he could be an enemy. I
had seen many things in regards to this one, the others were just children,
nothing to worry about or fret over. He was the problem. He was cold, and
determined, and stubborn. What he wanted he got, just like me. That was why I
started surveillance. Estet gave us many advantages, state of the art tracking
was one of them.
He didn’t go out much, he didn’t shop much and when he did he bought few
frivolous items. At six am he left the shop by car and went to the east, there
he vanished from surveillance for at least an hour, more often between two and
four, then he would return as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened,
although for him, it hadn’t. Then he worked in the shop from between four and
eight hours, Prodigy had got a copy of their shift rota and it was easy to
predict the absences in relation to his shifts. He always left at six and
returned a good half hour before his shift. After his shift he would take a
walk, sometimes stopping into a store, these usually coincided with release
dates. He was as meticulous in his shopping as everything else. Once he had
bought a sweater. Twice a week he would go to the post office to send
something overseas. I didn’t care enough to intercept the post, it was obvious
where it was going.
On the days that he sent the letters he would stop off on his way home at a
supermarket where he never spent more than four thousand yen. Prodigy’s
Intel suggested that it was his turn to feed them. He even got copies of the
receipts and it became obvious from his ingredients he could cook, and cook
well. At that point he had been up thirteen hours. Then depending on the day he
would either stay in his apartment where there was no sign of a television and
read or listen to music, or once a month he would go drinking with a friend, I
even had Intel on his friend. The friend paid for everything. He came home
alone. He never slept for more than six hours.
I disliked the blank spots in my information, they were inefficient. I
despised inefficiency and took over his surveillance myself. Tokyo was covered
in security cameras like fleas on a cat, but like the cat it had blind spots and
whatever it was he did, he did it in a blind spot. I changed camera angles, I
hacked mainframes, I changed codes, and I couldn’t figure out what he did, he
didn’t pay for it, or if he did it was in cash, but withdrew no money to do it. It
was in an area full of private residences but whatever way he took he missed
the cameras until his reappearance in the same spot where he vanished.
I bugged his car. That proved as fruitful as commanding the tide. He parked
up less than fifteen feet out of the range of the last camera. Wherever he
went he walked from there, but judging from his nightly perambulations, that
didn’t mean it was close. It also suggested that could be part of the reason
surveillance lost him if he was on foot and he was looking for a car.
I went over the tapes again and again and again, but nothing. He had
vanished completely, but then reappeared. I went to the area and checked it, there was nothing. I checked blue prints and maps and there was nothing. I moved
the camera so it covered where he parked his car, his car was there at the
time to make sure, and then went back to see what direction he took the next day.
Weiss had a mission that night. I missed the opportunity to bug him by
seconds when he jumped back out of range. I very nearly asked him where it
was that he went and how he got there? I hadn’t realised just how much it
irritated me until I saw him, jumping out of range with his sword in the saya.
He wasn’t wearing his trench coat and he looked long and slender, all in black apart from his hair. He looked very young and very dangerous. He snarled at me,
and I couldn’t help but think of him like a snippy pet, all snarls and teeth but
with no real bite. My surveillance was so complete I could pick him off
anywhere after noon, or in his car on the way to the blank spot. He commanded
a tactical retreat as did I. We didn’t regard Weiss as dangerous, they were
lucky and they were stubborn, but no real threat.
Although following the mission we didn’t get back till gone three, and they
had further to drive I didn’t go to bed, and went to the last camera that
recorded him at ten past six and followed him. He didn’t deliberately stay out of
the way of the cameras, the path he took was the quickest and the easiest.
He went to a traditional house where the door was opened for him he went in,
escorted by a middle aged matron, and about two hours later he was led out by an old man. There was no hint whatsoever what went on behind the wall. The name
plate said Tamakurai, which revealed nothing, blue prints and maps revealed
nothing. I hadn’t expected it to annoy me as much as it had.
I took to surveilling the house, I rented out a room in a house facing it and
recorded everyone in and everyone out. I stopped off twice a day to change and
collect the tapes. He spent time within that house every day and was
always met at the door by a middle aged woman and let out by an old man.
Through out the day the middle aged woman escorted children and young men in
and out. The middle aged woman was a servant of some kind, and following her
revealed nothing. The old man never left the house. Research showed it to be a
kind of private school though what it taught I could only guess, entrance was
only by invitation. However there was more than one way to skin an Abyssinian.
I crept into the garden around five am, drugged the man’s lazy old dog, and
waited. The answer was so obvious I very nearly groaned but that would have
alerted both Abyssinian and his sensei to my presence. It was a kendo dojo. He
came here to practise his sword craft daily. It answered so many questions and
I felt an idiot for not realising sooner. I had been surveilling him for seven
months but this was the first time I had ever really watched him. He was as
graceful as his namesake cat, long clear limbs that moved like water through
first tai chi to warm his muscles and then a long hard sword battle with a little
old man who appeared to be made of some kind of elastic. He wore traditional
robes in a pale grey and his feet were bare. I had never seen anything so
beautiful in my life. The only motions he made that were uncontrolled was the
swing of his red hair. I had answered the question and in doing so had set
myself a thousand more.
I had to steel myself to look away from the white skin on his forearms as
his shirt rode up. I had seen him with a sword many times but this was the
first time I wasn’t on the wrong end of it, I would be if he saw me, but only if
he saw me. The bend of his feet as he lunged and parried and thrusted and
turned was intoxicating. The flick of his red hair in that pale coloured room.
The look of determination on his face. I had to keep perfectly still or he would
hear me, I was armed and so was he, but that wasn’t what this was about.
The old man was keeping his ground firmly. He was neither giving nor taking
slack. He was as rubbery as a gum tree and although he was small and
wrinkled he was more than a match for Abyssinian. He was working him hard,
forcing him back again and again. Abyssinian was frowning, then raised his hand,
put down him wooden sword and rolled his shoulders, looking out almost exactly
at me. I swear he almost looked me clear in the eye, but he obviously didn’t see
me or he would have reacted, then he lifted the sword again, and began the
fight anew. Each step was almost perfectly choreographed, the sensei didn’t
need to say anything, the only advantage he had over Abyssinian was his years
of experience. Abyssinian had youth, vigour, strength, and beauty. I caught
myself at that thought. He was an annoyance, like a buzzing fly, buzzing flies
were not beautiful, they were swatted. His hair was flung across his face, his
mouth open, his eyes narrowed down to slits, I was close enough I could hear
him panting.
I had to get out of here, and fast. It was becoming hard to think, harder to
remain objective. I crawled away from the door until I well out of sight, and
hopped over the wall, but not before I tucked a camera with a digital relay on
the frame of the paper doors.
I found myself a small local restaurant and ordered coffee. My hands were
actually shaking as if he was someone that scared me. The truth was I scared
myself. He was beautiful, I ran over our previous meetings in my mind as I
sipped the scalding black coffee, ignoring the pretty waitress and her cautious
employer, had he always been beautiful under that scowl and scream of Shi-ne.
Had his skin always glowed like that, like a pearl or some other gemstone. No he
had been Abyssinian, an annoyance, and then he began his kata. Part of me
wanted to go back to the dojo and gun him down and rid myself of the
annoyance, the other remembered his face as he practised, the look of intense
concentration, the way his hair was slicked to his forehead, the way his mouth
was slightly open. I checked my watch, it was nearly eight. How long had I
watched him, and had I lost him when I panicked.
Part of me knew it wouldn’t matter, one of two things would come of this,
one he hadn’t seen me and he would go back to the shop and carry on letting my
surveillance pick him up again, or two he would come and find me, and nothing
would happen in a crowded place. I wanted to tell myself that I found this
restaurant for that reason, but really I just needed a coffee to calm my
nerves. He was not my enemy, that was too good for him, he was a fly in the
ointment, a spanner in the works, nothing more, but somewhere when he
practised with his wooden sword he had become more, he had become human to
me.
I looked at the muffin the pretty waitress put in front of me, for a whole
moment trying to remember if I had ordered it. It looked like something I
would eat, a gaijin breakfast, it was studded with blueberries. I didn’t want it.
I pushed it away, leaving more than enough money for coffee, muffin and a
healthy tip on the table. Then got out.
I went to the safe house as soon as I could. Prodigy sat on the couch with a
hand held game bleeping and flashing away at him. He looked up when I came in,
"Out all night, Crawford?" He asked.
"I went out this morning." I told him, part of me wanted to take that
whirring bleeping contraption and stick it up his nose, what right did he have to
mock me? "I ate out."
"Oh," he said and went back to button bashing with abandon. When he lost
his concentration to the game cups rattled in the cupboards, when he lost they
shattered. Nevertheless cups were easier to replace than he was. He was
Prodigy, he was Schwartz. It was a bearable price to pay, and better than
drinking out of plastic cups. "Anything nice?"
It was too early in the morning for conversation, didn’t teenage boys sleep
constantly, I know I had when I got the opportunity at his age, but not Prodigy,
he just pushed the buttons on that infernal machine or in the space room and
made the world obey. I wondered if he did sleep at all. "A coffee, and a
muffin."
"You should have asked me." He said, "I like muffins, was it blueberry?" If I
had have thought I would have brought it back for him, he may have been small
and abnormally active for his age, but he ate enough for four.
"It wasn’t very nice," I told him, I hadn’t even tried it. "And I didn’t think
you’d be up. I went for a walk very early."
"Finding Abyssinian’s blind spot?" I blinked, I knew I had set Prodigy the
start of the surveillance, but I didn’t think the annoyance had filtered that far
just yet.
"A kendo dojo." I told him bluntly running the tap into the coffee pot for
more coffee, maybe I was coming down with something but I couldn’t seem to
stop shaking.
"Aah," he said, "sometimes you really can’t see the wood for the trees." He
turned off the console and put it down meticulously on the side of the table, so
it was exactly parallel to the edge, "I put it down to a Kritiker safe house or
something."
"I didn’t even think of that." I told him, "I bugged it," Why was I telling him
this, he was Prodigy, he was Schwartz but that hardly made him privy to my
innermost thoughts.
"I would have too," he said, "the more we know about Abyssinian’s technique
the better to counter it."
I agreed as I made the coffee. "Have you eaten?" I asked changing the
subject. He shook his head, the others wouldn’t be up for hours yet and he
normally cooked for everyone. "Get your coat." I told him, he actually looked
shocked. I couldn’t remember ever taking him out before, but that hadn’t
meant that I hadn’t, it just made it very unlikely that I had. "I’m just antsy," I
told him using the American word, "and you look like you could eat a horse,
stable and all." He looked at me very suspiciously, "I’ll even pay." He got his
coat.
Prodigy can be disconcerting, he looks like a child, sometimes he even acts
like a child and then he looks at you and all sense of his childhood vanishes. He
plans meticulously, he executes complex strategies. Of us all he is the most
suited to Schwartz, Mastermind is temperamental and can be frustratingly
weak at times, Berserker is difficult to control and impossible to stop. Prodigy
looks as innocent as a baby and then when he gets the opportunity he will do it
and your heart is crushed and he hasn’t moved a muscle, but still managed to
rifle your pockets. Sometimes he is very young, and sometime I look into his big
blue eyes and I consider the options I am presented with. He is dangerous, as
dangerous as any of us, if not more so, but sometimes he is only eighteen and
very small for his age. He is home tutored, at a separate safe house, because
of issues he had at school.
Sometimes I want company and he is easier managed than the others.
Something changed in me this morning and I don’t like it. There is a café down
the street from our safe-house. Its convenient. I open the door and Prodigy
glides in, he is never over energetic, he just doesn’t sleep. He sits at a table
and waits for me as I hang my coat on the back of the chair. "Kawaii," a woman
says looking at us, "are you out with your papa?" She asks prodigy.
He raises an eyebrow, "no, he’s my employer and together we’re part of an
international conglomerate of assassins."
The woman looks mortified although he told her the truth. "There’s no need
to be rude, young man." She tells him going back to her own table.
I would be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy watching that. I didn’t laugh, that
would be the last straw, but I enjoyed it. "I don’t know, Tousan," he says for
the woman’s benefit. "People today."
"Order what you like," I tell him handing him the menu, "as much as you like,"
he raises a single thin eyebrow, "I told you, I’m paying."
I call the waitress over and order coffee, I even lower my glasses to look at
her over the rims and explain that the young man is to have everything he
desires. She coughs. This kind of mind game suddenly isn’t fun anymore. Prodigy
orders enough food for a small army, mostly sweet.
"I trust that you’re not feeding me out of some kind of parental
responsibility." He asks.
"Of course not," I tell him, pushing my glasses back up my nose to look at
him clearly. "it is inefficient for you to pass out of malnutrition at certain
inopportune times from eating someone’s cooking." We are always careful of the
words that we choose if we talk about work, but Mastermind’s cooking is, even
internally I carefully choose my words, educational, hearty and filling, but
German. If Berserker gets in the kitchen, he cooks everything in fat, including
his own hands usually. In a moment of lucidity he told me of the four Irish food
groups, bacon; beans; whiskey and lard.
He is not a telepath like Mastermind but he can tell what I’m thinking, what
I am avoiding thinking. "I should learn to cook," he says, "perhaps we can slot in
lessons, Far shouldn’t really be let loose with those kitchen knives."
I smile at him, he treats the gesture as suspiciously as I would, "it is the
blood pudding that disturbs me most."
He smiles back, my little ally. "He will eat anything." He concedes as his food
arrives, "but I’m sure its not really blood in blood pudding," he says biting into a
sausage with obvious delight. He’s enjoying his food too much for me to
contradict him. "Can I have some coffee?" He asks.
"No." I tell him, "it will stunt your growth. Have some tea."
He frowns around the sausage. "Schu lets me drink coffee." He says.
"Schu calls you Naggles," I remind him, "and I’m sure you don’t want me to
start that."
He agrees to the tea which I order for him. "Is this about the surveillance?"
He asks dipping his sausage into the runny yolk of his egg and then into a blob
of tomato sauce on his plate before biting into it.
I blink, caught unawares. He is the only other that knows about it, but even
he doesn’t know what I saw this morning, what I can still see. His skin is so
white. "What makes you say that?"
"You’re antsy," he repeats my word, "you were doing that this morning, you
never do this." He looks at the table. He’s clever, sometimes I forget that.
"Maybe you’d be better off going to the gym and working off some of that
tension, or maybe going to the range." I look at him surprised at what is
actually a very good idea. "Did something happen?"
"I nearly got spotted planting the camera." I blurt out, a small truth to
cover the whole truth, the image of Abyssinian with his head flung back, his
hair across his cheek, his mouth open.
"Clumsy." He chides gently, cutting his bacon, teasing me the way I would
scold him. He is in a very good mood and I can’t say that I trust it. "He’s
handsome though when he’s not in a death glare."
I practically spray coffee over him in shock. The look that he gives me is
conspiratorial, "you must have noticed, taking over surveillance like that, he’s
scary but that doesn’t stop him being hot. I mean if he wasn’t Weiss I’d throw
myself at him, listen to me, I’m like a proper fan boy." He smiles to himself
almost a little shyly. "Believe me, everyone but you noticed."
"I’ve never seen him without the look of determination." I tell him blithely.
He quirks that eyebrow again, the ketchup skids across the table, "I believe
you." He says somewhat sarcastically, "but I have more interesting tapes than
you think."
It’s my turn to raise an eyebrow. "They’re not cheap." He reassures me, and
that sounds like Prodigy. "I have mission tapes." He said, "and voice recordings."
It’s then we talk in earnest.
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