A day I hate (pics with stories)

It was a day exactly how I hate them. Rainy, misty, cold and windy.

Normal people would avoid getting out of the house if at all possible. But I was not normal and it was not possible for me. Because they called for me.

I sneezed when I reached the Tower Bridge. The old stone walls looked as forbidding as always. In the slight fog it seemed as if they would look down on you, as you were approaching their gates.
But that was nonsense, of course. Buildings cannot look. Well, most of them.

Anyway, in this case it was not the towers that were looking at me.

pic CC0

“Hello”, I greeted the little girl standing in a shadowy corner of one of the gates.
“Hello. You are late.” Her face under the yellow rain coat hood did not move and her eerily deep voice sounded like we would be standing in a cellar.
“So? I got the message just 20 minutes ago.”
“You are late. Door three.”

Without any more words I opened the entrance to the tower. But instead of going up to have a good look on the river, which would be impossible anyway in this weather, I took a different route.

Not many people know that there are vast underground tunnels under the tower bridge. In old times they were used for smuggling, sometimes of officials, sometimes of very unofficial things.

Even less people know the whole extent of those tunnels since most of them are hidden.

I am one of those who not only know about most of the tunnels, but also know how to enter them.
I used the secret lever and a totally innocent part of a wall suddenly sprouted a hole. Which door to use changed in regular intervals. If you weren’t told by the door guards (the ones without uniform, like the girl) which door it was today, it would still open. But there would also be a surprising amount of traps of all sorts to greet the unsuspecting wanderer.

But I was lucky, the girl didn’t play a trick on me and I could go down to the meeting place. I only met one other person, clad in a dark mantle and hiding his face. I didn’t look. He (or she or it) didn’t look. You never did that. You concentrated on your steps that echoed hollow from the mossy stone walls and nothing more.

Finally I arrived at my goal. It was a small room, divided in the middle by a red curtain. Two men were watching. They were deaf. Whatever was spoken in this room would only be heard by the one giving the task and by the one receiving the task.

“You are late”, was the greeting I received by a figure hidden behind the curtain. It was a voice that made it impossible to say if it was man or woman.
“I already heard that.”
“I am sorry, but this task is of utmost importance and, alas, comes with a short time frame. It also bears some conditions that require your very special skills and attention.”
“And who is it that has gotten the attention of the guild?”, was my question.
The curtain opened a bit and a slender, white arm with a small piece of paper appeared. I snatched the paper and read the client’s wishes.

“Impressive”, even I had to admit.
“Possible?”
That was no empty question. Tomorrow? With these extras?

“Yes”, I concluded after a minute of thinking.
“Yes, but it will be necessary to hire additional personal. And since it has to go fast, it has to be done without discretion.”
In other words, I would have to kill the hired muscles, too.
“We are prepared to double your normal salary to pay for those conditions, and triple it because of… the delicacy of the target.”
“That is acceptable.”
“Then I wish you good luck.”

It was a feeling as if the soul on the other side of the curtain had gone to the other world. It felt totally empty. I know this was not the case, and it was not the first time it happened, but it still made me shiver. How could any person make himself (or herself) so totally disappear from the human senses?

But it was not a good idea to think about such things. Without one word more I turned around and took the way back.

Back on the bridge I did not react to the girl in any way. Her business was done. Mine had started. As always it would end with the very horrible dead of someone I had never met before and I did not hold any grudge against. Such was the business of the Assassin’s guild of London.

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