Prologue
407 Words
Prologue
1991
Chiu Wah On smiled at his old friend; metallic black, compact and powerful. He felt the weight of the SIG Sauer P225 Pistol in his coarse hands and checked the recoil actions to ensure everything would work perfectly.
Lighting a cigarette, Chiu inhaled and blew out grey smoke that wafted upwards, dispersing against the whirring ceiling fan. His fingers ran over the long scar that went from his forehead and around his left cheekbone; a constant reminder of that bloody night, before settling on the solid form of the weapon again.
Chiu knew the weapon inside out, as if it were an extension of his body, and had handled it many times in training. It was a widely used handgun and not easy to trace or be attributed to any particular source.
The first time he had fired the pistol felt like it was only yesterday. The execution yard in Nanjing, capital of Jiangsu province, under a stark, grey sky. Two People’s Liberation Army guards escorted a shackled prisoner into the empty concrete yard, pulling off his cloth hood to reveal the broken face of a man aged around twenty, eyes wet with tears as they settled on Chiu in anguish.
His superior handed Chiu the loaded P225 and gave him a level stare. He took it and looked into the eyes of the prisoner for a moment, before swiftly raising his arm and firing point blank into the forehead. Every detail, every sound, was crisp in his mind. The shot, followed by the slump of the body on the hard concrete ground, and finally the words of praise from his superior. His first live kill gave Chiu a grim satisfaction, enabling him to move on from years of raw frustration.
The cheap Bangkok hotel room was low lit. Net curtains across the open window wafted in the breeze and the walls faded into a sickly brown from years of stale cigarette smoke. A television flickered silently in the corner and the occasional roar of a moped or tuk-tuk filled the room. He had not left the hotel for three days now and it felt like the walls were closing in on him. Thankfully, the killing would soon begin.
Chiu wrapped the pistol and cache of bullets in a cloth, tucked them into a red canvas bag and then placed it back into the bottom of the wardrobe. Patience, he kept telling himself, over and over. Patience.
- Writer
