Chapter 5
442 Words
Chapter 5The autopsy wasn’t bad. At least I didn’t disgrace myself by throwing up. Not that I’d expected to. This was nothing compared to shooting a man in the face at point blank range and watching his skull disintegrate as his face come out of the back of his head.
Mr. Vincent called it short when he received a message from headquarters. He spoke to Mr. Wallace, spoke to his secretary, Ms. Parker, then turned to speak to me.
“Matheson, I have a job for you.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Let’s go take a ride.”
We went out to the parking lot and got in his car, the same make and model as mine but a newer year. Once we were on the road, he started talking.
“If I recall correctly, you lived in Cambridge for a time, so you’re familiar with the Boston area.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Someone in Huntingdon’s Boston HQ is screwing with the computer programs, most especially for accounting. That one was supposed to contain a simple debugging program, but instead of running a scan and making any corrections automatically, it’s exponentially increasing the errors.”
“Not good.” And whether the guy doing the screwing was a freelance or from one of the many alphabet agencies that littered DC made no difference. A good portion of our funding came to us through Huntingdon. It was a deep, dark secret that Huntingdon fronted for the WBIS; as such we couldn’t let anyone or anything take advantage of it.
“No. It’s actually increasing the problems to the point the entire office is pretty much at a standstill.”
“What do you want me to do, sir?”
“Fix it. Whithers is your contact. You’ll meet him on the concourse. He’ll have the identification papers you need to claim your ticket and get you onboard with the pistol he’ll give you.”
Shit. I hated this kind of job. When he’d first mentioned computers I’d thought—
Never mind. This was my job.
The pistol would be cold; with all its serial numbers filed off, it would be untraceable.
“I know the building, Mr. Vincent, and it shouldn’t take me long to get there from Logan. How far do you want me to go?”
“I want him taken out with extreme prejudice.”
“Yes, sir. Do you want any messages left on the body, sir?”
“I believe I’ll leave that up to you.”
I reached for the door handle.
“Just one thing, Matheson. Don’t get caught.”
“No, sir.” I expected him to drive off, but he didn’t. Was this some kind of test? Well, whether it was or not, I had a job to do.
I went into the terminal and began looking for a man who’d look like the last thing the average person would expect to see as an agent.
- Writer
