 I was mulling over ways to stop this assault on my innards, when I noticed a familiar face walk up to Staj, the owner, who in turn pointed to my table in the back of the café. Good one, Staj. Apparently this place wasn’t the refuge that I had previously believed. I silently vowed never to come back, but I knew that it was a hollow threat. I didn’t know about the absinthe, but Staj did import the best Jazz musicians available in this part of the world, and I knew that I would be back. The courier didn’t say a word, but merely dropped the note at my table. He knew my face. I waited until he left and walked into the water closet with the note: “Respond to London, by plane. Meet with station chief.” Typical la Confrerie elusiveness. The only information that I could glean from this note was that they wanted me there quickly. No train and tunnel for me this time. Whoever drafted the missive must have known how much I disdained flying. I returned to my table where my untouched shot sat waiting alongside a fresh beer that I hadn’t ordered. I made it a practice never to consume unattended drinks, so I allowed my coat to knock over the shot, but missed the beer. I could avoid the splash of a single shot, but a whole pint of pilsner would have saturated my coat and I didn’t want to reek of beer on the plane ride. I apologized to Staj and refused a replacement, “I’m flying.” As I walked into the foggy street I heard the portly proprietor’s voice following me over the din of the three piece combo: “You’re not piloting the damn plane, Chance.” “Next time, Staj.” Absinthe crisis averted. He wouldn’t be too upset. I had left a large tip and Staj was notorious for helping himself to a portion of his staff’s hard earned gratuities. Cheap bastard. Since I can’t imagine that anyone would be interested in the tale of me getting nauseous on a flight, suffice it to say that I arrived at Heathrow International “without incident.” At 0930 hours I reported to a nondescript tailor shop in the garment district. I can’t remember the name on the front of the store, because la Confrerie has used a clothing store front so many times that I can’t walk into a Gap without thinking that I am going to be whisked into the back and handed a dossier. It was usually peoples’ names like: “Winston and Banks” or “Lloyd and Cunningham.” Sometimes they made it a haberdashery. Pretty weak for a secret organization. I walked in and gave the phrase of the week: “Pineapple buttons.” It was always a living object combined with an inanimate one in that order. If you were under duress, you could change one of the words or simply change the order of the two. You couldn’t vary it too much or any drunken idiot could come in and say two words and get himself killed. As I was escorted back to the station chief, I contemplated many sets of circumstances where some unsuspecting patron accidentally gave the phrase of the week and found himself sent on the adventure of his lifetime. It hadn’t ever happened, but the word “buttons” struck me as particularly dangerous for a clothing shop. As it turns out the station chief was one of my classmates from Wingman Camp, “Numar the Nigerian. Station Chief – London.” I really was impressed. Outside of France this was one of the sweetest plums one could pick. My feelings were of sincere admiration and not envy. I had been offered Station Washington and Station Copenhagen on different occasions, but didn’t want to leave the field. “I fell into the role. When the last Station Chief retired, they made me acting Station Chief against my protests and now I am stuck here,” his wide grin showed that he didn’t mind it too much. It wasn’t so bad if you didn’t mind giving up the field. Once you were station chief, you could even have a wife and kids. Life as a Wingman in the field wasn’t conducive to marriage. It wasn’t even conducive to having friends. “Okay, do you want to tell me what I’m doing here?” I sat down in a leather chair in front of his oak desk without being asked. “Or did you just want me to put your tailors to the test?” “God no! I wouldn’t let those blind fools hem your pants.” Of course. Like every other la Confrerie front. It’s the way we keep foot traffic to a minimum. Bad service, shoddy products, etc. Then no one wants to come back. Sooner or later word of mouth spreads and no one will patronize the establishment. He yelled from behind his desk in a deep mildly accented voice, “Hey, boys. Chance Ransom wants you to make him a suit!” There were a few feeble laughs from outside office. “Okay, I get the point. What’s the job then?” I began becoming a little impatient, but tried not to let it show. “Yes, yes, the old Chance as I knew you before. Down to business. Sorry, but I do get bored here.” He opened his desk and tossed me a dossier. I caught a glimpse of what looked like the butt of a revolver and a bottle of rum lying on its side. “Sorry, Numar, I just got off a plane.” Typically all assignments started like this: I would receive a folder or envelope depending on which supplies were readily on hand that would contain every piece of data about my principal that could be obtained. Everything from whether or not he smoked, health history, color charts for clothing, psychological profile, taste in music, clothing sizes, etc. You might not know whether or not you had an Oedipus Complex, but before you became my principal, I would. You might know that you are afraid of heights, but la Confrerie would know why you were afraid of heights. We had to know everything, so that we could serve our principals. It bordered on fanaticism. This profile was different. It contained two sheets of paper. It was the application that all principals had to complete prior to contracting a Wingman. There were a lot of blank spaces. “What the hell is this, Num?” I said not looking up from the paper. “It’s not a normal assignment, Chance.” I continued to read, while waiting for a more satisfying explanation: 5’08, athletic build, brown hair… “We’ve had some unusual activity in this area. I asked for you because I’ve heard that you are…how should I say this…accepting unconventional assignments these days.” As a station chief, he would have been cleared to know about the double sanction in Buenos Aires. “You heard wrong.” … brown eyes, Latin, 20-24 years of age, “The principal wouldn’t give you his exact age? What the hell is this? Wait this is a female?” I had never seen the “F” box checked off on an application before, so I normally just skimmed past it. I barely caught it this time. “Yeah. Look, Chance, I don’t want to play games. She’s not a principal. She’s a threat. About a year ago we started hearing rumors around town that there was a female operator working primarily in the Piccadilly Circus area.” The fact that I thought that he was making a joke must have been apparent to Numar. “I am deadly serious, Chance. There have been reports of a woman matching that description, using the techniques of la Confrerie, albeit crudely.” He gave me a moment to read the rest of the application. There was not a lot of useful information. It was called the Norton-Fallsburg Experiment. In the early sixties, several years before the women’s rights movement was in full swing, William Norton and Johannes Fallsburg hypothesized that women could be trained to be Wingmen. The idea being that they had certain attributes that were conducive to the mission of the organization. The first and only group was recruited in 1962. A separate site was established exclusively for the training of women. They were tested through the early phases of the same training that the men received at Wingman Camp. The experiment was disbanded after three months. The women began seeing the mission as a betrayal to their own gender. Several of the subjects were quoted as saying that it was wrong to use manipulation and subterfuge to seduce women. I always thought that was strange. We studied it in Wingman camp. Because of careful protocols, none of the female subjects knew enough about la Confrerie to be of any significant threat. Of course, from time to time, male recruits have over-identified with targets, but that is rare and the trait is usually detected in the early phases of training. Norton-Fallsburg was a progressive idea, before a time that would never come. “Jesus, Numar…” “The description is vague because no member of la Confrerie has seen her first hand. She is obviously way too young to have been a part of Norton-Fallsburg. Besides, we have pretty much tracked the entire test group. As could be expected, most of them are successful professionals. One’s a U.S. congresswoman…” “Pretty much? Not all of the group was tracked?” “You weren’t around for the 70’s budget cuts. Before your time. Apparently they lost a couple back then.” Numar saidthis as though he was a much more veteran Wingman that had survived this tumultuous time. Give some people a title and it goes straight to their head. “I want what you have on those two.” “What’s the point? The one thing that we do know is that she is way too young…you think maybe an offspring? “I have no idea, Numar. I don’t really have a starting place for this. What the hell do you want me to do if I do find her?” “Your assignment is to identify and eliminate the threat.” At that I sprung to my feet, “Listen, you fuck. I don’t care if we have matching class rings or what the little name plate on your desk says; I am not sanctioning a woman. I’m not doing another sanction. Period. Get me another assignment or I’ll be back in Marseilles before the door shuts behind me.” The enormous Nigerian stood up to match my move. I measured the man to have four inches and a well carried forty pounds on me, “This is not the Shriners, Ransom. You will not raise your voice in my office. Now sit down.” I stood there matching his gaze. It was at that time that I remembered some advice that the Frenchman once gave me. “Chance, never try to fight the Nigerian. He will destroy you.” Well, that was pretty clear advice, I suppose. Besides, I didn’twant to fight Numar. For all of his scariness, I liked the man. However, a line had been drawn in the sand. “It is not a sanction, Chance,” he let out a sigh and took a half a step back, “Now, please sit down.” It was what needed to happen to defuse the situation, “Sorry, Numar. B.A. is still messing with my head.” No Wingman had ever had to perform a double sanction before that time. “Understood. You have absolute discretion in how you want to deal with her up to and including a sanctioned kill, but it isn’t required. I will have those files delivered to your room. Do you need anything to get started?” “A decent tailor. Most of my wardrobe is in Antwerp and the rest in Prague.” “I’ll send my man to your room, tout de suite.” When I exited the shop, I walked a couple of blocks to a street where I could hail a taxi. “Head to Mayfair, Driver.” “Do you have an address for me?” As a matter of course, I never give the driver the address until I am close. “Piccadilly and James. Around there.” “Heading to the Ritz, Governor?” Damn. Not only did he guess where I was going, but he must have mistaken me for a public figure. It wouldn’t matter, but I rely a great deal on anonymity. Resembling someone famous is a liability. I pulled the brim of my hat a little lower and told him that I was not who he thought. Apparently, that did it, because he knocked off the small talk. Once I got cleaned up at the hotel, I sat down at the desk in my room to figure out how I was going to find this female Wingman. I know it’s an oxymoron, but I really didn’t know what to label her. I wasn’t thrilled that my hotel was so close to the target zone of Piccadilly Circus, but it did make for a short walk. I had no clue what I was searching for. The profiles on the two elusive members of Norton-Fallsburg were thorough, but the trail went cold on both in the mid-70’s. One of them appeared to have been destined for a fairly conventional life: husband, pregnant at the time, community college, etc. The other had gone the beatnik route. Carol Louise Jillian was an American who took the trouble to change her name to “flowersonnet” in 1968. The lack of capitals or word spacing is no accident. Her name is actually “flowersonnet.” Flowersonnet began joining radical elements of late 60’s society, which were to be found in abundance. Some of her causes actually conflicted with others. She marched against the Vietnam War in Washington, but joined a group that advocated nuking the north. She was a vegetarian, but wanted to unionize the workers at a pork rendering facility. She was a card carrying member of the American Communist Party and a member of a nameless group that promoted anarchy.Jesus. How did she get past the initial psyche for la Confrerie? Numar was wrong about one thing though. The Brotherhood didn’t lose track of her because of budget cuts. They lost track of her during one of the many IRA bombings of 1974. It was suspected that she may have been involved with the terrorist organization. An unidentified female was killed in the blast. It was believed to be Jillian aka flowersonnet. Another inconsistency. Flowersonnet’s mother was Chilean and her father was from Uruguay. Absolutely no connection with Ireland. Although all of this insanity was interesting, it did not necessarily mean that Jillian had anything to do with this fraudulent Wingwoman. However, there was the photo. The last existing photo pictured flowersonnet in a peasant shirt and bell bottomed dungarees. She had a braided Native American headband crowning her dark hair. Even with the ridiculous outfit, one could see that she was a Latin beauty. Other than the era and the age range, she could fit the general description of my target. Maybe. Three weeks met with almost no results. I say almost no results, because I had gained a few things. For one, I was becoming familiar with the staffers at every pub and club within three clicks of Piccadilly Circus. Additionally, although this was not really productive work, I found that my signature drink, the Bomb Wick, had gone out of fashion. None of the bars even stocked the proper type of Slim Jim. One bartender made a valiant attempt with a local brand of beef jerky, but to no avail. Some things just weren’t meant to be classics, I suppose. So, it hadn’t been a total loss, but my overhead was running somewhere in the neighborhood of 800 pounds sterling a day and it was a particularly tight budget year. It wasn’t until almost a month to the day from the night at Staj’s place that I caught a break. As usual it was Fortune’s decrepit old hand that played a part. I know. Everyone thinks that Fortune is a graceful lady, but to me she has always been a hideous bitch goddess…except this time. I had been following a routine of hitting the busiest places on their respectively busiest nights. That was a mistake. Assuming that my thesis that the Wingwoman was the offspring of flowersonnet – or at least trained by her - was correct, she would never hunt the busiest grounds. A Wingman survives on his anonymity. If you go to the busiest places and see the same faces, people will remember your game. Like snipers, we never hunt the same ground. That is why my first break came when I broke my routine to grab a late night snack of fish and chips atKu De Ta over on Regent. I was staring through the amber liquid in my pint at the remaining piece of fried fish, when she walked in. Had I had any of the beer in my mouth, I would have probably spewed it out in shock like a human atomizer. As it were, I had the same general reflex, but just blew out a stream of warm fishy air. Bravo, Chance! She had a dark crown of shiny straight hair cut in a fashionable medium straight haircut. I had been seeing a lot of women around London wearing their hair that way recently, but none to such acclaim. Her skin was as close to a mixture of olive and porcelain as any alchemist would dare attempt. However, it was her eyes that were her most remarkable feature. They were dark and deep and piercing. She appeared tall and lithe, but it was hard to tell beneath the classic beige trench coat. Incidentally, aside from being fashionable, the coat met every la Confrerie prerequisite, save one: it was worn by a woman. She was beautiful, but my contempt for what she represented overshadowed any attraction that I may have felt. I was the point man for la Confrerie, and I would do whatever it took to stop her. That would start with me going into the bathroom and freshening my breath. Two orders of fish and chips, are rarely a harbinger of good things to come. I waited to see if she ordered a drink to make sure that she wouldn’t leave. I then cautiously backed my way into the gentlemen’s lavatory. Once inside I selected a large water closet that had been remodeled from the original ancient wood to facilitate the disabled. I was glad to see that the ancient bar had a modernized bathroom. It would make my job easier. People often ask me if I wear a coat because it looks so cool and mysterious. The answer to that is obviously “yes,” but there is more to it than that. Inside my coat I carry a small bag; larger than a wallet, but not so bulky that it could any way be interpreted as a purse, at least that is my most profound hope. In any event, it is completely concealed. Inside it is a small supply of grooming items. You know the kind of thing that you would find in any hotel vending machine: deodorant, a small flat comb, hand lotion, a few vials of cologne, some shaving cream, a nail clipper and file, hand sanitizer, a liberal supply of condoms of different sizes (I’m a Wingman; they are rarely for me), some general hair products, folding toothbrush, toothpaste, dental floss, mouthwash, a sewing needle and thread. I also carried a straight razor loose in my coat pocket. I spread the contents out on the edge of the sink that adorned the wall of the water closet. I considered my options. At Wingman Camp, we train in grooming rituals. Don’t confuse this with the general grooming that you normally do to get ready for a big date. A grooming ritual is an intense time limited set of practices that condition you from head to toe with varying degrees of thoroughness. The trainees are brought into the general training room, and practice in a mirror while the instructor times them. To put this into perspective, a civilian would do what we would consider a one sixteenth grooming ritual to go to work at the office. Someone that is very conscientious about hygiene, like a model or a hairdresser would be in the one eighth grooming ritual range. No self-respecting Wingman would shovel a stable with a one eighth grooming ritual. It is what we call a substandard level of hygiene. We have to have a quarter grooming ritual down to five minutes, ten for a half and twenty for a full. It would take the average human being one and a half days to accomplish a full grooming ritual. Most people would starve to death if they had to groom like we do. In Wingman Camp I had an FGR time of 17 minutes and 23 seconds. I don’t know if it was hubris or dogged determination that motivated me. All that I remember is thinking about the importance of the mission and not wanting to let Numar and the boys back in Marseilles down. I decided on the full grooming ritual. Did you hear that Ransom pulled an FGR in the field? What moxie! Okay, so maybe it was ego. I took off my wrist watch, set it on the sink and began my work in earnest. I made the fixtures of the Ku De Ta to be over a hundred years old. A century in Piccadilly Circus, but I doubted that those partitions had ever seen the anything like this. There were snippets of hair and fingernails flying, emulsified liquids introducing themselves to one another in the air and on my skin, clothing being cleaned and pressed without the aid of a proper iron. When I donned my watch I checked my time: sixteen minutes and forty seconds. A personal record. Of course, by now I was sweating profusely, which negated some of the effectiveness of the FGR, but perhaps she wouldn’t notice. I walked out into the bar a thoroughly invigorated man. However, I was mortified to find that my quarry had eluded me. The female Wingman was gone. In retrospect, the FGR seemed a bit ill advised. I pulled a hundred pound note from my billfold and handed it to the bartender: “Ever seen that lady in the trench coat before?” “Eh?” “The lady with the dark hair and the trench? Ever see her?” “No. First time.” “Did she order anything?” “Yeah. Some crazy drink I never heard of. Required a bloody Slim Jim. She settled on a Cosmo.” “A Bomb Wick?” “Yeah! That’s what she called it.” My cover was blown. She was taunting me. A chill went down my spine, “She didn’t even finish her drink.” “Why not?” “A couple of big tan looking blokes came in. They all left together.” “Did you see which way went?” “No, sorry. Hey, you were in the bathroom for a while. Is there a mess to clean up?” “Maybe just my trail of smoke.” Not too many people have ever broken the 17 minute barrier. I had the right to be a little bit cocky. “Flippin’ Yanks.” I guess a pound c-note doesn’t buy you respect in the new London. When I walked out into the street, I realized the futility of a search. However, I couldn’t resist the urge to make a quick canvass of the area. “It’s no use, Chance.” I heard the disembodied voice call to me from an innocuous panel truck. The street was virtually deserted so I broke protocol and banged on the back. The door opened and I climbed in. “I blew it, Charlie.” Charlie Mason had been assigned electronic surveillance for the evening, “Did Jack pick her up on foot?” “Sent him home, Brother. Figured that you had given up the chase when you went to Ku De Ta.Guess we all failed, but we did get these.” He waved his hand to a wall of monitors. One of them had a grainy image of the woman that I had seen before, “Now we know what she looks like.” The other had the two men, but their faces were not visible beneath their broad brimmed hats. “Charlie, you’re a genius!” Charlie pulled into an alley and I climbed out of the van. He told me that there were no identifiers on the other two men. I walked up the street a bit and found one of those cool red phone booths the likes of which allowed Dr. Who to travel time. I never used my cell phone in London. Their phone booths were just way too cool. I rang up Numar’s phone, “On a pay phone, Num.” “God damn it, Chance. Why can’t you just use your cell phone inside the booth.” “Never mind that. Did Charlie report in?” “Yeah, said you got a photo, but lost her on the street.” “Um, yeah.” “An FGR, Chance. What were you thinking? Did you really expect her to be there after twenty minutes…” “16:40.” “I don’t give a flying fuck if it was ten min…16:40? Really?” Touche! “Num, you should have seen me. I was on fire.” “You should stop by, before you head in for the night, Chance. Marseilles has been asking for a progress report. I have been holding them off until we had something significant.” “Yeah, I figured as much. Give me an hour. I want to make sure I don’t pick up a tail.” As annoyed as I was at having to meet with him this late, I didn’t want to take any risks. The brief contact tonight, made me realize that I had started getting lax. I was beginning to believe that my quarry didn’t exist. A dangerous illusion. I took the tube in two unnecessary directions, before I finally took a cab to five blocks from the tailor shop front. The rest of my journey would be a careful stroll to the shop. Barring me exposing any trailers, the entire trip would bring me there approximately an hour after the Nigerian hung up with me. As I got within fifty meters of the front of the store, I noticed that the lights were on. Careless and a breach of protocol. Station Chief or not, Numar was going to get an earful. You would have thought that he knew what I was thinking. That is exactly what I thought as I saw him burst out the front door. Was the crafty Nigerian clairvoyant and had put up with enough of my insolence? Was he coming to give me the thrashing about which Edgar had warned me? I saw my answer before I heard it. The event went something like this: A huge ball of fire began to illuminate the street from the shop front to beyond where I had stopped in my tracks. A sound followed that would leave a ringing in my ear for the next 24 hours. Finally a blast came that knocked me backward off of my feet and shattered glass in several of the buildings. I rolled on to my stomach and stood up. I ran to where Numar had been thrown. I peeled off my coat and used it to extinguish the fire that was emanating from his left calf. I turned him over and he whispered something to me. I could not hear him so he grabbed my shirt. This time I was able to read his lips, despite my ringing ears: “Charlie is inside!” As he tried to get up, I laid across the large man’s chest. In my mind if he moved he would die. I looked at the flames shooting out of the tailor shop. I knew for certain that Charlie was dead. Numar was questionable at best. As I fumbled for the cell phone in my pocket, I made a silent promise to myself that whoever this woman was, she would not get off of this island alive. Suddenly my new record wasn’t important. Exercising my option to sanction this cancer was. It was dark and cold and it smelled like piss. It was dark and cold and one of my friends was dead. Maybe two. I didn’t know if Numar would make it. The smell of stale urine told me two things: that I wasn’t the first person to use this hideaway and that I would have to remain vigilant in case he returned. I assumed it was a he, but you never know. I pulled the pack of cigarettes from my pocket and drew one out. I had four in reserve. That was less than one per hour until I could make my move. I would have to alternate them with shots from my flask. It was only about half full. I tilted my hat back, lit the cigarette and reflected on the events of the night. There had been a few minor secondary explosions. Of course, after calling for an ambulance, my second call was to Marseilles. They would need a full report later, but I just gave them the broad strokes. There was little chance that anything would have survived the white hot conflagration. Even if it had, there would be nothing that could be traced back to la Confrerie.That is as long as Numar had followed security protocols. In any event, no member of la Confrerie would ever return to the blast site. I left Numar when I heard the two tone siren that is so distinctive to European emergency vehicles. I couldn’t risk getting caught up in the police investigation. Numar had lost consciousness, but he would have prepared a lock solid alibi for all of his actions, including why he and Charlie had been knocking around a hard luck tailor shop at nearly 2 AM. Wingmen usually will have an established cover. Trying to make up lies on the spot is a sure way to alert someone to deception. We are trained to have a satisfactory alibi before partaking in even the most innocent dealings. Of course, sometimes an on the spot fabrication is necessary, and we receive training for that as well. I also didn’t think that I would have to worry about the van. It had apparently been the source of the explosion and was completely decimated. I had no way of knowing exactly what had happened, but I theorized that while I was inside theKu De Ta, she, or one of the two men that she had met, had placed the device under the van. The details were irrelevant. It was clear that she was responsible for one or potentially two deaths and her account would be brought to bear. To put a not too fine a point on it, she would die and so would her henchmen. However, my immediate problem was getting out of the area without being seen. A taxi was out of the question at this hour. I smelled of smoke and had soot on my face. There simply wasn’t a place for another Full Grooming Ritual and the one earlier that night had depleted my supplies. I also couldn’t risk getting picked up on any of London’s famous surveillance cameras. I knew I had to go to ground somewhere in the area. I had ducked into a blind alley when a news truck barreled down the street. The shadowy alley was only about ten meters deep, and housed a small dumpster. The dumpster must have been loaded with rotting fish or something equally as disgusting. There was no way I could spend the next 5 hours hiding in there. However, I could almost reach the pull down ladder of a steel fire escape if I stood on top of the trash receptacle. I climbed up and removed the belt from my coat. I threw the buckled end over the bottom rung of the rickety apparatus and pulled it down. I climbed until I reached the top. On the roof was a meter house with an unlocked door. Not the Ritz, but it didn’t smell like fish, not that day old urine was that much better. It was a much easier affair to get back to my hotel on a busy weekday morning. To my astonishment, Marseilles was sending a team to interview me in the field as opposed to me flying back there. They said that my work was more important than ever now that she had committed murder. I tended to agree. The good news was that Numar was expected to survive the blast. He had several broken bones. Other than that he would need some skin grafting on his back and face along with a bit of physical therapy, but he would be out of the hospital in approximately six weeks. “This will be the fourth time I’ve told you the story,” I was getting irritated with the briefing team at the safe house in Chelsea. They weren’t accusing me of anything. If they didn’t have a hundred percent confidence that I was blameless, I would have been pulled off of the mission and sequestered at headquarters. However, they wanted to make sure that I wasn’t inadvertently leaving something out of my account. “You should go see Numar’s tailor while you are here.” I had seen this bureaucrat around main headquarters, but had never been introduced. My comment wasn’t meant to be delivered politely. He was wearing an ill fitting brown suit with a printed shirt and striped tie. It was a travesty. I normally would have been a bit more delicate, but he and his team were wearing on my nerves. “I think we have everything we need, Monsieur Ransom. Is it true what I have heard about the FGR?” I didn’t answer. I grabbed my coat and hat and left the well appointed flat. Charlie was dead. The police had pulled his charred, unrecognizable body from the flames. We had lost the photo of the lady in the coat and her two henchmen. While it had been uploaded to Station London, Numar hadn’t wanted to forward the images to Marseilles until he had spoken with me. The point is, as hard is it might be to believe, the Full Grooming Ritual record was no longer important. My tactics would have to change. Before I was hunting the busiest grounds and received dismal results for my effort. I was going to have to be a one man dragnet on the city of London. This had been the first attack of its kind on a la Confrerie facility. Marseilles wanted to send me an army. Pull Wingmen off of assignments. Open the coiffures. They were even going to send me the trainees at Wingman Camp to bolster the manpower. I categorically refused it all. I needed this bitch to keep her pretty little head above ground. If she slipped out of London, I would be looking for her for the next 20 years. I wanted her to think that we were so inept that we lost her trail. It was actually close to the truth. That is if she hadn’t left London already. I had a composite sketch drawn up based on my memory of the photo and my initial contact. I also used the photo of Carol Jillian aka flowersonnet as a model. If flowersonnet wasn’t this woman’s mother, she would make a damned good look alike. The composite artist printed up a few hundred wallet sized cards with the composite and flowersonnet’s computer touched photo. I doubted that I would use the cards, but I took them anyhow. The problem for the artist was that this woman’s physical appearance was more than the sum of her features. She had a vivaciousness about her that was not easy to capture. The result was that the composites looked a lot like her, but you could be holding a card in your hand as she passed you by and you would have no idea it was her. I was instructed by the interview team to take the night off. It made a certain degree of sense since there was no doubt in my mind that she was also taking the night off. Because I was more than likely the target of the blast, I didn’t need to show my face out on the streets before I had even come up with a plan. Also, la Confrerie investigators told me that they didn’t want me speaking to Numar before they had an opportunity to debrief him. Aside from that, they didn’t want me getting spotted at the hospital by authorities. The damn problem with having a cover is that it often paralyzes your actions. You end up doing nothing at all in a vain attempt to preserve your cover for all eternity. Not talking to Numar was going to be incredibly counterproductive. Those suits from Marseilles could go fuck themselves. It was still early in the evening so I decided to get a little rest before heading out. I had just had a sleepless night followed by six hours of interrogations. After a hot shower, I laid on the bed and shut my eyes, but I was still way too wound up. I opened up the guest services menu. Although the in-room massage looked tempting, I decided upon just ordering the Chateaubriand Henry IV, for Two. I hadn’t eaten since the prior evening. I drank sparkling water. I would not drink alcohol outside of the mission parameters until the assassins were dead. With that thought, I lost my appetite. Fortunately, I had already consumed about a quarter of the massive slab of beef. I carefully wrapped the meat in a plastic bag. I wrapped a steak knife and fork in one of the cloth napkins and walked out into the street. Like most major cities, London was full of homeless. One of them was going to have a very nice steak for supper. I didn’t feel too guilty about pilfering the silverware. They could either bill me for the utensils or eat the cost. I was sure my extended stay was netting the Ritz a fairly healthy profit. Even still, I would throw some extra money on the tip that I left for housekeeping to ease my conscience. I am not a thief. I started to walk to Queen Victoria Hospital, where Numar was recovering. Hyde Park was on the way where I was certain to find a harmless tramp or two. However, a small mongrel began to follow me and tried to get at the bag as soon as I turned off Piccadilly. I was able to fend him off and things would have been fine if it were not for the fact that he was the first of a pack of dozen loose hounds that apparently roamed the streets looking for meat toting visitors. I ended up separating the utensils and throwing the plastic bag into the pack of dogs with predictable results. If I wasn’t so focused on my objective, I would have found the scene amusing. Chance Ransom – Lord of the Hounds. Pretty cool. Queen Victoria was going to be a bit of a trick. Under normal circumstances, I would have gone to the field office and asked them to recon the hospital and manufacture appropriate attire and credentials. With the field office reduced to ash, I would have to come up with my own plan of attack. I bought a hot cup of tea and The Times from a little stand, and sat on a park bench across from QV. Seeing no chinks in the security armor, I decided to reposition myself to the opposite side of the building. On the east side, there was a service entrance. There was a loading dock with an open retractable door. Although most hospitals have security, the lack of threats usually makes the personnel less than diligent. Even in a city that has a history of terrorist attacks. My entry was simply a matter of walking into the loading bay and entering the hospital. It took me only a few minutes to locate what must have been one of several locker rooms. I found everything that I needed. I picked out a lab coat and a clip-on set of security credentials. I threw a loose stethoscope around my neck for good measure. Under close scrutiny, I would have never passed for this man. He was bald, pink, short and corpulent. In other words, the kind of guy for which I generally winged. Of course, no one was going to see the photo. I had heard one of the members of the team mention to my interviewer that Numar was in a private room in the burn ward. When I got to the floor I was challenged by the station nurse. “May I see your credentials, Doctor?” “Certainly,” but as I handed them to her, I said, “Perhaps I can give you my business card as well,” holding the stolen identification just out of reach. She smiled and said, “I really am quite healthy,” as she tried to lean a little forward to take the identification card. “Absolutely. You are the picture of health, I’m sure,” I tucked the card under my arm and leaned in conspiratorially, “but I do reconstructive surgery. Otherwise I probably wouldn’t even have noticed that bump on your nose. It’s really nothing.” With that she finally withdrew her empty hand and placed it onto the bridge of her nose. “My fiancé told me that he can’t even notice it.” I glanced at the dry erase board on the wall behind her to obtain Numar’s room number. “He’s a good man. You are very lucky. I will make sure that I leave a card on the way out in case you change your mind.” I smiled politely and walked down the hallway toward Numar’s room. The enormous man was dwarfing his hospital bed. There was the usual assortment of bandages wrapped around his face and hands. He was sitting up with the television remote in his un-bandaged hand. I could see in his eyes that he was clearly drugged. I hadn’t considered that. I wanted him to be as sober as possible for my questions. “Dr. Ransom. No flowers?” “How droll, Numar. I’m wondering what la Confrerie is going to do if you come out of here a junkie. Listen, I need to know some things. Why would this psychotic bitch blow up our station office?” “How the fuck would I know that? If I had that kind of insight, I might have gone home early that night, or stopped her and Charlie would be alive. Jesus, you are wired.” “When you first started getting these reports about her, what were they saying?” I began to sit on the edge of the bed, but I must have shifted him or something, because he winced in pain. I stood back up. “That she dressed like us, talked like us and employed a few of our techniques.” “Yeah, I read all of that. No mention of which techniques though. If someone recognized they were Wingman techniques, then they must have known what they were.” “You know you’re right. It was remiss of me not to mention them. Awkward Chic. Confident Shy. Things like that.” Something was not ringing right with his omission. Numar was the meticulous sort. “A woman pulling off Awkward Chic? I’d like to see that.” Awkward Chic was pioneered by Edgar and a few other Frenchmen in honor of Jerry Lewis. It requires the Wingman to act the buffoon to make his principal appear better by contrast. Numar let out an opium-laced laugh, “By God, Chance, she even used a version of your Plastic Surgeon Maneuver.” He was lying. I walked back over to his side and put a hand on his shoulder. “You rest up, Num. I’m serious about the pain killers though. See if you can’t wean yourself off.” He let out an over exaggerated laugh, “Yes, Doctor Ransom, and, Chance, make sure that whore pays for what she did to Charlie.” Before I left the hospital I took the trouble to put the credentials and the lab coat in a plastic bag and stash them above the acoustic ceiling tiles in one of the restrooms. There was no sense in going through the whole pilfering process again if it wasn’t necessary. I took a long route home so that I could clear my head. Numar was high, but he was clearly lying. In Wingman Camp we trained for six months in lying and detection. We actually lie a lot so the time is not split equally, but on occasion it is beneficial for a Wingman to know when someone is lying to him. Surprisingly, the lies usually come from the principals and not the targets. Rarely are they from one Wingman to another. From the start, I had been getting a feeling that I was being led down a path during this assignment. I now had confirmation that my initial premise – that this mystery woman was the product of flowersonnet – was incorrect. Carol Jillian aka flowersonnet was trained in 1962. I didn’t develop the Plastic Surgeon Maneuver for another 15 years. This wingwoman, whoever she was, received training from someone inside la Confrerie who had recent training. Of course, at the end of the day, I still had a dead technician and a giant Nigerian lying in the hospital. I was on my own on this one. I didn’t have enough to go to Marseilles and I couldn’t trust Numar even if he was healthy. It was time this woman and I had a face to face and this time, I wouldn’t care what my breath smelled like. It would probably be fine though. So, I sent up the white flag. I broke my routine of non-routine. I went from bar to restaurant to night club around Piccadilly Circus handing out the cards with her face. On the backs they all said the same thing: Ku De Ta – Midnight – Every night until we meet. C.R. For over two weeks, I would walk past the surly bartender, select a booth in the back of Ku De Ta and face the door. I would nurse a pint of John Courage until 2AM and leave. The bartender warmed up to me. I left a 20 pound note on the table each night for the single pint. I had become something that my vocation had never before allowed me to be: a regular. As it turns out, being a regular was not as great as I remembered. For years, my life had been anything but routine. Sitting in that booth, I always felt like a bullet was going to come from nowhere and end it all. A feeling to which I have now become accustomed. However, at the time it made my breathing feel heavy. It was on just such an anxiety ridden night when my well dressed quarry arrived on a pair of naked calves riding $600 shoes. I don’t know what I expected. Trumpets? Bursts of light? An eerie silence? Whatever it was, it didn’t happen. Nothing changed other than the fact that at one moment she wasn’t in the room and in the next she was. I was oddly unprepared for it. I thought about the things that I should be doing, but nothing came to mind, so I sat there stupidly sipping my beer. She walked directly toward my booth and sat across from me. She looked angry enough to kill. Why not? She had before. She reached into her coat and I started coming to my senses. I didn’t want this to end in some sort of a kill or be killed showdown. I wanted answers first. I lunged across the table and grabbed her wrist. “No you don’t, dollface.” However, when I pulled out her hand, she had already taken hold of the object for which she was reaching. It was one of the composite cards. “I’m prettier than this,” The comment caught me off guard. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t witty repartee. “I told them that.” Sometimes my Wingmanish flirtations kick in despite my best efforts, but I had to stay focused. I thought about Charlie and I wanted to strike her. “What the hell do you people want from me? What do I have to do to get you to leave me alone?” “It’s too late for that. I didn’t want this assignment, but then you upped the ante. I could let it go that you blew up the shop. It was an eyesore anyway, but Numar is hurt and my tech guy is dead.” “Numar is hurt? Oh dear God.” Her reaction seemed genuine enough. It wasn’t possible that she didn’t know. The papers had covered the blast with an account of the casualties. “I have to make a call.” I weighed the risk of letting her make the call against the scene that might be created from trying to stop her. The bar was deserted as usual, but I didn’t want the bartender thinking this was anything more than a romantic tryst. He didn’t appear to be paying much attention anyway. I was on her heels after a few seconds, careful to watch the door for her hired muscle. The Ku De Ta had a large wooden booth built into the wall. I opened the door and knocked the phone out of her hand before she could dial. “All right, Lady. Now you’re going to answer some questions.” There was mostly anger in her eyes, but also a bit of fear. That would work in my favor. “Why are you trying to kill me?” I asked, getting down to the most pressing business first. “I’m not. I don’t even know who you are.” I was holding one of her wrists and a lapel. I didn’t want to hurt her, but I would if I had to. “Why did you blow up the van and the tailor shop?” “The tailor shop bombing? Is that what you’re talking about? I’m not in the bloody IRA. I don’t blow things up.” She was either a really good liar or I was missing a big piece of this puzzle. I switched my approach. I loosened the grip on her wrist and allowed her to sit on the bench. I decided to lower myself a bit, but not so much that she would have any sort of physical advantage. “How do you know Numar? You knew who he was when I asked you about him.” “Oh. That was a huge mistake. I should have never gotten involved with him. Now if you’ll excuse me…” Back to the tough guy routine. “No, you are not going anywhere yet. Now, Numar!?” “You don’t know about him trying to bring me into your little operation? La Confrerie.” My blood chilled. “Bring you in?” “Yeah, he told me that he wanted me to be his protégé. He started training me one on one, but I started to get the idea that he wanted, hmmm, a bit more. He was more like a father type to me. When he kept pushing though, I started to have second thoughts. I know you aren’t supposed to leave, but it got really uncomfortable and I was scared.” “How long was this going on?” “About a year. Other than the last two months. Look, I really want to be a wingwoman. You seem professional. Maybe you can finish my training. Then I won’t feel like an idiot for getting all of this plastic surgery just to get dropped on my bum.” Years of portraying myself as a cosmetic surgeon gave me an innate ability to spot even the most sophisticated cosmetic procedures. She wasn’t lying and things were coming together in my head. “Who were those goons that you were in here with a couple of weeks ago?” “Those ‘goons’ were my brother and his boyfriend. They live in San Fransisco, but they came over to keep me company. I was afraid when Numar sacked me.” She seemed offended at me having called her friends “goons,” but it seemed to pass, “Will you at least tell me your name?” “Chance Ransom.” I stood up and her eyes followed me. She was beautiful and composed and composed beautifully for that matter. If there were such a thing as wingwomen, she would definitely be one. “So, Mr. Ransom. Would you consider training me? Now that you know what happened. Give me another opportunity. I’m sure that you are very professional.” I bent down and in swift motion grabbed the back of her head. My eyes locked in on hers and I leaned in and kissed her. For the first second she tried to pull away. I won’t lie. I wasn’t going to be deterred, but her lips finally relented. The kiss was passionate and long, but when it finally broke I said, “I’m not very professional and I don’t believe in female Wingmen.” Before she could respond, I faded off into the night. It was too bad. I wanted her. But being a Wingman has never really ever been about getting what I want. The truth of the matter is that with proper training she would be unstoppable. When la Confrerie recruited me, I was on my way to becoming a fairly successful womanizer – not that that is a worthy goal. They trained me and gave me a skill set that surpasses anything that a non-Wingman could ever acquire. However, I realize that if I were to truly even the playing field and arm my quarry with weapons similar to mine, the game would be over. Accepting that in our game women are still intrinsically superior is the core to my success. Training her would be like dropping Vonnegut’s Ice 9 into the Atlantic. The end of the world as we know it, if you’ll forgive R.E.M. and Kurt V. references in the same paragraph. I walked to one of the red booths and made a report to Marseilles. They had chastised me about using an unsecured line before, but with the field office in rubble, they couldn’t say much. “I’m not sanctioning him.” I’d had enough of that. I had almost killed an innocent woman. If they wanted Numar dead, they would have to take care of it themselves. “Relax, Monsieur Ransom. We have an asset en route. It should be taken care of before the morning.” “And the girl?” “She’s an innocent. Nothing will happen to her.” I wasn’t sure that I believed that. I hung up the phone and walked to Queen Victoria. I knew I might not have much time. I wasn’t sure why I was doing this. I guess that as close as we all are in la Confrerie, there are always connections to one another that make us form alliances and cliques. Numar and I had been close at one time. Still I didn’t feel bad about reporting him to Marseilles because he had killed Charlie and had tried to get me to kill an innocent woman. I just didn’t want him to die at the hands of some stranger. I had a dark present in my pocket and it wasn’t chocolate. I found the lab coat and credentials exactly where I had left them. This would be the final time that I would need them. I passed the same station nurse, who, upon seeing me, put her hand to her nose and tried not to make eye contact with me. When I entered Numar’s room, he was as high as a kite on pain killers, “Ladies and gentlemen, you’ve got your Chance Ransom here. Applause, please.” This wasn’t going to make things any easier. I pulled the power source from the IV machine and told him to open his mouth. Docile and drugged, he complied as I poured a liquid amphetamine solution into his mouth. It wouldn’t make him so much sober as alert. It would have to do. I absolutely abhor drugs of any nature, but Numar would not be much longer for this world. He was a marked man. The effects of the stimulant were relatively quick. “What is going on this time, Chance?” “You need to listen, Numar. There isn’t much time. You’re going to be sanctioned, my friend,” my voice was quiet. He looked down and tears filled the giant’s eyes. “How did you know, Chance?” “You ran out of the station office before the explosion happened. Nine times out of ten, the guy that almost gets blown up is the guy that set the explosion.” Don’t quote me on that statistic. I just made it up. “You also said that this woman used my techniques, despite the fact that you were leading me to believe that she was trained by a woman who was thrown out of the program years before I was even recruited.” A tear rolled down his cheek, “You even had her cut up to look like flowersonnet.” “What are the odds that you let me walk out of here, Chance. I think I’m strong enough, and I had a suit delivered…” His words trailed off. He knew the answer. “How’s it going to happen, Chance?” “I’m not sure. You know as well as I do that they vary their methods, but if I had to take a guess…a man will walk in with a needle full of death. He will have a silenced gun in case you get cagey, but he won’t use it otherwise. He will say something like: Numar Benswala of Nigeria, for the murder of a la Confrerie operative, for violating our code of silence in the recruitment of an outsider and for the unsanctioned attempted assassination by proxy, La Confrerie Fraternelle de Wingmen sentences you to an immediate death. Only it will probably be in French. Oh, and he will ask you if you have a last request that is practical under the circumstances.” “What is your plan, Chance? To watch?” It saddened me that he would think that. I produced a small glass cyanide capsule and held it between my finger and thumb for him to see. “Restore your honor, Numar.” The man nodded slowly. Some of the former steel returned to his eyes. “Chance you should know that Charlie was an accident. He was supposed to be gone. I was going to try to kill myself in a grand fashion, but I lost my nerve. I won’t this time though.” As I placed the capsule in his hand, he said: “I don’t know why I did what I did, but I fell in love, Chance. I just fell in love.” I had no response for that. One of the things that we learn as Wingmen is that there is no way to know how love will affect some people. This woman wounded him, but he also had a professional mess to clean up. That was when he called me in. He was going to trick me into cleaning up his embarrassment. I had thought of a lot of things to say to the man. Ugly things. Sympathetic things. Worldly things. But handing him his death left me speechless. I eventually recovered and asked him if he had a last request. “Do you have any chocolate?” Damn it! “No.” He gave me a wan smile. “Anything else?” “I want to see it, Chance.” “Pardon?” “Your Full Grooming Ritual. I want to see it before I die.” “Here? I don’t know how much time we have.” “Then get started, please.” Maybe it was my vanity or maybe I was just trying to grant a dead man’s wish, but I tossed him my time piece and said, “Clock it.” The pressure of the impending arrival of the assassin gave me the motivation to push the envelope even farther. “My God. You’re floss work is amazing and I’ve never seen such shaving.” I, of course, could not respond, because every crevice of my mouth was being groomed in some fashion. At exactly eight minutes and forty three seconds into the ritual, a familiar face walked into the room. Edgar wore an expression of disappointment, “Hello, Numar. Chance, you idiot, what are you doing?” “Last request, Edgar. Are you the assassin?” “Moi? No. I came as a witness and the formality of reading the verdict. The nurse was contracted to do it.” I didn’t slow the pace of the FGR, but fortunately my mouth work was finished. “The nurse is a hired gun?” “No. She is just a nurse who really feels that she needs a bump removed from her nose. We promised top notch surgery. I wonder where she learned this idea, Chance.” The Frenchman turned to look at Numar, “I am sorry, my friend. We have not much time. I must…” When Edgar’s voice trailed off, I glanced at the bed. Numar had bitten into the capsule. There was no mistaking it. Blood and foam was forming at the corners of his mouth. Edgar went over and shut his eyelids, “Cyanide? You are a gentleman, Monsieur Ransom. Let us go.” “Edgar, I may break my own record here. What time does my watch over there say?” “Get your coat and hat, you fool.” He was right so I acquiesced, but I didn’t feel completely fresh for the rest of the night. The Frenchman led the way toward the exit. I felt as though my mind was half a dozen steps behind my body. I could actually see our backs as we fled the scene. I remember not hearing our footsteps. In fact I didn’t hear anything and my hands were numb. I had allowed Numar to maintain his honor and for that I felt no guilt, but all that I could think of is how often the Frenchman, Death and I were being invited to the same parties. Only Death always stayed behind. I left the hospital wondering how long it would be before he decided to follow me home. Part of me hoped that it was soon. Chillbear Latrigue
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THE LADY WORE A WINGMAN'S COAT |