Last

This is the story that won first place at the Tata World 'Write Stuff' Competition, which had over 8000 participants from countries across the globe.

Prompts:

1.     Story should begin with ‘As I get into the cab’

2.     1000 words maximum

Last

As I get into the cab, I find a wallet stuffed with cash on the seat. Surreptitiously making sure that the driver isn’t paying any undue attention to the happenings in his back seat, I open it to find the details of my next assignment; the cash is there to tide over any expenses concerning the mission before I get my pay-off. 

My job is not something for which there may be a course found in any college. Nor is it something that brings fame. In fact, fame in my profession meant that you were dead. Literally.

I am a bounty hunter for the United Nations. A peacekeeping body? Not really. Putting down revolutionary leaders before they turn into martyrs is my job description. And tonight is my last mission. The shelf life for such a lucrative vocation is bound by the risks that can be taken. Conscience has a very limited part in my life. If the broad objective is just, then any and all means may be and are taken to save as many human lives as possible.

**

Romania. The latest crop of neo-Nazis had sprung up from this area. The once free inhabitants of Bucharest were now under the tyrannical parallel ruling of Sergei Lukyanenko, the influential and charming leader of Blood and Honor, a known Neo-Nazi organization. The government is doing what it can to negate his authority but he spreads his word through rogues and assassins, through underground routes never even dreamt about by the ineffectual government. It is time for the professionals to come in. And I am the best.

**

The night is dark and quiet, quite unlike what is expected from a metropolitan. I see the withdrawn, scared faces of the infants and the young mothers. I tell myself that they do not affect me. They do not affect me. I see the haggard looks of old people who have seen tortures unimaginable. I see the resigned eyes of children who know that their loved ones are not coming back from the murky pits of the Mafia’s grip. They do not affect me. I see the Examples that Sergei has put up, to deter more from opposing him. I see the dead men whose ghosts wander the streets. They do not affect me. They do not affect me.

I unwrap my sniper from the violin case that I have long been carrying around. I set up my watch post: a room in the top most floor of a long abandoned hotel. It gives me the perfect view of the headquarters of Blood and Honor, so brazenly left open for the government and the people to see yet be unable to breach. Sergei will come in the morning, as he does everyday. Unafraid. Nobody knows who he is. Nobody knows what he looks like.

Except me.

**

Sergei Lukyanenko, when I knew him in Moscow University, was Dmitri Voskov. Our friendship was the only saving grace in the winters of that cold city. We shared a dream, to rid the world of those undesirables who were controlling the nations of our world. Corrupt politicians and cruel bureaucrats were our bête noir. We both dreamt of joining the United Nations as diplomats in an effort to root out the cause of the world’s decay. Needless to say, Dmitri did not go through with this. Today I am a part of the UN, but hold quite the polar opposite designation of the one that I coveted then. 

Yet, even then, there were telltale signs of something amiss in Dmitri’s grand vision, as if he had but shared the surface with me. He was a man of many faces yet I was too naïve to spy it, taken in as I was by the grandiose plans to change the world.

Sergei Lukyanenko. He was the Russian author whose works both of us were so fond of. The pseudonym was my first clue. His methods of retribution were my second. He was fond of the ideas of the KGB of old; the Gestapo had it right, according to him. People had to be forced to do what was good for them was his ideology.

And thus I knew. My last assignment is to assassinate my old friend. The one because of whom the state of the Romanians was unable to affect me. They cannot affect me. They do not affect me.

**

The crowds milling past the Blood and Honor building make sure that they do not linger. Too much fear has been sown by this building. The passers-by duck their heads, hunch their shoulders and hurry past, careful not to stand out. It makes my task that much harder – how do I spot one face in hundreds if none of their faces may be seen?

And then I see him.

Sergei Lukyanenko. Dmitri Voskov. Standing tall amongst the masses, an unshakeable force amidst those who have been forced to get used to being bullied. Arrogance has clouded his judgment, I observe. He does not make any effort to blend in. He remains the same.

I close my eyes. Can I kill my best friend? Is he the devil that my superiors have told me he is? It cannot be! But then I open them, and once again see the harangued look pasted on the people around him. And then I know that he is.

I tighten my finger around the trigger and look at Dmitri through the eyepiece. He stops and turns around, faces the abandoned hotel. He looks straight at me (though it is impossible that he can see me), and smiles. As the first of the four explosions rocket through the abandoned hotel I pull the trigger. The second explosion, but I know that my work is done. I do not miss.

The third explosion, and I see Romania restored, no ethnic bloodstains on its tapestry.

My occupation is lucrative in proportion to the risks. I see the lives I have saved. My conscience is clear. The fourth explosion, and I have what money cannot buy.

- Ayesha Malik, 2009