Well, I couldn’t run through half of Nuuk, of course, even though I wanted to. It had grown too much for the last decade, and I wasn’t in such extraordinary shape either. Instead, I just ran through a couple of blocks and hopped into the first cab, gasping for air, almost nesting myself in the driver’s lap. Then he drove me back to my place. While in the car, I felt relatively safe because we were moving. When we reached my neighborhood, however, I realized my life would be a nightmare from that moment on. And I didn’t even know the full extent of it yet!

It was a weird situation, actually. Nobody in my neighborhood knew where I had been, and nobody in the place where I had been knew where I lived. Despite that, when I paid the driver and his car vanished down the street, and I turned around to walk toward my place, I sensed someone quietly sneaking up behind me. I was still dizzy and nervous from what had happened, and it took me a few moments to react. When I turned around at last, I did it just in time to accept a hard blow to the side of my head. I felt terrible pain, and then a huge black cloud quickly descended over me.

I instantly collapsed on the ground. For one second, it seemed that I lost consciousness, but it was only for a second. When I returned to my senses, there was no trace of my cameras. Everything else was in my pockets, untouched: my wallet, my ID card with credit chips, my gun—everything! Only the cameras were missing.

I didn’t know what to think about it and had no explanation. It simply made no sense, so I had no idea what to tell Bobby when she appeared later. For the past ten minutes, I had been sitting at a cafe, nervously waiting for her to come and get her missing camera, also wondering whether she would be mad at me or just disappointed.

Earlier in the afternoon, when I considered the situation, I had come to a curious conclusion. Only two people knew where I lived and where my assignment was—Bobby Bjornson and Sharon Vorderbruggen. Without much consideration, I blamed Sharon, mainly for two reasons: first, she didn’t accept my phone call when I tried to reach her after the accident, and second, a strange detail from the scene at the Chinese restaurant emerged in my mind.

The car of the jerk that stole my Beijing and set me up for the shooting was a model of Hondsu. I didn’t see it very well because the situation was dynamic back then, but this much I remembered. On the other hand, Sharon’s car, which I “fixed” the previous night, was also a Hondsu—a Hondsu Amphibia. The most disturbing fact, however, wasn’t this coincidence but that both vehicles had the same little dent on the left side of the front bumper. At the restaurant, I noticed the damage when the idiot shot at the Red Dragan’s windows, but I was too frustrated to assimilate it right away, and after that, I was too busy worrying about my life. However, when I slept on it, the fact reappeared in my memory, and since it was way too weird, suspicion started eating me up.

At first, I didn’t grasp the entire seriousness of it all, but when I dwelled on the events, I shuddered, hardly believing what I had done. If the car was really the same, I was screwed up because it was literally plastered with my fingerprints and DNA fragments. I clearly remembered how Sharon didn’t bother taking her gloves off during our sex act in the Hondsu, and she also laid her dress on the backseat before lying on it. She was just too careful not to contaminate my DNA with hers! It meant that she and her helper had set me up, and I had been stupid enough to fall for it in return for a lousy blowjob. I was such an idiot! I was just the perfect fool!

I kept swearing at myself the whole time in the cafe and wondered what Bobby Bjornson’s role in all this might be. Was she part of the same game, or was she just trying to use me the way Sharon tried to? Unfortunately, I had no way of knowing that yet because things never worked like this for Murphy! Typically, I had to wait for someone to screw me up, and then, maybe, I would start realizing what had happened. I swore to myself again and took a sip of my drink. Suddenly, it had a sour taste.

A few minutes later, Bobby finally showed up, and her arrival calmed me down a bit. At least she wasn’t avoiding me! I noticed her in her car as she passed by, but she continued driving around the corner at the next intersection because there was no parking spot in the area. Thank god the vehicle wasn’t a Hondsu! It was some Sangi—maybe a Feng Shui or Quiver. Soon, she was in the cafe with me.

“Hey!” she greeted me cheerfully. “How are you doing?”

“I’m fine, thank you.” I stood up, but without going for a kiss. “And you?”

“I’m okay!”

We looked at each other for a while without saying anything else. It was an awkward situation but pretty standard in these cases. I didn’t kiss her simply because I didn’t know if she wanted me to. We had had sex, it was true, but it was just sex—not a relationship or even a date. We hadn’t talked about what yet.

After a few seconds, the kissing moment passed completely. It was too late for it now, but it was still early to start talking business—at least, not before we sat down, which none of us did. Bobby couldn’t stand the tension and caved first.

“Well, it’s weird, isn’t it?”

“It is,” I agreed.

“So, you wanna come to my car?” she hesitantly proposed while looking at me fixedly. I looked back at her, and the hair on my neck slowly bristled. Knowing how stupid I was in these cases, her words felt like a death sentence.

“Why? Engine won’t start?” I just asked grimly.

She didn’t answer but turned around and headed for the door. Like a ghost, I followed her. We silently crossed the street, turned into the intersection where she had parked her car, and approached it. All the while, I was expecting her dress to fall down, leaving her naked, but her garment was knee-length, and I couldn’t step on its hem, whether accidentally or not.

When we reached the vehicle, she opened the back door and explained nervously, “It’s distracting, you know. The awkwardness between us will affect our business, so I say let’s remove the tension first. What do you think?”

To my surprise, I found myself shrugging. Speaking of how stupid men are when it comes to sex, I ended up thinking that leaving my fingerprints in two cars wasn’t much different than leaving them in just one. Besides, Bobby didn’t have gloves on and wasn’t too careful with her hands during the act. When she lay on the backseat, and we started it, she grabbed the leather and almost ripped it apart with her nails. Nevertheless, I was cautious not to touch anything else but her butt and breasts. Luckily, she was too hot to notice.

Incidentally, the entire “tension removal” didn’t go without weird moments again. Remembering the previous time when we had sex, I was expecting something strange to happen, and eventually, it did. At the very climax of the act, just when Bobby started moaning heavily in my face, she sharply stretched her leg to kick the door behind my back open. I hadn’t even noticed we had left it ajar. Afterward, she quietly groaned a few more times, and then we were through. The tension was removed.

“So someone stole it in front of your condo?” she asked me, astonished later when we returned to the cafe.

“I was about to go inside when it happened,” I said, still wondering what her reaction would have been if she knew they had actually stolen two cameras from me, not just one. I was also glad that we had sex before this conversation because I doubted she would be up for it now.

“Well, it’s too weird.” Bobby pursed her lips, showing almost no concern about the loss, which surprised me. “Who knew both where you lived and where you had been?”

I looked at her grimly. “It’s funny that you ask because you did!”

She didn’t even try to pretend she was scandalized. “I’d be the last person interested in stealing my camera, don’t you think? Besides, I’ve already paid you. What would I gain here?”

“Yes, you’ve paid me,” I agreed, feeling the bump on my temple with my fingers. The swell was pretty good and made with a gun handle. I doubted Bjornson would have had enough strength to deliver such a blow. “Do you know someone interested?”

Bobby slowly shook her head. “Many people could be interested, but that’s not the point. The point is that they couldn’t have known what you were doing that afternoon.”

“Maybe it’s a sister organization of yours.” I hesitantly suggested, tempted to play a little game with her. “Some of your rivals, I mean. Have you heard about Global Guards?”

She looked at me, almost indifferent, but not exactly. “No. What about them?”

“I hear they’re after Chavez just like you. I hear they have taken on the task of saving rhinos, too. It seems weird, doesn’t it? They have exactly the same goal, yet you don’t know anything about them!”

“You seem to hear too many things,” Bobby murmured, suddenly pulling a wry face. “How could you even know all this? Did they march in front of your office with banners of rhinoceroses and slogans?”

“No, they actually came to my office with an offer too similar to yours!” I teased her.

This time, she turned her eyes to me without being able to hide her surprise. She remained relatively calm but clearly wasn’t happy to hear what I said. All the while, I was carefully watching her reactions.

“When we talked, and I mentioned to them about you and the Green Guards,” I unleashed myself in improvising, “it turned out they knew you. They claimed you were a face for a crime syndicate, aiming to push Greenspace out of the game so you could start dealing with the Chinese directly.”

Bobby Bjornson shook her head grimly, still not losing control. “It’s bullshit!” She denied it after a while. “What was the name of their organization again?”

“Global Guards.”

“Never heard of them!”

“Well, it makes sense if you think about it. You said you knew nothing about me when you came to my office, right? Obviously, your boss keeps many things from you!”

Bobby frowned, annoyed. She kept looking out the window for a while, silent. “As long as they’re after Chavez, it doesn’t matter what they say,” she suddenly announced. Despite that, I could see she was frustrated. Something told me she definitely had an idea who I was talking about. “Perhaps we should approach them instead of competing! What did they want from you exactly?”

I gave the “environmentalist” a short but deliberate pause and then answered, “It was just the same thing as you—to spy on Chavez at the restaurant. They even used the same arguments to convince me!”

“Did you agree?” Bobby wanted to know while ignoring my attempt to provoke her.

“No. I wasn’t convinced I could handle two cases simultaneously,” I lied. “I was afraid I’d lose focus, so I said it was against my code to work behind your back.”

“Then they’re most probably the guys who stole my camera!” Bobby presumed seemingly nonchalant, demonstrating almost no interest in talking further about it.

“Maybe,” I agreed vaguely.

She didn’t say anything else and just remained thoughtful. After a few seconds, her hand reached into her purse, and she took out an envelope, putting it on the table between us. It was almost the same as the one she gave me back in my office. The only difference was that this one was a little bit thinner.

I looked at it, and then I looked at her inquiringly.

“It’s the rest of your payment,” she explained. “It’s your ten grand.”

“And why is that?” I was confused. “The job was a fail, wasn’t it? You still have no pictures of Chavez!”

“So what?” Bobby replied evenly. “You did what you had to. You couldn’t have known they were going to ambush you and hit you on the head! Besides, I believe you still work for us, right? We’ll be in touch soon to give you instructions on how you should proceed.”

She quickly closed her purse and stood up. I remained seated.

“By the way, about these Global Guards guys—the fake environmentalist looked at me intensely before leaving. “I’m quite sure they’re trying to use you one way or another. You may easily end up in trouble because of them. I would be very cautious if I were you!”

Then she turned around and headed for the door.

“You know, they warned me just the same thing about you!” I cried after her when she was almost at the doorway. “They said I should be careful! Isn’t that funny?”

She turned her head to look at me briefly but didn’t stop. She only pulled a face to indicate that I was stupid and naive, and that was all. Then she left. I followed her with my eyes until she got into her car and slowly drove away. Then, I thoughtfully looked at the envelope on the table.

I didn’t know what to think about this. I had done nothing to deserve the rest of my payment, and I could think of only one reason why Bobby would do this: she was paying me to stay away from Sharon. Unless, of course, she had something in mind, which, in my ignorance, I couldn’t see and now, she wanted to keep me in the game for later. Anyway, it was going to become apparent very soon.

I took the envelope without even checking the contents and stuffed it into my pocket. I threw a few bucks for my drink on the tabletop and went outside, looking for a cab. When I found one, I told the guy to drive me to Chinatown, making him stop two intersections before the Red Dragon. Then I paid him and slowly walked down the street, still thinking. The dent on the front bumper of the Hondsu wasn’t giving me a break. I needed to take another look at it despite the risk.

Unfortunately, my little investigation uptown was rather fruitless. When I approached the restaurant a few minutes later, I stopped and looked around, alarmed, because too many people were there. Most of them were Chinese. A small group was installing a new glass door while others were yelling at them—probably for not being able to bring food supplies into the kitchen. The situation was unlikely to change any time soon.

I stayed close for a while but didn’t dare go to the car. Regardless of that, I could clearly see that the vehicle was a Hondsu Amphibia, and it had a damaged front bumper. It was just what I had been afraid of. The fact disturbed me a lot and made me wonder what fucking business the jerk who stole my Beijing had with Sharon now. It made no sense because I was going to give her back her stupid camera anyway. The only possible explanation was that it wasn’t about the camera but setting me up for the shooting.

With such dismal thoughts, I walked away after ten minutes, looking for another cab to take me home. Despite how badly I wanted to forget about all this, I was pretty sure I couldn’t leave it the way it was. My fingerprints were all over that car, and it would have been a tremendous risk if I left them there. There was actually only one thing worse than that—if I tried to steal the damn Hondsu—and it was precisely what slowly started eating at me on my way back. No matter how hard I tried to expel this idea from my mind, it just kept coming back, and I was utterly helpless to think of anything else.

©2016 S.T. Fargo
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(www.stfargo.com)