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Chapter 5
The man knelt on the floor next to his bed. He had knelt for a very long time. This was as it should be. His knees were beyond pain now. The man wasn’t a burglar by trade. His art had been that of an enforcer. He had studied hard for this first mission and had done well, even with all the technical parts. He used all the information they gave him, and studied even more. He’d taken special care to avoid detection. He had neutralized the complex burglar alarm. The man had entered the place at exactly the right time. Still, he had failed.
He had done the right thing in leaving when the panic alarm sounded. He knew it was more important to stop the rest of them than to stop the first one if it meant he got caught. He was sure the first one would not be a threat after his work. But the man also knew his superiors would judge his first mission a failure. He hoped he would be allowed to continue his mission, but the man thought the odds were against him. This is why he prayed. He believed in prayer.
The man pushed himself to his feet. At first his legs would not hold him. Eventually, he was able to stand, and not so long after, walk across to the little chest of drawers. He put on his disguise and the cheap, no-name clothes he’d bought at the thrift store. The man walked down the back stairs of the rooming house into the blowing San Francisco night. It was eight blocks to the Internet café.
Walking eight blocks — walking anywhere not watched by the fucking screws — was a dream he wouldn’t have allowed himself three years ago. Even with his foot, he loved to walk, at least when he was on the outside.
He walked nearly twenty blocks to make sure he was not followed. By the time he arrived, his knees hurt much less. Now he could feel the pain in his foot.
At the café, he told the clerk he wanted a booth in the back — one with sides. The clerk didn’t even smirk. Kinky porn was the new normal. The man did not care what the clerk thought, but did not want to be memorable.
He had to wait for a booth. He paid cash for the sign-on and ordered a coffee to give the clerk something to do other than watch. “I would like an Americano, extra hot, plenty of room for milk.” He sat at a corner table and read the Chronicle until his booth came open.
As he stood and walked toward the booth. A young man, tatted up, beefy and pretty, tried to slip into the booth ahead of him.
The man placed his arm in front of the youth. The youth turned his startling green eyes, as empty of expression as ice cubes, toward the man and fluttered his lashes. Something the pretty boy saw in the man’s eyes made him stop, turn and leave the café.
The man logged onto one Internet account, through another Internet account, through his invisibletrail.net account. It took a very long time to construct his message. The message appeared to be a discussion of certain passages in the Bible. The man used the long memorized code to painstakingly build his message of failure, and asked permission to continue his quest. He promised to stop the second sinner’s attempt to interfere with their savior’s work within three weeks.