Work In Progress

I'll call him John. He never gives out his real name, so one name is as good as another. He is, among other things, an assassin, and a damn good one. Actually, he's the best there is, though of course you won't find anyone who will either confirm or deny that.

Now, assassins are a poorly understood lot. If you close your eyes and try to picture an assassin, you'll probably come up with the image of a man casually setting up his sniper rifle on the top of the building next to his mark. If killing people was so easy, we'd have to draft our political leaders by lottery rather than elect them by vote. The world of the skilled assassin is a very deadly one, often more dangerous for the predators than for their prey. Assassins spend most of their time hunting their own kind.

It was doing exactly that which took up most of the time John spent on the execution of Carlos Ramirez y Fuentes, the erstwhile dictator in all but title of a small rural patch of one of the less prosperous of the South American countries. He wasn't too bad, as such overlord-thugs go, but then being beaten with a stick isn't bad as vicious beatings go. However little his conscience bothered him, he did know that there were people who would, so he spared little expense in fortifying his villa.

A dozen armed men patrolled the edges of Carlos' extensive property, and there were another four inside who stuck close to Carlos day and night. They were not high quality assassins, but then most of the paid killers in this world are mere thugs — simple men whose one great intellectual discovery was how to amputate their moral compass.

Of course John attacked in the night. Those prepared for the night always have an advantage in it. This advantage would largely have been lost if the Carlos' guards had their dogs at hand while walking the patrols, but luckily for John the dogs had all been sick for the past two days from some bad dog food. Either that or an inhaled neurotoxin the dogs were exposed to sniffing around the grounds. The symptoms are quite difficult to tell apart.

The guards were very nervous without their dogs, of course. Any change in routine is enough to set a bodyguard on edge. They had largely calmed down by the second day. John always liked to say that Iago's observations about reputation go double for fear: it often comes without cause and goes without reason. Not that their lost fear would have done them any good, but their reduced caution made John's job easier.

The first two (they patrolled in pairs) were not much trouble. A pair of crossbow bolts silenced them forever. The rest were easier; with a gap in the patrol there was more time to work on the tail end of the snipped circle. Within half an hour the twelve professional killers who guarded the property had become professional worm food. It was the first time any of them had ever given food to the hungry.

Though it was safe to walk up the driveway, John never took risks he could avoid. He had dispatched the sniper who sat at one end of the property and watched the patrols over the patrols every night with his scope. The last words he heard before he felt the bullet pierce his skull were the almost apologetic explanation, "It's a bad idea to return to the same place by habit." John had hidden the walkie-talkie in the tree next to the forked branch the sniper sat in every night. It was unnecessary, but John always had a soft place in his heart for snipers. They played a hard and lonely game, and when they lose it, they deserve to know why they lost.

John had killed that sniper, but what if he missed a second one? He had never made that mistake in his one hundred and thirty eight jobs, but if there was going to be a first time, he'd rather not make it easy for the guy.

The electricity going out was not an unusual occurrence and the well maintained diesel generator kicked on almost instantly. It sputtered out nearly as quickly since John's bullet cut the fuel line almost where it entered the engine. In a few moments John was inside the house and eliminated the house guards. Private rooms may be more comfortable, but they are less safe than shared quarters. Within ten minutes of entering, John had made his way inside the bedroom to where the man and his wife slept. Silently he drew the long, sharp sword from its velvet-lined sheath. Moving with silent grace, he came to the foot of the bed with his sword poised and looked into the face of the doomed man.

John almost thought that it would be a pity that this man who had ordered so many tortures and painful executions would himself die a quick and painless death, but he checked himself. No. He grimly smiled to himself. I will not make Hamlet's mistake, he thought. I am executioner, not judge; God may decide whether Carlos Ramirez y Fuentes should suffer, it is only my job to hasten that decision. In a flash John brought his sword down separating the dictator's head from his body. At the same time as Almira Ramirez y Sanchez was startled from her sleep, John leaped catlike over the bed and twisting in mid-air pulled his sword out of the mattress, landed next to the woman who just sat up and continuing the sweep of his sword sent Almira to join her husband. Her jealous spite had deprived too many beautiful young girls of their ears and nose because Carlos had looked at them longingly, too many women of their lives because Carlos flirted with them.

John cleaned his sword and re-sheathed it. There was still one task left. The Ramirez' daughter, Arcelia, had no hand in her parents cruelty and no one really wish her ill. Certainly no one who had commissioned John to execute the elder Ramirez, at least.

He walked into her room, in which she lay asleep, and inspected it (and her) carefully for hidden weapons and trap triggers. When he was satisfied that she was completely unarmed, he leaned against her dresser and said, simply, "Arcelia."

She awoke slowly at first, but then with a start when she realized that there was a strange man in her room. He held his hand up to signal that she should be quiet, but she screamed anyway. Pulling the blanket protectively around her, she huddled up in the corner of her be farthest from the strange man and waited for the guards her scream would fetch.

After a few moments, he broke the silence, "There is no one here to come running to you, Arcelia, unless you can scream loud enough to wake the dead."

She merely looked at him with fearful eyes. He was probably lying just to get her to keep quiet. She screamed again, "Help! Help!" Where were the guards? She cowered back a little, and pulled the sheets a little tighter, though he hadn't moved.

"Since all I want to do is talk with you, we might as well start now as wait a few minutes for no one to come."

She started at him in pure fear. Who was this man, and could he be telling the truth? How could he be telling the truth? Her father had over a dozen men working on the grounds. Could they call be dead?

"What do you want with me?"

"What does any man want of any woman? That you listen to me and be rational."

She flashed him a burning look. The circumstances might be terrifying, but she was not going to take a sexist joke lightly, all the same.

He chuckled. "If you don't want certain answers, don't ask open-ended questions. Anyhow, for your sake I'll be brief." He drew a deep breath, then continued, "Arcelia, you're a woman alone in dangerous country. For perhaps obvious reasons I had to disable the telephones, so you can't call for help. I don't suggest trying to shout to your neighbors, either. Your father picked this area for his retirement because of its isolation. Unless you can talk with animals you'd find it a very one-sided conversation.

"My offer is this: I can simply leave you here, and you can find your way to wherever you want to go carrying whatever weapons you can find in the house, or you can go unarmed and I'll escort you until you're there and safe."

She stared at him incredulously.

They stayed, staring at each other, for nearly a minute. It was Arcelia who broke the silence.

"Who are you? And what, exactly, have you done?"

"Call me Ramirez. What I've done, depending on how you would like to look at it, is avenge over two decades of brutality and barbarism or kill your parents and the seventeen men your father had hired as guards (incidentally, it is convenient that your maid visits her family every third Sunday).

"For what it's worth," he added, "I'm sorry for causing you suffering."

After a few moments, Arcelia broke the silence again, "And you want me to go with you?"

"I never said that I wanted anything. I made you an offer. I do think that you would be wise to accept it, but that doesn't mean that I do — or don't — want you to."

Almost impulsively, Arcelia asked, "Well, what do you want?" Like all human beings, she had the instinct to seize the initiative, even if she had no idea what to do with it once she had it.

John smiled, his eyes twinkling devilishly. "I want to be a dragon. I want a body the size of a school bus and a tail longer than a snake. I want wings the size of the sails on a ship, teeth sharper than a needle, and breath hotter than hell. I want to soar among the clouds like a bird and look down on all the beautiful world. I want to be more than a man and have none of Man's vices."

Arcelia didn't know how to respond. She wanted control of the situation, or the conversation, or something. She couldn't think of how to get it. Finally, she said, "Whether or not I accept your offer, if you're so concerned about my welfare, please don't joke with me."

"I was quite serious. That is what I want. That it's not terribly relevant to the moment is true, but it's your business why you want to know this now, not mine."

"Why are you being so literal?"

"Why aren't you?"

"Why have you offered to bring to me civilization?"

"Because you are in danger."

"Because of you!"

"Exactly."

"Well, then, if you were so concerned about me why did you put me in danger?"

"Because I could also get you out of it."

Arcelia paused and thought for a moment. His responses were all reasonable — but for an insane situation. Was it really possible that he did what he claimed? Was it really possible that her family and all of their guards were dead? She hadn't really started to believe it yet, but it was really starting to worry her that no one had come in response to her screams earlier. Enriqué should have come running within a few seconds. Could everyone be in the far side of the house for some reason? Could they have left her all alone in her room and this crazy stranger wandered in somehow?

"I take it that you won't mind if I walk around and make sure that you're telling the truth about my family?"

The idea that this strange man could have been telling the truth about her family had not really sunk in, and she was mostly concerned with keeping him calm while she found out what was really going on.

"That's as you please. I hope that you have a strong stomach."

It disconcerted her that he didn't mind. She had expected that he would find some excuse to keep her from looking around. Still, she had to find out what was going on and she couldn't be in any more danger leaving her room than she was staying there with "Ramirez".

Arcelia slowly got up and put on her night robe, keeping her eyes on Ramirez. She had no real reason for watching him — if he was going to jump her he could more easily have done that before waking her up.

She didn't admit it to herself, but she watched him because of his calm confidence. He had turned the world on its side, but he was standing upright in the tumult he caused. He was at once an angel and a devil, and whichever side predominated he seemed, at least, to know what was going on.

Arcelia slowly walked out of her room. She had half-expected to see corpses in the hallway, and was a little relieved that there was not so much as a bloody footprint. She walked past the two rooms reserved for her sisters when they visit and went to her parents room. Taking a deep breath, she pushed the door open. Scarcely a moment later, she shut her eyes and turned from the grizzly scene, driving her head into her hands as if she could undo what she saw if she just pressed hard enough.

"No... No..." she said, as if to someone. After a moment, she opened her eyes and looked for John. She felt many things, but above all she was confused. Grief, understanding, even anger — all these things had to wait until she figured out what was going on now.

She hadn't heard him come after her, but he was only a few feet behind her. He was just standing there, with a look somewhere between compassionate and curious, respectfully silent. Arcelia stared into his eyes. She swallowed and took a deep breath, preparing to speak. It was some minutes before she could speak, though. Every time she opened her mouth to try no words would come.

At last she said, quietly, "So it is true?"

"Yes," he said gently.

"Do I really have a choice?"

"Yes."

"Do you really consider dying in the jungle to be a choice?"

"Yes, though it is not certain that on your own, you would die. Nothing in this world is certain until it happens."

"You're quite the philosopher."

John spoke in the same gentle voice, but there was a hint of a smile on his face: "Yes."

Arcelia sighed. She almost laughed at the absurdity of her situation.

"What should I do?" she asked. "What would you do, if you were me?"

"If I were you," he said thoughtfully, "I would accept my offer.

"If I meant to do anything bad to you, I would surely have done it by now. If I wanted to harm you, there was no reason to wake you up. Even if i wanted to kidnap you and deliver you to some vengeful associates of mine — incidentally, there's no one that I know of who holds a grudge against you — even if I had wanted to kidnap you, I could have just tied your hands and forced you to walk behind me.

"So, all things considered, it wouldn't seem very likely that I was being deceptive in my offer, or at least, if I was, my deception would be too subtle to discover just by thinking about it. So I would accept.

"But what shall you do?"

Arcelia thought for a moment. "I'll come with you." Having decided to trust him, at least for now, she figured that she might as well ignore her anger. "So, what now?"

"You should pack some rugged clothing in a bag. Long pants and long-sleeved shirts, if you have them. Also socks, underwear, etc. Also, you'll want to bring money, as it will be useful to you once we get to town. I'll carry the bag for you, so it's OK if it's heavy, though please don't be ridiculous about it."

Arcelia did as John suggested and within half an hour they were off.

For the first few hours of their journey, neither Arcelia nor John said anything to the other. John was being respectful and Arcelia was far too caught up in trying to figure out what she thought and felt. Certainly she knew her father and mother well enough to know that they were not saints, so she did not condemn John irreversibly. Yet the bonds of blood are strong, and she couldn't easily forgive the deaths of her parents, either.

The whole situation was simply too surreal for Arcelia to react sensibly. There was in any event nothing Arcelia could do about her situation now, having placed herself into the care of this handsome, if strange, assassin. She had been thinking about what little she knew happened for so long that she needed something to distract her from it. She couldn't stop any other way. Resolving to find her distraction in conversation, she finally broke the silence by asking, "So how long have you been an assassin?"

John was a little startled by the abruptness of her question, but he wasn't really surprised by it. Death and grief were his line of work, after all. Looking back at her, he replied "It's nearly twenty years." He pushed on.

Having built up the courage to start a conversation, she wasn't going to let him leave it at that. "Do you like it?"

John stopped walking, and slowly turned to face her. He looked at her face for a moment, almost as if looking for something. She returned his gaze. Not knowing what he was looking for she didn't know how to show it, and didn't even know if she wanted to. She held her expression and waited. She was determined that he would not embarrass her into looking away. At length, he spoke.

"God forgive me. I do."

Arcelia did not take long to reply, "I think that I understand. A while ago you spoke of wanting to be a dragon. I do kind of know what you mean. But to me, you are a dragon. You want to fly, but I'm as far from you as you are from flying." John was silent, listening to her. She continued, "I can't imagine that being a dragon very nice. When you breath fire, you have to breath it somewhere, and fire always burns. But even when it's unpleasant, it must be fun. Even when it's painful, it must be exhilarating."

John looked at Arcelia with respect. A small smile crept over his face. "It is."

He let a moment pass, then asked her, "And what of you? Do you like what your life has been?"

Sometimes two people who don't know each other become intimate simply because they didn't get to know each other more slowly. Such was the friendship forming between Arcelia and John. While they were forming it, neither was willing to slacken the pace.

"You know," she replied, "it really doesn't matter, does it?"

"How do you mean?" John asked.

"I'm starting a new life today. Or maybe I will start it once we get to town. Or maybe I've already started it." She paused for a moment as she jumped over a fallen tree. "Whichever. I wonder what life it should be?"

It may seem strange that Arcelia should be so intimate with the man who just killed her parents. If so, in her defense when the world has turned upside down, the most comfortable position can be standing on your head. It's a sort of humility: when the world goes mad, it may just know something which you don't. It's also true that John was a handsome man, and it's human nature to trust good looking people.

"What should any of us do with our life?" John said thoughtfully. "You know, I did once meet a man who knew what he should do with his life, but he was a monk. Somehow that seems a bit like cheating, doesn't it?"

"How so?"

"Because his answer to the question, 'what should I do in this world?' was 'nothing'. Oh, I don't mean that he made the wrong choice. He's certainly a good monk. It just doesn't seem very helpful as an example for the rest of us."

"Yes. If the purpose of his life was to serve as an example for the rest of us in being worldly, he certainly made a mess of it." Arcelia was feeling quite playful — a little drunk on the feeling of freedom that comes with starting over before the hard work of actually starting sets in. "How do you know that we all shouldn't renounce the world?" Arcelia was actually smiling now.

"As Benedict said in Much Ado About Nothing, 'the world must be peopled'."

"Yes," Arcelia conceded, "but there's more than one way to renounce the world. You hardly live a normal life."

"Do you think that I'm celibate, then?"

Arcelia thought for a moment. "I honestly don't know. You'd certainly be more picturesque if you were. Well, maybe not. I could see you being a lady's man, too. Endlessly bumping from one woman to another and getting nothing but physical release, searching without knowing it for a woman who was more than just a body — that would work too."

John just smiled. "I try to know what I'm looking for. Things are easier to find that way. But I guess that you're right, I'm not normal."

"I guess that you won't be much help, then."

"Probably not."

Arcelia was now not sure how to continue the conversation and stayed silent for a few minutes, hoping that John might think of something to say. At length, he did.

"The obvious way to start is to consider what you're good at. That's also the bad way to start."

It was Arcelia's turn to smile. "You're going to have to explain that one."

"What you're good at is just an accident of your history. You're good at piano because there was a piano in the house. You learned to dance because you admired someone you happen to see two months before you might have seen a kung fu movie if you weren't at dance class. What you're good at is a little bit you but mostly it's everyone else. We talk about making our way in life, but mostly we make each other's ways. Dr Frankenstein had nothing on the guy who taught me to shoot. If you really want to decide for yourself, start at the end and work your way backwards. The first question is what you want written on your tombstone. The second question is what you need to do to convince people to write it. Once you've answered that, you know what to do with your life."

Arcelia considered this for a few moments, then asked, "And what do you want written on your tombstone?"

John grinned and said, "Look behind you."

John laughed and Arcelia joined him. It was good to laugh.

They continued on in silence for some time. Conversations are fragile things, and neither Arcelia nor John wanted to break the one they were having. They also both had a lot on their minds. John is contemplative by nature, and there were practical matters which he had to pay attention to as well. Arcelia had asked some questions which she would soon need to have answers to. Neither really noticed how much time had passed when Arcelia asked, "So... is it difficult to learn to be an assassin?"

John thought about it for only a moment before replying, "That really depends on how long you plan to survive for."

Arcelia believed him, but somehow it didn't seem right to just agree with him, so she said, "Is striking from the shadows really that dangerous an occupation?"

"Oh, don't get me wrong. Even and idiot can last for a little while. The thing is, most idiots do. Killing people for money is not usually a good way to make friends, but it's a wonderful way to make enemies."

"I can imagine. Do you think that I'm too old to start learning?"

"There isn't really such a thing as too old. I mean, if you're sixty you're probably not going to be doing a lot of acrobatics, but acrobatics are rarely a good idea."

Arcelia smiled. "You mean that the movies aren't realistic? That's rather dissapointing to hear."

John smiled back. "If the movies were realistic, they'd have to make the movies differently. No one pays a movie theater to see what they could watch on the news."

Arcelia considered this for a moment, then got to the point. "So, do you think that I should give it a try?"

John wasn't surprised by the question. "That depends on why you want to," he said.

Arcelia wasn't surprised either. She looked very serious and said, "Because I want to be a dragon too."

John considered this a moment.

"Let's get to town first."

Impending rains forced John and Arcelia to camp for the night a little earlier than John had intended. He used the time profitably, though. Sherlock Holmes maintained that a person should know as little as possible that was not of use so as to save space in the brain for the things which would be of use. He very famously declared his intent, immediately after learning that the world is round, of forgetting it as soon as possible. John disagreed, believing instead that the brain is like a muscle — the more one crams into it the more space it has for more knowledge.

Kung fu masters hold that it is better to be the master of one punch than to be the student of ten. John held that it's better to be the master of five. And, while you're at it, knowing a few kicks wouldn't hurt either, to say nothing of a few chokes, a couple good limb breakers, and don't forget that throws can be enormously helpful in some situations. And, when you get down to it, traps are often more convenient than actually fighting.

John was in many ways a renaissance man: a jack-of-all-trades who had mastered quite a few of them. When it came to teaching people, this had its plusses and minuses. Since there was so much to learn about in so many subjects, it was easy to get started in any situation. The downside, as Arcelia was to come to know, was that the end was never in sight. On this rainy evening, the pluses predominated. Except that hard work is, always, hard.

After a few minutes of explaining the theory of building jungle shelters, John had Arcelia build two for them while he prepared dinner (and watched her). Arcelia took to building shelters quickly, and they ended up sleeping in the second and third shelter she built.

After dinner, John lent Arcelia a copy of the Ranger Handbook (United States Army, not Dungeons and Dragons) and settled down to read Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil. As they were settling in, Arcelia noticed John's book.

"Nietzsche? That sounds remarkably... stereotypical. Are you a follower of Nietzsche?"

John laughed. "Oh heavens no. He's wrong about nearly everything. I'm reading this," John gestured with the book, "to try to figure out what people see in him."

Arcelia put her book down and looked at John quizzicaly. After a moment she asked, "Do you have a contract for a philosophy professor?"

John chuckled. "It's hard to imagine a philosophy professor someone could need dead. No, this isn't professional."

Arcelia considered this for a moment. "So you really are a philosopher?"

John shrugged his shoulders. "I don't think that people should call themselves philosophers. It's pretentious, and if they're a 'lover of wisdom', then what's everyone else? A hater of wisdom?"

Arcelia smiled, a little impishly. "Some people are content to leave the hard questions unasked."

John replied, "I'm much more worried about the people who are content to leave them unanswered."

"But people who leave the hard questions unasked have to leave them unanswered."

"Not at all."

"How can you answer a question you haven't asked?"

John smiled. "Well, you do have to leave the answer unspoken, but people do it all the time. You know why a poker exists — to poke. Fires, specifically. Did you ever ask yourself why a poker exists?"

Arcelia started to answer, but John cut her off.

"—It might exist because every house should have a club in it. It might exist because a fire represents the uterous and the energy which creates life, and the poker symbolizes a penis thrust in it to stoke the fires of life. Maybe it's a holdover from the medieval period, around because men dream of being knights and want something that looks like a sword. Maybe it's just art — an exploration of the two-faced man who follows the straight path and deviates at the same time. Maybe it's just a big accident with no meaning or purpose at all — they're found in homes near fireplaces by a giant coincidence with no meaning. I doubt that you've ever asked any of these questions, but I also doubt that you've ever found a poker a great mystery too terrible to speak of."

Arcelia and John were quiet for some moments, then John finished, "Questions are great, but answers are better."

For the first time, Arcelia didn't mind agreeing with John. They both went back to reading. Some time later, Arcelia fell asleep first. Afterward, John set some alarms and traps around his shelter and fell asleep too.

John and Arcelia awoke at first light and continued on their way. There was a great deal that Arcelia wanted to talk about, but John insisted that they concentrate on their trip. "The first rule of staying alive is that when you're not someplace completely safe, pay attention. It's amazing how much you can see by looking for it."

John did consider it safe enough during mealtimes to converse, however, since he insisted that meals be eaten above ground. "The second rule of staying alive is when you're not someplace safe, control your circumstances. On the ground, we can be surprised from any direction. Thirty feet up, we can only be surprised from up or down, which are much easier to watch, especially with two of us."

At lunch time, Areclia brought up the question which she had been thinking about all morning. "How do assassins get paid? I'm guessing that you require payment up front, so people can't shirk on you, but what if they want to kill you afterwards to cover their tracks? Can you get paid without them being able to track you? And how do you even get assignments without the police finding you? You can hardly put ads on TV."

"Advertising is actually the easiest part. While nearly everything about our lives is done in secrecy, our results make the newspapers. A client won't say, 'get me The Black Viper' or 'get me the Dancing Baboon' or some other silly code-name. He will say, 'get me the guy who killed Eric Van Johnson,' or 'I want the guy who got the Tornatelli brothers'. In passing, I should mention that in the world of contract killers, 'guy' is a neuter-gender term. For whatever reason, most cloak-and-dagger assasins are female."

Arcelia interrupted John, "cloak-and-dagger assasins?"

"There are basically three types of people who kill (specific) people for money. The most numerous are your generic thugs who've gotten into the high-risk and high-pay thuggary. They're minimally competent, don't last very long, and are usually sent after people who annoy organized crime. Next, there are government agents. Most of them are actually in the military and come from one of the sniper schools. Their targets are usually military, though occasionally CIA-type assassins will go after political marks. Snipers are usually more competent than CIA-types, but they're also more specialized and often have easier tasks. Intelligence agencies frequently try to make their operations look like accidents. Not that they're good at it.

"And then there are the people like me. Freelancers. Our targets are usually political and sensitive. It's self-selecting — those are the types of jobs where a lot of money is involved. It's also the hardest, because people who turn to freelancers need quite a bit of distance from the killing. Because of all the secrecy and misdirection we have to employ, I call it the cloak-and-dagger work.

"Anyhow, you're right that the payment is the hardest part. Paying an assassin to kill someone requires several steps, all of which need to be untraceable for both the client and the assassin's sake. There's the request, the negotiation of payment, and the delivery of payment. None of them are easy, but the last is the hardest. Money is almost always traceable, and when it turns untraceable it's a big neon sign that something is up."

"So how do you do it?"

"The great thing about our world is that if someone with money has a need, someone will find a way to satisfy that need. There are a few solutions, but the common one is what you might call brokerage houses, or more colorfully, assassins' guilds. People who understand politics and finance arrange the payments and the cover for them. The best and most common covers are overpriced services that don't need to show results — motivational speaking, management consulting — that sort of thing. You can get away with some amazing prices, and don't have to provide anything tangible for the money. Art works, too, since artistic taste is so subjective."

"That's marvelous. This way the money doesn't need to be untraceable, and so you're not putting up any neon signs." Arcelia appreciated the ingenuity of it all.

"Yes, though it's tricky for the broker to get it to the assassin. It is a bit strange for a management consultant to himself hire management consultants, or for an artist to buy a lot of expensive paintings. It works for a consultant to buy paintings, but having a multi-million dollar art habit might look a little odd — you generally want to avoid repetition, because unnatural repetition might arouse suspicion. Pleasantly, while the client needs to pay the entire sum quickly, the broker has more leeway in getting the money to the assassin in multiple payments, since you can trust the brokers."

"They never try to keep the money? It's not like an assassin could sue him for it."

"True." John smiled mischeivously, "but most brokers don't try to double-cross professional killers. Perhaps it's natural selection."

"Of course. The ones who try it once don't live long enough to try it twice. So what about the intial contact? You can't be listed in the yellow pages."

"No. You're right that initial contact is very hard. There have been a lot of approaches tried. References and personal contacts are probably the most common — you know people who know people, and they can figure out how to get in contact with you — but that's also very risky. All it takes is one to turn on you and you're in danger. Some people actually do try web pages, but that's even more dangerous — what clients can find the police can find too, and the internet is not as anonymous as you might think."

"And what do you do?"

John smiled and thought for a moment. He wasn't sure how far he should trust Arcelia. Threading between answering her question and not giving away anything which might be dangerous, "The key," he finally said, "is to never stop moving. What's hidden can be found, but finding where something used to be and will never be again isn't useful."

Arcelia thought about it for a bit. "If you constantly change how to get in touch with you, you're harder to catch, but you're also harder to find. That would seem to argue against web pages."

"It does."

"So you need something which is easy to find, but which doesn't do someone much good to find. So you have some way that people can let you know that they want to talk with you so that you can contact them."

"In essense, yes. You give people a way of posting their contact information in an inconspicuous public place so that you can check them out and get back to them if you think that it's safe."

Arcelia was content with this, and they were soon on their way again.

Dinner started in relative silence. John was the first to break it, asking, "Are you serious about wanting to become an assassin?"

Arcelia considered this for a while. "I would say that I need to think about it, but only because it seems like I should. I know what my answer is; I would feel like I was rushing into things if I gave it too quickly. But that doesn't change what the answer would be."

John was pensive. "The truth is that I don't how to get you started."

"Well," said Arcelia practically, "how do most people get started?"

"Oh, I don't mean that; aside from joining an army, there are several straight-forward ways of learning. What I mean is that I don't know what the safest and best way to teach you is."

"Safest?" Arcelia was taken back by this. She had been getting so used to John that she had all but forgotten the unstable foundation that their relationship, such as it was, was based. She couldn't blame John at all — she could barely believe herself how completely she had forgiven him for killing her parents by now — but it was a painful check all the same. Though John was in fact a remarkably attractive man, Arcelia didn't want John at all in a sexual way. She was fascinated and engaged by him, though. He offered windows into worlds she had never before known she wanted to visit. Realizing that he couldn't trust her meant that many of these windows would be kept shaded. She had not given up all hope, though. Searching for words so that he wouldn't explain all of this to her and by doing so convince himself further, she managed to say, "Look, I know that things look bad. You killed my parents, and if they were know saints still, blood is blood. But the truth is that I'm not angry at you for it, and I don't want revenge. But obviously, those are just words. Is there anything that I can do that would let you trust me?"

"That," said John, "is the age-old problem, not just of assassins, but of people. How can we know whom to trust?"