No one looked twice at a person doing a menial job, which a lesser man might have resented. The man who would come to be called Robert Hawkins had a job to do, which afforded him no luxury for resentment. He opened car doors, closed them again, took keys and drove cars short distances only to drive them back again. He walked back and forth pushing a lawnmower over an expanse of grass that needed to be cut half as often as it was. He reached into a pool drain and swirled his hand around until the last of the accumulated gunk was clear. It was a circular motion, a holding pattern until he received further instructions.

One day there was a man in a black coat that was too warm for the season standing under the trees at the edge of the property. He nodded, and disappeared into the gazebo.

There was no need for words. Everything that he needed to know had been told before he had been sent on the assignment, so when he walked back around to the back of the house it was with purpose and deliberation.

The supposed master of the house was doing laps in the pool, back and forth, more circular motion. He was killing time at this hour like he always did, and ignoring the pool guy with the casual arrogance of the rich enough to lord it over someone.

All he had to do was say he thought he saw something in the filter, a dead rodent, and the man was out of the pool like a missile erupting from the water. He pretended to fish around in the filter for a second, pulled out a mess of leaves and fur that looked like a decaying creature and offered to show it to the boss who recoiled in predictable disgust.

The toxin took a little while to work its way through his system, but he still had half an hour left in the man's usual swimming routine. Inside of fifteen minutes he was tiring, and after twenty he was slowly rising to the top of the pool, motionless. He went to the back and got the heat-vision goggles, stepping into the shadows of the greenery beyond the pool where the outside world wouldn't be able to see him. Slowly, the corpse's body temperature equalized with the water.

He pulled the goggles off and packed them in his briefcase, removed the drip dispenser from the pool filter and packed that away as well. It would all be disposed of in the shredder, in the incinerator, there were methods for that sort of thing. He would go back to what passed for his home and report the success of his mission, the elimination of a threat to national security. And then he would be sent to his next job. All part of the routine.

Months later, when he told Jake that he had been a pool guy, he wasn't even really lying.

Go to the top! For you have reached the bottom.