Scrivenings of the King-Beyond-The-Wall

Travel Marvel #3

If you ask me, Italy is the greatest country in the world. It has Rome, perhaps the most historically significant city in the Western world. It has the Vatican, the centerpiece of the modern Catholic church. It has more museums and statues and monuments and historical sites than just about anywhere. And the food is to die for. Pasta, gelato, bread, you name it. That's why I never pass up the chance to visit when business provides the opportunity to travel there.

The only downside to Italy, really, is the law enforcement presence. With so many priceless artifacts and treasures, they have a substantial police presence to keep people like me from doing the things we're there to do. I feel for my brothers and sisters in the heist game; those museums and historical sites are so loaded with security features it's almost impossible to steal something nowadays. Not like a few decades ago when you could just grab something off a museum wall and make a break for it. Now they have plexiglas barriers and pressure sensors and security doors and all the things that make a good old fashioned smash and grab impractical. Those guys have had to get more sophisticated with their thievery.

Then again, I don't have that same problem. The assassination game is much the same as it's always been; people pay you to dispatch someone, and your job is to basically figure out how to make that happen in a way that (a) satisfies the client, and (b) doesn't get you caught. Some of my colleagues have much more elaborate theories of the job than I do, but you can essentially boil everything down to those essentials.

For this particular assignment, I've been in Venice for the past couple of days. It's not my favorite part of Italy; the canals are a fun feature for those who have never seen them before, but they're a little dirtier and a lot more inconvenient than most people think. Plus, when you have a city situated on a literal island, egress can be a bit of a logistical challenge. Which means you're limited on what methods you use, unless you particularly enjoy the Grand Theft Auto video game-style run from the cops. The guys in my business who tend to do that don't tend to be on the job for very long. They're either rotting in prison, or rotting in some grave somewhere.

For this mission, I've opted for an old standby... poison. It's clean, it's quiet, and if done right, it's something where you're miles away before anyone's the wiser. Miles away and off the island, specifically. And I lucked out for this job; my target is a creature of habit. He always frequents the same coffee shop at almost exactly the same time every morning. Predictability makes things easier for people in my line of work. It's just a matter of slipping something into his drink and letting nature take its course.

There are basically two ways you can take an assignment like this. You can either try to slip something into the drink yourself, or you can get someone to do it for you. The latter, involving someone else, is always a tricky proposition because if things go sideways there's a potential witness to identify you later. But if you do an adequate amount of prep work beforehand, that can be less of a risk than being seen dropping something into a person's coffee on your own. And this particular coffee shop had far too many cameras present to make that a viable option. Tourists with camera phones were everywhere, and the proprietor had a halfway decent security system that covered many of the angles inside the store. So I opted for approaching one of the baristas on his way into work one morning.

He looked like a college kid working a summer job to earn some money. He had been there a few weeks; not long enough to develop any kind of real attachment to the job, and his attitude reflected that. He was the perfect guy to approach with my "prank." I noticed his college fraternity ring on a prior visit and figured that was my way in. I told him that my target was a frat brother of mine from back in the day, and I wanted to pay him back for all the awful hazing he did to me when I was at university. The barista instantly identified with the sentiment and asked what I had in mind. I produced a small bottle of laxatives (which I had injected the poison into with a needle while leaving the bottle's safety cap intact) and asked if he could slip it into my friend's morning latte. I told him my friend had a presentation at work that day and it would be hilarious to have him running to the bathroom every few seconds.

And just like that, an unsuspecting accomplice agreed to take my murder weapon into the cafe and deliver it to the victim without me ever having to set foot inside. I just had to wait for him to leave with his coffee from afar, shadow him while he drank it to confirm its effects, and then confirm the kill for the client from the privacy of the bathroom he ran into once the poison ran its course. Thirty minutes later, I was on a water taxi leaving Venice's city center and headed for my flight at Marco Polo Airport.

Next year I'll be in the Italian countryside while I plot the assassination of a Silicon Valley tech CEO who hasn't been as compliant with his Eastern European investors as they would like. He's renting a villa outside of Catanzaro that's supposed to be simply *chef's kiss* and my employer set me up in an equally impressive villa next door. Two weeks doing recon in the Italian countryside... have I mentioned this is my favorite country in the whole world?


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(1,000 words)


Prompt: Italy is my favorite country; in fact, I plan to spend two weeks there next year.