The Sand Trap (21 page)

"Fuck, just my luck to get some amateur
Korean Tae Kwan Doer” Gord thought as he easily blocked the
worker’s first swing and tried his own which was also blocked. He
knew it was unlikely that anyone, much less some mall worker in
Seoul would ever take him down. While he was fifty-eight years old,
he still had reflexes that were well above the norm. He knew that
because he had been tested when he joined the service. What they
found out explained why he had excelled at any sport that relied on
speed. There was no punch or kick this guy could put out that Gord
would not see in plenty of time to react. This man was a nuisance
and he wanted to end it quickly, but the guy just would not
cooperate. He was good. As good as anyone Gord had fought in his
years of working for the government, although, in all honesty, all
of his fights had just been practice bouts at the annual training
camp with people of similar skill from other agencies around the
world. While his specialty was exotic poisons, he had received
training in martial arts and other weapons, but in all the years of
his part-time job with the government, he had never had to fight
anyone for real. This really sucked. A fight to the death in a
dirty underground mall washroom in Korea? How would he explain that
to his kids?

Gord made a move with his left fist, which
was blocked, and the worker slammed a heel into Gord’s thigh, just
missing his knee. That was a fortunate miss since it was the knee
that had put him out of competitive hockey thirty years ago and it
was now very arthritic. Even a glancing blow would have sent Gord
to the floor and that thigh kick was hard enough to hurt. Gord
returned the kick and it was only partially blocked. They paused
and looked at each other for a moment. The scene would have been
funny if Gord wasn’t so worried about his timing. A six-foot tall
ninja facing off against a five-foot nothing in dirty overalls
while both stood in a puddle of water and shit. Gord saw the
determination in the guys eyes and had to finish it. He took a
sweep with his right leg and as the guy jumped, Gord feinted with
his right hand. As the Korean reacted to block it he landed off
balance and slipped on the wet floor. He lay there stunned. Gord
just pointed his finger at him to say, “Stay there.” The
maintenance man nodded. The other guy was still cowering in the
urinal with a stunned look on his face. Gord wondered momentarily
if he should kill the two workers but he had never faced anyone he
had killed before and they hadn’t done anything wrong. The one guy
had actually put up a good fight. Besides, it wouldn’t make any
difference if they were alive or dead, this incident would raise
suspicions about the circumstances of the banker’s death and the
police might even find some minute evidence of the powder. If that
happened his boss would not be happy since they only used Gord when
they wanted a death to appear natural.

Over the years he had perfected a number of
ways to make a death appear natural and beyond any suspicion of
action from any outside source. This was supposed to be one of
those. A natural death of the banker would lead to a natural and
honest succession. A murder would lead to a severe disruption of
the Korean banking system.

He could not do anything to fix that
now.

He pushed the now compliant worker into a
stall and pointed again to say, “Stay there” and closed the door of
the stall. He climbed back up on the sink and replaced the grate to
the vent, took off the mask and put his suit back on over the black
tights. With any luck neither of the workers had seen him jump down
from the vent and if they mentioned anything it would just be a
crazy story of a ninja coming into the washroom and attacking them.
One would have the bruises to prove it. But so would he, he thought
as he rubbed his thigh where he had been kicked. “I’m getting too
old for this shit,” he announced to himself as he slipped out the
washroom door and joined the flow of people heading back to the
conference hall. A glance at his watch told him he had taken
twenty-six minutes from the time he had put the powder in the
glass. As he walked through the convention centre entrance he heard
alarms ringing from the bank building across the road and as he
greeted Monica he was cool and collected.

“How has business been?” he inquired.

“You missed all the excitement!” she
announced.

He looked over to where she was pointing and
saw a phalanx of Korean police just down the hall from them. His
heart stopped for a moment.

She continued. “Some guy wouldn’t leave the
Irish booth. He kept yelling something in Korean. Someone told me
he was saying he would not leave until he was given a
scholarship.”

Gord could see now that half a dozen police
were roughly handcuffing some skinny kid with long hair.

She looked at Gord strangely. “You'd better
wipe the cobwebs from your hair.”

Gord reached up and pulled some air vent
cobwebs from the front of his hair. “Wonder where these came from?
Maybe I’m just not moving fast enough these days!” he joked. “This
fair is over. Let’s pack up and get out of here.”

They quickly packed up their display
materials. Fortunately the load was lighter than when they came in
having handed out hundreds of brochures and booklets describing the
benefits of paying huge foreign student fees to attend their
university. Still, the load was cumbersome and awkward for both of
them as they made their way to the taxi stand at the front of the
conference centre.

Once outside the building they could see
there was some commotion across the road at the bank building.

“Wonder what’s going on over there?” she
asked.

“No idea,” Gord replied, as he walked with a
visible limp to the first taxi in line.

“Damn, “he announced as he struggled to get
the rolled up display with a large photo of Pierre Trudeau
University into the back seat of the taxi. “I’m getting too old for
this fucking job.”

(Back to Table of Contents)

“I’m quitting, “Gord announced to his lunch
companions.

“What do you mean ‘quitting’?” one of the
four men around the table cautiously replied.

“Quitting everything – the university …”
Gord paused and looked out the window at the eighteenth hole of the
Valley Golf and Country Club, and repeated with finality. “Quitting
everything.”

He had just finished his usual Saturday
lunch that had followed his usual Saturday golf game with the usual
foursome. They had all been golfing together for over twenty years,
and one, Richard Fairfield, had been golfing with him every
Saturday when Gord was in town, for over twenty-five years, ever
since they had been graduate students together at the University of
Toronto.

It was Richard who asked the cautious
question. “I see, and just exactly what are you going to do once
you quit” he paused, “everything?”

To be honest, that was not a question that
Gord had considered much. He just knew he had to change his life.
While the other two regular playing companions were just long time
friends, one a lawyer and one a bureaucrat in the federal
government, Richard was, in fact, his boss, although no one around
the table knew it. Richard’s formal title was Vice President
Operations for the CIDC, Canadian International Development
Corporation, a small government operation that according to its
website “
monitored economic activity around the world to provide
Canadian businesses with up to date information that will enhance
their global competitiveness.
” To their credit they actually
did put out some good material in this regard. That wasn’t what
Richard did for them and that was not the real purpose of the
office. It was, in fact, a covert arm of NATO’s intelligence
branch. They operated under the watchful eye of CISIC, the Canadian
International Systems Information Corporation, Canada’s own
intelligence agency, but were totally independent of any Canadian
oversight, political or otherwise. Someone in NATO twenty-five
years ago figured quite correctly that no one would look to polite
and diplomatic Canada for such a black ops and CIDC had
consequently been operating quite efficiently and secretly since
then. Its business was not economics. It was killing. Or
assassination. Or threat elimination. Whatever Richard wanted to
call it was OK with Gord because for him it was now only about
killing and he had grown a little tired of it. They had already had
that discussion on the golf course the week after Gord came back
from Korea. They only met during their weekly golf game and it was
the only traceable link between the two of them.

“This wasn’t an easy one Richard,” Gord had
offered. “Shit. I got trashed by a washroom maintenance man!”

“Yeah, well it turned out that your
‘maintenance man’ was a highly trained undercover operative for the
North Koreans and we figure the only reason he backed off from
killing you was he was afraid of being caught himself if you
continued the fight in the washroom. He was identified on a
security camera walking down the tunnel to the subway shortly after
you left the washroom, so he didn’t stick around to tell the story.
The other guy could not really remember anything so you were lucky
this time.”

“Right. I was lucky. Sure. Tell that to the
big bruise on my thigh. Actual fighting isn't exactly my thing.
Hell. I’m just getting too old for this,” Gord suggested as they
walked down the fairway. “Besides, don’t you think some data wiz
somewhere will eventually link my presence to the jobs we have
done?”

“As for the fighting, it's true that's a
little bit of a stretch for you, but that's why you get training
every year – for that one time you might need it. And remember, you
were identified in the first place because of your unique spatial
relationship skills that kept you from getting crushed this time.
And the data wiz thing? That’s not likely. You only do a job for us
once every few years so it would be a stretch to put it all
together. The records are kept in deeply buried very secure files.
Too old? Are you too old to take the healthy retainer we give you
to be available?”

Since his recruitment, the Agency had paid
Gord an annual tax-free untraceable retainer that was larger than
his annual salary from the university. So far he had only used the
money judiciously – university tuition for the kids, a winter
retreat in Anguilla, a new car – all feasible on his university
salary if you did not look too closely. He had put enough away to
maintain his lifestyle for some time if the retainer dried up.

“Fuck the money Richard. I just can't do it
anymore.”

Richard stopped him in the middle of the
fairway and put his hand on Gord’s arm. “Gord when you joined you
knew we were the Hotel California.”

“Is that a threat of some sort Richard?”

“Not at all. I just suspect that you and I,
the Agency, are not done doing things for each other. But come on.
Hit your shot. Let’s see if you are too old to play golf.”

Gord had dropped the topic. The conversation
for the rest of the day bounced from golf and family and the
weather to when they were going south for warmth and golf this
winter. None of the guys shared Gord’s music interest so that
rarely came up in the conversation and Gord showed little interest
in their incessant political prognostications. Golf was pretty much
the conversation of their Saturday lunches.

“So Gord, “Harold Bailey, the lawyer asked.
“If you retire from the university what will you do?”

Gord was tempted to say “Kill some more
people”, but as he pondered a response he looked up at the flat
screen TV on the wall of the bar and watched the golf game in
progress. It was some sort of senior event and Freddy Couples and
Tom Watson were teeing off. “I think I’ll try and make it to the
senior tour,” he blurted without much thought.

The table broke into loud enough laughter
that the other tables looked over annoyed at the disruption to
their own conversation.

“You are good Gord,” Peter Hailey the other
member of their foursome observed. “But a three handicap won’t make
the professional tour!”

Gord was immediately defensive. “Come on
guys. Everyone at this table is over fifty and everyone a single
digit handicapper and which one of you hasn’t fanaticized about
being on the senior tour?”

“It's a long way from fantasy to action,”
Richard observed. “I fantasize about a night with Angelina Jolie
but I’m not quitting my job to look for her. Brad Pitt looks a
little tough for my liking.”

They all laughed.

“No, seriously guys,” Gord continued,
getting into his spontaneous idea. “How many times have we all sat
here after our Saturday round and watched some tournament or the
other and either said, or thought, that with a little time to
practice and work on our game we could be that good?”