A cool October morning.

I waited for the metro at an above ground station, Pétillion. Tuesday morning rush hour in Brussels, Belgium.

Nobody goes to, or even thinks of Brussels. But the politicians do. It’s the home of the European Parliament, and of NATO, the most powerful military coalition in the history of mankind, led by the U.S.A.

And this week the United States will sign its first export license for the F-22 Raptor. The most advanced fighter jet in the world, to EU countries bordering Russia.

The Brits are pissed. Being Americas closest European ally and being in a queue behind the likes of Finland for the latest military hardware leaves a bitter taste. Bitter as sauerkraut.

They are even behind the Germans.

Geopolitics is a bitch.

Nobody knows me, or suspects me in any way. I’m just one of a team of what we call decoy trackers.

We hunt the hunters.

I’m dark skinned and black. Asked to wear a hoody and go to the same places every day. Unshaven, scruffy. Invisible.

There are a few of us, and the spies and body guards are caught….off guard.

Despite their training, they do have ingrained social prejudices. This means my appearance does heighten their perception. More awareness. Instantaneous, visceral fear from years of media programming. It throws them off.

In a split second they rationalise it. It’s just another, probably migrant, worker. An unimportant, uneducated part of the background noise in a diverse city. Minutiae.

And yet I am one pair of dozens of eyes. We pass by in a moment and we know who they are. We are conspicuously inconspicuous.

We never follow anybody, but we see everybody. And ‘our friends’ as we call them, control the electronic eyes of the city.

Today I saw him again. Dmitry.

Though he goes by the name of Alessandro Ampolo. He was born in Vladivostok, but raised for a short time in Moscow and then in Florence, Italy.

He works for the office of the region of Tuscany in Brussels. A standard job in the European capital. He’s been here for four years.

He plays squash twice a week with his friends at De Brouckere and drinks at Place de Luxembourg on a Thursday, with all the other European civil servants.

He blends in. But we see him. We see them all.

He’s been fucking a Greek American, potential defector. She was educated at a private school in Lisbon, Portugal and has been giving him details of the upcoming F-22 export, and of the upcoming EU border deterrent mission details commencing in March 2023.

My part in this is urgently small, but I love knowing the details. One thing I do know is that these two are toast. Soon to disappear.

Interrogation, possibly, and execution without trial.

For their colleagues it will come as a surprise.

Missing posters around the neighbourhood, or even the whole city, searching for their innocent alias. Some young, bright, clean cut civil servant.

Bad things never happen to these types of people.

Unless there’s an underlying reason.

——————

Today is Thursday. Two days after I saw Dmitry, and we know that tonight he and Eleni, Alias Claire, will go home together from Place Luxembourg after work drinks.

I am sitting silently in the closet of his carelessly un-bugged, lightly surveilled apartment.

I am ready.

I screw the silencer into my Beretta M9. The sound of perfectly machined, dense twisting metal calms me.

Like meditation in the still of a dark night. My breath becomes deep and full, like a football player about to take the last penalty in a World Cup final. Focused enough to silence a crowd of 100,000.

Down the hallway a lock turns and two laughing lovers enter. Careless drunken aliases.

Stumbling unaware into the beautiful symmetry of a spiders web.