Incarnations of Immortality

By The Bear!

Disclaimer: See Prologue

Epilogue

Somewhere in Toronto

8 a.m. Monday December 18th

A man stood before a desk.  There was a chair there, but he had not been invited to sit, and- given his failure to acquire what the man behind the desk wanted- he didn’t want to press his luck.

The man behind the desk looked with icy contempt at the flunky before him.  “I gave you a simple assignment.  I told you where they were staying, and what they were doing here in Toronto .  All I asked it that you keep an eye on them and tell me where they were at all times.”

The man tried to defend himself, “They haven’t been there since the first day of the conference.  They had someone else check them out of their rooms, and they haven’t been back.  They missed their flight out of Toronto , and there is no record of them taking any other flight.  There is no movement on their credit cards, they haven’t checked in to any other hotel or motel in the city.  Their rental car hasn’t been turned in yet, so it is possible that they have driven out of town, but there is no record of them going through any checkpoint into the states, nor any hotel or flight records anywhere in Canada .”

The man behind the desk raised his voice only slightly, “Do you think you are telling me anything I don’t already know?  If I wanted an explanation for your incompetence, I would have asked for one.  The only thing I want from you is their present location.  Until you have that, you have nothing I want.”  He leaned forward slightly in his chair and said in a more normal tone of voice, “Now, I suggest you find out where they are.  Do it quickly, or I will find someone else to replace you.”  The threat of permanent replacement was unspoken, yet clearly communicated.

The man spun around on his heel and left the room.

Another man, older stepped out of the shadows in the corner of the room and sat before the desk.  “Good help is hard to find, but if you keep killing them off, you’ll make it even harder.”

The man behind the desk was not amused.  “You were supposed to be my backup.  Your daughter is partnered with the ones who were chaperoning these two, and you are no more help to me than he was!” he growled, indicating the man who had just left the room.

“My daughter… has chosen this time for one of her inconvenient little ‘I’m a grown woman, quit trying to tell me how to run my life’ temper tantrums.”

The man behind the desk angrily crushed out his cigarette. “I’m not interested in your family problems, commissioner.  If you cannot handle a simple request to keep an eye on two people, doing nothing more devious than attending a conference, then it may be time for us to re-evaluate your usefulness to the program as well,” he said smoothly as he removed a pack of Morleys from his coat and lit his next, drawing deeply and blowing the smoke into the commissioner’s face.  

 

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