The head in the scope matched the head in the picture, so he pulled the trigger.
He dismantled the rifle without haste, picked up the spent shell and packed everything into the golf-bag lying open on the table. He kept his gloves on, did not want to leave fingerprints anywhere. Shouldering the bag he carefully opened the door of the apartment, stepped to the elevator, rode to the ground floor and calmly walked out the front door.
The fact that he had just killed somebody did not bother him at all. It was just a job, like selling a car or keeping books. As a professional assassin he followed orders, executed them to the best of his abilities without getting emotionally involved. All he was interested in was a clean successful hit, and a clean successful get-away. Everything else did not matter.
It all comes down to planning and organization he thought as he walked away from the building towards the stolen car parked two blocks away. By the time police would arrive trying to figure out what had happened and where the shot had come from, he would be long gone.
He unlocked the trunk, stowed his golf-bag, walked around to the driver’s door, opened it and slid behind the wheel. After starting up the car he checked the mirrors, carefully drove away from the curb and accelerated to just below the posted speed limit.
He dropped off the golf-bag at a self-storage unit he had rented under a false name, then left the stolen car at the Greyhound station parking lot. He walked into the station, ordered a coffee at the snack shop, and sat down at one of the small tables in front of it.
He fished in his pocket for the throw-away cell-phone he had bought the day before, dialed a number from memory, and after the beep left a short message: “The eagle has landed”. It meant that the job had been done and that the three hundred thousand Dollars could now be transferred to his account in the Cayman Islands.
As he was sipping his coffee he thought about his future. Two more jobs were all he needed to spend the rest of his life in comfort. He not only planned every job in detail, his future too was planned meticulously. Two years earlier he had acquired a false set of papers making him a French citizen. He had also bought a small villa near Nice on the French Riviera. The papers waited for him in a safe deposit at a bank in New York. The price for the papers and the villa had set him back considerably, but with two more jobs he would easily make up the shortfall. He already saw himself comfortably retired, playing golf or hiking in the mountains. Maybe I am going to buy a boat, he thought, not too big, but big enough to live on and explore the Mediterranean coast.
After finishing his coffee he boarded the first city bus, rode about four stations, all the while discretely scanning the people, bus, and street. He changed to another bus and rode another six stations. He dismantled the cell-phone, threw the pieces into several different trash containers, before returning by bus to the Greyhound station. No tail, nothing out of the ordinary. His survey complete, he walked two blocks before catching the bus that would drop him close to his house.
He felt content. Another job well done, no hassles, no problems, just the way he had planned it. He exited the bus and walked the two blocks to his house.
Just before he turned off the sidewalk towards his front door, the man inside the house across the street looked at the picture. The head matched, so he pulled the trigger.
It was just a job, like selling a car or keeping books.
END