The Client Killer (Chapter 1)

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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E-mail: murphy@murphyseyes.com

Content

Chapter 1        Rapidus

Chapter 2        Ristorante Il Giardino

Chapter 3        SafeComm

Chapter 4        Envelope on Window

Chapter 5        Recalled

Chapter 6        Mission: The Coconut

Chapter 7        The Bystander

Chapter 8        Very Very Basic Mistake

Chapter 9        The Pray

Chapter 1 Rapidus

The Frankfurt evening was a study in quiet, the deep, absorbing calm of a late autumn Sunday. Night had settled like a shroud, swallowing the city whole. The scattered streetlights offered only feeble, gloomy pools of light, powerless against the encroaching dark – perhaps never intended to fight it.

From the sky, the River Main would have looked like a blade that had sliced the city into two, its northern and southern halves hastily stitched together by bridges resembling band-aids. This was the Frankfurt of old money and discreet power, where the silence was not a lack of sound but a statement. It was a silence purchased by prohibitive real estate, enforced by taste, and broken only by the purr of a departing luxury sedan or the precise click of a lock in a wrought-iron gate.

On the south bank, 420 meters from the water, sat Mainer Kirche Street. It was 320 meters from a local park, 370 from a tram station. Its profound quiet was certified not by signs, but by prohibitively high house prices.

Three years ago, Georg Schneider, an electronics engineer, had bought the third-floor apartment at Number 7. The renovation took eight months – four longer than promised. He’s a methodical man, and everything needed to be precise.

Now, he stood at his kitchen window, looking down at the empty street before turning to his nightly ritual: taking out the garbage.

On Monday morning, the waste truck came early, a metallic roar that preceded dawn. It was better to take the trash down now, to leave the apartment clean. New garbage would be generated, of course, then trashed. Life was an inevitable cycle of creation and disposal. Everything followed the same pattern, from dust to dust.

He walked out of the building, his hands full of neatly separated bags – kitchen, toilet, plastics, papers. He paused, his step faltering. A figure was huddled in the entryway next to the blue paper-recycling bin.

“Excuse me, do you perhaps have some coins for me? I am starving.” A woman’s voice, soft but clear.

Georg didn’t look at her. He felt a spike of annoyance, not sympathy. Homeless people belonged near the central station or the shopping districts, not here. This was an intrusion.

“Sorry. No money. Only garbage,” he said, his voice low, his eyes averted.

“Thank you! Have a nice evening!” The reply from the hooded figure was improbably polite.

Georg ignored her, focusing on the bins. He could feel her gaze on him, a faint pressure between his shoulder blades. He was determined not to acknowledge it. She should not be here.

The task took six seconds. He turned back toward the heavy door.

“Have a nice evening!” The voice came from the shadows again, low enough not to shatter the peace, yet clear enough to demand a response.

He stopped for a fraction of a second. “Same to you, have a nice evening.” The words were polite, empty. He didn’t look back.

He slid his key into the lock, pushed the door open, and stepped inside. The hydraulic closer would seal it shut; he didn’t need to look back. The certainty of machinery was its charm. He was an electronics engineer, not a mechanical one, but he understood the basics of mechanism well enough.

Georg unlocked the heavy door, pushed it open, and stepped into the dim corridor. As the door began its slow, hydraulic swing shut, it narrowed the outside world’s view of him to a final sliver of his back. In that last moment, before the latch clicked home, a single 9mm round – silenced to a soft, percussive thump – crossed the threshold from the darkness outside. It struck Georg in the back of the head. His body jolted and collapsed forward, out of view, just as the door sealed shut.

From the silent street, nothing was amiss. The only evidence was the fading echo of a sound softer than a book falling on carpet.

The homeless woman stood up, melted away from the bins, and disappeared into the darkness.

Georg Schneider was found by the Monday morning waste collector, who discovered the body in the first-floor corridor of the six-family residence, shot dead. The bullet had entered and exited through his head. No forced entry, no shell casing, no witnesses, no suspect. The only clue for the police was the 9mm projectile itself. Period.

After eliminating Georg Schneider, Madelyn Emmerson didn’t run. She moved. Her pace was deliberate, a steady, unhurried rhythm that ate up the pavement without drawing a glance. She was a shadow leaving a deeper shadow, turning first onto Erthal Street, then onto Wald Street. In the lee of a graffiti-scarred wall, she found the designated waste container. The transformation was swift and practiced. The bulky hoodie and stained pants were shoved to the bottom of the bin, taking the persona of the starving woman with them. She knew the waste truck would make its early Monday morning collection, her discarded identity would be compacted and buried long before the city fully awoke. Beneath it, she wore dark, nondescript trousers and a soft, close-fitting jacket.

The cool night air was a relief against her skin. She ran her fingers through her hair, shaking it loose from its confines, feeling the weight of it fall around her shoulders. A single, deep breath, drawing in the damp air of the river nearby, and she walked on. Just another resident on a late-night stroll.

A hundred and twenty meters later, she turned left onto Ufer Street. The River Main lay to her right, a wide, black ribbon of indifference – indifference was an incurable sickness each and every large city was immersed in. A car or two hissed past, their headlights skimming the water’s surface like futile searchlights, failing to draw a reaction from the ever-flowing Main. Madelyn was equally untouched. She didn’t look at the water; her eyes took in the reflections in shop windows, the empty spaces between parked cars, the constant, passive scan of her environment.

Her car, a common Volkswagen Golf in a common shade of grey, was parked precisely where she had left it. She slid into the driver’s seat, the movement fluid and silent. The door closed with a solid, muted thud. For a moment, there was only silence. She placed her hands on the wheel, feeling the steady pulse in her own wrists, waiting for it to slow to its resting cadence. Mission complete.

Then, the routine: a check of the rearview mirror, then the side mirrors, a glance over her shoulder. The start button was pressed, and the engine purred to life, a low and unobtrusive sound. She pulled away from the curb smoothly, without a squeal of rubber, merging with the sparse traffic. The navigation system, set hours ago, glowed softly. It would be a long drive north; she wouldn’t be back to her sterile Hamburg apartment until dawn was bleeding at the edges of the sky.

Madelyn Emmerson was a covert operative for the US Department of Defense, stationed in Hamburg. Her cover was managed by Rapidus Air and Sea Logistics, a fully functional company headquartered in Norfolk, Virginia, with a bustling office in HafenCity. It specialized in international supply chain management, providing the perfect excuse for movement and meetings across Europe.

Internally, the company was a well-oiled machine. The Accounting Department oversaw data analysis, the Operations Department handled surveillance, while Customer Service carried responsibilities from intelligence collection to communication. The IT Department was, of course, for IT purposes, as well as technical support in field operations. The Administration Department had a supporting function: providing anything forged – fake IDs, crafted itinerary evidence like hotel bookings or flight tickets, health insurance, house rentals, telephone bills, bank account statements, cinema ticket stubs, parking tickets, restaurant bills – whatever was needed to make a story solid. HR was the smallest team in the company, intervening only when interrogation was required.

And then there was Sales, led by Madelyn Emmerson. She didn’t come to the office often, for good reasons. As Sales Manager, she was expected to meet clients all over the continent. Within the company, she had earned a nickname: ‘The Client Killer.’

It was not a metaphor.

When Madelyn visited a client, the business wasn’t lost. The client was. Permanently. Without a loose end. She was a legend in the trade, the ultimate clean-up crew. Georg Schneider had been one of Rapidus’s clients, business that Madelyn had to conclude. And Rapidus was a DoD unit with a strong European base, reporting directly to Deputy Secretary of Defense, Lieutenant General Sean Miller.

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Step into the shadows—Murphy’s thrillers await.