Abhay sat at a back booth in one of the bars he liked to frequent. He almost never drank, as it clouded the mind, but he liked the atmosphere and the anonymity. Only one of those two qualities were required for today’s important phone calls. Calls he could never make in his home, car, or his work cubicle, not unless he wanted the Order to hear his latest deals. The hidden microphones he’d found during his daily sweeps of his devices, advertised the obvious surveillance.

Heh. He wasn’t born yesterday.

After a quick glance at his surroundings, Abhay took out a cheap cellphone—one of those prepaid by-the-minute jobbies he’d bought specifically for today—and dialed the first number on his task list.

“You’ve secured a meeting with the buyer?” Abhay asked the man who answered after the third ring.

“Yes. Two days from now.”

“Excellent,” he replied.

“How much do you want for the name?”

Abhay loved how his contact got to the meat of the matter quickly and without a fuss. He never asked for details on what he was helping to sell, even if that something was the name of the Order’s highest executive. The leader of the entire Order of the Guardians for God. The twenty percent cut Abhay paid him bought his silence. Besides, the less he knew about what he was brokering, the less likely he would be to rat Abhay out should he be caught and made to talk. Abhay wouldn’t put a little bit of torture past either the Order or his own group, if the mood suited them. But the stakes—and the money—were too big for Abhay to trust one of his usual underlings. They might jeopardize the entire operation and cost Abhay millions in lost revenue.

“Let the buyer tell me how much the name is worth, but I won’t take less than half a million.”

“Okay. Will you be contacting me the usual way?”

“Yes.”

The man on the other end of the line hung up the phone. After a moment, Abhay dialed a second number.

“You have the encrypted email ready?” he asked without waiting for a greeting.

“Yes.” The second man answered, unphased by Abhay’s brusque tone.

“Good.” Abhay thought for a moment, “Send the email tonight.”

“Understood.” After a pause, Abhay’s contact asked, “Anything else?”

“No. I’ll call you for an update in four days.” Abhay waited until the contact hung up the phone. They never exchange real names or general phone pleasantries. Just one more layer in Abhay’s secrets within obscurity.

Now that his phone calls were finished, Abhay popped the cover off the back of his cellphone, removed the battery and SIM card, and began dismantling the plastic and internal components in preparation for disposal. Some of the phone parts he would throw away here, and some pieces would be litter. Others still would be dumped in the trash along the way, or burned later. He would buy a replacement phone in a few days. In the meantime, his black-market contacts would leave new contact numbers, sans their names, on a specific bulletin board at local meetups. Abhay would collect those numbers, and when the time came, he would call to get an update on his merchandise sale to the Order.

Once finished, Abhay opened his laptop. When it finished booting, he launched the programs needed to proxy his access and disguise his location. He needed to find more work, and he didn’t need the Organization or the Order to know about it.

A chime pulled his attention from his searching.

Prototype 5, Abhay’s planted phone, the one which captured ambient noise around the phone’s owner, had a message for Abhay. Abhay clicked the appropriate icon, grabbed his earbuds, and listened to the prepared file.

Black, Simon said.

Simon, a voice responded. Abhay assumed the masculine voice belonged to the infamous Hashashin Adam Black, Simon’s nemesis.

Jack’s confirmed it. A man, bearing Prescott’s appearance and mannerisms, has been spotted at Heritage. Go take care of him, Simon ordered in a clipped tone and Abhay felt a bit light headed.

In the background, there was a sound of fabric moving and a soft grunt, before Adam replied, On it.

Abhay glanced at the timestamp of the file. His script had processed it fifteen minutes ago. Abhay slammed his laptop shut and jammed it into his bag. He had to hurry if he had any hope of beating the Hashashin to Mark’s nursing home. 

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