"Do you still have any doubts, sir? Understand, because of the nature of our business I can give you no official guarantee, but what we are embarking on is so profitable in itself that no guarantee is necessary." Said Mr. Silent, a handsome young man of about twenty with slick golden hair.
Then he stooped down to the surface of the fragrant forest floor, picked up a flat pebble from it, and skilfully skipped it. The pebble bounced gracefully several times off the turquoise ripples of the pond, on the bank of which Mr. Silent stood with a serious-looking, well-dressed man.
When Mr. Silent had sufficiently enjoyed the elegant ripples he had caused on that formerly smooth, crystal clear face of water, he straightened his extravagant, black, brocade suit and turned to his companion with a broad smile.
"I remember standing here in this very spot exactly a month ago with a friend of mine, trying to persuade him, as I'm persuading you now..." said Mr. Silent thoughtfully, absently snapping his fingers as if trying to fish some distant memory from his mind. "He resisted... resisted the progress I was offering, but finally he said 'Okay. I'll take it. I may not believe it, but I'll gladly take the risk for you.' And a month later? He came to me on his knees and thanked me for finally talking him into it! He even offered me some of the vast fortune he had made, but I refused. In short, I don't need any more money! There's so much money in this business, there's enough for everyone! You don't have to argue with anyone here, you don't even have to try hard, and the money will come pouring onto your bank account!"
Mr. Silent ended his speech with an enthusiastic clap and cast a conspiratorial glance at his potential business partner.
He just shrugged his shoulders and said happily, "What can I say? You've convinced me! I'll take it! Just one last question... Why the hell are you called Mr. Silent?"
"That's a good question..." Mr. Silent said with a disturbing smile. "I don't talk much."
"Is that a joke?" The man laughed. "No offense, but I haven't met a more talkative person in a long time!"
"I like to believe so, but unfortunately, secrecy is part of my professional demeanor. It simply inspires trust in people. So what can I do about it? I love to talk and it torments me when I have to keep all my thoughts to myself. That way I can only talk to someone who I'm sure won't reveal my true personality to anyone else... by the way, that reminds me that I still have a job to do here."
With those words, Mr. Silent pulled a small black pistol from under his jacket and pointed it at the poor man, who assumed this was an ordinary business meeting (and naively believed there was absolutely nothing suspicious about meeting in the woods).
"Good-bye, sir. It was indeed a pleasure doing business with you." Mr. Silent said almost regretfully (but really only almost) and shot the unfortunate man, who couldn't even manage to run away due to the shock, between the eyes in the middle of the forehead.
Mr. Silent watched in silence as his victim's limp body buckled and dark blood gushed from his forehead... like water from a park fountain.
As the corpse fell face first into the damp dark dirt and gradually ceased its post-mortem twitching, a heartfelt sigh escaped Mr. Silent's lips.
Now he would have to be silent again...
But there was also something magical about silence. As he looked around, dismissing the thought of standing over the cooling body of someone who, because of him, was no longer breathing, it was a glorious day. The sun was shining, a pleasant breeze gently brushed the treetops, and he was free! Free as the woodpeckers, who, like a great forest orchestra, hammered their song into the trees. Free as...
Tadadam tadadam tim tim...
Tadadam tadadam tim tim...
The annoying ringing of the mobile phone pulled Mr. Silent's romantic soul back into a very unpoetic reality.
So back on duty...
"Yes?" Mr. Silent announced into his cell phone.
"Finished?" His boss's gruff voice asked.
"Yes." Mr. Silent replied dejectedly. The one-word answers were killing him. Having to repeat only 'yes' or 'no' over and over again almost made him wish he was in the position of his victims.
"Then come to me now. I have another one for you." Mr. Silent's boss said as if he was ordering meat from a butcher shop. A little blood would be shed for him, but no one would feel sorry for pigs, would they?
"Yes." Mr. Silent repeated the word, which tore his soul more than a bullet did the body of one of his victims.
And that was the end of the conversation. So Mr. Silent slipped away from the scene of the crime and got into his luxurious black Mercedes... Well, there were some advantages to being a hitman.
About an hour later, at about 7 a.m., Mr. Silent parked very neatly and carefully in front of the apartment building where his superior lived. When he got out, he first made sure that he was in a place where parking was permitted and paid at a nearby parking meter. He may be a criminal, but he believed that some rules were necessary for the proper functioning of society after all... and he would also look like an idiot if he got busted for some problems with his parking bills after so many successful murders. Mr. Silent had a clean record with the police and he wanted to keep it that way as long as possible.
Before he got out of the car, he checked his hair in the mirror. Precision and neatness were valued in this business.
Anything less than perfect was punished by death...
Mr. Silent then jumped out of his luxurious black car, which in his gloomy mood sometimes seemed like a hearse (maybe because he had actually carried a few corpses in it, but let's not spoil the poetic moment) and headed for the third floor of the old apartment building that towered in front of him.
From the outside, it was a perfectly ordinary house. Who would have guessed that the local crime lord resided within its walls?
Well, maybe someone did. When the neighbours heard the rock music roaring from his flat at six o'clock on a Sunday morning and didn't go to complain, they must have suspected something.
Without hesitation, Mr. Silent knocked on that door, which had become to him in his few years of service what a general's office door is to a soldier.
He was, after all, a soldier.
He had to keep telling himself that.
He was just a soldier. Just a soldier.
If he didn't have even that small consolation, his conscience wouldn't bear the weight.
"Come in!" The hoarse voice of his boss, a seven-and-fifty-year-old stout gentleman nicknamed Lord in the criminal underworld, boomed at him from inside.
Lord looked a bit like the sort of kindly uncle who teaches you to ride a bike as a child and gives you advice on seducing girls as a teenager, but don't let appearances fool you. This jolly uncle left his brother... no, I shouldn't say that. I have to stick to the official court report. His brother and his entire family accidentally burned to death in their house, which caught fire due to a short in the wiring without any external cause, leaving the electrician to take all the blame. So decided the judge... but, I must say, only after Lord had very graphically demonstrated to him that even his own house was not fireproof.
"You called me. Well, I'm here." Mr. Silent said brusquely, and entered Lord's apartment, his eyes fixed on the tips of his snakeskin boots.
Those who would have entered the place for the first time might have been struck by the extravagant layout of the apartment's undisguised focus on wildly lit aquariums, but not Mr. Silent, who was there at least once a month (and more often in times of Lord's paranoia) to take orders for someone's execution.
So, quite calmly, he walked around the whole aquatic circus, from the bowels of which the fat Japanese carp were casting their eyes at him, and sat down at the marble coffee table, on which, of course, stood nothing but a goldfish tank.
"But! Mr. Silent!" Lord smiled, and went on feeding one particularly plump white fish that was flopping in a large tank of water right in the middle of the living room.
"My most trusted soldier!" Lord laughed, wiping his wet hands and sitting down next to Mr. Silent.
But then he grew serious and said reprovingly, like the uncle who found out you had secretly drunk all his plum brandy, "But even the best soldier sometimes misses..."
"Lord?" Mr. Silent lifted his head in confusion from the glossy surface of the table, and took an exceptional look into the eyes of the one who had made him a murderer.
"Oh, yes, Mr. Silent," Lord went on gruffly. "I learned early this morning from a very reliable source that a man who should have been dead for four years has been hiding in prison all that time-"
"I can explain!" Mr. Silent defended himself.
Lord, however, let him make no objection, and silenced him with a heavy rap on the table top. "I haven't finished talking yet! You haven't done your work! You have spared the one who threatened your life, and what is more, mine! I would understand if you had a problem with killing one of my ex-wives. But no, you shot those without protests! You'll end up pitying your predecessor, whose departure secured you this lucrative position! I can't understand that! This is no longer a momentary failure, but downright stupidity!"
"I-" began Mr. Silent with a shudder, but even this time Lord did not let him finish.
"Are you an idiot, Mr. Silent?"
"What?"
"I'm asking if you're an idiot, Mr. Silent!"
"No..."
"That's good!" Lord sputtered, rising abruptly from the table. "Because I don't hire idiots! And the criminals I don't hire, I kill, so think carefully about whether you want to be an idiot or not!"
Mr. Silent was silent. He would have liked to say something in his defense, but he wasn't expected to. He could only remain silent.
"Come here, you bastard." Lord ordered, walking over to the medium-sized fish tank that stood by the window.
In that brief moment, Mr. Silent lost whatever hope he had left. He who once lost the Lord's trust never regained it. Even if he survives now, his life will become uncomfortably similar to the experience of a tightrope walker balancing above the Grand Canyon.
But like many who have gone under the guillotine before him, Mr. Silent wanted to at least retain his dignity. So he didn't run, he didn't fight back, he just removed the silver silk scarf from around his neck, placed it on the table and stood before his boss in resignation.
"You or me?" He asked ruefully.
He had participated in this unpleasant procedure so many times that he was now capable of executing himself in this way.
"I myself..." growled Lord, and without further ado, dipped Mr. Silent's head into the fishbowl.
When Mr. Silent ran out of oxygen after a while and began to twitch a little under his strong hand, Lord moved on to the next step.
"I know you know my lecture by heart... after all, you've replaced me in it a few times, but it wouldn't be complete without it..." Lord said loudly so Mr. Silent could hear him even underwater.
"This is the Beaked Sea Snake..." continued Lord calmly like a biology professor introducing the deadly creature to his students, and opened the partition in the aquarium behind which the sea serpent was located. "A single bite from it will kill you within twenty-four hours. The antidote could theoretically save you, but you'll probably have a hard time getting it while you're writhing around in unimaginable pain... So let's take a little gamble now! If the snake leaves you, I'll let you live, but if not..."
At that moment, Lord interrupted his sadistic explanation in surprise and looked at his killer snake, which continued to just crouch in the corner of his aquarium. At this point, his speech would have usually been interrupted by the hysterical roar of a man who had been bitten in the eye by a bloodthirsty sea beast.
"What's the matter with you, beast?" Lord said gruffly, poking the snake with the brush he had been using to clean its aquarium. "Come on, aren't you hungry? Then be a good snake, come eat..."
However, as soon as the snake's motionless body floated belly up to the surface of the water, it was clear to Lord that he wasn't going to poison anyone else today.
"Fuck, it died..." remarked Lord disappointedly and dismissed Mr. Silent, who rolled to the floor with a loud cough.
Mr. Silent didn't even get a chance to breathe properly and Lord was already giving him new orders.
"Alright... I'll let you live. But you'll do something for me. Firstly, you're going to get rid of a troublesome person, the papers to him are in that file next to the carp tank... secondly, you're going to track down this guy for me who should have been rotting in a coffin a long time ago and finish what I paid you to do four years ago. And thirdly, you get me a new snake..."
Mr. Silent just nodded shakily. He was still kind of drowning, so he couldn't even manage his classic 'yes'.
"Fine... go on then! What the hell are you doing here? It was just a bit of water! God, you're a wimp..." said Lord, rolling his eyes and looking away from the choking Mr. Silent back to his dead pet.
Mr. Silent coughed up the rest of the water he had swallowed in the fishbowl, staggering to his feet and heading for the door as fast as he could.
He didn't look back at Lord anymore, just grabbed the file that hid the identity of his next victim on the way, and stumbled out of the apartment.
However, after he had descended and partially rolled down the stairs and crawled to where his Mercedes was supposed to be parked, another unpleasant surprise awaited him.
The car was gone.
He could have prevented the police from towing it away, but he was still defenseless against car thieves.
He'd just have to take a cab.
Mr. Silent opened the envelope from Lord with a sigh. This was not going to be one of his best days.
But he was still better off than the poor fellow whose name shone viciously at him in large letters on the top of the document.
Poor Robert Vašinka.