The Assassin

Illustration by Liz Moser.

The assassin was from neither here nor there, though he spoke all their languages. He operated mostly at night time, under cover of alcohol, smoke, lust, and other elements of intoxication. He was smooth with it—baiting his targets into empty, unassuming locales. He was systematic, too; his operations had a rhythm, like an old farmer snapping the heads of poultry before dawn.

The girl was not a target. She was an old classmate the assassin knew from high school. They had run into each other the previous evening at the bank. She had recognized him, somehow. She suggested they see each other, for a drink, for dinner, just to catch up, whatever. The assassin said why not? He did not have many friends. At his age, in his line of work, friendships were difficult to maintain. 

It was a damp summer evening. The assassin was dressed in office clothes, undercover as a business consultant. He was pacing back and forth in front of the shoe shiners on Theatre Lane. He decided he would take her to the Italian place by the Mid-Levels, which he had noticed on his way back to the hotel the previous night, after he finished a job in the woods of Lung Fu Mountain. He had one more job, which he planned to finish later tonight. Tomorrow, he would fly back home, to headquarters, in Washington, DC. 

The girl, on the other hand, had just arrived. She was from the mainland, Shanghai. Her parents dropped her off at Pudong Airport two days ago, promising they’d visit over Chinese New Year. She didn’t know anyone in Hong Kong until she saw him—the old friend from her high school exchange program. When she was 15, she had spent a semester studying at an American private school in DC. He had also introduced her to that city. 

The girl emerged from the stairs of the metro, out of breath, and found him already standing there. He was tall and decent looking. He had a serious face that only looked friendly when he smiled. He looked very different than she remembered. She was surprised she had recognized him at all, the previous evening at the bank. She caught his eyes and waved to him. 

“Hi,” said the assassin. He was relieved to see her. She was 15 minutes late, and he had wondered if she would show at all. In his experience, when people were this late, it usually meant they had found him out. 

The girl was wearing a sleeveless white dress with pink lipstick and minimal pink sandals. She had long, black hair that fell just below her shoulders. She was plain looking. The assassin would not have picked her out from a crowded street. But she was instantly familiar to him, despite them not having met for over a decade. The assassin recalled a prior outing, when they ran into each other at a movie theater in Georgetown. Both were seeing the film alone, so they instead watched it together. He recalled that it was a Pixar film.    

The assassin guided the girl up the stairs and into the walkway infrastructure that spread like tentacles across downtown Hong Kong. They walked slowly, with the view of the harbor to their right. It was still light outside, though they could see the sun setting on the waters. The orange rays fell on their faces. On their left, skyscrapers crawled up the steep, green hills. 

“You know what happened to me yesterday?” said the girl, in English, as they walked passed a convenient store. “I went to the 7-Eleven to buy instant noodles. You’d think this would be easy, but it was not. First, I had to bring a bunch of coins with me, because they don’t take Alipay.” 

The assassin said, “Some places take it.”  

The girl said, “No, listen. I’m not done. Second, I buy the noodles because I am hungry. I go to my room, boil some water, and make the noodles.” 

The assassin said, “I don’t understand this story.”

The girl said, “You know, in the mainland, each instant noodle box comes with utensils on the inside, right? But this box did not have one. So I’m thinking that this is an issue with the brand. I go back across the street to the 7-Eleven, and I buy another cup noodle from another brand. Guess what?” 

“What?” 

“No utensils! It’s a Hong Kong thing. They don’t give you utensils with instant noodles. In the mainland they give you utensils.” 

“Why didn’t you just buy utensils the second time? Why did you instead buy more noodles?”  

The girl put her hand in front of her mouth and started laughing. “I don’t know,” she said, switching to Mandarin. 

The assassin laughed, too, surprising himself. The girl’s laughter was infectious. He liked that she was full of joy—with sincere happiness that was ready to burst out of her with the slightest provocation. The girl was a stark contrast to the people the assassin normally dealt with—traitors, money launderers, terrorists, and other bastards. Their eyes were devoid of feeling. Their eyes harbored resentment toward life itself. He never felt bad for killing them. Most of the time, killing them was for mutual relief.  

Yesterday’s target was a double agent responsible for leaking the identities of CIA informants who had infiltrated the Chinese military. The assassin had stalked yesterday’s target outside the luxury apartments near the top of Victoria’s Peak. There was a party at the penthouse of a shipping tycoon. The assassin had pretended to be a government chauffeur, waiting for the target in a borrowed Lincoln Town Car. The target fell asleep during the drive, so he pumped the target with a cocktail of drugs, making it look like an overdose. Then he dragged the corpse into the woods. It would be days until someone stumbled across the body. 

The girl stepped onto the escalator, and the assassin followed behind. The escalator would take them uphill for half a kilometer. “I’ve seen this thing in a Wang Kar-Wai movie,” she said. She leaned over the railing and looked down at the pedestrians below. Then she looked up at the sky, her hair swinging behind her. “You think it’s going to rain tonight?” she said. 

“Maybe,” said the assassin. 

They arrived at the Italian restaurant and took a seat by the window. It was dark now. The waiter was European, so the assassin ordered for her in English—manicotti with spinach, sausage and cheese. He got a beer, and she got bubble tea. She picked up the fork and knife and looked at him playfully. “I still don’t really know how to use these,” she said. 

“Maybe you can ask for chopsticks,” he said. 

She laughed at the absurdity of it. She placed the utensils on her plate, looked down at her food, and bit her lips. She looked into his eyes again, very sincerely, and said, “Can I actually?” 

They didn’t stay for desert. He insisted on paying the bill. On their way back down, the skies opened up, and it started pouring. 

People around them scattered along Pottinger Street. The girl took the assassin’s hand and led him underneath the awning. There was a small bar nearby, and they ducked inside. The interior was warm and quiet, lit with rosy lights. There was only one other customer, a tired-looking banker in his fifties, drinking an Old Fashioned at a table in the far corner. 

They each ordered a glass of wine. The assassin asked what the girl was doing here, in Hong Kong. She told him about her doctoral thesis—a cross-national study comparing public trust in government—which she was writing at City University. “Any way you cut it, people in mainland China are more trustful than people here or in Taiwan,” she explained. 

The assassin said, “We definitely don’t trust our government in America.” He gulped down his drink and ordered another one. Their conversation reminded him of his studies in political science at Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service, where he had attended before joining the special ops and serving in Afghanistan.  

The girl said, “Tell me about your family in Hong Kong.” 

The assassin was caught off guard by this question. He had mentioned he was staying with family, but that was a lie. He did have family somewhere on this island, but he hadn’t seen them since elementary school. 

The assassin’s grandfather migrated to Hong Kong as a child in the 1940s, from his family’s village in Guangdong, to escape the Japanese invasion. His grandfather learned how to fish when he was 10 years old. If his grandfather did not catch fish, his grandfather’s younger siblings would go hungry. 

The assassin’s parents were both born in Hong Kong. The assassin’s father worked as a banker, and his mother worked as a nurse. His father’s bank transferred him to Washington, DC, in the late 1980s, to work in government relations. The assassin was two years old when they moved. The assassin often wondered how his life would have been different had he grown up here instead. Perhaps he, too, would have been a banker—going out on dates after long hours at work, betting on horses at the racetrack, visiting the beaches on weekends, etc.

The assassin told the girl the story about his grandfather and the fish. The girl seemed to appreciate it. The rain stopped when the story was over, so the two of them headed out the bar and continued down the mountain. 

The girl was staying in Mong Kok. The assassin offered to see her home. He led her up the labyrinthine walkways and into the ferry terminal, where a boat had just arrived. They sat by the windows, enjoying the open view and the breeze. The night lights of Hong Kong, in all their neon glamour, surrounded them fully. The engine sputtered, then roared, and they made their way across Victoria Harbor. 

The girl said, “I feel like a Viking in a steampunk novel.” 

The assassin basked in this rare happiness he felt from being with her. He wanted it to last. But he had another job tonight—to kill a Russian arms dealer selling Kalashnikovs to Syrians. He toyed with the idea of letting the Russian escape. He toyed with the idea of quitting and going rogue. Then he could start over and build a new life here, in this city-state of pirates, like his grandfather did. Perhaps, in this alternate life, he and the girl could be together. For the few hours he was with her, he felt like the man he wanted to be. 

The boat landed in Kowloon. They got off and made their way to a bus stop on Nathan Road. The girl said, “Maybe you can walk me home next time. I have to stop by school real quick.”  

The assassin said, “OK.” 

The girl reached out to hug him. “I had a great time tonight,” she said. The bus arrived, and she stepped onboard. “Let’s see each other again this weekend.” 

The assassin forced a smile. He did not have it in him to tell her the truth. After tonight, he would be a wanted man. He would have to flee the country. He would not see her for perhaps another ten years. The girl took a seat by the window and waved to him, looking even more joyful than before. The assassin stood there, feeling helpless, and watched the bus turn the corner and disappear.  

The assassin arrived at his hotel a few hours later. He shaved his mustache, put on a pair of black-rimmed glasses, and changed his outfit. He went downstairs, unlocked his motorcycle, and took off toward the Red Light district in Wan Chai. 

The Russian arms dealer arrived at the whorehouse as expected, just after midnight. The Russian was overweight, wobbling slightly as he walked. The Russian looked harmless, even jolly, under the moonlight. The assassin felt almost bad for the Russian.

Today had been a strange day. The assassin felt wrathful today. He felt there was pent up rage inside him. The original plan was to make it look like a self-inflicted gun wound—a quick, painless shot to the head. Instead, he would make it look as if the Russian hanged himself. Instead, he was going to strangle the fucker.