(1) A Death in Hysterium

Juris Souder left the subway station in Copenhagen carrying his waterproof trench coat over an arm and looking apprehensively at the clouds. They seemed dangerously close to the rooftops of the Vesterbrogade, and they were certainly dark with potential rain. But it wasn't just the inclement weather that made him apprehensive that morning. It was the prospect of meeting a woman in the outdoor dining area of the Hard Rock Cafe that gave him that terrible feeling that everything he hoped would go right would inevitably go wrong. As he crossed the boulevard a drop of rain hit his nose and spotted a lense of his glasses. A bad sign, he thought.

He had been told to look for a woman with a white streak in her jet black hair, who would be sitting at an umbrella'd table, working on a crossword puzzle. She was not young, but neither was she old. She was at that age when a woman has not quite surrendered to the inroads of aging. Her name was Susan Turphy. A New Yorker. She spoke fluent Dutch and German.

She saw Juris stepping up to the red-tiled patio with the rolling gait of the morbidly obese, and worried that he would not fit into the aluminum chair, or, if he did, the chair would not sustain his weight. She frowned, then immediately smiled when she noticed him coming toward her. She could see that he had misgivings. It would not help business any if he caught her frowning.

What she did not know, among the many things she didn't know, was that in just a few minutes she and Juris would be dead. So in the short term it did not matter if she frowned, or if the chair collapsed under her client's weight. In the long term their brief meeting would have no serious impact on the contract they were negotiating for the assassination of Juris Souder's rival. In fact, their conversation, in the eyes of fate, was superfluous. Sitting together at a patio table, as a light rain began to dampen the concrete street, had no significance beyond that of being a target for the killers who were driving slowly past the Tivoli Gardens three blocks away in a plain black sedan.

Juris had transferred one hundred thousand dollars in loans to a Swiss account, as stipulated by Lucretia's Glove, the very secret organization that was to arrange for the murder of his rival, Miklos DeGroot. His meeting with Susan was to settle the negotiator's fee, which was to be his final payment. This was a simple credit card transaction, a private matter between him and Susan. For the record he was buying replicas of Ming Dynasty vases from Susan's art emporium in Manhatten.

After the formality of greetings and a bit of small talk, Juris handed Susan his Visa Gold card and said, miserably, "I shall always feel terrible about this. But it must be done. Too much is at stake. There is no other way, I must agree with you." He continued in this vein, taking off his glasses and wiping his face with a scented handkerchief, as Susan, nodding sympathetically, swiped the card through her portable transaction device. "What is necessary," she commented, "must necessarily be done. Necessity takes precedence over all other concerns."

Juris was a computer technician. His wife was a doctor of biology. Together they were working on a diagnostic machine of such value that, once patented and on the market, was certain of earning them multiple millions of dollars. Their problem was that a former associate, Miklos DeGroot, had stolen their idea and much of their know-how, and, to their great dismay, was on the verge of applying for a patent. If Miklos beat them to the punch with a working model, it would be he who would reap the millions; that, and the accolades.

Whoever the gods of fate may be, they had visited Juris Souder a week earlier in the form of Professor Fredrico Rolgo, a Lucretia's Glove representative who was on sabbatical in Sweden when he met Joris at a medical convention, held at Stockholm. 

Liquor and desperation are potent motivators. Juris had talked of his woes. When Rolgo had deduced what was ailing the man, he recommended Susan. She was exceptionally skilled at overcoming the qualms and scruples of prospective clients.

The black sedan slowed to a crawl as it approached the cafe. It was only nine o'clock and the traffic was sparse. Besides Juris and Susan, there were only three people dining at the patio tables, and they were at the opposite end, grouped together over grilled burgers and fries. Not that it mattered to the woman in the back seat of the sedan whose silencer-equipped Uzi had eyes only for the negotiator and her client. The woman wore a grey pink-striped pullover sweater and an olive green crocheted cap. She looked to be quite young, certainly so in comparison to the man at the wheel, whose thick eyebrows were streaked with white. He pressed a foot on the brake, shifting to neutral.

"The fat boy first," he said over his shoulder.

"Duh, fuck," the woman said.

Susan smiled at Juris and made to shake his hand. His head jerked sideways and he seemed to be making a face at her, as though to downplay the momentous aspect of the handshake. That was Susan's last impression. A moment later the two bodies were lying next to their overturned chairs.

The plain black sedan made a leisurely turn on Vesterbrogade and followed a double-decker tour bus. "Where will we have lunch?" the woman asked.

"In hell," the driver said, as usual.

At that same moment a man wearing an Aloha shirt and white slacks was bending over the body of Susan Turphy. He took a glossy black pendant from her necklace while pretending to feel for a pulse in the jugular vein.

A commotion was developing in the cafe, which was not unexpected. The man went slowly back to his flower stand alongside the curb and put the pendant, which was actually a microphone, inside the wrapping of a bouquet of pink roses. 

He waited, nervously, for a Volkswagen Golf to drive up to the curb. He could see it coming. From the corners if his beetle-browed eyes he watched a small crowd of cafe employees gather near the bodies. He stood at a certain angle to the patio, so that his miniature camera could continue recording the scene. When the car stopped in front of him he handed the bouquet of roses to the driver, apparently a priest.

"A disaster!" whispered the man in the Aloha shirt.