Green Light

Falcon and Raven strolled the walkway, two among many, along the blue Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir in New York City’s Central Park.

Runners and cyclists dashed and glided past them in both directions in the mild late Spring day. Falcon reached out and touched the black wrought-iron fence separating the walkway from the lake. It felt reassuringly solid beneath his fingers.

“I am ready to proceed,” said Raven, the ex-KGB man. “I need only the ‘green light’ as it is called.”

They wore typical office attire. Coats and ties in colors dark and gray pegged them as a couple of businessmen taking a constitutional walk during their lunch hour.

“You are confident you can bend this waitress, this Reilly-woman to our purpose? Without her knowledge?” Falcon asked.

“Our attack will be both psychic and psychological. The details involve our man Ruiz. Would you care to hear them?”

“I’m sure they are fascinating,” Falcon said. “It is the result that interests me.”

“The result is that Skinner will be delivered to the client, and the client’s payment to the agency.”

“As cleanly as that?”

Raven responded with a rare grin. “Well,” he said, “an egg or two may be cracked in the process. But there is nothing to touch upon the anonymity of the Agency.”

“You have always been successful Raven, even when, like now, others said it couldn’t be done. So you have the so-called ‘green light’.

“But tell me one thing. These women are so powerful. How will you neutralize the older one, this Megan Harris? How do you take her out of the equation?”

Raven considered the question. He looked across the reservoir at the New York City skyline. The art deco San Remo building, with its twin ornate limestone towers rising 30 stories above the Central Park trees, caught his eye.

Just like the two American women, he thought. So beautiful and majestic in their power and glory, rising above everything.

“Rape,” Raven replied.