Sunday, November 25, 2007

pour l'éducation d'autres


Translated from (very poor) French.



Of course I noticed the Bulgarian, I mean how could you miss him? Greasy little bugger with dark, limpid eyes that never seemed to be focused on anything in particular. Dark and swarthy little chap dressed in cheaply made, poorly tailored Eastern European knock-off of Western clothes. The problem was that someone(s) had taken the trouble to hire him, and therefore I was not really in a position (at first) to sidle up to him and ask him his business with me. Since I am not some clever spy-master, it took me a few days of seeing him on the fringes of crowds, or popping up at places where I was to figure out that maybe he was becoming my (thinner) shadow. Racking my hazy memory, and taxing my limited intelligence, I was unable to conceive that anyone, anywhere, would want to have me shadowed. If you are curious about my day to day activities, then you my friend, need a hobby and maybe some therapy. Either way, there he was my shadow. What in the bleeding hell had I done? Who had the nerve to want to know what I was doing? Christ, just ask me if you want to know. No need to go through all this trouble to hire some (clumsy) bastard to trail me around. So, I decided to give the little bugger a peek into my day (see previous post) as you can tell not a lot is going on in my life. I wish I could say that I was being sneaky and giving him a look at a boring day on purpose. Sadly, that is not true, the day he observed is pretty much a slice of my life. Pretty exciting stuff huh? Either way the more I thought about it the more pissed I became. I mean who the hell hired this jackass, and why? However, I really did not consider myself set up to spy on the spy. After all, he is (in theory) a trained professional. Me? Not so much. Also, for some reason it just seemed a bit hypocritical of me to going prying into this fool's life when it offended me for him to snoop into mine. Luckily for me, he was an inept bastard. Apparently, he did not read the Stasi manual about sleep. It is all well and good to question a "subject" (I really enjoyed being called a subject made me feel so very cheap). when he or she first wakes up. You just need to be careful to ascertain IF he or she just woke up. Some people wake up in stages, some people wake up right away, and some people you just are not sure if they are awake yet or not. Certainly, if you have your subject in custody this is not a problem, but if you do not have all hours access to the subject, you should be very careful. It evens the odds a bit, and you have to sleep yourself eventually. All sorts of mischief can be done while you are snoring away the afternoon. Once (or I guess if) your "subject" realizes you are there, things become much more difficult. Granted, they might be terrified in submission, or scared enough to make a critical mistake, but you never know when you run into a clever bastard that might not want to be eliminated. Worst case sceanrio you get someone who wants to be a hero, and decides to make your life an object of their attention. Now, I am certainly not a hero, and from from being a clever bastard (well bastard yes, clever not so much), but, I am not a total fool. Once I wrapped my mind around the concept of secrets I begin to realize we all have them, and it is incumbent upon us to keep them, or tell them as we see fit. This is when I figured that even the Bulgar must have something that he did not want me or anyone else to find out. Since I am aware that one Bulgar does not a Stasi make, I am going to leave it to him (or his handlers) imagination if I was able to find something out that I can use. Ne trahir rien.

5 comments:

Cynnie said...

I think I fell asleep

tideliar said...

Excellent mate. Very well written!

The Grand Inquisitor said...

thank you tidy, and yes cynnie apparently you did :)

Cynnie said...

I ever claimed to be a brainiac dude..

Stephen Lourdes said...

Hi,

My name is Stephen Lourdes and I'm an editor at Noir Press, publishing.

I'm picking an old post as I don't want to be swamped by others coming across the details.

I don't just think your writing is brilliant, I know it is. Ever think of serializing a story or writing a novel? You're a great writer, and I mean that. In fact, this is the first (and more likely the only) time I'm leaving such comment on someone's blog.

If you're interested, please let me know. Write to contact@noirpress.com marked to my attention.

Best regards,

Stephen Lourdes

___________________________________________________________________
Noir Press | 6 Swans Nest Business Park, Pouladuff Rd, Togher, Cork
Ireland | P: +353 21 4840904 F: +353 21 4840939 | Noirpress.com