The Plotters. Un-su Kim

looked as arrogant as ever, despite her whiny voice. Without taking his eyes off of her, Reseng slowly slipped his hand inside his leather jacket. Which should he choose, the gun or the knife? Which one was less likely to startle her and make her scream or fly into a panic? When asked, most people said they were more afraid of knives than guns, which made no sense to him. But then, fear is never rational. Reseng chose the gun. Before he could pull it out, the woman’s face stiffened.

      “May I put my clothes back on?” Her voice trembled.

      “Why?”

      “I don’t want to die naked.”

      Her eyes met his. They held no trace of anger or hatred. Her weary eyes simply said that she’d learned too much about the world in too short a time; her vacant pupils said she was tired of feeling afraid and didn’t want to see anything anymore.

      “You’re not going to die naked,” Reseng said.

      But the woman didn’t move.

      Reseng softened his tone. “Get dressed, please.”

      She picked up her clothes from the floor, her hands shaking as she pulled up her dainty Mickey Mouse panties. When she was dressed, Reseng guided her to the bed by her shoulder and locked the door. The woman took a pack of Virginia Slims from her bag and tried to light one, but her hands shook so hard that she couldn’t get the lighter to work. Reseng pulled his Zippo from his pocket and lit it for her. She gave him a slight nod of thanks and took a deep drag, then turned her head and exhaled a plume of smoke in what seemed like an infinitely long sigh. He could tell she was making an effort to stay calm, as if she’d been practicing for this moment, but her thin shoulders were already trembling.

      “I hate having marks on my body. Could you avoid leaving any?” she asked quietly.

      She wasn’t begging for mercy. All she wanted was to die without any cuts or bruises. He suddenly wondered about Chu. What was it about this woman that had stopped Chu’s clock? Had her frail body filled him with sympathy? Had she reminded him too much of a girl in a Japanese porn video? Had the mysterious melancholy clouding her features aroused in him a misplaced sense of guilt? No. That’d be ridiculous. Chu wasn’t the kind of guy who would fuck up his life because of some cheap romantic notion.

      “You hate having marks …”

      Reseng slowly echoed her. The woman’s eyes flickered nervously. He found it hard to believe that she was more afraid of having marks on her body than of dying. Reseng gazed down at the floor for a moment before raising his head.

      “You won’t have any marks.” He tried to keep his voice as level as possible.

      A startled look came over her face. She seemed to have just figured out what the oversize bag in the corner was for. She must have pictured it, because her entire body began to shake.

      “Are you putting me in that?”

      Her voice had a nervous tremor, but she managed not to stutter.

      Reseng nodded.

      “Where will you take me? Are you going to leave my body at a garbage dump or in the forest?”

      For a moment, Reseng wondered if he really had to tell her. He didn’t. But whether he did or not, it changed nothing.

      “You won’t be buried in the forest or dumped in a landfill. You’ll be cremated at a facility. Though not, strictly speaking, legally.”

      “Then no one will know I’m dead. There won’t be a funeral.”

      Reseng nodded again. She’d toughed everything else out, but for some reason that made her burst into tears. Why make such a fuss about what’ll happen to your corpse when you’re facing imminent death? She seemed more worried about what she would look like after death than about the death itself. What a thing for someone her age to worry herself over.

      She gritted her teeth and wiped her eyes with her palm. Then she fixed Reseng with a look that said she was not going to beg for her life or waste any more tears on someone like him.

      “How are you going to kill me?”

      Reseng was taken aback. Fifteen years as an assassin, and he had never once been asked that.

      “Are you serious?”

      “Yes,” she said flatly.

      As per the plotter’s orders, he was going to break her neck. Snapping the slender neck of a woman who weighed no more than thirty-eight kilos would be a piece of cake. As long as she didn’t put up a fight, it would be quicker and less painful than might be imagined. But if she did struggle, she could end up with a broken vertebra jutting through the skin. Or writhing in agony for several long minutes until she finally suffocated from a blocked airway, fully conscious the whole time.

      “How would you like to die?”

      As soon as the question was out, Reseng felt like an ass. What kind of question was that? How would you like to die? It sounded like he was a waiter asking how she’d like her steak cooked. She lowered her head in thought. He could tell she wasn’t actually choosing right then and there, but was instead confirming a decision she had already made for herself.

      “I have poison,” she said.

      Reseng didn’t get it at first, and he repeated the words to himself: I. Have. Poison. So she’d already thought about suicide. And she’d chosen poison as her way out. He wasn’t surprised. Statistically, men usually chose guns or jumping to their deaths, whereas women preferred pills or hanging. Women tended to prefer a means of death that left their bodies undamaged. But, contrary to what they imagined, the kinds of poisons that were easy to purchase, like pesticides or hydrochloric acid, resulted in very long, very painful deaths, and had high rates of failure.

      “It’s the least you could do,” she said, her eyes pleading.

      Reseng avoided the woman’s gaze. Break her neck, stuff her in the bag, and get to Bear’s. That was his job. Plotters hated it when lowly assassins took it upon themselves to change the plot. It wasn’t about pride. The problem was that if the plot changed, then the people waiting at their various posts would need new cues, and everyone’s roles would get out of sync. If incriminating evidence got left behind or if things went sour, then someone else would have to die in order to cover it up. And sometimes that someone was you. Changing the assigned plot was not just a headache but a potential death sentence.

      Reseng looked at the woman. She was still gazing at him, pleading—not for her life, but for this one last thing. Could he grant it to her? Should he? Reseng furrowed his brow.

      If she took poison, it would remain in the ashes even after cremation. And if traces of her DNA were found in his car or on his clothes and poison was detected in a sample of her ashes, there would be compelling evidence of foul play. But that sort of thing happened only in the movies, and was rare in real life. Plotters weren’t perfectionists, they were just pricks. Poison, broken neck—it made no difference. The woman would be cremated either way, and her ashes would sink quietly to the bottom of a river.

      “What kind of poison?” Reseng asked.

      She took a packet from her purse. He held out his hand. She hesitated before giving it to him. He gave the cellophane packet a gentle shake and held it up to the light. There was a loose white powder inside.

      “Cyanide?”

      She nodded, her eyes never once leaving his.

      “How much do you know about cyanide?”

      She tipped her head to one side, as if she didn’t understand the question.

      “I know you die if you swallow it.” Her voice sounded half daring and half annoyed. “What else is there to know?”

      “Where’d you get it?”

      “I stole it from a friend of mine who was planning to kill herself.”

      Reseng