The capture of the lieutenant had been easier than he expected. The man was in the full flush of love, bearing flowers for his mistress.
What a disappointment.
He had expected a struggle at least. Something to test his new-found skills, but it was not to be.
He put them both together in the box. Deschamps would wake up soon and discover the inert body of his mistress lying next to him. She wasn’t dead, of course. Only injected with a neurotoxin to give the appearance of death. Something he had picked up from the Japanese when he had gone there for the surgery to his face.
The surgeon had spent a long time explaining the dangers of the extract from the liver of the fugu fish.
A small vial could kill sixty people, while a fraction of that could give one person the appearance of death.
That would be the first pleasure he would enjoy today. The look on Deschamps’s face as his mistress began to stir and come back life.
Priceless.
And afterwards, there would be a second.
A choice. He was preparing the choice Deschamps would face. He liked to give them a choice, it was only fair. After all, didn’t we make choices every day of our lives?
Choices to be good or evil.
To love or hate.
To help or hinder.
To kill or save.
The choices of life. And of death.
Deschamps had made a choice two years ago. A choice that had led to the death of a family, killed in the collapse of a new building he had approved for habitation. The developer had paid him well for his signature.
Deschamps would have to make another choice later today. But whatever choice he made, he would die.
That’s the problem with choices; sometimes they both ended up in the same place, whichever way one chose.