Resistance is futile

“Walk, keep walking, don’t look back.” I kept repeating that sentence to myself as I made my way down rue Franklin, headed for the Schuman metro station where I was sure I could loose them in the crowd.

There, right in front of me, disguised as a STIB controller was one of them. I wouldn't fall for that old trick; I about to show him that I hadn't wasted my time playing Rugby when I was younger. Fast walking, no, running toward him, ready for battle, I allowed myself to see how it all had started.

Little bastards, thinking they were smarter than me, thinking I wouldn’t notice the signs. Everything began when I came home, right after I had taken it. I knew it was a huge risk to take, so I was very cautious, I looked in the rear view mirror every now and then, checking if the cars behind were behaving the way cars ought to do. I even burned two or three traffic lights, James Bond style.

I was beginning to doubt my sanity when I got home, but there it was, the first signs that they were onto me. The parking spot right in front of my apartment was free. Ha! Ha! That parking spot’s never free. So, I did what any sane person would do and went to park three blocks away and came back on foot, taking big detours. They probably thought I would park there like an unsuspecting idiot so they could plant a bomb under the car and as soon as I started the engine in the morning: BOUM!

Anyways, it’s when I got home that I realised that those after me were no amateurs. Nothing and I mean absolutely nothing was out of place. Everything was where I had left it.

“Oh”, I thought to myself, “they’re good!” Incredible, it was simply amazing how meticulous they had been. Everything they had moved while searching, they had put it exactly as it was, even the frame holding Uncle Nick’s picture, which I had tilted on purpose was still at an angle.

I rushed to the sleeping room without turning any lights on, because A, they probably were bobby trapped and B, even if they weren’t, I was certain that there was a vehicle opposite the street, probably a van full of men armed to the teeth waiting for a sign of my presence to “take care of me”, if you catch my drift.

Ho! Ho, they really had sent the elite after me. The bed was as well made as in the morning when I had left. Well, that is if you omit the C4 under the bed and the motion detectors to trigger it as soon as I sat a foot in the room.

Well, I was about to prove to them that I was no amateur myself. I slept in on the hard bathroom floor that night.

Uncomfortable? Yes! But I woke up alive.