Facade
(Musical Accompaniment: Not That Sort of Bank, Henry Jackman)
Reed Congress Hall, District 12, Chicago Syndicate, Combined Syndicates of North America, 2012-08-29.
Isaac Balowski stepped down from the podium in the Presidium of the Supreme Syndicate Congress having closed the session for the day. The 75th year of the Combined Syndicates was soon to be celebrated, with the preparations for the Red November celebration well underway. As Commissioner for Nationalities he’d had to present the report on the Mexican Situation and the reaction of the Nationalities Commission. The Nacionale Liberacion movement had taken the Chiapas foothills and had declared a free Mexico that was ‘inextricably bound’ in conflict with the CSNA. He left the cloistered chamber and fished in his pocket for the battered cardboard box of ‘Great North’, retrieved a single tube of tobacco and lit up as he took a pull on the cigarette he wasn’t legally allowed to smoke in a government building. The Chairman of the Supreme Syndicate Congress, Noam Chomsky was due to close the session the next day but as Balowski felt the fumes of Great North burning his throat he wondered how long the nation had. He stepped into his office and walked over to the desk, checked his files and then sat in the plush leather chair. Several phones sat on his desk, the clear plastic covers on the dial-rings having aged badly and gone faintly yellow. He glared at them for a moment and then turned and stood, stepping over to the floor-length window that looked out over Chicago. The Congress Hall was a modern building that overshadowed even the greatest sky-scrapers, by edict but beyond the high walls of District 12, the city fomented whilst he smoked and navel-gazed. It all, he reflected had gone wrong since Vonnegut had died, back in 2007.
Vonnegut was one of the last of the Great War politicians and the Chomsky reforms were in Balowski’s opinion, seeding dissent and allowing counter-revolutionaries to appear despite the best efforts of the Syndicalist way of life to provide for the people of America. Balowski had himself served in the Great War, one of the divisions that were pulled back after the Germans broke through the French lines on the Ardennes. Vonnegut’s division was one which was in the screening position and the remainder of it saw the inside of the German Prisoner of War camps for the best part of a decade. Balowski hadn’t known Vonnegut before the war, but he was part of the committee involved with the repatriation of P.O.W’s under Chairman Foster, had met the man and helped him through the chaotic period surrounding the rise of Martin Luther King on the coat-tails of Bayard Rustin.
Chomsky on the other hand, hadn’t served at the Front, some weak-heart nonsense that kept him from active service. He hadn’t seen the Fall of France, or his best friends being burnt to death by German incendiaries. He didn’t, to Balowski’s mind, understand the price paid to ensure that he could spend the war years becoming a teacher and then a politician, and now he was selling the Syndicates to the enemy. His fingers twitched and then Balowski dropped the cigarette onto the carpet. He’d been so deep in thought it had burnt down to the filter which now smouldered on the floor. Balowski swore softly and got to his feet before hearing something and pausing. He turned to look at the door. A striking man in the outfit of a Syndicates Intelligence Network officer, who looked to be about forty five, was standing there. Balowski got to his feet.
“Generally, you’re expected to knock.”
The man smiled, reached into his pocket and pulled out a silenced handgun.
“Assassins tend not to.”
Two shots fired and then a third through the skull as well. Balowski had been thrown back into his chair after the first and blood sprayed over the window at the third shot. The officer checked his watch. 10:32 PM. Balowski usually didn’t leave his office until after midnight. He paused and collected the casings that the pistol had ejected from the carpet with gloved fingertips before slipping them into his jacket pocket.
“Mr. Thompson sends his regards...”
The officer spoke softly to the stunned looking corpse, and then walked back over to the doorway, collected the briefcase and opened it so that the clear stinking liquid within poured out and soaked the desk and carpet surrounding Balowski. A match was struck and tossed from a safe difference and as the petrol caught alight the glow cast a shadow over the officer’s face. He stepped to the door and discretely shut it behind him.
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