Mystery of the Jebusite Tattoo

It was two am. The man pressed his whole weight against the wall, looking sideways he understood the inevitable. His contact dead. What went wrong?

The desperate figure tore at his shirt, and reached inside under his right arm but his holster was empty. The man darted forward and plunged into sheets of blackness to escape. His vision was clouded by the mist and he couldn’t see. Where was he? His mental guard weakened from the hysteria of encounter. The error, he crossed over. He could not escape the predator that waited patiently, and silently to inject its poison into the lesions of the open cracks. There was no antidote to the corrosive force of greed. Now it cornered him ready to deliver the final crushing blow. Leave me alone! Give me peace! The man screamed in the silence of his mind. Everywhere there was danger, of capture, of eventual death. Pigalle, the red door, he had to make it to the red door!

The man made it into a wide avenue. Panting furiously, he lunged into the nearest recess curling up into a foetal position in the shadows, accepting the fact that it might well be his last moment of life. In a burst of courage the man sprung upwards and turned to face the wash of headlights coming towards him. He held up his arms, pleading for assistance. The cars accelerated, and passed him by. The man kept running in the middle of the wide deserted avenue. He turned a corner, desperate to find the signal, a flickering lantern above the red door. He had to find the woman, the beautiful woman with the emerald eyes.

The man dodged between the houses as sweat blinded his vision. Then he saw it. The Rue Jean Baptise, the edge of Pigalle, indistinguishable from the moon’s shifting light. He took a breath and pressed himself against a filthy brick wall in the darkness. He wiped the trickling blood from his eyes, as he did he observed a row of neat three storey apartments, roofs and window frames leading up to recessed doorways. At the end of the trio of apartments he saw it, a short flight of stairs to his right. At the top of the stairs was a flickering light illuminating the hue of red. The man ascended the stone steps and peered back once over his shoulder. He reached the tiny, narrow landing. Breathless, he leaned his whole weight against the red door. The man looked down from the top of the stairs. The silhouetted outline of assassins were still moving swiftly across each building. It was only seconds before they reached him. Moments later he heard garbled voices from behind the red door. Three muted cracks splintered the arch above his head. The door swung open. The man fell backwards. The USB memory stick fell from his hand