ASSASSINS

A milkman strikes...!
(Although it IS only in a James Bond film...)

So anyway, there I was, heading off for what we euphemistically call a “comfort break” but what was basically a brief excursion to remove some of the vast amount of coffee from my system in order to make room for some more, when a situation arose which might seem familiar to you, or might just be the ravings of someone who really does worry far too much about far too much…

I ought to explain, because here I find myself, starting a story right in the middle again and finding that I’m probably not making any more sense than I usually do, which is, of course, none.

Our offices are in a communal building, and there are businesses upstairs and downstairs who share a common lobby area, off which are also the “facilities” which I was so eager to make use of.

As you enter the lobby from the corridor that our office opens off from, there is a glass wall ahead of you which keeps out the outside world, and also keeps the window cleaners fairly busy for a couple of days each month, a regular visitation which exposes us to their cheery old-fashioned mildly sexist and racist banter (all about which I will tell you another time, I’m sure) every so often when they pop indoors to deal with the interiors.

In that glass wall is the main door to the building which, since the coming of our “night visitors” earlier in the year has had a daytime locking mechanism added so that genuine visitors have to buzz the entry-phone in order to be let in. This is the preferred option rather than allowing for the possibility of villains to sneak into a hidey-hole and wait for everyone to leave the building so that they can then break out and have away on their toes with our precious things…

Anyway, standing beyond the glass and all forlornly in the rain, as I dashed speedily through the lobby on my vital personal mission, there was a delivery man feverishly pushing the various door buzzer buttons whilst standing in the rain, and, it seemed, getting little joy from the various offices which he was trying to draw attention to himself in.

And so, because I am, in fact, occasionally actually capable of being a “nice man”, I stopped for a moment to punch the big green “open door” button which we have on “our” side, and let the delivery man in.

He was carrying a large box and asked where a particular company’s office was, and, after a few moments of “cheery” banter, off he went up the stairs, presumably never to be seen again, and I gratefully went to do whatever it was I needed to, the details of which I’m sure you’re very grateful to discover, we need not go into here.

It was only a few seconds later, as I stood contemplating to myself in that way that we do, that I thought the dark thought…

“Could he be an assassin…?”

Okay, so I’ll grant you it wasn’t the least paranoid thought that I’ve ever had, but it did strike me that in an awful lot of those spy thrillers I’ve watched down the years, the evil assassin dresses up as a delivery person and it is some gullible hapless innocent like me who always lets them into the building, and furthermore, it is almost exactly the perfect “cover” because you are kind of just “invisible” to most office staff when you are making a delivery to a building.

Not only that, but few people are going to question the great big box you are carrying which might just contain your pistol, a bomb or a cluster of grenades for the wicked purpose of wiping out everyone in the office supplies company upstairs which is obviously the cover organisation for some diabolical plot.

My paranoia isn’t completely unreasonable. I had recently seen a documentary about whether people are naturally good or evil, and one of the scenarios the psychologists had tried out involved a lift that “you” had remote control over, into which  “you” allowed someone to enter who then, unexpectedly turned out to be an assassin. The dilemma was whether you would choose to save the crowd on the upper floor over the individual on the lower floor, and the choice as to who “lived” or “died” was “yours” to make.

Anyway, I emerged from the amenities and all hell had not broken loose and there had not been any loud bangs or flashes emanating from upstairs and, because I did hear the door go whilst I was going about my business, I expect that the “delivery man” had also gone on his way to continue with his.

I then returned to our office, safe and secure in the knowledge that I hadn’t in fact inadvertently allowed some carnage to ensue, which came as something of a relief, but then I remembered that there are places in the world we live in where nobody can be quite so sure about that, and where the most innocent of acts are leading to acts of horror the likes of which I find hard to imagine, on an almost daily basis, and that I’m very, very lucky not to have to deal with in my little world.

Keep safe, people, remain cautious, and beware the assassins…!