text: Who is this man? You are asking yourself. What did he do? You wonder to yourself. This man has a name but for now he will just be referred to as Man. Well it all started about a month ago in Istanbul. I had been tracking the man for some time. He is a character of habits. Drank an espresso every morning from the corner cafe. Walked to his office down the road. Fed the pigeons during lunch. Day after day the man practiced his most zen routine. Disciplined I thought he was. Then the man suddenly disappeared. No espresso. No walk. No pigeons. Not a soul in Istanbul noticed. I was confused. I had been watching the man for weeks. Closely watching. How did he get away? Where did he go? I mean what the hell. I am the best there is. I found Madoff. I found the affluenza kid. Hell I even found Frank Morris (I mean he was just floating there but I found him). Did he get picked up by a spice trader? Ate a bad kabob? I mean the fuck Man. Days I sat and went through my notes. Scrubbed through my security tapings. Played back all of the audio recordings. This man was expectably dull. Nothing. Just him drinking is fucking espressos. He whistled a lot. I mean I found Bison Dele for Christ sake. I started to think. More than usual. What details did I miss? Also, why in the hell did this job fall to me? I mean I found Natalie Hollaway. For the fourth day in a row I scrubbed through all my tape and audio recordings. There has to be something. Espresso after espresso I drank. The rewind and fast forward were grounded down to nubs. WHERE THE FUCK IS HE? I was at the end of my ropes so I finally reached out the local contact. Fucking embarrassing. Laughed at me the entire damn time. Self-righteous saffron smelling dickless prick. I mean I found Phillip Taylor Kramer, that’s legend shit. The local contact was no help. I finally decided to walk a day in this man’s shoes. I bought an espresso at the corner cafe. Walked to his dumb ass office. Fed those rough ass looking, good feather wana be pigeons. I give up. I don’t know anymore. WHERE. THE. FUCK. ARE. YOU. Then I saw it... It had been staring at the entire time. A blind spot in my monitoring. A side entrance to the train station. I ran in. “SHOW ME THE FUCKING TAPES NOW YOU ASSHOLE!” I screamed at poor Ibo who worked the security desk. AND THERE HE WAS. This profoundly boring, neutral, dull, dim, witless, five dollar ass man had hopped onto a train to Glasgow. to be continued... British Airways non-stop to Glasgow. Now since we have some time on our hands, let me explain to you who this man is. I don’t know. I really don’t. It was a simple surveillance gig, thought it be over in like a week tops. BUT NOPE it went ooon. Much longer than these tend to go. Whatever, not complaining, I got to live in Istanbul all expenses paid for a month. Sweet gig for the most part. What I knew then which I still know now is who hired me. Mr. Howard. Now Mr. Howard is an interesting man. Interesting in the sense that you never meet the same Mr. Howard twice. What I mean by that is Mr. Howard is literally a stranger always. I don’t know if he uses androids or is a shapeshifter but every time he is different. We all rotate the jobs from MH. This one was on my rotation. MH says gather some intel, you gather some intel. Easy and pays well. Usually the jobs involve some criminal activity, some bad behavior, really just getting some dirt; but this one was nothing. MH doesn’t mess around with nothing. I figured there had to be something to him. So I flew into Istanbul, set up shop. Got a couple cameras with long range lenses, patched into the local security camera feed, and got the bugs placed. Easy. I had a week of prep before I started which basically meant early days. I would walk down to the bakery and buy this amazing olive bread loaf in the morning and hit up nearest sojox shop for lunch. Fucking great. Then it started. Day 1 easy. Day 2 easy. Day 3 easy. Day 8 ***yawn***. Day 12 Please do something. Day 22 change the fucking channel already; Jesus it’s been the same American infomercial dubbed in Turkish for four hours. No one should be setting and forgetting meat! Day 27 ah fuck where’d he go... Now the other issue we need to discuss is why he would go to Glasgow of all places. Nothing from the description of the job or the description of the mild mannered man would lead you to suspect Glasgow as an option. Sure run off to Budapest, Paris, St. Petersburg, but Glasgow? Weather forecast is rain and wind for the forcible future. Combine that with men in kilts and golf balls being lobbed through the air at all times and you got yourself a bad day. Let’s go back to MH. When he first approached the home office to set up his overall deal he specified that each job was part of a much larger job. Every piece must go right for the whole to work. Fuck up one part and you fuck up the entire contract. That was two years ago. Must be a really grand plan. Hopefully the man going to Glasgow is part of the plan.