Monsieur le Président

Man on a mission

"Go home Reinald." Proposed general Lucas to his hard working friend.
"Don't you owe this special evening for your loved one? Qu'on penses la madame de ton absence?"

But the answer he received echoed throughout the shrill streets of the Capital.
"I am married to France, Général. Mon coeur blessé appartient à la Ville lumière."
The walls have ears aux Champs-Élysées, and that remark would surely reach the snooping press, much to the chagrin of President Reinald's wife.

Both stings of the oldfangled clock in the presidential palace struck midnight, yet it had gone largely unnoticed by the young man of developed conscience occupying this stead. Bent dutifully upon his office desk in quiet solitude, he was scrutinizing the minute details of every draft of law proposed. His stainless steel watch, cold and precise, began to sink ever deeper towards his link cuff, its ticks filliping upon the strained nerves of the wrist that rose to hold its cause. The stacking seconds rendered heavy les doux paupières du Seigneur même, for no throbbing sense of guilt nor exalted purpose could help him overcome such unbearable exhaustion, the sandman from on high scattered his dream inducing dust, blinding the eyes to corruption while lulling to sleep an entire generation to dreams of grandeur past interrupted by bouts of the melancholic truth, the president was but recently elected to represent the newly awakening country, a beauty waking from a rest that resulted in a century of stagnation and that will require of him to work tirelessly for the next hundred years or so to stack the deck in his country's favor once again, or else they are at risk of ending up as the laughingstock of the modern world. Such is the reason for his perpetual fear of resting and insomniac tendencies.

Thus he had made urgent appeal for help from his trusted right hand to keep him focused, a clap to his front in order to hold himself in stellar working conditions so that he may concentrate on his rivalry against the machine of time that never stops. "The spirit truly is ready yet the flesh is weak."
He muttered the bible passage to himself as he laid his elbow on the oak surface to be his only soutient. His arm, a pillar holding his addle head from falling on the neatly stacked papers lest it cause an improper mess if he dozed. "I would destabilize the entire country, the republic would shatter if I close my eyes." Hethought. "But of what worth is my dedicated effort if there seems to be no will to enforce the much needed legislations?" He added, remembering the crass defiance of the interior minister when he demanded of him to detain the former financial advisors suspected of embezzlement and whom refused to attend the tribunal with the excuse that they were not summoned in a proper way.

"Such gross abuse of power, les gendarmes belittling the intelligence of the french people." he grunted with his powerful voice, pounding his fist as the strict hammer of justice upon the sturdy wood, his veins bulging until the tuxedo shirt's semi spread collar tightened around his neck, the peak lapels expanding to encompass his exhaling chest. His serious face turned into a crimson form of madness, in part caused by the vulgarity of their responses, in other due to the fact that he expects obedience from his subordinates.
"And obedience I shall get." The man answered to himself as he lit up his bulky cuban cigar." To hell with the constitution, 'Tis but papercuts on the sly fingers of the corrupt! That's what it is!"

I am not your mailman, the minister of interior answered him when he made the request of the arrests." He would be lucky if he finds himself a decent job at the post office after I am done with him."

When he's had enough of the bitter taste of wrapped nicotine that fueled these indignant memories, he extinguished his cuban upon the orderly heap of papers, causing a hole of dark residue with burning extremities in the thick stack, the flaking pieces resurgecing an enmity in his dark eyes. That is, until he saw an intense, concentrated light penetrate his window's blinds, and he has stood with an inquisitive mind as to examine the source of this perennial, nightly occuring beam.

"I have been watched for some time now." observed the collected man looking through the window slits in search for a figure.
"Perhaps it is a perched sniper, I wonder what sort of man he's able to observe through his veracious scope." A disquieting thought to most, yet it brought a strange relief to the disgruntled official, his hands behind his back as if he was about to be executed by a firing squad. "There can be no functional repose as long as the heart keeps pounding and the mind is preoccupied with the elaborate sequences of breathing, It is the only through a noble death that a man is able to get a good night's rest." He affirmed as he stared to his Aubercy shoes. "Unfortunately for my enemies, I am not a man whose life can be taken away so easily." He added as he lifted up his gaze assuredly, his heart of steel unfazed by the secret attention of those covetous for power. Indeed, he was predicting their every move, his security brigades positioned in every accessible location, even present undercover in bars, where partisan men, flushed with the ecstasy of wine and the warm company des plus belles femmes, get too comfortable with discussing treacherous thoughts. That is how he was able to curb their devious ambitions and engineer the fall of those that plotted his demise.

But if the rod emitted is not the work of the red menace, whose eyes can they be?
It looked less like the light at the end of a tunnel and more as the burning glow at the tip of a cigarette, hinting about the presence of a stranger in the dark whose intentions are questionable. The only way to assuage his curious mind is to head there and make it a meeting of three. Himself, the stranger and a loaded gun.