...telephone.

Nick Kismet gazed in faint surprise at the white plastic receiver on his desktop, as if the mere fact of its presence might explain this unexpected interruption.  The phone trilled again insistently, but offered no further enlightenment.

He did not get many telephone calls on the office line.  Almost everyone who might possibly want to contact him knew his cellular number; in fact, the office number didn’t even appear on his business card.

Business card.  Who would have believed that?  The thought brought a rare smile to his lips, cracking a normally intense, almost brooding expression.  A tall man, nearly two meters, with broad shoulders and an athletic build, Kismet’s few acquaintances knew him to be reserved almost to the point of isolationism. His dark hair was clipped short, as it had been more than a decade before when he had begun serving as an ROTC cadet; while his military career had stalled and ultimately transformed into something far more personal, his sense of discipline had never been fully retired.

As the phone commenced another cycle of electronic chirps, he relented and lifted the handset to his ear.  “Global Heritage Commission, Nick Kismet speaking.”

“Did you get my message?”  The voice was feminine, faintly muffled as if the speaker was attempting to disguise her identity by wrapping a handkerchief around the mouthpiece.

“What mess–“ He broke off when the irritating notes of the dial tone began screaming into his ear.  When he spoke again, it was solely for his own consideration.  “Well, that was useful.”

He almost put the matter out of his mind.  It was late, already six in the evening, and while he never really kept any sort of traditional schedule, there was certainly no reason for him to be in his office in the lowest level of the American Museum of Natural History at this hour.  Whoever had made the mysterious call had been lucky to actually reach him; by all rights he should have been en route to his Brooklyn Heights brownstone residence, if not absent from the United States altogether on some far-flung assignment.  That the caller hadn’t seen fit to actually say anything relevant was barely a cause for concern.  Probably a wrong number.

He logged off his computer and rose to his feet, intent on leaving behind the cryptic communique, along with all other matters relating to his position as American liaison to the Global Heritage Commission of the United Nations Education, Science, and Cultural Organization (GHC/UNESCO.)  But as he reached for the door handle, his gaze fixed on an object protruding from his threshold.  With a perturbed frown, he knelt to pick it up.

It was a glossy tri-fold pamphlet of the kind often found in hotel lobbies touting various tourist destinations; the cover bore the unmistakable outline of the tallest building in New York City.  He drew back his hand to toss it away.

What message?

For a moment he did not move; only stared at the paper in his hand, replaying the abrupt monologue of the female caller.  At length, he unfolded the tract and was not at all surprised to find written on the shiny paper, in what looked like red grease pencil, a series of numbers: “8:00.”

“Eight o’clock at the Empire State Building,” he murmured, shaking his head.  “You’ll have to do better than that.”

He then folded back the remaining leaf to expose yet more writing – letters this time – and as the single word written there penetrated his conscious mind, Kismet would have sworn his heart skipped a beat.

Prometheus!

It took every ounce of self control he could muster for Kismet to refrain from urging the taxi driver to go faster.  There was no particular need to rush; he would be arriving at his destination well ahead of the deadline, but he could barely contain his eagerness.

At some level, he regarded the assignation with suspicion.  In more than a decade of searching he had not heard so much as a whisper about the mysterious secret society named for the Titan of Greek mythology.  His only knowledge of that group – if indeed it was an organized body – stemmed from a violent encounter with an assassin who had spared his life after massacring an entire family.  Yet it was neither that horrific incident, nor the unexpected stay of execution that had made the search for the Prometheus group his purpose in life, but rather the strange parting message of the killer:

Kismet, if I killed you, your mother would have my head.

A foundling, Kismet had no idea who his mother was, nor any clue concerning her involvement with the murderers of Prometheus.

He gazed at the pamphlet again, examining the scrawled letters in the glow of passing street lamps.  Further experimentation, in tandem with his knowledge of the gender of his mysterious contact, had led to the conclusion that the ‘ink’ was actually a bright crimson shade of lipstick.  This revelation did not however relieve him of his anxiety regarding the approaching meeting.  There was still every reason to believe that he was walking into a trap.

His singular experience with Prometheus had been deadly, and there was no way of knowing if the moratorium on his own death sentence had expired.  He had always been circumspect in his search and to the best of his knowledge only a handful of people living, most of them members of the US military, sworn to secrecy, knew of the incident and Kismet’s interest in the secret society.  Of course, that didn’t include the members of Prometheus itself, and therein lay the reason for Kismet’s apprehension.  Then again, if they wanted him dead, they could have accomplished that goal at any time, and without heralding their intentions.

He gave the cab driver a twenty dollar bill and hastened toward the Thirty-fourth street entrance.  As he passed into the lobby however, he slowed, studying the faces of its occupants for some sign of recognition.  Most were tourists; adventurous young couples making a nighttime sojourn to one of the city’s most famous landmarks.  No one offered more than a cursory glance.  He kept walking.  Although the message had not indicated a specific place within the massive edifice for the rendezvous, Kismet felt an inexorable pull in defiance of gravity.

As he stepped from the high-speed express elevator, surrounded by people who were quite obviously visitors to the Big Apple rather than residents, it occurred to him that he had never before made this vertical journey.  In the descending twilight, the skyline of New York City, as seen from the windswept, open air observatory on the eighty-sixth floor of the Empire State Building, was an awe inspiring sight.  Despite the urgency of his purpose, Kismet flowed with the human current toward the iron bars that lined the edge of the observation deck and let his eyes rove over the cityscape.  Only then did he turn away to see if anyone in the crowd found him more interesting than the view.

Two men immediately caught his attention.  They were not standing together but curiously enough seemed to have the same tailor.  Both were burly, looking like nightclub bouncers in sport coats, and conspicuous in their choice of semi-formal attire in such a casual environment.  Kismet self-consciously realized that he too looked rather out of place in his charcoal gray two-piece suit.  But despite their incongruous appearance, neither of the men was doing anything particularly suspicious.  Their eyes periodically wandered from the skyline to glance at the crowd, but their curious appraisal fell short of scrutiny.

After a few minutes the tide of spectators began to ebb and most of the tourists lined up to catch the next elevator down.  When Kismet looked again, he found that the two men had moved, changed position, but were still there, still making unobtrusive surveys of the group.

They’re not interested in me.  Who are they watching?

He looked more closely, following their line of sight to determine what the men were really doing. When he finally spied her, Kismet wondered why he hadn’t noticed the woman before; like the two men, her choice of attire was at odds with the standard uniform of most visitors to the landmark edifice, but that was by no means her most noteworthy attribute.  A shapely form in a maroon Armani suit, with glistening black ringlets that would have stretched  down to the middle of her back if not for the constant winds that buffeted the eighty-sixth floor, stood peering through one of the coin-operated stationary binoculars positioned at intervals along the edge of the observation area.  Below the hem of her dark, mid-thigh length skirt, her sculpted legs were clad in matching fishnet stockings which eventually disappeared into pumps with impossibly thin leather bands and three-inch stiletto heels.  Yet it wasn’t until she straightened, then turned to look in his direction, that Kismet knew he was looking at the author of the anonymous invitation.

With a wry smile he walked toward her.  “I hope you won’t think this too forward, miss, but that’s an extraordinary shade of lipstick you’re wearing.”