A Conversation with Mr. Smith

by RGoodfellow64

.

.

Disclaimer: All characters belong to ABC and Andrew Marlow. This is just another interpretation.

.

.

.

As he walked into his office Smith was startled by someone standing by his desk. "Who are you?" he asked.

"You've been a very hard man to find," Maddox replied.

"What do you want?"

"You have some sensitive information about my employer. Information you've been using to protect Detective Beckett."

"Are you forgetting? We have a deal!" Smith said indignantly.

"No. What you had was blackmail. Now, you're going to tell me where all that information is. And after you do, I'm going to put Kate Beckett in the ground once and for all."

"And the price for her life is keeping mine?" Smith asked.

Maddox smiled, a smile that didn't reach his eyes and said, "No. Your life is already forfeit. Blackmail isn't something that can be simply forgiven."

Smith thinly smiled back and said, "Ahh, easy or hard, then?"

Maddox nodded his head and said, "It all depends on how quickly you give me what you have."

Not having moved from the doorway, Smith asked, "Will you let me to go my desk or do you want me to just tell you where to look?"

Maddox's eyes were cold as he said, "I've already gone through your desk," then pointed to a metal box on the side of the table. "Is it all in there?"

"Hardly. But the key is under the left side of the blotter, easy to find just by feel."

Smith watched as Maddox placed his left hand on the blotter, found the key and opened the box. All the time his eyes never left Smith's, until he looked into the box briefly and pulled out a plain white envelope. "What's this?"

Smith actually smiled and said, "That's the information for your…" he paused and asked, "Do you call him a client or are you simply an employee?"

Maddox shook his head and said again, "What's this?"

Smith's grin looked almost feral as he said, "That is all the information that is in this house. It's all that your…client…needs to know that he's through the minute you kill me."

For the first time there a brief flash of emotion across Maddox's face, it was confusion. Seeing that brief look, Smith continued, "When it comes down to it you're a business man. Freelance of course, but still this is your work, your profession, and you get paid for doing your job, am I correct?"

Maddox didn't say a word, just stared at Smith, as a snake would look at a mouse. Deadly intent masked by cold indifference.

Smith nodded to the envelope in Maddox's hand and said, "After I received the information and called your client, I made arrangements. After all, everyone who has had anything to do with him, either opposing or working with him, have been killed…everyone."

He paused a moment and stared at Maddox before saying, "I wouldn't make any long term investments with your money if I were you," he gave a thin smile and added, "Knowing your client, he already has your assassin ready to go."

Maddox stood there staring at Smith, his face like a stone. Briefly Smith was startled to find a line from the poem 'Ozymandias' coming to mind as he stared back at him. Finally Maddox spoke, his voice cold, "Where is the rest of it?"

Now Smith actually smiled, a wide smile, a dangerous smile. "I made seventeen copies of everything. Each copy was sent to a law firm somewhere in the country with instructions to send them to the proper authorities and news outlets if something happens to me."

"If you simply disappear no one will know what happened."

Smith shook his head and said, "I know your client. I was aware that any deal he made he would break. There are people out there who are potentially far more powerful than your client is, and they will be more than happy to take him down. Of course you and I won't be around to see it though…"

Maddox stood looking at Smith and finally looked back at the envelope in his hand. As he was thinking Smith said, "Take that to him. Let him read it and know where we stand. I'm not going anywhere. You found me, you know who I am and I'm too old to live on the run."

He nodded to the envelope again and said, "Let him know where we all stand. Unless he wants to commit professional and political suicide, he will let the status quo be."

Maddox stared at the envelope in his hand then looked up at Smith. Without a word, he silently moved back and away, blending into the darkness of the room and then he was gone.

Smith stood still for another minute, before he slowly walked back to his desk and sat down. He looked at the empty metal box and slowly closed the lid, placing it back in the bottom drawer of his desk.

He'd lied to Maddox. He never made seventeen copies. He made only one. If anything happened to him that single copy would go to the one person Smith knew would move heaven and earth to destroy the dragon.

He stretched out his arm to pick up the phone and make a call but then pulled it back. 'No', he thought, 'Let him have one more night of peace before all hell breaks loose'.

.

.

.

AUTHORS NOTE: One of my favorite poems is 'Ozymandias' by Percy Shelley. I will let you decide what line Mr. Smith recalled.

Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1817

I met a traveller from an antique land,

Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert…Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.