The Assassination of Colonel Hage-Ridarta is a contract killing arranged by James Mowry and carried out by Skriva and Gurd within hours of their accepting the assignment. The colonel’s death is reported as a shooting in his car, not a suspected suicide; the report both confirms the operation’s success and supplies the public signal on which Mowry has made payment depend.

Commission and Terms

Skriva asks James Mowry whom they are expected to attack and how they can be sure they will be paid. Mowry names Colonel Hage-Ridarta as the target, writes the colonel’s address on a piece of paper, and hands it to Skriva. The exchange makes the violence a specific, actionable job: a named victim and an address replace any general discussion of whom to strike.

Payment is still a point of contention after the target is set. Gurd presses Mowry over the money, noting that they do not yet have it. Mowry reassures him that payment will come, and promises more besides, but ties the promised money to a public milestone: the day the news of Hage-Ridarta’s death appears in the papers or on the radio. The arrangement makes publicity part of the transaction’s terms. The killers are not merely to complete the job; its success must become publicly legible before Mowry’s stated payment condition is met.

The Killing and Its Report

A small item on the back page of a newspaper supplies the confirmation. It reports that Colonel Hage-Ridarta, commanding officer of 77 Company S.M., was found dead in his car at midnight the previous night. He had been shot through the head, and a gun lay nearby. The report explicitly says that suicide is not suspected and that the police investigation is continuing.

The newspaper account does not describe the killing itself or identify its perpetrators. Its position as a brief back-page item contrasts with the importance the operation has to Mowry and the men he hired. The evidence of the murder reaches the reader through a public report, not through a witnessed attack; the details establish a shooting while leaving the investigation unresolved.

Consequences and Narrative Function

The timing links the commission to the death with striking speed. After reading the report, Mowry recognizes that the Gurd–Skriva combination has worked quickly: they completed the job within a few hours of taking it on. The passage thus confirms that the address and target Mowry supplied led to the colonel’s death, even though the newspaper itself does not connect the killing to them.

The report also brings the promised payment condition into view again. Mowry had made publication of the death the moment when payment would be due; the back-page item now provides precisely that public notice. The episode joins covert violence to ordinary news circulation: a contract arranged privately becomes a few lines in the paper, and those lines serve as both confirmation of the killing and the agreed signal for money. The police investigation is still in progress, but no further investigative outcome is given here.