Not necessarily good questions, either. My instincts are buzzing at eleven on a scale of one-to-ten that something feels…offabout this assignment.
Turns out Budapest was the perfect choice. My target is supposed to be meeting some group in Gyor to deliver arms to them. That’s only a couple of hours from here by car.
Even better, it’s barely an hour from my safehouse outside of Bratislava.
Except…
My target is a former agent who “retired” years ago and ended up going into business for himself. He was smart enough to never do anything to put him at odds with our employer, so he was left alone.
Suddenly, he’s on the radar again, for something that appears to be completely unlike his former M.O.
What feels off, to me, is it looks like the group he’s dealing with has been set up, as well. Another agent is supposed to eliminate them with extreme prejudice because of imminent plans the group has near completion. I distinctly remember some chatter through back channels a few months ago, warnings about it being a coordinated op from our end, and to stay clear of it, because they wanted to try to attract a couple of extremists who’d been laying low too well for them to ferret them out.
But…
Yes, I’ve been part of plenty of targeted ops before. Even ran some of them.
This feels…different. More like entrapment than a legitimate honeypot. The subject I’m after is Edward James Fowler, former Army, brought over to intelligence after he was shot up in Afghanistan. No family, and he was a foster system kid who went in after high school.
I could request his entire jacket, beyond what they’ve sent me, and study it in detail, but I don’t want to do that yet. It might trigger red flags if this is a set-up, and they might pull me from the assignment. If I’m not supposed to know the other half of this equation is a hinky set-up, too, that might go badly for me.
I didn’t survive this long doing what I’m doing by being stupid.
Of course, it could be exactly what it looks like on its surface, trying to take out two sets of baddies for the price of one op.
If that’s the case, why isn’t it being coordinated between the agents handling the splinter group and me?
Once I’ve finished reading, I shower, brush my teeth, and climb into bed. It’s not very likely I’ll have a restful night, but it’ll be my last chance to get some decent sleep before the completion of this operation.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not cavalier about taking lives, even if it sounds like I am. I’m not a sociopath who enjoys murdering people for fun.
What I am is very pragmatic. I have a job to do, and it’s for the greater good. If me killing some shitbag who’s planning to car-bomb a holiday outdoor market full of civvies saves a few hundred lives, I’m happy to do that with a clear conscience. Saves everyone the cost of a trial and years in prison upkeep, too. Not to mention, it makes it impossible for said shitbag to be used as leverage in a prisoner-exchange deal at some future date, or made into a martyr if he decides to go on a bullshit hunger strike for attention and then becomes the darling of neolib bleeding hearts via social media.
Or, worse, he somehow escapes and goes on to do more heinous deeds while becoming a twisted folk hero in the process.
A clean, quiet “disappearance” is far tidier and preferable to any of those options.
And I use that example simply because it’s one of many that have crossed my path over the years. I’ve liquidated terrorists, assassins, and nuclear scientists working for hostile nations. I’ve taken out adult children of despots who were already eagerly following in their parents’ footsteps. I’ve helped instigate coups to topple dictators, and I’ve poisoned a private jet pilot spiriting a group of rich pedophiles to a private island in the South Pacific for a child sex party.
Along with many other things I’ve done.
I’ve never directly killed young children, though. That is a line I will not cross, even when I’ve had to bend my way around orders in the past. Sure, a few innocents have ended up as collateral damage over the years, and I always regret it when that can’t be avoided.
Except what I do is for the greater good, and all that.
Mostly. Some of it is a morally grey area, and it’s one of the facets of my career that I’ve come to accept.
What also strikes me is that this will likely be my last active assignment. At fifty-seven, I am no longer viable in what is admittedly a younger man’s game. I don’t want to go out like Bruce Willis and his gang inRED, with agents young enough to be my grandkids trying to eliminate me.
I suppose it’s exactly that fictional movie scenario playing in my mind right now.
Whythisjob?
Whynow?
Whyme?
They could send any twenty-something kid in there to follow Fowler and put a bullet in the back of his head when he’s not looking. They could leave some poison on his doorknob to frame the Russians for his death, although that might draw more attention to the case than people above my pay grade are comfortable risking.
