A telegram with coordinates and a pass code alerted the recipient this mission demanded a very specific skill set.
Upon arrival at the abandoned warehouse street clothes were discarded and destroyed, replaced with a rather nondescript military uniform that could pass for nearly any nationality in a pinch. Mobile phone had been "forgotten" at home, and a disposable one provided. A tidy stack of altered travel documents, cash, and the heavily redacted file of the individual to be targeted were carefully zipped into a backpack. No weapon was provided, that could be acquired along the way. The plane ticket was one way. The possibility of return from one of these excursions was always improbable, and even upon survival, exiting the same way one arrived was never an option.
The fatigue clad figure lay motionless on the roof of the now abandoned house. A single bead of sweat rolled from the blonde hairline, along the unflinching cheek, only to slip lazily off the stone still chin. Sharp eyes the color of steel scanned the arid horizon. A dust storm just visible in the periphery threatened to disrupt the completion of the mission. Though, if the next move was timed properly, a dust storm could be the perfect escape cover.
Thankful for the tripod the Afghan rebel sniper, who had proven to be entirely too easy to subdue, had propped the M16 on; the mysterious interloper adjusted the rifle's sight in order to locate the intended target. Just along a dilapidated wall, a team of harried British army medics and nurses were administering aide. A backlog of wounded were waiting to be triaged as it appeared one individual was the recipient of an inordinate amount of attention.
General Morstan.
The British General and his team of intelligence scouts had been responsible for obtaining more intel than any other unit, cyber or otherwise, in recent memory. His tactics were questionable, but the results were effective. Despite his success rate, it had also come to the attention of the American CIA that the General was involved in the highly lucrative act of trading and selling said classified information to the highest bidder. Friend or foe mattered little, as long as the amount had enough commas and zeroes.
In exasperation, the rooftop assassin adjusted the rifle's sight once again and curled a well-manicured finger around the trigger. A glance in the direction of the impending dust storm revealed she had mere minutes left to act. The fire fight between rooftop insurgents and military on the ground raged on. She had failed once to terminate the target, she couldn't miss again.
And yet she was overcome by a fleeting moment of sentimentality. She supposed that was only normal when her intended mark had, for all intents and purposes, been the only father she had ever known.
Her birth mother had died in childbirth, and her biological father had been a career military man. He left her in the care of nannies and neighbors, as there was no other family to care for the child. He had been fatally wounded on a peace keeping mission during an uprising in South Africa in the 80's. His best friend, another career man, Morstan, had promised to look after the child.
No. Nothing about this mission was normal.
A series of questionable choices, and even more questionable opportunities, set the General and his adopted daughter on two very different paths. His many indiscretions had placed him in the cross hairs of several intelligence agencies the world over. Her particular skill set designated her as the most sought after and qualified individual to ensure he never traded another secret.
She hadn't intended to miss her first shot.
It should have been quick, and painless, as far as the General would have been concerned. A single shot between the eyes. But she had hesitated when the memory of a particularly lovely Christmas morning intruded upon her mind, breaking her focus. By the time she fired the shot, the General had leaned down to light a cigarette. The bullet still struck his head, but the wound had not been instantly fatal.
Fatal was the mission.
Steeling her nerves, she realigned her focus. She had sight of General Morstan's neck. The bullet would tear through both the carotid arteries and trachea, resulting in death within moments. The only barrier to completing her task was the intrusion of the overly attentive army doctor.
Gazing through the rifle's sight, she watched him work. Unlike the medics and nurses blustering around him, the gunfire and shelling seemed to have little effect on his nerves. He worked quickly and efficiently, barking orders and pointing direction to his subordinates, all without taking his eyes off the General's wound. He was clearly in command of the situation, and yet, even from her rooftop position, she could tell he exuded compassion from his very core. She felt a twinge of admiration for the army doctor, even as she grew increasingly impatient with the fact that he was the only thing blocking her from completing the mission.
She hated the choice she had to make. She hated the men who had sent her here. She hated the army doctor for upholding his Hippocratic Oath, even in this hell hole so far removed from civilized humanity. And she hated herself for taking the shot.
It was a clean shot, through and through. Left shoulder. He would fully recover, be discharged with honors, and after some physical therapy still be able to practice medicine. It was, however, the first time she had shot an innocent in order to take out her target.
Brushing an errant strand of hair from her eyes, she flexed her fingers in an effort to calm her shaking hands. The attempt was unsuccessful. This chosen occupation was not for the faint of heart, though normally she could convince herself she was on some primal level delivering justice, and she never lost any sleep over it.
But that army doctor would haunt her dreams for years.
Despite herself, she watched in awe as the army doctor struggled against the medics who tried to tend to his wound. It took just a moment too long for her to realize he was motioning to her position. She accosted herself; he had figured out the trajectory of her shot. Out of time, she lined up the rifle, and without a second thought stole the final breath from General Morstan's very throat.
In order to cover her tracks, she dragged the unconscious insurgent back to his gun, and keeping herself low, managed to make it to the neighboring rooftop and down an interior stairwell before a team of soldiers burst onto the first building's roof. Shots were fired, and she knew the Afghan would never have an opportunity tell his side of the story.
The tremor in her hands made unzipping her pack more difficult than it should have been. She fumbled as she pulled a long robe and burka quickly on over her fatigues. A string of curses followed her she ducked into the alleyway and followed the route she had laid out the night before. She had secured transportation to Turkmenistan. The rest would be figured out from there when she would text her contact the all clear code. She had, by her best estimate, approximately 36 hours to get back in order to be home with her adopted mother when the news arrived that the General had been killed in action.
Heart racing, she carefully picked her way through dirty alleys and along crumbling walls, always staying in the shadows. She wanted to pause long enough to collect her thoughts, to catch her breath, to calm this infernal nervous tremor, but she knew she had to keep going. What had that army doctor done to her?
Cries of panic filled the air as the dust storm finally bore down, twirling frantically down every street and alley. Finally she exhaled in relief, as the driving dust swirled around her, erasing any remnant of her existence and shrouding her in anonymity.
Mary Watson, her name now, the one she had chosen, turned the pen drive over and over nervously in her palm. What was done was done. There was no going back. So as not to lose her nerve, she quickly placed the pen drive on the small table. When had she become this version of herself? She had been an assassin, and a very good one at that. Yet nothing in her entire life had given her such pause, nor hurt as much as this current situation.
After years of being haunted by the nameless army doctor, she had stumbled upon him in London. It was undeniably him. She had recognized him immediately. Avoidance would have been wisest, but she was intrigued. So she trailed him. Bumped into him at the market. Took a menial job at his clinic.
Intrigue grew into infatuation. She craved normalcy and stability. Dr. John Watson offered just that. Until one night at dinner the world was turned upside down, when like an eastern wind Sherlock Holmes blew back into the doctor's life, upsetting the already precarious balance Mary had worked so hard to establish.
And here they sat. Mary, Sherlock and John. Mary's heart was perched on the precipice, about to shatter at any moment. The severity of her past sins threatened to steal away every last ounce of her current happiness. What a fool she had been to even entertain the hope of a happy life. The moment John opened that pen drive; he would know every sordid detail.
"'A.G.R.A.'" Sherlock spoke first, reading the letters scrawled on the pen drive. "What's that?" His voice was weak, and he struggled to sit upright. But, what more could be expected? Mary had only shot him a few days ago.
The word normal should be outlawed.
Mary cleared her throat. Her heart threatened to burst from her chest. She turned her attention from Sherlock to John. "Um... my initials."
It would have been better, easier, if John had taken a swing at her. She wouldn't have deflected or dodged, but taken the blow in stride. Instead he sat in stony silence, his face contorted in anger and pain, with his eyes diverted. His knuckles grew white as he gripped the arms of the chair. This was a side of John she had never seen before. From the way Sherlock studied John's demeanor, if she had to guess, Mary would say Sherlock had never seen this either.
John had succeeded in fully terrifying her, without lifting a finger.
Ever so carefully, Mary decided to break the uncomfortably deafening silence. "Everything about who I was is on there." She paused, and considered falling on her knees at John's feet in order to beg. Or at the very least, taking his face in her hands to force him to look her in the eyes. She opted to fold her hands in her lap and bow her head, as in prayer. "If you love me, don't read it in front of me."
John shrugged, and finally turning to face her with a sneer, demanded, "Why?"
Why indeed.
That pen drive contained everything. There were, to her knowledge, at least two of Sherlock's unsolved cases that could be answered by files on that drive. There was justification for her arrest in 16 countries, spanning five continents and 20 years. Not to mention an account of the day she shot the army doctor. Her army doctor.
Her mind flashed to the first time she and John had been intimate. She had traced the scar on his shoulder with her fingers, gingerly kissed the puckered skin, and whispered a breathy "I'm so sorry." He had tensed initially, but then laughed and stroked her hair gently.
"Why are you sorry, love?" John's eyes searched her face. It felt to Mary as if he was peering into her very soul.
"I… I'm sorry that you have ever had to suffer."
John had laughed a sad laugh and pulled her into a tight embrace. "Well, that's just life. But you needn't apologize. I can't imagine a thing you could ever do that would cause me pain."
Mary squeezed her eyes shut as she forced the memory from her mind. Her tongue suddenly felt very thick, and tears that burned like acid threatened to spill over at any moment. "Because... You won't love me when you've finished," John's emotionless, icy glare held her captive and she shivered as she forced herself to finish her statement, "and I don't want to see that happen."