As I hold his bodyguards gun to his head, tears begin form in his grey eyes. This stoic, rich and powerful man has been turned into a weak and snivelling one before me. My stalling his murder only prolongs his pain. His pleads for mercy are so rushed and mumbled that they are undistinguishable. The room is silent apart from his pleas, but many more sounds fill my ears. I can hear my heart pounding as the adrenaline from scuffling with two more unexpected guards still courses my veins. The screams of his now-deceased wife and child still ring in my ears. I can hear Birkhoff through my comm unit asking me if the target is secure
The target is secure, but not dead. It is up to me to kill him, and I don't know if I can.
Of course, I can. There is no physical incapacity which would prevent me from pulling the trigger, but whatever morals I have left stop me from doing so. I have read the files, I know that this man is a horrible man with no proper principles himself, but still I resist from firing a bullet into his brain. I have killed before, three times to be exact – and that is why I'm standing here about to commit my fourth. But that was different, they were attacking me straight-on. Ripping at my clothes, pulling at my hair, striking at my body. It was kill-or-be-killed.
How is this different, though? It's not really, when I think about it. And although I have no time to think, I can't stop my mind from trying to justify my actions. How else am I supposed to do this? If I do not take his life, someone else will come and do it for me. Then I'll be taken back to Division and deactivated. And all this would be for nothing.
While my mind has been wandering, my victim has composed himself. He decides he has nothing to lose, and so lunges at me. Now, it really is a kill-or-be-killed situation. The instincts that have been drilled into me for the past seven months kick in without second thought. I sharply bring my knee to his groin with as much force as I can muster and in his brief moment of recoil, I pin him to the floor. Before I can think and hesitate again, I jam the specialised glock in between his eyes and pull the trigger. A single drip of crimson trickles from the wound.
As soon as the trigger is pulled I can feel the dead weight beneath me and sense the lifelessness of the body. I cannot afford to slip back into a weak mind-set and so force myself to think of my training. I meticulously check the room for any signs that I have been in there, and the only trace there is a strewn cushion from our struggle lying on the ground. It appears very out of place in the immaculate and luxurious bedroom. I step over the lifeless body and place the cushion back onto the plush chaise-longue. I step over him coldly once again and exit the room, gun still in hand.
"Target down," I say stoically to Birkoff as I enter the equally-lavish hallway. Still on forced auto-pilot, I pull the trigger on the two guards I had been fighting with. The steady rise and fall of their chest's as they unconscious ceased immediately as soon as the gun sounded. I don't even flinch. As I turn the corner, I meet the bodyguard's body lying on the floor, a pool of darkening crimson surrounding him. I replace in his hand the gun he was killed with and then passed on to me to murder his employer. The British police will be oblivious to the sequencing – it is an open and shut case, the spiteful bodyguard kills his boss and then takes his own life. Simple.
"Van is waiting for you half a mile south west from the property, the rest of the team is already on their way. Michael is just descending the stairs from the butler's quarters, rendezvous with him," Birkoff reports.
Michael and I arrive simultaneously at the back exit and leave together. We jog lightly, weighed down with our weapons and the thoughts of what we have just done. It is not until the Division van, disguised as a company vehicle for a plumbers, is in sight that he speaks.
"Well done back there. Heard you encountered a few unexpected complications," His statement was left open-ended – he wanted a response I didn't know what to give.
"It was nothing I couldn't handle," I settle on, deciding to make no specific comment.
"Congratulations on the success of your first mission. You will be recommended to Percy and receive agent status. You move out after the debriefing," His tone was blunt as always.
The feeling of being congratulated for murdering three people in cold-blood cannot be accurately described. I'm not even quite sure I know what I should be feeling. Ashamed? Guilty? Mortified? I do know that I am horrified at the indifference with which I murdered the final two guards as if it was nothing. As if their life was nothing. Surely they deserved some remorse? It matters not, as guilt, mercy and remorse is something I am certainly not allowed to show nor have at Division.
