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“I don’t ‘think’ – I know it.”
“I don’t want a black mark on my record.”
“Not a problem. You would receive an honorable discharge.”
“If I’m going to be a secret agent, won’t it be a problem that they’ve got my fingerprints and pictures of me on file?”
“If you accept my offer, I’ll have them destroy your records and completely erase you from their system. There will be no trace of your time in the military.”
I stared at him. “You can do that?”
“It would astound you, everything I can do.”
I turned that over in my head for a few seconds before I asked the next question. “What’s the pay?”
“Given your experience, I think we could start you off at 120,000 per year.”
“…pounds?” I asked in shock.
He laughed. “That was the plan.”
The military paid me in Swedish krona, but I’d grown used to exchanging my money for pounds every time I came to visit Rachel. So I knew that Alistair was offering me almost three times my salary in Special Forces. In US dollars, it would be about $150,000 a year.
“That’s… quite nice,” I said, stunned.
“Good, I’m glad it’s to your liking. There would be bonuses and raises, of course. But there are a few caveats before we proceed any further.”
“Like what?”
“My department is ultra-secretive, even by the standards of MI6. Many of the things we do would cause international incidents if it became known we were behind them. Other governments don’t take kindly to foreign agents entering their countries for any reason whatsoever – even if they would benefit from the mission’s objective. Totally understandable, by the way. We would be outraged if a Swedish operative came into the UK and knocked off a crooked arms dealer, no matter how much the bastard might deserve it. But what this means in practice is that no one can know what you do. No one. Not even Rachel.”
“If I get out of the military two years early, she’s going to want to know why,” I pointed out.
“Does she tell you everything about her job?” Alistair challenged me. “About her life?”
“She doesn’t tell me anything.”
“There you go. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.”
I frowned. “I, uh, don’t quite understand – ‘gander’?”
“Sorry – colloquial phrase. A gander is a male goose. Rachel is secretive, so you have every right to be, as well. What’s good for her is good for you, too.”
“…I guess…”
“Just tell her that you were hired by an organization that works with the Swedish government and that the military voluntarily let you go work for them. It’ll be the truth – she just doesn’t need to know that the ‘organization’ is the same one she works for.”
“Huh,” I grunted as I pondered that.
“Second caveat: you would be a freelancer, and our department has to have complete and total deniability as to our freelance agents’ actions. If you’re caught… by the target or a foreign government, it doesn’t matter… you’re on your own. You must never try to leverage your connection with MI6 to obtain release. We will categorically deny that we know you. If you get caught, no one is coming to get you. You and you alone will suffer the consequences of failure.”
I frowned. “In the Special Forces, we don’t leave anyone behind.”
“This isn’t the Special Forces,” Alistair said brusquely.
When I didn’t reply, he said, “Plausible deniability on MI6’s part is the bedrock principle underlying this position. You must accept that condition, or we might as well end the discussion right now.”
“So if I’m on a job for you and I get in trouble, then what – I’m fucked?” I asked, unable to hide my irritation.
