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Background was the division within MI6 that researched non-essential targets…
Like the romantic relationships of agents.
“I know, and I’m sure they’re already looking into him, but I’d like you to take a crack at it.”
“On the books or off?”
Sean was asking me if he needed to keep it secret – so if something unsavory came up, my bosses wouldn’t know about it.
But if something did come up and it looked like I was trying to hide it, then Sean and I were both fucked.
I swallowed hard. “On the books is fine.”
“Alright… what’s his name?”
“Lars Henriksson,” I said and spelled it out. “He’s in the report I filed on Kabul – he was the sniper who saved me on the rooftop.”
“Ah, now I remember. Okay, give me a couple of hours and I’ll get back to you.”
“Thanks, Sean. I owe you.”
“More than you can possibly repay,” he said with a smirk, then went back to his computer screen.
A couple of hours later, Sean surprised me by knocking on the door of my temporary office. As a field agent, I didn’t spend much time at headquarters, so I grabbed a temporary room whenever I needed one.
“Hi, luv,” he said brightly as I looked up from my laptop. “Fancy a bite to eat?”
“No, I’m good. Did you find out about – ”
“I’m simply famished,” he interrupted, then said forcefully, “How about you join me for lunch?”
“…sure,” I said, finally getting the message. “Let’s go.”
We took a taxi so traffic cameras couldn’t track our cars’ license plates.
Sean didn’t say anything until we were sitting in a deserted pub ten miles from MI6. Even then, he kept glancing around like he was afraid the boogeyman would pop out of the shadows any second.
“How well do you know this guy?” he asked.
“Pretty well.” Or at least I thought I did. “Why, what did you find?”
“Are you sure he was in the Swedish military?”
I frowned. “Uh, yes – that’s where I met him. In Kabul, remember? I told you, it’s in the report – ”
“Which is what I went back to when I started the search. His name’s not in there anymore.”
“It was redacted?”
‘Redacted’ meant blacked out so that only someone with a higher security clearance could see it.
“No. It wasn’t redacted; it’s just not there anymore. Now all it says is a sniper in Special Forces. Nothing about a Lars Henriksson.”
“But – that’s – ”
“Very strange,” Sean finished. “It would take somebody way above our paygrades to alter a field agent’s report after it had been finalized and entered into the system.”
My stomach churned with fear. I felt like I had walked out into the middle of a field, and someone from the sidelines had screamed that there were land mines all around me.
