Me, The Mentor: Chapter 2

“Excuse me?” I respond­ed, incredulously

“I want you to teach me your trade,” she repeated.

“Well, I don’t know how much of a trade being a gen­tle­man farmer is, and I’m cer­tain­ly not the one to try to teach it to some­one else.  Besides, you don’t look like some­one inter­est­ed in farming.”

“C’mon, Michael.  Don’t be coy.  You know I’m talk­ing about the trade of assas­si­na­tion.  Look, I’m not going to beat around the bush.  I know a great deal about many of your assign­ments, China, the Hague, Maui, Washington, Toronto.  And I know how suc­cess­ful you’ve been.  Damn, you’re one of the best.  You car­ry out your assign­ments and seem­ing­ly walk away with­out leav­ing a trace.  Oh, I know there have been remains to be cleaned up, but you’ve nev­er seemed to have any prob­lem extri­cat­ing your­self with­out difficulty.”

“Wil, I don’t have the slight­est idea what you’re talk­ing about,” I lied.  I noticed that she did­n’t men­tion my caper in Cincinnati and at Clintonville, nei­ther of which was sanc­tioned.  Was it pos­si­ble that she had gar­nered her infor­ma­tion from the agency?  From L.T.?  I could­n’t imag­ine him let­ting details of our work get out.

“Look, Michael, I worked for the agency — we both know which one I’m talk­ing about — until a few weeks ago.  I was a project coör­di­na­tor work­ing in the same sec­tion as Hugh Standish, so I had access to vir­tu­al­ly every­thing going on between the two of you.  And I fol­lowed your work quite metic­u­lous­ly.  I was impressed.  And I final­ly decid­ed that a desk job, work­ing for some­one else the rest of my life was not a voca­tion I want­ed to pursue.”

Standish is the real name of my con­tact who had often assumed the name of Lionel Trane, who I referred to as L.T.

She con­tin­ued.

“And even if I could have got­ten a posi­tion with the agency as a field agent, I’d be work­ing under close super­vi­sion all the time.  Not some­thing I’m look­ing for.

“Maybe I’m just a free spir­it, but I think I could be good doing what you do.  At least with the prop­er train­ing and I think you’re the one to pro­vide that.”

“Okay, Wil. Assuming that every­thing you’ve said is true, I have two ques­tions.  One, why would I want to be your teacher, and, two, what’s to pre­vent me just killing you now in order to pre­serve my secret life?”

“I would have been dis­ap­point­ed if you had­n’t asked those ques­tions,” she replied.  “To answer the first, there is always going to be a need for peo­ple like you.  The world is full of nasty play­ers, those who can’t be allowed to con­duct their dirty busi­ness and there has to be a way to cur­tail their nefar­i­ous enter­pris­es with­out expos­ing the coun­try by using the house play­ers or the military.

“As to your sec­ond ques­tion, I have two answers.  First, fol­low­ing your activ­i­ties as long as I have, I’ve come to under­stand you — at least I think I have — and you don’t just kill peo­ple for the mean­est of rea­sons.  Besides, you might have some dif­fi­cul­ty explain­ing a dead body on your prop­er­ty.  But more impor­tant­ly, just in case my first sup­po­si­tion should prove wrong, I’ve left a dossier of your work and a full biog­ra­phy of you in a safe place with instruc­tions to an acquain­tance that if I’m not in con­tact at cer­tain inter­vals, it will be released to the appro­pri­ate peo­ple.  At that point, your life would­n’t be worth a plugged nickel.

“Look.  I’m sor­ry about that, but I had to pro­tect myself to some extent. I think you’d agree.  I expect you’d do the same if our roles were reversed.”

“Yes, I expect I would.”

It was almost sur­re­al.  The two of us sit­ting in my liv­ing room across from one anoth­er, con­ge­nial­ly sip­ping wine and dis­cussing an arrange­ment by which a train­ing pro­gram would be entered into for one assas­sin to teach some­one else how to be one.

I refilled our glass­es, con­tem­plat­ing how it might be pos­si­ble to ter­mi­nate this discussion.

“Willa, let’s assume for a moment that your sup­po­si­tions about me are cor­rect, just how do you pro­pose this arrange­ment would con­tin­ue?  Or have you con­sid­ered that?”

“Well, yes ... to some extent.  Of course, I did­n’t know just how you might respond, so I haven’t worked out all the intri­ca­cies of the thing, but I knew you had this farm and that you lived alone, so I thought maybe I could stay here and any train­ing could take place here as well.”

“Not bloody like­ly!  First, I don’t want peo­ple, espe­cial­ly my neigh­bors, won­der­ing why a young woman is shar­ing my home. And sec­ond, I would nev­er take the chance of any such train­ing activ­i­ties draw­ing inter­est here.  The farm is pret­ty remote, but that does­n’t mean that neigh­bors aren’t aware of what’s going on around them.

“Looks like your idea is dead aborn­ing,” I said with some satisfaction.

“Well, maybe not, Michael.  I con­sid­ered you might not buy into that sce­nario, so I have access to a pri­vate estate not far from here in east­ern Kentucky, a place rarely used, in Wolfe County, with a cab­in and suf­fi­cient ameni­ties.  We can get to it eas­i­ly, it’s remote, and offers a good vari­ety of land­scapes to allow for all dif­fer­ent kinds of training.”

“Sorry, Wil. That would­n’t work, either.  I have no inten­tion of going into the moun­tains of east­ern Kentucky with some­one, espe­cial­ly a woman I hard­ly know, and being gone for extend­ed peri­ods of time from here, or liv­ing in the woods.  I’m not the out­doors type.  And the type of train­ing you’d require could not pos­si­bly be con­duct­ed in a place like what you’ve described.

“If you real­ly fol­lowed my work, you’d know that. 

“Any oth­er sug­ges­tions, or are we fin­ished here?”

As she sat there sip­ping her wine and appar­ent­ly try­ing to think of some oth­er options, the phone rang.

“Hello.”

“Michael?  Hi.  It’s L.T.  How are you and Willa get­ting on?”