Me, The Mentor: Chapter 4

“Uh, huh.  And just what does ‘not exact­ly’ mean?” I asked, fear­ing that I was about to hear some­thing that was going to change my mind about not tak­ing anoth­er assignment.

“Well,” began L.T. “I know that Willa has come to you request­ing that you teach her your trade secrets.  I’m also pret­ty sure that you’re resist­ing that pos­si­bil­i­ty, even refus­ing to acknowl­edge her sug­ges­tions about your oth­er life.”

God, is he that pre­scient … or is my house bugged? I won­dered as he continued.

“She may be a novice, but she undoubt­ed­ly has some infor­ma­tion about you that may cause you to have sec­ond thoughts.  If you real­ly want to get out of the busi­ness, hav­ing some­one fol­low in your foot­steps may well be a path to do so.

“This assign­ment is going to be a bitch, no doubt about it.   But if you had some­one along with you who could watch your back and pick up some of your tech­niques, it might be an oppor­tu­ni­ty to real­ly make a break from the busi­ness and at the same time cre­ate a prod­uct that could con­tin­ue the good work you’ve done.”

Somehow label­ing a human assas­sin a “prod­uct” seemed a bit mechan­i­cal, like send­ing a drone to do the work of a jet with an expe­ri­enced fight­er pilot, or one of those police robots they send into par­tic­u­lar­ly dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tions in order to avoid jeop­ar­diz­ing a human.

“So you think hav­ing an inex­pe­ri­enced human shad­ow along on a dan­ger­ous mis­sion is a smart thing to do?” I asked.

“I real­ize it’s not the best sit­u­a­tion, but it is one in which you and we can accom­plish two things at the same time.”

“What you real­ly mean is ‘kill two birds with one stone’, but it sounds espe­cial­ly lethal when you say it that way.”

L.T. ignored my sar­casm — or else he knew I was right, but did­n’t want to say it.

“Look, Michael, I ful­ly under­stand that she’s a novice, untest­ed.  But while she was work­ing here, she demon­strat­ed that she has great capa­bil­i­ty.  And she catch­es on quickly.

“If this is some­thing she real­ly wants to do, I believe that she’s capa­ble of doing it.  And I can’t think of a bet­ter teacher.

“Look, you can find some sec­ondary role that she could play, even if it’s noth­ing more than reload­ing your weapons, but if she has a chance to see how you work and some of the tools you use, she’ll be that much clos­er to her goal.

“And it may be enough to get her off your back.  We could even sweet­en the deal by entic­ing her back into the agency and pro­vid­ing fur­ther train­ing to rein­force what­ev­er you can teach her.

“I think she prob­a­bly would resist com­ing back into the fold, but I’d even be will­ing to get her into train­ing and allow her to ‘lone wolf’ it afterward.

“Michael, I know this is a big load to take on, but I’m con­fi­dent that Willa can be an asset, both to you and to us.  And this is a par­tic­u­lar­ly nasty sit­u­a­tion we’re deal­ing with, one which I’m pos­i­tive will give you a good feel­ing when it’s over.”

“If I survive.”

“Well, there is that,” he respond­ed, a bit too jovially.

“Okay, L.T.  I’ll take it on.  I actu­al­ly think it might be a plea­sure to take these deplorables off the street.  And if get­ting Willa off to a start will get me out of the busi­ness, that’s an added plus.

“Just one more thing.”

“What’s that?”

“One mil.”

“What!?  Michael, that’s more than four times your usu­al fee!”

“Look at it this way L.T.  You real­ly need me on this one, and I’ll be doing dou­ble duty, per­form­ing and teach­ing … not to men­tion buy­ing my way into retire­ment.  Take it or leave it.  If you leave it I’ll bid Ms. Temple good­bye after she fin­ish­es her wine.”

“You’re bleed­ing me white, Michael.  I don’t know if there are suf­fi­cient funds in our con­tin­gency to approve this.”

“Bull wafers, L.T.  You guys have so much dark mon­ey stashed you could buy a coun­try.  You’re wast­ing my time, L.T., and your nick­el on this call.  C’mon, L.T.  ‘Good to go’ or ‘good­bye’.  Which is it?”

“Good to go,” I heard, much soft­er than his nor­mal speak­ing voice and with a def­i­nite note of resignation.

“Okay.  Send me what­ev­er you’ve got on these peo­ple.  You have my email address.

“What’s the time frame?”

“Like every­thing.  ASAP.  The quick­er you get on the case, the more peo­ple will be saved.  Just let me know when you’re head­ed down there, and I’ll arrange back­up for you along with up-to-date info.”

“Right.  I’ll need a cou­ple of days here just to famil­iar­ize Wil with some weapons and maybe let her get in some range time.  I guess I can get away with that for a short peri­od of time with­out arous­ing the curios­i­ty of the neigh­bors too much.”

“The quick­er, the bet­ter. Keep in touch.”

Click!

Damn.  One of these days I’m going to get in the last word and get to hang up on him instead of the oth­er way ’round.

I wan­dered back into the liv­ing room where Willa was hold­ing her glass, with an odd­ly sat­is­fied look on her face.

“So, did Mr. Standish have good or bad news?” she inquired.

“Oh, I think you know exact­ly what news Mr. Standish had,” I replied.

“Whattya mean?”

“The phone in the oth­er room has a light on it that goes on when both phones are off the hook, Wil.  That lit­tle light went on almost as soon as I picked up the receiv­er so I know you lis­tened in on our entire conversation.”

“Well.  Okay.  So, what now?”