Not Always an Enemy

You don’t have friends in Elora’s line of work. But you don’t always have enemies.

That’s how she saw the man sitting before her, swirling the glass of Merlot in his hand while he checked out the waitress on the other end of the private dining room, who was waiting in sight but out of earshot, so the two could speak freely.

“I hope your eyeballs melt,” Elora said into her wine.

Collin turned his attention back to his date. “Jealous, are we?”

“Perplexed. You ask ME out and yet you take mental pictures of our waitress, which she notices you doing, by the way.”

“In all fairness, I’ve been asking you out for years. Somewhere along the way, I forgot what to do if you agreed. And it’s hard to enjoy someone’s company when they’ve got an ulterior motive.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Because we are spies, and spies make their livings on ulterior motives,” Collin stated as if he were saying the sky was blue.

“Are we though? You’re in an office somewhere near the top of a high-rise, strategizing for missions and—I don’t know—making bad jokes at a water cooler. Meanwhile, I’m training a bunch of doe-eyed recruits. We’re not exactly in the field anymore.”

Collin finished the rest of his Merlot in three gulps, then beckoned the waitress for another glass. “First of all, I make excellent jokes by the water cooler. And second of all, wasn’t it supposed to be better when we stopped going on missions ourselves? Weren’t we finally going to be able to let our guard down?”

“I’ve tried, but there’s just this fear that I’ll get called back, as old as I am,” Elora sighed.

“You make it sound like you’re a walking corpse. And since we are the same age, I take offense to that. We’re just in our sixties, Elle. Besides,” Collin leaned forward. “The most dangerous assassins and spies are the ones who hide in plain sight. I could easily be undercover as a retiree playing checkers in the park. And you’d be feeding the pigeons.”

Elora laughed so hard she had to set down her wine glass. “Do the pigeons have code names?”

Collin, unfortunately, was sipping wine when Elora said that, and he had to fight his laughs to swallow. When he did, he replied, “Naturally. It’s how we share intel.”

When the laughter died, Elora said, “I wish we could enjoy the rest of our lives this much.”

“But you didn’t come here for that, did you?” Collin said.

She remembered the ugly mix of anger and sorrow that consumed her when she found out. She’d teetered on the edge of doing her duty or saving him before remembering where her loyalties truly lied.

“Why did you betray us, Collin?”

He motioned for the waitress to refill his glass. He watched the wine intently as he swirled it in his glass, making note of each bubble he saw. He took a long, savoring sip before he said, “Elle, the year we joined the agency, we were among thirty of the country's most capable men and women. How many lived into their sixties?”

“Just us,” Elora said. “But we knew the odds. All of us.”

“What we didn’t know is how seamlessly we’d be replaced. How, by taking on code names, we no longer had an identity of our own.”

“So you betray an entire country of people that you swore to protect, because you don’t like the sacrifice you knowingly made? Do you think that everything we’ve worked towards is meaningless just because most people don’t even know to mourn us?” Her voice rose as she stood from her chair. If she had been looking at an enemy, she’d remain collected. But she was looking at Collin.

As recruits, they helped each other grow, achieve their dreams. They shared their pasts and motivations. When one practiced methods for withstanding torture, the other was there to ground them. When one was injured, the other was there to help them.

You don’t get friends in Elora’s line of work. But sometimes you get someone like Collin.

That’s what she thought, anyway, but the information he sold could have cost thousands of lives, had the buyer not been a double agent. How long had this man been a traitor? Was Elora ignorant to it all, or did she purposefully ignore the signs?

“You, me, and every single other spy in our agency—we were all betrayed first,” Collin said.

Elora took extra care to sit down gracefully, like she wasn’t affected. The time for talking had come to an end. “Look, I know you know what I came here to do. But I want to make sure you know why.”

Collin nodded. “Yes, Elle. I know the 'what', and, more importantly, I know the 'why'. Frankly, I wish I had your steadfast belief that what we do is worth it,” he finished the last of his Merlot. “If you’re worried about all the wine I’ve had tonight, don’t be. I can still take you on. I’m still good in a—” Fits of coughing erupted from Collin. He knew immediately what was happening.

The least Elora could do was look him in the eye, meet his accusing gaze. Somehow he thought that Elora herself would be swayed. Somehow he thought they were friends.

Elora remained in her seat as Collin collapsed to the ground, as his pain continued, until finally it stopped. She could have remained in stasis there all night. But she wasn’t done with the job. The young waitress appeared at her side.

Elora steadied her voice and said, “Good job on your first assassination. He didn’t even notice you slipping the poison into the wine.”

The waitress, a new recruit Elora had been training, replied, “He must have been caught off guard, eating dinner with a friend and all.”

“We weren’t friends,” Elora said. She just didn’t realize they were enemies.