License to Kill

He regarded me for a few seconds, then said, "Of course we can't keep calling you Mr. Livingston, can we? Richard Livingston is dead, as is his good lady wife. And he won't be coming back to life today, I'm afraid. I think, for now, you'll just have to be Mr. Smith, until we can come up with something a little more inspired. John Smith, for now. I am... Mr. Thurgood. As good a name as any, I think."

"So, Mr. Smith, what are we to do with you? You've had an extremely traumatic experience, no one can argue that. Although it might be argued it was your own fault for involving yourself in an extremely sensitive security service operation, something no one asked for."

I snorted. "Don't give me that crap. I wouldn't have been there at all if your little operative hadn't decided I was just good cover in the first place. Don't even try and pin all this on me. As the yanks say, that dog won't hunt." I would never have been quite so confrontational before my experience, but when you've truly given up all hope, some of that carries over. What was the worst they could do to me? Worse than what I'd already endured?

The man stared at me a while longer, the silence filling the room.

"Be that as it may, the whole thing is insanely regrettable. We've lost any advantage in intelligence terms we ever had with the Saudis now. After that little debacle, they are on their guard. We lost six months' worth of work and you lost almost two years of your life, and got tortured into the bargain. We had a pair of senior field agents cover blown, and were put to some effort to try and calm things down. The implications on sales of our equipment to their country alone are enough to keep ministers up at night."

"Boo fucking hoo," I responded, not giving a shit. "You'll forgive me if I'm not terribly worried about 'the effort you were put to'," I stated.

"Yes, I quite appreciate your attitude, Mr. Smith. I dare say I'd be thinking and feeling the same things if I were in your shoes. I'm just trying to appraise you of the external situation. I don't honestly expect you to really care all that much." He wasn't perturbed by my outbursts in the slightest.

"I'm absolutely sure you must be very very angry at us for not coming to your rescue. Honestly, though, we were sure you were dead. The two agents reported the window blowing out of the room they had escaped from, and there were sounds of gunshots. It was concluded that you were shot or otherwise deceased. We did watch the hotel, to see if your body was removed, but saw nothing. The same with the embassy. No one moving a body in or out. We are still puzzled, and not a little concerned, that we didn't detect them moving your unconscious body in, frankly.

"However, all that being true, you are now the recipient of knowledge that just can't go into the public arena. The Saudis will deny it all, anyway, and Christ knows, they are good at silencing those who piss them off, and then there's us. This entire incident is one long embarrassing saga, and political dynamite for the current administration. Much as I dislike it, we do have to protect the leadership. We are good at destabilizing other regimes, can't allow the same to be done for ours, I'm afraid, old boy.

"Then there's what you've been through. I will grant you, you've been pretty hard done by. Our operative's rather callous use of you is hard to excuse, I have to admit. And it directly contributed to the disaster of the operation, and your unfortunate incarceration with the Saudi Government, and all that entailed. Yes, we are not without a great deal of empathy for you. You didn't ask for, nor did you deserve any of what has occurred. However, what is done is done, and we need to forge a way forward now."

He looked down and plucked a particular paper out of the folder in front of him, and threw it to my side of the desk.

"With that in mind, the government of the United Kingdom and Great Britain would like to offer you the princely sum of eight million pounds, tax-exempt, for your troubles. Of course, that comes with strings. You will be required to sign a document exempting the UK government and its subsidiary agencies from any legal challenge, and further to that, sign a gag order stopping you from ever discussing the circumstances of this grant, and what led to it. Do you understand what I am telling you, Mr. Smith?"

He leaned back, head tilted forward, which meant the light from the desk gave him a demonic appearance. I glanced at the document. It had numbers on it, and the sum of eight million in bold, and underlined.

"I think so. You were never here. I was never here. I was never a guest of the Saudi Arabian Government. Presumably, I was never married, either?"

"Indeed. We will furnish you with new credentials, history, name, the usual. All completely legitimate, since we are the issuing authority of these sorts of things in the first place. In regards to your marriage, well, Richard Livingston might have been married, but Mr. John Smith, or whomever you end up being, never was. Mr. Livingston is, unfortunately no longer with us, so any marriage he may have had terminated some time ago."

He steepled his hands and smiled ghoulishly behind them.

"I'm glad you understand the, ah, delicateness of this situation, Mr. Smith. I want you to know that your treatment at the hands of the Saudis has not gone unanswered. They are still in the process of paying for that, let me assure you. I can't let you know exactly how recompense is being extracted but rest assured, it most definitely is. I know this is probably of little comfort to you right now, but your government is not about to take this lying down."

"They just expect me to, then?" I said before I could stop myself. Antagonizing this man wasn't going to help me. Much as I wanted to just jump up and punch him in the mouth, even I recognized I was on a loser here. I needed the money to restart my life, because sure as shit, everything else was gone.

Mr. Thurgood looked pained. "It's a regrettable situation for sure, Mr. Smith. I wish there were other things I could say to make it better, but unfortunately, it is what it is. I am hoping the money will help smooth things over. As I mentioned, it's tax-free, since it's located in a bank in the Cayman Islands, so not only is it not something her majesty's tax collectors can get at, I dare say even the feared American Internal Revenue Service cannot claim it, either. Further to this, the UK government is also offering you free private healthcare, for all possible medical issues that may arise, for the rest of your natural life. Particularly in regards to injuries sustained in the past two years. We feel very responsible for that. However, beyond that, I'm not sure what else we can offer you at this stage."

"What about my ex? Is she still around? A conversation with her might help... how did you put it? 'Smooth things over'?" I honestly had no idea what she'd say to me, but I knew exactly the things I wanted to say to her. None of them were nice. I'd had a long time to think about it.

Mr. Thurgood looked even more pained at this, looking reproachfully at me.

"I'm afraid I cannot comment on the Ex. Mrs. Livingston's present situation, Mr. Smith. I am, I'm afraid, a simple civil servant, and such information or ability to make things like that happen are far above my pay grade. I can neither confirm nor deny the Ex Mrs. Livingston's current employment or whereabouts, nor can I make such a meeting happen, even if it were possible. I will, however, pass the request back up the chain of command. You never know what might happen. Someone might get out of bed the right side that day."

He made a note on a pad in front of him.

"That said, Mr. Smith, there is one thing I can offer you. It turns out that the Ex Mrs. Livingston did actually empty the family home after your... imagined demise, and all those properties and items are in storage, and are available to you. Since you are an only child, parents of age, there was no one else to pass any of these items on to, so they are still sitting in the storage unit where they were initially placed. The Ex Mrs. Livingston has indicated that she considers them all yours, and you are free to remove from that storage unit anything you wish."

Then he pulled another few sheets of paper out of the folder, and passed them over the desk, and then threw a pen on top of them.

"This is a copy of the Official Secrets Act, which I now require you to sign. That covers our ability to, er... enforce your silence on these topics, something I am sure we won't need to do, will we, Mr. Smith? And the other is the document exempting the UK government from all legal challenges regarding these unfortunate affairs. If you will be so kind as to sign these, we'll then ferry you to rooms at The Savoy, which are prepaid for the next sixty days, giving you plenty of time to decide your next steps. We'll obviously be in touch regarding access to the storage facility, and to give you communication methods to get hold of us, regarding access to the money we talked about as well as the medical coverage."

I signed the Secrets Act, since I knew that was a standard form, - there would be no clever wording on that. However, I picked up the other form, and started to read it.

While I did that, Mr. Thurgood continued.

"Now, obviously, as I did briefly refer to earlier, these perks do come with caveats. You can never go home, Mr. Smith. To which I mean no contact with anyone from your former life. No Facebook conversations with old friends, no phone calls to anyone at your old job, or clients thereof. Or parents, who already believe you to be deceased. You are going to be a new person, and a new person with history, you shall be. We shall be watching. Do I make myself clear, Mr. Smith? No entertaining ideas of writing memoirs or interviews, or the like. To be honest, it would almost certainly be extremely hazardous to your health, and I don't mean from us. I mean from the Middle Eastern governments who tend to be rather final when it comes to addressing those who embarrass them in public. They may not have come to the ultimate solution to you while they had you in captivity, but I assure you, you embarrass them publicly and they will reconsider that position in an instant. You need to keep your head down, enjoy the money, and make a new life for yourself. If you insist on making public waves about the events of the past two years, I dare say some financial penalties will be incurred, penalties I'm not sure you would be able to meet. I'm sure we understand each other, don't we, Mr. Smith?"

As he got to the part about penalties, I had just discovered them in the document he expected me to sign. If I made an issue of what had happened to my life, then not only would they be asking, -- no, demanding, - the money back, but also more besides. And as a signatory to this contract, I would be legally on the hook for it.

I sat back, with Mr. Thurgood gazing at me.

This was the crucial question. What did I want now? While I'd been stuck in that cage, I'd never really thought about what would come next, if I was rescued, beyond confronting Clarissa. Towards the end, I'd entirely given up anyway.

Since I had been extricated from captivity, I had given it a little thought, but since I had been held incommunicado so much post-incarceration, I had no idea what my options would actually be. It had been clear I was as much an embarrassment to the UK government as I was to the Saudis, only they weren't in the business of locking me up in a cage and torturing me, so that was a net win. But still. I had no real idea what would happen next.

And now, here I was, being offered a stupendous amount of money to effectively suck it up and go away. Be a good little boy, and play in the corner, leaving the grownups to talk over brandy and cigars.

But then, did I want any more exposure to that world anyway? So far, one hundred percent of what I'd seen of it was pretty shitty, especially for me. How much more involvement could I survive? Either my heart or my body?

Did I really want to poke the bear, no matter how justified I might feel? It sure hadn't worked out for me so far.

And, on the other side of the equation, no matter what I ended up doing next, it sure would be easier with money behind me. The reality was that I was never going to be going back to being a professional financial analyst again, not with a two-year gap in my experience. While the new documents would, I'm sure, have covered that, the reality is that the financial industry moves extremely quickly, and if you are out of it for any prolonged period of time, say, almost two years while being held in isolation in the basement of a Middle Eastern country's embassy, then you weren't going to do well in an interview situation.

And I also doubted that even though they'd give me new documents to live, that the UK government would also provide me with references for that period of time I was locked up, or, indeed before. I mean, it's not like I could call on real references for my work, was it? That guy was dead. And even if they did, it was even more doubtful they'd hold up against someone calling for a job reference. You needed real domain knowledge for that.

No, I wasn't going back to being a money manager, unless it was just for myself. Which was the only thing I really knew how to do professionally.

So... on balance, the money then? With the strings that came attached? How onerous were they really? Was I going to rock the boat? Make life difficult for anyone? Most likely me?

And their points regarding being a target, well, yes. I could believe them. I'd already sampled the Saudis' hospitality once; I didn't want to risk that again. Next time, I'm sure I'd not survive it.

On reflection, then, probably best to just sign, take the money, and vanish. I didn't have to make decisions right there and then, plenty of time for that.

I looked back at Mr. Thurgood who, I was pretty sure, had been following the thought progression on my face. Clarissa always said I let my thoughts show on my face too much; she never had any problem being able to follow my train of thought. Of course, now I realized where she'd learnt that skill, but still, I must have been pretty transparent if this dude who'd never met me before was doing it too.

I mentally shrugged, picked up the pen and signed the other document, stipulations and threats and all.

"Capital, Mr. Smith. The right decision. The only decision, if I may be so bold. Right, then let me take possession of this..." He leaned forward and picked up both documents. "I'll ensure that a copy of this comes to you, along with that new identity, forthwith."

He examined the signatures, ensuring that I'd signed with my actual name.

"Excellent," he murmured, and then, glancing back at me, said, "I think this concludes our business. If you go out the door, someone will be there to take you to the Savoy. As I mentioned, there are rooms there reserved, and we've taken the liberty of providing you with a wardrobe of clothing, and the usual toiletries. The access to the money portion will be covered tomorrow, where we'll drop off a credit card, and the details of the account and bank where the money currently resides."

As I stood to leave, he looked up at me and said, in a more commanding voice, "Mr. Smith. One more thing. We will be dropping in occasionally, just to check up that we are all abiding by our agreement here," he held up the document. "These checks will be random, and they may invade your privacy a little, and for that, I apologize. However, we cannot be too careful here, and indeed, neither can you. For you, the stakes are very high, so please, stick to the terms. For all our sake."

He held the gaze a little longer, just to make sure I got the message. I just nodded, turned, and walked to the door, which opened in front of me. I never looked back at Mr. Thurgood and I never saw him again.

Life Part 2 -- Lucas Ferring

Four years later, I was ensconced in my new home, and doing my best to just live life. I'd made the decision, that fateful day, that I needed to move on, not look back and not dwell on what had happened to me, but to embrace the opportunities I had open to me going forward. Mainly because of the money, let's be honest.

While sitting in the suite at the Savoy, I'd sat and thought about what I wanted in the next phase of my life. I'd had my new identity delivered, - I was now Lucas Ferring. I'd been born in Hastings, in Kent and was now Man About Town, so to speak. Access to the money had arrived, and some of the first things I did was go out and eat, then take in a movie, buy some books and watch as much TV as I could, just to catch up on societal stuff.

I'd considered what I wanted, and narrowed it down to a few things. The first was, out of this country. I knew the UK government would probably keep tabs on me wherever I went, but I wasn't about to make it easy on them. Plus, if any Middle Eastern country wanted to find me, I wanted to make that as difficult as I could, too.

If I was going to move abroad, then there were several things I needed. Wherever I went, English had to be spoken prevalently. I didn't want to stick out because I couldn't speak the local lingo.

It needed to be somewhere international so I could travel if need be, so the middle of Australia was out for example. It would need to be somewhere I could hide, have my own place, have stuff delivered by Amazon, - which did rule out New Zealand, - and that had convenience as a priority.

I wanted to be near water. The bullet that had struck my leg and the resulting wound that had not been treated appropriately was mostly healed, but the reality was that my biking time was now done. The pain in the thigh was too much. Plus, my fingers made using the bikes controls, -- the brakes, the gears and so on, - just too hard. Add to that the loss of 20-20 peripheral vision and well, yeah. No more biking for me. I was quite sad about that. I ended up swapping this exercise for rowing instead. There was some pain with that too, but nowhere near the levels I'd had for biking. I'd tried running but that was just a nonstarter. So, rowing it was. And while I could do that at home, I'd discovered it wasn't half as effective in terms of a mood boost as it was when I did it on water. Therefore, a home nearby water was required.

Not too hot. Not too cold. Near a metro area, but not in it. Somewhere I could disappear into. Buy a place that was a little isolated, but not so much it required a helicopter or a horse or a boat to get to. My trust of my fellow humans has never returned to the levels it once was, and as for women, well, forget it.

But I wanted to be close enough to civilization that I could get a decent meal, see a movie, go shopping at Asda. Or Walmart, as it ended up being.

Yes, I ended up in the good old US of A! In Maryland, more specifically, just outside of the city of Salisbury. I bought a place on the water, right off the Wicomico River that fed into the Tangier Sound, which in turn fed into the Chesapeake Bay. It was fine for my needs. Close enough to Salisbury to get civilization, but far enough out to have privacy, but still getting all the benefits of electricity and clean water and all the rest of it. Hell, even my cell phone (Yes, they call them Cell Phones out here, instead of Mobiles, like we do back home!) worked in my house. I got satellite internet, courtesy of Mr. Elon Musk, and had my Netflix and all the rest of it.

In my research, I'd also discovered that if you brought five hundred thousand dollars into the country, it was an instant green card! So, five hundred dollars transferred from my bank in the Caymans later, I'd been granted a green card within six months of moving to the US.