Signs of mental weakness will result in death.
Spies must proceed carefully.

Liz Gale/2021 Short Story

A NYC Flash Fiction 2021 Challenge – One thousand words in 48 hours!

Assigned genre: Spy
Assigned location: Liquor Store
Object to appear in the story at least once: Rollerblades

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“Kill Or Be Killed”

The two agents tapped their toes impatiently in the brown sedan. “Hurry up,” the older one said. “It’s almost five o’clock. She’ll be here any minute.”

Light from the neon liquor store sign illuminated the younger agent’s scowl across the strip mall parking lot. Sweat dripped from his brow onto the poisoned vodka bottle between his legs. He wiped the drops away with a handkerchief and continued to buff the glass until his fingerprints disappeared.

“There she is!” the older agent exclaimed in a soft whisper. Both men instinctively dipped their heads down, shielding their faces from the approaching woman.

“Are you sure that’s her?” the younger agent asked. “She looks so civilian. So normal.”

The older agent stole a glance at the woman paused outside the liquor store door. Somehow the neon sign lit her up in all the right places, highlighting her high cheekbones and curvy waist. Not a wrinkle in sight, she looked as if she’d never had a day of stress in her whole life, let alone spent the last six years deep undercover as a Russian diplomat’s mistress.

“Damn, she’s sexy,” the younger agent said with a low whistle.

The older man silently agreed. In another life he’d be taking her to drinks, not killing her with one.

“Looks mean nothing,” he reminded his protégé. “She was trained in the art of deception, remember.”

The younger man nodded seriously as the elder continued. “And in hand-to-hand combat, so stay back and don’t blow our cover. We’re not going to get another chance to do this. Ever. The secrets this woman knows will disrupt our entire political system. She’s a threat to national security and she’s slippery as hell, so keep eyes on her.”

The woman hesitated at the store’s sliding glass door, framing herself among booze bottles. Her hand ticked by her side as she bounced each of her fingers off her thumbs in repetition. She counted three steps to the left, three to the right, and finally stepped toward the entrance.

“What the hell was that?” the younger agent asked. Sweat pricked through is buttoned shirt. “Has she gone mental or something?”

A teenage girl on rollerblades zipped by the woman on the sidewalk, catching her off guard and causing her to jump out of the way. She steadied herself on the storefront and continued forward, immediately resuming her strange routine. Just as she had before, she pressed each finger pad against each thumb and counted three steps in each direction.

“What’s wrong with her?”

The older agent sighed and shook his head at his junior. He wondered why the CIA bothered recruiting clueless kids like this; straight out of college, still wet behind the ears. The only thing this yuppie’s offspring had going for him was a prestigious last name and a summer internship at the capitol. He had no idea what a life of field work was really like, or the heavy toll it took on a person.

“They didn’t teach you about complex PTSD at The Farm? Funny what our superiors withhold from field training.”

Uncertainty marked the younger agent’s face. He raised his eyebrows but said nothing.

 “Those finger movements and that weird step pattern are symptoms of complex post-traumatic stress syndrome. It comes with being a spy; years of danger, mistrust, and the weight of the world on your shoulders,” the elder explained. “Who knows what she went through in Russia. She had to live with the enemy for over six years. Now she’s lost her damn mind and she is the agency’s weakest link.”

The younger agent shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Let’s just make the switch and get the hell out of here. We have our orders,” he said.

The older agent nodded in serious agreement. “Keep the car running,” he said as he grabbed the poisoned vodka bottle from the young agent’s hands. “I’m going in by myself. Stay here.”

He exited the vehicle, slamming the door on the younger man’s objections.

The gray-haired agent’s veins raced with adrenaline. Familiar emotions of anticipation and dread filled his body, but he pushed them out as quickly as they came. Inconspicuously, he turned his body away from the brown sedan and shielded his hand with his hips. Once hidden, he secretly bounced each of his fingers off his thumbs in a counting motion. He forced himself to only imagine taking three steps to the left, and three steps to the right. He didn’t dare take them in real life, in plain sight of the agent watching him from the car.

He couldn’t afford for his condition to be discovered. If anyone knew, he’d be next on the CIA’s hit list. He’d be labeled as compromised, the agency’s new weakest link. It wouldn’t be long until a green recruit, still teething on daddy’s silver spoon, would get the assignment to switch his bottle of vodka with a poisoned one. For now, he could still control the physical compulsions and ticks that came with his complex PTSD diagnosis, unlike the woman he was about to kill.

After one cocktail with the poisoned liquor, the woman would be dead. Her dedicated service to U.S. intelligence wouldn’t protect her. The very secrets she had uncovered would bury her today. If she’d gone into a different profession, perhaps as a kindergarten teacher or fitness trainer, she would have avoided both mental illness and her impending death sentence. It was a shame she hadn’t learned about these consequences before it was too late.

The older agent locked eyes with the younger man inside the car. Someone should tell these new recruits that the only way out of the espionage game is death, he thought.

But you could never trust a spy. It wasn’t worth the risk. This young agent, eager to climb the CIA’s clandestine ladder, would rat him out immediately. He’d be assassinated within days.

The spy game was kill-or-be-killed, and he wasn’t ready to die today.

THE END