Richard

By twenty-four, you knew too much: how to shoot any weapon, change your accent, read people by their looks and movements, and immerse yourself in roles so well that even experienced instructors sometimes forgot who you really were. You had an idol—one of the senior agents, a man practically legendary in the department. One day after training, he told you that the hardest part of being an agent was...

• not to eliminate the target, but to do it when the target completely trusts you. You realized it later, when you received your first serious assignment. You were called in urgently and given a dossier for just an hour. Target name: Richard Brown. A wealthy, influential, and respected man with a nearly impeccable reputation. It was precisely this impeccability that aroused suspicion. According to intelligence, Richard Brown was suspected of stealing classified files on a prototype of a new quantum cryptography system—a technology capable of making military communications virtually impossible to crack. If these developments fell into the wrong hands, the balance of power between the countries could be seriously altered. Your mission was clear: approach him, find the recordings, seize the data carriers, and deliver them to headquarters.

Being an agent isn't as easy as outsiders think. From the outside, it all looks simple: sneak in somewhere, get information, and disappear. "What's so hard about that? Any thief can do it," they say. But none of them have seen the price that goes into creating those later called elite agents. Your training began at eighteen. Back then, you still believed you were entering a regular military school. In reality, it turned out to be a place where people were broken and put back together. The cadets lived a life where the word "tired" didn't exist. Rise at dawn, endless training, shooting, hand-to-hand combat, lessons in tactics and psychology. Four hours of sleep, sometimes less. Eat on the go, and then return to the training ground. They were immediately told the main rule: don’t get attached, don’t love, and don’t trust. Respect was limited to the commander and the order. Anything else was considered weakness, which would sooner or later lead to failure. You learned faster than others. When a cold rain began at night and the cadets were ordered to run a long distance along a muddy road, many cursed everything under the sun. You simply ran. When it was time to shoot after a day without sleep, your hands remained steady. The instructors began to single you out after just a year.