It was printed in bold red type across the face of the brown envelope.
There was no address on the front, and on the back, nowhere to
return it to either.
Mark Roswell slurped his coffee, tore off another piece of toast, and stared again at the angry red words.
TOP SECRET
And below it, in smaller, but no less foreboding type:
Authorised personnel only
Mark pondered the A4-sized delivery. All of a sudden it felt much too heavy in his hands, as if the weight of his curiosity had somehow drained from his fingertips into the envelope. He placed it on the counter in case he dropped it.
Perhaps it was a letter bomb. Do I know anybody who would want me dead?
Ex-girlfriends who couldn’t quite
let go, a couple of cousins who had shaken up the family tree,
a few
kids he had picked
on at school. There were a lot of sour relationships out there,
but dead.
He held the envelope to his ear,
careful not to move it too much. No ticking. Did letter bombs
tick? He
didn’t know whether
he was relieved or not.
“Get a grip, Mark,” he told himself. “You
been watching too many movies.”
He slipped his thumb under the fold and tore
open the envelope. There was a single sheet of paper inside.
Thank you kindly for
your assistance with this mission, further details of which
will be given to
you on a need to know basis. Any information you receive will
be of a highly sensitive nature and cannot be repeated. Should
you do so, you will be handled accordingly.
Weapons will be made available when required.
We will contact you momentarily.
“Mission?” The back of the sheet was blank. There was a watermark, but he couldn’t make out what it was. “What
the hell is this?”
Mark dropped the piece of paper onto the kitchen counter, and it ran through his mind that one of his friends was pulling a practical joke on him. He tried to laugh.
But then the telephone rang,
and it didn’t seem funny anymore.
