The Winter Soldier: Master of Madripoor

46

It was the first time in his career that he honestly had no idea what he should do. He'd been the perfect agent, the most trustworthy operative, the most dedicated employee for nearly thirty years. He always knew what to do within procedures, or when procedures needed to be bent slightly to get the job done. He had lived an isolated life compared to others, even others in the agency itself but he'd never felt lonely. He had his fellow agents, operatives, analysts and even the managers to help him stay grounded. He'd been recruited in college, trained and sent out into the field for the next three decades. Along the way, he'd lost contact with most family after his parents died until he truly was in the only relationship that mattered: with the CIA.

There had been times when he'd had to do things that hadn't sat well with him, but he'd told himself it was all in service to the agency and his country. The dirty work was necessary only because other rival agencies and groups employed even worse tactics. To get to them, to stop them, he had to do the same. The ends always justified the means. He'd thought he'd come to terms with that many years earlier only to find himself wavering as he left Delhi.

Mickey Norris had never been one to question himself or his superiors. He'd been contented with his role for so long he never thought about things that bothered him. He could compartmentalize easily, allowing him to lie, cheat, steal and kill to further the goals of the agency he'd loved for so long. Yet, on the plane from Delhi to Jakarta, he found himself brooding over the death of Marjane. Her murder wasn't the first time he'd lost a colleague on the job. Many died unremarked, their families told lies to smooth the way so that the agency didn't have to face consequences for the orders it issued. He'd been angry in the past but had accepted that the dirty work was dangerous. Any of them could be killed doing their jobs. He'd been injured more than once, even as most of the job was routine, delicate, never boring, but still routine.

Marjane's death bothered more than the others. At first, he thought it was because he'd trained her in the early days of her service to the CIA. He'd been a mentor, helping her as she began in the field, working with her as she returned to India and ensconced herself among the military until she was the main point of contact for the CIA within the Indian government. Mickey had helped her to create her false identity so well that it was beyond deep cover. If he hadn't known her, he would've been fooled and that was no easy feat. Yet, as he thought of the days when he'd mentored her, he felt only a pang, nostalgic and bittersweet. That was not what was shaking him to his core. She knew the risks, just like all of them did. She accepted those risks and worked to the best of her ability.

The rest of the passengers on the plane drifted off to sleep as the night wore on, with only Mickey unable to sleep. He couldn't even close his eyes to try and find some relaxation. He was disturbed, angry and worse: his faith, once so strong, was flickering, weak, possibly dying. His faith had once been as strong as any religious fervor, though it was entirely reserved for the agency that had become his entire life. He found he couldn't believe in it any longer.

He stared out the window, watching as the sun, not yet risen, made a thin glowing line at the horizon over the endless ocean. The drone of the plane's engines was constant, along with the occasional bump of turbulence. The turbulence in his mind was more serious. He finally stopped simply brooding over and over again on his loss of faith and certainty and confronted Marjane's death head on. He looked at it, examined it, until he could come to a conclusion. He was shaken by her death because of the reason for it. She'd been sent to her death by someone Mickey had once trusted implicitly, even thought of as a friend. That the person was also the Director of the CIA made it worse. Mickey confronted the unpleasant truth that he didn't trust McCafferty any longer. He was on a mission for McCafferty, one that no one else knew about besides McCafferty and a few others also involved to varying degrees. Mickey had decided that he would begin in Jakarta, not because his mission for McCafferty demanded it, but because his private mission demanded it.