Bingo Runner: A Chase Through Time

In the beginning has always been a relative term.

Dan hung up the phone and took a minute to relax. It'd been a long few weeks. He was glad to be through with it all, he was well over due for the couple weeks of vacation he would receive in between missions.

The traffic was unbearable in the city; everything had gone crazy with the death of the prime minister. The cab ride was almost 30 pounds, quite a bit for a normally short drive. Dan got out of the cab and took in the mountain air near his headquarters as the cab drove off, back to the city and to the madness.

A brief retinal scan and he was inside. Signing into the database registry to make his presence known, he knew that the retinal scan would have already alerted his superiors, but he was a stickler for protocol. He would have time for a quick nap before his debriefing. Unfortunately, regular sleep patterns were a luxury that agents simply couldn't afford.

Dan awoke a few hours later; he assumed it was sometime mid-afternoon although he couldn't be sure. His pager had no less than 10 missed rings, and he knew he was expected in the briefing room. How ironic that it would be the same room Patrick was briefed in just days before.

Walking briskly, he attempted to get some blood flowing to his brain. He was quite groggy - worn out. He picked up a coffee from the wall dispenser en route; luckily the Americano was fresh.

Dan strode confidently into the debrief room and sent out an arrival signal. His superiors would appear in a few minutes to let him know how everything had wrapped up. He twiddled his thumbs and took the opportunity to reflect on past events. He hadn't had to kill a man in many missions, especially not a good man he could have almost considered a friend. Dan couldn't remember a life when he had had friends, though. People came and went as quickly as missions did these days, and sometimes the two were even related. He chuckled a little to himself, his apathy was staggering. He was just beginning to reminisce about his brief romance with the beautiful Paula when he heard the doors behind him whir open.

"Dan, glad to see you are back and all is well," the man known only as the General said cordially. Such pleasantries were a delightful façade everyone enjoyed partaking in here at the center.

"Thank you General, it's great to be back. My pleasure to serve," Dan replied in an equally cordial fashion. He liked the General, the man had raised him to be the missionary he was today.

"Well Dan, let me first congratulate you on a mission well accomplished. The assassination went smoothly, and you enforced our cover front to the investigators very well. There's no way you could be instigated in the murder. Fantastic on that job. Sorry to hear about your partner Patrick, he should never have been in on something of this magnitude..." The General said, and although he didn't show emotion, he did look a bit thoughtful.

"Yes, it was a tough one, General, but if you could perhaps let me know what's next? I don't like to dwell on the past, and that mission, although a roaring success, is over." Dan replied, a tad blithely.

"What's the hurry Dan? In a rush to do nothing? I don't blame you one bit. Well, there's not a lot to say, at least not a lot I'm at liberty to say," the General said, chuckling a bit at his own joke. "We'll clear everything up in a few weeks when we brief you for your next task. We're going to have a lot of damage control with the upcoming turmoil in the government. There's just one last thing to clear up before you go, an issue of sorts we've detected. Just a minute while I bring it on screen..."

Stay tuned next week for Part 2 of Bingo Runner: A Chase Through Time.

Read the finale of The Spy Who Called Bingo:
The Spy Who Called Bingo: Part 13