Mirror of Treason

“How could you?”

It was an indignant question I had prepared to answer, if asked of me. When I decided that the only recourse for the injustices I had witnessed was to willingly give my state’s secrets to the enemy, I had known the decision was…illegal. Immoral, perhaps. One should always be true to their word, and I had promised to protect this secret with my life, knowing its value. A wrong was being done.

Not that the whole of my actions - and hopefully, the results of them - were wrong. It would all be a net positive in the end, I had hoped.

“How could you?” I asked the man on the business end of my tiny pistol. It was not a question I had thought I’d be asking another.

I’d caught him in the secure room as he was squatting down, taking pictures of one of the classified documents in the safe. The enemy spy - that is, the man betraying my enemy to help "my country" - gave a pained smile, raising his hands to his side, perhaps not in surrender, but in bewildered, frightened amusement. Perhaps his mind was filled with the same turbulence as my own.

"Couldn't build the bomb without you, could they? Why else would they trust a traitor?" The other spy asked. He didn't have the accent that most of his other countrymen had; I would have never known he was from my enemy's homeland if I had met him on the streets of my town across the pond.

The hammer on my pistol made a brittle clack as I pulled it back. I had a mind to be done with this man. Beyond simply being annoying, my life might depend on his absence.

“Answer my question,” I asked, icing my voice as much as I was able, “Why would you betray them?”

“You think the country you see is a paradise?” He laughed, “You think the place your handlers show you is real?”

The uncomfortable truth, that is, that he betrayed his home for the same reasons that I betrayed mine, was not lost upon me. Of course there were enemy spies. I just never imagined I’d have to talk to one.

“Tell me, what’s so wrong about your country that you’d stoop as low as I have?” He continued, dropping his voice to an almost musical bass tone. Despite myself, I found it soothing.

“It’s like you said: the good things you see on TV aren’t the way it really is,” I said, keeping the weapon sighted on him.

“Yes, but…why? What pushed you over the edge into espionage?” He asked.

I knew he was probably looking for the opportunity to ambush me, perhaps to get me talking and catch me by surprise, but I’d been holding in my motivations for so long.

“Wasn’t just one thing. I…” I lowered the pistol slightly, “There was just so much wrong.”

He rocked back on his heels, taking a seat on the floor.

“Too many people left sick and hungry. Too much money spent trying to…well,” I waved the gun, “To kill you. Stop this.”

He flashed a weary, resigned smile.

“And you’re the only one who feels that way?” He asked.

The silence stretched uncomfortably as I held the deeper thoughts at bay.

“Probably not,” I said, and pulled the trigger.

******

There were pictures of many more documents on the spy’s phone taken over the course of a month, and he had four fake passports in the bag he carried. He was an amateur. It seemed clear that if I hadn’t found him, someone else would have.

Killing their traitor mostly solidified their trust in me. Some of the smarter officers suspected that I was covering my tracks. It was a wise assumption: the only thing you can ever be sure of about a betrayer, whether they hurt or help you, is that they will betray. But those more intelligent leaders were overruled by their blustering superiors, who insisted on my trustworthiness due to my decisive, masculine action, if only in implication. It was an amusingly familiar attitude.

But the other spy’s last words hadn’t fallen on deaf ears. Breaking trust was something that couldn’t be undone. I didn’t relish my dirty deeds; I was no sociopath. I’d done wrong by people I trusted and liked, who felt the same for me, who were owed my integrity. Of course I regretted it, but I was the better man for that regret.

I’d told myself I was doing bad things for a good reason. In any case, I had to believe that I was right, and he was wrong. I’d passed yet another point of no return.

I had to believe.

I had to…