The Company
Congratulations, Agent! You’ve been offered a job with the Company, bringing justice to the world. And since you’re reading this, we can assume that you’ve already accepted.
Here’s what you’ve learned about the Company so far, from your handler or from barracks chatter, or perhaps even by spying on other people around the safe house. You can’t prove any of it, of course. Still, it all seems to fit.
The Company is a clandestine organization with a sworn mission to deal with injustice and human suffering wherever it may be found. This doesn’t mean food and medical aid, war-crimes trials, or lobbying against dictators – although you’ve been assured that the Directors contribute vast sums of money to such efforts. No, this means action against the people who cause the problems . . . action that goes beyond peacekeepers and law-officer exchanges . . . direct action.
Why?
Everybody likes to say that “somebody” should do something about powerful countries that run torture chambers, secret prisons, and concentration camps; that prop up dictators; and that assassinate anyone who disagrees with them. About wealthy corporations that poison the land, exploit their workers, and destroy economies. About so-called freedom-fighters who hold their own people hostage while they terrorize the world. About international criminals who engage in child smuggling, white slavery, and piracy.
What action that does takes place is carried out by the world’s power elite, however, and their agenda rarely has much to do with justice. Frequently, those who deign to solve one problem are causing a dozen others somewhere else. More often than that, though, action simply doesn’t happen. Whether out of fear of trade sanctions, diplomatic isolation, or war, or simply thanks to backroom agreements, it’s easier to look the other way. Not to get involved. Let things happen the way they’ve always happened – and so what if a few “little people” get hurt?
Fortunately, not every corporate mogul is a greedy, immoral bastard who wants to get rich for the sake of being rich, and not every government official blindly supports his nation’s goals. A cabal of powerful men and women created the Company because they realized that the world needs order, but that obeying laws to keep the peace only works when there’s a peace to keep – a real peace, which isn’t the same thing as being paralyzed by manufactured fear. And of course lawfulness isn’t the same thing as justice.
Who?
The Company was started up by some wealthy people indeed: ethical captains of industry for sure, but also some Old Money that got a conscience, probably a few media stars, and maybe even a lottery winner or two. Someone got them talking – initially over the Internet – and then stepped out of the picture. Nobody is sure who catalyzed those early meetings. Theories range from frustrated UN officials to former heads of state to Elvis, but the smart money bets that it wasn’t an individual but a group of digital activists who pulled off a successful social experiment. Chances are, nobody will ever know.
The wealthy cabal quickly realized that money alone could not solve all problems. They knew that if they tossed cash at self-proclaimed troubleshooters, they would end up breeding further deadly corruption. Instead, they used their influence to feel out likeminded people involved in intelligence, military, police, and security organizations the world over – not just national services, but also nongovernmental and private groups. They figured that such individuals would know how violent and criminal problems are caused and solved, and that at least some of them would have a conscience.
As it turned out, most of their would-be experts didn’t have a conscience. But a few were tired of the methods of their masters. They shared the Company’s goal of seeing justice done regardless of national or corporate interests. These, the Company approached covertly. With the Company’s money, it was easy to meet privately and to make the meeting look like a simple misunderstanding if it didn’t go well.
The few who truly shared the Company’s goals and had a clear vision of what needed to be done were invited in. They retired normally, took their pensions, and vanished into obscurity. In reality, they joined the Company’s sponsors as Directors, and set about assembling the resources they’d need to fight evil covertly. Above all, that meant highly trained men and women willing to risk their lives and accept a modest paycheck from a mysterious employer in order to fight the good fight.
The Directors established clandestine recruitment protocols. They made sure that only people who shared the Company’s stance against corruption and injustice would be approached as potential agents, and that these would be skilled operators whose views and actions had already gotten them discharged, fired, left for dead, or marginalized by their “legitimate” superiors. They spent the necessary money to make sure that these candidates would have no idea at all about the Company’s true nature prior to being screened for motivation, mental stability, and professional skills. Then they spent even more to arrange new lives for their recruits.
Recruits like you.
When?
All the planning, organization, and recruitment happened between the late 1990s and the present day (2009), but the Company only just opened for business. You’re in on the ground floor. You’re part of the first cohort. There are no senior Agents to hold your hand or tell you war stories. There is no history. To be precise, you’re making history – and if you do it right, nobody will ever know.
Where?
The Company recognizes no national boundaries. More accurately, it doesn’t bar anybody’s citizens from recruitment and it doesn’t deny anybody its aid. Wherever there’s grave injustice – criminal, political, social, or however you want to label it – the Company takes an interest. If the injustice looks like it will respond to conventional, overt aid, then the Company’s wealthy sponsors give it. But if the problem looks like one that can only be solved by action, well, Agents are sent in.
As far as you know, the Company doesn’t have a “home base” or an “office.” It seems to be organized largely via the Internet, and meetings and operation staging take place out of temporary safe houses. If equipment or travel can be bought above-board via conventional channels, Agents simply find the necessary funds in their accounts – or, where necessary, in prearranged hotel rooms, or even in the hands of locals who think they’re working for someone else. When restricted items are needed, portable goods are dead-dropped in an abandoned building. Larger equipment is conveniently left where it can be “stolen,” and company operators are tipped off in time to beat the local underworld to the prize. The Company seems to have tentacles everywhere.
What?
It would be a fair criticism that by operating outside established channels, equipping Agents with everything from lockpicks to guns to high explosives, and taking often-violent action against people who haven’t been formally tried and convicted in anybody’s court, the Company is as bad as the problems it purports to solve. The Company doesn’t deny this. Indeed, the Company makes it clear to its operators that it’s aware of this, and wants every one of its people to be as certain as possible that every lock they pick, every bullet they shoot, and every bomb they set off is going to result in something that the world can look at and say, “We’re better off that this happened.” Where there’s any doubt, there is no doubt – abort the mission.
This doesn’t make the job any easier.
To take down the unjust, Agents often have to use the methods of their targets: espionage, murder, and sometimes worse. There’s a time and a place for torture, and that’s when some scumbag has a secret that’s going to get thousands of people killed if he doesn’t talk. This is why the Company recruits only a special kind of person.
This is why the Company recruited you.
Company Agents