The night was late, the Washington DC night cold with the winter wind. The roads had been covered with slush, forcing Teller Goldstein to go slowly on the George Washington Memorial Parkway. He'd called his wife on the cell-phone when he left the office, letting her know that he was on the way. Teller tabbed the automatic garage door opener and looked over his house as the door slowly rattled up. In front of him his house was decorated with Christmas decorations. He admired the large house, three stories, expansive snow covered lawns, fine brickwork with large windows.

Teller waited till the door was up, then pulled his luxury sedan into the garage, the headlights briefly sweeping over the stacked boxes on the shelves.

Everything in its proper place. Organized. Sorted. Put just right.

Shutting off the car, he got out and thumbed the fob out of habit, locking the car's doors. The door finished closing, shutting away the Virginia night. The tread of his loafers sounded loud to him as he moved over and opened the door that led into the house.

Only a few lights were on. It was late, work at the office having taken his attention till ten in the evening. He wasn't surprised that the only lights that were on were in the kitchen, the hallway, and the study. When Teller saw the box of wine sitting out on the counter he shook his head. Like a lot of DC wives, his own Maria had taken to drinking wine after dinner, waiting for her husband to come home.

The last few weeks had been busier than Teller wanted to remember.

His loafers whispered on the expensive carpet as he moved down the hallway, brushing at his expensive gray suit, wondering if his wife was going to pick a fight with him or not over the late hour. That was the only reason he could think of her for waiting in the study for him.

The door was slightly open, and Teller pushed it all the way open, stopping and staring at the scene in front of him.

His wife was kneeling in front of his expensive mahogany desk, her hair covered her face, her head lowered. He could see metal wire wrapped around her wrists and forearms, cruelly deep, drawing blood that had dripped onto the white Persian carpet. His son and daughter bracketed his wife, both of them kneeling, both of them bound with iron wire.

"Maria!" Teller cried out, rushing forward before his mind had completely processed everything in the room.

"Stop," The voice was mild, almost bored, and Teller jerked to a halt, one hand still held out toward his wife as he lifted his gaze.

Leaning against his expensive mahogany desk that was rumored to have once been Lydon B. Johnson's, was a man that Teller felt he should recognize. Short, slight. Wearing a Seattle Seahawks windbreaker and cargo pants, rimless glasses over watery blue eyes, fingerless black leather gloves, with a FBI baseball cap finishing off his appearance.

It was the pistol in the man's hand that got Teller's attention.

"What do you want?" Teller asked, licking his lips. His mouth was suddenly dry. His days of field work were far behind him, he'd ridden a desk for the last fifteen years.

"Nothing you can give me. Nothing you can offer me," The man said, his voice soft, slightly bored. "You are Director Teller Goldstein, of the Central Intelligence Agency, Senior Assistant Director of the Directorate of Operations."

Teller swallowed and drew himself up. "Then you know you're signing your death warrant, Mister..." He let the last part hang.

"None of your concern," The man said. "This, is your wife is thirty years, Maria Goldstein-Wyatt. That is your daughter, Mary Goldstein, an agent of the National Security Agency, and of course, your son, an agent of the Office of Science and Technology, and one of the reasons I am here."

Teller frowned. His son? How? He licked his lips. "There are guards on the grounds."

"Laying in the snow. Yes. But that's what you get when you hire Red River Corporation security, Mister Goldstein," The little man's face was still expressionless, as if he was speaking about the weather to a colleague he detested. The little man sighed, shrugged. "Well, let's get on with this."

Teller frowned, wondering what the little man meant when he suddenly raised the pistol and shot Teller in the left knee. The pistol only made a slight popping noise, the vented barrel and the subsonic hollowpoint .38 round doing their jobs. Teller went down with a cry of pain, grabbing his leg. His family screamed, his wife looking up, tape across her mouth, the same as his two children.

The little man moved from the desk, walking over and staring down at Teller. Teller reached out, trying to grab the little man's ankle, and managing to succeed.

Right before the little man shot him in the elbow.

Teller cried out as the little man squatted down next to him, sobbing with the pain of the two gunshot wounds.

"You, Mister Teller Goldstein, are an idiot," He said, still bored. "You may have gotten authorization for what you did from the Vice President, but you should have known that while he is beyond my reach, beyond the reach of those who would seek vengeance for what you did," He pressed the pistol against Teller's side. "You, on the other hand, are not."

Rather than shooting, the little man went back to lean against the desk.

"What? What did I do?" Teller gasped.

"Operation Blue Morning," the little man said.

Teller went still, staring at the other man. "How? How did?" Teller stammered.

"I kept track, from a distance, of all the assets you struck at. When they all vanished within a four day span, and their families came up deceased, I knew that someone had opened a box long ago closed and put on the shelves," The little man said. "Now, I do believe, you authorized the termination of those asset's families?"

Teller shook his head. "Please, no, my family had nothing to do with it."

"Neither did their children," the small man said. He shrugged. "It is nothing personal."

Teller watched in horror as he shot Teller's wife, son, and daughter twice in the back each.

"They aren't dead yet, Director Teller," the small man said.

Teller sobbed, watching in horror as his family choked and gagged, trying to cry out past the blood filling their lungs. They fell to the side, revealing their ankles had been wrapped with wire that had then been attached to wire wrapped around their waists.

"God damn you!" Teller screamed.

The small man shrugged. "God doesn't care about anything involving this, Director."

The little man had been immune to threats, pleas, promises, and offers of bribes as he had sat there and watched Teller's family die in front of him. Every time Teller had tried to move over to one of his family members, the little man moved over, grabbed him by his hair, and pulled Teller away from his dying family.He watched his daughter die first. Bloody froth running from her nose, her eyes going red as she suffocated. His wife next went, writhing and then going still. His son held on the longest, almost five minutes, before he too was still. Teller was weeping by the end of it.

The man stood up and precisely shot each of his family members in the temple, then reloaded the small pistol.

"The Director of the Central Intelligence Agency as well as the Director of the National Security Agency and the Director of National Intelligence have all signed off on this. They, unlike you, understand just what you have done," The little man said, lighting a cigarette. Teller noticed the little man held it between his ring and little finger, as if he was French. "You, in your arrogance, could have killed everyone in Washington DC with the actions of Operation Blue Morning."

Teller tried to get up and the little man shook his head.

"Do you understand the nature of what you were messing with?" He asked.

Teller licked his dry lips and glared. "It was tying up loose ends," He snarled. "You killed my family over a bunch of rejects that nobody will ever miss."

The little man shook his head. "Except for the eighteen thousand members of the extended family of some of those 'rejects', they, I imagine, miss them."

"It was necessary, National Security," Teller said, wiping the tears from his face. "They could have posed a danger to the United States."

"They had not posed any danger to anyone in over a decade. Then you had to go and open that box. Disturb sleeping leviathans," the little man said. Teller watched the little man move over and squat down next to him. "Do you have any idea of just how bad this whole thing went on you?"

"They're all dead. The Operation is over," Teller said. He choked back a sob. "Killing my family, killing me, won't change anything."

"That last asset. It's been almost three weeks. Have you found his body?" The little man asked.

"What difference could it possibly make now? There's no way he could have survived up there. Not in the middle of winter. Not without shelter. The buildings are blown up, destroyed. DNA from the blood shows that he was bleeding too heavily to survive more than an hour or so," Teller snarled. "He's dead. It's over."

"So the answer is no. You don't have a body," The little man said. He sighed and shook his head. "You killed their families, often in front of them. Children. Babies. Women."

His face grew hard. "Why is that we of the CIA can't seem to control our baser instincts?" He asked.

Teller stared as the little man brought up the pistol and pointed at his face.

"Why? What difference does it make to you?" Teller asked.

"None that you would understand," The little man said.

And pulled the trigger.

Teller's head snapped back, the bullet too low powered to exit the skull, instead, it bounced around inside.

The little man checked the pulse of each person, then left, turning off the lights as he went. He walked across the lawn, passing the dead bodies of two of PMC members that had been providing security. Both had been shot at the base of the skull with the pistol riding in the small man's hidden holster. He keyed in the code, left the gate, and waited for it to close.

The car that pulled up was an unmarked black sedan, one of thousands in Washington DC. The little man got in, shutting the door and leaning back in the comfortable leather seat.

"It's done?" The driver, a large African American man asked.

"Done," the little man said.

"I'll let the interested players know. Hopefully what we've done tonight will pay the weregild those two families are going to be snarling for," The larger man said.

"They didn't account for the primary target," the little man said. "They haven't found a body."

"Then he's not dead," Perspiration appeared on the larger man's forehead. "Let's hope this satisfies him."

"Time will tell, Mister Henry," The little man said. He looked out the window. "Time. Will. Tell."

The drive was silent to the large parking garage near the Lincoln Memorial. The little man got out, watching the sedan pull away.

For a long moment the little man stood in the darkness of the parking garage. Eventually he lit a cigarette as he walked out. He stopped on the sidewalk, looking around him at the Virginia night.

Why? What difference does it make to you? The little man could hear Teller's last words again.

"Three one seven in life and death," Senior Director Timmons said to the darkness.